The Odd Dragon Out: Reckoning of the Cinder-Born

Ginger and Alcaeus slowly and silently walked through the mutilated chamber. Their backs were stiff and straight, their eyes wide open, staring straight ahead and not daring to glance back.

Behind them, an eerie scraping noise persisted, taking momentary stops that only inspired a potent chill within the boys; well, their spines, to be exact.

The corpses of the Blighted were being disposed of. The scales on the beasts produced a strange, agitating sound when sliding along the rough floor of the chamber.

The individual who was carrying out this rough task was the same Ginger and Alcaeus had peeped a glimpse of when they first walked in here - a thin figure stuck to the dark wall which had drawn the large chain and summoned the three Blighted they had just killed.

That slender, spindly figure had emerged again right when the great Blighted fell – dead – crushed against the wall by the force of the two boys' combined Kardia.

The beast's messy, grotesque remains – a half-shattered head, a compact torso with a hole at the abdomen from which guts spilled like dark, chunky porridge, and two stumps where powerful limbs had once been attached – were being dragged to who-knew-where.

Ginger and Alcaeus had not even entertained the idea of studying the strange individual. In fact, they were compelled to look away and go about their business, which they did.

Instead of compulsion, perhaps it was crippling fear that temporarily eroded any sum of reason from the two boys. They barely felt real. Their bodies seemed to act on their own as they rose from where they had fallen just now and briskly walked off.

'Just keep moving. Just keep moving…' Ginger urged himself. He felt relieved as soon as the scraping was slowly tuned out of his head, replaced by the nearly in-synch sound of his and Alcaeus' footsteps.

It was only when peace cast a rainbow in Ginger's mind that his eyes widened, realization finally setting in.

'I don't feel heavy anymore!' he thought, genuinely surprised that he had not caught on, or rather, processed it.

But now that his mind was set on this, everything that had happened and was happening to his body started to become clear, an explanation for it all following right after as Ginger's brain worked overtime.

From the moment that he and Alcaeus had touched the pedestal, both their Kardia had gushed out voraciously from their stoks, compounded around their bodies as one large mass, and exploded out to wreck the great Blighted. Ginger had felt that all his Kardia had been exhausted then, but he hadn't processed it until now. When it had happened, he had noted it as this vague feeling of emptiness.

Now, the plump dragonling realized that this was the reason he was back to normal; why he didn't feel the heavy sensation, and why his eyes no longer saw things in an odd fashion.

'So, that's how it works? I suppose that makes sense. That load of Kardia I suddenly got, marked how everything changed with my body. How I got so tough and suddenly started seeing the insides of other living things... So, maybe it's safe to think that when all that Kardia runs out, I turn back to normal,' Ginger thought.

This conclusion made the most sense to him. But more curious than that, why did he suddenly get this wild experience he hadn't endured since a Stride ago?

Well, the conversation that the plump dragonling had had with Ira surfaced in his mind, especially one statement the eccentric dragon had said.

'…I have never heard of a dragon with two souls.'

What Ginger had just experienced was a side-effect of having two souls within his body.

'Ira did say that these abnormal effects are happening because my other soul was triggered. The last time it happened, my second heart was awakened by the golden fire during my First Burning – my first ever experience with any draconic traditions. Now…'

And now, this had happened because Ginger had killed his first Blighted, refining his Kardia; another important draconic event.

'Hmm, the enormous amount of Kardia, I can understand since I've experienced it before, but what about the other changes to my body? I didn't feel like that back then. Is it something new?' Ginger agonized.

He had a mix of excitement and anxiety as he thought about these unusual powers.

That heavy sensation was far from pleasant. It was phenomenally uncomfortable and made it hard for him to move. On the other hand, it seemed to lessen the burden he felt from the excessive amount of Kardia as it applied both inside and outside his body. Better yet, it made him really tough. The large jaw of the great Blighted would have crushed Ginger's legs if he wasn't in this state.

Then there was the new vision he awakened.

'It doesn't have any weaknesses, as far as I can tell. I wasn't really thinking straight the entire time I had it, though, so it's hard to say,' Ginger thought before looking at Alcaeus who adopted a faintly agitated expression as he walked two meters away from him. 'He saw what my eyes looked like. Would he answer me if I asked about it?'

Ginger was about to commit… when he stopped himself.

Maybe that wasn't a good idea.

The reason was because…

'I still feel a rush of Kardia slowly oozing into me,' Ginger thought. 'The Blighted's Kardia… Was I the only one between us who got a share of it?'

After a Blighted or a Condemned was killed, a portion of its Kardia mysteriously flowed into its killer's body, provided they were Cinder-Born.

Since Ginger had dealt a fatal blow to the great green Blighted before the furious attack his and Alcaeus' Kardia dealt to the creature, he thought that perhaps he had been awarded its involuntary prize instead of the Doukas boy – if that was even how that worked.

Maybe that was why Alcaeus seemed upset. He wouldn't really have any good snarky comments since he was the one who lost, right?

With that in mind, Ginger kept his thoughts to himself, and soon, he and Alcaeus emerged in the spacious, well-lit cavern.

Both dragonlings squinted.

There was an immediate reaction to their emergence, with a lot of finger-pointing and chatter spawning in their honor.

The difference in the atmosphere from where he was coming from and where he had just set foot in, influenced Ginger greatly. He felt both relaxed and exhausted.

'I did go through a lot, didn't I? How long were we in there anyway?' he asked himself.

Right in front of him, Ginger saw his thickly Professor standing proud with the same indecipherable V-shape on her lips.

However, quite like when she faced him during the Second Burning, Ginger felt as though the older dragon expressed her emotions through the two eyes set behind her round-rimmed glasses.

There was excessive thrill, swelling pride, and hints of joy in those eyes.

'Huh. Right. She was watching the whole time…' Ginger thought.

'SHE WAS WATCHING THE WHOLE TIME!'

Suddenly, the plump dragonling remembered the fatal ordeals he had faced!

He had almost been cooked by the great Blighted's flame while trapped between its maw and its torso!

He had almost been crushed along with the smaller Blighted he had managed to kill a second before it was turned to paste by its senior!

He had been pinned between the great Blighted's jaw and the hard ground with barely any hope for escape!

In all these circumstances and more, how come Professor Lyall didn't come to his rescue?!

Sure… Ginger had almost forgotten that this was a supervised exercise and had treated it like a life-or-death situation at first, but since that wasn't true, how come it still felt like he was in mortal peril till the end?!

Was Professor Lyall so fast and so strong that she could have easily reacted if she truly felt that he was about to die? Better yet, could she read minds? Or perhaps see the future?! How could she have been certain without either of these abilities?!

The guarantee of safety she had given the students before suddenly lost some of its attractiveness in Ginger's eyes.

The plump dragonling fumed.

He nearly showed the intense emotion on his face as he drew closer to Professor Lyall, who, just like all the times when pairs returned from the chamber, didn't speak. She simply gave him and Alcaeus a nod.

Ginger wore a creepy, fake smile as he passed by her. His hand trembled as it formed a fist.

Somehow, it didn't sting from being swollen as he had expected.

While grappling with his negative thoughts about Professor Lyall, Ginger's chest swelled with even more fury as he saw Reiss looking up at him with a fresh, inviting smile.

Immediately, his face turned ugly and Reiss had quite a hilarious reaction to it.

"Good grief, Ginger! Since when can you wear a frown with such… character?" the small dragonling shot from his seat – an irregular mound on the floor – and blinked several times.

"So now you can look at me?" Ginger barked in response before realizing that all the other students on this side of the cavern were looking at him. He quickly sat beside Reiss and gripped the back of his neck – with appropriate restraint.

"Wait, wait! I can explain, you idiot!" Reiss yelped with his tiny hands reaching for Ginger's.

"Explain what? I was trying to get to your attention, to see if you were alright after what you had to go through in there! I was worried, you know? What happened to your hammer? Were you injured too badly?"

"I know! I know! Shhh! Good grief! It was all Professor Aarons' fault!" Reiss cried.

"What?" Ginger finally loosened his grip. He donned a confused expression.

Reiss massaged the back of his neck with both hands, a glimmer of hatred shooting from his eyes to Ginger's face.

"I was trying to signal to you too. But then, I realized – well, all of us here realized – that Professor Aarons cast some kind of illusion that stops those of us who have gone into the chamber and those who haven't, from interacting. From that side, it looks like we are all resting or thinking or something, right?" Reiss said.

Ginger's fury waned.

An illusion?

He looked over to the students who had yet to be called up.

He saw Caron looking this way. She was looking right at him, a little concerned.

Ginger waved. Caron's expression didn't change.

Oh.

'Now that I think about it… It was pretty weird that Reiss ignored me like that. It's just that… If this really is an illusion, it's a pretty good one!' Ginger thought.

"I see. That actually makes sense. So, Professor Aarons isn't just standing between us with that scary look."

The hunched Professor was indeed doing more than just attempting to threaten the two groups of students with sharp eyes.

"Yeah. Apparently, she's one of the instructors for the Phantoms Out Course. Seems like she's really good at this," Reiss said, his judgmental gaze on Ginger making the plump dragonling shrink.

Ginger muttered an apology which Reiss 'hmphed' at, and then a back-and-forth argument persisted between them for a few seconds, with Ginger claiming that he hadn't really been upset with Reiss and had used minimal force on his neck, a stance which Reiss refused to believe, demanding fitting retaliation.

Soon, levity bloomed between the two, then a bit of silence as they observed the next pair heading into the cold, treacherous embrace of the chamber ahead.

"So, did you use that 'pedestal'?" Reiss asked as he leaned against the remains of his hammer – its handle.

Ginger wore a faint smile.

"Yeah," he said.

It was funny, really.

No wonder Professor Lyall and Professor Aarons insisted on keeping things about that thing vague and secret from the students who had yet to go into the chamber.

There was never anything special about the pedestal.

It was just a regular construct enchanted and emboldened by nothing.

What brought on that supernatural eruption of Kardia that Ginger so vividly recalled… had to do with the criteria for the pairings that he had been trying to figure out all along.