Life went on, somehow. Alisa hardly paid attention to the bookwork, struggling to care about grades any longer. She hated the way she became accustomed to her spells coming out heavy and thick and sluggish, whether hand cast or powerscripted, but at the same time she couldn’t help being drawn into the challenge of it.

War magic was at once frustratingly difficult and infuriatingly simple. A month earlier, she’d have been able to perform every spell perfectly with only a few days of practice. Now, she felt like a bumbling toddler trying to grab something just the wrong shape to grasp. Every single spell, no matter how simple or minor a divergence from standard, required time after time of practice to cast.

And then there was her dragon egg. Procedure required her to keep it with her at all times, a constant physical reminder like a boulder weighing her down, an itching wrongness; yet that, too, began to feel ordinary.

She hated it until she couldn’t even summon hatred any longer, until all that was left was a deep empty uncaring. Emotion came and went. Some days she’d spend constantly on the verge of tears, others she snapped and grumbled with anger at everyone and everything, but most she drifted through with apathetic calmness. It made her angry that the only class to lure her out of her fugue was the one she wanted least, but it was the only place left where she could try something new. Even if that new was only casting the same twenty basic spells she’d known since she was a child first able to draw power threads.

Sadie tried to coax her into coming up with new schemes to bring down Francine, who’d moved on to belittling people based on the type of dragon they had, and how none of them could compare with her Grandus that would surely prove to be the superior of them all. As much as she deserved being brought down a few layers, Alisa no longer saw the point.

Sometimes in her dreams she still had her pure untainted power, flowing thin and clear exactly where she wanted it. At first, she woke from such dreams hopeful that perhaps the past weeks were only a nightmare. Then, the more time passed, the less frequently the past intruded. Before long, the darkness and despair of her days began to seep into her night visions, fire and frustrated failure replacing any chance of escaping her fate even in sleep.

The egg lay warm and solid in its wrapping, tucked against her side, unmoving and unchanging physically, but the connection between her and the vile creature inside grew by leaps and bounds. Sometimes she dreamed in dark warmth full of inhuman sensation and foreign thoughts which she could neither understand nor remember.

Such impressions were normal, the dragon-bonding teacher explained. A dragon mage would gain more control over the bond once the second sealing mark was inscribed on the hatchling, but until then the echo back would grow in strength until the dragon hatched from its egg.

Sometimes Alisa found herself thinking in odd looping patterns quite unlike her usual mindset, or lingering on odd details about her surroundings as though she’d never seen them before. Once she blacked out completely and came to herself lying on her back in the lawn between the lecture hall and her dorm, and evidently had been there for some time by the sunburn that manifested itself. She spent the next week enduring daily applications of a pasty alchemical medicine and ignoring the reactions of everyone else.

Sadie remained her sole confidant, to whom Alisa expounded upon her troubles whenever she emerged from apathy into the despair or rage that filled the spaces between dark emptiness.

Sadie’s egg was among the first to hatch from their class, a tiny blue Browning with heavyset limbs and spindly wings which she named Mirva. After that, it was Mirva this and Mirva that, and Sadie barely had time for classes, let alone her best friend.

Alisa told herself she didn’t care, and let herself drift deeper and longer. Weeks passed with the simultaneous haste and interminability of dread and uncaring despair. Other dragons hatched; more students were excused from non-essential classes like math and handwriting to tend to their charges.

Alisa’s could hatch any day, and yet each day it did not. She began to consider that perhaps it was a dud or a runt, perhaps it would never hatch, perhaps it had died. But she knew it had not; knew it by the foreign sensations that still overcame her at increasing intervals, by the vague sensation of being observed that lingered any time she did something it considered interesting.

It was not dead, it simply hadn’t gotten around to hatching yet.

The twins hadn’t approached her again after their awkward introductions, and Alisa didn’t mind. Though part of her wanted to fully embrace this new fate, throw herself fully into mastering it as perfectly as she’d mastered the pure spell forms, the sheer difficulty and pointlessness of it continually pushed that thought deep beneath the weight of simply continuing to exist.

Then the egg cracked, and all the instructions about what to do next fled her entirely. Her usually ordered mind fragmented into flashes of darkness and a choking crushing desperation to escape. She’d been warned about the feeling, but as she tore the wrappings from her waist and clawed them off the egg it overwhelmed her completely.

Darkness, fractional lines of light. Pushing, straining, reaching.

Dizzying vastness, open brilliance.

Bright warm comfort. Familiar-differentness.

Alisa came back to herself with a sharp sting of light. She found she was lying on the floor in the hallway between classrooms, the dragon curled between hands cupped protectively against her chest. He was peeking out, curious, his pale skin almost transparent.

He tilted his head up to stare into her eyes, and she found she couldn’t hate him. She still hated the circumstances, and the consequences, but the tiny dragon now occupied with licking at her finger, she could not hate.

“Hello,” she whispered, and dizzying sensation flooded back to her. She thought she heard a voice for a moment, growling and rasping, something like ‘Azendandor’.

Vertigo assailed her as she was in two places at once, staring at herself while staring back at herself, huge and warm and tiny and vulnerable. She stretched her wings and felt them brush against her hands, leathery and soft.

Welcomeness and companionship. Warmth. As it began to fade, she felt a sort of breathless wonder. It had been so long since she’d felt anything so positive, so pure, undiluted by worry.

Azendandor, she heard again, a bit fainter.

He soon tired of investigating her hands and crawled out onto her chest, then up her neck which tickled and made her giggle involuntarily. She brushed him back and he scurried along, little wings flapping as he scrambled down and onto the floor.

Alisa rolled onto her side to watch him, emotion warring within her. He was the personification of everything that had gone wrong in her life. She’d hated the mere thought of his existence since before he ever hatched.

But he didn’t know any of that. His only thoughts were curiosity and a sort of thoughtless unconditional love that she couldn’t bring herself to reject. As far as he knew, she was his protector and friend. He seemed completely unaware of her inner tumult.

His body was too long for him to know what to do with it, his legs stubby and short, his tail as long as her hand, his wings nearly the same when fully flared. He was long and sinuous, pale grey in colour but for his darker wings, and moved with a combination of flapping and slithering and crawling that began somewhat ungainly. The longer he explored the hallway, the more he figured out how to coordinate his body’s many parts, his tail flicking, legs scrambling, wings flapping, and it began to look somehow natural for all its bizarreness.

Then Sadie ran back, with Zo Rienna the dragon-bonding tutor in tow, and Alisa suddenly realized the gravity of the situation.

Her dragon balked at the newcomers, raising himself up, wings flared, and hissing once in warning. When the advancing humans didn’t retreat, he turned and scurried back to her with more haste than she’d yet seen him display. Alisa caught him in her hands and held him, sitting up to provide more semblance of dignity than sprawling on the floor.

“I will hold it,” Zo Rienna said, holding out her hands. Alisa shrank back. “You need to complete the bond. It will need to be held still for you or you risk harming it with a miscast.”

Alisa looked at the dragon, and he looked back at her, and she felt certain he wouldn’t squirm. But she didn’t resist as he was taken from her hands and held, gently but firmly, behind his head and front legs, and again by the wings and back legs, in Zo Rienna's skillful grip.

She charged her stylus and reached toward him, then hesitated. He was very small, no bigger around than two fingers. The bond wasn’t a simple circle, and her power was heavy and clumsy. She could have drawn it on a page easily enough, but not so small.

“What are you waiting for? You mustn’t delay.”

Alisa withdrew her power from the stylus, the crystal tip going dim. She shook her head. “I can’t. He’s too small, I can’t draw that precisely. I’ll need to wait until he’s bigger.”

“Once it’s bigger, it will be too late to form the bond properly. Now that the shell which held the connection in place has been broken, you’ll quickly lose the anchoring. The less time between hatching and bonding, the stronger your connection will be.”

Alisa looked at the creature, and realized she was right. His thoughts were hazier now, the force of them significantly lessened from when he’d first hatched. More sensation - discomfort, desire for freedom, and eagerness to continue exploring - but far less overwhelming.

He sensed her conflict, and tried to run to her, limbs flailing uselessly in the firm grasp of his captor. Azendandor!

“Let him go,” Alisa insisted. “I’ll finish the bond when we’re ready.”

Zo Rienna frowned. “These first weeks are foundational. If you neglect the connection for more than a day or two, there’s the risk it will reject the connection and run wild.”

“He won’t.” She held out her hand. “Azendandor’s a good boy.”

He stilled for a moment, staring at her even if he couldn’t understand the specific words, and raised his head to hiss in agreement. Confirmation.

“He promises to be good,” Alisa interpreted, though admittedly she was taking significant liberties with the translation. “Now please, let me have him back.”

Sadie’s dragon Mirva meanwhile had finally got up the courage to untangle herself from Sadie’s hair - she spent most days hiding on Sadie’s shoulder - and flew closer to stare at the newcomer. Mirva’s scales glinted midnight blue with deeper ocean highlights forming curving half-diamond patterns across her back. Her wings flapped tirelessly to keep her oversized body aloft, and before long she dropped back to Sadie’s outstretched arm with a deep exhale.

Mirva had shed her scales since her own bond was initiated, and Alisa could see no remnant of it on her body. There was every chance the same would be true of her tiny naked-looking snake of a dragon, but while Mirva was wide and thickset with plenty of area to draw on - and even more so since she'd been growing over the past weeks - Alisa's new dragon was too tiny for her to risk.

After another few minutes' consideration, Zo Rienna acceded and released the squirming thrashing dragon. Azendandor flopped to the ground at once, unwilling to remain in the tutor's hands even long enough to be transferred to Alisa's waiting ones, and scurried up onto Alisa's leg where he clung with tiny claws to the fabric of her trousers.

She reached down to pick him up, disentangling his claws. "Careful," she remonstrated. "You'll leave marks if you're not more careful."

He tilted his head and stared at her for a long moment, then resumed his awkward flapping scramble down the back of her hand and up her arm and onto her shoulder, then hesitantly stood up on his rear legs, wings beating madly, and using her ear as a step bounced and scrambled up onto the top of her head. She tilted to look up at him, and saw just the tip of his chin, held high, staring out at the world from the highest vantage he could find.

Alisa reached up and disentangled him from her hair, setting him back on her arm. "Stay where I can see you," she ordered. "Since we're not fully bonded yet, it's dangerous for you to go out of my sight."

Azendandor, of course, didn't understand and promptly attempted to reclaim his perch. She tilted her head out of the way and picked him up by his middle, where neither front nor back legs could reach. If he were any larger he could have batted her aside with his back wings, but as he was still very small his protests were in vain.

Zo Rienna began detailing other information, now that they were moving on without completing the bond. Azendandor, as an Aelanir, would grow fast. He would require food more frequently than most dragons, which she could requisition when needed. She was directed to where several outbuildings had been reclaimed from their former uses and now had been dedicated entirely to the raising of dragons, provisioning, exercising, and otherwise.

"It's a temporary measure until we can get more permanent facilities prepared."

Any standard riding beasts had been relocated out of the academy, riding classes took place exclusively on unbound dragons for now, and the stables had been converted into resting grounds. Still, this would be nowhere near enough for the hundreds of dragons currently hatched. There would be no difficulty in fitting them while infants, but even after two months the first were beginning to reach sizes unreasonable to keep in a student's room indefinitely. Much longer and they wouldn't fit through the doors. Francine's was over-large from its birth, and she'd already been moved to one of the newly seized rooms outside the academy walls.

It turned out, the Traitor had declared all lands adjacent to the academy for several blocks to be part of its territory from henceforth, evicting the owners so the homes and businesses could be converted into dragon-sized accommodations. Builders and workers had been scurrying about outside the academy for months now, but only when it was explained to her did Alisa fully understand the implications.

"Aelaniri also require a lot of time outdoors. Once you complete the bond, of course. Until then you should keep him indoors or hooded when it’s necessary to move between buildings. Your schedule will be arranged to accommodate this."

Alisa hoped that meant more battle magic classes and fewer spent sitting and reading about things she no longer cared about, but somehow doubted fate would be so much in her favour when it had been anything but up to now.

"It may take a few days to a week before the dragon is ready for its first meal, but once it does you'll need to feed it every day or two. Small meals at first, then they'll gradually become larger and further spaced as it grows."

"He," Alisa interrupted. "Azendandor's a 'he'."

"Well, very good, then. He." The tutor smiled encouragingly. "He will require a lot of sleep as well, so don't be troubled if he becomes difficult to rouse after eating. This is normal. If he begins to bite and nibble at things more often than usual, it's probably a sign he'll need feeding soon. Don't be too quick to hurry him off for food, though; you don’t want to teach him to expect you to jump or he’ll start doing it on purpose."

Alisa asked a few more questions, then another boy came running to say that his friend's dragon was hatching and he'd passed out, so the tutor left her with instructions to come find her or one of her assistants if the dragon ever gave her any trouble or she had further questions.

"You won't give me trouble, will you?" Alisa asked.

The dragon panted at her in a singularly non-reassuring way, then immediately tried to climb up her ear again.

"No, no, you stay down," Alisa insisted, grabbing the slippery creature again and placing him on her arm. He'd learned the trick of it now, and scrambled up her arm the moment she stopped holding him.

"You're going to rip my ear off if you keep it up," Alisa warned. The dragon didn't seem to care, so instead she placed a hand over her ear so it no longer stuck out, tilting her head so hair covered the protrusion completely. Azendandor dropped back down to all fours on her shoulder, leaning up, leaning to the side, looking around for his convenient step. When he found no sign of it, he instead bunched himself up, all four legs close together, his snakelike body looping upwards between them, tail coiled, then leaped.

He missed her head, bouncing off the side of her cheek, then clawed at the front of her jacket to catch himself. She squeaked at that, inclined to swat him away, but caught herself at the last moment and carefully disengaged his claws instead. Swatting him would have dug the runs in deeper.

"You should go to a closed in space," Sadie said, interrupting her constant struggle to keep the dragon still. He had more energy than anything she'd ever seen before, constantly trying to move one way or the other.

"Probably a good idea," Alisa confirmed, and they sprinted toward their dormitory building. Mirva chirped and squeaked from Sadie's back, and Alisa's dragon raised his head and stared, making faint rasping sounds in response. He tried to jump free of Alisa’s hands, but she held him in both and restrained him determinedly. Once they reached the dorm, Sadie opened doors for her so she could enter without risking dropping her curious little charge. They both knew that if he got out of sight, they may never find him again.

Alisa was beginning to second-guess her decision not to bond him immediately, but every time she thought about the thick blobby nature of dragon magic, she know she’d made the right call. Messing up the bond would be worse than not having one.

Then they reached Alisa’s room and Sadie turned to go.

“Wait!” Alisa cried desperately. “What am I supposed to do?”

“Talk to him, help him understand what’s going on, and wait for him to fall asleep. Once that happens, you’ll have a couple hours to rest before he needs attention again.”

Alisa shook her head. “I’m not prepared for something like this!”

Sadie grinned wryly. “Neither was I. You’ll get through it.” She absently patted the dragon-shaped lump around her neck, and Mirva poked her head out through Sadie’s hair to growl softly. “We'll all get through it."

Alisa thought she heard a hint of sadness in Sadie's voice.

"Could it be, my happy friend has finally found reason to doubt?" she teased.

"No, of course not. I understand what's been commanded from us, and I've no intention of complaining about it. Not when it means I have Mirva, and so much potential for more."

She absently stroked her dragon's head, eliciting a further pleased rumble from Mirva.

Meanwhile, Azendandor had decided now was the perfect time to explore the bed. He leapt from Alisa’s shoulder, wings flapping furiously, only to miss his mark and flop onto the floor in a tangle of wings, serpentine body, and short flailing legs.

Sadie nudged him with her foot, flipping him back upright, and he hissed raspily at her foot, pulling himself up as though to say 'I could have done it myself'. Alisa didn't doubt the assertion.

"I know you could have," she said soothingly. "You're so flexible, I bet you could right yourself from any position at all."

Azendandor tilted his head up at her, as he always did when trying to comprehend her words, then looked away when she stopped speaking.

Sadie laughed wryly. "Good luck," she said, stepping toward the door. "I've got classes, but I'll check back on you in a few hours."

Alisa nodded, wondering how in the world she was supposed to keep up with this constantly-moving ball of slithery dragon. Currently, he was clawing his way up her bedspread, determined to examine the bed for himself by whatever means necessary.

What have I gotten myself in for?