And, what could have caused the death of all these dragons?
“Wait!” Nova called. “Wait, go back, I want to see what’s down there!”
“You needn’t see anything down there,” Korgad announced, continuing his ascent. “Bone and blood along the rock. Pay it no mind, little girl.”
“I’m sixteen,” Nova protested, feeling a surge of irritation come over her. “Bring us down, Korgad, I’m not afraid of a little blood!”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Zephyr warned. “I don’t want to see any dead bodies.”
“I don’t think they’re human,” Nova said, leaning over Korgad’s side and craning her neck to try and see, despite the fact she couldn’t make them out at all anymore, aside from as small, dark shapes lying near the dragons. “They looked like monsters. Korgad, bring us down; I want to see what happened!”
“Hmph, fine!” Korgad snapped a little, tilting his wing and starting to circle back around, descending upon the battlefield. As they drew closer, Nova still leaning sideways to try and see as much as she could, she began to get a sense of foreboding at the way the dragons looked, mangled and still, with torn wings still outstretched and claws half dug into the ground. She couldn’t imagine a dragon falling easily.
“How did this happen?” Nova breathed out. “How could anyone take out dragons like this? You’re so powerful, so strong, how do you lose to monsters that small?”
“They have greater numbers,” Korgad huffed. “They know their way around a dragon; up against enough of them, we have little defense.”
“What about fire?” Zephyr asked quietly.
“Eh?”
“Can’t—don’t dragons…breathe fire?” Zephyr asked. “Wouldn’t that be a good defense?”
“Dragons don’t breathe fire,” Korgad scoffed. “What on earth gave you that idea?”
“What?” Nova stared. “What do you mean?”
“On Earth, the fairy tales all say dragons breathe fire,” Zephyr told him blankly.
“Bah, your fairy tales are wrong,” Korgad huffed, drifting to one of the larger areas that was free of bodies, beating his wings a few more times to slow their descent before landing, and then crouching so the two girls could climb down from his back amidst the field of bodies. Now that they were on the ground, Nova got a better look at the huge carcasses of the dragons—most of which were even bigger than Korgad, though their scales were the same colors and their large, vacant eyes were amber like his. The other creatures, though, were more surprising, and Nova frowned as she looked around at them. There were a lot of different kinds here, some that she recognized and some she’d never seen before, most of them looking at least partially human, but all of them definitely some kind of animal or beast of some sort. She passed a black horse with bloodied, torn wings of its own, spikes protruding along its back. Was that…a pegasus?!
“Gryphons,” Zephyr breathed in shock nearby, and Nova turned to her, following her gaze to the corpse of, sure enough, a gryphon. Zephyr looked around, walking a bit further into the field and starting to look amazed. “Harpies, pegasi…fauns.” She knelt down a little over a humanlike body, a young man by the looks of it, but with horns sprouting from his hair and the legs of a goat, one of which was bent the wrong way, clearly broken, and again, the man—or faun—was covered in blood, his skin white and his eyes staring blankly ahead.
“I…I don’t understand,” Zephyr said quietly, standing up and moving back over to Korgad. “What happened here?”
“Mythoi,” Korgad told her, his voice grim as he looked around at the dragons with narrowed eyes, stamping his front legs a little and moving his tail agitatedly back and forth. “Creatures of evil from another world. They must have found a portal in this area and tried to invade Ragond.”
“Mythoi?” Zephyr repeated. “But these are monsters, from Greek and Roman legends! They’re not real…they don’t actually exist! They can’t exist!”
“Then what are we looking at, Zeph?” Nova asked. “They’re all right here, right in front of us.”
Zephyr blinked at her, letting out a slow breath and running a hand through her blonde hair as she looked around again, shaking her head as she stared down at one of the bodies Nova had already identified as a harpy, which appeared to be a human-sized bird sort of thing, with sharp, eagle-like talons and wings, but the head and shoulders of a human woman sprouting up where the bird’s head should have been. “I can’t believe it…”
“I think it’s time to accept all this stuff is real,” Nova told her. “It can’t get much crazier than this.”
“You say that now,” Zephyr said. “But I get the feeling we’re in for a lot more.”
“What—which ones are Mythoi?” Nova asked Korgad. “Is that just…anything that isn’t a dragon?”
“Mostly,” Korgad replied. “Though the term doesn’t apply to normal beast and bird—only the monsters you see before you. Humankind and Dragonkind live here in Ragond, hunting the wolf and the bear, and keep tame horse and cattle. The Mythoi are these who come from beyond, from Mythos.”
“What happened?” Nova asked again. “What’s Mythos? Why are you at war with these…Mythoi?”
Korgad shrugged his shoulders a bit, turning his head away from her as he continued looking around the battlefield. “We’ve been at war for two decades,” he told her in a low voice. “This world exists because of Mythos—the world these creatures are from. Both Mythos and Earth give life to Ragond; it is a reflection of both, you could say, and draws its power and magic from the two worlds, through portals such as the one I used to bring you here, and the one the Mythoi used to invade.”
“What?” Nova frowned, feeling confused. “That doesn’t make any sense. What do you mean, a reflection? You mean it’s like a mirror?”
“No.” Korgad narrowed his eyes a bit, tilting his head. “Perhaps that was the wrong word…Ragond is a recreation. There, does that explain it?”
“Uh, not even sort of.” Nova stared at him, trying to figure out what he meant. “It’s a recreation of Earth? How is that possible? How did it happen? How long has it been here?”
Korgad let out a bit of a huff, stamping his front legs again and shaking out his head. “So many questions,” he muttered before letting out a deep sigh. “Ragond exists between two worlds,” he explained. “On the one side is Earth, and on the other, Mythos. Both outer worlds are self-sustaining to an extent; they possess enough magic to continue alone. But Ragond is a dependent world—it cannot produce its own magic, and therefore draws upon the magic of other worlds to exist. The portals are the links that shift the magic from those worlds to this one.”
“But Earth doesn’t have magic,” Zephyr said blankly.
Korgad let out that rhythmic, rumbling laugh again, though this one sounded more…bitter, than amused. “Not anymore,” he told Zephyr. “At least, not on the surface, though your world still possesses the ley lines, forgotten deep beneath the ground.”