They were only a few miles out from the ring of mountains that made up their school when they decided the silence had gone on for long enough.

“We should introduce ourselves,” Vermonysis decided. “I know your name is Shriken but I don’t think we’ve met before.”

Shriken was a shadow dragon, from the looks of his onyx body. His scales were angular and black, and his eyes were a striking gold. He had elected to wear some iridescent hammered armor that draped over him, and had picked up a bow and arrow from the supplies room. “I do think we’ve met. We were partners in Shadow class when you first started to try it out, but I don’t think I saw you again after the first week.”

This earned a chuckle from Vermonysis. “Oh yeah! How could I forget you, my mentor Shriken? I wanted to try learning to cast Shadow magic, but I guess I’m just not a very dark person.”

“That’s surprising, considering what I’ve heard about when you were a hatchling. You could learn if you kept at it,” Shriken assured him.

“Oh. Yeah.” The fire-and-lightning dragon brushed his fingers through his head scales sheepishly. “I’ve got so many good things going for me at school and it’s been so long that I like to just focus on the now. All that stuff’s in the past.”

Caltyr rose a ridged eyebrow in curiosity. He was disconnected from the rumor mill at his school; all he got were bits and pieces, fragments he caught while listening in during lunchtimes. But it was like having only some of the pieces to the puzzle.

“You haven’t heard?” asked Vermonysis with a tilt of his orangey head. “That’s kind of refreshing, to be honest. Maybe having a clean slate with you is what makes us such good buddies.” He patted Caltyr’s armored shoulder.

Honestly, he hadn’t known they were ‘such good buddies’, but the words sent a giddiness through him. Someone considered him a real friend, and not just a classroom acquaintance born of necessity or a skilled apprentice. “I wouldn’t judge you if I knew,” he reassured him, “but if you don’t want to share, it’s alright.”

“It just feels like it’s so far away now, to be honest. Like it happened to another me.” Vermonysis shrugged, but continued easily. “My parents just hated me. I came out red when they were a thoroughly lightning-focused yellow-scaled ‘family’. I tried and tried to impress them, but it was never enough. They say a second element’s never as good as your first. They would always pull my red scales out and sell them to humans, until one day they just sold me entirely.

“But not before letting them rip some of my organs out. I got away from the humans after three failed attempts and now I’m here with Kraven and the crew, and things have been good since. Actually, Kraven helped rescue me on my winning attempt. He’s so fucking huge, man, the humans just didn’t chase me anymore.”

Caltyr took in Vermonysis’ story, bobbing his head as he talked. “It’s unusual to think that a dragon took another dragon’s scales for their own gain, and that they didn’t like your fire element. I’ve always thought fire was so cool. When I think of a kick-ass dragon, I definitely think of lightning and fire first, and you have both.”

“I’m Fellithe, by the way. And this is Vallath.” Fellithe, the dragon who had asked Kraven if they were getting a reward for this excursion earlier, pointed quickly to her minuscule body and then to Vallath, a yellow dragon with squat little legs that made him look like he was constantly crouching. “Now that we’ve all introduced ourselves, can we get going already?”

Vallath rose a short arm. “I didn’t actually get to—”

“Let’s get going already! The sooner we get all this done, the sooner we can be back in time for our classes.” Fellithe narrowed her eyes, sky blue and pulled nearly shut with a restrained annoyance. “Especially since we’re not getting anything for being out here risking our lives.”

“Oh, Kraven’s an old softie,” Vermonysis chuckled. “He might be making an award for us right now. Why don’t we just do our best to deserve some kind of award instead of expecting one? Who knows, if we do well enough, he may even give us two!”

Caltyr’s first thought about Fellithe was that she reminded him of Sara, which didn’t bode well for them becoming friends. Except Sara didn’t always expect recognition, she just had this way of talking over others and putting herself first.

He didn’t know if Vermonysis was being serious about Kraven maybe reconsidering the whole award thing, but he figured it would be best if Fellithe believed they would be receiving something for their efforts. “Oh, yeah. I’m sure he’s back there forging each one of us a plaque right now,” Caltyr agreed.

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He looked to Vallath as well. “And Vallath, it’s nice to meet you,” he said directly to the yellow dragon who had been skipped over. Not on his watch, Caltyr decided.

Vallath raised a lemon-coloured hand to wave at him in thanks.

Vermonysis waved with his spiked tail in return. “I know we’re not exactly strangers, but nice to meet ‘ya,” he said, swooping his gaze between the three of them.

Fellithe returned the gesture with her rocky gray tail, and the other two did as well. The earth dragon’s demeanor seemed to have brightened with the possibility of a treasure on the other side of this quest, and Caltyr supposed he couldn’t blame her. They were dragons, after all.

“In the interest of moving along, let’s take a look inside the bags Kraven gave us. He said there were maps, and there’s no use starting if we don’t know where we’re going,” Caltyr suggested as he fussed with the bag slung over his neck so he could find the beginning of the zippered closure. He fumbled with the tag once he found it, until finally he hooked it at just the right angle. Life with clawed fingers was a trial sometimes.

The others sat down, and they all unloaded their bags in the field of swaying grass. They were filled with several smaller bags, with rations, lunches, heavy blankets, a thin cushion, the communications necklaces they had been promised, notebooks, pens, and other little items. At the very bottom of it all was the coveted map.

“Did he have to put it all the way at the bottom?” Vallath asked when he saw Caltyr finally extract his, bewildered. His stubby limbs seemed to be making the process all the more arduous.

Vermonysis chuckled. “I didn’t think we all needed to unpack at the same time.” He patted his untouched bag as he lorded over the mess of items all over the grass.

Caltyr unfurled the paper map. It was a hand drawn and painted map of the area directly surrounding their school grounds, with big red dots marking any human cities or encampments. It was a deeply familiar piece of paper to anyone who had ever ventured outside of the school walls, but this copy had more to it.

Orange dots marked locations that were only suspected, and this map had so much orange on it that it left him dizzied.

And that wasn’t even the worst of it. Deep purple dots told him where in the area they had encountered demons.

The purple dots were clustered together, as if the demons were all collected in the same spots. How were they going to find groups of three or four if they were all grouped in the same places?

“I know where this human city is, and where this camp is. We could start there,” Caltyr suggested. He pointed to the city he’d traveled to with T’allyandria to get him his replacement special bottle cap; where he had left his message for the humans. It had been easier to get to from his old school, but they had wings attached to their backs, so travel wasn’t a deadbreaker.

“Anyone have any better ideas?” Shriken asked with a flat voice, which seemed, now that Caltyr had heard him speak enough, to be his always-voice.

“Let’s just go there,” Fellithe said as she shoved everything back into her pack in the configuration it had come in.

“Lead the way,” Vallath agreed, stretching his wings out from their folded position on his back.

Almost as if to make up for his lack of leg, his wings seemed to be larger than normal, like two big kites attached to a dragon and far more than he needed to stay afloat.

Caltyr made sure everything he was holding and wearing was securely attached. He, too, had elected to wear armor, and he had padding underneath it that sat snuggly against his scales. It was affixed with a set of belts, so he tugged them on and confirmed they weren’t going anywhere. They stayed securely in place.

He slipped the communication necklace he’d extracted from his supplies around his neck too; the second one he had now, next to Emily’s.

“Sure. I’ll lead the way; it shouldn’t take us too long. Maybe an hour. Let’s fly above the clouds until we’re almost there, and then we’ll descend.”

Caltyr jumped into the sky and flapped himself up high. Seeing the four others jump and soar up to follow him gave him a surge of responsibility as he glanced down at their four faces. Had he just been made the unofficial leader of their group, somehow?

He had almost never been the leader of anything.

The realization wasn’t altogether unwelcome. He had wanted to be the top of his class one day, and he knew that being on the top of anything meant looking down and seeing everyone he had passed to get there.

But maybe he was getting ahead of himself.

It took a lot of muscle to get his entire self and at least three days of supplies up above the water vapor, but once he felt the mist against his scales, the hardest part was over. He grinned at the view of the tops of the clouds, so thick and cottony that they looked like a whole new continent.

He wondered if he could play with their density and make them walkable as the five of them streaked through the air, but with so many others following him, he figured he shouldn’t mess around and try. Maybe experimenting with the water cycle could be a secret reward for himself on the return trip.

Wind parted and fluffed his scales as they traveled. It was thunderously loud in the sky, which made having a conversation a near impossibility. The trip was both too noisy and too devoid of conversation, and he couldn’t even crack open a book to entertain himself.

He settled for watching orange light refract off the backs of the clouds and taking in the rare pocket of nature as the view of the forests below broke through the thick layer of white.

About an hour later, he swooped down to check if they had gone far enough.

The city was but a speck on the horizon, but what he did see were the ruins of his former home, which hit him like a ton of bricks.