The journey was agonisingly, painfully slow going but at the same time it was the greatest adventure Nicola had ever been on. For the first few days, Ethan led Nicola through the mountains near Ranora and each night they slept under the stars. Ethan placed a small glowing stone on the ground each night and within minutes the air around them was warm. He told her that if it rained the stone would make the rain fall around them, not on them and they would stay dry.
“How does it work?” Nicola asked curiously one night.
“Magic,” Ethan replied, making her eyes go wide. She spent the whole evening staring at it in wonder.
Eventually they came to a vast lowland plane covered in grass. Nicola had never seen anything like it before in her life, she had never before been anywhere where there was not another mountain on the horizon. She knew in her mind that there were great empty places in the world, she had seen a few maps showing them, but to see them was something entirely different.
After coming down onto the plains Nicola started to get bored and decided to ask Ethan some questions about Dragon Valley as she still had very little idea about what kind of life she had let herself in for.
“Ethan?” Nicola called.
“Yes?” he answered with a smile.
“What are the dragons like?”
“What do you mean?” he asked with a little laugh.
“Well, what kind of people are they?”
“Honest,” Ethan said after a moment’s thought. “Honest and very fair. Humans can lie very easily, dragons never lie and they don’t like people who do. I’ve been told they can taste it in the air whenever someone lies to them but I have to say I’ve never tested that.”
“Hmm, what kind of things do they like doing?” Ethan smiled at her question slightly before answering.
“They like reading and writing, they like making things grow and more than anything else in the world they love flying. I was told Brant and Jason visited your village, did you meet them?” Ethan asked.
“I met Jason but I didn’t speak very much to him.”
“Ah, well if you had you might have noticed something a little different about him, you see there aren’t many people who fly with the dragons and those that do…” his voice trailed off and for a moment he seemed lost in thought before continuing.
“I don’t know quite what it is but they understand the dragons better than anyone else, almost as if something about the dragons rubs off on someone when they share the sky with them. Those people have such an appreciation for wonder that it’s a wonder in itself and they all say that it’s something they learn from the dragons, just by being around them.” Ethan went quiet then, thinking to himself, but Nicola wanted to know more about the place she was going to call home.
“What about the Castle in Dragon Valley, is that like in one of those old knights tales?”
“What? Oh, no, not at all. The Castle was built by Dravadon thousands of years ago. The story goes that before the cataclysm, when the dragons first came to this world, Dravadon went to the southern continent and found the valley that everyone now calls ‘Dragon Valley’. When he got there he reached out his thoughts and the rock itself grew into the shape of the Castle. When it was finished that’s where he made his home.”
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“What’s it like?” Nicola asked, her eyes wide with a curiosity that made Ethan smile again.
“Enormous,” Ethan replied. “In fact I can’t tell you how big it is because I don’t think there are any words for something that huge and inside it feels even bigger. It’s pure white and you can see it for miles. There are seven towers, four of them are used now for people to live in, the one in the centre is the dragons’ tower, it’s the largest and that’s where they live. There are two towers in front of that one which now house a university.
“In the centre of the Castle is the library. People make jokes about there being more books in there than one person can read in a lifetime, but I really wouldn’t be surprised if that was true. Underneath the Castle there’s an entire hospital, there are engineering workshops and the only quantum forge that I know of in existence.”
“What’s a quantum forge?” Nicola asked.
“You don’t pick easy questions, do you?” Ethan asked ruefully, Nicola blushed slightly in embarrassment.
“Let me see if I can explain this right. This world, the universe and everything in it is made up of building blocks and each building block is made up of even smaller building blocks. Eventually you get to the smallest of small building blocks and these are made up of the purest type of energy, do you understand?”
“You mean energy like light from the sun?” asked Nicola.
“Sort of, but the light from the sun is made up of all sorts of different kinds of light and all of them are made from energy but…” Ethan took a breath and tried to arrange his thoughts. Trying to explain this to anyone would be hard, trying to explain it to an eight year old, even a smart one, was really tough. “The different kinds of light are different because the energy that they are made of is arranged in different ways, do you understand?”
“Like… like the way buildings are made?”
“Yes, exactly. If you’re going to make a big building then you use different materials in different ways than if you’re only building a small one. So no matter what something is, if it’s steel or rock or gold or light, it’s only different because of the way the energy that makes it up is arranged.”
“So that’s why normal metal isn’t like the metal in dragon scales, the energy is arranged differently?” Nicola asked. Ethan’s head whipped around to look at her.
“Yes,” he said quietly as he thought to himself; ‘this girl’s so smart she’s frightening’.
“So what’s all that got to do with what a quantum forge is?” Nicola asked.
“Right, yes, sorry. Er… ok, whenever someone starts talking about quantum mechanics, they’re talking about the smallest of tiny building blocks that make up the universe, when you start talking about the way energy is arranged to make them up, that’s also quantum mechanics.
“A quantum forge can arrange or rearrange that energy into anything, any shape, any pattern. There really is nothing that can’t be made in a quantum forge.”
“Nothing?” Nicola asked.
“Nothing,” Ethan said with a smile. “Under the Castle they have huge bays where great spacecraft are built and kept, not navy ships, smaller ones that are more specialised. They have vehicles and machines from before the cataclysm as well. They couldn’t keep spaceships and ancient machines running without something to make parts for them and nothing does that better than the forge.”
The conversation went from there to the vehicles the people at Dragon Valley used, from intergalactic spaceships to wheeled vehicles that could cover virtually any terrain.
“There’s something I don’t understand,” Nicola said. “I thought the dragons were magical, all of that’s machines, not magic.”
“The dragons are magical and a lot of mages live with them, so do a lot of engineers and scientists. Think of it like this; magic’s a science like the others, the dragons and the people who live with them study all the sciences.”
“Could I learn?” Nicola asked eagerly.
“I believe you could!” Ethan laughed.
And so they continued to talk as they travelled. Nicola had a thirst for knowledge that was unquenchable and asked no end of questions concerning just about anything and everything to do with the dragons.