The first day of the third Stride, since Draggard-Phoenix Institute for the Cinder-Born was opened for the year, began with the First Years bustling about on their way to the classrooms excitedly. Even though their exercise during the Breather was rapidly losing its fresh flavor, the fact that pairs of students had no idea what exactly other pairs went through in the dark chamber of the Beginner’s Den made for a great series of tales that remained untold.

As Ginger and Reiss walked into the First Blue classroom, the former dreading that they had to start with a heavy course like Expired Times and Diluted Histories, they heard a lot of chatter about slaying Blighted casually and narrowly being turned to paste from their peers narrating to others. After the genuine retelling of events that occurred two days ago, it was reasonable to expect the attention hogs to modify their stories in the most engaging way possible.

“You wouldn’t believe it!” Ginger heard Nicolas Onasis, a comedy and sarcasm savant, as several of his fellow students and Professors had dubbed him, say. “I’m pretty handy with a sword, see. I cut off the Blighted’s arm with one swing from its shoulder! It glared at me, see, very intensely. Would have thought I killed its mother, or worse, forced it to hatch prematurely with a kick back in the day.” There were a series of laughs. “But I wasn’t scared, see, and I don’t shy away from nasty ways to win. Oh, Ebony knows, I crawled into the thing through the stump of its severed arm and jabbed at its heart from the inside.”

Ginger scoffed.

He had half a mind to break the immersion by asking why then Nicolas had emerged from the chamber as clean as a whistle but he held himself back. Well, that wasn’t true. He simply found something else that beckoned his attention.

Fillys and Alcaeus had gathered up a crowd and were, quite like Nicolas, sharing their experiences, the former to boys who seemed to fancy her and the latter to girls who hung on his every word.

It seemed the exercise in the Beginner’s Den did more than just to awaken the true properties of the First Years’ physical properties as dragons – as Qin Asha. It seemed to have either solidified or generated fame – desirable fame.

Ginger who neither sought nor lacked attention was repulsed when he saw Alcaeus at the centre of it once again. As he glared at the apple-green-haired boy, Alcaeus sensed his gaze and glared back. He scoffed, somehow willingly letting go of the chance to throw a jab at Ginger and Reiss today.

‘He hasn’t gotten over what happened…’ Ginger thought.

He had been in a most peculiar situation with Alcaeus in the chamber. The boy had seen what Ginger’s eyes had looked like when he was under the influence of his second soul’s arousal and he had been greatly shaken.

That experience must have stuck with him, so much so that Ginger began to doubt whether he truly hadn’t bumped into Alcaeus for the rest of the Breather or if the Doukas boy had avoided him till now.

Upon taking their seats, Ginger and Reiss began to furiously discuss the topic that Professor Edelman, the Expired Times and Diluted Histories teacher had said he would love to find the class sufficiently privy to before today’s lesson. Their back and forth had begun to get especially heated when they noticed a change in the atmosphere within the class.

Looking up, the two dragonlings saw the source.

It was Caron.

She had just walked in, a look of one who hadn’t slept so well on her face. Her springy red hair bounced as she walked towards the two, a yawn that forced her to seal her baby blue eyes for a few moments escaping from her mouth.

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More than a few eyes followed after Caron, but there was no mirth or ridicule like before when everyone had seen her look her worst by far two days ago. There were hints of intrigue, curiosity, and subtle annoyance now.

“Ginger, Midget,” Caron greeted the two dragonlings before arranging her seat next to Reiss.

Ginger and Reiss looked at each other, unsure what to say.

“Hey. Are you alright?” Ginger said after a few moments passed with Caron offloading her bag.

“Yeah,” Caron said with her usual lazy tone, and she faced the two dragonlings, a determined look on her face. “The tail end of last Stride taught me I’ve been sort of relaxed when it comes to what I proposed. From today onwards, you two and I will be learning as much as we can from each other. Of course, as I promised, I will help you guys out after I’ve mastered everything about your individual habits and skills. I’m the sort to deliver where I make a promise, after all.”

Ginger and Reiss looked at each other again, but this time, they knew exactly what to say.

“What? Are we just going to pretend as if you weren’t a mess two days ago? Now you’re suddenly alright and we can go back to being your test mules?” Reiss hissed.

Caron looked genuinely surprised by the dwarfish dragonling’s outrage. She looked at Ginger. The look on his face told her he shared Reiss’ sentiments.

Ginger had felt particularly strongly about Caron’s behavior. She seemed to have non-verbally pronounced that she didn’t see them as friends, or at least that’s what Ginger imagined her unwillingness to confide in them about what was happening between her and Fillys was.

Caron frowned and she had opened her mouth to speak when a familiar voice assaulted the classroom, ringing so loudly it caused one of the dragonling boys to fall off his desk where he had been seated while chatting to one of the girls.

“What is right is seldom presented obviously before the paths of the righteous, of heroes and heroines. It takes a keen eye and strong mind to even define where there is a fault which needs correcting, and likewise, how great said fault truly is,” Professor Edelman, straight-backed, dark-eyed, and stern, said importantly as he walked into the class, concerning himself as little as possible with the brats who raced to their seats.

Ginger and Reiss gave Caron odd looks as she returned one of her own to them. There was much to be said, but clearly, now wasn’t the time.

Professor Edelman pushed back his indigo-colored hair and elegantly began his sermon of a lesson, half of which Ginger, Reiss, and Caron did not quite hear until he began a rather frightening exercise where he would suddenly point at a random student and ask what they researched for the lesson.

A few blabbered and blustered meaninglessly, but others, like Fillys for instance, confidently gave well-researched details about the Primordial History of Ravi with their chests inflated.

To this, Professor Edelman greatly expanded on what he felt his more… serious students had expounded.

“It is, of course, no news to you that Ravi is but one rich continent in this wide realm. While our kind has yet to venture past Ravi’s borders, there is little doubt that there are other landmasses out there, actively drifting away from ours – repelled, I should say. Sadly, even for our most accomplished Fauress, it is a task and a half to draw close to these continents even when approaching from the sky. Once again, nature seems eager to remind us that beyond our strength, there is much – too, in fact – that we do not know,” the aloof dragon said.

“That said, it is not as though we do not have hints, or reasons to stay and appreciate Ravi alone. Many of you, I’m sure have heard folktales from your great-great-great-great-great fossils of relations, some about the races that existed before the great mount Burmrag which birthed all Cinder-Born kind. It is true. We were not the first to lay claim on Ravi. This is why there are so many structures on this piece of land that we still investigate to this day, we, along with Blighted and Condemned as well.”

Ginger was suddenly invested.

He had yet to hear of this before. He had known for a little while that Ravi was just but a continent in this world, but…

To think dragons were not the first to live on Ravi? This was news to him.

The plump dragonling also couldn’t help but wonder just what structures Professor Edelman was referring to – ones in which dragons, Blighted, and Condemned all had a vested interest.

For some odd reason, a thought crawled into his head, stunning him.

That ruin mentioned in his Hunt next Breather…

But no. It couldn’t be. It wasn’t any Blighted or Condemned that nested there, was it?