Journey Through the Clouds

A submission for the OC contest over at Club-Of-OCs club-of-ocs.deviantart.com/
This is my own original character.

The contest link is here: club-of-ocs.deviantart.com/jou…

This is a traditional piece using the following prompts:

Background: ghostly palace in the sky (visible in the mirror)
Subtheme: magical/enchanted/fairylike
Creature: a horse-like fairytale creature
Item: a vintange hand mirror

My drawing is a bit of a mix of different fairy tales and mythologies. In Norse mythology, the realm of the gods is connected to the mortal world by the rainbow Bifrost. This is the idea behind the rainbow bridge in the clouds. In Grimm's fairy tales, innumerable heroes must traverse perilous paths to enchanted castles in order to win the hand of a princess. Others, meanwhile, must endure torturous nights in haunted palaces infested with ghosts or demons. And mirrors have always seemed a bit magical to me.

Let us imagine that this hero has acquired an enchanted mirror that opens the path to a magical world. The hero, astride a noble bicorn, crosses the rainbow bridge to a castle in the clouds, inhabited by hostile ghostly beings. If the hero can survive 3 days and nights within the confines of the castle, they shall be rewarded with the key to the most fabulous object in the world...