The apartments Meyron kept in the Academy were situated near the dungeons. This was both a request and a convenience. Fewer people tended to wander in that direction, and it remained cool in the often brutal summers. The headmaster had offered her rooms in one of the spires like the other Pinnacles, but her fellows made it quite clear how unwelcome she was and Meyron didn’t want to associate with those idiots anyway.

General clutter was ever-present, but currently it was a complete disaster. Meyron hated packing.

“‘Honorary’,” she muttered to herself, and threw another dress on the stone floor. Many of her dresses were old and out of date. Her daily wardrobe were her mage’s robes, and part of her wanted to keep that identity, but she didn’t want that dolt Headmaster Trayvon taking credit for her exploits. The thought of the pompous elf sent another dress sailing from the wardrobe onto the floor.

Meeting with the old man, Mr. Eldeman, spurred Meyron into action. His son manned their table in the sprawling capital’s Market Square, and would be there until the end of the season. It gave her a place to start. She looked at the tiny stack of five applications and her anger died down before the shadow appeared. She glanced to her left anyway just to be sure.

She had one necromancer to tutor in over a decade, and he turned out to have next to no talent; he could only summon and control three siphons, and the rest of his tendrils were mere decorations. He couldn’t even see another necromancer’s power. Finding students to teach was what she needed, and if Headmaster Trayvon wasn’t going to give them to her she would find them herself.

First, the farmboy. Another was a noblewoman who likely resided in the capital this time of year. A set of twins on separate applications, both part dragon like herself; they would prove difficult to find. Last was a Druid, and until she saw him with her own eyes, she thought this application might be a joke. The Druids hated the Academy of Mages.

But before she could embark on this journey she needed something to wear that didn’t go out of fashion a hundred years ago.

“Mage Meyron, these are men’s clothes.”

“That’s Pinnacle Mage Meyron to you,” said Meyron, sticking her pointer finger in the seamstress’s face. “And I know these are men’s clothes. I want them tailored to fit me. I’m going on a journey and robes and dresses won’t do.”

The seamstress held up her hands in surrender, shook her head, and then waved for Meyron to follow her into the fitting area in the back. Her temper had been quite on edge the last several weeks. Perhaps she was molting; the scales on her knees, elbows and hips did itch.

No one ever quite got used to the scales, but the seamstress did a passing job at dismissing them and knew to mark the area for leather patches to help with wear. Few people with enough dragon blood to assume their dragon form existed anymore, though the stark and unnatural colors remained. Most of them were born instead of hatched, though that had more to do with who their mother was.

Meyron never met her mother. She hatched after she was slain in the Great War, and her father raised her and served on the dragon council. Until her magic surfaced. Necromancer paranoia was at an all-time high, and he made a choice. She hadn’t spoken to him in over two hundred years.

The seamstress worked quickly, and Meyron paid her to have her things finished before the end of the day. She agreed, but rolled her eyes as she did. Now she needed to find a small enough pack suitable for long travel. The journey to the capital would be difficult enough without the added burden of a heavy pack.

Without question, the best part of living in such a massive city was that if it existed, someone here would be selling it. Merchants and peddlers from all over Rainon and Cinder gathered in the neutral ground of the Academy and shouted their wares over each other in a cacophony of prosperity. The capital could compete for size, but paled in variety.

Meyron found a leatherworker she trusted and ducked into his shop. Only one other patron looked through samples of his work, and a young man, almost too young to be as good as he was, stood behind the counter and attached decorative buckles to belts. Unlike magic, trades could be passed on and she knew this boy’s grandfather and their work was always impeccable.

“Afternoon,” he said with a nod. “Always a pleasure to see a Pinnacle of the Academy in my shop.” The other patron turned, a tanned man looking worse for wear with an old scar running down the side of his face. He held a staff and continued looking at the various strips of leather with different dyes. Meyron wrinkled her nose. He smelled terrible.

“I need a sturdy pack, but small and able to harness onto a dragon,” she said. She could feel the eyes of the other patron on her. Without any warning, her darkness fully materialized into the familiar form of the man with tousled hair, navy breeches and tan shirt and stood off to her left.

“A simple enough request,” he said. “I’ll have it ready before we close.” Finally, a reasonable shopkeeper she didn’t have to threaten.

“Excellent,” she said, but she wasn’t looking at him.

“You need to get out of here,” said the darkness, and he jabbed a thumb towards the man with the staff. “Something isn’t right about him.”

He didn’t have to tell her twice. She cast a quick protection spell around the leatherworker and left one of her tendrils behind. One could never be too careful. The stink surrounding the man had little to do with his hygiene and it made the hairs on her neck stand on end. Whatever the man was, it wasn’t anything pleasant.

Sunset approached and the seamstress was finished with her alterations. The breeches, all black, would be snug at her hips and ankles. Patches of dark brown leather covered the areas her scales grew, and the wretched woman embroidered little scrolling vines on her hems in gold. It explained the smug grin on her face when she handed them over. Thankfully, her shirts were plain and in shades of white and brown. A cloak would have to wait until she reached the capital.

When she returned to the leatherworker’s shop nothing appeared amiss. She absorbed her tendril, carefully hidden with scraps of leather, and learned nothing. The pungent man either left without buying anything or didn’t make conversation if he did. Meyron made sure to tip the leatherworker generously.

The Academy of Mages sat on a large rock off the coast of the city and a stone bridge with no supports, railings or suspension spanned the distance. A thin, flat layer of stone that should’ve been impossible served as the primary route to access the Academy proper. Most people didn’t like crossing it unless they absolutely had to, and those like Meyron who crossed it thousands of times hardly noticed it anymore.

Beyond the bridge, the Academy was in the shape of a square, a courtyard in the middle for magic practice and events. Spires spaced evenly around the square Academy rose high in the sky, each representing a different type of magic: water, nature, earth, fire, wind and “necromancy”, though that spire was used to house the overflow of water and nature mages.

Sometimes, in her less sane moments, Meyron wished things were different and she lived at the top of the necromancy spire, the rooms below filled with her students and no one feared her and included her fully as a Pinnacle.

Then she would snap out of it. Fantasies were always better than the reality, and the reality was the Pinnacles bickered and fought constantly, even when they got along. At least this way Meyron always knew where she stood: outside, and not part of the Academy. Not anymore.

Off to the eastern side of the Academy was an old and poorly maintained flight deck designed to accommodate dragons in their true form. As far as she knew, Meyron was the only one who used it and it truly wasn’t necessary for a dragon her size.

Old fraying cloth hung on rickety frames to create makeshift dressing rooms, and she stepped into one to undress and pack her things into the small traveling pack that bulged with the clothes she just bought. Fully nude, she attached the pack to her front, the straps altered to fit like a harness that criss-crossed her back and kept her shoulder blades free.

Meyron took a breath and focused on the part of her, buried somewhere inside that wasn’t human or magic, until it bloomed and the world changed. The familiar tingling of black scales as they replaced her weak skin put a smile on her face, and the wind felt good against the thin membrane of her wings. The best part? The darkness couldn’t touch her here.

It took a moment to stretch her wings and test her strength, but soon she beat her wings against the air and climbed upward, above the spires and the Academy proper, above the city and all the puny humans that lived there. Yes, this was a good start. This was a good way to leave the Academy and never come back.