The Odd Dragon Out: Reckoning of the Cinder-Born

Ginger was now walking over the bridge which was neatly demarcated, with areas for pedestrians, and for those with fancy rides drawn by beasts.

By following other chattering dragonlings wearing unfamiliar styles of casual clothing, some bigger than him, and some thinner, Ginger had started to slowly learn a few things about this world, but they hardly helped him bridge the insurmountable gap of knowledge between him and the locals.

Worse than that, Ginger was appalled to find that almost every boy and girl who looked remotely his age, had a stunning beauty to them.

Young girls whipped their silky, different-colored hair about and discussed subjects he was horrified to eavesdrop on. Young boys had an air of firmness about them that made him wither, and imagine that perhaps he wasn't a boy at all.

It was peculiar, and cruel to see since Ginger soon learned that every one of the dragonlings walking on this bridge towards the school, some with escorts and others without, were First Years.

What's more, it seemed like Ginger was missing more than a few traits that made a dragon. For one, he hadn't thought about it before, but unlike the slit-like pupils of other dragons, his were dark and round, just like those of a human.

Ginger sucked in the sweet Mana Essence in an attempt to calm himself.

Doubt strangled him thoroughly.

Should he even be here?

Was this the right school?

Would Ancor's strategy for getting him into the school even work?

"Ancor... please don't let this be one of those times where you end up saying, 'Grave miscalculation on my part," Ginger murmured to himself in horror.

The pairs of parents accompanying their children made him feel even worse. He felt his colon perform a breakdance when he heard encouraging words, and loving quotes.

Often, when pairs of eyes looked at him, and his dirty scarf, Ginger's furious habit of scratching his thigh when nervous would kick in, though he had to stifle the urge, in case he gave others the wrong idea. Instead, he turned and pretended to be taken by the lake below the bridge.

The wide waters had a dim, violet tinge now because of the deficient sun slowly retreating over the horizon. Said waters served as a good distraction from time to time, but the best one was undoubtedly the destination of all the beautiful overachievers Ginger walked amongst.

The school ahead.

Halfway through the bridge, Ginger got a clearer view of the fine elements of the school.

A wide, tall, bronze wall rose around half of it, fitted with turrets of towers per each ninety-meter distance. Burly buildings of different shapes peeked from over the wall, with the greatest of them being a huge, cube-shaped castle that strangely had the aura of a proud bodybuilder.

Ginger gulped.

His anxiety soared.

The cubical construct had the backdrop of a vast, snow-tipped mountain that dwarfed both it and the high wall in size, acting as the other half of the wall around the school.

The mountain looked like it had been impaled in the middle by something huge because a dark hollow could be seen even from this distance.

'I wish Ancor had told me more about this place,' Ginger thought while turning slightly pale.

There wasn't a single structure as magnificent as this in the Wild, at least a poor soul like him had never seen it.

As a consequence, Ginger was the only dragonling marveling and nearly bursting into applause at a wall, a mountain, and a cube.

As he drew close to the gate, he saw another impressive sight.

It was this sight that finally drew the eyes and surprise of the other dragonlings, as most of them looked up at it with great interest.

Over the entrance – a simple, excessively large square gap in the wall – was an ebony statue.

It stood proud at a height of ten meters, and a width of six, sculpted into the form of a fearsome beast that Ancor had shown Ginger to be the true form of a dragon that had graduated from juvenile dormancy.

Four powerful limbs with clear, large scales, gripped tight onto the wall with sharp, curved claws. A broad, heavy body then rose with thick muscles under the depiction of scales, at one end of it, a long, winding tail half the length of its body, and on the other, a long neck ending in a large head.

Strangely, the face of the dragon wasn't as Ginger recalled from Ancor's examples.

Dragons had several forms and types, but this one... his Shaman mentor had never mentioned.

Instead of a long snout, a maw full of rending teeth, and pronounced nostrils, Ginger saw a face like that of a hawk. Sharp eyes carved using a precious stone akin to red diamond mounted the face along with a long, intricate, open beak. Around this head, numerous long scales protruded like feathers, and two horns were perked atop it.

Two pairs of webbed wings completed the beast, the size of each incredibly large.

Below this ebony statue, was a large, silver plate that read:

'Draggard-Phoenix Institute for the Cinder-Born.'

Ginger sucked in a deep breath and kept all words he would have wanted to say to himself.

The other children around him, however, did not.

"That is so cool! I want to look just like that! I can't wait for Fourth Year! Ah, I can't even wait for my First Burning!"

"So that's the depiction of Ancient Elder Draggard-Phoenix. It's more impressive than the one in the books. Did you know this is not even to scale? He was at least three times as big."

"Wow, look there! The others are so far away."

Ginger saw a girl with wavy, brown hair point frantically to his left, where, far from the entrance, another stature could be seen.

It depicted a dragon different from the ebony one in a smaller size, taking the shape of a very long, serpent-like form with four short limbs that ended with claws. Its vermillion hue was striking, but easy to miss because of the sheer length of the wall on which it was placed.

"They all look different..." Ginger uttered, stunned.

To his right, there was another depiction of a dragon, this one with an azure vibrance, a heavy jaw, a rather stocky body bordering on fat, and two vast, tree-webbed wings.

There were two others, but they were too far to see clearly, and even if Ginger intended to make a quick run to sate his curiosity, a loud voice call to him and everyone else held him tight.

"Alright, alright! Quiet now! I don't have all day!" shouted a shady, immature-looking dragon.

He wore what looked like a straw hat over his head, a long black coat made of soft fabric, and... a pair of shorts and sandals.

Ginger immediately found it hard to take him seriously. He only reeled his impressions in to maintain a straight face when he saw the man's pair of striking ocean blue eyes with slits for pupils scan past him.

Oddly enough, this man wore no scarf or covering around his neck.

He didn't hide his scales, which were of a vibrant cerulean hue, covering his neck to the jaw.

This was the first clump of scales Ginger had seen beside his own.

"As usual, parents will not enter. Kiss your wittle imps goodbye, and get your scaly asses out of here. And that fees better have been paid too, otherwise, we'll send your stuff, and your imps to the Rebounding Seether!" the man announced rather grumpily.

Several murmurs were heard at the impolite declaration, but the parents of all the children said their goodbyes, and one by one, pair by pair, they began leaving.

Ginger watched with mixed sadness while distancing himself from the other dragonlings. Those that knew each other formed groups and walked towards the cloaked dragon who gazed at them all with what could only be annoyance.

The grumpy man gestured towards the gaping entrance.

Scores of dragonlings rushed past him and passed through the entrance.

Ginger watched in shock as the first of the dragonlings to walk through... suddenly disappeared. He had expected to see them pass into the image of a freshly mowed lawn beyond the entrance, but...

'Am I seeing wrong? Is it some kind of illusion?' he wondered.

This seemed normal to everyone else that followed, and Ginger felt like an idiot for being the only one who was wondering where everyone was disappearing to.

He stood rooted in place as the crowd thinned.

Sometime along the procession of other dragonlings, he heard the shady dragon with sandals yell, "Don't dare try to pass through if you don't know whether your fees was paid in full or not, little imps! Hmm, hold on. You could try. It'll be quite the sight, actually."

Ginger didn't dare try to enter. Logically, perhaps he should, since Ancor had told him to find someone at the school, but he didn't want to risk it.

The best option, as it stood, was to approach the grumpy man in the straw hat.

Ginger really didn't want to.

But standing here for eternity wasn't an option.

Hesitantly, he drew towards the man who was busy shooing slow-moving dragonlings and gulped hard. He bit his upper lip fiercely and suppressed the urge to scratch his thigh.

"Uhh... excuse me?" Ginger said in a high-pitched voice. His manner of speaking was rather slow.

The dragon turned to him aggressively and growled, "What?"

Ginger breathed in to cool his insides.

"I... uh... I'm looking for someone. Could you help me?" he asked politely.

The man seemed to turn a bit mellow at his timidness, but he still grunted.

"Spill it, imp."

Ginger perked up a little.

"I'm looking for someone by the name of Ira Otus. Could you please help me find him... them?"

The man narrowed his eyes and scoffed.

"That's Mister Ira to you. Why are you looking for me? And how could you possibly not know who I am?"

Ginger immediately turned to stone.