Storm Breaking

For all anyone knew, the stone could have been there ten thousand years.
It certainly looked the part. It stood there, sand-blasted and parched, etched with queer, almost undiscernible hieroglyphs. Whatever shape it had had had had been worn away by the centuries, leaving only a yellow, oblong rock within sight of the city of Aspherna, yet shunned both by the desert nomads and the city folk.
Except one.
No-one with any sense even looked at the stone without making a sign to ward off bad luck, but the city folk all agreed that the young man who stared at the stone for hours on end, heedless of sand and sun, was equipped with less than the full complement of wits. Apart from staring at the shinned stone, he always covered his face, leaving only his inky black eyes and a strip of brown skin exposed to the air; and, on some of his more desperate days, he would get up on a podium and rant, endless sermons praising buried, forgotten gods, gods older than the Dead God of the Plains the Farhighter people of Aspherna worshipped, gods locked away beyond our own universe in the mythical city of Delirium, the gods of the sands and the void and the evil that lurks in all men's hearts.
At first, they hadn't listened to him. But that was before the Blue Dragons.
The empire of Farhight, to which the city of Aspherna belonged, was an absolute monarchy. The Shahanshah, the monarch, in Salkir, the capital, reigned at the top of a vast, thoroughly corrupt ancién régime maintained by legions of informers, spies and policemen, all working under the aegis of the Green Dragon, symbol of Farhight, to help the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. But Farhight's armies were legendarily incompetent and, together with an Ersian guerrilla from the Urglenn Mountains called Shamus of Borova, a bunch of peasants had decided to kick down the rotten door of the Farhighter monarchy, adopting as their symbol the Green Dragon's mythical opponent, the Blue Dragon. For years, Blue Dragon guerrillas under Shamus' command had harried the monarchy's soldiers, winning raids and skirmishes left, right and centre. Eventually, the monarchy's forces – the Green Dragons, as they were dubbed – were forced to withdraw from much of the eastern empire, including Aspherna.
The Blue Dragons took the bait.
A mere month after the Blue Dragones established a communist utopia in Aspherna, the Green Dragons' army had appeared only a week's march from the city. The Blue Dragons' choices were hard: abandon the city and lose the support of the people, or stand and fight. Each option promised annihilation. The ever-wily Shamus of Borova elected to escape to the plains, leaving enough of a garrison to put up a fight, and leaving the Asphernans, vulnerable as they were to whatever punishments the Shahanshah's officials deemed prudent, in the lap of the gods. But the Dead God of the Plains was on the Green Dragons' side.
It was about then that someone remembered the mad young man and his vanished gods.
“Prove it to us!” a man had shouted at him, as he ranted from his lectern one day. “Give us a sign from your gods!” The young man had stopped talking, had looked at the man with those inky black eyes. His face-covering scarf had twitched in what might have been a smile.
That night, both the Asphernans and the approaching Green Dragon army had seen the light in the sky. So had Decanus Constantine in Akar, Crown Prince Zorlac in Orlan, Pontifex Ankh in Magia, Janin of the Sand's End Shai Qadi, atop Barrowmount, and hundreds of thousands of other people across the Occidental Basin and Farhight, each ignorant of the devastating effect it would have on each of their lves. Only the Asphernans knew what it meant, and they believed then.
“I told you!” the young man railed. “I told you, and ye of little faith believed me not! Only for your part in spreading the religion of the Amen-Ur will you be saved! This I know, people of Aspherna, this I know! And tonight, I say to you, tonight, I will go forth to the holy yellow rock – aye, holy, though shunned it may be – the holy yellow rock to meet no less than the earthly representative of the Amen-Ur, who will descend from the sacred light...” here the young man paused, panting for breath, “...to confer on me their holy wisdom! Watch and see, my people, watch and see!”
The people watched the red light. Its coming could be a coincidence, the more sceptical among them whispered, but sure enough, the strange light gave all appearance of growing closer – certainly larger – and more distinct.
It quickly became apparent that this was no burning rock. The lights shimmered and separated, becoming points defining a larger, as-yet unknown object – an object burning its way through the atmosphere towards Aspherna, piloted by an unknown – a divine? - hand.
When it landed, near the ill-omened oblong rock, the young man went out to meet.
And came back... different.