Someone once told me that when the night sky is filled with fire, dragons will return.
I always thought it was a legend told in secret over campfires among unbelieving mages. But now fire rains in the sky. The mountain beyond the forest spews fire and lava and ash.
I crouch on a hill at the tree line, my hands buried in the dirt. Lava spurts into the air before me and rushes down the mountain, aiming at the forest.
Power resides in the earth, energy from atoms and cells and the movement of plates below the surface. The energy ignores me at first, but soon I’m able to gather it. To control it.
Another explosion splatters the sky.
I push against the earth, commanding the energy to form ditches around the edge of the mountain. Two earth mages plunge their hands into the dirt beside me, and the energy obeys faster. Dirt crunches as land parts and sinks into depressions.
The first wave of lava spills into the depression, and we deepen it until a river of lava is diverted through a system of canals.
Exhausted I collapse as another earth mage, just arriving, replaces me. Ash covers the sky, but then it shifts oddly. I lean forward, squinting, and something falls from the sky. A tiny dragon smashes into the ground beside me, its emerald scales caked in lava and smoking. Its eyes are still shut, and bits of scalding shell cling to its snout.
Dragons have returned.
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