All of the dragons find themselves in a grassy meadow owned by a farm that seems to have been abandoned. It's a sunny day within this pocket of reality, and green grass has never looked so beautiful as it does in that field. A sky of a perfect shade of robin's egg blue beams at them from above.

In front of them is a small child wearing a blue headdress on her shining, long black hair. Her headdress resembles peacock feathers. Pearls as big as a man's thumb sprout from golden wires from among the silk plumes. Her dress is a deep red with a mandarin collar and a wide skirt that brushes against the grass. There is a panel of blue and gold flowers that runs down the middle of the skirt. In front of her is a podium on which a number of scrolls sit.

As each of you appear, she smiles and hands you the secret that the emperor has bestowed upon you as a task. She gazes at each of you with a sweet smile on her precious, tiny face.  In looks she doesn't appear to be much over the age of five. Her large, black, almond shaped eyes stare with awe at you, since none of the celestials have seen a dragon in over 1000 years.

Clearing her throat she folds one hand over the other and bows to you. From her bowed posture she states in Mandarin, words of such weightiness that they belie her appearance, "Welcome dragons to your mercy from the Jade Emperor. My name is Ping. I am just one child among his many, so please do not think killing me will have any bearing on your status as his prisoners. On the scroll is what you must do to gain your mercy and your freedom. Some of you may have your own goals. Do NOT attempt to overcome your fate. Because the emperor has little trust for you, he has placed those gold necklaces upon you while you were still within hell in your punishment. If you attempt to do too much magic, or try to take them off, you will be sent back to hell. You also are missing your dragon jewels. They are within this town, but if you collect them, you still will have to contend with the Emperors demands."

She smiles sweetly again, and hands you a scroll.

Aliyah is not impressed or indeed happy even. While the meadow is beautiful the reason she is there in the first place leaves a sour taste in her mouth and lessens the beauty of her surroundings considerably. The black slacks and deep red, almost maroon top that Aliyah is wearing at the moment don't show off her figure all that well, as they were not meant to. Her choice of clothing was more stylish that flattery today, even down to her 1 inch heels she had on.

Looking to see which of the others had arrived, she was a little surprised to see she was the first. Watching the little girl that introduced herself as Ping, Aliyah bowed back to her and gently took the scroll from her. "Thank you Ping, you serve your father well." Opening her scroll, Aliyah silently reads it's contents to herself. Frowning as she does so.

Ping bows low to Aliyah. "Xie Xienin, Mighty One" she replies in a sweetly reverent voice.

As Aliyah steps aside with her scrolls, the childlike being lifts another scroll off the pile and presents it to the next person.

Shiro walks forward with a sneer lifting his lip. "Go away, stupid child. Stop pestering us with your incessant, long speeches. Your speech bores me. And coming from you, it holds little to no water with me. If the Emperor wanted to give me something of value, he would have sent a messenger more equal to my stature! Sending a child is an insult. Am I a child to be trifled with?"

Ping seems to take the outburst from the White dragon in stride. She bows low again, then kneels and places the scroll at the man's feet. She seems slightly dazed as she mouths the words of the question that Shiro last asked. She looks up at him and stutters, "B-bào qiàn!"


***she is formally apologizing***

The wind stirs up in the valley becoming fierce in its strength. Ping kneels down on the ground and covers her head. Clouds gather in the sky, blotting out all light as they darken into black thunderheads. Rumblings of thunder roll through and a single bolt of lightning strikes less than a foot from where Shiro is standing.

A voice booms from within the thunder. "Do not test my patience, dragon! Take your scroll and leave!"

Maylin's silver hair stirred in the wind and her emerald eyes stared daggers at Shiro as she moved forward to help the young girl up. "Fool! She hissed at him. "The Emperor of Heaven has released us from Hell and the first thing you do is insult his Messenger. You should ask his forgiveness a thousand times over for compounding your crime and rousing him to anger!"

She straightened the young girl's clothing and bowed low before her.

"Perhaps I may have been premature in my assessment of the situation," Shiro says as he looks with puzzlement at the scene set before him. "Even though I disagree with the furor directed against me, I will take the scroll."

Shiro glares at Maylin.

 "Do you even know what your sin was?" he spats at her as he grabs up the scroll on the ground and looks for the exit.

The clouds roll away and the wind dies down as Shiro takes up his scroll. The meadow is once again peaceful. Ping allows Maylin to help her up and smiles at her as she helps to straighten her dress. "Xie Xienin, Mighty Silver one." she murmurs politely.

She gazes placidly at the White one as he growls his question at Maylin. While he was speaking, she'd turned and picked up the Silver dragon's scroll. She has it in her hand, awaiting Maylin's acceptance.

Done reading, Aliyah tucks her scroll away, bows to her fellow dragons and to Ping once again. Straightening back up, Aliyah gives a small smile and turns to leave, sneering at Shiro as she does so. "What makes you so much better than His Children, brother? Are we not all equal? Or do you think some better than others?" Aliyah was genuinely confused on this point. Why was Shiro being so arrogant as to think himself better than Ping?

One of the great and abiding truisms of life is that if one wishes one's entrance to achieve the maximum possible impact, one must arrive fashionably late.

Eliza arrives just as the clouds of the Emperor's wrath part, allowing a bright and heavenly radiance to pour down and sparkle off of the silver of her hair and the vivid sapphire of her gossamer silken kimono.  She moves forward to approach the servant-child's podium, small pale bare toes peeking from beneath the hem of her ankle-length gown with each step, and although she glances curiously from person to person around the clearing, clearly taking note of the twinge of tension in the scene she's walked into, she just as clearly chooses to ignore it for the moment.

She accepts the offered scroll and reads, with a single curt nod as though she found written there exactly what she expected to find, and then beams a polite smile at the Emperor's herald.  "Thank you, little one," she says, though in actual point of fact the diminutive woman is only barely greater in stature than the child.  Somehow though she manages to make looking -up- into the faces of the others with her startlingly azure eyes seem every bit as imperious as if the gaze had come from any majestically willowy frame who ever towered over her peers.  She tucks the scroll away into one sapphire sleeve as she regards each of the gathered luminaries, apparently choosing the moment to acknowledge the anxiety in the air after all.

"Don't let's be cross with each other, darlings," she pouts, a little cutesy vertical furrow of consternation creasing between her brows.  "It's unbecoming."  And without a further word or gesture, she simply turns toward the route leading down into town, attended by little whispery rustles of her silk as her bare feet pad breezily along, their soft paleness pristinely declining to be sullied by the dirt of the road.

A muscle ticked in Shiro's jaw as he glowered at Aliyah. His eyes looked like flat pieces of jet that glimmered with dark emotion.


"I believe that I am superior only to my former self. I feel no derision towards anyone in here. Stature is merely posture exemplified. I stand with my head up high, knowing that my gaze is always out towards the future. Present company not withstanding, this whole game of the emperor seems manipulative. Sin? What is this sin he so accuses us of?  I refuse to grovel at his feet, and at the mere presence of his emissary. Why should any of you?"

He crushes the scroll in his hand as he spares a glance at Maylin and the small child before storming away from the other dragons to head towards the exit. His black jacket flaps behind him as he walks away. He straightens the cuff on his embroidered, white linen, mandarin collared shirt and flicks away an imagined mote of dust. His stiff silk pants rustle slightly as he disappears

--to Main street--

The small child watched as two of the dragons left, then turned to the others two that were still present.

"The white one doesn't understand that the Emperor is sure one of you was a traitor that betrayed the Gold dragon and his guardian. Our mighty and wise ruler was hoping to flush the perpetrator out through the ages of pain and torture in Hell. He has removed all of your rights to rule and given them to others. He has removed your jewels and all that you hold dear. Still the evil one refuses to budge. He has decided this will be your last chance."

She swept her arm towards the exit, making her belled sleeve flutter with the motion. The golden nexus swirled as it awaited their exit.

Aliyah contemplated Shiro's words as the other dragon took his leave. What he said made sense to her, but it just wasn't in her nature to treat a youngling or hatchling the way Shiro had treated Ping. Once again glancing at the contents of her scroll, Aliyah sighed heavily and tried to hold her head high as she made her way out of the garden towards the main street of town.

[To Main Street]

Maylin bowed before Ping and held her hand out for the scroll. "The Emperor is wise and merciful. I am, as always, his to command. I will help unmask the traitor who so betrayed our Golden Brother and our Father."

She took the scroll and bowed once more, her silver hair nearly touching the ground. "Xiè xie nǐ, Ping. Zhídào wǒmen zàicì jiànmiàn."

She walked through the golden exit and into the world for the first time in ages.