Stefano's model, a lush and fair-skinned beauty of much bigger bosoms than brains, screamed as her flesh dissolved. Her long pristine hair evaporated into the warming air, the roots catching on fire and then escaping the unfortunate woman. Stefano did not see the woman turn and bellow at him, with one side of her face exposing a gaping hole to her skull and tears and blood streaming out of her eyes. A tumultuous eruption of stone and brick collapsed the balcony, sending what was left of her careening down to the street below.
Stefano swerved as the first sounds of screaming and the first sight of flame reached him, stumbling backwards away from his unfinished portrait that no longer resembled the fire ravaged model. Another man was in the room with the eccentric noble - his recently hired bodyguard, a rough local by the name of Pedro. He was huge and menacing, with a shaved head and a mean mouth, but he understood the attraction of money and had been nothing but submissive to the rich Morosini. Now, he stood dumbfounded, trapped in his position by the door. Stefano quickly yelled at him to do something, running back to the decorated wall in the attic of the house he has purchased. However, neither man had time to mount any defence as the front wall and balcony crumbled suddenly under the weight of an unknown assailant, something supremely powerful and large. The shockwave from the move sent Stefano and Pedro falling uncontrollably backward, but luckily Stefano already had his back to the wall and he clutched onto the drapes hanging there with a new-found strength born out of terror. Pedro, on the other hand, cursed as he launched into a rough corner in the perpendicular hallway and was presumably knocked unconscious instantly. That was when Stefano opened his eyes against every instinct he had and looked ahead.
Only a small section of the beast was visible to Stefano, yet what the slighty overweight man saw was... truly spectacular, a description he could not find the words for - if they even existed. His face was a mere arm's length away from the underbelly of the creature, though the spines and scales that protruded around it swerved with magnificence, closing the gap from Stefano to the underbelly by more than half its distance. Each scale breathed and moved with independence, and Stefano thought he could glimpse pure fire between their vertices, as if the belly of the beast were a raging oven. The material that comprised the underbelly was unlike anything Stefano had seen before, it was sleek and rugged, smooth and ragged, all at the same time. In the brief few moments that the creature stood before Stefano, the rest of it completely obscured by the ceiling remaining and the beast itself, the man was filled with a surge of wonderment. In that moment he asserted that nothing he would ever see would match the beauty and tremendousness of the contradictory underbelly and incomprehensible,
alive skin of the creature. In that moment he knew, he would go to the ends of the Earth to glimpse this creature again. Then a great force snatched the sight away from Stefano and the ceiling caved in on itself, the only thing protecting him from dying being the rubble that already lay on top of him and the considerable amount of fat on his belly. Nevertheless, a fragment of stone glanced his head and he knew no more.
---
Pedro's eyelids separated with difficulty a short time later, and were met by a devastating sight to say the least. The entire front wall and much of the exterior right wall had vanished into the streets below, and through the gaping chasm of the once luxurious penthouse all Pedro saw was embers and smoke residing in the remains of Sintra. Dazed natives stumbled through the cobbled streets, among the corpses of friends and family, and the merchants they bought fruit from, and the nobles who decreed their laws. The foremost emotions of the town were now sorrow and confusion as to just what transpired not long before, and would anyone ever recover? Pedro angled his head around, shaking off resting rubble from his aching shoulders and using his strength to burst free from his position in the damaged hallway. A frantic muttering came from the attic's main room around the corner, and Pedro raised his fists for the endless possibilities that could await for him there. He rounded the corner swiftly to see a half-crazed Stefano Morosini, his embroidered cloak in tatters beside him, his normally pristine hair gone wiry and disturbed. The middle-aged man sat in the far corner of the room, rubble on three sides of him, frenetically dabbing away at half of a canvas left over from the attack. Pedro raised his brow in curiosity. Stefano had seemed a controlled and perfectly sane man, but Pedro did not sense the same aura coming off of him than before.
"
Senhor Morosini...?" The large thug-for-hire cautiously approached the rambling noble, now getting a visual on the art Stefano was deliriously creating. He had sketched with skill three large patches of skin, detailed with scales and reinforcement like three chain links in a suit of armour. In the narrow passages between the patches was a stream of orange, red and a mustard yellow mixed from what Stefano had salvaged from his artist set-up. Despite the hurriedness the flames were eye-catching and they seemed to burst out from behind the skin.
"Not a finished work, yet, Pedro. Not finished. As. Of. Yet!" Stefano pounced to his feet with a unprecedented energy behind his movements. He snatched the canvas from the corner and held it like a babe, the sketch nestled into his chest between the open linings of his waistcoat. "Come, friend, we can hardly stay here with this new redecoration - it's hideous. Though I do admit I can appreciate the expansive window. Come, now!" With that he swept past Pedro and proceeded to the furnished stairs.
Pedro was taken aback by his offhandedness. It was likely that many had died in the just recent event and the pompous man seemed to be
enjoying it. People could be dead who Pedro had known his whole life, his friends... his mother.
"
Meu Deus..." Pedro murmured with a childlike tone to his voice, not befitting of his current appearance - a large thug with scares on his face and dried blood smeared across his temple. Pedro trudged off after Stefano, though he dreaded the discoveries he might find in the devastation.
---
A considerable crowd was assembled in the palace courtyard, the gate to which was missing it's hinges, them being presumably burnt off. The attention of the people was directed at cooly-dressed tanned man who reminded Stefano of a Spaniard he once knew. The man was recognisably armed with an air of leadership to him.
"...Archbishop of Efeso himself has proclaimed this a divine judgement, directly from the scripture. We are heathens, it is our burden to bear. I've made my..." He continued to speak, preaching to the crowd about a subject contextually unknown to Stefano - but he could grasp it's meaning. The nobleman had scanned the people standing around the tanned man, including the speaker himself, and with the flames still reflected in the jittery Morosini's eye he suspected that they knew of the creature.
Pedro had caught up with Stefano and he threw a hand down on his shoulder, perhaps with more force than was necessary. Stefano seemed unaffected by it, however, though he spun to meet Pedro's worried gaze.
"I shall find what I am looking for here, Pedro, I am sure of it. Why else would they all be here? Why else..."
"
Senhor, I am sorry. I have to go for now, look for my friends. My mother."
"Hm? Ah, of course. Such a terrible disaster. Yet..." He trailed off but Pedro noticed a glint in his eye that had not been there an hour earlier. There were more important things on his mind, however, and he chose instead to bid farewell and begin jogging away down the street.
"...exactly will the expedition be going?" A woman asked the spokesman. Stefano skipped quickly into the gap between the gates and approached a refined man he recognised from his short time in Sintra - a gentleman with a large beard and black cane.
"Greetings, man," Stefano spoke in a hushed whisper, with an ear still inclined to hear the armed speaker's reply to the woman, "An expedition, then? To what end?"
"Relief effort, they are asserting." The bearded man inclined his head toward Stefano, and meeting his eyes he added, "But I have my doubts. Especially with all the rumours of a Dragon."
A Dragon. Stefano perked up. He had known of Dragons and other fantastical beasts from the stories and etchings from Greek mythology and his Hellenic order, though could that other-wordly, awe-inspiring chest of the creature really belong to an existing Dragon? It was certainly a theory.
Stefano nodded to the bearded man and altered his eyeline to meet the speaker at the front.
"Morocco." The spokesman stated.
---
Stefano, though irritated about the lack of space in any of the living quarters, had secured himself a moderately sized corner on the galleon, albeit with some influence from his expansive currency. A large wooden partition obscured the corner from the other residents of the room, and as for the narrow gaps that were open Stefano had slipped a few coins to a native and asked him to stay close to the gaps and stop anyone if they attempted to enter. Wood tiles covered the entire room, stretching across the floor and around the ceiling to meet it's tail. The wood was not splintered or decrepit that he could see, and it did not produce any foul smell. A portion of the corner had been taken up by several sheets of linen and an expensive goat-skin blanket of high quality. Stefano eyed his prized half-canvas that he had carried with him for a short while now, and seeing a necessity to be performed - Stefano moved it from from it's position and placed it within plain sight of his bed. Stefano sighed and stared at it for a few minutes, wonderment still in his mind from the memory the painting gave to him.
This is the only way I will have any chance of seeing it again. This Dragon or whatever it is. No matter the cost, I need to do this.A distance away, Pedro knelt on a blood-stained carpet. Much of the wood comprising the hut had fallen away into the pile of rubble and material outside. Tears ran down the thug-for-hire's face, and had been doing so for more time than Pedro would have wanted. The charred corpse of his mother lay bent and broken before him, her mouth angled in a horrific scream that pierced the very integrity of Pedro's soul. He felt only pain, hopelessness, and a rising anger.
Stefano felt only desire.
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