For a Different Reason

I stumbled up from Orion's bedside with a gasp. Orion himself was already half-sitting up, eyes wide from our abrupt fall. In an instant, Sirius was up on the bed, licking his face. The glow of the auroras filled the room, and there was a distant rumbling sound. I looked around and saw Alexandros, Sigrid, Eva and Asa all around the bed, staring at the two of us.

"Was that a three-headed dragon?!" Alexandros practically yelped. He looked different, but I chalked it up to the strange light from the auroras, which I now realized was actually coming through the window.

Asa shook his head, looking as bewildered as the moment I had said my world didn't have magic. "That was-that-I-" He looked different too, something about his eyes. I looked closer. Wait, where were his pupils?

Eva screamed in my ear. I flinched away, then looked past her to see what had startled her.

A confused-looking Sigrid stood at the end of the bed, with all-black eyes that had a thin ring of silver where the outer edges of her iris should have been. She whirled to look over her shoulder, then back at Eva. "What?" she said.

Everyone else looked at her and screamed in unison. For a few moments all was chaos. Someone else noticed Asa's pupilless eyes and yelled again, but I'm not sure who because I was busy sputtering at the wings I noticed on Alexandros's back. All of us yelped, including Orion, as black mist suddenly swirled around his hands, and he frantically shook them in an attempt to dispell it, falling off the bed in the process. Sirius barked uselessly, jumping from person to person with a similar black mist trailing behind him, adding to the pandemonium.

"Erm, excuse us."

Our yelling cut off abruptly as we turned to look at the slightly open door, which the two mages from earlier were poking their heads through, staring at us in bafflement.

"Do you all...need a moment?"

"Yeah, I think we do," Alexandros said weakly. The mages nodded and shut the door. We erupted into panicked conversation, for some reason feeling the need to speak in loud whispers, as if to make up for our previous noise.

"Okay, so all of us saw that, right? Big dragon talking to Orion and Wish?" Sigrid hissed.

"A three-headed dragon!" Alexandros added.

"Wait, you guys saw that? How much did you see?" Orion interjected.

Eva giggled. "Oh we saw enough. You two make a cute couple."

Orion groaned and looked at her. He frowned and looked at her more closely. "Whoa, Eva, your ears are pointy!" 

She felt them and let out a small shriek that she quickly stifled. "I need to calm down, we all need to calm down!"

"I think we have good reason to not be calm!" Asa said, clutching his head. "Do you guys realize what happened? We're spirits now! All of us! How is this going to mess with my mana flow? Will I have to start learning to cast spells from scratch?"

Eva tried to comfort him. "Well, Wish learned pretty fast, so-"

He interrupted before she could finish. "Yeah well Wish is different!"

"Enough!" I cried, not very loudly but at a volume that rose over the stage whispers. "I take it you guys also said yes to Meissa's final question?"

Blank stares for the most part, although Asa muttered "Meissa the dragon, I feel like I've read about that somewhere..."

I sighed. "The three-headed dragon is named Meissa. Did you guys answer the question about choosing to be a spirit for a different reason?"

"I mean, not out loud, but yes," Alexandros replied, shrugging his shoulders and accidentally bumping Sigrid with his wings in the process. She gasped in amazement and stretched it out like a tent over and behind her. "Oh! Yeah me too."

Eva and Asa nodded in confirmation. I sighed, then went over to the closed door and knocked. It creaked open slowly, the two mages blinking owlishly at us.

"We need to see the king," I told them.

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We were led to the rooftop of the palace, where the king and some mages were watching the sky and looking through some kind of sensors made of wires and crystals, muttering about mana fluctuations in the shield. The sky glowed from auroras stretched from horizon to horizon. Green, red, blue, pink, yellow; I knew this was something I probably would never have seen back home. The mages escorting us had a whispered conversation with the king, who turned to look at us. I waved, though the gesture felt overly nonchalant considering the bizarre crowd behind me. I heard a rustle, a hissed exclamation, and a quiet apology as Alexandros bumped Sigrid yet again with his wings.

As the king approached, I tried to explain. "So, Meissa spoke to me again. Well, spoke to all of us."

He took a deep breath as he processed that and put a hand over his mouth thoughtfully. He regarded each of us in turn, then turned and called out to the huddle of mages, who were so focused on their sensors that only a couple had stopped their work to stare at us.

"Master Finnegan? Would you come here a moment, please?"

Master Finnegan emerged from the group, muttering and writing calculations in a book. "Yes, yes, what is it your majesty?"

He looked up and dropped the book. The frantic beard-stroking began. He circled each of us, muttering all the while.

"Fascinating! Celestial magic, but different somehow," as he stared into Sigrid eyes, then grabbed one of Alexandros's wings. "Also celestial, also different."

He moved on to Eva. "And what about you? Hrm, definitely plant-based mana, but I can't tell which plant. Odd, very odd, I've studied magical plants in detail but this doesn't look like any of them. What plants were near you as you turned?"

She shrugged. "Nonmagical herbs from Haven in Orion's dressing, as far as I know."

"Hrm, yes, speaking of Orion you look mighty healthy for someone who was on death's door last I checked. Yet another kind of celestial magic. Asa, you're a spirit too? Tell me everything!"

"Well Master, I-" Asa was interrupted by a massive boom that reverberated across the city.

"Look!" cried one of the mages, pointing to the sky.

There, to the north, was an absolute storm of dragons with trimmed tails, breathing aurora-green flames on the dome.

Dschubba had come.