As the smoke cleared, the three travellers found they were in a stone grey room. It looked and felt cold and was very dimly lit. Helen could smell strong unavoidable odours which she could not even remotely identify. Most were nice, but others, well, perhaps one can guess.

There was a wide wooden door to the right of them, which was the front entrance and exit. The door was like oak, only stronger. It was eight foot high and four inches thick. It had three hinges that were made of what looked like steel. Both sides of the hinges were square, and they were attached to the door and stone frame by thick steel rivets. These were at least five inches in length. The door was barred with a long thick strip of very sturdy looking wood. The very same wood from which the door itself was made.

Helen couldn’t help thinking it looked like a door that a fortress would have.

There were also double doors to the left. It was those doors they walked to. They were a dark navy blue and had Wizard runes spread across them, some of which were as big as Helen’s hands. The symbols suddenly moved and changed into plain English letters that said, WELCOME.

Delsani opened the right-hand door by pulling it outward and walked on through. John stopped for Helen and held the door open as she walked past. As she went through the doorway, she saw that it led out into the middle of the main hall of the Towers of Telian. She knew this, as she was an author and had written of it in a few of her books after John described it to her. The hall was lengthy and tall, and along the walls on both sides hung torches with tall and very bright silver flames. The flames were so bright that the only shadows that could be seen were theirs. Not even any of the artefacts lining the walls or filling the main hall had a shadow between them.

The display of old relics was so large that it went from one end of the hall to the other on both sides. They were separated like in a museum, with a different arrangement for each time or race. The artefacts ranged from suits of armour and helmets to swords, bows, arrows and crossbows with bolts. There were other weapons, small and large. There were clothes too, and pieces of old parchment with all sorts of writing on them. Most of the ink was faded, and some were so old that the writing on them could hardly be seen at all. Those mostly belonged to the likes of famous Men, Elves, and Dwarves.

There were also old wands, staffs, parchment with spells on them, cauldrons, broomsticks, and hats that belonged to famous Wizards and Witches. Each artefact had a small plaque to explain what it was, who owned it, and in what time. And there were wooden doors here and there along the walls which gave access to the main building, which sat between the three towers.

The floor of the hall was dark and finely polished; it was so glossy that the reflections of the hall could plainly be seen in it, as though it was a sort of giant black mirror. But it was not a mirror, and those were not reflections in it. The floor was a dimensional window, and so it was called, for it gave a view of other dimensions. In it, Helen saw a woman sitting upside down only a few feet away. She had her head in her hands and looked as though she were crying. She lifted her head, and Helen saw that the woman was a double of herself. The double saw her too and quickly got up and started to walk her way. She stopped short of Helen and looked at John. Tears filled her eyes again. She looked unsteady, as though she would fall. Then she looked at Helen and began to talk to her, but Helen could not hear her words. The floor gave only sight and no sound. Helen believed she could read the woman’s lips, though. “No trust, John is dead.”

At first Helen thought that she had it wrong, but in some way it made sense. That would explain the anguish Helen had seen in her double. The view of the woman and hall faded, and the floor turned grey.

Delsani had seen what Helen had seen. “Keep in mind that she lives in an alternate universe. Things can be different there? These differences may be big or small. And sometimes there are none,” he said.

Delsani’s words caught John’s attention. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

“There’s nothing wrong, John,” Helen lied.

John looked at Delsani. “I know something is wrong. What is it?”

Helen stood there silent and then said weakly, “I saw myself in the floor, and I told myself not to trust any Wizard, and that you’re dead.”

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John paused for a moment, and then reflected, “I know what that’s like. One time I saw a double that said, ‘Mum will die.’ The only thing was both my parents had died when I was very young.”

“Er ...right,” said Helen, still feeling uneasy.

“Just because I’m dead in that dimension, doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m going to keel over any time soon,” said John sarcastically.

“Is that supposed to cheer me up?” Helen asked, not at all amused.

“No, it means Delsani is right; there’s probably nothing to worry about.”

“Probably,” the young woman repeated, sounding quite concerned.

“There’s nothing to worry about, Helen, believe me,” replied her husband reassuringly.

Helen continued to feel anxious about the whole thing.

Then as quickly as the dimensional reflection had faded, it came back. All three were now looking, but Helen’s double was not there, because the floor looked into different dimensions. Now they could see a man. He was tall and neat except for his short messy hair, which would have been completely blond if not for streaks here and there of dark brown. He looked young, at most in his early twenties, and was wearing a beige shirt, black trousers, and a belt that was black with a silver clip-in buckle with an engraved Dragon’s claw holding an orb. He was wearing light brown shoes, and in his right hand he held a sword. In his other hand he held a piece of cloth, which he used to wipe down the blade of his sword.

On the blade were Elvin runes, which seemed to shine with a small echoing light; a light that made the silver blade look exquisite and flawless. He stopped wiping the blade then put the sword gently and carefully into its sheath, which was blue with the same letters. They also had a shine to them, but unlike the light on the blade, it was not an echoing light, but more like a sparkle, as if diamonds or some other valuable stones were set in.

The guard of the sword looked like two long fangs running up beside the blade. They were four inches in length, and both the guard and the butt of the hilt were the same colour of blue as the sheath. The handle’s grip was royal blue with a thin blue chain winding round it.

The man turned slightly, and it was then that John saw something silver glimmer in the torchlight. It was the centrepiece of a necklace that was held around his neck by a thin black rope. It looked tiny from where they stood and hard to see because of the light shining on it.

John was trying to see what the silver piece was when he saw his eyes unexpectedly change in his refection in one of the glass cases, from hazel brown to green. Not only did they change in colour. They changed in appearance as well. The pupils had stretched from top to bottom; they now looked like little Dragon eyes.

Like his eyes, his view was now also green. He could see light green ripples moving from his pupils to the edges of his irises. His sight was better, the detail of everything around him grown clearer than ever. The ripples seemed to have their own function. For every time they passed, he could see the dust particles moving in the air. When he looked at the doors at the far end of the room, he could see a draft coming through a gap at the bottom of one of them.

Then at the side of his right eye, John could see two thin wafts of air that were getting bigger and diminishing as they floated away. When he turned round, he saw that it was the very breath of Helen and Delsani. It seemed that he could also see any movement no matter how small it was. This is like some kind of radar, he thought.

“We are privileged to be able to see the great Wizard-Elf Dragdani,” said Delsani, “It’s not every day you see a living legend.”

“Dragdani,” said John. He knew he had seen the man before, but he had been away from Dorminya for so long that he could not even recognize one of the most famous people to ever walk that world. He turned his gaze back to Dragdani, looked at the sheath of his sword and to the Elvin symbols, and then to his eyes alone they changed and appeared now as English letters. They spelt Yeluilat, the name of one of the most radiant stars in the Elvin night sky. It was also the name given to the Sword of Light, which was forged by the Wizards and Witches of Cayer-Huld and the Elves of Haludon then given to Dragdani as a gift when he assumed the throne. It was called the Sword of Light because when its name was spoken aloud, it would emit a blinding light that would drive back any darkness and reveal anything that might be hiding within it. But the sword would only allow its true bearer to perform this act. Anyone else foolish enough to try it would be swallowed by the light and destroyed within its radiance.

John turned his attention back to the necklace around Dragdani’s neck. His eyes, to his own surprise, zoomed in on the silver piece, and he saw that it was in the shape of a Dragon. It was looking to Dragdani’s right, its wings half open, its front claws holding a multicoloured orb, and suspended on the rope at either side of the Dragon’s head were two silver metal beads. As every Wizard knows, the silver Dragon was the personal seal of King Dragdani. Wizard’s and Witches young and old call it Dragdani’s Dragon, for the silver Dragon was modelled on the Dragon Lanisic. He and Dragdani were the best of friends, and some of the Wizards even called Lanisic Dragdani’s Dragon.

Lanisic was the leader of the Jemonac Dragon Colony. Salith destroyed the colony for siding with the King. He also destroyed the Wizard Order of Thyeron, named for the largest of Dorminya’s moons, and the old Coven Wiannta, which took the name of the first Witch to recruit for the coven. After the Order, the Coven and Colony lay in ruins. They were slowly restored and renamed, though it took many long years to rebuild what Salith had taken.