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Darkness surrounded them once more. It was as if the blackness had swallowed even the ground they stood on. Drawing his sword again, the High Inquisitor looked around as if it were going to help.

Even Rachel was not at ease and her massive two-handed sword was out in her hands. They had traveled so far and were not about to turn back even if they could. The group came close together, using their tails to recognize one another. Rachel looked back, but she couldn't see anybody else even though she could feel them. She spoke in a worried tone that she had hoped to hide. "High Inquisitor, I'm not sure what we can do now. It's so dark that I can't see the floor."

High Inquisitor Tuzeen sighed gently. "I can't even see you, Rachel. Julio, do you have any magic that would assist us here?"

Julio responded promptly with, "My apologies High Inquisitor, but I am spent."

Tuzeen sounded stressed and worried. "Great... just great. We've come to find the mana crystal, and what we find..." His words were cut off.

An ear-splitting shriek echoed through the hallways, causing the rattus to cover their ears. With the energetic shriek, the area they were in lit itself for a moment. It was a rounded room much like the one above, but there was no visible sign of an exit or entrance. The lights came from the walls and flashed a multitude of colors while the sound died down.

When the sound had nearly dissipated, the inquisition relaxed a little, becoming aware of their lit surroundings. Julio, finding himself looking at the wall, turned to face the center of the room just in time.

The room quaked with energy, and the darkness became dominant once again. Suddenly, amidst the shaking of the room, eight cracks broke the surface of the floor. A bright light streamed up through the cracks, bringing illumination back in an ever-changing display of colors. One of the cracks became longer as it made a jagged path towards the group of rattus. Lana quickly stepped back as the crack stopped just short of her feet.

The shaking continued as the center sections of the broken floor fell down and opened a hole in the middle of the floor, letting light flood the room from below once again. A ball of light slowly rose up from the depths of the broken floor, blinding the rattus who were forced to look away and shield their eyes. As they shielded their vision, things slowly went blurry, and they had the strange feeling of flying. Tuzeen got a strange... nostalgic feeling.

There was once a little boy, with cheeks soaked in tears. Upon his brown furred body were grey ratty clothes. He was down on his knees before a dead woman, his arms cradling her head to him. He continued, against all hope, to plead her to awaken, but to no avail. Her assailants were long gone, and he had been there for hours now.

Finally, someone else came along the same stretch of path. Two rattus in dark green cassocks with hoods, riding upon armored steeds. They stopped not far from the sobbing boy, and turned to see what had happened. One turned to the other and spoke in a coarse and quiet voice. "Hold for me." He dismounted, and pushed back his hood. He had fur of white, and a golden circlet upon his head. His eyes were blue, but aged, and had the apparent experience of a warrior. He approached the boy, and stopped just short of him.

The boy knew he was there, and swung his one arm backwards. "Zao! Zo'ukka jien zeetao!" He was demanding that he be left alone, but his voice was shrill and coarse, the speech was so forced from his sorrowful throat.

"Zao." The older one replied with a no, knowing he could not leave this child here. "Jaon du zao. Azza du jaon duazijji?" He told the young rattus that he was not alright, and continued to ask him his name.

The boy hugged his mother's head tightly, and replied quietly. "Ujjao'diedo'ut."

The white rat nodded gently. "Jien du kaotu kaoton izzadonjo du Uzzadujoza, Duzudaozuja." He introduced himself with his title, Grand Inquisitor Coldclaw.

The rest of the day seemed to blur forward, but once Coldclaw had helped the child accept the passing of his mother, and give the proper words of her passing, he took him with them. Ever since then, the boy looked up to Coldclaw, and resolved to honor him by training to be an inquisitor like him, so that he could be strong enough to one day save others, and prevent the loss of mothers. He learned much as a monk, the common language being one of those things, and then he learned much for combat in his time traveling. The sandy deserts of Yura-dan became like a second home to him after a few years, as the kobold there taught him the ways of martial swordsmanship. Eventually he tested his skills in the trials of Uzzadujoza, and earned his status as an Inquisitor.

Tuzeen shook his head and blinked. His mind swirled back to the present, and his head was pounding in pain. He had fallen to the ground at some point, and slowly brought himself to a stand. He couldn't see the floor that he pushed himself up from, but that was only the beginning of his disturbing surroundings. The floor was impossible to see as it was covered in a thick layer of fog, but the layer was so thin that it did not hinder the view of the rest of the area. He was surprised to see a sky! Black clouds swirled far above, and raged with yellow, cyan, and red streaks of lightning in random melody, but made no thunderous sound. There seemed to be a green-colored sky that he could see between the edge of the fog, and the edge of the dark clouds.

As he gained a bit of a grasp of his surroundings, it struck him that he did not see his fellow inquisitors, and as soon as that thought entered his mind, a rattling boom was heard from the eye of the swirl in the clouds. His hands went to his ears and he turned to face it, as he saw the multi-colored crystal slowly descending from the clouds. Golden arcs of lightning streaked from it in random directions, tearing off into the sky. The crystal was huge, possibly eight feet from point to point, and it was shaped as a tall sliver. It had facets all along its structure, each one held a different changing color to it, which played tricks with the high inquisitor's eyes. He suddenly felt weak and unworthy, as the obviously incredible power was shown by the crystal. He then recalled his mission. He took a deep breath and regained his resolve, then stared at the crystal. "Mana Crystal of Chaos! I have come to use you, and end the distortions which are shifting our lands!"

It crackled with energy, and a coil of red lightning wrapped up around its body. Then, from one of the facets, an arc of golden electricity shot out and enveloped the inquisitor. His muscles all tensed up and he went to the ground, as the electrical assault ripped into his body. The electricity was so great that it tore holes in his cassock.

The lightning stopped abruptly, and with the relaxation of his muscles, Tuzeen fell to the ground, face first.

There had been a war, long ago. Myrrolds used to have reign over a mighty empire, one which held peace and prosperity as its highest ideals. They had such a long reign of peace that the myrrolds could develop their own advanced technologies... steam gears. The neighboring country, the cat-people known as cuarr, wanted the technology. The myrrolds refused, because they believed the cuarr had bad intentions, so a war had begun. Myrrolds, while advanced in thinking, were not the best fighters. A few good champions rose throughout the twelve long years that the war continued on, until they were forced into their own capital with their backs against the walls. The queen of the myrrolds ordered that there be a vault created that nobody would be able to get into, and it was done. In a last effort to save the world from the evil that their own technologies could create, all of their information and research was sealed in the vault. Then, to keep the vault from being penetrated, she used magic. She used a grey mana crystal shard that she placed in the vault's power-generator. She then ritualistically had her subjects sacrifice themselves, and add their very souls to the power of the shard. With the power of their eternal souls, the shard was strong enough to keep the gate shut for a very long time. The queen, one of the only ones left, was the one to exit the vault, and close the outside lock.

The queen was then slaughtered with the last of her subjects by the cuarr invaders. The felines didn't have a long celebration before the vault itself shone with a bright light and grey energy, and suddenly replaced itself with solid rock. Unbeknownst to the cuarr, the shard had gained enough energy to reconnect itself to the crystal it came from, and using the willpower of the souls, transported itself far, far away.

Tuzeen's held his swimming head with both hands as he stood up. He groaned, and processed the information and the story he received from the chaos crystal. He nodded gently then. "I see... That explains the ancient myrrold vault we found." He scratched his head and looked at it, afraid to ask... but he knew he had to. "How did the black lizard-men arrive in our caverns?"

He quickly regretted asking, as the crystal suddenly glowed brightly with power, and his vision blacked out, as another golden blast connected with him.

Tarrn-Grath, a continent not yet discovered by the rattus, is one made up of a long, snaking region of land. In the center is a long mountain range that the gronks living there call the "Spine of the World."

Now, gronks are a fairly interesting species of scaled beings. They could be explained as a mix between a reptile and a feline, what with the large ears and their incredible flexibility. Though they're known to have agile bodies, they are also completely scaled, and have long, thick tails. A gronk has no sense of smell from a lack of nostrils or Jacobson's Organ, but they can still breathe by a series of gills at the sides of their neck, but not all gronk species can breathe underwater. Their eyes are usually a pure-white color, and most gronks have grey scales. However, gronks migrate, and like chameleons, change color, and sometimes body structure to their location.

Shadow gronks are known for living in complete darkness. So of course, the main mass of the shadow gronks lives in deep caverns within the Spine of the World. Despite their inability to speak, they have developed keen hearing, and telepathic communication between each other, but noticeably other species are not as keen.

This is why when the kobold explorers came to try and find a new place for their species to settle on, they couldn't communicate with the gronks. So the canines went back home to report that monsters overran the continent and that the colonists should bring warships with them.

In the following years, the kobolds assaulted gronk settlements in a series of surprise attacks that pushed back more settlers than any of the gronk civil wars combined. When the entrances to the Spine of the World's caverns were closed off during the attacks, the shadow gronks had time to develop a plan. Their plan was to use a new weapon material they had made to destroy the rubble and to defeat the kobolds once and for all. However, something went wrong with the darkness project, and it began to collapse on itself. The black shards they were using to empower steel into dark-steel became volatile, and eventually exploded. Though the explosion did not destroy the colony, it came in tune with the mana flow of the world, and the entire radius replaced itself with mines from the rattus empire's gold mines. In turn, the shadow gronk colony was put into the place of the empire's mine. Then, new problems began.

Tuzeen once again got up, rubbing his head. "I don't wanna ask any more questions," he said with a groan, waiting for his eyes to regain their focus on the mana crystal. "Very well, crystal. I understand. However, I must do the right thing." He approached, and slowly went to his knees. He placed his hands together and bowed before the crystal. "Please, I beg of you, grant me the power to communicate with the shadow gronks, I want them to learn that we can have peace, and I want them to know what has happened. I shall endure any test you wish, but by my lord Uzzadujoza, I wish only to help those in need."

He slowly leveled his eyes back with the crystal, as it shone brilliantly. Suddenly a thunderous boom sounded, and three arcs of lightning connected with him, as all went dark once again.