Every student in T’allyandria Morriganha D’Llarkhen’s beginner shadow class was every bit as obedient as Caltyr expected them to be. Nobody spoke when her mouth was moving, nobody ever left their seat, and all of them called her by her whole name: Miss T’allyandria Morriganha D’Llarkhen.

Having each and every student refer to her in full every time they had a question took up a lot of time, but seeing the flash of contentment crossing her eyes each time made it obvious why she was doing it. This was a power trip for her.

If he wanted to rise back up to the rank of being her friend again, he would be wise to refer to her as such as well. Clearly, it pleased her. Not as much as his plan would, surely, but it would be a vital ingredient in success.

He remembered that the dark princess of a dragon had been allowing him to slip before, allowing him more and more to refer to her simply as a casual ‘T’allyandria’. He missed those times, especially when he had to form a wordy ‘Miss T’allyandria Morriganha D’Llarkhen’ every single time he had a question.

But it would be a small price to pay for returning to his former position.

T’allyandria’s long, sharp tail flicked behind her as she pushed away from her mahogany teacher’s desk. “Does anybody care to tell me what we were learning about last class?”

A purple hand shot into the air. It was more of a true purple, unlike T’allyandira’s near-black illustrious sheen.

“Yes, Wysteria?”

“Um,” began the purple dragon in a quivering, feminine warble, “we just learned that shadows are the absence of light, and that to conjure them, we need to shut out our inner light. Is that… right?” Wysteria tilted her head at the end of her sentence, looking into the professor’s eyes expectantly.

“Exactly.” T’allyandria nodded, before flicking her gaze straight over to Caltyr. “Do you think you can do that, Caltyr?”

Now that she was regarding just him, the nurturing lilt drained from her voice. Her words were sharp, just like the rest of her. She had always been gaunt, but as her body grew, the hollows cemented themselves in her cheeks and the scales around her eyes grew to be even more needle-like.

She pushed off the cushion that sat behind her mahogany teacher’s desk and began to walk over to the open half of her classroom with purpose. Caltyr’s eyebrow ridges rose. Did T’allyandria want him to try to conjure shadow right now? This was his first day!

Caltyr pulled himself up from his sitting position and joined her on the larger half of the room. Each classroom was geared toward its element. Kraven had pushed for the ‘classroom’ section with the desks and books to be dwarfed by an elemental practice area.

T’allyandria’s was a sheer vantablack floor that ate the light, and a set of headlight-like lights projected a beam of light downward. A series of pillars created streaks of shadow that were barely visible in the void-like tiles of the floor.

His claws clicked as he approached.

“You’re going to be very behind the rest of the class if you can’t even conjure a speck of shadow. I wish you had asked permission to join my class before you just showed up, but I’ll give you a chance. If you can cast right here, right now, I won’t kick you out.”

Ahhh. Usually, when a new student joined a class, a brief introduction was done. He knew now why he hadn’t gotten his. If he didn’t pass, he may not even be here tomorrow.

She was prepared for him to fail.

He could see why. When starting a new elemental path, it usually took about a week to be able to summon even a speck of that new element. One’s insides had to be formed around it, made to accept it, or that was how it felt to him.

He knew how to cast water and light, and he had picked up a bit of fire as well, so he was no stranger to the process—which was how he knew this would be nearly impossible unless he had one hell of an affinity.

“Isn’t this a school, Miss T’allyandria Morriganha D’Llarkhen? At least give me an idea of how to cast in this new element before you tell me to do it in front of everyone.”

T’allyandria’s violet eyes narrowed. She sucked in a breath, and Caltyr almost thought she was going to laugh him out of the classroom, but she responded in kind. “Fine, but we’ll have to take points off, since you had a hint.”

“Am I being graded on this?” Caltyr balked.

“Yes, if you even manage to pass.” The dark purple dragon’s tail swished back and forth in thought, making a whipping noise from how tapered it was at the end. “Wysteria was absolutely correct. To cast a shadow, you have to push away all the light you have inside you. I know you can cast in light, Caltyr, so you need to bend that away and cast out of the absence. Casting in shadow is unlike anything you’ve ever done before. Instead of calling upon the element, you need to push another away. Now go,” she finished, sitting down and watching him intently with pupils the size of pins.

Speaking of pins, the water dragon could hear one drop in the room now. The students still at their desks weren’t even whispering amongst themselves, no doubt due to T’allyandria’s subtle use of her unique mana.

So, to cast in the element of shadow, he would have to yank away all of the light inside himself and somehow force out the lack of light. He had some idea of how to drive the other elements away, but how would he then push their void outside of himself?

Instead of mulling too hard over it, he decided to just try it. As usual when creating something from nothing, he put his hands close together. Having them there as an anchor just seemed to help the summoning process.

Then, he closed his eyes.

The water dragon started by sealing away his liquid-based mana. He pictured himself erecting a rubber wall that kept his tides at bay. The water fought and frothed violently at the idea, but ultimately, he succeeded in pushing it aside, much to its apparent chagrin. Next, he coaxed his fire mana into the trapped water, snuffing it out with an angry hiss that was so high-pitched it made his ear holes hurt.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Lastly, he had the light. His inner light’s face had taken on the appearance of his mentor, and her face flashed inside his mind as he tried to shoo his light magic away.

Are you trying to make me disappear again? it asked, its chin turned upward in disgust.

Don’t be dramatic, he sighed to his inner imaginings.

He pulled an all-encompassing sheet of blackness from nothing and threw it over his imaginary Miss Tavren, who took a final moment to look at him disappointedly before his inner light disappeared entirely.

He stood there in his own mind then, accompanied only by the occasional sound of running water when his most prominent element got rowdy and tried to escape.

True darkness was his only company now. The insides of his skull cavity were filled with blackness, touched by not a single beam of light. Now it was the only thing left, he tried to gather it within his hands and cast it into the outside world.

He forced it between his palms, but when he cracked an eye open, there was no physical conjuration awaiting him.

T’allyandria hadn’t taken her gaze off him. She looked conspicuously at the empty space in front of him and rose a brow as if to ask if he had given up yet.

Caltyr sighed and returned to his inner nothingness. He was going to have to do this metaphorically, if he couldn’t accomplish it physically. He knew from his past experiences that magic was more responsive when emotions were involved.

Caltyr feared what that would mean for void magic.

The figure under the sheet in his mind rustled knowingly.

He knew as well as it did that, for this to work, he would have to feel his lack.

His inner version of Miss Tavren stood, and he could see her outline become more defined, making it obvious that it was her. She stood above him like a mountain, many times his size, even now that he had grown to something more akin to a teenager by draconic standards.

The void in his chest became more apparent the more he allowed her to linger in the front of his thoughts. Instead of her voice simply being ‘a voice’, it changed into her calm, level tone that reminded him of a still, welcoming sea.

“Caltyr, do you remember what happened?” she asked him, the fabric around her mouth moving with her words.

Her voice sounding so much like her real voice made the space inside him swell up further.

“What happened when?” he asked avoidantly.

“When you didn’t listen to me,” she clarified.

Caltyr winced. “I tried to listen, I just… I had to—” He tried to defend himself, but this was something he had never come up with a good enough explanation for. Nothing felt right. Nothing was correct enough to explain what he had been thinking.

“Had to what, Cally?”

The nickname passing through the woman’s lips made him feel like the ground beneath his feet had crumbled.

The first time she had called him that had been when the class was out in the field, checking to see how much the plants had grown after a long, enduring rain. They were out on some combination of a field trip and a lesson, the kind where they were really just hanging out with their mentor with one or two teachable moments thrown in.

For a group of dragons, many of whom had never even met their parents, their trips outside with their professors were precious.

Caltyr had always stayed close to Miss Tavren on their trips, mere steps away from her giantesque form. The image of him walking through the flowers while measuring the growth of the grass had been cute to his classmates, who had thought of him as an enigma.

Naturally, they’d bestowed him with a nickname they thought was suitably adorable. This was, of course, before he’d thought to let anybody in on his secret flesh powers.

He chuckled at the girls calling him Cally, but when Miss Tavren joined in, he looked up in wonder.

“Let’s go measure the dandelions, Cally,” she teased, driving his dumb crush even further down into his chest.

Little did he know that he would be the cause of her having to drive her own hand into her own chest later, ending her life.

He lacked his mentor; lacked parents; lacked friends.

He had fallen from grace in his classes. While he had been third in the class before, he didn’t know how many people had concentrated on their studies and surpassed him now. His special powers had taken everything from him.

An intense feeling of cold moved through him.

“He’s doing it!” he heard the students behind him wail in surprise. “He’s doing it—too well!” Their wails morphed quickly into scratches of fear.

When he cracked open his eyes, he only saw darkness. He wasn’t sure he had even opened his eyes until he blinked them a few times and felt the skin sliding up and down. An orb of darkness was bursting forth from his hands, growing so quickly it was flowing into the other section of the room, encroaching on the other students’ space.

They collectively scurried away, the sound of their claws clacking and scraping against the classroom floor reaching his ears in a distorted manner through the blackness. They sounded further away than they truly were.

Caltyr looked at T’allyandria, whose amethyst eyes glowed like jewels in the dark. If this was what it felt like to cast in the element of shadow, he wondered just how much the new shadow mentor had lost in her own life to be so skilled.

“Looks like you did it,” T’allyandria said matter-of-factly, but there was as much excitement in her voice as there was light in the room. “Now can you put it away already so we can get started on today’s lesson?”

Caltyr struggled for a moment to switch his brain out of the ‘I have no friends and everything sucks’ mood he had been cultivating. But when he finally managed to dispel the growing blackness, he saw T’allyandria at the front of the class ushering everyone back into the spaces behind their desks, as opposed to cowering against the wall.

She looked over to Caltyr and gestured to the seat he had been sitting at earlier. She was inviting him back to class.

He fought the grin clawing its way to his face as he walked triumphantly over and sat in the seat that felt like a throne.

But the true prize would be getting his friends back.