Undiscovered Origins

Undiscovered Origins - Chapter 26

Chapter 26:

            They didn’t push the horse and unicorn faster than they could go. In fact they kept them both a medium gallop so they could make progress but never pushed past that. Drake still eyed the unicorn’s horn from time to time with disbelief in his eyes. It seemed as if even he didn’t know unicorns existed. They had been on the road for days with a path that literally closed behind them when the forest realized Jade had passed.

            They stopped at a few streams and saw a few waterfalls on the journey. Some were magnificent sights that Jade only thought to come from dreams. Hummingbirds buzzed around them suckling at the flowers with their long beaks. Animals were everywhere and that sight was the most pleasing to Jade. There was never a sign of danger, no gargoyles or ghouls anywhere and she was thankful.

            Finally after days of travel Drake slowed to a trot with his horse as they neared the clearing of a meadow. Rapidly he came to a stop nearly causing Jade and her unicorn to collide with him. The unicorn walked to the other side of Drake’s mare and stared into the clearing. Jade gasped at what she saw.

            In front of them was the largest stone temple she had ever seen. It rose up to a triangle with a small square building on the top. It was gray in color from large stone slabs that attached together. Each side seemed to have a wide stone staircase that traveled all the way up to the top. There were people surrounding the temple and there appeared to be those at the top as well.

            Drake began to slowly trot forward and reluctantly Jade followed him into the meadow. There were several other structures surrounding the temple that all seemed to have people surrounding them. She was cautious staring at everybody as Drake led her down into the stone city. They caught many glances on their way down, a lot of them towards her or more specifically, her unicorn. There were looks of amazement at the magnificent creature. Even though the looks weren’t directed at her she still blushed as she never seen so many people looking in her direction before when she wasn’t performing with her hula hoop.

There were exotic creatures all around the people as well that seemed to be worshipped by them. There were a few with large bodies like that of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle. They were magnificent to look at and Jade almost caught herself slipping off her unicorn. There was another large bird that looked similar to the first but instead of having the body of a lion, the second half of its body looked like a horse’s. Half of its body had feathers until it reached the halfway mark and it turned into the horse’s frame of hair. Its back two legs were hooves while its front two were talons. Jade thought she never saw anything so beautiful.

“What are those?” Jade asked.

Drake seemed to smile at her and then the large creatures as if appreciating their beauty, “Griffins, half lion and half eagle. Hippogryphs, half griffin and half horse.”

Jade was astonished by their beauty. The hippogryphs were all brown in color from their feathers to their hair and seemed to have a shiny coat of both. The griffins however seemed to take the color appearance of the lion with tan fur and under feathers although some of the exterior feathers were a darker brown. She stared at them for several minutes before seeing what else there was.

            Drake didn’t seem to pay attention to any of the people in the fields but continued to trot his horse forward towards the temple. Jade’s eyes wandered to the people staring at her and most seemed human though a lot had strange color eyes or hair or something else that seemed slightly different. Off in the distance she swore she saw more half faeries but when she turned her head back to look they seemed gone.