Chapter 1: Out of the Ashes
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     Mayi flew as fast as she could through the winding tunnels
of the Sylph cave. Her wings were aching, but the messenger had
brought word that the creature was stirring, and it was her duty as
head of the Healers' Guild to be present when it did...

     The young sylph thought back to the day when the stranger
had appeared, a few months ago. It had been a strange one, to be
sure. Even though they were deep within the Earth's protective
crust, the sylphs could hear strange sounds from above. Crashing,
explosions...and an unearthly screeching... Then, silence. The next
day, when the young ones had gone to the surface to gather berries,
they had found it. It was at this point that Mayi had first been
summoned.

     The creature that had fallen from the sky was strange
indeed. It appeared to be a human female, but the blood that
flowed from its wounds was like none that Mayi had ever seen. It
was a thick black ichor with an extremely noxious smell... The
creature had been badly wounded by the fall, and the stuff was all
over the place. The healer didn't dare touch it. The grass where
the woman had been found was charred black; Mayi didn't even
want to think about what the stuff was, let alone mess with it.

     But despite the caustic nature of her blood, the woman
seemed quite harmless. The elders had ordered that the creature be
kept in a cavern some distance away from the main residence,
where she had remained comatose since the day of her discovery... 
Until now.

     Mayi fluttered through the stone archway that formed the
doorway to the cavern, and hurried to where the three Elders were
clustered around the mat on which the creature lay. They turned at
the sound of her arrival.

     "Ah, Healer," said Zefnar, the oldest.

     "You are," began Salzen,

     "Just in time," chimed in Ulam. The Elders had an odd way
of finishing off each other's sentences..and thoughts. "The creature
is about to awaken." The Wise Three returned their attention to the
prone form on the mat. Mayi darted over to better examine her
extraordinary patient. The woman's face was pale and thin, framed
by long raven-black locks. She was dressed in the same simple
sylvan robe that Mayi had clothed her in when she was first found.
The young healer could detect no change since the last time she
had checked in.

     "Are you sure she's waking up?" she asked, a slight frown
furrowing her brow.

     "We are," the Elders replied in unison.

     Then, the creature stirred, raising one thin arm as if to
ward off imaginary foes. She muttered something, her mouth
forming words the sylphs could not understand. Mayi noticed that
the woman's canine teeth were slightly sharper than those of a
normal human. She knelt beside the strange female, and stretched a
hand out to tough her neck. The pulse she found was strong and
healthy, but the creature's flesh felt strangely warm...

     "She's burning up," muttered Mayi. Then, suddenly, the
creature's eyes flew open. Mayi gasped in horror. The eyes that
met hers had no pupils, no irises, and no whites. They were
uniformly red. Blood red. They seemed to glow with an eerie inner
light...

     "Where am I?" she asked matter-of-factly. She sat bolt
upright, and glared at Mayi with her strange eyes. The sylph
looked downward to avoid the disturbing gaze.

     "You-you're in the Sylvan Cave," she stammered. "You
were hurt, and we-" She was cut off when the stranger stood up
abruptly.

     "A cave? Underground?" The woman's brow furrowed as
she took in her surroundings. "This will never do! I must go out,
and serve Kefka!"

     "Kefka?" Mayi frowned. What kind of a woman was this?
If she was a woman at all... She shook her head, clearing it of
mental clutter. She was still a healer, and this creature, whatever
she might be, was her patient. "I think not! You're in no condition
to-"

     "Enough of your mindless prattle, pixie!" The woman's
eyes flashed. "Don't you have some fairy dust to go sprinkle or
something? I can feel His will, pulling me even now... I must go!"
With that, the woman clenched her fists, and drew them up to her
chest. She closed her eyes. And then, something even stranger
began to happen.

     The woman began to change.

     Her body grew in length and breadth, sprouting shiny black
scaled. Spines pushed themselves through the skin of her back.
Large, black, leathery wings emerged from her sides. Her neck
elongated and, to Mayi's horror, the creature's head split in two!
The two halves grew and twisted their forms until they assumed
the shapes of two dragons' heads. The woman was gone. In her
place was a huge, two-headed black dragon. Its obsidian coils
glimmered in the torchlight. Its heads looked towards the ceiling,
and simultaneously let out a bloodcurdling screech. It was the
same sound they had heard before... This was the creature that
Mayi had nursed back to health. She screamed.

     "Noooooooooooooooooooooo!" The creature payed her no
heed. Instead, it simply stretched out its wings. Then, it drew in
upon itself and flew towards the ceiling. So great was the
creature's power, that it managed to punch a hole through the cave.
Mayi was temporarily blinded by the sunlight that poured through
it. When her vision returned, the dragon was gone. She turned to
the Elders, who seemed quite dumfounded.

     "Black..."

     "Wyrm?"

     "Oh, my."

     "What are we going to do?" asked Mayi frantically.

     "We," began Salzen,

     "Are not going to do anything," said Salzen.

     "Because..." put in Ulam,

     "Nothing has happened here." Zefnar looked at her sternly.
"Do you understand?" Mayi nodded. The Elders knew best. They
always did...