Origin of the Cerberuses

[morrisoni]

Long, long ago, in the times of the mage wars, in the blazing lands of Voltar, a foolhardy young fire magi named Cerber wandered, lost. As she climbed the slopes of Magnis, hoping for a vantage point to find her master, she found a flaming egg. She cautiously reached toward it, and found that the flames, although warm, did not burn her. She put the egg in her pocket, unsure of what it was, and kept searching.
As she continued to ascend, she discovered another egg that shot fire. Foolishly assuming that this egg would be as harmless as the last, she scooped it into her hand, receiving nasty burns. Thinking twice this time, she used the metal box she had brought specifically for this purpose, and kept the egg away from her bare skin.
She finally found her master, and took the eggs back to their fortress, on one of the Calisto Islands. She never told anyone about them, but kept them warm, and cared for them for months, until one day she returned to her room to find her belongings on fire. As she looked around the room, she saw a small dog, fire spewing from its mouth, jumping playfully onto a dark red, flaming lizard with five heads.
The young magi knew immediately that she was in over her head - the two eggs she had picked up, being as inexperienced as she was, turned out to be a hellhound and a fire hydra. She cast a fireproofing spell, and an immobilizing spell, to halt the chaos. By this point, the noise had alerted the girl's master. He was furious, and gave her a long lecture, but let her keep them, under the condition that she keep them under control.
Over the years, the girl and her two pets formed a special, unbreakable bond. The Hellhound answered to Inferno, and the Hydra she named Blaze. They lived happily, despite the pets' discomfort at being constantly surrounded by water. But disaster cares for no bonds, no love.
Decades after the eggs first hatched, the mage wars were over, Cerber's master was long dead, and Cerber and her pets were very old. But mutters of rebellion were beginning to swirl in the Calisto Islands, supposedly stirred up by a mysterious magi. Cerber paid them no mind, for she knew that most of the islanders trusted her, and would never harm her, and that if anyone was foolish enough to attack her, her pets would protect her. However, her pets had no defense against the very thing that had protected them from many enemy mages during the wars - water.
One day, a great monster rose from the deep, seemingly a leviathan with wings, and legs. On its back was someone Cerber had hoped she would never see again.
It was the apprentice of her master's greatest enemy, a water magi with a heart of darkness. Just as evil as his master, he never told anyone but his master his real name, and he went by the name of Tsunami. Cerber tried to act, shooting fireballs at Tsunami, to protect herself and her friends from the island, but to no avail. The massive creature opened its mouth, and released a vortex of water, extinguishing her fireballs and heading straight for the island.
The island was destroyed, sunk to the bottom of the sea. Cerber and her pets had managed to get many of the islanders to safety, and had left the island themselves, but Blaze and Inferno, being creatures of fire, had been mortally wounded by the sheer amount of water they had been exposed to. Cerber was heartbroken, and took their lifeless forms to the mainland, to an close friend of hers, named Tana. She was a old magi, like Cerber, and a devotee of the dark arts, but never used them for anything but good. Cerber pleaded with her to bring back her friends, but Tana told her there would be a price.
"Your pets had bonded so much with each other, I can't bring them back as separate creatures. They will return as two beings, but not the same as they were before. It will be part of each."
"Okay, okay, just do it! I'll do anything!"
"But there're more, Cerber. The same way they bonded with each other, they both bonded with you. You are a part of them now, and they are a part of you. If I'm going to bring them back, your spirit is going to be required as a part of one of the two new creatures."
"You act like that's going to make me change my mind," Cerber exclaimed. "Those two are my life. Without them, I'm lost. I don't want to exist without them."
"I just want you to be aware of the price you must pay. Giving new life to a creature that has died is difficult. Without these bonds, the result with be just like a Decessus. An undead."
"But that won't happen this time, right?" Cerber asked, rather concerned.
"Because of the purity of your hearts and the strength of your ties, no. You will become a powerful, majestic pair of beasts. The beast with your spirit energy will be more powerful. The strength of three is greater than the strength of two. Other than that, I can tell you no more, other than that the creature you become will be unheard of, unseen. Something that doesn't yet exist in this world."
"Okay. Do it."
"Are you sure you want to do this? Once I start, there's no going back."
"DO IT!"
"Okay." She began to recite an old, powerful incantation, that shouldn't be repeated by anyone without experience.
All of a sudden, all light in the room disappeared. When it returned, Cerber, and the bodies of her pets, had vanished, and in their place stood a pair of massive dogs, with three skeletal heads and flame coursing through their veins. One, with a breath of red fire, sat peacefully, waiting. The other's breath was blue, the color of the hottest flame, and it had manes on all three necks of the same fire. This one was restless, pacing around, and Tana instantly knew that this was the one with her friend's spirit inside it.
"Can... Can you understand me?" she asked, not sure what would happen. The dogs both nodded, all six heads at a time.
"Do you recognize me?" Again they noded. "Do you remember what happened?" At this, the dogs released a great howl, almost deafening Tana.
"Do you want to stay here, with me? The dogs howled again, quieter this time.
So it was that the mighty beasts known as the Cerberuses came into being. Tana named them after her dear friend, who had given up everything to be with her two closest companions. The dog with blue fire, from the strength of three, she called the Soulflame, because it had the soul of her friend. The one with red fire, she called the Hellflame, after it's color, and the Hellhound that made up half of it.
The descendants of those two creatures were much less affectionate, and grew more and more detached from Tana as the generation passed, until she found herself having to train them intensively to keep them under control. It was then that she decided, the Cerberuses, even the Soulflames, no longer had any human in them, and they were better off in the wild. So she released all but two, one Soulflame and one Hellflame.
They stayed with her until they died. She survived to almost 200 years of age, almost unheard of even in magi. Many say that the cerberuses she had taken care of took care of her in return, making sure her health stayed with her. After her death, the last two she had held onto left, and joined their family.