Chapter 5; The Dragon's Flame

A fragment from the fifth chapter from the unfinished book, The Life Chronicle of Abedi Terik, the Dragon Emperor by Emil Tark, the head librarian of The Imperial Archive.

The rule of the Emperor changed significantly when he met Ardere Brulante. Up until that point in time, magically gifted individuals were hunted by the Order of the Imperial Knights once they became a problem. It was not an ideal situation as by that point they had already sown chaos and death. Brulante sought an audience with the Emperor with a different solution in mind. An order dedicated to hunting down the gifted early and training them to be loyal to the Emperor himself. Intrigued by the idea, Abedi gave her resources and five years to show results.
This was the start of the group that would become known as the Dragon’s Flame, the Pyronate Order.
Brulante’s past has been obfuscated much like the Emperor’s himself. However, some I have been able to track down.
She was born in the south of the Empire in a small village that no longer exists. Her magical talent manifested strongly when she was young and the villagers, scared of her power, deemed her a witch and tried to burn her. This small minded fear at a powerful young woman seems to have set her on the path of domination and given her the lifelong obsession with fire and burning that she displayed.
The stories I have managed to discover say that the flames didn’t burn her but licked up around her feet and she turned them back upon the village folk, razing the settlement to the ground. She was the only survivor.
She disappears from record for a long time after that. There were a series of large scale blazes across the Empire, slowly winding through the land towards the capital city. I surmise these were Ardere flexing her power and destroying those she deemed as enemies, or maybe just those she considered beneath her.
When she went before the Emperor, she was still quite young. Barely in her twenties, but very magically gifted, she formed the order and went right into hunting down other children with the arcane talent. Within the five years she had been allotted, she had formed a strong roster of young people that were dedicated to the Emperor, and more importantly, dedicated to her.
To begin with, she formed the Preceptor faction, first electing to train them herself. Eventually passing off that task when she had brought up enough people able to continue the task. Then a problem was reported in the west. A rogue magic user had started robbing and killing people. She took a few of her more promising students and went to deal with it. This was the start of the Pursuant faction.
None know when the Perpetrators were founded, the group dedicated to killing anyone who stood in the Emperor’s way, but stories started one day of people who spoke out going missing. Fear spread and the Emperor’s reputation grew.
After the five years passed, the name of the Pyronate has been spread across the Empire as something to fear and watch for. Their ranks were growing steadily every day, and training was going well. The Emperor gave Brulante his blessing, and the Order became official; she became the first Principal of the Pyronate. She reported to his Imperial majesty regularly and accounts say they grew quite close.
The Emperor granted her all the land known as the Kebakaran peninsula to found the headquarters of her order. A place of their own to look after and grow in. This land had been empty until now, being known as a bleak and barren land. Frequent volcanic activity kept people from being able to settle it. The order used their magics to create areas of safety, tunnelling into the spires of volcanic rock that had been created by eruptions and hollowing them out. Making a series of towers they could inhabit.
Upon her death, a new Principal was chosen from the ranks of her most trusted agents by the Emperor. A practice that still continues to this day.