The Valley of the Dragons

“There weren’t always dragons in the valley.”

Caroline gazed out across the empty expanse beneath them. “There aren’t any dragons now, Grand Master,” she murmured softly. As if she needed to point out the obvious to the famed Grand Master Merlinus Ambrosius Octavius Vitae Lamechialson, or Myrddin Wylit as he now like to be called.

Master Myrddin grunted. “You’ve been my student since birth and still you trust your feeble human eyes over your other senses.”

“Hmph, fine.” She closed her eyes and did as she’d been taught, pushing all the air from her lungs to still her heart to a slow beat. Someday, Grand Master had assured her, she wouldn’t have to concentrate so hard on focusing to find the magick, within, or without. She slowly breathed in again, to link her own power to that of the magick fields, lines, and nodes surrounding her. Her body began to tingle as she felt the oxygen move through her veins, acting as a catalyst for the elven magick that flowed in her blood and drawing the outside magick inward to form a link between the two. Someday, she’d be able to connect to both forms of magick with just a simple thought. As the two magicks linked within her blood, from the stone beneath their feet and…She sucked in a sharp breath of surprise.

From somewhere far off, Master Myrddin chuckled.

In her mind’s eye iridescent eyes turned to regard her and then suddenly, she was transported. Standing in the same spot upon which she now stood, a mountain no longer, but a gigantic draconian body covered in deep garnet and burnt redwood scales. The scent of sulfurand ash filled her. “Dragon Mother? Master! She’s alive. Eveniea’s still alive!”

The mountain beneath her feet trembled and the dormant super-volcano rumbled.

And…laughing at me?

“Yesss,” Master Myrddin murmured, letting the sibilance in the singular word lengthen until Caroline was forced to wonder which of her questions he was answering. His voice continued to echo through her mind as the vision expanded.

No. Not a vision.

A memory. Not Master’s though.

She could feel the gigantic dragon smile then.

Yours.

Dragon Mother echoed Master in reply, her “yesss,” deeper and more sonorous, making the valley tremble as she laughed.

“There weren’t always dragons in this valley,” Master repeated. “Watch and learn.”

And the entire valley filled with dragons and all forms of dragon-kind. “My off- ssspring,” Dragon Mother’s voice threaded through the echo of Master Myrddin’s. “My children.”

“There are so many,” Caroline replied, letting her awe fill her so that Eveniea, the Dragon Mother, could feel it too.

“There are ssso few,” the great dragon corrected.

Caroline’s knees nearly buckled at the sudden weight of Eveniea’s sorrow. Only her teacher’s arms slipping around her physical form back on the ridge of the Draconian Mountains kept her from falling. Down. Down, head long into the gorge.

“Since the death of Asphar and the closing of the veil, the dragons who are able to gather here have been dwindling,” Master Myrddin whispered in her ear. “I need you to help me find a way to change that.”

“But didn’t you,” she began.

“Yes,” he replied crisply, cutting off the rest of her question. His own sorrow joined Eveniea’s, and the weight of their combined feelings became suffocating.

Damned empathic blood. She gasped air, pulling on the magick to steady her body and ease the constriction on her lungs. Then the scene in front of her moved.

It took only a moment to realize that she was seeing a rewind of events. Jumping first a year, then two. Ten, then a hundred. Until time rewound so quickly it made her nauseous, but Eveniea’s voice whispered through her and stilled her thoughts, steadying her. A deep, gently burning warmth filled her, like the sensation of a well fermented plum wine from Master’s cellar.

It took another moment to recognize the flavor and feeling of Eveniea’s power flowing into her and overpowering that which came from their surroundings. “This was our birthplace,” the dragon whispered, and the scene stopped moving, “but I sss’pose you would not have called it a valley back then.”

Brimstone and sulfur smoke obscured the valley below and as it cleared Caroline found they now stood at the edge of the active super-volcano that had formed it. The bubbling lava rose slowly up the crater as something gigantic began to push its way out of the volcano’s core. Across the crater a luminous figure moved as if dancing and as it spread its arms to the lava, like a marionette drawn by the figure's arms, the form growing inside split into unequal parts that stretched, and grew. Until the smaller of the two rose to the surface.

The larger form rolled beneath the smaller, falling for a moment deeper into the lava, and then Asphar, the Bright Star, Father of Dragons, extracted himself from the boiling lava and flapped his great wings for the first time. His skin hardened into a mix of silver and diamond. His eyes deepest obsidian. As he hovered just inches above the surface of the lava, he reached one glistening arm down until another rose from the lava to grasp his. Garnet and burnt redwood intertwining with silver and diamond as Eveniea, herself, followed her beloved mate from the lava.

“The birth of the dragons,” she gasped. “This is how you were born!”

“The great volcano erupted with our birth and covered the Earth with our afterbirth. Many perished. Much to the anger of the other Angeli. Our father, Nathanael, the figure you saw on the edge of the volcano, became a recluse buried in the depths of his forge far beneath the remnants of our birthplace. I have often wondered if not for his exile, if Nathanael, Grandfather of Dragons, would have allowed the death of my…,” the great dragon’s voice broke over her last word, “mate.”

The scene shifted. The shattered crater of the now dormant volcano filled with life. Plant. Bird. And most importantly, the offspring of Eveniea and her mate.

Caroline flinched as a dragon the size, color, and markings of a monarch butterfly flew through the space her body would have occupied had she been physically present. Her spirit shuddered violently, as a deep cold crept through the valley and all within it turned to the east where a great shadow began to move across the sun. At first, she thought she was witnessing an eclipse, but then the shadow came into focus as it grew nearer.

“Marta,” Master Myrddin murmured.

And her own memories filled in the rest. “Marta Blacktongue. Father killer.” She’d read about this moment in one of Master Myrddin’s books. One of the ones she wasn’t “technically” supposed to read. But. Honestly. How do you tell a teenager to stay out of the Restricted Section, and then talk about a book in the Restricted Section all in one breath, and not expect them to then go looking for said book? I mean. Seriously.

“The Destroyer,” Eveniea added with the sorrow of a mother who has witnessed one of her children turn into something evil.

Asphar fell, long after many of his children had already been slain. Eveniea lay helpless at the edge of the crater, fearfully injured and heavy with unborn dragonlings, unable to help any of them. Through it all, Nathanael, their creator, remained stoically below ground.

“It was Merlinus and other Magi who came to save us.”

“At what expense?” Master Myrddin’s voice broke. “At what cost?”

“It was,” Eveniea murmured in reply. “Asss it had to be.”

The scene split in two, juxtaposed one atop the other, but each individually unique. Just as the first of the dragons had split from the molten lava into two unique beings. “You split the world!” Caroline felt herself exclaim.

“No,” Master Myrddin corrected. “Technically, we merged them. They were twins already. The umbilical between them severed long ago. Only the tenuous remnants of the veil remaining to link them.”

“So, you…” And before her widening eyes, the tattered and broken veil mended. Strands restitching themselves together in a shimmering tapestry of light and shadow. Marta and most of her kin found themselves caught on the side of the tapestry that would leave them exiled in the realm that the magi and others would eventually call Avalonea. Only a few of the dragons and their kin remained on Earth. Too few. “You repaired the veil. That’s how you sealed it!”

“Yes,” Master Myrddin affirmed sadly.

Only then did she realize that he too, along with some of his companions, were on the Avalonean side of the tapestry. A woman screamed and ran towards the ever-thickening fabric separating the twin worlds. Her hand met Master Myrddin’s against the shimmering partition and Caroline felt the heartbreak that echoed from that infinitesimal yet infinite distance preventing their touch. “Nivianna, your lover.”

“My wife,” he choked. “But someone else felt our heartbreak too and even in her darkest hour, took pity.”

The veil shimmered suddenly and he all but fell into the arms of Nivianna.

Marta roared her displeasure and flew at the tapestry to return to Earth and destroy her mother and all others who would defy her, but the tapestry held.

“And now you know how you came to be my student in Avalonea rather than on Earth. The loss of the dragons on this world weakened the Earth’s hold on magick and something about my power healing the veil, linked me to it.”

“Linked usss to it,” Eveniea sighed. “Like mothsss to a flame, we cannot leave it long.”

“For a long time, we were too weak to let anyone else through the veil, even my brothers and sisters whom had followed me in to battle. Marta, in her rage, destroyed all she could and scattered her siblings to the far reaches of Avalonea and the worlds beyond both these planets.” Master Myrddin sighed deeply. “The ever weakening magick on Earth scattered them further still. The ones too weak to travel through the void of space went down to their eternal rest.”

“And Nivianna?”

He sighed again. “And Nivianna went with them. I. Unable to leave the veil for long. I did not." His dark, all-seeing eyes turned to her and she could see in their depths the pain he still bore. "Now, you know my deepest regret.”

“And mine. Why there are no longer dragons in the valley,” Eveniea murmured, heaving a great sigh.

The vision shifted again. Asphar’s body moldering at the center of the valley. Plants and smaller dragons laid to waste across its barren soil. Eveniea’s tears filling the crater until a vast lake formed. Her body eventually covered by layer upon layer of dust and dirt, until the weight of time turned them, layer by layer, into stone. “Wait. I’ve seen this place in the Atlas of Earth. Its. Its Crater Lake in Oregon, isn’t it? Yeah, this is Crater Lake out in Oregon!” She could barely believe it.

“And that island in the center is Wizard Island,” Master Myrddin confirmed. “My compound on Earth.”

“Never far from the veil. Not for long,” she repeated, understanding.

As she returned slowly out of the memory and back onto the ridge of the Draconian Mountains, looking out over the vast Dragon Gorge, she realized that even in Avalonea a small mound stood in the center of the valley and upon that Master Myrddin had built his tower. “You protect his resting place in both realms.”

“We. Protect hisss resting place,” the female voice spoke once again through her mind.

“And in so doing,” Master Myrddin added matter-of-factly, “we protect the one place that some can still cross between.”

“From Marta.”

“From Marta,” Eveniea agreed. The mountain beneath them trembling ever so slightly as she breathed the words.

“And from others that would threaten the existence of our worlds,” Master Myrddin added.

“Or the veil itssself,” Eveniea added.

“So that is why there are no dragons in this valley?”

The mountain shuddered enough to put her off-balance as the great dragon and Master both laughed. “Wait for it, impatient child,” was all he said.

And no sooner had the words left his mouth, they came.

Some flew.

Some walked on two-legs.

Others on four.

Some slithered, lacking legs altogether.

One small as a butterfly, flew over to hover before her eyes and suddenly she understood.

Fully, understood.

Asphar had died on his birthday and every year since, the dragons migrated to the Avalonean equivalent of their birthplace because they could not return to Earth. To nest. To mate. To celebrate the life that still remained, and… to mourn those they’d lost.

All under the watchful eye of the Dragon Mother.

And Master Myrddin, of course.

“And now you, my child,” his voice rolled through her thoughts and the Dragon Mother laughed once again. Hard enough to send stones rolling down the side of the gorge.

Caroline turned to her teacher, flustered. Had they both been able to hear her thoughts the whole, entire time?

His only reply was a sly wink before he threw his head back and laughed.