It was nice to sit and chatter with Rhainnon as well as to meet several of the people who worked as maids within the castle. Rosalea was relieved that it felt like not only had she and Rhainnon not fought, but that they were able to openly be around each other that hadn’t quite been true in Mire. It was even nice to see Oralee loosen up and play games a bit. Rosalea slept well that night, and she enjoyed breakfast. She was even pleased, but also a little embarrassed, that after her off-handed comment about not liking to look icy, there was clothing with warm yellows and blues for her today.

She had been contemplating going outside again when the dragon arrived. “Good morning, Rosalea.”

She felt herself grow a little tense instinctually, but she nodded agreement. She still felt uncertain about his ability to control her, but she felt a bit more free now and a lot like he was trying to help her in some ways.

“Come with me outside,” he suggested as she did not particularly answer him with words or her thoughts. She nodded as he turned to leave the room, and she trailed along behind him. As they walked through the hall, “For the first part of your lessons, we need to go to a more remote place. I shall be flying us both there.” With no further warning, he wrapped his tail about her middle once again.

Rosalea could not stop herself from squeaking as she felt the grip of his tail around her mid-section, and she closed her eyes tight as he lifted her over his back and set her on his shoulders. She supposed that at least she did not yell with surprise, which was definitely the impulse she had smothered with that squeak. She breathed out a huff. All these people touching her the last few days was more than she had experienced in almost two years. As his walk shifted his shoulders back and forth, she had to hang onto him. You know you are not like a horse and not easy to just ride, she thought despite herself.

His chuckle at her rumbled through her knees and thighs as she hung onto him. “I will not allow you to fall.” She braced as he put his wings out, and she worried he was about to beat them so he could leave the ground. However, he levitated himself upwards with his magic until he caught a breeze and began coasting away from the castle. It is so far down, was a thought that was instantly followed by a wave of dizziness and anxiety.

“I will not allow you to fall,” he reminded her again. She still felt tense, and she finally just clung to him with her eyes shut so she could not see the ground far below her. “I do have magic to help you if you lose your balance. You will not fall.”

I understand, she thought to him, but she didn’t feel like she could relax.

They flew in silence for a few more moments and Rosalea took a deep breath and slowly looked out. For the first time, she got a little sense of how big the dragon's estate was. She could see the castle behind them and it was surrounded on all sides by cultivated lands. There were pastures and fields. The landscape in some of the pastures were dotted with animals. Kaylar was warm beneath her, which was nice, because the wind produced by his slow flying was pretty chilly at this height.

***

Kaylar breathed in and then out and couldn’t help but smirk a little. For someone that does not like me being in your head, you’re certainly quick to just fall back on thinking answers at me. It was definitely different than what he was used to when dealing with people. He hoped that handling her a little more often and directly like this would continue to desensitize her to all the fear she obviously felt. “We are going to land soon.”

I understand, she thought at him again, and she pressed her arms about him just a little more tightly. She got still more tense when he tipped them forward, so he glided slowly down ward. He caught himself with his magic and landed gently. They were in an open meadow some distance away from anything interesting. He crouched so that she could slide off of him.

“The goal for today is to teach you to better use your essa magic. Every mage has it, mages with multiple types of magics have more of it.” He watched her as she walked a little away from him, until she was out of reach of him easily grabbing her again, and then she looked up at him.

“Ulric said it was like raw magic,” she said.

“A teacher you had before?”

She turned pink, feeling as though she had said something revealing, but in reality he did not know and would not have known who this Ulric person was. She nodded yes.

“It is close. The healing magic you used was a deep magic, see? Essa is a deep magic. Essa is the magic below the surface. It makes barriers, moves things, can extend the time you spend using a magic of one type and can also allow you to wield multiple types of magic at once. It is raw in the sense that it is not bound to a given element within you.” He didn’t tell her that this wouldn’t be the only day they would work on it. He didn’t tell her that no one he had taught was able to learn it even after practicing every day for weeks. It was always repetition, exhaustion, and then one day it would just click.

He moved some distance away from her, to allow room for her to respond to what he was about to ask her to do. “We are going to practice fighting with magic so that you will have to be resourceful. The more resourceful and pressured you are, the more likely you are to reach the concept in your head. I have watched you focus on one element at a time to do what you want to with magic. I am going to push you past that. Therefore, I will allow you to try your first attack on me. Put some effort into it, or it won’t even tickle.”

“What?!”

Kaylar smirked. “Hit me with something, Rosalea! Or I will hit you!” And he lobbed a loose, but significant ball of raw Essa magic at her.

***

He’s a stupid thought wizard, she thought despite her continued attempts not to think too much in front of the dragon. She ran away from the spot the giant doom ball of silvery magic was angled toward than attempt to face it. He does not even have to hardly look where he is using magic; he does not even have to see his target for his mind spells to work. Also, he is a dragon! He is probably ten times stronger than I am. She didn’t want to think in front of him, but here she could not both react to him and monitor what her thoughts were doing.

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The essa magic blast he sent cut into the earth and scorched it a little as she scooted out of the way of it. He can just think and magic just happens for him, so I cannot just watch his body language to figure out what might happen next.

“Come on, Rosalea, you’ve been full of fight toward me this whole time, and I give you a window to freely attack me, and all you can think to do is run away?” the dragon antagonized.

She promptly resorted to a caelus blast of air at him. It would have taken any human or even horse right off their feet if she connected with that much ferocity. However, he had no trouble willing his essa magic into a barrier that the air was forced to break around.

He countered, leaving his barrier up and throwing another bit of actual raw magic at her, this time at a bigger size so that she would not be able to just run out of the way. She braced herself, forcing caelus magic out in front of her, forcing it solid like she used to stop arrows and walk through air. The pressure of the magic headed toward her burst through in spots, and she had to dance out of the way as she split the essa magic around herself. Dragon magic scored the hillside and there was a molten earth smell in the air.

“Come on now, Rosalea. I was more afraid of your magic when we were in the barn together, and you obviously had no control of any of it! You are the most magical human I have ever seen, and this is all that you can do?”

Another blast. This one was bigger still, and he knew she was running low on what she thought were the limits of her caelus magic. She was afraid before that he might just choose to rewire her mind. Now she was afraid he was going to blast her to bits with magic. I am really tired of being afraid, she thought, throwing her arms out to bring up another caelus-based barrier. A second later, she realized there was not close to enough of it, so instead, she shoved herself backwards with it, taking herself off her feet, but it sent her tumbling out of the area where the dragon’s blast of magic shattered the hill side.

She called out to the plants; grasses took energy from her and helped to grip her and stop her tumble. She found her feet and stood, looking up the hill now at a rather smug dragon.

“If you are tired of being afraid of me; you could try doing something to make me afraid of you. If I hit you again, what will you do? Sacrifice all those plants that just helped to save you? Is there enough water in the air to stop me? Look at the earth itself smolder after the magic hits it. Will you try to call the earth to jump in the way? Or will you do something more?”

As he antagonized her, she did look up at the sky, but there were no clouds. It would be an immense effort to call lightning at this point. She knew the grass beneath them wasn’t going to inhibit him if she attacked with it. There wasn’t moisture in the air because it was cold enough that most of it fell to the ground as frost this morning. She knew all of these things even as he rattled them off, and she had rarely been able to get the earth to do anything for her as direct as change shape. Even as she panicked and tried to think of what to do, he threw more magic at her.

She was holding her terra magic, and even though the ground didn’t do as she told it to, not like the air and water; she had been able to learn to do one thing on her own. She clenched her fist and pulled down, exerting a ton of magic into an area the blast was about to pass through, and it created such pressure of gravity and force that she brought the essa magic down to the ground where it blew up and rained the area with dirt clods and dust. She hadn’t even collected her thoughts when there was already another one coming, bearing down on her through the dust. It is going to hit me, I cannot do anything, she thought, paralyzed. She closed her eyes and expected the end…

After several moments of nothing happening, the dragon began to laugh. Rosalea opened her eyes to see the blast hovering casually in front of her. The dragon saw her backing up from it, and it dissipated. “Rosalea, you did not even fight back at the end. I expected… more.”

She was reminded suddenly of Ulric, which reminded her how much she really didn’t like this powerful beast that had imprisoned her. For a moment, she hated him.

“Interesting,” the dragon said as he approached her. “Most terra mages, by the way, which are inexperienced, don’t resort to gravity or pressure fields, but literally to ripping up chunks of earth and flinging them about. It’s the most simple terra magic.”

She stared up at him, What does that mean then?

He lowered his face to get more on her level with his eyes, turning his face to one side a bit, and she saw again how big he was compared to her. “I also find it interesting because the most intuitive thing to do with air is to let it flow, but you bully it around in practically solid sheets and use it to levitate, which is easier for most people to do with essa magic. Like it or not, your high pressure personality is showing in your magic, as well as your unwillingness to show anything deep or meaningful about yourself.” He smirked.

Rosalea felt herself blush and she folded her arms to her body as she felt very insecure. He continued, “I know you think for some reason you cannot be your true self around me. I know that you are afraid of me seeing through you, but I assure you, that in the end, I will understand you perfectly, and you will figure out how to understand me better. I do not particularly care if you have no experience being authentic, I will find a way to drag the real you out of you.”

He was so smug. It made her so infuriated at him that she felt, for just a moment, like she could not breathe. She had a flash of an impulse to shove his face away from her and tell him to back off, but she did not dare touch him. It was difficult to handle when he was the one initiating touches. She was not sure she could decide between which felt more awkward to her: meeting Nerric and knowing she was supposed to marry him or pressing herself to the scales on Kaylar’s neck, squishing frills down against her core, and feeling the shape of his scales against her cheek and the plates beneath her hands that lined his neck and belly.

He stood up straighter and stretched. “For a first attempt, it was meaningful. Tomorrow will be better because you will feel less insecure about fighting me, I suspect. To give you a little incentive, or maybe just something to struggle with, I will tell you what your thoughts and magic reveal about you again tomorrow, so you can get just as irked at me as you are now, preemptively.”

She suddenly realized what he was doing - what his approach had been since finding her in the barn when she thought he was Rhainnon. All of this has been calculated to throw me off balance so that you can reframe yourself in a new light to me, and then she flushed as she realized she had been thinking a lot all during the fight, and right after it, without realizing it. Shame and disappointment squeezed over her chest.

“You did think a lot. You are also a little right; I am indeed forcing you to have to figure out how to respond to situations you are not used to. At the same time, I do firmly believe it is beneficial for you to learn magic, and you obviously like doing it. Before you get all over-analytical about it, yes, I am going to figure out things that you like doing and do them with you because I do want us to like each other.”

Rosalea felt herself feeling pouty about it. He was reading who she was no matter how she resisted, and yet… Even though it was infuriating her completely, it also felt… nice?

“For now, I will not further cause you distress today. I do want you to work on your magic though, so I have scheduled time for you to work with Briar. He told me he met you yesterday, and he thought you were nice. I asked him to teach you more plant magic, since you are bad at it so far, and the plants are just reacting to what you are asking them for. After that, I will schedule some time with Yelena with you; she is an Ieshan, but she is also a terra mage. We’ll see if she can help you understand that magic any better, yes?”

I will be exhausted under that schedule, she couldn’t help but think. Then she felt infuriated by the next heartbeat as she realized she had slipped again. She didn’t like it, but it was almost easier to keep thinking in front of him now that she had already done it and nothing bad in particular had come from it.

“That is part of the point. The sooner you realize you still have magic, regardless of what your river allotments appear to be, the sooner you will grasp what I am trying to teach you. Now, let us go back to the castle.”

She panicked expecting him to come and pick her up again, but instead she felt the stomach twisting jolt of being placed in gem storage. Everything was now a uniform green. She wasn’t sure which of the two unpleasant things she disliked more, being picked up or treated like an object.