Mel was getting ready to leave her dorm room and walk the path up to the dragon forge when a knock on the door startled her.
“What is it?” she asked.
The door swung open and revealed one of her guards and Austin standing behind her. Mel sucked in a breath, feeling her body tense. Austin had told her the last time they saw each other that he wouldn’t be able to come by her room anymore. An unsettling feeling made her stomach churn, and Mel hoped he wasn’t here to deliver bad news.
Austin strode inside and the guard closed the door behind him. He gave Mel a small smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. The piercing blue of his irises was filled with pain, and Mel reached her hand out to him, circling her fingers around his wrist.
“What happened?”
“I tested the dagger last night,” he said. “It worked but also didn’t, not like I thought it would.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I sank the dagger into the beast and activated the lava spell, I think. I’m not sure, but I felt the metal melt inside the monster and it reacted to it. Like it hurt the beast in a twisting, painful sort of way. But it didn’t die from the spell. At most it lost control of one leg. But that’s it. There wasn’t a bigger reaction than the metal just melting inside its flesh. I’m sorry, but I don’t think it’ll be able to kill the dragon.”
“Oh, okay,” Mel said.
She rocked back on her feet, releasing her grip around his wrist and pulling away into herself. Her forehead creased, and she wondered what she could do to fix the weapon. Maybe she could tweak it somehow, make it bigger? But then they wouldn’t be able to attach the magical imbues as arrowheads and get it up to the dragon in the first place.
Austin was quiet, looking down at the floor between them, his shoulders slumped. Mel observed him for a moment, feeling something else lurking behind his features.
“Did something else happen?”
“Not really. It was just a long night.”
Mel scrunched up her nose, feeling like he wasn’t telling her everything. “Please, talk to me.”
Austin’s gaze lifted and caught hers. His expression surprised that she wanted to know.
“It’s just that someone got hurt under my command. I have this massive ball of guilt in my stomach that doesn’t want to release me from its grip. I’m not sure what to do. They’re looking for me to lead because of my brother, because of my last name, but I don’t want to. Not when my decisions, my choices, will cause people to get hurt.”
Mel cocked her head to one side, staring at him. She didn’t know what to say. It was clear to her that Austin was having trouble fighting in the war and that too much responsibility was resting on his shoulders. She knew how that felt. She felt it too. The responsibility of fixing everything, of killing the dragon, weighing her down.
“Who got hurt?” Mel asked.
“An elemental warrior. He was old, probably retired, but pulled back into duty by my brother’s or father's hand. Now he’s in the hospital.”
Mel nodded. “Then maybe it wasn’t your decision that got him there, maybe it was your father’s or Derek’s.”
“I can’t think like that. I laid out the plan to test the dagger on the beast. It was because of me. If we’d stayed put, none of this would have happened.”
“Perhaps, or maybe something even more terrible would have happened. We make mistakes and have to live with them, move on from them. We can’t stop trying just because everything doesn’t go the way we want them to. We have to push on, try again, hope we’ll make better decisions in the future.”
Austin shook his head, opened his mouth, but then closed it again. He dragged a hand over his face, exhaling in a long sigh. “I don’t want to become Derek. Someone who doesn’t care about the mess he creates and just moves forward like a machine. Someone who doesn’t flinch when people die under his command.”
“I know. But I don’t think you ever will be. You’re trying so hard to do the right thing, and I know you’re doing your best. But I think you are running a bigger risk in pulling back and refusing to take command than you are in becoming callous. Maybe you should try to push yourself in the direction of forgiving and accepting mistakes, not beat yourself up over them.”
Austin gave her a flat stare. “Is that what you’re doing?”
Mel took a step back from him, swallowing. She hadn’t expected him to ask her about her decisions. She’d just wanted to give him advice, not have the tables turned on her.
“I’m…yes, I’m trying to. I know Aldrion needs me to create a weapon that can kill the dragon. So that’s my focus now, even though some of my choices aren’t completely white, maybe more in the gray area. I think they're necessary to push forward and I’ll accept the consequences of them.”
“Even if it means it’s your fault, too, that an elemental warrior is in the hospital now? Even if it had been me?”
Mel reared back, feeling his questions like a hot knife to her belly. “Why are you asking me this? Are you trying to make me feel bad? To make me stop?”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Austin shook his head. “No, I’m sorry that what I’m saying is coming out as insensitive. I just want to know. These are the questions I’m grappling with. I just thought maybe I could find answers in how you are dealing with these things yourself. It was perhaps stupid of me to think you could relieve my guilt. You shouldn’t need to do that.”
Mel took a deep breath and released it, feeling her anger dialing back. “It’s okay. I get that you’re having a hard time now. I’m having a pretty hard time, too.” She glanced around the room, making herself and Austin aware of her current prison. “But I don’t know what else I can do other than hope for the best and try to move forward. If I stop, if we stop, then we’ll all die. You know that.”
Austin nodded, his gaze sinking down to the floor again. He took a step back toward the door, just as one of the guards pulled it open. He didn’t look at her again and didn’t say anything more. He just left Mel alone in her dorm room.
She hated how things had ended between them, but she thought she understood him. The pressure of everything was coming down on them hard and it was difficult keeping hope present in their minds.
#
Mel sat down in front of Will in the small classroom at the dragon forge. Master Foss was already here. His gaze searched the room and then landed on Mel. There was determination burning behind his eyes, and the pressure in her body eased. She’d dreaded coming here after talking to Austin this morning, but something told her now that maybe Master Foss had good news.
Meredith entered last and sat down, a confused look on her face. Master Foss stared at her and just when her backside had hit the chair, he spoke. “We got the approval. Headmaster Lorken has agreed to let us experiment with double imbues. I think we should spend today working on the arrowheads. What do you think?”
Master Foss looked out over the room with an excited air, but he was met with quiet hesitation. A frown spread over his forehead and Master Foss rocked back on his feet.
“Did you tell Headmaster Lorken the truth? Or did you bend it like we suggested?” Meredith asked.
Master Foss’ easy-going attitude vanished, and he looked down at the floor. “I might have implied that the experiment would be riskier than perhaps it will be. But who knows, things could still go wrong. I think it was still in the realms of truth.”
“So, we’re doing this, then? Going behind Headmaster Lorken and the governor’s backs? Crafting the arrows and shooting the dragon down, right?” Will asked.
A tense silence stretched across the room, as if no one wanted to touch what Will had said. Mel felt a pressing sense of ignoring what he’d said all together, like it was treason to agree with his statements. Perhaps it even was.
“Look, we need to kill the dragon,” Master Foss said, dragging a hand through his beard. “I’d rather do it with the governor's approval and with the sanction from Headmaster Lorken. But as things are today, I don’t see that happening. Lorken is bent on us failing, and I can see now that Meredith was right. He won’t approve of the experiments if it's not a huge risk of making us look bad. I suspect we won’t get his approval to continue at all if this next experiment succeeds.”
Master Foss sighed. “I hate to say this, but I think it’s best if the five of us agree to keep our experiments on the double imbue between us. I think it’s best if we have a finished product we can use before we present anything to Headmaster Lorken or the governor.”
There was mumbling and nodding going on in the classroom, but no one went right out and said yes to his statement. Mel’s throat constricted, and she knew she had to deliver the bad news from Austin now. Even if they hadn’t explicitly stated they were on the same page, she trusted these people more than perhaps she should have.
“I met with Austin today,” she said. “He tested out the first double imbue last night on a beast and it didn’t work. Not like we thought it would at least. The blade melted inside the beast and hurt it, but it didn’t die from it. I can’t be sure if it’s because the imbue wasn’t strong enough or his spell was weak or if the idea itself won’t work. But I think we should consider this when making more experiments and make sure it’ll work on the dragon. Make sure it will actually kill it, not only hurt it.”
The room’s eyes were on her, and Mel swallowed hard. She felt like this was not their failure, but her own in some way. She knew they’d come up with the idea together, but somewhere inside a voice told her she'd made a mistake. She wasn’t good enough. She needed to try harder.
Mel’s hands clutched tight in her lap and her eyes stung from the sudden emotions swirling up.
“Maybe we need something more to spread the lava spell inside the monster,” Dean said. “If we get it in there, how do we make sure it spreads around, infecting the entire creature, killing it from the inside?”
Master Foss shook his head. “That sounds like we might need more than just a double imbue. That sounds a lot like what Lorken is doing. I’m not sure we should walk down that path, the one with explosions and unknown consequences.”
“But isn’t this entire thing something unknown,” Meredith said. “Double imbues are scary and unstable. Melting metal inside a creature is not known to anyone but us. What if Headmaster Lorken is right? What if his invention might work?”
“What do you mean?” Dean asked.
Meredith turned to look at him. “Well, what if the arrowheads were made with Lorken’s invention, not ours? Small explosions that were activated when they’re inside the dragon?”
Mel’s heart surged, and she watched Meredith for a moment with a surprised feeling welling up. Could that really work?
“Headmaster Lorken is using fire imbues with a wind imbue in the center. The elemental warriors activate the fire magic surrounding the wind imbue and make it detonate,” Mel said. “I’ve seen it once before, in Windbrook. There was this boy, Dorian, who threw in a magical weapon imbued with wind inside the bonfire on Equinox Day. It made the entire thing explode out in a big arc around the bonfire… I think Headmaster Lorken is doing the same thing.”
Master Foss cocked an eyebrow at her, and the corner of his lips tugged slightly. “Yes, that is essentially what the new weapon is. Interesting, you figured it out, Melissa. But unfortunately it won’t work. The fire needs air to fuel it. Not even magical dragon fire can burn without a steady supply of air and if the arrowhead was inside the dragon when trying to activate it, it wouldn’t burn. At least not to any significant degree. Not enough to destroy the wind imbue.”
Meredith raised her hand, like she needed permission to speak in this room. Master Foss gave her a flat, tired look, and she smiled sheepishly, lowering her hand. “Sorry, I just got so excited. I have an idea. What if we use the double imbue instead of the fire imbue? That way, we melt the metal around the center of a wind item and it will get hot enough to destroy the imbue and unleash the wind inside. Won’t that work?”
Meredith looked over at Master Foss, and Mel turned to regard him as well. He dragged a hand through his beard and stared off at some distant point above them all. He muttered to himself, and his forehead creased.
“Perhaps,” he said. “It won’t get hot enough to actually melt the titanium, but maybe it doesn’t have to. If what Melissa said is true, that a wind item can detonate in a bonfire, then perhaps it doesn’t need the same heat when the metal is imbued.”