“Why did you pair me up with Alcaeus during your exercise, Professor?” Ginger asked. His eyes twitched. “I understand all that you said just now, and you’re right. I don’t have the time to be worrying about useless things – entertaining idiots, feeling sorry for myself and all – but do you have to play a part in making things difficult for me? You know that Alcaeus and I don’t get along. You knew. So, why?”

Ginger had to applaud himself for phrasing his question in a manner that he thought was entirely reasonable and not the slightest bit aggressive. Well, he hoped Professor Lyall saw it that way. He also hoped she would sense how betrayed he felt.

The thickly dragon showed no visible reaction. Ginger might not have said anything at all.

“Why don’t you two get along in the first place?” she asked him.

Ginger was taken aback by the question.

What? Did she really not know why? The answer was obvious!

‘I’m not the one with the problem! It’s Alcaeus! He clearly has a problem with me being a halfling!’ Ginger thought.

But wait.

Was that really the reason?

Ginger was surprised when his own conscience contradicted him.

No, you’re wrong.

The memory came to Ginger. The memory of that first day in First Blue, before his secrets were exposed.

Alcaeus and Fillys had ed his seat, and at first, Ginger had been willing to part with it until he felt the collective attention of his fellow classmates. The feeling being bullied in front of children his age instilled in him was unpleasant. Ginger had never experienced something of the sort back in the Wild. He had been emboldened right then and had bitten back against Fillys and Alcaeus’ pride.

And that had begun the childish enmity between him and the siblings.

Professor Lyall must have predicted how Ginger would feel about her question. Better yet, Ginger came to realize that she wasn’t a Prime Instructor in name only. Just as she had known that Ginger was agitated by the recent rumors, she had also known the reason behind the friction between him and the Doukas siblings.

“Alcaeus and Fillys were born to a Carrier House. They are from a wealthy background, and without a decent Cast or a visible sign of wealth, it is impossible to get into their good graces. Even if you weren’t a halfling, they would have looked down on you all the same,” Professor Lyall explained. “In my experience, scolding pampered brats and attending to their every squabble doesn’t work all too well for an instructor. In fact, it only gets me a bad label and ensures that all the wisdom I offer goes unheeded. You must know, Ginger, I love Fillys and Alcaeus as much as I love you. You are all my students and I do not see a cause to favor some and not others. Alcaeus had a lesson to learn from you just as you had a lesson to learn from him.”

Ginger frowned.

“A lesson? What could he teach me? He wouldn’t have cared if I was killed in that chamber!” he snapped.

Professor Lyall nodded calmly.

“He would, before he saw what you were capable of. He didn’t know that you were experienced in close-quarters combat now, did he? He didn’t imagine you’d be so resourceful with Mana Essence against the Blighted, did he? Tell me, how has Alcaeus been with you after your experience in the Beginner’s Den?”

Ginger had frozen at “what you were capable of,” but he managed to stifle his shock. For a second, he had thought the professor was referring to what happened with his Kardia in the chamber.

She was onto something though. Since the Beginner’s Den, Alcaeus hadn’t called him names or mocked him, like his sister continued to do. Ginger was sure the reason lay beyond the fact that he had beaten the Doukas brat in a close confrontation to get the kill on that Blighted he killed.

Alcaeus had seen Ginger’s eyes.

He had also witnessed the powerful blast of Kardia Ginger had unleashed.

Ginger turned pale and avoided Professor Lyall’s eyes.

‘She knows. She must suspect something at least!’ he thought. His Prime Instructor had been witnessing at all.

She had also seen it when the large Blighted had crushed him under its snout. She had witnessed how that had no effect on Ginger at all when it would have critically wounded most dragonlings.

The plump dragonling suddenly became motivated to make sure he didn’t give Professor Lyall any openings to ask about that. He scratched his thigh furiously.

“W-what was I supposed to learn from Alcaeus then? He was supposed to learn not to look down on people like me, right? What about me?” he said.

Professor Lyall smiled. She was reading him like a book, he knew.

“That despite everything, and above everything, Alcaeus is your ally. He will be someone you can rely on when the time comes. In the future, your combined strengths – harnessed willingly – will defeat a powerful enemy as they did in that chamber.”

Again, Ginger remembered how his Collapsing Kardia and Alcaeus’ Surging Kardia had blasted that Blighted to oblivion.

He sighed. He wasn’t willing to resign to Professor Lyall’s opinion just yet.

“Were you really watching everything that day? Did you really intervene for other dragonlings?” he asked.

“Indeed. Not all of you First Years were up to the task. I offered a hand to ensure no one would be left out. There were those who needed it, but I made sure they didn’t see my intervention.” Professor Lyall’s eyes turned into crescents and her lips became a wide V.

Ginger couldn’t help but agonize over the professor on his way to the next lesson of the day. He had held back on asking Professor Lyall if she had involved herself with him and Alcaeus. He imagined she wouldn’t have answered.

‘If she really saw everything… what does she think about it?’ Ginger thought, his very bones getting crippled by a nasty chill of anxiety. But there was no answer, and the dragonling wasn’t sure he wanted to know it.

He met up with Reiss in Mana Essence Mechanisms and Manipulation and continued struggling alone with his apprehensions. All throughout the lesson, Ginger kept eyeing Alcaeus. His interest in the boy’s sudden flaccid poison tongue where he was concerned piqued his interest.

As though to balance the abundance of attention, Professor Hennigar’s gaze kept lingering on Ginger. He had an interest in the plump dragonling. With each glance, Ginger was reminded of the Djuka’s proposal: Professor Hennigar was willing to offer him extra lessons on account of his great talent with Mana Essence.

The dragonling wasn’t sure how to respond to this. He was too swarmed with all kinds of stuff to find time for an extra lesson.

After the class, Ginger split off from Reiss who stared at him, puzzled. He chased after Alcaeus after ensuring that the dragonling was nowhere near his sister. Thankfully, Fillys seemed to prefer the company of her giggling crowd to her brother’s these days.

“Alcaeus. Could I talk to you for a second?” Ginger said when he caught up to the Doukas boy outside of the classroom.

Alcaeus scowled immediately.

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“What?”

Sensing the impatience and reluctance from his classmate, Ginger shot his question at once.

“My eyes… You saw them back in the Beginner’s Den, right? What did they look like?”

Alcaeus’ scowl grew deeper.

“What are you talking about?”

Ginger grew a scowl of his own.

“You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

“Leave me alone,” Alcaeus said and he stalked off, leaving Ginger dumbfounded, not to mention furious.

Reiss approached.

“You’re talking to Alcaeus now? Are you that eager to replace Caron?” he said with a small smile that beckoned an explanation subtly.

“No. I was just asking something.”

Reiss didn’t ask what it was that Ginger could have possibly wanted to ask Alcaeus. Somehow, that stung the plump dragonling. He almost wished Reiss would snoop.

The day ended as horribly as it had begun – with thoughts, apprehensions, and insensitive inquiries from schoolmates. The completion of his Custos and the meals from the Feeding Hall might have been the only things to salvage the worth of the day for Ginger.

He was determined to sleep away some of the fiercely negative emotions when he got to the dormitories.

“Good grief, Ginger. I only allow you to mooch off my homework when you’ve made some effort to try the questions on your own. I won’t be doing you any more favors like yesterday,” the dwarfish dragonling warned from the top bunk. He had already changed into nightly clothing.

“Please, Reiss. I’m just so tired,” Ginger begged, but Reiss would not buckle. In addition to his homework books, the dwarfish dragonling had his stack of Bibles for late-night reading ready on his bed. He was yawning a little though, a sign that midnight would be his limit for today. To Reiss, that was a waste, Ginger knew. “Can you wake me up before you sleep then?”

“Fine, fine,” Reiss said as he began scribbling furiously in his book.

Ginger slept with a lighter heart afterward. His stresses melted away in the flood of whipping wind, sleep, and dreams.

Dreams.

Ginger remembered dreaming about something again, but it hadn’t been unpleasant this time around.

Thank goodness!

When he heard a voice calling to him, waking him, he didn’t feel the drab sensation from yesterday.

…Until vicious emotions that couldn’t have been his own filtered into him.

They appealed to something within him, begging with traces of agony and burning fury.

Instinctively, Ginger responded with his own emotions, angry and firm. He might have been speaking a language. Perhaps emotions could speak.

He refused the appeal without hesitation.

The emotions came again, insurmountable and from multiple sources, pleading bitterly for something absurd, something Ginger couldn’t have given.

No, I will not do it!

He, no, they, begged. They pleaded for it. He was the only one who could do it.

I won’t! Are you insane? Why would you ask that from me? I don’t even know who you are!

The fury from the amalgamated emotions mellowed and the solemn pleading for mercy intensified a hundredfold.

Through the emotions, Ginger saw snippets of the reason why they would ask something like that of him. He suddenly pitied them.

Was it really so bad if he granted their wish? Compared to what he saw to be the source of their suffering, what they begged him for was sweet mercy and the greatest of honors.

This could be the last chance they had to get what they sought.

But even still. Ginger’s stalwart morality got in the way, as did his ignorance.

I…I don’t think I can take on such a burden. Please, don’t ask me again. Please, don’t!

But then another ferocious emotion flared from somewhere… somewhere behind Ginger. It had a livid, vivid and firm will, quite like his own while here.

You have no right to deny us this! It’s well within your power even in this state! Don’t you dare leave us like this! Give it to us! We are willing! We will not haunt you for it! Do it! I’ll show you how!

The emotion was so powerful that it forced Ginger’s eyes open.

The plump dragonling was stricken aghast when he found himself smack dab in utter darkness.

Where had the dorm lights gone?

Wait. Why wasn’t he in his bed?

Ginger felt a cold, rugged floor under his naked feet. He shuddered.

‘Where am I?’

With the way his eyes opened so wide, it was miraculous that he could still see nothing. He would have continued to agonize over where he was, wondering if he was still dreaming, if a boundless collection of whispers hadn’t suddenly bombarded his ears.

“Please, grant us Perfect Execution.”

“We will forever be grateful.”

“It has been countless Cycles. Don’t you understand how much it hurts? Please have mercy.”

“Cut us down. We will welcome your sword. We swear by the Ancient Dragons.”

“Perfect Execution. Please, Perfect Execution.”

Many, many of them said the same thing in monotone voices that were stripped of the vibrant emotion Ginger had been feeling and interacting with just now.

He stumbled back and yelped.

The voices drew his vision and he spotted their source in the darkness.

Before him, in the dark chamber, dozens of dragons assuming their humanoid forms were bowing or lying face first before him, begging to be slain.

They whispered quickly and smoothly, as though reciting something they had practiced for eons.

Some of them lurched forth when Ginger drew back and continued begging. Their voices grew more intense and filtered through his ears without pause. They were mere whispers but they were loud, unnerving, and crippling. Ginger turned pale and covered his ears. It didn’t help.

The voices only grew louder, and the emotions he had been sensing, appealing to him, gushed through him, almost becoming his. They were as varied and complex as the dragons Ginger saw before him. His eyes raced as they adjusted to the darkness.

The boy shrunk. He let out a feeble, “No.” No one heard.

He was back in the Beginner’s Den. In the same chamber, he had killed those Blighted.

But… how?

Why?

Panic flooded him. It increased tenfold when he spotted something that was a great deal scarier in appearance than the dragons.

It was a dark, spindly creature, twisted in an odd sort of way difficult to parse. It was by the wall, watching with eyes that Ginger couldn’t comprehend.

The dragonling screamed at the top of his lungs, his face a canvas of terror.

This was the same creature that had taken care of the defeated Blighted during Professor Lyall’s exercise!

He was back here again?!

Ginger was so frightened that his legs failed him. He fell to the ground, shaking uncontrollably. The blood, bone, and flesh might have melted from his body. He felt light and insignificant.

He might have voiced his spiraling thoughts if he could hear himself think.

“Do it already! You’re running out of time!” a voice boomed from behind the plump dragonling. He turned before he could jerk in surprise.

The source of it, packed with a familiar, furious intent was a Denatured dragon seated upon a small pedestal.

It could have fit in Ginger’s palm, but the plump dragonling couldn’t have been more intimidated by it. The icy blue scales on it, its serpentine head facing him, its wings unfurled to full size and span…

“Do it! Please! I’ll show you how!”

The voice of the dragon alone was powerful enough to send Ginger flying back. He fell among the prostrated dragons and before he could recover, they seized him by his flesh and clothing and smothered him, begging, pleading.

Their voices and emotions filled Ginger as though he were a water vessel.

The pain and agony of every dragon that touched him melded with his being. Cycles of suffering dabbed against his untainted flesh and Ginger shrieked so horribly he might have lost his voice for good.

It was too much.

The horrors these dragons knew were not of this world.

They weren’t for the living.

They were too torturous. Ginger himself could hardly comprehend them.

The dragons dragged him around, angrily, desperately, begging for Perfect Execution. Some pushed their faces into his, some kicked him, some clawed at his skin, and some – he barely noticed – as young as him, were crying, calling him names he didn’t understand.

Ginger was crying along with them. He tried to pry them off him, but others – so many others – clutched him in their place, hurting him.

Ginger didn’t know he had the capacity to feel so much at once.

But it wasn’t only sensation that filled the boy.

Certain things buried themselves in his head – in his mind – along with the constant command for him to do it!

“ARRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!” Ginger cried, but his voice was only the hundredth loudest around.

“Ginger! GINGER!”

The plump dragonling somehow heard it. Someone called him from the distance, somewhere past the horde of dragons.

His tear-drowned eyes turned in the direction of the voice. The obstructions in his sight did nothing to block his view.

He saw four vague silhouettes that rapidly became clear in his eyes.

“Ginger! Snap out of it!” Reiss’ voice came, loud and quivering. The dwarfish dragonling made to rush towards Ginger, but a taller silhouette next to him held him back.

“Don’t. It’s too dangerous,” Ira warned.

The other two figures were frozen stiff.

Caron had every intention to rush forward like Reiss, but she had to admit… she lacked the nerve.

Vassilis had the barebones of what the redhead felt. He simply couldn’t comprehend what he was looking at.