A young man, hardly older than me by the looks of it. He wore a thick moss green scarf and cloak to match. The cowl fell over his head and revealed his white mane, falling down into the back of the cloak. His eyes looked eerily familiar, and it didn’t take me long to realise the split second we locked stares.

Blind like Winter.

The white in his eyes dominated the entire thing, leaving me to question if he’s connected to Winter somehow, but my fast falling pace pushed that suspicion away.

Not wanting to use lava sphere on a human, I retracted the spell. Unfortunately, he didn’t share my preference for peace and a winter star headed straight to me.

Without much thinking, I blew a great flame and used the force from it to push myself aside, effectively dodging his spell. I created a pool of water and dived into it for a soft landing. The minute the liquid disappeared, I used a lesser arcane sphere to push him over. He struggled to stand from the force, from there, I bound his hands and feet with arcane bind, the bright chains slightly clanking.

The slain ice dragon bled out on the beautifully trimmed lawn, staining it, an anathema for the groundsmen in charge of maintenance. My heart was guilt-tripped by my own decision, I wanted to go with the dragon to ensure he was fine, but I chose not to and this was the result. Was this my fault?

I stood over the silent young man. He didn’t resist at all, which only made a more cautious person of me. “Who are you?” I inquired, ready to intercept any trick he might have up his baggy sleeves.

Suddenly, “I, don’t know,” his thinning voice said, “I can’t remember, anything.” Shortly after, he passed out, leaving me in an even scarier conundrum.

A few battlemages rushed to the scene afterwards and asked of me questions I could not answer. Where did the boy come from? Why? How? All very important things to find out, however, something else troubled me.

His uncanny resemblance, not only in the absence of an iris and pupil, not only in his white unkempt hair, but also in his, smell. He had the scent of the enslaver of dragons, or, was it that, he smelled of dragons?

This boy was an anomaly that didn’t quite fit into the regular mage criteria and this left me baffled as to my next actions.

The battlemages wrested him from me soon enough and kept him under surveillance and magic bindings.

“Who was he? Someone you know?” Vaughn inquired, his gaze quite stringent.

I shook my head and shrugged, “He doesn’t even seem to know who he is,” I explained, “maybe he has memory lo­­–”

Those words unspoken, chimed in my head, making me recollect the times of when I appeared in Venreval. I was forcefully and abruptly teleported into the mountain. Uncle said, teleportation scrolls cause amnesia, right? “Vaughn,” I called his name, as if he wasn’t already listening to me, “do you know of any magic that causes amnesia?”

“There are old books,” he cited one that dealt with inscriptions, “that tell of the adverse side-effects of using magic inscriptions, however,” he rubbed his chin and looked upward, trying to retain what he read, “they’re very minor. There was no such penalty like memory loss, not even anything remotely similar.”

That was boggling, I clearly remembered Chiron saying inscription teleportation made me forget my past. Maybe it was the young archmage’s inexperience? Perhaps my uncle knew better.

But the more important task at hand, was addressing yet another dragon killing. Unlike the first time in the academy, this dragon was sent here by his elders. His failure to return could only mean one thing to them, at least, that is what king Sven Aran stated. His court steward and archmage agreed, steepening a fear in me. I’ve never been in a war, or close to one and I didn’t want to experience it.

After we put the matter to rest, I decided I could do with some of my own and returned to my quarters with intentions of sleeping, but curiosity rendered me a sheep to its allure. I went to Glacier Crest, not to the summit, but to the landing that they allowed outsiders on.

“You again!” one of them shouted and attracted the eyes and wings of many sharing their hostility. Their breaths were ready to ensnare me, but they didn’t. Something was peculiar. It was miniscule, discreet, but it was there. I could tell, something was holding them back. Their duty and desire had two very different goals, so they paused, hesitating whilst the frost around their vicious jaws circled.

One of them warned that my presence here was not welcomed, her voice rumbling. Was I being so bull-headed that I forsook any alternatives? Did those two deceased ice dragons leave such a jolting impact on my conscience? I felt obligated to help them, especially knowing that I could’ve curved the narrow roads of fate and save a life. Instead, I chose to tread lightly, and naivety sold the wishful thoughts to me that I could help behind the shadows, that I needn’t show my face. How foolish.

I made my decision.

“Why do you stop? Go ahead. Strike. Kill your only chance of peace.” My taunt was as unwelcomed as I. Loud growls and snarls pitched forth from their bowels.

One landed near me, sending forth a nova of snow. It circled around me, like a vulture stalking its near-death prey, “You do not understand your position, smooth-flesh.”

“Make me,” I gave the final nudge off the cliff of reasoning and into the precipice of abhorrence.

It clawed its giant limb towards me and I put up a force field, blocking its heavy blow by a hair’s breadth. I skated along with its strike and opened a portal to my left, slipping into it with the momentum I already garnered. Above her I appeared, calculating where I think their centre of balance would be. An arcane sphere hurled towards that point, sending the vicious dragon crashing to the floor. Arcane chains emerged from the ground and ensnared it.

A large wave containing millions of sharp ice particles blasted towards me. The other dragons didn’t sit idly by while I fought one of their own. Instinctively, I cancelled it out with a large breath of fire and finally landed, skating a little on the icy ground, performing a less than stellar finishing.

My right hand was constantly channelling barrier magic around me, only flickering off when I needed to launch an arcane sphere and bind them. During all the fighting, a thundering roar discharged mercilessly from the summit of Glacier Crest. Every single dragon halted their attack, even those already caught in my arcane binding stopped struggling to get out.

A lone dragon, as white as snow, landed. They bowed their heads in respect.

“Why are we fighting?” she asked, a tranquillity laden in her voice.

“M-my queen, this human attacked us!” one defended.

I couldn’t believe him, “Hey!” I shouted, “You guys attacked me first!”

She looked down at me, this pale queen, “Who are you, child?”

Thank goodness, she was calm. “My name is Emily Crescent. Two of your dragons asked me for my help, and right after they were killed by Samael Winter and a young boy. I failed at protecting them, so,” I went quiet for a while, “I’m here to help, if I can.”

“Emily? I’ve heard of you. To come here on your own, a Blackheart through and through I see.” My father must’ve had a reputation for her to say that. The queen’s eyes latched onto me, their sapphire illustriousness not failing to make me admire. She spent a chillingly long time looking at me, perhaps pondering something. She let a wing down, “Come.”

“Queen Aurora! Please, we must advise against this. This human is dangerous!” One of them tried deterring her actions. After all, if I mounted her, I’d be sitting on her blind spot, she’d be defenceless. I could kill their queen without much effort, so their hisses of disagreement were understood.

“Dangerous? Perhaps,” the queen replied, gesturing me to climb, and as I did, she continued, “but if she wished to do harm, those of you captured, would be dead.”

They turned their eyes away, ashamed and disgraced that her words were so unloving, but truthful nonetheless. Without any more opposition, she flew off to a rather isolated cavern even deeper into the lands of Glacier Crest. I shivered, quickly deciding to down a lava pill. Why did she take me this far out? Was I overstepping my boundaries? This could be a trap, I thought, reminding myself to keep vigilant.

The cavern led deeper into the earth, going underground into the frozen fjord. We came across a large body of blistering cold water, of which, of course, we had to swim through. A large passageway underneath brought us to a large room. Despite it taking just a few seconds because I held onto Aurora, I rued the distastefully chilling water.

“We need your help,” she wept, bringing my attention to a haunting sight, “Winter, only left a few behind,” she said, looking weakly at her remaining eggs, “he took five of my unborn, and destroyed the rest before they could hatch. Please,” she turned to me, “help.”

It was then, a less than appropriate thought warped my mind, why don’t they just take them back? Why are they letting Winter do as he pleases? “You are dragons, surely your clan can defeat one man.” I commented, finding it a little strange.

“It isn’t one man. Winter’s strength is not to be underestimated.” She informed me of his copying ability, and his subordinates, like that boy I saw wielding the winter star spell. Those things had slipped my mind. “Even knowing what we were facing, the dragons of the north would still challenge him,” she breathed out miserably, “but we do not know where he hid my eggs. However, for them to survive, the place must be as cold as these lands.”

I switched topics, knowing we’d get nowhere on the eggs, “And, what of the elders?”

“The elders!” her fury leaked out as her claws etched into the icy floor, “Their minds, are being torn apart by magic, most likely, Winter’s. This is why they are giving strange commands to the others. I would stop them, but I am left weakened after birthing the eggs. I fear this war will start without me being able to fight.”

She was quite worried, almost sickened at herself. Of course, being the chemist I am, I tried my pills and potions, but they had little to no effect on her. My mind was more than just ruffled. Did I make a mistake in the creation process? No matter how many times I tried, her body’s power would not return. I soon realised, her power was stored in the eggs, and until they hatched, she probably would be defenceless. I gave up on it soon enough.

With all the possible war tunes being sung by the arctic dragons, I decided to let the night fall unproductively upon me, choosing to simply rest instead of tear my mind’s health to shreds.

“I heard,” Mandy hopped onto the bed and clung to me from behind as I stared blankly at the walls. “The first dragon we saw Winter kill asked you for help, and now, another did the same and shared a similar fate. What will you do?”

“I’m going to help,” I said, a little scatter-brained, muttering “somehow” after a long pause. My plan was indeed to snip the tension in the bud, but how would I go about it? “Well, enough about me,” I turned to the misty-eyed battlemage, “how was your day?” I inquired.

She complained a little, about the number of complaints she’d been getting. Being the only head of the Sentries proved a daunting task with an unrelenting string of duties snapping viciously at her ankles every minute it could get, begging for attention in an awfully forceful manner. As much as I seemed to get involved in recent activities, she also had her plate full of unruly mages, and even had to spearhead an investigation into a missing student. “I thought it’d be easy, but the minute I settle in, he goes missing!” she quarrelled, sighing after in a defeatist tone.

“Who?”

“Levi Ashworth, one of the eight prized sorcerers of this school. If I don’t get him back, my reputation is going to–” she paused, refusing to mention the consequences, maybe in fear that they may materialise after her mention of them.

We talked into the night and fell asleep eventually. When I awoke, she was gone, her responsibility giving no moments to catch a breather.

I teleported to the Eblis’ pool to clear my head. Locating the eggs of a queen dragon whilst trying to prevent a war wasn’t exactly something I was faced with every day.

In the lavender blood, I closed my eyes and sank into it, soaking thoroughly. I could feel the pit, the very bottom of the crater – where I promptly dozed off – speaking to me. It kept calling it to me, with a voice I’ve been finding to be more familiar the more I hear it.

“Surrender your heart!” it said to me, a sudden clearness and crispness to the usual whisper-like, shadowy voice. I woke up immediately and swam to the surface. More than a little ruffled, I looked around. A ghost? I wondered, but also bonked myself on the pate for being so superstitious. It couldn’t be, right?

I dried the odourless demon’s blood dripping from me with blanket and returned home. I made my daily rounds, delivering pills across Venreval, making sure to treat the students as priority.

Suddenly, Chiron contacted me, asking if I’d already gone to the Crag. I replied with an unfavourable “no”, to which he justly grumbled, but showed some sort of understanding after he took my position and situation into concern.

In the middle of my pleading, a deafening explosion rocked my ears into shock. It came from the direction of the palace, and when I really paid attention from the lonely village I was in at the moment, I noticed a huge cloud swarmed in the skies. No way.

To the royal court, I teleported, having to dodge rubble from falling atop me. The rally cries of the dragons stood strong. I understood now, that battle already started.

The king was taken away by the battlemages, presumably to get to safety.

Breaths of frost and ice shards rained down from above like death itself. Screams and roars filled the skies outside. Being caught off-guard as we were, signalled a one-sided battle. The elders must’ve grown weary of waiting, and used the murders of the two ice dragons as just reason to sink their nefarious and wilted fangs into Venreval. This jammed my mind into a corner and it wasn’t sure where to turn to escape. Am I for the dragons, or for humanity? What will siding with one cause the other to do? Was my decision even of importance? My picking of a side, as compared to an entire kingdom and the icy north must’ve been as insignificant as the screams for mercy that hurled out the lungs of these people.

The few seconds I peered out at the massacre from the palace’s balcony was enough to jostle my conscience into movement. Maybe I was too soft, but I couldn’t just sit back and allow people to die, knowing I could do something. To the centre of town, I teleported, in the midst of chaos. People scattered, livestock squealed, taps and fountains froze, ice formed everywhere, some in the form of spears, running through the hearts of man, woman, and child. It was vexing, this position I took. What I was about to do could, in no way, be interpreted as helping the dragons of Glacial Crest.

The first lava sphere hit the chest of an incoming dragon, shrouding his front in fire and melting away his scales until he crash landed into the ground, in severe pain. Next was an arcane sphere, smashing directly below one of them and mashing into its underside, sending the winged attacker hurling into one of its comrades above. Before they could land, my magic chains wrapped their wings and mouths shut.

Their sheer numbers made me unable to focus on all of them. It was like trying to exterminate a nest of ants by hitting them one at a time with a rock. I took a pill and gained some ground, over someone’s house. The skies began resembling the white opacity of snow-covered ice, and under that sunless enclave of wintry-domination, I spat fire like my life depended on it–and it did–until they began noticing their kin dropping like flies to a swat. Huge breaths of salamander fire eviscerated the cold-hearth of many ice dragons, the embers soaking through their scales the minute it touched them. Through my mouth, flames came alive. In my palms, bright red spheres of molten earth propelled forth.

For some seconds, I had my way, unnoticed, but that luck would eventually wither. When the bulk of the forces noticed my unwanted intervention, many of them did a quick landing and turned to me, breathing forth lances made of ice, about the size of a regular knight’s sword.

In that moment, I knew I couldn’t conjure teleportation fast enough, considering the speed their attacks travelled at. I had to block their draconic breaths with the barrier spell, dual-casted; the sheer magnitude of attacks soaring to me would totally crush a barrier channelled with just one hand. They hit, shattering to pieces on impact, nonstop. This onslaught justified the king’s ban on allowing the talk of murdered ice dragons to spread. I saw now why they were afraid of these dragons. My barrier began cracking, the magical force was simply too great to withstand, and revealing Eblis power was out of the question. Metamorphosis, my only hope, couldn’t be used.

A hole appeared in my weakening barrier, until one decisive shard of ice stuck me right through the arm, almost wanting to tear it off. I yelled out in excruciating pain. It slid through my forearm, lodging itself between the bones and fracturing one. That pain fell my concentration, weakening what was left of a one-handed barrier spell even further. My life was on the line, as there didn’t seem to be an end to their attacks, nor any room for me to counter. Just the smallest window of time was what I needed, but never received. The ice shard hurt immensely. I wanted to pull it out, so desperately, but my other hand was preoccupied with keeping my breaths of life intact for as long as it could.

The last of my barrier was beginning to crack. No, I can’t die yet, not now. My mind was reaching a wall, my adrenaline searching desperately for my fight response because my flight had surely failed. The dark, sinister demon’s energy began shrouding around the wound in my arm the more my barrier cracked. I couldn’t tell if I was doing it, or if it was protecting me of its own accord. My blood was running and my vision was becoming blurry, my body shivered, until, I gave up on what people thought about me. I learned that day, death’s door was the greatest motivator a person could ask for.

As I was about to use metamorphosis, Audax came rolling in, spectacularly so, spewing flames and making a large nova of some sort. He grabbed their attention away from me. I tugged the ice out of me and began channelling a healing magic onto my arm the moment my friend came tumbling down from the skies.

After my arm was tended to, I joined Audax the Reckless, burning away the ice and its masters. A while after, a battalion of battlemages brought an arsenal of spells to the fight. They were jumping from rooftop to rooftop, albeit in an organised manner and began subduing the dragons of the north at an alarming rate. They were good, very much so, unfortunately, they were still far off from where Audax and I were fighting.

Suddenly, a winter star zoomed through the sky and cut down a few ice dragons in its path, eventually taking a wing off Audax before it disappeared. They all fell, but I ignored our attackers and ran to Audax, casting a one-handed barrier and a healing spell to stop the bleeding and pain. The restoration magic that restored limbs was far too demanding to cast it while channelling the barrier, instead, I created a portal back to Emberscale. He scoffed at me. The nerve of this dragon!

“Just go!” I yelled, already angry at myself for letting him get injured. I most assuredly didn’t want him to die. And at the moment, the caster of that winter star distressed me greatly. No care was given to the ice dragons at all when the person targeted Audax. “I don’t have time for this!” I used my arcane chains and pulled him through the portal forcefully, even though he wanted to stay and fight.

Suddenly, I felt a heavy presence behind me. It was that boy, the very boy who couldn’t even remember his own name. I was about to stand but he held me by the throat and pushed me down. With quick wits, I put my hand on his shin and summoned at arcane sphere. The force of it pushed his leg back and made his body waver. His chin was met with my elbow at full force. I must not have been suited to physical combat, because he didn’t even fall over, but he did falter.

He rocked his jaw side to side and began casting spells, but a shadow swept by the side of my vision and rocked a solid punch right into his stomach. I felt like the force of the blow smashed his spine. He flew a few metres away, until he came to a sliding stop atop some ice.

“What, are you doing here, Mandy?” I asked. Only she could be responsible for a punch like that.

“How’d you know?” she turned around, removing the cowl from over her head.

“I just kn–” my sentence was cut short by what I was witnessing off in the distance.

Samael Winter!

He was flying low, away from the eyes of the battlemages who looked to the skies for the dragons. I intercepted him by teleporting over in the square near the gallows. He took notice of me and stopped. His arcane cuffs were busted open and its effect looked to be nullified. “So you cause all this death just to escape?”

He remained wordless and jumped down from his ice platter. The staff I first saw him with was summoned into his hands, its sturdiness and metal construction had me questioning its usage with magic.

We squared off for a couple seconds until he dashed in, forgoing the use of magic and choosing close combat. I wasn’t sure how to react, but I prepared my chains and arcane spheres to capture the man once more. I sent the spheres flying at him, but he easily dodged. I wrapped the chains around him but the minute they touched him, they were broken out of. Aurora was right, I certainly wasn’t to underestimate the man.

I raised my forearm up, casting a force field to protect myself. Suddenly, a pulverising first buried itself deep within my cheekbone on the other side.

Two Winters, at once!

I rocked back from his punch, then felt the electrifying staff crashing into my knee. After that, was a simple, old-fashioned beat-down. My body wasn’t responding the way I wanted it to. The constant strikes made it impossible to retaliate. I was near unconscious when he finally stopped, his fist dripping with cerise blood.

“I was planning to teach you your place another time, but since you came to me, I figured I’d just do it now,” he stooped down and slapped me a little, making sure I didn’t pass out, “stay with me, kid. You’re a good person, you’ll be useful to this kingdom soon enough, so I don’t think I’ll kill you. But, you’ll need to stay clear of me and not concern yourself with my business. You’d best tell miss Sikorski the same. You can sleep now.”

As if his allowing to me to sleep was a command, my eyelids cemented shut.

Finally, I came to. The curtain flapped endlessly from the mild winds outside, and a harsh light came through my window. It must’ve been midday, to be this bright. I flipped my covers off, getting up off the bed, a massive headache accompanying me. My hands gripped the door handle, a little hesitant to see what was outside, but I opened it anyway. The first person I saw, albeit not how I envisioned he would look at all, was that boy working for Winter. I immediately put up a barrier and formed a lava sphere, ready to decimate him.