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SUMMARY: This is meant to be a history for a larger work.

Soot covered the glowing city walls tarnishing the shining crimson beauty that was Blessing. Ash, scuffed by worn citizens, covered the streets as dogs and cats ran freely through open homes and littered avenues. Shuffling sounds announced the coming of a dirty boy dragging a canvas laden with blankets and water skins. Nearby a dog lifted its head and wagged its tail but the child continued on, coughing whenever the smoke became too much. The canvas he dragged left a ragged path in the dust. Tears, from eyes made red and puffy by the thick pall of smoke, washed equally ragged trails down the child's dirty face.
Turning a corner, the child entered the central plaza of Blessing, once a treasure of the land, now it stood luridly lighted in red while a strong breeze rattled through desiccated leaves. The grand fountain to the north was full of dust and debris. Bronze statues of former leaders, shimmering like fire from the uneven lighting, held their soot blackened limbs raised in supplication. Never stopping, the boy continued east along the main thoroughfare that led to the Winter gate. Glittering red buildings covered by black soot lighted the path to the open gate, which was filled with fire and smoke, blood and death. Hell made manifest.
Outside the gate's tattered pennants whipped in the flame stirred winds while wounded soldiers and citizens wailed inside over crowded tents. Other young children emerged from the gate dragging whatever they could find to help the wounded. Mothers and daughters helped care for the mounting wounded in the overflowing tents, while some of the older boys ventured out into the carnage to salvage weapons or retrieve the wounded. All were grimy and glassy eyed with exhaustion and loss. Low on the horizon, below the smoke that snuffed out the stars, the moon rose with a deep orange hue like some hell spawned pumpkin. A young woman, newly widowed, sat down outside a shelter and wept bitterly.
The battle had been raging for four days. Carnage unabated covered Snow Plain from the gates of Blessing across the river Winter to the gates of Prosperity. Hundreds of war engines blazed in the night, their fires reflected by the armor of dead soldiers and glazed eyes of unarmored citizens. None were left in the cities except the very young. The conflict went far beyond pride and honor, beyond right and wrong into genocidal madness. Neither side would be content without the obliteration of the other.
Far removed from the grizzly nightmare unfolding upon Snow plain, Blessing's sorceress stood arrogantly defiant of the blasts sent by her enemy. The sorceress was standing at the edge of a cliff high in the Nartag Mountains. Ember's silver hair was plastered to her face while her finery clung to sweat dampened skin. Even though the battle had raged for days, leaving Ember's normally aloof beauty bruised and dirty, she still wore the haunter of her position and discharged vitriol with the ease of long use. The damage to her outward appearance only heightened her desire to cast Flame down and reap vengeance upon his beloved city of Prosperity.