It hurt.
Before his eyes opened, before he could even register the feel of dusty air or softness beneath his scales, he felt the pain.
Abstractly, simply by location, it was familiar. Hundreds of hours of his life had poured into training, long past when other dragons would have given up; he knew the pain of a sore soul.
He did not know the pain of a burnt soul.
His being was ginger, throbbing, and when he, in practiced exercise, directed the flow of mana out from its coronal source downward along his spine, the pain spiked when it touched his throat, where he would yank out a part of himself as Breath, again and again. That pain, and what had felt like scars, all that had come of his Breath, had long ago healed. Yet now in their place, at last, he had brought forth new wounds and new agony.
Kaon could fight through pain. This was worse: as he directed the flow down, the feeling didn’t just intensify; the magic frayed. He felt mana spilling out of his meridians like blood from cut veins.
But Kaon could fight through pain. He decided, as he had many times before, to wrench — to Breathe.
Sometimes a new cold swept in from the town to spread among the pupils, and always Kaon succumbed to them. He knew that feeling of clogged sinuses blocking breath. In bad moments, the air came out as slowly as if someone were choking you.
That was how the black mist came out of his throat. Slowly, less than an inch by less than an inch.
Kaon shuddered in pain. He hadn’t even opened his eyes yet.
He kept pulling, and the pain only worsened until he couldn’t bear to continue. He opened his eyes, and molded the black mist. It seemed slower to even fade.
Kaon had gotten used to the uses and limitations of six cubic inches of magical air.
This? It was three, perhaps four.
What a reward for daring to experiment, to try figuring out my Breath.
Kaon stretched. Perhaps it all paled in comparison to his melted soul-nexus, but despite having been slammed, knocked across a stone floor, and shot with bolts of flame – Kaon’s body felt worn but alright. He stretched and he shivered.
Even before he opened his eyes, he knew where he was. The feel was unmistakable.
He’d been defeated by a definite enemy, sedated and transported against his will. Why here, and not some villainous lair, or some prison (in the formal sense, that is)? Was that whole encounter just a warning – did they think they’d done enough to scare him off?
Kaon rolled off the soft cot he slept on every night, and frowned. His room; or rather, his slice of the collective lair. Here, he’d been assigned perhaps the worst bed of all.
He looked up. Atop the stone edifice, long openings lined those round walls, with gutters to arrest rainflow. The windows were malignantly positioned; in the morning, hateful dawn light broke in right above his head, and demanded he wake. In the evening when he might retire, the town’s pseudosun would have circled around to blare in from the other window.
Merciless. The too-bright light gave him a headache on the best of days, and dizziness from the violence and foreign mana still allayed him.
A yawn surprised him from his musings. He caught a pair of slate gray eyes watching him from a head tilted upside down.
A deep voice. “Oh hey Kaon, yer awake.” The gaze looked away, neck curling the head back into former position.
His lairmate, Oap, lay on his back, gazing at clouds through a wall opening. A white dragon, Oap’s crest scales grew spiky and lightly red; overall he had some resemblance to a rooster.
“What time is it?” He could guess by the sun having not yet circled around to strike from the other side, but that wasn’t specific. Then again, did he expect specific out of Oap?
“Sixth bell rung uh, a bit ago?”
Kaon narrowed his eyes. “Lunch was served?”
Oap gazed out for a moment, leaving Kaon to wonder if he was heard or ignored, before the late response came: “Oh yeah.”
“…Did you get me any?”
“Uh, I thought you’d already ate?”
“I’ve been asleep for at least an hour. Did you wonder how long I was out? Did you consider why?” Kaon didn’t take naps; if Oap had done something comparably out of character, Kaon would have noticed and sought the reason.
Oap rolled his wings in a shrug. “Everyone deserves a good nap. Enjoy yours?”
“No. The agony of my damaged throat nexus and battle scars makes that a little difficult.”
Oap hummed. “Sounds like you’ve been going a little hard. Take it easy, no? Nobody ascends a level in a day, y’know?”
Kaon grunted. He watched the other drake for a moment, considering his plan. Perhaps the red dragon intended to scare him; but he wouldn’t be deterred.
“Hey Oap, want to help me with something?”
A moment of the slow sweeping of Oap’s eyes across the sky. Then, “Huh, sure. Whatisit?”
Kaon lifted his ears. “Ever wanted to see inside a dragoness’s lair?”
“Yeah, we’re the Lair Inspection Team,” Oap was saying. “You heard about the break-in, right? Wanna get all the clues, ensure security, yooknow all how.”
Both of the dragonesses frowned. Kaon anticipated imminent failure, and glanced away as if to rob it of some of the sting.
In practice, this wasn’t a training yard. Dotting around were stones arranged for exercises – braces for wing beating, or bipedal balance beams – but between the bubbling fountain at the center and all the dish-shaped benches, it functioned in practice as a social space. Pupils from mixed levels (mostly the first three) dotted and mingled in the space. Geddion and Welk were here, in a throng with a couple other drakes. Imbry was here too, alone, but hadn’t seen him or hadn’t recognized him.
(There had been two dragons outside of Haore’s, one for each of them. It was clear why a major player might be interested in Kaon, but Imbry? What had been the motivation?)
Imbry hadn’t recognized them, and not just out of lack attention. They were dressed with some anonymity. Black scarves looped several times around their serpentine necks, and dark shades covered each of their eyes. (Geddion’s private tutors had a set of them to endure the drake’s intense bursts of light, and all it took was Oap asking to borrow them. The temptation to not return them overwhelmed Kaon; the dark glass relieved by small part the pseudosun’s tyranny; the world appeared saturated in color.)
“And what about him?”
The unexpected response drew Kaon’s attention back to the conversation he’d thought doomed. Both of the dragonesses looked at him.
Nesle and her roommate. A dragon of round face and big eyes, Nesle had light green scales, with dots of white and light blue paint spirling into patterns all across her scales, refined to intricacy on her face – the precision of it all looked artful. Beside her was a dark blue dragon, who must have been Vessia’s other roommate.
Nesle merely frowned, but the dark blue dragon had a look of outright distrust, perhaps recognizing him as the Malthec. He’d kept his wings folded, but his pitch black scales weren’t common. The metal neckband, though, was probably the real giveaway.
“Oh, him?” Oap patted Kaon’s back with a wing. “If we’re going to get inside the mind of the thief, we’ve got to have a roguish drake like ‘im. He might seem mean, but he’s a good one when you blow away the dust.”
Kaon rolled his eyes. Nesle was nodding, though, a small smile opening. “Oh, thank you both! I’m glad Devain really is taking this seriously. He seemed so… when I told him the horror I witnessed this morning, it was like he didn’t care! My most prized possession!” Nesle looked back to Oap. “How can I thank you?”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s what pupils are supposed to do, right? Keepin’ the order.”
Oap, for all that he didn’t do or achieve much, did have a deep voice and solid, handsome features. It must have been what made the difference, somehow; Kaon, and his struggle, bore witness to distrust and suspicion, but Oap put dragons at ease. He smiled, and they smiled back. Kaon smiling just made things worse.
He looked away from the conversation, scanning over the mill of dragons once more. It wasn’t just relief from the anticipation of something going wrong – Kaon had to stay on guard, check and double check. One of the first level dragons had dark red scales, and nearly made Kaon jump (and imagine explaining that to the dragonesses).
“Perhaps,” the blue dragon started, eyes going back to Kaon. “We could accompany you? It’s our lair after all. I’m not sure why Devain would pick you to do the inspection.”
“We met with Haore earlier. That is a fact,” Kaon said. The plan had been for Oap to do the talking, not Kaon — but every opening felt like a chance for things to go wrong. Oap would let something slip, or they’d poke holes that couldn’t be ignored. “And she’s in charge here while Devain’s gone.”
“Sure, sure. My point stands.”
“It’s dangerous.” Kaon wondered if pointing out his now slightly swollen flesh where the firebolts hit him would help his case. The white dragon lifted eyecrests in surprise as Kaon elaborated, “I was attacked earlier today. If you haven’t deduced that the thief must have had help from inside, I don’t think you’d be much assistance for the investigation,” Kaon said, then frowned. Wrong track. He tried, “Keeping you at a distance is for your own safety. Just leave things to the Lair Inspection Team.”
Oap gave a chuckle, and Kaon bristled. But he said, “See? His intent’s in the right place. Miss Haore really does want us to report back anything we find. I can make sure K doesn’t get too shifty, if it’ll ease things up.”
(Kaon had figured Oap to be a terrible liar, so he’d made sure he didn’t think he was lying. Selective quoting of Haore’s words, presenting facts out of context – it was a flimsy story, but Oap seemed to buy it.)
“Let’s get started before the trail gets any colder,” Kaon said, and turned and took a step past the two dragonesses. Oap gave a last nod that had a bit of bow in it, and Nesle laughed. The dark blue dragoness was watching him as he walked off, then glancing back to Nesle.
The white dragon came up behind him. The black dragon gave him a single nod of acknowledgement.
“Good job remembering your lines back there.”
“Lines?” Oap said. “You told me what we were doing right before we landed. Did you think I would forget that soon?”
Kaon walked on. They marched towards a cavernous opening on the rocky face of the hall, where they’d find second level dragoness lairs. The dirt beneath their paws was claw-scratched and riddled with holes from dragons taking off and landing.
“So, what exactly are we gonna be doing? You never explained what exactly this Lair Inspection would, err, inspect.”
“Leave that to me,” Kaon replied. “I was thinking you could be something of a guard? Do you have any Breath charges?”
“Uh, yeah. Two. But do… you needa guard? Can’t I inspect too?”
While he spoke, Kaon was looking around, checking his surroundings once more. The timing could have been better, but not by much.
Kaon looked up, and swallowed.
Looking back at Oap, he didn’t answer, and hoped the seriousness in his tone seemed it less like a dodge. “So, I have bad news and worse news,” Kaon said, picking up his pace while Oap slowed in confusion. “The bad: I wasn’t lying about getting attacked earlier. It was a fourth level dragon at least, with Breath of homing flame.” Kaon pointed to the singed scales as evidence. A pause, then he gave the proclamation: “The worse: they’re coming. Right now.”
Kaon pointed.
A dark red figure glided down. The dark red figure; there was little doubt. With his dark glasses, Kaon could make out the scales even at this distance.
“But… I have a plan. In that fight – there’s something I learned about my Breath. I want to give it another try.”
Snuggly Serials 