Elly’s interest in dragons hadn’t dulled one bit. He waited until everyone was asleep before he sneaked into the library in the middle of the night. He flew around until he found a handful of books that might help. They floated along the way behind him as he went to sit.

Once he sat, they put themselves in a neat stack before him. 5 books.

He began with the top book, opened it, and skimmed the table of contents. Most of the topics intrigued him, and so, he decided.

The first book talked about elemental dragons and their histories in great detail.

His eyes devoured the pages.

Most dragons had just one elemental affinity and could only use that element. Dark and Light dragons were the most interesting. They were different from the other types and were the rarest. Light dragons had white flames. Dark dragons had black flames. That made sense. And the dark and light ones could travel to other dimensions and worlds.

Now that he thought about it, he hadn’t explored the light and dark elements much. Based on the book, it seemed that most people had no affinities for either of the elements. They were much more common in other realms. Like for angels and demons.

He would research those elements some other time because right now, his interest was in dragons! That would be a refreshing break from constantly studying his usual categories of spells.

The books made small references to other beings too, like unicorns, which was cool.

1 book led to another and another until he had a desk with 10-20. Of course, it would take him a while to get through these. A couple days. A week or 2. Of course, he would maybe skip pages along the way because some of these books were encyclopedia-sized.

Night after night, he came back and spent a few hours on the books until it became a necessary ritual. If he didn’t read about dragons and magical unicorns or something bizarre, he couldn’t sleep.

~~~

At the table, Elly could hardly keep his eyes open. Every now and then, his head leaned downwards, but then he woke up just in time to stop it from falling on the table.

His breakfast was getting cold, but he couldn’t help himself. Finishing the other half of his warm sweetroll was impossible. A big task for a small boy. And he had already spilled the lemonade from his glass across the table by accident.

For the longest while, Sapphire stared at him, sipping her juice from her mug.

“Have you been staying up late?” she finally asked.

He probably took a whole minute to understand the question. “...Of course… not…”

“It’s not good for you. You need to go to bed early.”

“...’Kay… Mommy…” He managed to keep his eyes half open.

“What—?! I’m not your—”

He kept his eyes open long enough to see the heavy redness in Sapphire’s face.

Can dragons swim underwater? Just the water ones, I think. They were blue. Water was blue. That made sense. Swim like fishes. “Fishy, fishy, fish…” he mumbled.

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“Fish?” Sapphire didn’t get it.

“Yes… Fish… Do you… like fish…” Elly stared down at the table, fighting the difficult battle of staying awake. He didn’t have the energy to look across the table at her. The distance was too far.

“Sure...”

“And… squid?”

“What’s a squid?”

“A thing.”

“A thing?”

“Yeah… a thing…”

“Sure…”

“In water.”

“A thing in water?”

He gave the slightest nod and yawned. Fish, squid, dragon, swim, swim… He couldn’t straighten his thoughts.

~~~

After a 3-hour nap, he woke up, and it was noon. He was so full of energy that he was convinced that he could wrestle a bear and win. Maybe he could find one. Did bears exist here?

He met Sapphire outside at their usual training spot: a large clearing in a nearby forest.

They practiced combination spells. The biggest challenge with these spells was that they required several sets of highly complicated formulas that all had to be converted to soundless incantations and executed at the same time, which was why having multiple spellcasters would make the execution smooth and easy for each caster. The casters had to be in sync.

“Ready?” Sapphire called from her end.

“Ready,” he replied.

Sapphire lifted her right hand.

Elly lifted his right hand too with some formulas in mind.

Slowly, they both swiped their index fingers rightwards across the air., stretching their arms to full length. Two strings of symbols popped up, one before each of them. Sapphire had a blue string. Elly had a red one.

As she pointed at him, he didn’t point back in time.

Both strings of symbols fizzled and faded away.

“You’re too slow.”

“No, you’re too fast,” he countered. “You need to give the wordless incantations time to absorb more energy from your fingertip before the next step.”

“Tch.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re mad that I’m right, aren’t you?” Elly turned smug.

“No.”

He saw the suppressed aggression in her eyes but would say nothing more. Being corrected by a child must’ve hurt her ego.

They tried again. Sapphire was still too quick by half a second.

“Ugh, can’t we take shortcuts?” Sapphire asked.

“Maybe…” He needed more time to think about it.

14 hours later

Elly was tired, but he wanted to keep going for a while longer, especially for Sapphire. She was hellbent on mastering some formulas.

They converted formula after formula after formula, weaving them into one another. The flow was steady and consistent as last. They had to be on point to connect and maintain the long chain of formulas. It was like a dance. Naturally, he took the lead, stepping into her and guiding her as they twirled their fingers around one another. By now, thousands of symbols floated around in the air.

They weren’t actually practicing spellcasting but the energy-infused formulas needed to generate the combination spells. The fundamentals.

Elly had invented about a dozen shortcuts to skip many of the steps, but they weren’t enough.

“Okay, stop.”

Sapphire stopped. “Hm?”

Mentally, Elly held up all the symbols around them so they wouldn’t disappear. He had the mana to spare. “This is silly. We need a shortcut.”

“Another one?”

“Not just any. One to skip all the formulas for all the combinations.”

Sapphire looked dubious and worried. “It’s past your bedtime. You’re tired.”

“What? I’m serious.”

She was already walking him inside, holding him by the wrist.

Ugh.

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