The Odd Dragon Out: Reckoning of the Cinder-Born

What was this about the pedestal in the corner?

Ginger's mind remained nailed on this detail that Professor Lyall didn't give emphasis or elaboration on.

He wasn't the only one to hinge on this, however. Even as his thickly Prime Instructor unfurled the parchment with the pairings for this activity with the clear intent to begin calling out the first two to head into the chamber, he found that the chatter within the cavern intensified.

Reiss pulled on the sleeve of his Light Gear to rein in his attention.

"What do you think about that? That sounded important, but it seems like the Professor doesn't want to bring much attention to it," the short dragonling said with narrowed eyes. "What could be so special about this pedestal?"

"I don't know. Maybe there's something like a Charm or a Pyro on it? Something to help?" Ginger said, unsure.

Reiss folded his arms. He had a grave suspicion about the pedestal, and about the manner in which Professor Lyall had told them all about it.

"Even if she said this isn't a test, it seems to me like she wants to inspect how much we have learned. I mean, come on. Now that she's said this, at least some of the idiots among us are going to go straight for that pedestal thing. She wouldn't want this to be that easy, right?" he said.

Ginger twisted his lips.

"You think it's some kind of trap then?" he asked.

"No, but I think it will be harder to reach than we think," Reiss said while nodding, validating his own assumption. "If not, I don't understand why she emphasized all that stuff about using every resource we have, not just our weapons."

Ginger nodded. He agreed with Reiss' analysis.

In fact…

The plump dragonling felt as though he was struck by lightning on the brain.

He looked up with his bulging sugar-grey eyes.

The globes of light illuminating this cavern…

"Professor…She used Mana Essence to make them…" Ginger said dreamily.

"Urgh, yes. What about it?" Reiss asked with a strange look on his face.

A small, determined smile appeared on Ginger's own.

"Ahem!" Professor Lyall's wet cough grabbed the attention of the students. It seemed she had lost her ability to clap, with her hands preoccupied with holding up the parchment. "The two to enter first will be… let's see… we'll have Aias Drexel and Eleni Lapin."

The two who had been called were revealed rather quickly as tens of heads familiar with their likeness and position turned to them. Those who didn't know were drawn by the eager motions of torsos, and they crinkled and careened to gawk at the two unlucky souls.

As the two walked rigidly towards Professor Lyall, Ginger soon found that their faces weren't too familiar. They were from different classes to his own.

Aias was a short dragonling with a bit of a muscular frame – or at least one that brought to attention the obvious possibility of him growing into a beefcake. He had short, messy, oily blonde hair and narrow green eyes. His posture screamed of false courage, but when compared to his counterpart, he might as well have been as confident as a stallion.

Eleni was a scrawny, but pretty girl with long, brown hair. Faint freckles hid under her vibrant red eyes which were so deep that they almost hid the draconic slits within them. She visibly trembled as she walked towards Professor Lyall. Her thin figure within the loose black and grey Light Gear made it all the more evident how scared she was, and garnered her some pity.

Ginger would have loved to show her some, but a large part of him was glad. How Eleni and Aias performed would determine just how challenging or otherwise the ordeal waiting in the chamber was.

"Straighten your backs, will you?" Professor Lyall said to the odd two with her eyes reaching over her glasses. "Just do your best. We'll be watching the whole time, so nothing especially bad will happen to you. Mind the scarf, dear."

Eleni shook and tucked the scarf poking out of the neck of her Light Gear deep within. It was becoming easier and easier to forget that there was a full uniform under the jumpsuit.

Professor beckoned the two towards the arched gap and everyone looked closely, holding their breaths.

Ginger and Reiss also watched keenly.

The plump dragonling saw his Prime Instructor say something to the two. Whatever she said was either immensely unsettling or nerve-soothing because Eleni squeezed the dear life out of the hilt of her Qin Steel rapier while Aias sucked in a deep breath and swung his flail lightly after she spoke.

The two then took unsure steps into the inviting darkness that led into the Blighted's chamber.

Ginger, haunted by some of the things he had read and seen in like-mannered settings for adventures in the Wild, half-expected to hear a scream and something getting squashed with a squelch.

'That's a really bad thing to be thinking about for my colleagues, isn't it?' he called himself out.

That wouldn't happen anyway…right?

He didn't know how exactly Professor Lyall and Professor Aarons were supposed to be watching Aias and Eleni, but he was sure they were.

Seconds passed.

The First Years collectively adopted silence and waited.

Some expected to hear footsteps fade into the distance at least, but even that much was denied them once the first two were swallowed into the black.

RAARRR!

A great roar, different from the first, suddenly sounded and the students shook. Another came, along with a faint sound of thrashing, and then silence reigned.

Ginger gulped and looked at Reiss. The dwarfish dragonling looked at him as well, and then they both looked at Caron. She was wearing a look of mild concern.

She caught their gazes with a short glance in their direction and hurried to look away.

RAAAARRRR!

Another roar, fainter than the first two blared.

The fact that the students couldn't see what was going on only served to inject them with ill-timed shots of adrenaline.

The suspense was ridiculous, and so was the anticipation. Desperate to glimpse a semblance of Aias and Eleni's performance, most of the students stared at Professor Lyall, who still stood by the arched gap ahead, and Professor Aarons who was among them, cut off from their clusters in a small, empty ring that none of them wished to invade lest their noses suffocated.

If something bad or otherwise was happening to Aias and Eleni, the students would never get to know because the two instructors did not betray anything with as much as a twitch.

It should have been clear from the beginning, actually.

Ginger scolded himself for thinking differently. If none of the First Years could decipher what Professor Lyall's daily variations of V-shaped smiles meant, how could they possibly hope to discern what she evidently wanted to keep hidden?

That was the whole point of not allowing any of the students to see how the others fared, right? To keep the element of surprise alive.

'Shunting Shamans…' Ginger lamented silently.

Several minutes passed.

The plump dragonling's mind got creative in the idle time.

He had visions of Aias and Eleni skillfully weaving between the attacks of vague, draconic creatures that thrashed and attempted to body-slam them. Yet, he also saw images of the duo getting ripped to shreds despite their Light Gear and the uniform, which the school refused any of them to part with even for today.

Fifteen minutes passed.

There were now more faint noises coming from the depths of the chamber. There was a lot of activity, that was for sure. Surely that meant that the first duo was alive.

Reiss nudged Ginger.

"Good grief, man! What do you think they are still doing in there? I can't handle this anymore!" he whispered shakily.

Ginger didn't know if the dwarfish dragonling was talking about the gnawing suspense or the heavy hammer he insisted on carrying on his shoulder to occupy his restless body.

"Fighting… I suppose," he said.

GUUM!

RAAARR!

An outlandishly vicious impact suddenly came, startling the students.

It sounded eerily similar to the sort of boom one would hear when someone hit their head on a wall but toned up ten times in intensity.

What was that?

The First Years began furiously expressing their opinions with a variety of emotions.

Moments later, heavy footsteps were heard, first faint and then crisp.

Soon, two figures walked out of the gaping darkness most of the First Years had yearned to peer through for the last quarter of an hour.

Aias and Eleni looked… terrible.

Their faces looked pale, and in some way, hilarious. Rather than seeming as though they had seen a ghost – as the old saying went – they looked like they had seen the ghost naked.

Dirty blood layered over their faces and combined with their slimy, disheveled hair, it contrasted oddly against the shaken looks in their eyes, a clear sign of the end of a rush of adrenaline, and the arrival of crisp clarity.

Their Light Gear they both wore was tattered, torn, sliced, and extremely dirty, but the uniforms visible beneath were without scratch or stain.

If many had noticed this easy-to-miss detail, they would have been relieved, but the majority of the students saw the superficial facts and imagined the worst.

Ginger was slightly alarmed, but he caught on quickly to the fact that Aias and Eleni were unharmed. Well, mostly. Eleni was limping.

Professor Lyall steadily received the two and gave a wide, taut V with her lips as she looked down at them.

The two didn't seem to have polite smiles of their own to spare.

The chatter of the students grew with some cheers mixed in.

Most couldn't wait to ask the two about their experience but of course…

"Let's move on," Professor Lyall said as she pushed Aias and Eleni to the opposite side of the cavern, away from their colleagues and friends.

There were gasps and grumbles.

"What did they expect?" Reiss said, a more relaxed look on his face.

But Ginger wasn't paying him any attention. He was tense, already imagining that he might be called next for the chamber. What was worse was the mystery behind whom he would be sent in with.

Professor Lyall, sticking faithfully to her 'we're behind schedule' pace, announced the names of the next two.

"Reiss Adel and Vassilis Avecsalot."