His words made Hermione's eyes widen in shock. Snape's gaze flickered sharply.
"I feel like you're not telling the whole truth," Snape muttered darkly.
His instincts screamed at him, and he cast a long, hard look at Dumbledore. The old wizard simply met his stare with tranquil honesty, until at last, it was the double agent who looked away first.
"No matter what you're hiding," Snape said, his voice tight, "I just need to know one thing… That damn brat Ian… did he go through that door?"
He shot a worried glance at the great bronze door.
To be fair, he was wronging Ian.
Ian hadn't gone in willingly.
Meanwhile…
As Dumbledore and Snape were still speaking outside the door…
Ian had already been sucked inside for quite some time.
Time flowed differently here. He had no idea how long he'd been lying on the ground.
"Ugh… did the door just give me a psychic smack?"
Ian's fingers twitched. Salty rainwater trickled down his neck, soaking his collar.
He pushed himself up with difficulty, his fingertips sinking into wet moss that felt, disgustingly, like old, clotted phlegm. That repulsive thought alone jolted him awake.
He scrambled instantly to his feet and cast a Scouring Charm on his hands several times over. Only once he was clean did he lift his head, and the sight that met him struck him speechless.
His vision was crystal clear, because the sunlight was dazzling.
It slammed into his eyes, shrinking his pupils as they reflected an unbelievable scene: Towering ferns, thirty meters high, rose like emerald parasols. Vines thicker than his waist hung between the enormous trunks.
A passing dragonfly beat its wings, and the gust alone was enough to ruffle his hair, each pair of translucent wings was four meters across! It felt like the entire world had been magnified several times over.
"Whoo…"
Ian took a deep breath, and felt light-headed, almost dizzy from the sheer oxygen. Then, from far off, came the thunderous sound of footsteps. A herd of sauropods, massive as trains, strode across the land, their long necks sweeping down to strip tender leaves from the canopy.
"Oh… my… heavens!"
Ian gawked, completely dumbstruck. Those were dinosaurs! Was this seriously the Jurassic era? He suddenly regretted never properly reading the dinosaur encyclopedia Hermione had given him.
But, whether this was the Jurassic or not, the dinosaurs were definitely real.
Ian hadn't even finished processing the sight when the sky suddenly darkened. A shadow engulfed the earth. In that instant, every dinosaur below screamed in terror.
And then…
A colossal, Ancient Dragon plunged down from the clouds. Its dark golden scales gleamed coldly in the sudden rain, and its vast wings blotted out half the sky.
It snapped up a fleeing dinosaur with frightening precision, its barbed tongue coiling around the prey before it jerked its head sharply. The sound of the T-rex's spine breaking made Ian's teeth ache.
"Uh… another Ancient Dragon."
Ian's throat went dry, he was starting to develop a genuine dragon phobia.
Luckily, the dragon's slit pupils suddenly shifted toward the fern thicket where he was hiding. The sulfurous breath that puffed from its nostrils instantly evaporated the rainwater within a hundred meters, yet it showed no interest in someone as tiny as him.
That oversight spared it an unexpected death. These days, Ian had gotten quite good at killing Ancient Dragons.
The dragon kept feeding noisily, tearing at the massive carcass. As its head swept low across the ground, Ian could see scraps of dinosaur meat stuck between its teeth. He wondered idly whether giant-dragon meat or dino-dragon meat tasted better.
Curiosity sparked, and with it, the unquenchable hunger of a foodie.
"I've already entered through the gate… once these creatures die, they shouldn't respawn, right?" Ian murmured thoughtfully, glancing at the dinosaur carcasses the Ancient Dragon had slain.
Unlike the reconstructed images he'd seen, these dinosaurs didn't have smooth skin, many were covered in feathers, like gigantic, super oversized chickens.
He suddenly craved roast drumsticks. Ian was indeed starving; he'd been trapped in the Forbidden Forest for quite some time.
Just as he was about to snatch some food from right under the dragon's jaws, and if that ancient dragon dared roar at him, he'd eat it too, the dragon suddenly stopped eating.
It looked around uneasily.
The sky began to change. Ian felt an overwhelming surge of magic.
"Wizards? Magical creatures?" He looked up.
A crimson glow bled across the clouds like spilled blood. Thousands of shooting stars tore through the atmosphere, no, not natural meteors. Ian could see ancient runes carved upon their surfaces, symbols he couldn't read.
"Wizards!" That much he could tell for sure.
BOOM…!!
The first rune-engraved meteor struck the dragon's back. Its dark-gold scales vaporized instantly, exposing charred bone beneath. The Ancient Dragon's deafening roar whipped up a monstrous hurricane with its wings, but…
It couldn't take off. Nor could it stop the next barrage.
Ian hid behind a decaying log, watching this magical bombardment that shattered all reason. Even after impact, the rune meteors still caused secondary explosions, squirming and reassembling like living things. They merged into burning chains that bound the dragon's limbs.
Then…
The red light in the sky condensed into a colossal hand. In its palm gleamed an ancient rune formed entirely of lightning, a rune Ian had only ever seen on the bronze gate.
An ancient spell… one he could never fully decipher.
BANG!
The giant hand seized the dragon's tail. It swung the mountain-sized creature into the ground. The shockwave uprooted every tree within a kilometer. Ian felt himself nearly thrown into the air by the force.
"Protego!" He hastily cast the spell.
Only then did he stabilize himself, and block the flying debris.
In that split second of distraction, seven rune chains pierced the dragon's spine, nailing it into a rift filled with surging lakewater.
The dying dragon's eyes suddenly turned toward a direction, within its pupils reflected a dozen floating figures in black robes. Ian opened his mouth to cry out…
But in the next moment, the dragon and those wizards vanished.
Not respawned. Not reset.
It was as if the black-robed dragon hunters had taken their spoils and departed, using a form of magic even more concealed than Apparition. In the blink of an eye, Ian could no longer sense them at all.
"What the hell is this place…?"
Ian remembered human history, even wizards couldn't have existed before mankind.
Could it be that those who hunted dragons… were the so-called gods?
"I remember hearing it before… that as Medivh, I would travel to the Age of Gods!" Ian's eyes widened as the realization struck.
So those black-robed figures were really gods? The young wizard was utterly confused.
As the sky gradually calmed, the rain began to fall again. Perhaps this was an era that not even the Hogwarts Library or any recorded history had ever mentioned.
An ancient age when gods and Ancient Dragons danced together.
And Ian…
It seemed he had uncovered the one secret the gods never wished mortals to know.
That in the beginning…
They too were wizards.
(End of Chapter)
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