Caltyr didn’t have to wonder how long it would take for the humans to find his message.

He found out why the city had been so deserted as soon as he returned; not to the sound of lectures or the scratching of a pencil across a page, but to the wails and screams of his classmates and mentors.

While they’d been out leaving their message, the humans had been descending upon their school with not just a threat, but a real attack.

Caltyr and T’allyandria took to the skies as soon as they saw more than just dragons on the horizon.

There were vertical dots there too– or, they looked like dots, since they were so tiny compared to the giantesque dragon bodies.

“No!” The water dragon shouted instinctively.

Caltyr tore through the sky as quickly as his leathery wings could take him, bringing him closer to his former place of learning.

As he zoomed closer, the school and its grounds came into view. A fire was illuminating the leftmost half of the building, whose walls were crumbling in places from some kind of bomb, or perhaps a fire spell on overdrive.

Dragons were filtering, coughing, out of the building, where the humans were waiting, weapons in-hand.

Most of them were wielding long, spear-like weapons with iridescent metal that glinted with purple and blue in the sun.

But some were armed with nothing at all. Those were the humans with darkened, vein-like markings beneath their skin, speaking to their consumption of dragon flesh.

It was obvious why they were here.

Caltyr had no idea how long the battle had been raging on for, but it was long enough that some of the outer walls were blackening.

He searched the crowds for familiar faces. Sara’s neon body was easy to spot, and so were Miss Tavren’s ivory scales. Miss Tavren had placed herself between her students and the attackers, and even from afar he could spot a red tear marring her skin.

He didn’t bother searching for anybody else.

Caltyr, to avoid being seen, floated further downward so he was hugging the grass. He felt his stomach clipping against the blades, his limbs pulled upward and inward as he approached.

He didn’t know what he was going to do when he got to the humans. His body was surging toward battle like a missile and he had no idea if he would be a burden when he got there, but what was he supposed to do– stand by and watch while his people got slaughtered and served for dinner?

The water dragon clasped his hands together and formed a weighty ball of ice between his palms, building it layer-by-layer. He swooshed it off to the side and made another, and then another, until he had a ring of frozen ammunition.

He had the element of surprise. The human warriors were focused on Miss Tavren, who was sending beams of searing light flying at her opponents, piercing and cauterizing their flesh at once. But there was only one of her.

Caltyr flapped fiercely forward and loosed his icy cannonballs, aiming for the heads of the humans.

One connected instantly, with enough force that the man who took the blow folded and collapsed wetly into the grass.

But then they were on to him. Shields went up; people whirled around and countered his ice with elements of their own, stopping his efforts cold. Less than half of his spheres hit their mark.

“Caltyr!” Bellowed Miss Tavren, but not in a happy way.

“Caltyr,” grumbled Sara, also not so happily.

Now that he was closer, he could see that Malika was also present. She was pressed onto Miss Tavren like one of her own scales, cowering.

And for good reason.

One of the human’s spears whistled as it passed his face found purchase in his mentor’s breastbone, cutting through her chitonous exterior like butter.

She didn’t make a noise, but Caltyr detected a change in her face as she winced at the burst of pain. She pulled her students into herself, hiding them behind and under her body.

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“We need to start fighting back,” Sara said through her teeth in an urgent whisper, aimed the cluster of adolescent dragons curled around the teacher’s feet.

“But all I can do is make a light ball,” Malika replied weakly, her words quaking as they left her.

“Then make a light ball in front of a human’s face to blind them,” Caltyr commanded-not-suggested, not quite believing that he was agreeing with Sara.

A cloud of shadow crept through the legs of the humans, snaking its way around and through where they were standing. When enough of them were entrenched in it, T’allyandria rose her dark hand and they all started to scream in unison, clapping at their feet and legs wildly in an attempt to dissipate her spell.

T’allyandria landed in front of Miss Tavren. The elder dragon dwarfed her in size but somehow she appeared more threatening, with her body’s sharp angles and imposing hue. “Back up,” she hissed with the same kind of weight behind her words as when she’d told him to bend his bottlecap.

Several of the humans began to stumble backwards.

“Leave.” She roared, and a great deal of those touched by her breath began to listen, swirling around where they stood and walking aimlessly away from them.

“Finally, someone who can do something,” Sara said, relieved, suddenly not so opposed to non-elemental magic.

But as much as T’allyandria could do something, the humans could do things back.

All around them, several smaller battles raged on, with teachers and students from other classes. Two of the mages were off picking on the older dragons with more meat on them, but one was standing just out of T’allyandria’s reach. They watched their comrades began to flee after whatever she did, and immediately, their eyes focused on hers with laser precision.

They knew not what she had done, but they knew it had been her.

The mage wasn’t wearing what Caltyr pictured when he thought of a mage. They were donning leather and a breastplate that matched what the others were using in their weapons.

They took their hands and put them out in front of themselves, and without fanfare, a pillar of flame exploded from their palms. Their veins glowed with the same fiery color the school was alight with but a hundred times worse.

The orange hued attack burst forth. Caltyr produced all the water he could in the seconds he had to prepare, but the fire swept through it and reduced it to mere vapors.

The flame licked across T’allyandria’s side, leaving her scales blistered and crackling like the pig skin dish with the same name.

She shrieked in equal parts pain and anger as she clutched her flank, baring her teeth at the mage. With her leg still simmering, she closed in on the mage with a slight limp in her determined step.

“Don’t you ever cast again,” she commanded throatily.

The mage smirked, their veins glowing with a potent blue. “I must be too strong for your weak little spell,” they jeered before shooting a jet of water straight at T’allyandria’s draconic maw, no doubt to shut her up.

Water, Caltyr thought suddenly, an idea striking him like lightning. With so many people closing in on them, all flightless and attached to the earth, it was a wonder he hadn’t thought of this sooner.

The blue dragon got to work on the magic his scales were colored after. He easily summoned forth buckets of water, directing the spray onto the shoes of as many human soldiers as he could reach. An impressive puddle formed beneath them within seconds, oversaturating the loamy soil.

“Oh no,” one of the humans exclaimed dramatically, pulling their soggy boot out of the muck, “my feet are getting wet. I don’t know if I can go on.”

Caltyr grinned and turned the streams upward. He soaked their fronts, their outfits, their faces– then, he turned toward Sara.

“Your turn,” he shouted to her over his scaled shoulder, gesturing to the scattered pools. This had been how he’d lost his battle. Hopefully it would at least turn the tides of this one.

Sara recognized his request immediately. With a gremlin-like, spurting chuckle, the yellow dragon flapped once, twice, and rose up into the air.

Her eyes glinted with determination as she summoned a crackling string of lightning from her core and launched it down into the water below.

It hit the pool and exploded into a spider web-like mess of mini lightning bolts that danced along the surface of the water, hungry for flesh. And flesh they found, as hundreds of people screamed in unison at the sudden shock of electricity coursing through their feet and shins they couldn’t escape.

A litany of human screams burst forth and the soldiers began to scatter, trying desperately to escape the muck before more lightning was pumped into it. Several of them slipped and fell face-first into the gooey earth, dooming them to quake as more voltage coursed through their bodies.

“Savage,” T’allyandria said, her voice steeped in wonder as she watched the bodies bounce and smoke in the human soup.

Miss Tavren, seeing the sudden opening, ushered for the students hiding beneath her protective belly to run. “Go now. Run further than their weapons can go and then take to the skies,” she advised them hurriedly in her sage-like voice, waving her hand toward the mountains in the distance.

The dragons unfurled from each other and, slowly at first, scurried away in a herd. An impressive number of them had been cowering under her, like a fearful clown car.

To distract from their frenzied escape, the light dragon did what she did best and spewed light from various parts of her face, sending beam after beam into the already collapsed, writhing bodies.