The first time Caltyr used his powers in front of the other dragons, they screamed.

It wasn’t easy to make an ancient being with chitinous skin yowl for its mommy, but when seeing a creature’s flesh split from its bones like string cheese, it was difficult not to react.

Caltyr had finally become old enough to be trained in the elemental magic of his people. He was a blue dragon, which meant he was destined to cast using water and, later, ice. It was implied that he would be a calm, collected dragon; something of a negotiator, a peacemaker, a mentor.

In his world, dragons stayed in the lane they were born into. Blue dragons apparated water. Red dragons breathed fire, though they could conjure it in the same way blue dragons could create water within a certain radius. Mouth breathing it out just seemed to be the classic way, and so to them, it was right.

The dragons of his world were unusually tight-knit. For the most part, his kin still preferred to live a solitary life, amassing power and whatever they considered to be wealth in their own sections of the world. They were happy to turtle their life away and never see the faces of their brethren, but in recent years, training the young for battle early had become a necessity.

Because the humans were after their flesh.

It was said that dragons were the foundation of all magic in their world, its living keepers. When a dragon learned to cast the element that matched its scales, they were taught to communicate with their inner selves, the thrumming, swirling tornado within. They didn’t draw their energy from an external force, but rather from their own bodies whose pores seeped with power. They were like trees, imbuing the world ambiently with magical energy instead of oxygen. But to many, they were one and the same. When the dragons left the world, so too would the powers that had become the crux of everyday life.

Humans were not born able to harness magic. Each and every human who could utilize mana, with mana tracks running parallel to their veins, would have to have stolen a body part from a dragon at one point: be it their flesh, eyeballs, or scales.

Caltyr had heard from his elders that the humans thought their innermost organs were the strongest, and that anyone who consumed the heart of one of his kin would be an unrivaled foe for years to come.

Sometimes, when the elders thought he was asleep, he could hear them whispering that they thought the humans could even utilize their energy better than they could. 

It was a terrifying time to be a tasty, tasty dragon, especially when the humans were known for being hungry for power beyond their station.

So when Caltyr, bursting with excitement, showed all the people in his class that he could pop a mouse’s skin clean off its bones, everyone balked. His ‘fleshomagic’, as he had been calling his power, did not impress the other dragons whose flesh was prized and valuable. They skittered backward in trepidation, their claws scuttling against the stone below.

“CALTYR! What a, um, lovely demonstration to bring for show-and-tell,” squeaked the white dragon who was acting as their mentor, ushering him quickly off the rocky hill that they were using as a stage. “But we were asking for you to demonstrate your water powers, not… that.”

Caltyr frowned. Why would he get up in front of all the people in his class and show them exactly what they were also learning? It seemed like a boring waste of everyone’s time. As he was forcibly removed from the stage, he conjured a lazy stream of water that mixed with the ribbons of flesh that had formerly been attached to the mouse.

“Tada,” he exclaimed lamely.

“Yes, there you go,” the ivory-colored teacher said as she continued to usher him away from the other apprentices, “that’s more like it. Caltyr, why don’t you go tell Kraven about what you just showed us?”

She was in damage control mode, trying to get him away from the others so she could calm them down and continue with their trite little show. He had only wanted to liven things up a little, and it had taken him a very long time of studying independently to learn that trick. Hours and hours of practicing had gone into flaying the meat off in sections rather than one fully attached lump.

When he pictured the day he would finally share his ability with his class, the others had cheered and hollered about his unusual talent, fawning over him in a mixture of envy and elation. As usual, the reality didn’t quite match up.

He sighed as he turned away from the class, ten to twelve other young dragons just learning to shape their magic into a stream, a beam, a line, a cone, a ball, and the most difficult of all; a heart. He was significantly ahead of the curve, already having mastered the elusive Watery Heart, which must have made his demonstration all the more terrifying.

Caltyr nodded and began on his four-legged walk of shame over to Kraven, the acting principal of their ramshackle magic school. 

Most days, he didn’t do much more than nap, curled around a mountainous hill at the top of the school grounds. The school grounds were a lush, green field near the outskirts of their walled city, the walls keeping them in and the ravenous humans out. There was a building they used for their less volatile lessons, but when they were to practice using their elements, they took to the wide open spaces of their walled enclosure.

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Kraven was one of the ancients, perhaps the most ancient of them all. That meant he was all but worshiped, the closest thing to a god any of them had ever laid eyes upon. His scales were a brassy color, indicating fire magic. Caltyr wondered if he had used so much fire in his life that he’d tarnished the usual scarlet that fire dragons boasted.

The bronze-colored dragon cracked open one of his piercing, mossy green eyes as Caltyr approached. Caltyr tried to focus on the shape of the scar over his eye and on counting how many face scales he had to avoid thinking about how much trouble he might be in.

“Did you bite one of the other students again?” asked the dragon capping the small mountain, not even bothering to open his second eye.

“No,” Caltyr barked defensively, “but if Malize tries to take another one of my marbles even after I ask him to stop, I’m going to do it again.”

“That’s fair,” Kraven rumbled, “Malize can be a smarmy piece of shit. Now, why did Miss Tavren send you to talk to me?”

Caltyr had counted forty-two scales all bunched between the dragon’s two eyeballs. He gulped and craned his neck to look behind himself, at where the others were just getting back into their demonstration. The dead mouse had been moved aside, behind a rock where the others wouldn’t be able to keep looking at it.

Caltyr raised his set of draconic claws and called the former mouse over, its meaty bits flying over in a clumpy mass, leaving the rib cage behind. He didn’t like how gruesome everything looked now that it was all tangled together, so he wove the pieces into a far more presentable braid and slapped them wetly down in front of the principal. As if that would make a difference.

“I made this.”

This warranted the opening of the other eye. Kraven widened both of his giant mossy green eyes as he took in what was now in front of him; the sopping, detached flesh of a mouse creature.

“Am I going to have to get you some kind of therapist? Where did this even come from?” The old dragon sounded bewildered, bringing a clawed hand up to his chin. If he had a beard, Caltyr was certain he would be stroking it uncomfortably.

“I took it off a mouse for show-and-tell—”

A deep, heavy sigh poured out from between the principal dragon’s lips, searing the mouse’s outer layer of fur with its ambient heat. “I’m definitely going to need to find someone to be your therapist, aren’t I? Who would even be qualified? Maybe Goldie would have some time to teach you to hunger for gold or power instead of whatever weird shit you’re busying yourself with right now.”

“I didn’t just take it off the mouse for fun or something,” Caltyr stammered out, desperate to not be rejected by their overseer, “I did it because it’s my power!”

“What?” The slits in the other dragon’s eyes shrunk, and he put both front feet on the ground, rising from his resting position. This was no longer a time for lazing about in the sun.

With quivering claws, Caltyr pulled the braid upward into the air and began to fuse the sections together. He forced them back into one unified piece and tugged down on their middle, tapering off the bottom of the smooth piece of meat to form a heart shape that mimicked the prized Watery Heart everyone had clapped at when they’d witnessed him form it for the first time.

But Kraven wasn’t clapping. 

He wasn’t abjectly horrified like the others, but there was nothing in his visage that betrayed that he was impressed, either. He had been through many raging battles and came out on the other side, and Caltyr could have sworn he saw an inkling of terror hiding beneath the man’s veil of calm.

“It’s my power,”Caltyr reiterated tensely, as he finished off the shape by draping its curtain of fur over it. In the end, the heart was rather like an uncomfortably dense, cold plushie, totally unsuitable for cuddling.

“And what did Miss Tavren say about this ‘power’?”

“Nothing, she just sent me over here to you.”

Kraven furrowed his chitinous brow. Caltyr stood there in silence as the ancient being worked out what to say to him.

“Caltyr, has Miss Tavren ever told you why a dragon only casts with his own element?” He pushed the two pointed tips of his nails between his own eyebrows, massaging between them.

“Because a dragon is an extension of their element, and to cast anything else would be a betrayal to one’s inner self or something. But my inner self is fine.”

Kraven’s eyes crept over the youngling’s azure blue scales. He had been noticing them turning a crimson color near the tips, and today the second color was especially prominent. He reached out with his massive hand and plucked one, holding it out in front of the younger dragon’s face.

“Look. You practicing this magic is tainting you; you can see it even down to your scales. You were born to be a blue dragon who wields water, and you do so with such skill and finesse. Even I can say that, and I’m not easy to impress. Why would you want to do—” The wartorn elder looked scornfully down at the crudely shaped lump. “—this, instead of fulfilling your magical destiny?”

It was true. As Caltyr looked closely at the small section of his armor-like skin, he could see that the tip was beginning to bear a faint blood-like color. 

“Why does Sara get to use both electricity and water magic, then, if she’s a blue dragon?”

“Electricity is one of the elements we can manifest as, Caltyr, not this heretic nonsense. Do you realize how unhinged this makes you look, and how similar you peeling people’s flesh off is to what the humans are doing to us? It’s-it’s—in a word, it’s godawful.”

The student’s eyes began to sting as he tried not to remember how he had thought this day would go. Months toiling away in private, preparing this never before seen ability to show to his people. Why were they so bent out of shape over something that could help them win a war they were so obviously preparing for?

“But I wouldn’t use it like that. I would use it for good, and I would use it against the humans—”

“That’s enough,” hissed the elder, a puff of fire joining the smoke that began to pour from his nostrils. “I’ve heard enough out of you. You’re going to use your skin peeling powers to be a nice guy? That’s rich.”

“I thought-I thought—” Caltyr felt the top of his throat closing up like a drawstring being cinched. “I thought you would be proud of me.”