“Are you sure you want to do this, Malika?” Caltyr asked, and looked around them at the light beams being conjured, swirled and reflected throughout the arena. “You don’t have to take pity on me. I can cast and practice on my own.”

The question shook Malika out of her trembling stare. “Oh, no, no, it’s alright.”

But she still didn’t seem pleased about their predicament. So she didn’t want to go back on her word, but the idea of them engaging in actual combat made her shake in her lack of boots.

“Instead of sparring, how about we co-cast?” Caltyr offered. His water teacher Mister Terumin had been having his class co-cast in his last few classes, which was just conjuring an element with the aid of another person. It was harder than it looked. Everyone had their own way of moving their water, so they would often break their streams and mess up.

“That’s a good idea,” Miss Malika breathed. Her face already looked less blanched, even for a light dragon.

Caltyr took a step backward. “Why don’t you start us off?”

“Um, sure thing. How about we start… with a light ribbon? Let’s try to make something like the aurora borealis together. I’ve read about them in the library and they’re just so beautiful.” The white dragon rose her hand and began to draw a line of light into the sky. Slowly, trickles of what looked to be sparkles fell from the line as she began to move it like a ribbon blowing in the wind.

It already looked shimmering and gorgeous, all on its own. Like a personal lightshow.

Caltyr added to it with his own wavy, bacon-shaped strand. He coloured it blue and wove it alongside hers, trying to anticipate the ways it moved so he could match it.

The blue and white lights casting upon her scales made a disco ball-like reflection on the walls and ceiling. “You’re like a disco ball,” Caltyr chuckled.

Malika looked up and giggled at the specks on the walls and ceiling. She shook her body and they jumped back and forth spastically, but then she slowly turned in a circle and the diamonds upon the wall started to dance like stars.

“That’s awesome,” Caltyr said as he stared upward in wonder.

Some viewed light as one of the least important elements because it was less combat-focused. Kraven had made a few comments about removing it from the rotation when Miss Tavren had still been alive. But right now, in this moment, he was glad to be learning it.

“Let’s try to make a big sun next,” Caltyr suggested excitedly. He dissipated his half of the light show and began to summon a pinprick of light between two parallel hands.

Just like Malika had helped him do.

He rose it into the air. It was difficult to contain; light wanted to burst every which way and resisted staying in one concentrated point. But he held it there with deep concentration. Slowly, he began to spin it and turn it in on itself, and it started to grow.

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“Sure!” The light teacher added more light into the core of his light ball, and it grew by three sizes. Then ten.

Caltyr began to lose control of the sphere now that it was so huge. There was so much more surface area to control all of a sudden and stray light beams began to spray erratically throughout the room.

“Um, I might be able to help with that, Caltyr,” Miss Malika offered with a soft smile. She held out her hands like she was in front of a campfire and the pressure was instantly removed from him.

“Thanks,” he puffed, and wiped his forehead. There was no sweat there, but it was the principle.

“Could you try to just add more light with me?”

“Yeah. Let’s see how big we can get this thing.” He grinned and began to inject the ball with a metric ton of pure beam power. He stuffed it so full of rays it looked like it wanted to vomit. The mini sun expanded and became bigger than Malika, and then bigger than him, and then almost as big as Kraven!

Malika’s eyes widened in delight. “We’re doing it!” she shouted. Even her shouting was just a normal person’s regular speaking volume, but he could tell from her exuberance that this was shouting for her.

Caltyr suddenly noticed how very quiet the classroom was.

The battles raging around them had quelled to nothing. Everyone’s attention was focused on the light orb overhead, and on the two who’d made it.

“Damn it, I told you we should’ve invited him to our group,” whispered an orange-tinted dragon saltily.

“Come on, he’s one of the new guys. New guys aren’t supposed to be good at stuff!”

“He’s literally got white in his scales, Gurp.” The orange dragon turned away from their team member and sulked dramatically.

Hearing that somebody had considered adding him to their team made Caltyr feel less cruddy.

“Come on, everyone get back to it. We only have so much time before it’s the other group’s turn,” Malika warned her class.

They slowly returned to their own practice battles.

Caltyr hadn’t taken his eyes off of their sun-like sphere. It was swelling up to a truly gargantuan size. “This is crazy. We might have to go outside soon!”

“We very well might,” Malika agreed. The walls were getting dangerously close to their creation.

The light teacher’s bright eyes were washed out with the beams from their makeshift sun. Her scales were painting the sides of the mountain still, and she looked… calm.

“Malika, there’s been something I’ve been wanting to ask you,” Caltyr said softly. This was as good a time as any.

The orb flickered. “What is it?” She wondered if they were finally going to talk about it. Her hand delicately pressed against where she had been torn again.

“I’m in a situation where I need some rare flowers, and I’ve heard you’re the one to go to for that. Do you know where I might be able to find some? I need the rarest in the area.” He considered adding in that she ‘owed T’allyandria one’, but was he really in the position to potentially threaten her? He had no idea what her deal was with the shadow dragon.

“... flowers?” she asked, utterly dumbfounded. The shell around the ball disappeared completely, and the light exploded into the room, unimpeded. “After all this time, and after how my chest looks, and after what happened to Miss Tavren, the first thing you want to talk to me about is flowers?”

The light dragon’s face broke through the explosion of bright white, and she looked livid, but quietly so. Hearing her restrained anger whispered rather than screamed almost made it more intimidating.

Fuck. He really should have brought up Miss Tavren first, their one common link, and apologized. He had been meaning to, but… He opened his mouth to respond.

“Caltyr!” shouted a voice from the doorway.