“What?” Caltyr exclaimed, his mouth falling open in shock.

“Yup. I just didn’t advertise it in front of the whole class.” T’allyandria’s gaze shifted to the side as she avoided the blue dragon’s eyes.

“Well, spit it out already! What kind of non-elemental power do you have?” Caltyr watched her in amazement, not missing a single blink or millimeter of movement. Was he truly not the only one?

“I can make people do the stuff that I tell them to.”

The male dragon’s brow ridge rose in disbelief. “What? So you can make people do stuff they don’t want to do?”

“Yeah,” T’allyandria confirmed, nodding her slim face, “I can. That’s part of why I don’t understand why Sara keeps on calling me evil. I truly show so much restraint, and she doesn’t even know it. All I do is make you bozos call me by my full name and swab the pretend deck sometimes.”

Caltyr gasped audibly in disbelief. “No. There’s no way you’ve been making us do that with magic. I don’t believe you.”

“It it really more believable that you’ve just been doing my bidding because you wanted to?” T’allyandria tilted her head, amused.

The azure dragon stomped his foot down. “I did the deck swabbing stuff because I thought it would be more fun for you if you got to be the tyrant. Now come on, show me. If I’m gonna believe you, you’re going to have to show it to me.”

“Fine.”

T’allyandria rose from her spot on the bed, joining Caltyr on the den’s loamy floor once again. She noted the tiny jar of bottle caps next to his bed, filled with iridescent caps and caps with jewels embedded in them. They were clearly the special ones, put aside to be cherished separately.

The dark purple dragon didn’t need to wind up to cast her spell, she simply spoke her desire while drawing from the mana within her. “I want you to go grab your second favorite bottle cap and bend it in half until it breaks.”

“What? No!” Caltyr refused, crossing his arms over his scaled chest. But when he looked down, he saw that his hind legs were moving without him having asked them to.

And they were going toward his side table.

“I don’t even know which one is my second favorite.” His hand reached out and into the tiny, delicate jar, past its mouth. His talons looked enormous next to the minuscule opening.

Apparently he did subconsciously know which bottle cap was his second favorite. He plucked his ruby encrusted special edition cap from near the bottom of the pile, rustling the other caps around in the process.

The cap was wide and flat, and the jewels were made of some sort of resin. He knew they weren’t true jewels, and yet they remained valuable to him. The cap had come from a boba drink, strawberry flavored with strawberry popping boba floating inside. The jewels were meant to mimic the appearance of said boba, swirling around in the drink, ready to burst.

Caltyr pulled every muscle in his draconic arm backward, away from the object being pressed between his fingertips. And yet, he still watched as his fingers began to pinch down.

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“Nooooo! Okay, I get it! I get it!” he wailed.

Caltyr stared on in horror as one of the boba crystals popped out of its socket, the tension driving it out as it folded inward.

T’allyandria’s soft giggling cascaded into a full-on cackle as he bent the cap fully in half and another ruby crystal fell from its place. He looked so ridiculously distressed as his limbs acted without his input.

She fell backward, tears in her eyes as she watched the bottle cap’s edges meet coupled with the blue dragon’s crestfallen look. All over a dang bottle cap.

The flimsy metal crunched satisfyingly, softly, into a semi-circle.

T’allyandria kept rolling around at the drama of it all.

Caltyr dropped the bottle cap in amongst its fallen gems, the motor control returning to his arm now that the deed was done. The cap would have a crease permanently now, one that couldn’t be fixed by being reset or remolded.

It was garbage.

“T’allyandria Morriganha D’Llarkhen, you suck,” Caltyr said saltily, crushing the remains of his second favorite cap beneath a draconic foot.

“Your face! Your face was so—hah!” The plum-colored dragon held her stomach to stop it from bursting, and eventually her chortling died down.

“I had to go into the human city for that one,” Caltyr said and sighed bitterly, “and now I’m going to have to go back in for another one. It was limited edition, so you better hope they’re still available.”

“Or what, you’ll lose to me in a fight?” T’allyandria stuck out the tip of her long, ink-colored tongue.

“Shut up,” Caltyr growled, but inside, he could feel the levity. He had wanted this kind of comrade for a while, somebody he could joke with, somebody who wasn’t worried he’d get offended.

“So when are we leaving?” Pressing down on her long, spindly talons, T’allyandria pushed herself back up onto all fours.

We?

He couldn’t help but notice he hadn’t invited her on his trip, but given the nature of her special power, there was no use in arguing with her about it. “Not until after I go talk to Kraven about whether a dragon can challenge someone on the same issue twice. And I have to at least go to my light class tomorrow, too.”

T’allyandria nodded in understanding. “You don’t want to miss that class, you’re right. I hear you haven’t even been able to conjure any light yet. You need every minute you can get.”

“You can say things that are nice too sometimes, you know.” The dragon shoved the knife he hadn’t realized he was still holding into the bag at his side.

“But why would I when I can just make people like me again? I bet half the reason you ever do stuff is because of how people might feel about it. I don’t have to worry about that.”

“You can just make people like you again?” he asked breathlessly. He felt he’d gotten the short end of the stick with his power, especially given how easy hers was to conceal.

“Yeah. I can make people like or hate me, or do stuff they don’t want to do. I just don’t. It’s easier to just let people hate you when you know you could just undo it if you wanted to. Except when it comes to Sara, she sucks, so I don’t see any reason to make her want to be around me. I’m fine with things the way they are.”

Caltyr narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “Are you saying you could just make Sara stop calling me evil?”

“Yeah,” T’allyandria’s shoulders rose lazily, noncommittally, “but I won’t. You need to let go of what she thinks.”

She turned to more expressly face the azure dragon, sitting so they were face-to-face. She brought a finger to the spot of her cheek where her lips ended and looked upward, pondering.

“If you’re really concerned about not being evil though, let’s do something good while we’re in the human city tomorrow. Let’s find a human with mana tracks and make them wish they never tasted dragon flesh.” The shadow dragon suggested with mounting passion behind her words.

It seemed she had a heroic streak as well, buried beneath her tendency to speak bluntly. Or maybe just a vengeful one. Caltyr knew, too, that her suggestion wasn’t exactly a suggestion. “If you can convince someone not to scream while I use my power, we could leave a message for the humans. Maybe that would keep them away from us for a while.”

Caltyr and T’allyandria spent the rest of the night chattering about their plan of attack.