YEARS LATER…

The only thing Caltyr remembered about what happened next was the feeling of intense warmth, like sunbathing on the beach.

For the rest, he only heard tales.

He knew he had seen his classmates get pulled to ribbons like pork, and Kraven too, but the next time he saw them, they were whole again. He still remembered the feeling of sheer relief when he first saw them alive and well.

What was different was how they acted around him.

It was worse than when he did the thing with the mouse. There was no bullying this time, just avoidance and stares injected with fear and trepidation. Even T’allyandria, who told him his power was cool and made him worthy of respect, no longer spoke to him after seeing it unleashed in earnest.

He didn’t mind that nobody talked to him at first. He was too entrenched in grief at Miss Tavren’s passing to want to talk to anybody anyway.

He remembered the look in his mothe—mentor’s eyes as he exploded into red mana vividly. Her shocked face and disappointed eyes were the last thing he saw of her before his body succumbed to the white light of death.

Sometimes, when he closed his eyes, he could still see her silvery irises quivering with potent betrayal.

He knew his mana core should have been blue, or even white—if only he had listened to Miss Tavren and Kraven the first time, it might have been.

All the other students in the school had the right to discover themselves and the powers that lay dormant inside them. They had to ask permission to practice more than one type of element, but it was possible, and harnessing two types of mana didn’t garner the same looks of derision that him using his power did.

Caltyr had just wanted the chance to explore what made him unique. He’d wanted the same chance the other students got. He had always figured that if he could practice enough, he could use his skills to do something that wouldn’t make people run for the hills. Something good.

It turned out it just hadn’t shown its true colors yet.

Now, years later, Caltyr was a blue dragon with a white twinge to the ends of his scales. He looked like the end of a wave, where the blue of the water cascaded into white foam. The red had disappeared from him entirely without even a single speck left behind.

And he hadn’t cast even a single wisp of his ‘fleshomagic’ since that day.

The school had relocated, too. He and the students who remained after the battle were in a new place now, hidden further away from the prying eyes of the humans. All of the students had been made to pack up their hoards. For some dragons, gathering up their most treasured items had been a disaster. Gold and gems were common objects to collect, and they were not light.

During the great move, he had learned what the others treasured. Sara collected shards of glass formed by lightning. How she slept soundly on a pile of glass, he had no idea, but he did have an idea now why her attitude was so sour.

Malika collected crocheted items, and she had learned to crochet. A dragon was not meant to be given such power. Her hoard was so massive, she had gotten a special exception to inhabit two rooms instead of one, lest she be suffocated by her own creations. The teachers had expected to have more pupils than they got, anyway, so there were spare rooms.

On the day of the move, she was forced to pick only her very favorites from her pile. She left with a sack the size of her own body and still one of the dens was packed to the brim with crocheted orb creatures with eyes.

Vermonysis had taken to gathering the stubby ends of candles and melting them into shiny new versions, which he hoarded. He had a sack overflowing with wax molds and unburnt candles with straight white wicks.

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T’allyandria collected skulls.

She seemed to be embarrassed by it, probably because it was something so typical for a shadow dragon to favor. But hers were unique, because she fashioned little flower crowns for them. She had them indexed and neatly stacked in two separate bags, labeled and ready to be reassembled when they got to the new location.

Their new school was partially beneath the earth. It was surrounded by a ring of mountains, and in the small valley in the center, there was an opening. It was difficult to breathe because the air was thin, but as dragons, their need to breathe was reduced. They could go for long periods of time with no air, water, or food, and he’d even heard tales of elders surviving for centuries on nothing at all.

The insides of the mountains were hollowed out like coconuts, and their new residences and classrooms were in the hollows.

It was a more formal establishment than before, one for orphaned or abandoned dragons with nowhere to call home—just like his old school.

Kraven grumbled often about how he had never needed a parent when he was a hatchling and there was no sad term like ‘orphan’ for what he was back then, and that was just how a dragon lived. Parentless, meant to find their own way in the world.

But the dragons in Kraven’s day weren’t being hunted by the humans. Or, if they were, there were so many of them it hadn’t mattered. Kraven was from a time before the tides of battle had turned. A dragon could no longer afford to spend most of their life searching for more objects to possess.

Caltyr’s mountain school was filled with new students, each one a potential friend, but they noticed quickly how much the students from his own school avoided him and followed suit. He didn’t know if they even knew why they were doing so, or if it was an entirely subconscious phenomenon, but he could sense a latent distaste for him in his peers.

Caltyr stirred on his gargantuan pile of bottle caps, causing a small avalanche of clinking metal. His collection had only grown, and so had his secret hoard of different types of magic. Since Kraven had taken over as the principal of this new school, students were now allowed to study as many elements as they wished, provided they had the time and desire to learn.

He knew that Miss Tavren would be horrified by the news. She had always been vehemently against raising students with more than two types of mana, insisting that each addition muddied their core’s brilliance. He didn’t know why she was so concerned with the purity of her students’ mana source, but every time he considered adding a new element to his roster, he could hear her voice in the back of his mind.

But he had decided a long time ago that this would be his trade. His uniqueness in exchange for any element he could get his claws on.

And since Kraven had taken over their lesson plans, he could get his claws on a whole lot more.

Kraven had always wanted their lives to be dedicated to learning to harness the elements. The richness of their lives was of little importance to him or anyone else if they were dead, he insisted, and Caltyr tended to agree. To do anything else would be turning away from the very real threat of the humans wiping them out entirely.

Others thought he was mean. He heard whispers in the hall as others tried to pretend he was invisible saying that the principal needed to relax his iron grip on their schedules and add a few non-magical classes in, like Art and Science.

Caltyr hadn’t heard any such complaining from the dragons from his old school. These days, T’allyandria and Malika were even assisting in teaching the Light and Shadow Magic classes, respectively.

Caltyr dismounted his ‘bed’ and put his head through the loop of his crossbody bookbag. It was stuffed with a few magical theory books and various notes, but they almost never used them anymore. It had been weeks since he’d last had to struggle with sharpening a pencil. His draconic hands, while serviceable, were not exactly grippy.

His room was larger here in the mountainous school, but as they gained more refugees and students in general, he knew he might have to relinquish some of his space one day. As such, he already had a small golden gate surrounding his bottle caps that kept them in place and a circular mattress capping them that he slept on. It wouldn’t be so hard to shift the rest of his furniture.

There wasn’t much of it. Students were provided with a utilitarian mirror with a frame, a three-drawer dresser, a bedside table, and a plain blue rug. He’d never felt a need for anything else. He wasn’t even filling his dresser, though he knew many of the other students enjoyed an array of fabrics and bags they would swap out daily.

Kraven wore only his scales and the scars he had acquired over the years. Occasionally, Miss Tavren had worn a suit jacket with a wide lapel when others were visiting. Most older dragons saw the act of wearing clothing to be ‘too human’.

Caltyr pushed through the door to his room and into the hallway, where others were just beginning their day as well. Their necks were droopy with a potent tiredness and lack of excitement for their day, but Caltyr had a renewed sense of vigor, and his was held high.

This would be the day where he would put his old power behind him and get his friends back, starting with the Shadow Instructor T’allyandria. He’d already acquired permission to join her class—she would have found out last night.

Now he just had to enact his plan.