The next morning, Caltyr arrived to light class bright and early, before all the other students. He even arrived before Miss Tavren herself, which led to a prolonged and uncomfortable silence when she did arrive. She set up her books, and he could hear the rustling of papers and writing implements above his own breathing.

Half an hour later, the class had begun. Sara and Malika were seated in front of him. Malika, who had cast a light cube, and Sara, who had cast a light sphere.

He hadn’t managed to cast any light at all.

“Your mana tornado, your soul, your mana crystal, these are all things that dragons call their inner well, where they draw their magic power from. Each and every one of you has one,” Miss Tavren begun from the front of the class with her feminine, clear voice that rung through the room like a crystal bell.

“We teach you to stay with one element to nurture the mana crystal being fostered inside you. This part is not a metaphor. As you age, your mana will begin to crystallize like a gem beneath stone, and you will form a mana crystal inside of you. Your childhood is spent informing this crystal, which is why we think it is so important that you learn to cast effectively during this time.”

Sara shot her hand into the air eagerly, wiggling it about.

“Yes, Sara?”

“What happens when you cast multiple elements? Do you make two crystals?”

“That’s a great question,” the ivory dragon exclaimed, clasping her hands together in delight, “and the answer is no. A dragon will only ever form one crystal, even if they cast multiple elements. They just may create something muddled and unusable. That’s why we encourage all of you to cast using only one element, because creating a mana crystal that contains more than a single element is so difficult.”

Caltyr wondered just how ‘muddled and unstable’ his would be, considering he was trying to learn three distinct types of magic. But from her wording, it sounded like it was merely difficult to successfully create a gem that boasted multiple elements, not impossible.

Kraven always said that nothing worth doing was easy.

He tried to pay attention to the rest of Miss Tavren’s lecture, but despite his fondness for the topic and the person attempting to impart the knowledge upon him, he couldn’t stop thinking about the trip he would be taking into the human city later in the day.

The strawberry boba drink was almost as delicious as the bottle cap topping the drink. The taste of the beverage inside the bottle most definitely informed his rankings when it came to the caps in his hoard, and so the prospect of getting another one was exciting to him—not that he would say so to T’allyandria. She would just think she had done him a favor by making him destroy one of his favorite things.

“Alright, students,” the ivory dragon said while closing up a hefty book, “it’s time for us to try to cast again. Malika and Sara, why don’t you help the other students, since you’ve gotten so good already?” She beamed down at the two of them.

“Yeah, okay,” Sara responded enthusiastically. But when she looked out into the crowd and saw him, her enthusiasm faltered.

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“Sara, you go and help Ren and Wysteria. Malika, why don’t you see if you can talk Caltyr through conjuring light?”

Sara breathed a sigh of relief and bounced off to go advise Ren and Wysteria.

Caltyr watched as Malika approached him, searching for any sign of disappointment on her face. But to his surprise, there was nothing for him to find.

Malika was a bright ivory dragon, much like Miss Tavren. She spoke softly and melodically, if she ever spoke at all. Her voice was the polar opposite of Sara’s raspy, grating chirp, and she wore a lilac cloth bag around her torso that held her textbooks. It had a few pins on it, one of which was the symbol for light.

“Hey,” Caltyr greeted her.

“Hi. It looks like we’ve been paired up.” She slicked the long, hair-like scales hanging around her face backward. “I’ll try to be as helpful as I can, but don’t expect too much from me. I’m only in the beginner class myself.”

“Anything would be better than the nothing I’ve managed to cast,” he responded with a shrug. “How about you start by letting me watch you?”

“‘Kay,” she agreed, cupping two hands in front of herself in preparation.

The azure dragon watched intently as she began to form a ball of light. It began with three delicate, glowing threads that spun into a sphere with such haste it was near impossible for his eyes to follow. Sara’s creation had been markedly different, created with chaotic strings that zigged and zagged until they, with much effort, stitched together to create an orb.

Malika’s sphere stabilized and shone brightly, illuminating her palms and the underside of her face. The beams gave her what looked kind of like stubble.

So, Caltyr wondered, could each dragon form their light magic differently? To Sara, it manifested as something riotous and untamed.

“Why don’t you try?” Malika asked as she allowed her creation to fizzle out.

Caltyr was already putting his arms out before she even asked. “Yeah, I’ll try again. Let me know if I’m doing something wrong.”

He pictured his innards again, the space between his ribs and under his flesh. He visualized his core, which he now saw as a set of floating, mangled crystals after the lecture from minutes ago: one large and blue, one a fragment of flickering white, and one massive and crimson, pulsing.

Caltyr made the tiniest shard blink to life. He pulled its energy through his extremities, and coaxed it out through his talons. But when he looked to see if he was casting anything, nothing was there.

“I think light is faster than you think it is,” Malika observed after taking in his attempt. “If you’re doing the method where you imagine the element, try picturing the light in a race. That’s what I do. Even if you manage to get a runaway strand of light, once it’s out, then you can control it.”

“A race,” he repeated, “okay.”

He closed his silver eyes and really tried to hone in on the sheer speed of the light. Just like Malika, he began hosting a race in his mind.

Ready, set, glow! he shouted internally, and from the white gem, three piercing ribbons went screaming past the starting line. They all vied against one another, trying to be the first to reach his hands and explode forth.

And explode they did.

Malika gasped with quiet delight and tapped him on the shoulder.

He opened his eyes to see a supernova of radiance twisting not in front of Sara, but in front of his own body. It was an orb of pure, unrestrained white that was twice the size of hers, and twice as stable.

“You did it,” Malika stated gleefully. “I taught someone how to cast light magic,” she whispered to herself under her breath in delight.

Caltyr glanced over to Miss Tavren, and to his surprise, he saw her shimmering white eyes creasing with some of the same pride she used to look at him with.

She rose from her desk and gestured toward the pair. “Look, class, Caltyr successfully cast his very first light sphere!”

The look on Sara’s face as she craned her neck to see his sphere, not flickering or jittering like hers had, was priceless.