Since ancient times, probably since before even Kraven could remember, dragons had settled their most tumultuous disputes using great violence. Whatever the cause for the turmoil was, whoever could prove their might would also prove themselves right. It was an archaic form of decision-making, but it was still one they were beholden to to this day.
As a species, they weren’t fond of the terms ‘good’ and ‘evil’. Each dragon was a free agent who acted the way they did for a multitude of reasons, reasons baked into their heritage. Some dragons ate humans, one for every heart and lung torn from their brethren. Some demanded sacrifices and worship from whoever was unfortunate enough to live in their radius, because something deep within them yearned for respect.
On a normal day, Caltyr hated their sorry excuse for a legal system. It was disgustingly easy to abuse, and it meant the bullies far too often came out on top, dooming their victims not only to being harassed, but to being ‘rightly’ harassed.
Today, however, he was unusually fond of it.
Winning the tussle with Sara would mean that, once and for all, she would be forced to shut her dumb mouth. He didn’t know why he hadn’t challenged her sooner. The idea that her and her friends would have to back off was already injecting a spring into his step that hadn’t been there before.
He walked his springy way out to where they had their recesses. Instead of playing pirates with his friends as he normally would, he found the rock he had chosen as the battleground where he would be fighting for his dignity.
The claw-shaped stone jutted jaggedly out of the ground and curved at the end, earning itself its name.
Caltyr sat down and rustled around in his bag until he found his notebook. He flipped it open to the page where he was keeping his notes from Miss Tavren’s water class, the page crinkled from use. He knew deep down that if he wanted to truly trounce Sara, he would need to use his Forbidden Power, but he wasn’t even supposed to be talking about it, let alone using it.
So water would have to do.
While the rest of the class was still working on shaping their stationery water, the water they kept swirling in one spot, Caltyr was moving and shaping it around himself in loops. He was quickening it, using it as a whip. He was allowing it to ebb and flow as it was meant to.
If he could figure out how to turn just a few sections of the whip into hard, unforgiving ice, he could have a devastating weapon on his hands.
Heck, if he could learn to make more than a wimpy little skating rink for ants, he would be unstoppable. He could form shields and even armor if he could learn to stand the cold. He would have to ask Miss Tavren if she knew any techniques to make wearing a suit of ice less of an exercise in masochism.
He drew forth a line of water, which flowed like a river from his hand. He began to flick it down into the grass, restoring what it lost when it smacked into the blades and exploded into mere dew dotting the lawn.
Caltyr practiced just making the mana listen to his commands, until moving it in the direction he wanted was almost as easy as making one of his limbs move. Water was easy, flowy, light.
It was simple to make it go where he wanted. Something in his own body’s makeup made it near-effortless to harness the element, at least in comparison to the others in his class.
Splash, splash, splash, the water whip went as he crashed it into the ground.
Now, he just had to harness what he had been feeling when he heard Sara talking down to him and his ‘character’. Character, character, character. Something Sara had and he apparently did not, something he lacked.
He harnessed the icy cool the first time by wishing to harm somebody, particularly Sara, so he allowed his bitter anger to rise to the surface this time too. He let it move through his flesh and into the length of his whip, which worked, but barely.
Caltyr was surprised to see the water closest to his hand morphing into one long icicle, but once the liquid froze over, it became immobile.
That wouldn’t work for his purposes. He used his hand to karate chop at the ice and break it up into chunks, letting it fall into the meadow below.
He would have to create the dagger-like edge of the ice at the extreme end of his watery weapon, far away from his body, while it was still moving.
They were only just learning to hover a water sphere up to a foot away from their center of mass in his class.
But if he could conjure ice so close to his hand, being able to apparate it at the opposite side of the water would be possible too. He wished he had a couple more weeks to practice, but that just wasn’t how time worked.
Caltyr practiced shaping the ice procedurally, just like Miss Tavren taught them. Step-by-step. He created a chunky sphere that he filled out layer by layer, thickening it before tossing it into the claw rock. It made a dense, satisfying crunch against its inner curve.
Next, he practiced making other shapes: cubes, stars, the heart he was sure would be called an Icy Heart. Considering how quickly he needed to refine his budding abilities, it felt like he was going at a glacial pace. Hah.
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As he was forming the butt-like curve of another Icy Heart, he heard footsteps approaching in the grass, light and wet against the muck he had created in the field.
“Caaaaal, we’ve been waiting for you,” whined a female voice. He recognized it as T’allyandria Morriganha D’Llarkhen’s voice.
T’allyandria Morriganha D’Llarkhen was one of the other dragons who played pirates with him. She was known for demanding a leadership role in their games. Many days she played as the Captain, forcing all of her shiphands to refer to her only as her full name. Even by dragon standards, her name was long, tiresome, and obnoxious.
At this point, it was drilled into his brain. Sometimes, when a room was silent enough and his brain needed something to think about, it would pop up.
T’allyandria Morriganha D’Llarkhen.
He went along with her shenanigans, because she didn’t seem to care about what anybody else said about him. Her scales sported a dark, glistening purple sheen, meaning she was a dark dragon.
When the other dragons weren’t talking about him, they were whispering about her. She knew what it felt like to be shunned for something she couldn’t control.
“Go on without me today,” he insisted, surprised they had even been waiting, “I’ve got something important to practice for.”
“And what could be more important than swabbing the deck for T’allyandria Morriganha D’Llarkhen?” She tilted her head, her magenta eyes boring into his very soul. They were multi-layered and intense.
He could see why the others were afraid of her, if all they had to go off of were her looks.
Caltyr held up the Icy Heart. “I challenged Sara to a duel. I’m practicing.”
“Oh.” Her eyebrow ridges rose in interest. “That’s way more interesting than making you goobers do ship stuff. How are you at hitting a moving target? I doubt she’s gonna sit still and just let you hit her with your ice butts.”
“I practice hitting mice and voles sometimes, but they’re too fast,” he admitted lamely.
“Pssh, those are way too small. You’re just going to waste all your magical energy trying to hit those, not to mention your confidence. Here.” She got up from her sitting position and began a slow, horse-like trot. “Try to hit me with your water stuff.”
Caltyr dropped the chunk of ice and followed the royal purple dragon with his eyes. He cast a stream of water just in front of her, where she was about to be, and it hit her squarely in the shoulder.
“‘Kay, good,” she said with a nod and slowed her gait. “You can hit a slug. But Sara is what? A water and electric dragon? She’s going to be smooth and fast like lightning. So I’m going to give it my all, and I want you to dare to hit the great T’allyandria Morriganha D’Llarkhen.”
And just like that, she was gone. A puff of black smoke smacked him in the face, smelling of charcoal and lilies, as she tore off into the distance.
Caltyr coughed and sputtered before running blindly after her through the swirling blackness, readying a ball of water at his side. It was much trickier to cast while he was moving, and he could feel the wind fighting its roundness, trying to push it into a flat disk.
He opened his eyes and saw her, but as soon as she noticed he had breached her wall of shadow, she began to run erratically in one direction, and then another. Just when he was prepared to toss his water sphere at her, she would zig for a little too long, throwing him off.
Caltyr decided he needed to be less methodical about this. Sara wouldn’t make things even this easy, she would be slinging lightning and going for the throat.
He sped up, closing the extreme gap between the two of them before spurting a long, quick stream at the shadow dragon. It missed, but just barely, sailing past her hind leg.
He shot a fine line of water at her again, and again. She avoided both.
Finally, he extended his water out into a hook and swept at her front, much like the whipping motion he’d been practicing. The liquid extended further out than he’d ever taken it and started trying to separate into droplets, but his force of will steadied it and he scooped her chest even while she turned, hitting her fair and square.
“Good,” she yelled, not slowing down, even now that he had succeeded, “now I want you to dare to hurt the great T’allyandria Morriganha D’Llarkhen.”
Hurt her? He remembered her wailing dramatically for an entire recess because he’d clipped her with his imaginary mop.
“Are you sure?” he yelled out toward her backside.
She responded by sending an angry wisp of shadow in his direction, which hit his face and encircled it with a cold mist that sucked the air out of his throat.
Caltyr stepped out of the darkness and found the plum-colored dragon again, who was closing in on him now. It seemed like her plan had been to tackle him while he was blinded, so he leapt backward and conjured not one but two icy orbs into being.
He pelted one straight at her center mass, and it plunked against her chest hard enough that he was worried he had broken one of her scales. But she kept advancing, so he fired the other one too.
She bounced out of the way effortlessly and passed him, using the razor-sharp edge of her claws to swipe his tail on the way by. He felt her slice through to his skin, and he yanked the appendage inward to stop it from being split to ribbons. “Ow!”
“Don’t forget that if all else fails, you can just use your claws. You hurt me, and I hurt you, so let’s just stop now. You’re ready.” She nodded her slim, triangle-shaped face in his direction while slowing to a stop.
She seemed proud of him, satisfied with his progress. But he wasn’t sure it was enough to win against Sara.
“What did she do, anyway? To make a nincompoop like you want to fight her?” She pulled her nails up toward her face and inspected them. They were black, shiny, and somewhat splintered from her run through the field. She began scraping the abundant layer of muck off of each one.
“She keeps saying I’m evil. Which may or may not be worse than calling me a nincompoop. What does that even mean, anyway?”
“It means you’re delightful and fun to be around.” She opened her lips in a forced smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Anyway, what do you care? Being evil wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. To me, ‘evil’ is just being free of what everyone else thinks of you.”
“I’d be fine with it if that was how she meant it. But she just keeps saying it to other people to warn them against hanging out with me, like I’ll taint them just by being around, like I’m… bad.” His scales began to droop slightly, unbeknownst to him.
“Oh. Yeah.” T’allyandria Morriganha D’Llarkhen plucked the scale from her chest that the ice ball had, in fact, broken. She walked over to the wilting blue dragon and graced him with a touch to the shoulder. “Then you’ve got to ice punch her face in.”