Several miles away from the capital city of Nesredna in the small town of Jadedale, the creatures of the town as well as a few merchants who were passing by had gathered around the town plaza to watch a mad dwarf and her latest invention.

“Ladies and gentlemen... the age of magic is OVER!”

Aura the Sphinx snickered at Agate the Dwarf’s statement. “What, again?” The other creatures snickered as most of them shared the sentiment of the stout lion-eagle woman.

“HA! Laugh all you like!” Agate strapped her safety goggles on as the final touch of her flight suit. “But today is the day a dwarf defies gravity! The sky won’t solely be the domain of winged creatures like you. And the superiority of science over magic will be painfully clear.”

“It will be painful, alright…” Ivan the minotaur mumbled as he had finished checking that the flying machine, or Agate’s baby as he liked to call it, had no loose screws. “Alright, nothing should fall off.” Ivan said. “But are you sure you wanna try this again?” The bull-man with a broken horn looked concerned as the dwarf climbed up to the seat of her invention.

“Ivan, she who risks nothing will never gain anything. And don’t worry, once I become world-famous as the world’s first flying dwarf, I will make sure YOUR name goes down in history as well as thanks for all your help.”

“That’s… generous.” Ivan felt regret over assisting the dwarf with building the dang thing, but he would rather try and help her make it work than just standing idly by as she tried to blow herself up… again. He went to the crowd in order to stand by the side of his wife Aura as Agate activated the heat crystals that were part of the machine’s function.

Her daughter Amethyst and the human girl Dimi watched as the so-called flying machine began to make noises of several types. The two fourteen-year-old girls each held a bucket filled with water, just in case.

“Remember our bet?” Dimi asked the dwarf girl with ribbons in her wellkept fluffy beard.

“Absolutely.” Amethyst grinned. “No take-backsies. Those thirty coronets are as good as mine.”

The propel started spinning like crazy. The crowd of creatures stopped smiling as they realized that now was the moment. Agate’s passion stopped being amusing as the vertical began to slowly move forward.

... and then it stopped moving. Aura smelled the scent of burning hair.

“I’M ON FIRE!” Agate jumped off the machine as the bottom of her beard was burning. “I’M ON FIRE, I’M ON-” The dwarf’s daughter and the human girl threw water in her face, soaking her entire person. “... Thanks girls.”

“Man, I was so sure she would fly this time.” Dimi grumbled as she gave Amethyst a small bag with coins.

Agate looked at Amethyst with a judging look. “You would bet against your own mother?”

“Mom, don’t think of it as me betting against you.” The teen dwarf weighed the bag in her hand with a grin. “Think of it as me investing in your failures.”

Agate stopped looking at her daughter with annoyance as she turned her attention toward the flying machine that now burned. Ivan and the other townspeople helped extinguish the flames.

“Mom, seriously.” Amethyst looked concerned. “This isn’t funny anymore. Maybe you should try to create something less... big? Everyone loves that toasting-bread machine you made.”

“Toasting bread is not enough to impress anyone.” Agate sighed. “I want something that actually makes creatures realize that advanced machines are the future and not just a temporary fad.”

"Wouldn’t it be better to make a machine that moves on land first and then work your way up?” Dimi asked. “Ah, no pun intended.”

“No, absolutely not. That would be a horrible idea.” Agate went to her machine to study it, hoping she could fix it instead of building a new one from scratch. “I already done the math and that would require that you make more roads, meaning the destruction of landscapes and nature in general. A land vertical would do far more damage than a flying one. I refuse to be responsible for the creation of such a thing. Ah, DARN IT!” Agatha kicked the machine. “I have to get special parts from Onyxville.”

“Onyxville... shit!” Dimi slapped her face. “I almost forgot. Ivan! Aura!” Dimi yelled at her godfather and his wife. “I have to do a thing in Onyxville! I will be back in an hour, promise!”

Ivan was about to object, but the human girl had already left.

“Eh, we can survive without her for an hour.” Aura said. Then, a coy smile appeared on her face as she rested her head on her husband and began to draw circles on his chest. “We have the house for ourselves for an hour. Any ideas?”

“Yes, I have an order to finish before tomorrow and you are about to train a new griffin.” Ivan shrugged, looking as if he very much hated to be the wet blanket.

Aura sighed and frowned. “You are no fun.”

***

Dimi was very satisfied with her purchase in Onyxville.

It was a vase with flowers painted on it. It hadn’t been expensive, but not cheap either, so Dimi felt good about buying it for her god-father and his wife as an anniversary gift.

Dimi stopped admiring the vase as she heard something. It was the sound of creatures arguing. She followed the sound that brought her to the entrance of a blind alley. The sort most creatures stayed away from because nasty things happened in those. She took a peak and saw that in said alley were a dwarf, a satyr, a harpy and some sort of female brown-skinned creature wearing a big hat. Dimi saw that the creature was armed with two kitchen knives, NOT the weapons of a mugger, meaning she was just trying to defend herself with what she had at the moment had in her possession.

Also, Dimi recognized the satyr.

“I swear, I will cut you if you get any closer to me, Hector!” The woman said while aiming one knife at her three attackers while holding one close to her face. Her angry narrowed eyes could be seen behind the dark glasses she was wearing.

“See? This is what I’m talking about.” Hector waved his hand at the woman as if he was showing his friends an interesting animal. “Her kind is violent. We would do anyone a favor by teaching this monster some manners before she leaves Onyxville to infect some other town.”

“HEY! Leave her alone!”

Hector and his pals turned their heads to see the human girl at the entrance to the alley as she carefully placed a vase on the ground and then proceeded to crack her knuckles.

“I’m a blacksmith and a boxer, so I can kick your asses.” Dimi smiled. “Especially your ass, Hector. Or maybe you can’t remember what happened last Friday?”

Hector very much remembered last Friday where he had squared off against Dimi in the ring. Just looking at her made his ribs hurt again.

“You two, take care of the snake.” Hector tightened his fists as his hoof scraped the ground. “The human is mine!”

Hector thought he had an advantage in a street fight since this wasn’t a boxing ring where he had to follow rules and wasn’t allowed to use his horns. But the sheep boy had not considered that Ivan the Minotaur had taught Dimi how she should not fight. Like how she should not stick her thumbs in someone’s eyes to blind them. Or how she should not knee someone in the groin since that was more effective than trying to kick them in that area.

As Hector leaned forward in pain, Dimi placed a solid punch on his rips, mostly to hurt his pride. After watching him fall to the ground and whimper, she looked up to see if the girl with scaly skin was okay. She was doing just fine as she kicked the dwarf in the face and held her knife toward the harpy’s throat. Dimi noticed that the harpy’s wings were bleeding. This female creature knew to go for the wings first so the harpy would be forced to fight on the ground where she had a disadvantage. Dimi also noticed that she apparently had a short tail that she leaned against the brickwall behind her to get more weight into her thrusts.

The dwarf tackled the girl from behind and made her fall to the dirt. The harpy was about to dig her talons in the back of her, but Dimi grabbed the dwarf by his arm and used his weight against him by throwing him into his winged buddy.

“Are you okay?” Dimi helped the girl up. “Why are... ah...”

Dimi blinked. The brown girl had dropped her hat, revealing that the top of her head had snakes attached to it. Now that Dimi had a closer look at her she could see that she was around her age.

“Behind you.” The gorgon stabbed the dwarf in the shoulder as he had fetched a dagger. Dimi stopped staring at the snake-creature and turned her attention toward the harpy that ried to kick her. She was horribly unbalanced and Dimi knocked her over with a left hook.

Dimi and the gorgon watched Hector and his friends limp away to lick their wounds. Once they were gone, Dimi returned her stare at the scaled girl who raised an eyebrow at her.

“Something wrong?” The gorgon asked.

“No, I just never met a gorgon before. That’s what you are, right?”

The girl narrowed her eyes behind her shades. “Got a problem with that?”

“No, I just never met one before, that’s all.” Dimi offered a handshake. “My name is Dimi.”

The gorgon hesitated before taking the human’s hand. “I’m Ruby. And thanks.”

“Not a problem. I... Oh NO!” Dimi ran to see if her vase was still intact. It wasn’t. “Shit! They must have kicked it or something!”

“Crud.” Ruby watched Dimi as she looked at the broken vase as she wondered if she could somehow fix it. “Hey, how about I thank you by buying you a new one.”

“Oh, don’t do that, it was my fault for leaving it lying around-”

“Yeah, you left it lying around to back me up. Let me buy you a new vase! The ceramics shop is next to my home anyways. Well, my ex-home, I’m getting out of this lousy town and moving to Jadedale.”

“Hey, I live in Jadedale!” Dimi said excitedly.

Ruby grinned. “I’m opening a restaurant in Jadedale, stop by my place once I open it and I will give ya a free meal.”

“So it’s you who bought the closed-down bakery?”

“Yeah, I decided to keep a low profile before I actually moved to Jadedale. Was worried I would be met by a load of people who would run me out of town before I actually arrived.”

“No way, Jadedale is great! We accept each other, and cross-species marriage is not frowned upon. In Jadedale, we can’t even spell the word bigotry! Heck, my caretakers are a minotaur and a sphinx!”

Ruby laughed as she grabbed the bag she had to drop as she had gotten ambushed and stuck her kitchen knife in it. “Dimi, it sounds like Jadedale is my kind of town!”

***

Ruby and Dimi sat in the wagon that transported people from Onyxville to Jadedale. Dimi held her new vase while Ruby was wearing her hat again to hide her snakes despite only sharing the wagon with Dimi and the goblin coachman who minded his own business and had his eyes on the road.

“-And then he wrote that he was a fish out of water!”

“That is so lame!” Dimi snorted, but then realized something. “Wait, you are only part gorgon? And how do you live on land?”

“Eh, I’m a hybrid, but according to my birth certificate I’m a gorgon. And I guess my body is mostly gorgon-like. But I did inherit dad’s tail and enchanted lounges, meaning that I can live both on land and underwater.”

“Still, a gorgon and a grindylow... that’s pretty unusual, right?”

Ruby looked somewhat bitter. “Actually... not as unusual as you would think. There aren’t that many gorgons left, fewer and fewer are born after the massacre. Dad was lizard-ish like mom, meaning having a child was possible for them. There are more half-blood gorgons today than there are full-blood ones.”

Dimi blinked. “Wait, hold on, the... massacre?”

Ruby sighed. “Yeah, no wonder you haven’t heard of it since you are a human. My people were originally from an island not far from Nesredna. About one-hundred years ago, the queen of Nesredna decided we were too dangerous since the gorgons did not want to make an alliance with the humans, meaning we could side with a potential enemy, like the orcs I guess.”

Dimi felt as if she had just been punched in the guts by someone wearing a stone for a boxing glove.

Ruby’s eyes tightened as she went on. “Gorgons pride themselves as astounding hunters and illusionists, but we were not the greatest military nation. The gorgons were slaughtered once the human armies attacked. Those who survived had to flee and we spread across the world. Our number has only dwindled with time.”

“Um...” Dimi was afraid to ask. “What was the name of the island where gorgons were from?”

A dark shadow came over Ruby’s face. “Ever heard about Ceto Island?”

Dimi bit her lower-lip. “Oh shit, NO!”

“Yup. My ancestors’ home is now used as a holiday resort. Creatures are sunbathing on the graves.”

Dimi was very familiar with Ceto Island. She had spent the summers there as a child while still living with her father. “Ruby... I had no idea.”

“Oh, please! I have no beef with you. It was a long time ago, and it was the royal human family who planned the slaughter of gorgons. They are the ones I’m really pissed at.”

Dimi felt as if she received a severe beating while being forced up a ring-corner. “Um... are you still mad at the human royal family? You said it yourself, it was a long time ago, right?”

“Eh, maybe I’m being unfair, but I don’t care if it happened long before the latest human ruler. They never made it up for us, they didn’t even admit that what they did was genocide. Also, they made life harder for us by making laws to treat us unfairly, like the one about us having to wear shades all the damn time.”

“Wait, aren’t your eyes... you know... dangerous?”

“No, that’s just human propaganda. We don’t turn people into stone with simple eye-contact, we stun people for about a minute or so. And we have to want it, it’s not a handicap. But taking off my glasses, even to just nudge my eyes, is a criminal offense.” Ruby sighed. “It sounds like small potatoes, but it is just the top of the iceberg. And it is extra annoying since the human king Pater made promises he didn’t keep because he was a wuss.”

It was almost too much for Dimi. “I’m sorry, what?!”

“He kept making speeches about equality among creatures, but he never did a damn thing to help gorgons, half-elves or other creatures humans have screwed over for who knows how long. I mean, if he was a douche-bag who hated us less-than-fortunate creatures, then I could at some degree respect it. But he never changed the laws because he didn’t want the humans he ruled over to be pissed at him. Seriously, such a little-” Ruby paused as she saw that Dimi looked uncomfortable. “Hey, come on, dont look like that. I mean, it is not like you are related to that wimp of an ex-king.”

Dimi felt great relief as they arrived in Jadedale. “I have to go home, work and stuff. I will see you later in your new place.”

Ruby watched Dimi run for it with the vase under her arm. The gorgon felt stupid for hitting the human girl with such a truth bomb and made her feel bad about being a human since she had been nice to her. Ruby would probably feel even worse if she knew how much it hurt Dimi to hear about king Pater and why.