'Good morning!' I greeted Anthelion, looking up from the pan of hot water, where I was shaving with a razor he had loaned me. I had a set of BIC disposables and an electric backup in my webbing, but I was taking my time over what I shared. After all, what use was a plastic razor in a world where steel was the limit of technology?

'Did you sleep well?' he asked me. I had rolled out my sleeping bag on a straw pallet in his storeroom. I hadn't slept all, but I replied:

'I well sleep, rock-like!'

He laughed and corrected my grammar. We had spent two days, just trying to talk about simple things: walk, run, talk, jump, table, book. He was a patient teacher. We talked a lot about each other. I learned that he was married, but his wife was... a long way away? Possibly dead, but it wasn't totally clear to me, because euphemism wasn't something my vocabulary extended to, yet. He had two brothers. He was a wizard. That was the best word to translate his role that I could think of.

I told him I was a soldier and that I used to have a wife but no more. He couldn't really understand the idea of being divorced. I told him about my son. This led to talking about time. I told him about a world with one sun.

As far as I could tell, the second "sun" was called Abeir. It always accompanied the main sun, Alkar. The details were beyond either Anthelion's knowledge or my ability to understand so quickly.

But today was a big day, because he was going to try to explain why I was here, in Planio; or possibly on Planio. Whether it was the name of this world or this country, I couldn't tell.

I toweled off my chin and popped a dental tablet in my mouth to brush my teeth. This, by the way, wasn't a radical concept to Anthelion. His tower was well appointed with basic plumbing, a coal-fired boiler and even a rudimentary shower. The toilet was a drop arrangement, with a scoop of dry earth to toss down the shaft. But it was also pretty clear that his servant - a boy who was possibly called Thenum, if that wasn't the word for "slave" - didn't enjoy the same sort of hygienic access.

And nor did the people outside the tower. Although I stayed in with Anthelion for the moment, I could see that their situation looked pretty desperate and was keen to find out more.

'Here in Planio, we have mountains here, here and here,' said Anthelion, once we sat together over a breakfast of hard bread, honey and goat stew. He punctuated his explanation with scribbles of charcoal on a sheet of tattered paper. He sketched out a rough square, with the mountains on three sides. 'Here is...'

He said a word I didn't recognize, but drew squiggly lines.

'Big water?'

'Yes! Sea is big water,' he agreed. 'And from sea comes... bad people. But not people. You are people. I am people. They -' he gestured towards the window, shuttered against a heavy rainfall, '- are people.

'But these...' he pointed back at the sea. 'Not people. Bad.'

By small increments and lots of new vocabulary I gradually pieced together that their country had been invaded some years ago. They had fought mightily and won many battles, but their enemy had used magic to summon monsters. At first, I thought he meant animals, but he did drawings with a person for scale and I was pretty stunned: bears larger than an elephant; wolves with two heads as big as an SUV; and stranger things besides, with sinuous tails and wings.

I mean, if someone back home had been telling me this story, obviously I would've been sceptical. But I was in another world, where magic certainly have the impression of being a thing, so I was just going to have to take this stuff on trust.

'We fought against the monsters, too,' Anthelion went on. 'Many, many people died. But we learned how to kill them. We had...'

Again, we paused for a discussion about the meaning of a word, which was something like what I would have called an elite soldier.

'These Paladins learned how to fight the monsters, while the other people fought the armies of the Sea People.'

Anthelion told me how magic was both new and old to his people. There were stories about it, but the ways of magic had been lost with time. But now a few people like him began to re-learn its power. I learned that the -ion in his name was a sort of honorific. He had been "Anthel" until he had learned magic. So really his name was more like Master Anthel. But apparently it would be very rude to just call him "Anthel", now.

'And we won. We drove the Sea People away. Their monsters fled into the deep forests and the mountains. We paid for victory in many lives. But the folikh'hiir weren't finished with us, yet.'

I asked about the words he'd used - "folikh'hiir" - and he did his best to explain until I grasped that he was talking about deities. From his tone, though, I gathered that they were either thought of as non-existent or, if they existed, actively malicious. From the experience he was describing, which must have been years of destructive warfare without relent, I could understand why they might veer towards atheism.

'We don't know what happened. Maybe it was the monsters in the mountains. Perhaps it was the death and destruction. Or perhaps the Sea People cast one last grand summoning as a farewell. But just as we drew breath to think we could rebuild our land, she awoke.

'Gazenthlion fell on the ruins of our cities and crushed rubble into dust. She tore whole armies apart. She consumed entire villages.

'The Paladins burned to ash. Our knights, wizards and lords... even our king died in her onslaught.'

Once I had managed to piece together an accurate understanding of everything her was trying to tell me, I asked him:

'But what kind of thing is Gazenthlion?'

'She is druach.'

He picked up his charcoal again and scribbled down an outline of a long-necked lizard, tail whipping and flame pouring from its mouth, with vast, bat-like wings curving from her shoulders.

'Druach,' he said again, and I understood.

A real-life, fucking dragon.