[Tancred]

There is a sound.

Not a loud sound, not right away - but it grows in volume, becoming more and more powerful; not an identifyable sound, but a blast across the sonic spectrum - resonating up and down the planes of existence.

Atop the red landscape, a lightning bolt - pure black light, the very embodiment of darkness - strikes the ground, but it doesn't disappear. It stays, blasting into the scorched earth again and again, forcing energy from the sky to the ground in a tortured arc.

Suddenly, the lightning bolt expands - or rips open? - and a shimmering ball of glowing blue fire shoots from it, spiralling across the hillside around the lightning bolt like a crazed top. It spins around, faster and faster, coming closer and closer to the centre of the lightning bolt once more as it orbits the dark energy.

Finally, it touches the bolt once more - and a terrific explosion sounds out across the blood-red heavens, sending the force hurtling back to the sky, boiling away the very atmosphere, leaving nothing but a smoking crater in place of the hill that once stood there.

The globe flickers, sparks, and detonates.

Earth and dust fountain across the land as the lip of the crater is blasted away. A cloud of rock - heated to gaseous form - rises towards the sky as the ground itself seems to scream at the torture it suffers. Fire leaps around, the blue lambency scorching the dark grass for several hundred feet.

Slowly it dies down... to reveal a man.

***

"AWWWWWWWWWW-RIGHT!" Karnas Thoth, Red Wizard, Invoker Extroadinaire and General Scumbag looks down at his body. No longer are there the shiny curves of plate armour; instead, he now wears a rather fetching red robe and accompanying brocaded clothing. The fact that he is still in the body of Tancred Foesmite, Cavalier Adventurer and one-time guardian of Karnas' soul can almost be ignored.
"You know, I never realised how good I looked in red." Tancred, imprisoned in the glowing holy sword that once held the soul of the evil mage, has finally grown accustomed to life as a sword - even if he remains frustrated at the accident that has caused both Karnas and he some irritation.
"It just goes to show, Holy-Boy, that I've still got it. And to think I always ridiculed Tenser's Thankfully Instant Fresh Clothing Creator as a useless spell!"
"Indeed... um, Karnas, where are we?"
"What do you mean, where are we? (Wow, I look great...) We're in your room at the bar. I went here to work on our little problem... let's get a look in the mirror - where's the mirror? Where's... um... where... yes, where are we?"
Tancred can do naught but shudder in his scabbard - the sword equivalent of a shake of the head.
Karnas takes a deep sniff.
"Hmm... a lot of energy on this plane. Could be the highly unusual clothes spell had some kind of odd effect... yikes, what HAS happened here?" Karnas looks thoughtfully at the crater, and the ruined sky above.
Tancred pipes up. "I've never heard of you doing anything THIS destructive before."
Karnas muses. Well, I CAN'T... but I'm not telling YOU that. "Well, yes, just as well for everyone else. Damn it, I thought this place was strange. It's taken us waaaay out of the bar - er, unless we're standing where the Bar WAS, in which case I'm damn impressed with myself."
"Well... perhaps we should go back? There's bound to be some quest starting up."
"HAH! ME? QUEST? Quest around like some penniless, smelly adventurer? Pah! I'm a Red Wizard! I have a far highher calling - the eventual creation of the chaos that will allow the Zulkirs to take supreme power of Faerun! Besides..."
"Yes?"
"I don't know which way to go."

***

The mage and the paladin-sword stare at the wounded sky for a few minutes. Then, with a resigned shrug, Karnas Thoth starts trudging up and out of the cratetr, heading... who knows where? With magic burning in his head for the first time in centuries.

OOC: I'm BACK!