“You understand how bad this looks for you, yes?”
The speaker sat on a high stone rest, forelegs standing tall, her gaze raining down on them. Haore had more horns than some drakes. A fourth level dragoness, she was almost built like a drake, thickset and strong. With scales the color of northern seawater and horns more brilliant than ice, she had the look of a glacier and its depths. She didn’t look pleased.
Imbry, it turned out, had gone to find help as soon as Giddeon yelled. She found Haore, and her Breath — fourth level dragons could channel it through their wings, affecting a wide area — had frozen them where they stood.
Kaon nodded minutely at her words. He wasn’t looking at her. His gaze roamed the room — slowly, to not seem anxious. (He wasn’t anxious.) It was a lair, Haore’s lair, but it was adapted for dragons to come and go. Adequate (but not comfortable) leather rests sat before a slab of stone littered with papers, and the blue-green dragoness sat behind it. With no windows, light came from an icelight lamp sitting on her slab; it sucked in heat and shone. Kaon found its light less annoying than the pseudosuns.
Haore’s lair — office, Kaon wanted to call it — felt cold. The dragoness didn’t care, but the four dragonets before her did. When they breathed, their expelled breaths were visible in front of them. (Curiously, not Haore’s.) Imbry was beside him, curled in on herself to contain heat. On the other side (a whole empty leather rest between Kaon and them), were Welk and then Giddeon, both shiverring violently. Kaon didn’t see the point in shivering.
“You, a lower year dragon, breaking into a fellow pupil’s lair, destroying our property, assaulting them unprovoked, stealing their possessions… What were you thinking? Were you thinking?”
“It wasn’t theirs. It was Imbry’s. They stole it.” Kaon spoke in quick, definite statements, forceful and clipped.
Welk laughed. “It was nobody’s, just sitting on the ground for the taking. Nothing stealing about it.”
Imbry’s voice was a murmur. “I dropped it.” The words were small coming out. Haore’s scaly ears twitched like she heard, but Kaon wondered if the two drakes did.
Welk. “I didn’t see your name on it.”
“Liar–” Kaon spat out.
Haore flipped over the amulet. “Her name is right here,” she said.
The blue drake didn’t flinch. The gray drake beside him, Giddeon made a thoughtful hum. “Liar is a bit of a strong word, wouldn’t you consider, Malthec? I don’t suppose you know what Welk here remembers better than he does, do you? He was speaking of his own perspective.”
Bullshit. Kaon almost said something, but he had the sense to drop it.
Haore looked at Imbry. “You said you were waiting outside Giddeon’s lair. You had Kaon retrieve this for you, no? Did he do this of your will, not his own?”
“No,” Kaon said.
“Yes,” Imbry said. “It was my idea. I – I told him to fight them for taking my amulet.”
Kaon stared at the pale yellow dragoness.
“You understand that you two have disrupted the order here in Devain’s hall, yes?”
“Of course,” was the small dragon’s response.
“I did the right thing,” was Kaon’s.
“You’ll be punished.” Her eyes glide to the two drakes. “Perhaps it would be fitting to let the victims keep this amulet.”
“Please don’t.” It was almost a whimper.
“Okay, but why,” Kaon drawled, “would we be listening you? You’re a pupil just like us. Barely any older.” She was fourth level, but unusually young for that state.
Haore’s wings flared. “I am your senior. Older, more experienced, and more responsible. Devain choose to let me in charge in his stead. Do you question that?”
Yes, Kaon thought. “No.”
“Thought so.” She closed her wings. She opened her mouth, but Kaon was quicker.
“But… Devain left you in charge? Where is he?”
“Looking for a wayward pupil.”
Kaon glanced up, finding something worth paying attention to. “Who?”
Haore looks at him, eyes narrowing, but divulges. “Vessia. She’s is not in the hall.” Her gaze swept over the four young dragons. “I surmise you know not where she’s gone.” She looks around, at everyone to show she wasn’t asking Kaon.
Imbry piped up. “This morning, she told me where to find Kaon at recess.”
Haore taps a claw once. “This morning? At what time?”
“Uhm, several hours ago?”
“Are you asking me or telling me?”
Imbry opened her mouth, but seemed to lose her nerve and just nodded.
Haore sighed. “Where was this, then?”
“Uhmm.” Imbry trailed off into muttering. Dropping her head back to the rest and covering it with her claws, she managed to say, “She was in my lair when I woke up.”
A brow lifted. “You don’t share a lair with her. Is this yet another dragonet who can pick locks?”
“It was still locked… And my door is kinda loud. A lot of lower class lair doors are.”
The prior conversation had bored or vexed Kaon – but Vessia was a topic of some interest. He looked to Haore, lips curling with the satisfaction of insight. “What is Vessia’s Breath?” he asked.
“Minor telekenesis.”
“Oh.” Kaon was disappointed. Not because his intuition for how she got into Imbry’s lair was shot down, but because that answer was… disappointing. Vessia, the mysterious, aloof dragoness in his class, the gorgeous, angular creature, ought to have been heir to some mysterious powerful Breath. She never did much to show off her power, even in their mana shaping class, so Kaon had taken to imagining she must have been hiding something great. Unless… she was embarrassed?
“Why would she go missing?” It was Giddeon’s arch voice.
“I did not say missing. Little escapes Devain’s wisdom. It is he who’s gone to retrieve her. I judge he will be successful; but her whereabouts are not knowledge he has deigned to share.” She shakes her head. “We’ve gotten off topic. This is about how to rectify this situation.”
Imbry dared lift her head again. “You can’t take my amulet. Please.”
“Imbry did nothing to deserve that,” Kaon noted. “Shouldn’t I be the one punished?” Kaon knew it was noble of him, but he regretted a moment later. He doubted he could shrug off every punishment they might saddle him with.
“I was getting to that. I think… You will be held back from advancing to the next rank until further notice,” she said, eliciting a groan from the black dragon. “That’s standard, Kaon, you shouldn’t be surprised. And hm, it would be fair for you to pay for the lightslime bulbs you smashed.”
That wasn’t… too bad. When Kaon thought about it, he had realized it took him twice as much effort to achieve half was much as the other dragons. Maybe this arbitrary limit wouldn’t ultimately slow him down, if it was released after not too long. And it couldn’t last too long. He had done the right thing, that couldn’t be lost on them.
“That’s a little light for this level of disrespect, isn’t it?” Giddeon asked, tone light and insignificant.
Haore checked him with a frown that was almost a scowl. “It’s standard.”
“Well, sure. But the offense isn’t standard, is it? Not many pupils are brazen enough to commit four different trespasses at once.”
Haore turned her gaze to the metallic gray drake. Her mouth, a flat line, didn’t change expression. But a momentary decline in temperature, enough for the drakes’ shivering to be mistaken for a flinch, suggested Haore’s reaction to Kaon before she opened her maw to confirm it. “I have made my judgment, Geddion, and I am your superior.”
Kaon’s head lay on the rest, mouth hidden behind a foreleg and ears drooped in disinterest. Such was good cover for the smirk that played on his lips. He watched Geddion frown. He took a moment to draw up a proper sycophantic response. (Kaon knew there would no hestitation if this had been Devain, and wondered if Haore caught that.). “Of course, madam. I mean no disrespect. It was a mere… observation.”
“I am quite capable of observation myself, dragonet.” Haore at all times lay unnaturally still, in a way that emphasizes her every movement. The mere inclining of her head, shifting her gaze back to the contents of her desk, spoke volumes. “I have conveyed what I needed to. All of you are dismissed. Make no further trouble under my regency; for I will remember it.”
Welk, with all the speed he could shiver at, fell to his feet and turned towards the entryway. Giddeon, with a manufactured bow of his head towards Haore, came a halfstep at his heels. The gray drake took only a moment to overttake Welk, to once more walk in his lead.
A yellow claw gently poked Kaon. Imbry was smiling down at Kaon, and grabbed his leg and tugs it a little. Kaon glanced at the doorway, then back at Imbry and nodded. The small dragon took this as meaning something. Kaon meant nothing by it, but it succeeded in making her drop his leg and start to leave.
“That means you too, Malthec,” Haore noted.
Kaon looked up at the blue-green dragon, and gave another meaningful nod, and Haore remained unreactingly still.
If Kaon were Geddion, the approach would be to feed her some compliment – perhaps saying he appreciated the look of her icelamps, or the patterns on her horns. Tactics of indirection and subtlety, softening the target.
Kaon didn’t see the point. He valued directness and suspected Haore, with how many excuseful pupils she interacted with as a high ranking librarian, would find it refreshing.
He reminds himself of these reasons as he speaks in a deep voice, tone expectant. “What else did Devain tell you about Vessia’s disappearance?”
A blink. “Knowledge holds power and value,” she says, with the tone of a well-revised idiom. “You’ve been here long enough to learn that.”
Kaon cocks his head. “That there’s any will to keep it secret tells me there’s something more to it.”
“That one of Devain’s pupils is unaccounted for told you that.” Haore stared, then shifted the gaze back down to her desk. “What this truly tells you is that Devain does not wish for you to know. He does not wish for any of the pupils to know.”
“You are not Devain,” Kaon notes. Inwardly, he wondered – was this worth the struggle? Should he just quit and head out?
“Devain placed me in charge with the understanding that I would relay all correspondences back to him. Frost dragons do not forget.” Then, seemingly disconnected. “If you go do something brainless in pursuit of learning what happened to Vessia – you will find yourself back in this office, and relaying what you find to me.”
“If you tell me nothing, perhaps I will not know better than to pursue.” Kaon knew when dragons were talking down to him. This was not that – but what was Haore’s angle?
“If it will keep you from the attempt,” – Haore looks back up, directly into his eyes, gaze intense. “Then I can reveal a few facts. This morning, Devain sensed the absence of a pupil, and it was Vessia who did not show up to scheduled training. She shares a lair with another dragoness, Nesle. And upon investigation, he discovered one of Nesle’s most prized possessions gone. Vessia’s bedding and scant possessions lay in disarray, suggesting special haste.” Haore pauses. “Devain tells me what it means: there was a thief who infiltrated the hall, making out with Nesle’s treasure, and Vessia, noble pupil, pursued them.”
Kaon waits, eyes narrowed and searching the blue-green dragoness’s features. “I see. Thank you for sharing Devain’s theory.”
“Make responsible use of the information. And remember, it is Devain and only Devain who is investigating and learning what is at play. If you make your own attempts, you will be seeing me again.”
Strange wording again. But Kaon had gotten what he wanted, and with another meaningful nod, he rises to his feet. Where other dragons had been made sluggish by the cold, Kaon found the dim lair refreshing. The prospect of returning to the light of pseudosuns but began to sap that renewed vigor.
Immediately outside her lair, the black dragon halted at once, ears flaring. The yellow imp had waited for him. She smiled and seemed to bounce to attention with his arrival.
“There you are! You took so long did Haore hit you with extra bad secret punishment?”
“I simply had some matters to discusss with the librarian,” Kaon said, looking down the length of the cavernous hall they stood within. They weren’t alone: two older dragons stood outside the office, occasionally glance at them. Kaon looks back at Imbry. “Is there a reason you were waiting for me?”
“Yeah, um.” Imbry looks down. “I… I worried Welk might–might want to take my necklace back. So I thought… would you mind keeping it safe, until I need it again tomorrow? I would be so thankful.” Imbry looked up at him, a pleading twist to her features.
Who was he to refuse a face like that? “Sure, imp. Just let me know when you need it back – I’ll guard it for you.”
“Thank you!” Imbry leans over and hugs her forelegs around him, and it takes a moment for Kaon to nudge her off.
“Thank me by not doing that,” he mumbles.
The necklace changes paws, and Kaon starts walking – and finds Imbry walking beside him.
“Thank you for retrieving it, too. I don’t think I got a chance to say that – it must have been harrowing to fight a higher ranked dragon.”
Kaon only hmphed. Then, he said, “There’s something I need to see to on my own. I expect we’ll met again soon.”
“Oh. Alright…” Imbry frowned, and then splits off, waving at him with a wing.
Behind them, Kaon noticed, the other, older dragons had followed, lagging quite a ways behind. One of the two dragons changes course with Imbry’s parting, confirming what had been obvious. They were tailing them. For what purpose? For who’s purpose?
At the edge of the cavern-hall, Kaon crouches, preparing to leap into flight. He was dextrous enough in the air to lose a pursuer, and then he could make his next move. The starting point, he decided, would be seeing Vessia’s lair for himself.
After all, Kaon knew the story Haore just told him was bullshit.
Snuggly Serials 