The voice belonged to Vermonysis. He poked his red-and-yellow head in and waved for Caltyr in a wide, attention-catching arc with one of his wings.

Caltyr cursed under his breath. “Vermonysis, just a minut—”

“No, go with him,” Malika said, with a bite to her words. “I’ve got students to instruct. Somebody over on the other side of the room needs my help.”

She turned and walked away so expeditiously that her tail made a whipping noise.

Caltyr stood there in a daze of guilt, sorrow, and a bunch of other feelings of negativity. He considered going after her, but his feet felt leaden and stuck to the earth. He hadn’t succeeded in growing closer to Malika, nor had he gotten the location of the flowers he needed.

And he’d made the only dragon in the room who wanted to be on his team upset.

“I really need you to get moving!” bellowed Vermonysis, with both of his hands cupped around the end of his face to form a makeshift megaphone.

Caltyr shook his head to drive away the negative thoughts descending upon him like falcons. “I’m coming!”

He met Vermonysis in the doorway, and was pulled out into the hallway with haste.

“Hey, man. We’ve got to get going.” Vermonysis took a few steps and then looked back to see if his blue buddy was following.

Caltyr checked the black necklace around his neck. It had been chattering occasionally with the far-off sounds of a child playing, but he hadn’t heard any Emily-themed emergencies filtering through. “Is Emily alright?”

“Yeah, Emily’s fine. I’m not sure how much I’m allowed to say, but you and I have been chosen to go out on a patrol. And everyone’s waiting for us, so we should really get moving.” Even as he finished his sentence, he was jerking his head to the side as if to tug him away. Mentally, with his mind.

He felt shitty just leaving things like this, but even if he ran back into the run and found Malika again, he couldn’t guarantee he would say the right thing. Maybe time really would be the best remedy, in this case.

Or was this just him falling back into old patterns?

“Lead the way,” he heard himself say.

Vermonysis bolted away, and Caltyr had to run until he felt his legs burning to catch up. All these lightning dragons were too damn fast. They were moving so hastily the details were blurring.

He hardly even noticed when they made it to their destination.

Caltyr was surprised to see the room he was being rushed into wasn’t the council chambers, after the week he’d had.

Instead, he found himself in a smaller chamber with shelves, slats lined up, human-shaped beds fused together to make Frankenstein’s monster-looking dragon beds, and a bunch of salvaged goods and weapons. It looked like there were enough supplies here to last several years, and there was a pair of sealed doors up against the back wall. If he had to guess, that was where they kept the good stuff.

Kraven was taking residence on three of the modified beds, his belly sagging between the gaps. He cracked open his eye when he and Vermonysis hurried inside. “Is that all of ‘ya?”

“That’s everyone I got told to go find,” Vermonysis responded.

“Okay,” Kraven croaked as he peeled himself off the floor and bed sets, leaving them mussed, “now that you’re all here, gather ‘round and listen up.” He stood up tall and his horns nearly scraped the rocky ceiling.

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The dragons present formed a bubble around him. There weren’t many in attendance; there were three others besides him and Vermonysis, and he’d seen all three faces on the rare occasion they had an assembly to give awards to high performing students. All three were students from the ‘new school’ that he’d never talked to, who had received all kinds of awards; and they were some of the biggest hitters on free casting days.

The burst of pride that filled his chest at being called in along with them filled up some of the space inside him that was being taken up with a tiny, imaginary version of himself yelling about flowers and difficult conversations in the recesses of his mind.

“Alright, so you might have heard about other groups being sent out on patrol today.” He looked down at them expectantly.

They nodded in unison.

“Well, those groups are out doing important work, but it’s nothing compared to what I’m going to ask you to do. You’ve been selected because you’re all skilled casters and some of the top students in our school, and we need you to go out on a top secret mission. Let me emphasize the word secret here; if you spread this around, I’ll fucking know. Do you understand me?”

Being threatened by someone the size of a skyscraper had a way of infusing terror into a person. Caltyr nodded once, but inside he was nodding a hundred times. The dragons who would be inside his exclusive, secret group nodded along as well. It occurred to him that none of them had said a single word in response yet.

“I understand, Kraven. If this gets out, it won’t be because of me,” Caltyr replied with a scaled hand to his chest.

“Good.” He squinted down at Caltyr with suspicion in his moss-coloured peepers, and then continued. “So, I’m sure you’ve heard news of there being demons around now. You may have heard it in passing, or particularly from the mouths of humans, since they’re out in the world now more than we are. Damned mana eaters, taking the globe away from us.”

The man went to start pacing, but the room was so small in comparison to his body size that he would only be able to weave in tight circles. “Anyway, I wanted to tell you that we haven’t just been ignoring them. They’ve been becoming a more pressing topic around campus as more dragons get sent out on patrols and run into them. Some have even not returned. We need you to go out into the world and gather as much information on these demons as you can.”

Caltyr remembered the two humans he’d seen while getting the skull for T’allyandria. They had been concerned about a demon problem as well.

“What we want out of you is for you to see if you can kill one. With your elements.” He shifted his piercing gaze downward at Caltyr specifically, showing him he hadn’t mysteriously forgotten about his ability. “Bonus points if you find out where they came from and why they’re here. I have a hunch, but mine isn’t very promising for dragonkind, so I’m hoping you can prove me wrong.”

“How long will we be out for? I’ve got a test later today,” one of the three dragons he didn’t know interjected worriedly.

“You’ll all be allowed retests when you’re back for any tests you miss by being away, and we expect you to be gone for three days, give or take. We’ll also provide you with armor, rations, and communications stones that will connect you to me personally. But don’t contact me just to chat, or I’ll shit in your lunchbox. Get in touch with me when you learn anything important, when you have pressing questions, and if you run into trouble you can’t handle.”

They nodded again to show that they understood.

“Don’t engage large groups of demons. That’s where the others went wrong. They may seem weak, but they’re relentless and the bastards never die. My advice? Try trapping them instead of killing them outright, and only fight two or three at a time. Any more than that and you should be finding a way to leave.”

Kraven gestured toward the pile of weapons on the floor.

“Find yourself a weapon if that’s your speed. We have lunches already packed away in slings, and the armor’s in the back. Try some on until one fits you. A properly fitted suit should move with you, not against you, and sit flush against your stomach. You should be able to fly with it on. Now if you have any last minute business to attend to, hop to it. You have 20 minutes before it’s time to go.”

A hand shot up into the sky, belonging to the smallest-looking of the three dragons Caltyr hadn’t met before.

“Yes, Fellithe?” Kraven boomed.

“Are we going to get paid for this, or are any awards going to be given out for our service? My hoard really thinned out during my spring cleaning last year.”

The wartorn dragon sighed in a pained way. “A reward? You kids these days, always looking for some kind of pat on the back. Back in my day, we did what we had to do without so much as a pretty rock as a reward. We went up mountain sides both ways to get to our enemies. How about, as a reward, you’ll feel safer living here knowing you’ve just killed some of what’s killing us? How about, as a fun treat, you’ll get to keep on being alive tomorrow? Is that enough of a reward for you?”

“Yes,” squeaked Fellithe.