Oddly, it was Janice that noticed it first... with a little prompting from her new found friend.
'Something's happening... something significant. Be ready,' warned the weapon.
And then it increased in size almost exponentially. Everything and everyone stopped and stared in awe as the whirling, twirling vortex of writhing, dark energy manifested itself in the form of a giant, blinding, green wormhole right in the middle of the residence. Magic churned around its circumference as thick, crackling, black tendrils of charged energy tried to snake free. Thunder rolled, shaking the ground. Looking more liquid than either solid or gas, the wormhole's constantly rotating accretion disc bubbled and writhed as tiny concentric ripples echoed out from its centre.
Manson threw Earth a look, wondering if it were somehow her doing. Her puzzled response had him swiftly conclude that it wasn't.
Bruised and battered, his spirit almost torn in two, slumped across the cold marble floor, George, the current dragon king, could only guess at what had appeared before them. There had been legends, documented somewhere on the upper levels of this very library, about extremely powerful beings, able to cast portals from one part of the planet to another. But as far as he knew, those that could do this were all long gone.
'If not that though, then what?' he thought to himself.
Janice could barely keep up with what was going on. Not the appearance of the wormhole though. She'd sneaked a peek through mainly closed eyes. No not that. Fu-ts'ang's excitement. There was lots of babbling, something about the 'lost soul not being broken any more, and about to return,' whatever that meant. All that she knew though, was that she needed to be ready to act. Things were still balanced on a knife edge, and this could well be their one and only chance.
Peter's brain felt scrambled. He'd been using all his mental force to try and access his magic and escape from these blasted binders when 'whooof', out of nowhere, that thing had appeared. It was hypnotic, dreamy almost... the colours, the movement, the slow rotation of the energies inside and out. Feeling as though he could watch it for hours, part of him knew not to get distracted. Not now. Richie was still across to his right, surrounded by dark dragons, their drawn swords reflecting all the colours of the unusual portal that had appeared out of nowhere.
Hook's adrenaline had peaked and was currently being held in check by his tremendous willpower. As he was about to strike, the humongous energy hole had appeared out of nowhere, pausing everything that was going on round about him. Noting that Tank and Peter had reined in whatever it was they had in mind, he'd stalled, waiting to see how events unfolded before he chose to act. Having no idea what he was looking at, by the expressions on the stunned faces of those all around him, it appeared that he was not the only one.
A split second away from sending the signal, just as it had sprung to life out of nothing, given everyone's reaction it had been a good job she'd stopped. Whatever it was, it was just too much of a distraction for her plan to have worked. Even the drooling idiot brandishing the blade to her throat had turned around somewhat to get a view of what was going on. Deep down inside she wished for some help from whatever that thing was. Getting lucky had never felt so good.
A blossoming, yellow sparkle sizzled around the outside of the ring, fizzing and buzzing, jumping and arcing, preceding the main event. And then the liquid parted!
In all his glory, much to the astonishment of the naga contingent of Manson's ragtag army, out slithered Vasuki, a fiery rainbow of magic igniting the air around him. Hushed gasps of surprise filled the chamber. But that was nothing to what happened next.
Following on behind, brilliant bright chains of laminium crisscrossing their bare torsos, out stepped Flash and Fredric, their bulging muscles gleaming against the backdrop of magical energies, ready for practically anything.
Behind them out poured Yoyo's ragtag band of young dragons, all looking much the worse for wear, a mixture of fear and anticipation crisscrossing their prehistoric faces, followed by the dragon himself.
The liquid eye of the wormhole parted twice more, but strangely nothing else appeared. Well... not anything visible to the naked eye anyway.
Almost as quickly as it had materialised, the wormhole vanished into nothingness, leaving the air around where it had been charged with magic.
In the annuls of history much would be made of this very moment. Stories would be told, songs would be sung. On the outcome, much depended.
Earth's surface. Nevada, United States of America.
Looking out from the end of Santa Monica pier in Los Angeles, the cool, salty breeze teased his brown, flowing locks as white crested waves washed up onto the beach below him. Scorching sun beating down on his exposed arms, he tried to push aside the warmth that flowed into him, shuddering at how it made him feel, the exact opposite in fact to his longing to be deep beneath the sea he stood so close to. Basking in memories of swimming in cold, blue ocean waters, he pulled his phone out of the pocket of his light blue jeans, brought up the appropriate number and, knowing what a momentous event this was, hit the dial button. All he had to do was wait for an answer and then he could hang up. It happened exactly that way, and he hung up after barely three rings. Job done, he headed down towards the beach, determined to feel the sand, and more importantly the sea, between his toes.
Simultaneously, all five seismic shockers burst into life, the magic captured inside them combining seamlessly with the technology to generate a series of formidable ground quakes that instantly destroyed everything in their vicinity. The solar farm south east of Vegas shattered into a billion tiny pieces. In India Springs, the Joshua tree's roots were decimated immediately, along with half the buildings in the town. East of Vegas, a mountain exploded in a fountain of rubble and debris, killing several hikers and wiping out any existence of the well used trail. Tyres flew hundreds of metres in the air in every direction, shelling unsuspecting residents of Pahrump with huge rubber bombs, something that added more danger to the earthquake they were now experiencing. Though all of this was nothing to what would happen momentarily. You see, all the ground quakes were scheduled to converge at one point and one point only... LAS VEGAS!
Full to capacity with high rolling gamblers and a myriad of tourists, the city itself never knew what hit it.
As unsuspecting visitors snapped away with their cameras, the famous "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas" neon sign splintered into a thousand parts, electrical sparks dancing like the devil as it did so.
Not far away, the Hoover Dam in the Black Canyon on the Colorado River suffered a series of devastating fractures to its main structure. Water being water, it soon found its way into the cracks and, with the expanding force of mother nature behind it, applied more vigour than the remaining concrete could handle. In an explosion worthy of any action movie, the entire dam came crashing down in one go, with thousands of tons of concrete crashing into the river below, and the full force of Lake Mead being released instantaneously. Within minutes downstream was flooded beyond belief, along with a tiny part of Boulder City. Bedlam, as well as water, had been let loose.
In a mere moment, the ground quakes united somewhere close to the strip. Not only did the earth move but, for a tiny second, it also appeared to roll. As it did, buildings shook, roads and sidewalks rippled, cars were strewn into the air, fire hydrants burst, gas mains ruptured and electricity cables tore free of their housings. People were thrown in the air and to the ground, and, for the most part, those were the lucky ones, as they'd been outside. Inside the buildings, it was a totally different story. Ceilings tore in two, crashing down one, two, three storeys and more, crushing anything in their way. Windows fractured in a spider web type of fashion, most breaking immediately afterwards, sending dangerous shards of glass ripping through rooms, unpredictable gusts of wind very nearly sucking a number of innocent bystanders out of their penthouse suites.