Sara had hit him once, and he’d hit Sara once. But Sara was the only one who had inflicted any hurt. He would have to fix that.

Caltyr opened up the great well he had access to, a river of water thrusting out of nowhere and dumping onto the council floor like a tidal wave.

Sara hopped away from it and flapped easily into the air, but Caltyr concentrated and pulled it upward to follow her. She used her wings to maneuver around the column of water. “You’re not going to catch me,” she taunted.

But he didn’t need to catch her. He allowed the water to fall back down to the ground and coat it in a thin sheen of water.

The lightning dragon looked at the pool her opponent was now standing in, dumbfounded. “Don’t you ever learn?” she asked with a scathing chuckle, before calling forth three bright lines of energy from above and throwing them downward with intensity.

As quick as the bolts were, Caltyr had to be quicker. He pushed a frosty cold from his feet outward, crystalizing the water from one end of the room to the other and jumping upward. His jumping body narrowly passed the lightning just as it hit the ice.

It discharged and exploded horizontally across the floor.

Caltyr created three pinpoints of light at three of the edges of the room, and curved the ice there upward. He waited for the lightning to travel to the outer edges of the room and just as it snaked its way over to the walls, he heated the pinpoints and fired the electricity back upward across the planes of ice. He reflected it back up to Sara with lasers.

The electricity had split into forks, and when it was given a place to go all of it followed, so suddenly the energy was fired into the sky in a pattern that looked like a spider’s web being built by a million frenzied spiders.

Caltyr pressed himself to the cold of the earth and looked upward just in time to see a panic-stricken Sara get hit by a tapestry of fizzing light and pain.

She fell from the air like a wounded bird. The sound of her hitting the ice echoed loudly through the council chamber.

Caltyr stood there, as frozen as the earth, his eyes wide and focused. Had he fucking killed her?

Her body lay there, unflinching. The water dragon took a step backward in trepidation. He considered using his light powers to do a shoddy job at healing her, or even his forbidden flesh ones to push her flesh back together like dough. Did they even work that way?

He would try it to not get expelled, but then, with Kraven here watching him so intensely, would the use of his powers slip under the radar? Or would that get him cast out too?

Was he about to get banished either way?

“You really… You really got me there,” rasped Sara as she wobbled to her feet.

Caltyr sighed in relief.

“But I’m not going to let some dumb human sympathizer with wrong opinions defeat me!” Sara buoyed forth like she had been shot from a loaded gun and brought one, two, three thin lines of lightning along with her.

He blinked and in the time it took for his lids to move down and up again, she was right in front of this face. His vision went white hot.

She smacked into Caltyr’s center mass and the two of them slid backward and crashed into the wall so hard pieces came away.

His brain was too rattled for him to cast. All three bolts flowed through him and crackled across the wall. His head throbbed with a split-second headache of epic proportions. “Sara, I have no idea what your problem is. But at least half the council agreed with me too, so I can’t be all wrong!”

Caltyr closed his eyes and called forth a veil of pure light to shine between them.

Sara hissed at the brightness burning into her retinas. She peeled off of him and took clumsily to the sky, holding her face. Her body was covered in cracks and blistering from the massive hit she had taken. The superheated charge had emboldened her usual scars which, of course, had come from his powers in their youth.

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

“That’s enough,” Delphine’s voice cut in. It seemed she had been thinking something similar; that Sara couldn’t, or shouldn’t, continue.

“No!” Sara shrieked, blinking the water out of her feral eyes. “I can still fight him!”

“Sara, the elements have made their determination. There’s nothing to be done anymore,” the beige dragon informed her coolly, looking Sara up and down.

Some of her vibrancy had faded, as if her powers had drained. And perhaps they had.

Caltyr looked down at his own scales, and they were practically glowing. No, not even practically, they actually were! Like a blue lantern that guided others in the night, the white tips of his scales were streaking with a bright hum.

The lightning dragon wailed with shrieking sorrow as her eyes adjusted and she saw her opponent glowing, and her own neon color draining.

“Sara, I have been through many battles in my life, and one of the most important skills I’ve learned has been when to admit defeat,” Kraven said from the back of the room, climbing over the protective shielding of the desk-like plane in front of him. “That doesn’t mean you’ve lost the war, just this battle.”

Sara seethed so hard that the ice around her feet splintered like glass. She stood on the shattered ground, physically quaking. “I haven’t… I haven’t lost!”

All her pent up energy helped her leap toward Caltyr and to her credit, she reached him before he could lift a finger. But not before Kraven and Delphine could. The ground beneath him rose into a pillar-like shape, flinging him into the air, where he instinctively caught himself with his leathery wings.

Kraven whipped out his massive tail to physically block her, and she crashed into his battle hardened scales with an audible ‘oof’.

The air left her body as she clotheslined herself, and she backed up, clutching her thoroughly emptied lungs.

“Sara, you’re not acting very heroic right now.” Caltyr quipped from above her as his wings kept him aloft.

Even with a face full of elder, she looked up at him with burning eyes. “I AM BEING HEROIC! We can’t just let the humans in, my mom won’t let it happen!”

The water dragon’s head tilted in visible confusion. All of them were in this place because they’d been abandoned by their parents, either in death or because they had other things to do than look after their spawn. Was Sara in contact with her parents? Or was there something else going on here?

Caltyr realized how little he knew about the others around him, in that moment, but it hadn’t been his choice, he reminded himself.

Sara pushed him away constantly and could hardly be called a friend. She was more like an enemy. But he hadn’t even heard rumors about what kind of life she arrived at their school with.

As for T’allyandria and Vermonysis… Perhaps he would have to talk to them later.

He had only had adolescent friendships, ones that rarely delved beyond who was going to play what role at recess. But now that he was older, that sort of friendship felt somehow hollow. He would have to try to learn about his friends. That might mean he would have to touch upon his own past, but if he expected others to share, why shouldn’t he?

He looked down upon the yellow dragon with a mixture of confusion and pity.

“Your mother isn’t here right now, Sara. It’s just you, and you’re fighting against the council,” he stated wearily, trying to inject a kindness into his voice, though he wouldn’t be the source she wanted to receive kindness from right now.

“Sara, once you’re feeling more emotionally regulated, we’re going to need to have a discussion,” Delphine stated in a forcibly neutral tone, like when a teacher was talking down to a particularly wild student.

Realization dawned upon the lightning dragon’s face. She whipped her head toward the crowd of distinguished dragons still sitting in their seats, taking them in with horror as if they hadn’t been there all along.

“I’m… sorry,” she whispered, pulling her head down as she moved quickly out of the council chambers.

“My apologies as well, council,” Delphine said, moving up to the raised platform in the middle of the room. “In the commotion, I forgot to officially declare the victor. Caltyr, backed by the elements Water and Light, your cause has been decided to be the most worthy.”

More than half of the dragons who were present began to thud their tails against the ground, shaking the room. The aura of light that had formed around the water-and-light dragon swelled valiantly as he stared dumbfoundedly into the crowd.

That he had won was obvious, but that the majority of the council seemed pleased made his eyes sting. It had been so long since he’d seen so many faces look so happy in his proximity, because of something he had done with his powers.

“This means that we must begin making space for this human. That shouldn’t be a problem, considering its size. Emily, was it?” The council leader looked toward the human girl to confirm her name.

Emily was blubbering in her seat, mushing her tears away with her bare arms. “I’m Emiwy,” she declared wetly, struggling to enunciate, “and thank you fow not… taking me back to the othew humans and eating me in fwont of them.

“That wouldn’t be vewy nice.” The crying kid took a moment to look toward the dragon who had suggested such a thing with a scathing look, as if committing a ‘not vewy nice’ act was the pinnacle of villainy.