[HEADING=1]CHAPTER TWO[/HEADING]
[HEADING=2]THE STORM[/HEADING]
The bullhorns blared a piercing whine before the first black specks appeared in the morning haze. Twelve tiny black spots that one could have mistaken for birds flying high, until of course the first blooms of lurid red blossomed over the London Presidium. Soon the slow tinkling tat-tat of the antiaircraft guns shooting flak high into the air, the roar of a dragon somewhere in the distance, lances of blue fire shooting skyward in impotent rage.
Soon it was over, trails of smoke drifting high into the air marking where the damage had been done. Wheeling and diving, dragons caught chunks of metal as they fell...useless objects torn down like a bird deprived of flight. Shadows beckoned hungrily to the souls lost, and elsewhere the dead were being shoveled into shallow graves.
The sudden anger and hostility from within the Third German Empire was not unexpected, but it was sudden all the same. Some dark thorn poking them in the side for too long, now reaching their breaking point and lashing out as they had done before. But the world was ready this time. Blades were drawn, shields were splintered, blood was spilled. All those within the Conclave drafted an ultimatum, which Germany casually ignored. With the aid of the USSR and certain other allies of Germany withdrew from the Conclave during one emergency session. Their ambassadors did not leave the City of the Illrians alive. Pumped for information, their minds flayed open, their bodies broken they were cast aside when their use had run thin. One million angry fallen angels with a score to settle, unleashed all as one. The Conclave called up every ally it had to begin a war they did not have the time to put down. Everywhere those who served an inner chaos rose up and fires were sparked.
But in the Sudan where a camel caravan crossed the dry rocky desert was one man who could end all of this. In search of a simple bell.
