"This is ... a lot to take in." My mother sipped her dessert wine, still thinking. We were all at our dining room, my mother and Celeste migrating from next door after my phone call. Lucy was also present, having come at my request, because she was going to get it all from me second-hand anyhow, so I had figured she might as well just hear it direct. The former 'Mrs Sterling' had lost all the worst flaws of her age; not hunched over, not rheumatic, her eyes bright, voice strong, wits very apparent. Her full reintroduction to us was as one Celeste Rothberg-Cartier, who seemed to be much less the doddery-grandma alias, and far more Minerva McGonagall reinterpreted as an undercover American dowager. My new impression of her was that she was unafraid to speak her mind, dignified, stern but fair, sharp-tongued, and with a low tolerance for stupidity. Though, I still didn't know exactly what she was doing and why she just happened to be living next door to us, but one thing was certain: I was going to get answers.

"Your son and Lucy can both testify to this 'tall tale' being true, but I would like to convince you fully. Seeing is believing, as they say, so I brought a prop with me." Celeste stood, walked to a cupboard and grabbed a bowl. She took it to the sink, half filled it with water and then placed it on the table in front of us. From a pocket, she pulled a tiny drawstring bag, and carefully she extracted what looked like a marble from within. It was a translucent blue, with opalescent veins flowing through the interior. "Now, observe."

With a theatrical flourish she held it over the bowl, then dropped it in the water.

Exactly where the marble struck, the water turned to ice, which spread very rapidly outward from the point of impact until the entirety was solid, the frozen mass expanding up the bowl's sides. Before we could react, Celeste held up her hand to indicate the demonstration wasn't done. She plucked the marble from where it was stuck in the surface, snatching it free. Equally as fast, the ice reverted, liquefying, and in a second it was back to being a bowl of water again.

Lucy's eyes were wide. "Wow. That was damn cool, pun fully intentional."

"That's amazing." Mom pointed at the marble. "It's magic?"

"It is. This little bauble isn't good for more than a parlour trick, but as you can see, the supernatural exists and magic is real. However, it's not something we can acquire so easily. It is a gift, and it always comes from one place. Rather, that should be: one species."

"Dragons," I muttered.

"Yes." Celeste nodded. "Dragons. Living on Earth for thousands of years, hidden among us, appearing just like us. Natalia, this is no fiction, as much as it sounds like one. The 'boy' in the room down your hall is all the evidence you should need."

"That, uh, young man, is actually a ... dragon?" Mom blinked, and took another sip, wearing the same 'problem solving' face that she used when work threw her a curveball. "Just to be clear, again, you are talking about the mythical beast that flies and breathes fire?"

"The very same." The older woman agreed. "While it is tempting to think of them as simply an advanced breed of animal, that view is critically naive. They are sophisticated, powerful, and highly intelligent, in many ways more so than us. Their mastery over magic and the complexity and intricacy of how they perceive everything makes them, one for one, the most deadly life form on the planet. Even their smallest and weakest should not be underestimated. Never take them lightly, because they are dangerous."

"I- ... I want to know more," I told her. "A lot more."

"Well, I shan't give you the entire compendium's worth of information, because we would be here for hours, but I can fix the worst of your bewilderment. What would you prefer I start with?" She rolled the marble casually between her fingers. "Do you want to know about their biology and social structure? Abilities? Their history and lore?"

"Lore!" Lucy's pick was immediate, and so quick that I didn't have a chance to argue. "It has to be something amazing. What the fuck is their backstory?"

"Lucy! Language, please."

"Sorry, Ms W." She had the decency to look sheepish at the scolding. "Didn't mean to be rude."

"Backstory?" Celeste chuckled, then abruptly sighed, her mood turning more serious in a moment. "This is the part where you may later regret asking, because the explanation is ... bleak, and even more difficult to swallow than what you already know. It would be right at home in a dark high-fantasy novel."

"I've just learned that all these fictional things aren't fictional. If I can accept that, then I can accept what you're going to tell me." Mom shrugged. "We all can, right?"

"Right." I conceded, and Lucy echoed my agreement.

"Well, where to begin?" Celeste thought for a second before starting in earnest. "I said 'one species' before, but that's not completely accurate. Dragons don't have a single type any more than we humans have a single ethnic grouping. In fact, their race, too, is defined by the opposing divisions within it. They came from exactly four distinct origins. Those four emerged from the magical accumulation and crystallisation of the Earth's primary elements into physical forms."

"Primary elements?" I thought I knew what she meant, but wanted to make sure. "I'm guessing you don't mean the atomic elements, but more like the ones the ancient Greeks talked about?"

"Yes, that's right. The four basic pillars of the natural world were literally embodied into living creatures; one each for earth, water, air and ... fire. Immortal, colossal, unimaginably powerful. There is no other way to describe them than the obvious: they are gods."

"Gods?" I whispered.

"Gods," she confirmed. "Each spawned an entire brood of their own, made of their essence and built in their likeness. Those children are the dragons, and they worship their creators as deities. They serve as faithfully as they can, and they name their patrons as Spirits of the respective elemental realms. For a long time, this is how it stayed, but-"

"-but something messed it up." Lucy was rapt, caught in the story. "Something crappy always happens."

"Yes, well, what happened is something that we still don't fully know the details of. It occurred a very long time ago, before humans were around. Few dragons of any sort are willing to discuss their ancient history in detail with us. When they do, the story will differ between types; for water it was entirely justified, for air a necessary struggle, for earth a reluctant calling, and for fire? It was an unspeakable betrayal. What we do know for certain is that something caused the incarnation of flame to go completely mad, and attack his siblings. His rage made him nearly unstoppable, so the other three did what they had to."

"What was that?"

"They banded together and killed the Spirit of Fire."

Killed him?

"That's possible?" I stared at her. "To kill something ... divine?"

"Possible, but incredibly difficult. Though, the real question is: how did they make sure he stayed dead? For something so strong, any defeat is temporary and true death is nigh impossible. They are titanic sources of magic, and they are not subject to the same rules as everything else. Their inherent powers of renewal can restore a broken shell to perfection, because these mystical beings are bound to the physical world itself. So," Celeste took a deep breath, "they unbound him."

"Unbound? Uh, they ... let him go?" Lucy blinked. "Kicked him out?"

"The Spirit of Water invoked a magical rite upon the vanquished body of their brother before it could revive, that banished his soul to the shadow realm, a place outside reality where he would stay eternally formless, and unable to affect the physical world in any direct way. You could think of it as a sort of purgatory for their kind. His remains were then destroyed and they believed it was over, except, in the chaos of his fall and before the rite began, the most trusted servant of flame stole a fragment off the corpse. That one piece escaped the rite of banishment, and within it a sliver of the Spirit of Fire remained, anchoring him to the living world. This artifact was thereafter named the Fear, because of the threat it represented."

"What happened to it?" I asked. "Did they do something with it?"

"I want you to understand how significant this event was for their race." Though she was speaking to all of us, Celeste's attention was on me specifically; more than just explaining everything to my mother, she was making sure that I was aware of what I had stumbled into. "It began a rift in their species that has never healed, and has pitted fire against the other three for countless years. The Fear has been hunted, along with the fire dragons who protect it, for millennia. They kept possession of it for all that time, and even after humans came along and began to spread across the planet, they continued to run, learning how to take our shape and hide within our societies just as their cousins did; fleeing what they saw as persecution by their own kind.

"It was in Europe during the 15th century that the water dragons made contact with a group of Germanic princes and sought help from humanity in finding the missing artifact. An agreement was made to cooperate, though they were clear to those princes that their existence had to stay undisclosed. Apart from a few odd encounters over the centuries, they had managed to keep the growing human population unaware of their presence. They did not desire the greater public become embroiled in a primeval war that began long before we were even here, as they knew if everything emerged into the open, it would only serve to escalate what was happening and kill a great many people.

"So, a secret society called the Noble Order was created to aid them. Working together proved to be most effective; there are certain things that people have a knack for that dragons were not so adept at, at least in that time. A couple of decades after the founding of the Order, the Fear was traced to a location formerly in the Kingdom of Bohemia that was lost in a war to Matthias of Hungary. In 1483, at the town of Brno in the March of Moravia, we disrupted a private ritual and attempted to seize it. During the violence of the fighting, it was shattered into nine pieces.

"Their cultists fled yet again, escaping with some of those pieces, though we also managed to acquire some. Over the last five centuries we have been trying to recover all of them, so they can be destroyed and the conflict put to an end. The good news is that by the beginning of the 21st century, the Order had five of the nine. Two more are believed to be completely lost, swallowed by history, with nobody on either side knowing the whereabouts. The eighth was seized here, in the United States, in 2004 during a well-planned raid. The fire dragons no longer hold any of their precious fragments, but there is still the final ninth piece left misplaced out there, and everyone is searching for it."

"If that's the good news," Mom wondered, "what's the bad?"

"The bad news is that while they have lost control of the artifact, it is only one half of the problem. You see, they need two things to achieve their goals, and very recently, roughly a month ago, they managed to acquire the other component: a copy of the incantation used in the ritual of banishment. With this, they intend to create a counter-incantation."

I had a feeling I knew where this was heading. It made me really uncomfortable to the point of vague queasiness, but I wanted to hear Celeste confirm what I was thinking. "If they get both of those two, uh ... what will happen?"

"They would do what they only dared dream of for so long. An individual, one of the strongest of their kind, would infuse themselves with the sliver of their master's soul contained within the Fear. The counter-incantation would be invoked, and the banishment undone. The formless would then return to the physical world, and the Spirit of Fire would be reborn into the host body, alive again and free."

Reborn?

We all stared at her, silent.

Shocked.

This is ... nothing like what I was expecting.

"Wait a second." Lucy held up her hands in a stop motion, never one to let a solemn moment pass without bringing everyone back to earth. "So this is what's going on? You're telling us that they are trying to resurrect an insane fire dragon god? How can any of his litter of flying toasters think this is a good idea? I mean, sure, he's their lord and saviour, or whatever, but ... you said he was crazy, right? Won't this end up being as bad for them as it will be for us?"

"Your observational skills are on point as usual, Lucy." Drily acknowledged, Celeste smiled, and then continued. "His brood were not always the zealots they are today. Our knowledge of their culture is incomplete, but one of the things that is well understood is that all of them hear whispers of his thoughts from where he is confined. His madness affects them, and it has changed them, exaggerating the more negative extremes of their personalities. Making them prone to their worst impulses; quicker to anger, to hate, and merciless, ruthless. They have a ruling council called the Conclave that is central to their efforts, and there are few fire dragons who resist the urges and refuse to abide by the Conclave's wishes. The odds are against them, it is true, but they have kept faith during this long struggle for one reason."

"What is it?"

"Prophecy." She stated it simply, matter-of-fact. "It was foretold they would succeed and their master would return. An approximate time period was even given for when it would occur, and also for the birth of the avatar-to-be. They believe it is inevitable, and so do some of our allies. Not everyone though. I don't accept it as being 'destiny' and neither do many of my colleagues." Her frame, slight as it was, tensed, the lines on her face growing harder. "I can't and I won't. They must not win."

"Uh, Celeste," I gestured nervously to the hall, toward the spare bedroom, "the avatar, it couldn't be ... him, could it?"

"Oh." She blinked, not expecting this question. "Uh, no. The avatar is meant to be born in the modern era, but quite some time ago. The target will have to be older than him. This brings us back to the beginning, however." Celeste clasped her hands primly in front, nodding thoughtfully. "Your injured guest is remarkable. He is the first fire type to be born outside his own kind in more than three centuries. He is young, but from what I have heard, he is shaping up to be an impressive example of his breed. He also represents an opportunity for the Order to learn more about our foe, and even, potentially, use him against the Conclave, if he is willing. That part is essential -- the willingness, I mean -- because he has the potential to go the opposite way too."