It began, as most things seem to do, with a loud noise.
The sound alone was almost enough to kill you—so loud that it seemed to take on a life of its own, shattering glass and dragging furniture into the streets through doors involuntarily flinging open in protest.
Even the dragon winced and then puffed a long drag of smoke out of her nostrils, waiting for the ringing in her ears to subside. Being young (draconically speaking) and somewhat lacking in what might be called classical education, she had entirely failed to anticipate the effect of shrieking at full blast in a small town enclosed by a canyon.
Well, dammit, this was supposed to be her moment. She wasn't going to back off now just because of a bit of temporary deafness. Her chest expanded like the bellows in a forge, and flame snarled between her teeth, so hot it was almost liquid. She breathed out, and the last thoughts of many of the residents of Little Canyon Village was that yes, perhaps the wife had been right after all, and the non-flammability of stone would have outweighed the economic practicality of wood, mud and straw. Light flashed.
Later on people would say that there were only two survivors. Of course, people are flawed creatures, and mistakes are easily made, particularly when there wasn't even a list handy of things who were supposed to be alive there in the first place. Like most villages of its kind, Little Canyon was grown, not built. There was a river nearby and some reasonably fertile land, so humans had started farms there. Eventually those humans came to realize that they needed a place to meet, and to trade, to run to in case of bandit attack, have their horses' shoes fixed and above all else they needed a place to drink. Drinking alone had its merits, mind you, but do it too often and even the sheep started giving you pitiful glances, and drinking with the spouse or kids got awkward rather quickly. So after brief discussion, it was decided to put all those places in the same spot. Thus was Little Canyon born, as people decided that they liked village life more than farm life. At least there were no sheep coughing politely into their fleece as you walked past with a bottle of whisky more fit to scrape paint off walls than to be drunk.
So nobody could exactly say that everyone but two died, and certainly some other things did live, including several hundred rats and most of a herd of goats that held the providence of grazing next to a dam. As for people, though, who can say? The Maker seems to delight in droll chance, so perhaps a few more managed to stumble through the wreckage and into the wilds of Fereldan. But they probably weren't all that important anyway.
His name was Corin, he was sixteen, and that seemed to him to be no age to die. Earlier that morning he had spent a long hour successfully persuading his parents to let him court a certain girl, and then another few painful hours persuading her parents. He had tactfully not mentioned that the girl in question loathed him, and would not tolerate five minutes of his company. It was probably the thing he liked most about her. Pretty girls deserved self-respect and high standards.
Her name was Vasilia, she was forty-nine, and that did not seem to her to be much of an age to die either. Earlier that morning she had been tending to the broken arm of a young boy who'd fallen off her father's horse. He had squirmed and whimpered the entire time, and it wasn't just because of his pain.
The third sentient creature to leave the ruins unharmed was, of course, the dragon. If she had a name, no-one knew it but her, and she was probably about a hundred years old. Earlier that morning she had been told to burn a village and kill everyone in it, and this she had tried to do. She was looking for many things, but above all else she was searching for a home.