Rose, Nathan, Yarid, Glorissa and Kylus were in a long, narrow white hall. Kylus was on the ground, still clutching his leg; a pool of red blood was on the white floor beneath his thigh where the ghost’s sword had stabbed him. The others stood above him, near each other.
“Can we heal him?” Rose said. “It looks like Sylis is gone, but I did tell Sylis that we would try. Red magic can make healing potions, but I don’t have any healing potions on me, nor do I have any magical fluid that I can use as a base from which to create it. Making the base for a Red-magical potion requires hours of preparation.”
“I’ll try to use White magic,” Glorissa said. She folded her hands in front of her, closed her eyes, and held her face up; she would have been staring at the ceiling if not for the fact that her eyes were shut. “Please, God, heal my friend Kylus. He is your loyal servant, and I, your faithful worshipper Glorissa, ask for this small miracle from you. Please, God, heed my prayers, and give us your answer.” She opened her eyes and swept her arms around in rapid circles, her hands open, making a motion as if she was throwing something at Kylus repeatedly, although her hands were empty, and she was throwing nothing but fistfuls of air at him.
“Did it work?” Rose asked.
“Arghhh! It hurts!” Kylus said, his voice a frantic scream. Darn, it didn’t work, Glorissa thought.
“No, God did not answer my prayer,” Glorissa said. “With the magic of White, all you can do is pray to God, ask God to help you, and hope for the best. We have certain words we can say and certain rituals we can perform that have worked well in the past, but that’s all we have. You can never control whether God helps you or not, nor can you ever know why God did or did not answer your prayer. And, if you are truly faithful, you don’t want to know why, and you wouldn’t want that control.”
Rose laughed, but it was a short, sharp snort of a laugh, devoid of any true enjoyment. “It’s great that you’re so happy about having no control over your White magic, Glorissa, but we still need to heal the boy, and I mean now. We need him to be able to walk to avoid slowing us down—and I do not want him to die right here and right now in this hallway. Green has the best healing spells, but of course with our luck, our Green is not a wizard. Nathan? Can you heal him?” It’s not surprising that a Red would have no respect for White magic, Glorissa thought. Rose’s insult aside, Kylus looks like he’s in a lot of pain! And my White spell failed. What are we going to do?
“I may be able to help,” Nathan said. “Necromancy does restore life to the flesh, in a sense, so we have ways of keeping flesh alive, although we are known more for our zombies and vampires and creatures of darkness, and we are not often thought of as healers. I have a spell that can zombify the flesh, to make it impossible for it to die. It will hurt, but I think I may be able to cast it in such a way that I only zombify the flesh that is wounded, leaving the rest of the boy’s body alive as a living human.”
Kylus screamed in pain again, and his entire body convulsed in agony.
“Do it,” Rose said.
Nathan leaned at Kylus’s side and placed his hands on Kylus’s wound. Kylus screamed again at Nathan’s touch, but the necromancer firmly held his hands to the wound. Nathan whispered a few magic words, and his hands began to glow with black light. As his incantation took effect, a cloud of shadow swept through the room, so that, for one instant, there was total darkness and none of them could see. In the next instant, the shadow lifted, and light returned.
“It is done,” Nathan said.
“Oh my God, the pain is gone!” Kylus said. He got to his feet, unsteady at first, but he was soon upright and standing without assistance. He took a hesitant step, stepped again, and again, and then ran a few paces to test out his leg. He smiled, and tears of joy poured from his eyes.
“I can walk! So… thank you, Nathan! I never expected to say this to you, but: I owe you my life! Thank you so much! You saved my life! How can I ever repay you?”
“I don’t think your display of gratitude is sufficiently effusive, Kylus. I may need you to roll around on the floor like a dog and grovel to repay me,” Nathan replied sarcastically. Kylus stared at him, grateful and insulted at the same time. “The flesh of your leg is now undead; you will want a Green-wizard healer to look at it and restore it back to true life, as soon as possible,” Nathan said. “If you don’t, my spell might eventually zombify your entire body and turn you into a zombie, although I believe the process would take several days to complete—perhaps even a full week. And I hope that we are all of us out of here by the time morning dawns, unless we have all died, that is. Of course, I have always maintained that you would make an excellent zombie, so the choice is yours of whether to complete the transformation.”
“Okay, I will run as fast as I can to a Green healer as soon as I’m back outside,” Kylus said. “But, seriously, I’m probably dead without you, Nathan. Thank you.”
“And, seriously, you’re welcome, Kylus,” Nathan said.
Yarid took his Serve-Sword helmet off, tossed it to the floor, and shook his head, shaking out his long blonde braid of hair so that his long braid danced around like a horse’s tail flicking at flies. He breathed a sigh of relief. Then he began to take the Serve-Swords suit of armor off, peeling it off his body one section of plate-armor at a time, until he was shirtless.
“Um, what are you doing, Yarid?” Rose asked.
“I no longer need this,” Yarid said. “It made sense to wear it while some chance remained that we might be forced to flee back through the Barracks of the Servants of the Sword while still disguised as Serve-Swords, if our heist were to fail. But the ceiling behind us collapsed, blocking that avenue of retreat. An elf should be shirtless, with only his sword at his back and his pants on his legs. It is how God intended faerie to dress. Disrobing myself of this human armor is a joy, it sets me free, and I am happy to feel its weight lift off me.” He took off the armor on his legs, leaving behind his tight-fitting yellow leather pants and boots, which were thin enough that he had fit them in like a second skin underneath his armor.
“The elf does make a valid point,” Rose said. “I’m a wizard, not a soldier. But can one of you please help me get this Serve-Sword armor off me? To be honest, I had trouble putting it on and I don’t even know how to take it off.”
The five team-members helped each other remove their armor, until they all had it off, except for Kylus, who chose to continue to wear his Serve-Swords armor and the green military uniform cloak that went with it. Yarid was shirtless and wore only his yellow pants and boots, while Rose had on her red hooded wizard robe and mask, Nathan had his black robe and black mask, and Glorissa wore her white clothes, white cape and silver magical Star Knights armor, which had been custom-made for her and fit so tightly against her slender body that she had been able to wear her armor underneath the much thicker, clunkier Serve-Sword armor disguise.
“I do feel better now,” Glorissa said, as she tossed aside her final piece of Serve-Sword armor. “Thanks, Yarid!”
Yarid looked at her and blushed. “It was my pleasure, Glorissa. I am always happy to help you in any way!”
Glorissa giggled uncomfortably and then looked away from Yarid. I think maybe Yarid still likes me? I don’t really know how I feel about that. He broke my heart, but I had hoped that was all in the past and I could just forget it.
“Great. Now let’s keep moving forward,” Rose said.
The party advanced through the hall, their eyes careful and watchful. They came to a dead end in the hall. A sheer wall of solid white stone stood in their path.
“No way forward, and the path behind us is blocked by fallen rubble,” Rose said. “Looks like we’re trapped. This is great!” she said sarcastically.
“No, I don’t think this is a dead end,” Glorissa said. She stepped forward, separating herself from the rest of the group. She walked up to the wall, reached out her hands, and felt the wall, delicately running her fingers across its smooth white surface. “I feel White magic here,” Glorissa said. “This is the wall of White magic that the Dark Wizard told us about. This is where I do my part. This is what I’m here for.”
“So you can cast a White magic spell to let us walk through this wall?” Rose asked.
“I can pray to God to let us pass,” Glorissa said. “Then God lets us, or God does not. I can do nothing else. But the Dark Wizard knew this, when he chose me as the team’s solution for this challenge.”
Rose rolled her eyes, but she bit back an angry remark. “Well, then, we place our faith in you,” Rose said. “Please cast your spell or say your prayer or talk to God or whatever your White magic needs. We will be waiting for you to work your magic. There isn’t exactly any other place we’ll be going until you succeed.”
Glorissa took a deep breath, held the air in her lungs, and then slowly exhaled, trying to force the tension out of her body with the air. Her muscles relaxed, and she felt loose and limber. I have no reason to wait, Glorissa thought. As it is said in one of the sacred scrolls: he who hesitates is doomed.
Glorissa clasped her hands together, her fingers interlocked, and closed her eyes.
“Oh Mighty Lord, our God, please hear me and grant my request,” Glorissa said. “Please allow us, your most humble servants, to walk through this wall. God, you made this wall, with your White magic, and we know that only you and your White magic can cause the wall to let us pass through it, parting for us like a sheet of water that we shall walk into and emerge out the other side. God, you are all-powerful, and your powers know no limits, and I have faith that you can do this thing for us. I know that such powerful White magic would be a grand miracle, but I ask this of you. Please, God, I, Glorissa, your loyal and faithful servant, ask this of you.”
Glorissa kept her eyes closed. I can’t do it. I can’t open my eyes and see that my prayer failed, she thought.
Suddenly she heard the others gasp. Glorissa opened her eyes.
“Oh my God,” Glorissa said in shock.
Words written in glowing, burning red fire had appeared on the wall, written into the wall as if the wall’s surface was a piece of paper and the words had been written with ink made of fire. A door had also appeared in the wall, made of the same white stone as the rest of the wall; the door was closed shut, and it had a small white door handle. The writing, which was on fire and glowed red, said this:
Glorissa, If you would have your friends pass through this wall, enter the door. You must enter first, alone, without the others. If you choose to go inside, I will let your friends pass, after you have seen what waits on the other side. But beware: if you enter, then I will show you the truth about what happened to your sister Leigh, and you will know, and I will not hide it from you. I give you this warning, with the promise that, if you choose to walk away, and not to know, I will let you, for I have given you that mercy, and you may take it. Make your decision. —God.
“Why wouldn’t I want to know what happened to my sister?!” Glorissa asked, her face lit red by the red light of the flame of the words on the wall. “I’m trying to rescue her! Why would God phrase it as if my knowing what happened to my sister is a threat? Why would God threaten me with that?”
“Do you choose to go in?” Rose said. “It is moments like this that remind me that God is real, and it appears that you truly are one of God’s favored children. We will not force your hand: I will not anger God, not when God has made God’s will abundantly clear to me. And I do not doubt that if we turn around, some White-magical path out of this place will open for us. But choose, Glorissa. Do you go in, or do we go back?”
“I’m on this whole quest just to rescue my sister!” Glorissa said. Her voice was nervous, and almost angry. “I never wanted to steal the Crystal, like the rest of you! I just wanted to find my sister! What could have happened to her that I wouldn’t want to know?”
“Do you have faith in God, that providence will rule over the course of events?” Yarid asked. “If you do not fear the truth, then you have nothing to fear from this knowledge.”
“My faith in God is absolute,” Glorissa said. “I’m not afraid. God gives, and God takes away. God gave me my sister, and God has taken away whatever it is that he has taken from her, or from me. Whatever I see, it is God’s will that I see it. I’m going in!”
Without another word, she grabbed the handle of the door, swung it open, and ran inside. The door closed behind her. Then the door vanished, leaving behind just the white stone wall, although God’s words still burned in red fire upon it. The others just stood there, staring at the burning wall.
Glorissa was standing in a void of total darkness. Two orbs of glowing light floated in front of her. One of the orbs was green, the other was white. She peered into the orbs. Within the green orb, she saw a bleary, smeared image: a human and an elf, both wearing crowns, were talking to three reptilian, lizard-like creatures of a species she had never seen before. In the white orb, Glorissa saw a shimmering, hazy picture: she could just barely make out her sister, Leigh, although there was someone else standing next to her sister. Leigh was in a place that Glorissa recognized: it was the Starlight Courtyard of the Star Knights Estate. Glorissa knew that God wanted her to touch these orbs, to learn something. She reached out her hand and touched the green orb first. She felt her mind get pulled into the orb and began to experience a vision of the scene held inside it.
King Zebyx almost gagged from the smell of the three dragons. They had the smell of death, of corpses killed and left rotting to die with worms and maggots crawling in their eyes and large insects making nests beneath their flesh, the stink of rot of a big pile of garbage that wild animals had found and peed and defecated in. The dragons ascended the steps up to the peak of Mount Zor Gath, the royal mountain, having taken the form of three humanoid lizard-men. The lizard-man in the center had scaly red skin and red-and-yellow eyes, and it wore clothes in the style of humans and elves and had a crown upon its head. The two dragons at its left and right had smooth, almost slimy-looking green skin, and eyes the same shade of green, and were completely naked.
Dragons had no names, at least not such as could be spoken in the language of the humans and elves; Zebyx had been told that the dragons identified each other only by their scent, sticking out their forked tongues to sniff the air in order to identify each other, and the dragon sense of smell was so good, and their foul stench was so strong, that they could smell each other at a distance of many miles away, so they had no need to use names for each other. Zebyx had no way to know if it was true that dragons did not have names, because the elves and humans had not one single dragon ally to tell them any hard facts about the ways of the dragons. The dragons had never told any of their names to the elves, so Zebyx assumed that they had none. Even if the dragons did have names, Zebyx preferred not to know their names, anyway. They smell so bad I can’t imagine how they use their scent as their name, Zebyx thought. I suppose having such a strong smell helps them smell each other, if their smell truly is their name. They smell like garbage, poop and vomit all mixed together—so, in a way, their name is garbage, poop and vomit. An accurate name!
Zebyx stood atop the peak of Mount Zor Gath, a very tall gray mountain which towered into the sky, the lone mountain among a sea of green forests in flat land that stretched for miles around it in every direction. In the distance, clouds of thick black smoke could be seen, and lines of red fire were slightly visible beneath the smoke. Zebyx was a tall, skinny elf dressed in flowing yellow robes that billowed about him, waving in the heavy wind that blew across the mountaintop. He wore a crown, and his long golden-blonde hair fell from his head behind his crown and was draped in thick blonde sheets that fell down his back. At his side was the human king, Gargarez, a very tall, wide, broad-shouldered, muscular man, far younger than the elf yet middle-aged among humans. Gargarez dressed in a green military uniform and wore a crown; the human had curly brown hair, a thick mustache, and a long brown beard that flowed down his chest.
“Good of you to meet with us, human, elf,” one of the dragons said; it was the one with red skin who wore human-style clothes. The crown upon its head was an iron crown set with many diamonds; the crown itself was small, but it was studded with long, sharp iron spikes that rose up from it like evil-looking horns. The dragon, taking the form of a humanoid lizard-man, was also wearing fancy purple clothes of the style worn by humans: it wore a shirt and pants made from purple silk that shimmered as it moved; its wrists and neck were adorned with heavy gold and silver chains studded with diamonds, rubies and emeralds, and it had a long purple velvet jacket whose train had a cleft for its tail to poke out from. That is the dragon whom the other dragons revere as their king, Zebyx thought. It wears purple, as do human kings. The other two dragons with it are its servants and attendants. The dragons can take many forms other than as giant winged lizards, and the dragon king often takes humanoid lizard-man form; I have even heard of it taking the form of a man or an elf when it tries on the clothes that it has stolen.
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Zebyx looked the dragon king up and down, with the careful eye of an elf who had worked in the merchant trades, selling gold to the humans, before becoming king of the elves upon the death of his father the late king. If I had to guess, I would say that it stole the purple silk clothes when the dragons looted the human settlements near Kalin, after which they razed the settlement and ate all the humans; it stole the gold when it attacked my elf tribes at the Fae Realm, and ate half of my elves after escaping with a ton of our gold; and it must have stolen that silver from the dwarves, so I guess they attacked the dwarves too, which would explain why we have heard no word from the Dwarf Mountains for many months. The diamonds, I think, the dragons stole from the humans when they attacked that new city the humans are building, the one they call Imperia. It probably stole the purple velvet from them, too. I wonder if it stole the rubies and emeralds from the gnomes? The gnomes have emeralds, and rubies, I believe, or at least they did before the dragon army attacked them.
“As you know, we summoned you here to ask you to make peace, to end the war between the dragons and the other sentient species,” King Gargarez, the human standing at Zebyx’s side, said. “We want nothing more than to end this needless bloodshed. Peace would benefit both sides, dragon king. Many, many humans and elves have died, but some of your dragons are getting killed, too.”
“Yes, I know,” the dragon king said. “We dragons have a natural magical immunity to any physical attack, which renders us near-immortal. Yet, somehow, you humans, and you elves, have figured out a way to forge Mythic and Legendary Weapons, which do render us vulnerable—for a minute or two, and then our natural magic shield automatically reconstructs itself, and we become immortal yet again. So, yes, you marksman elves have been skillfully shooting your arrows into us after your human warriors hit us with your filthy, wretched magic weapons, and you have killed some of my dragons. But only two dozen or so of my dragons have died. How many elves and humans did my dragons slaughter? Hundreds? Thousands? Tens of thousands? How many of your people did you two so-called kings fail to protect?”
“Many,” Zebyx said through clenched teeth.
“Peace will favor you far more than it would favor the dragons,” the dragon king said. “As such, I will demand a mighty tribute to make peace, one proportionate to the value which you would obtain from such a deal.”
“Name your price,” Zebyx said. “You have something in mind. Spit it out and be done with it!”
“Zebyx, mind your manners!” Gargarez said. “We are negotiating!”
“These dragons respect only strength and power, and, when it comes to matters of war, they are not wrong,” Zebyx said. “Make your case, dragon. I will say yes or no on behalf of the elves. King Gargarez speaks for the humans. We will listen, respond, and then it is to be peace, or war.”
“It is a war you will not, and cannot, win,” the dragon said. “My army of dragons is too powerful. If you reject my offer, I will wager than only God alone can save you—and we all know how fickle and unreliable the whims of God are. I will not hesitate to order my dragons to kill every elf, human, dwarf and gnome in the realm. A land in which only dragons remain alive would please me greatly. So please do seriously consider my offer.”
“Make your offer,” Zebyx said.
“Both of your firstborn daughters,” the dragon king said, “for me to eat. I have seen that lovely young girl of yours, Zebyx King of the elves. She looks delicious! I simply must taste her. The human king’s daughter is a bit ugly and might taste bad, but she has meat on the bone, enough to make a nice meal for me also.”
Zebyx snapped his fingers, casting a magic spell. The dragon in humanoid lizard-man form was hit by the spell, and fell to the ground, knocked over, with a large blue-purple bruise on its red face. The dragon leered at Zebyx, its snake-like red-and-yellow eyes full of anger and hatred.
“You will regret that, elf,” the dragon said. “But your attack is merely a mark of your cowardice and desperation, and it does not bother me. As per the terms to which I agreed, I will not attack you here, while we stand atop the royal mountain, which is sacred to God and has been declared by God to be a place where deaths will not happen. But, as soon as I get back to my lair, I will give my army of dragons the order: kill all your kind and let none remain alive! We will burn your land, eat your livestock, slaughter your women and children without mercy, kill all your warriors, and eat every one of you that we can fit down our dragon throats and swallow into our stomachs, regardless of whether we eat you after killing you or eat you alive! This means the death of all your species! You stupid king of the elves! This means war!”
“I’m looking forward to it,” King Zebyx said to the dragon. “Now get out of my sight. I desire to smell your foul stench no more.” The dragon king stood and bared its sharp teeth at Zebyx in a snarl, but then, with the other two dragons at its side, it turned and began making its way down the path that wove down the side of the mountain.
After the dragons had left, Zebyx sighed, and his shoulders slumped. This is a disaster! Zebyx thought. We are doomed. I will ready my army and lead them into battle against the dragon army and the dragon king. But I fear that, unless I pray to God and somehow convince God to intervene in this war on our behalf, we are dead. I have no idea what I can promise to God that can inspire God to act on our behalf, but I must think of something! The dragons are simply too powerful. The age of men and elves is over. The dragons will rule.
“Would you have done it?” Zebyx asked Gargarez. “Would you have let the dragon eat your daughter, to save your people?”
Gargarez shook his head. “No. You were right. No good can come of evil, and no evil comes from good. No good would have come from making a deal with evil dragons. This is true, even if, at first glance, it might appear that some good might somehow have come from evil if we had made a deal with evil. I wanted to make peace with the dragons, and the human kingdom I swore to protect is being butchered by that bloody lizard and its filthy, stinking army of giant winged reptiles. But I am no coward. Let the dragons come! The humans will ride into war at the side of the elves.”
“Then come, my friend,” Zebyx said. “Let us prepare for war. It may be our final battle.”
Glorissa emerged from the orb of green light. Well, that was interesting, she thought. I had read about that meeting in my history class at Star Knights Academy! Soon after, the humans and elves lost the war, but then God banished the dragons after Zebyx and Gargarez promised God they would protect the Crystal of Light and the Crystal of the Elements forever, and that formed the covenant between God, humans, and elves. But that stuff happened ten thousand years ago! Why did God want me to see that now? She turned her eyes towards the white orb, the one where her sister Leigh appeared, with another shadowy figure at Leigh’s side. This one is probably what God really wants me to see. And God warned me I probably will not be happy about it. But I will finally learn where my sister is. I am afraid of what I will see, but I choose to see it. Glorissa reached out and touched the orb of white light.
It was night; no one was in the Starlight Courtyard, other than Leigh and a boy dressed in the clothes of a Star Knight cadet. Leigh wore a white uniform, but the boy’s uniform was red. Leigh walked up to him, taking sly glances to her left and right to make sure no one was watching before she ran up to him. Leigh was dressed in her Star Knights Academy uniform, and she had a white cloth bag tied to her belt, with something inside the bag.
“Hi, Noah!” Leigh said. “Do you have something for me?”
“Yes, my dear,” the boy said. He leaned forward and kissed Leigh on the lips, wrapping his arms around her back while he held his lips to hers and gently worked her lips with his. The water spouted from the fountain with statues of angels behind them, and the reflection of them kissing could be seen in the water, lit up by the light from the moons above.
The boy broke away from Leigh, and she reached her hands up to her hair and adjusted it, with a proud smirk on her lips. Leigh’s skin was the same shade of brown as her sister, but the boy was the exact opposite: his skin was as white as bone, or snow, with the same matte-white quality as the skin of a fae, although his facial features were human.
“And now do you have something for me?” the boy asked.
Leigh peered around, looking this way and that, and again saw no one; the Starlight Courtyard was deserted at night.
“Yes,” she said. She handed the bag to the boy. “I broke into the vault and took the Ancient Crown, just like you wanted, Noah! I’m not sure what sort of prank you intend to play using it, but I hope it’s very funny! I don’t know why you didn’t just go grab it yourself: that vault is so lightly defended that breaking into it is a joke. I know there’s supposed to be that spell so that only Star Knights can get in, but I just proved that even us students can get past the spell, by taking the Crown. The only reason you couldn’t get it is that maybe the guards might have smelled you when you snuck past them? You do have that body odor problem we discussed. Everyone at the Academy knows what Noah Nyx smells like; they talk about you behind your back all the time. People say they know you’re nearby just by the smell in the air, and I think it’s so rude of them to say that! But don’t worry! I smell like lavender and lilacs, so I have gotten it for you.”
Noah reached into the bag and pulled out an iron crown. The crown looked incredibly old and worn and faded, but it was adorned with diamonds, and it was surrounded by rows of very-long, very-sharp spikes. His eyes lit up at the sight of the crown. Outside of God’s vision, Glorissa gasped. That was the very same crown that the dragon king was wearing in the other vision!
“I think this will look beautiful on you,” Noah said. “I would like you to put it on. I know you gave this gift to me, but consider the Ancient Crown to be my gift from me to you, a token of my love for you.”
“A gift from my boyfriend! I’m so happy!” Leigh took a moment to adjust her long, thick, curly brown hair about her head, and then she took the crown from the boy and daintily planted it atop her head.
“Excellent,” Noah said. “Leigh, did you ever stop and wonder why the teachers instructed you that it is forbidden to take the Ancient Crown out of that vault? Did you ever ask why they would go to the trouble of casting a spell so that only Star Knights had access to it?”
“No. Should I have?”
“Perhaps.” The boy smiled. “The Ancient Crown is not merely ancient, Leigh, it is very ancient. It is not one moment less than ten thousand years old. Once, it was worn by the king of the dragons, before God banished those noble, graceful, mythical snake-creatures from your realm. The dragon king enchanted this crown with a spell, such that any human, or fae, who wears the crown is put under the mind control of the dragons. So, sad to say, now that you wear it, your soul belongs to me.”
“What do you mean?” Leigh asked. She raised her hands to her head to take the crown off—but then her hands froze before they reached the crown, and her entire body went stiff and rigid, except for her eyes, which were wide open, shimmering with fear. Her eyes looked at the boy, and her body jerked back and forth, as if she was trying to move but could not.
The boy began to pace back and forth in front of Leigh. “You humans are so stupid: you never ask enough questions. Did you ever ask, for example: when God banished the dragons from the realm, where did the dragons go? Where did God put us? No. Your human history books are entirely silent on the subject. No human ever bothered to ask. Well, let me tell you, my dear and precious Leigh: we were sent to a distant world, one made of volcano lava that flows and geysers up into an ocean of fire. That world is nothing but a constant sea of fire, burning so hot that you always scream in pain while you are there. If you look up into the night sky, you can see it: it looks almost like a star, but it glows red, not white, as a normal star does. Look up, Leigh. Look for the red star.”
At the boy’s command, Leigh raised her head. Tears were now pouring from her eyes.
“Look at me, Leigh,” the boy said. She lowered her head down and stared at him again.
“You humans also never asked: what does banishment mean? Does it mean that the dragons can never return? Or does it mean that they are so far away that they pose no danger to you? Don’t feel too guilty about that: most of the other dragons also chose not to ask, but I, their king, did ask that question. As it turns out, after I had spread my wings and took flight, when I flew up into the star-filled darkness of the void which you see as the night sky, it only took me ten thousand years to get back here, to the realm I had been banished from. Oh, yes, that is quite a long time, but do not fret, Leigh: I made the time pass by quickly because I spent every moment thinking about the pain and agony I would inflict upon the humans and elves after I returned.
“And so here I am, ten thousand years later, standing before you, banishment and all. My army of dragons is not nearly as strong as I am; they could not survive ten thousand years of flying though the void, as I did. To bring them back, I must destroy the Crystal of Light and the Crystal of the Elements.
“But you have been very useful for that purpose, Leigh! Without you, you stupid girl, who so easily fell in love with some random boy and was willing to break all sorts of forbidden taboos just to share a stupid joke with him and get a cheap laugh, I could not have done it. The spell protecting the Ancient Crown would have kept me out, but it let you in. As it turns out, my dearest Leigh, the joke was on you. The Ancient Crown is now mine, once again, these many thousands of years later. It was nice of the Star Knights to find it and keep it safe for me until I returned. Their reward for their service, like your reward for yours, will be death.
“I am already amassing servants and building a conspiracy within the Star Knights. There are those within the Star Knights who suspect me and who have begun to sense the conspiracy I am forming, and I do not know how much they know, which is why I wanted to find an innocent, stupid girl who knows nothing, to steal the Ancient Crown for me. I will use an illusion magic spell to make the Ancient Crown look like the King’s crown, and then I will sneak into the Royal Palace disguised as a butler to the King and swap it in for his royal crown. The King is attended by many royal court wizards, but the spell in the Ancient Crown is such that none of them will detect it. I will take control of the King, and you made it possible for me to do so. And I do thank you for it!
“Once the King is under my spell, I shall put my two servants, the two dark priests Wote and Shome, in charge of the Imperium. They are the bastard sons of the King and have some slight claim to the human throne, albeit a weak claim, so I believe that the Noble Houses will acquiesce to being led by them. They are my two most loyal servants from among the humans. Having the King as my slave should prevent the Star Knights from moving against me in the open and going to war to stop me, because if they did, I would simply have the Kingdom declare war against them. The Star Knights may try to act in secret and use some trick against me, but the true threat that they would have posed will be gone. With the Kingdom under my control, who will stop me from breaking the Crystal? Who will stop me, Leigh? Who?”
Leigh did not answer, but tears poured down her cheeks like rivers.
“It remains only for me to destroy the Crystal of Light and the Crystal of the Elements, causing the banishment of the dragons to end, and then my army of dragons will return to the realm,” the dragon-disguised-as-a-boy said. “The only obstacle in the way is the stupid elves who protect the Crystal of the Elements, and you foolish humans who guard the Crystal of Light, doing as God bade you like God’s pathetic, miserable slaves. In ancient times, the goblins served the dragons, and I believe I may be able to re-establish the alliance between dragons and goblins, to use the goblins against the elves. Goblins are brainless idiots, much like you humans, and they love it with a dragon does their thinking for them. Goblins hate elves, so the goblins should be very happy to execute a military plan of mine to vanquish the elves and destroy the Crystal of the Elements for me.
“I do not yet have a plan for how I shall gain access to the Crystal of Light, but do not worry, Leigh: I am a genius, and I shall think of a plan, in due time. Once I control the Kingdom, thanks to you and the crown you gave me, I will have plenty of time in which to formulate and concoct some scheme by means of which to obtain the Crystal. When I do, I will smash the Crystal of Light into a thousand shards and fragments and laugh while I look at the glittering crystal remnants on the floor before me. With God’s spell ended, I will bring my dragon horde out of exile and restore the dragon species to our rightful place as rulers of your realm.”
The boy looked up as he walked, staring up into the night sky, so that the pale moonlight made his white face glow silver as he walked about the courtyard. His neck twisted and his head moved in a very inhuman way while he walked, so that his eyes remained fixed on one distant spot among the stars: a star that glowed red.
“There is another question which you humans chose never to ask,” the boy said. “What is the purpose of the dragons? Why do we exist? What ends do we seek by means of our actions? You seem to have regarded us as mere stupid beasts who had obtained magical powers by some lucky accident. You thought our war against you was us merely mucking about at random, or a predator’s bloodlust, as if we were an enraged bull charging forward with no knowledge of where he was headed. You humans believed this, even though we proved smarter than you, time and time again. Let me tell you the truth, Leigh. Millions of years ago, there was a species of snakes who became so smart that they killed all their natural predators, cultivated mammals as their food supply, and flourished, living in peace and harmony. They discovered magic, and they used their magical powers to evolve, giving themselves wings, legs, and giant size, and becoming the dragons. Dragons are nearly immortal, possessed of the most powerful strength, and we also have the keenest, sharpest minds possible, and all the most deadly and mightiest magic is ours to command. We ruled this world, Leigh, for millions of years!
“But then you humans evolved, coming up from a bunch of apes and monkeys, the filth of the world. And, soon after you appeared, the magic of the realm mixed with your blood to cause various magical mutations, resulting in the evolution of the species of elves, dwarves and gnomes, all of whom came from the human line. You ruined everything! Because, by some means which I never understood, you misled God into thinking that you and your kind were the good, the loving, the pure, the true, the happy, and that you deserved dominion over the realm, and that we dragons were no longer masters of the realm.
“Bah! Your kind are nothing compared to the dragons... yet God told us that God favored you ahead of us. God made a mistake. God erred. God was wrong. God’s divine order was ruined by your very existence. Your kind should not exist, and dragons should rule the world: we are the superior species. Your kind are weak and stupid, and we must be the dominant species of this realm. Our goal is not mere carnage, and bloodshed, and war, nor do we seek in the first instance to eat you and turn you into our food supply, nor to cleanse the realm of you merely so that we may lay claim to the realm for our own out of selfishness and greed. No: we seek to correct God’s mistake, and to restore the correct divine order. We have the divine right to rule, which God took from us by mistake and gave to you. God has failed, but thanks to me, God’s true purpose for the realm will be restored.”
He stopped pacing, and then looked at Leigh. “You serve no further useful purpose for me, other than to serve as a snack the next time I grow hungry,” the dragon said. “Go to my dorm room in the Star Knights Academy and wait there for me. I have set magic there so that the door to my room will open when the Ancient Crown approaches. Go inside and wait. I am too busy tonight with putting my plans into motion to eat you now, but don’t worry, I soon will. Speak to no one and say nothing. Just go to my room and wait there. When I need the Ancient Crown, I will take it from you—after I give you one final command, to crawl into my open mouth and slide down my throat, from which position I can bite your body off, leaving behind only the head, and the beautiful, wonderful, magical crown perched so gracefully upon it. You are an ugly girl, and you humans usually taste more repulsive even than elves or dwarves, but I hold out every hope that you will taste considerably better than you look. Now leave.”
Noah walked away in another direction, leaving Leigh alone. She slowly began to walk back into the castle, her movements slow and rigid, as if she were fighting her own body as it walked. Her tears reflected the white moonlight as they made her cheeks wet. As she left the Starlight Courtyard, Leigh managed to whisper a few words, forcing them past the mind-control spell that locked her entire body, including her mouth: “Glorissa… will… worry…” and then she vanished into the doors of the castle.
“Oh my God, Leigh, no! No!” Glorissa said. She was alone in the void so no one else could hear her, yet she spoke the words aloud. She cried, and raised a hand to her face and wiped her tears off onto the back of her hand. But then the tears stopped, and her face hardened into a look of firm resolve. She spoke to the darkness that surrounded her. “Okay, God. I have seen. I know. I understand. Leigh is dead. My sister Leigh is dead. I have to accept that. Now I can move on with my life. And… thank you for showing me.”
A door of white light appeared in the darkness of the void. Glorissa walked into it.
A door appeared in the white wall, like the one Glorissa had walked through a few minutes ago, and the words made of burning red fire suddenly vanished.
“I guess Glorissa did whatever it is that she was supposed to do,” Rose said. “Walking through the wall would have been fun, but I am prepared to accept a nice, safe, reasonable door. Let’s go, team!” Rose opened the door and entered. The others, except for Sylis, followed behind her.
