The Elementals

There weren't always dragons in the Valley. That is not a true statement. That's only what the villagers thought. Truth is, there wasn't always a valley, until us dragons arrived and carved the valley with elemental magic. Three of us specifically. Keira, the color of sandstone, split rock and unearthed layers of crust. Ezri, the blue dragon, held back the waters. Then there is myself, Alena, the red dragon, the only dragon that can handle the heat, charged with placing the dragon egg deep inside the earth. There it would absorb the element fire and wait for the celestial alignment.

This is how elemental dragons are made. A few centuries bathing in an element, timed with the opening of the celestial gate. A kiss of starlight beamed from our sacred star to a perfectly positioned egg, births a dragon whose dominion with its element can only be described as magical; for better or worse, magic is magnetic, and so we stayed cautious of what or whom our magic may attract, for it is not only dragons who can move the elements.

All forms of life flowed into the valley over the centuries, yet it wasn't until the arrival of humans that things became problematic. Human visitors became settlers, and settlers became villagers, and the village populated the valley and declared dominion on all other creatures. We gave the humans their space and took up rest within slits Keira created for us in the mountain, still watchful and on guard of the egg. It was not until the middle of the seventeenth century with just two years to the celestial alignment that we smelled a smell in the valley we feared the most; the putrid smell of dark magic.

Keira, Ezra and myself decided we needed to investigate but it wasn't wise to stay within our dragon form. We performed a ceremony within a slice of the mountain. Keira closed the eye-slit of the mountain so no eyes in the valley below would catch the swirl of colors as our elemental powers poured into the gemstones we extracted from rock. We fashioned them into amulets that now hung from our neck. We magicked flowing hooded wardrobes whose colors matched our elemental skins. Our eyes still shined our elemental colors. Before you no longer stood three dragons, yet three human looking sisters; the most beautiful ones of course any could imagine. As we entered the village in the middle of the night, each holding a lit lantern, the villagers looked upon us newcomers with equal amounts of questions and awe, but it was he who wore the collar and clutched a book and gave us an awry stare that smelt of dark magic. A mage had arrived and taken stronghold in the village as the voice of all things holy.

The Order of the Draconian Mages, those who have become learned and skilled at hunting dragons, have been our foe through the centuries. They may look human but are truly some twisted form of elements with moonlight; moonlight is weak compared to starlight, but easy to capture, and so easy to make these mages. One mage would simply be a toothpick, but enough mages have killed dragons before.

Even though the mage must have felt magic and been drawn here, the entire valley hummed with the same magical hum we do since it came from us, so even as we passed him with his awry stare, the mage had no more clues than before of the source of magic. What mages are knowledged to is our ability to shapeshift with magic. They are ignorant to our how, but they do know we can take a human form, and so the dark mage's awry eyes searched and sought for anyone that exhibited unusual powers.

After six months and no greater success discovering the source of magic, the dark mage set the villagers against all things magic. He held up to the villagers what appeared as a holy book full of scripture, but we recognized it as it truly was, his spell book. Out of his mouth spewed spells that convinced the villagers witches lived among them in the form of women, and so began the trials and burning of women. Then the dark mage took hold of a very non-magical, non-remarkable human that had become my friend over these past months, tied her to a tree, and set the base a flame.

Keira and Ezri begged me not to, to not expose myself, to not not expose us. Something everyone should know about dragons, is every dragon tends to have a temper, and you don't ever, ever, let me repeat, ever, want to see the temper of a fire dragon. I stepped through the flames, of course unaffected and unbothered. I freed my friend and carried her out of the flames.

The mages eyes connected with mine. He opened his spell book and spewed a spell creating a phantom dragon of fire and flame. It was before the next moment the villagers would say, "there weren't always dragons in the valley." That was when I crushed my amulet and released my power and returned to my normal dragon self. I roared a dragon's roar. C'mon mage, let's see what you got . . .