Pat Pending

Nobody could remember when the last dragon was seen; there was no final battle, no noble knight drove a spear through the last great wyrm. They simply decided to quit hoarding gold. For centuries, humans misunderstood dragon hoards. We assumed dragons loved gold because they were greedy. In truth, dragons collected whatever civilization considered its greatest store of value. During the Bronze Age, it was bronze weapons. During the Roman Empire, it was coin. During the Renaissance,...

What about unicorns, you ask? Surely, they exist today, or at least existed at some point in history: Encyclopedia Brittanica, The Travels of Marco Polo, The King James Bible and other works proudly proclaimed unicorns existed. For thousands of years, unicorns were sustained by a peculiar kind of magic – not simply belief alone, but certainty. A traveler glimpsed one at dawn and knew, beyond question, what they had seen. Monks illuminated them in manuscripts. Kings hunted them. Natural...

Nobody really knows what happened to the vampires when magic died. Historians assume they were hunted into extinction, leaving ancient ruins empty where evil once held sway. The truth is much less horrifying, and when one knows where to look, it becomes obvious. As belief faded, the immense magic required to sustain these immortal aristocrats collapsed under its own weight. Generation after generation they became smaller, simpler, and more instinct than intellect, until all that remained of...