"I suppose you lot think you're something special, being a handful of the sparse few to be endowed with magical abilities, don't you? One of the minority that is, therefore, able to attend our fair university." Professor Leightpenny asked, sneering from behind her spectacles and down her long, hooked snout at her students that sat like cattle for the slaughter before her, as if they had earned her contempt by daring to generally exist in her vicinity.
Yes! Faline thought with exuberance. I am special! I'm going to actually be somebody! Just imagine all the good I'll be able to do for-
"Well, you're not."
Wait, what?!
"You are simply burdened with awesome responsibility, the magnitude of which may very well boil your adolescent brains in your fragile little skulls. Congratulations. Look to your left, then look to your right." Professor Leightpenny instructed.
The class did as they were told, offering a few awkward smiles and chuckles at the dragons they made eye contact with.
"Odds are," Professor Leightpenny continued, as if she was relishing scaring the soul out of her class. Faline wondered if she did this with all her classes, or did she just particularly dislike them for some reason? "At least one of the dragons you just looked upon will not make it to the end of their education here at Calibraxis. Perhaps they will not even survive."
Faline had heard a rumor that Professor Leightpenny had had a single clutch of eggs in all her long life, and that she was so evil and twisted, she fried them up and ate them before they could hatch. She hadn't believed it, thinking it was surely an exaggeration, but now she wasn't so sure.
She felt the proverbial wind beneath her wings, that had once promised to carry her to such lofty heights, all at once stop blowing, her stomach feeling uncomfortably like jello that hadn't had the time to properly solidify.
Die?
Faline once again cast her eyes about the room, wondering which of those present wouldn't make it. The overconfident looking male with parrot-like red feathers? The small, sea green female, who was already shaking out of her scales with fright?
Or will I be one of the ones to fail? Faline thought with a shaky breath.
She had been so happy-elated, among the clouds, consumed with an all-encompassing joy-when she had first discovered that she, she, of all dragons, possessed magic.
She, along with some of the older teen dragons that had resided at Seaside Orphanage, had volunteered to take the chicks that had wanted to tag along to the beach.
Sundown Beach had always been a safe, peaceful place of white sand, hammocks hung between palm trees, and the cry of gulls wheeling overhead; Faline herself had gone there for as long as she could remember without incident.
But of course, there was a first time for everything.
There was netting in the water that was graded to keep "smaller" predators out, such as great white sharks. No bigger predators had ever been recorded coming so close to the shore, because their massive bodies would likely become beached. Which was all well and good, until a rogue megalodon, capable of easily taking a dragon chick or two in a single bite, had sawed through one of the nets with its large, serrated teeth.
The older dragons in charge of watching the chicks saw the huge fin immediately and sent out fevered warning shrieks to call the little ones back to shore.
One of them, a little, pale pink female by the name of Petal, was lagging behind.
Faline knew that their warning cries would have carried and alerted the full-grown adults back at the orphanage, and any that may have been close by, but she wasn't willing to take the chance waiting for them to get there.
The water broke around the massive beast, revealing its cold, black eyes, terrible mouth with rows upon rows of jagged yawning open behind the struggling Petal, who screamed out in desperation. The shark seemed mad with hunger, willing to beach itself in order to snap up a meal.
Faline didn't think. She acted.
She launched herself up into the air on her purple, moth-like wings, landing on the shark's massive head. She wasn't full grown, and even so, she was always a bit runty, so as the shark thrashed beneath her, she got thrown from side to side. She used her long, dexterous tail to half-throw, half-shove Petal towards the shore and, thankfully, onto the sand and out of range of the megalodon.
Faline hissed as the monster's sandpaper skin slashed into her delicate, pink paw pads, but she couldn't afford to let go now. Her velvety wings had begun to become heavy with sea water; she could neither fly nor swim away fast enough to avoid being eaten herself. Her only choice was to fight. She sunk her talons deep into the sea beast's flesh, causing the froth around it to turn red with blood. She had the idea to use her back talons to gouge out the shark's eyes, but she was too afraid that she would completely lose her footing then, and she'd be done for, the gnashing teeth entirely too close for her comfort.
It was then something welled up from deep inside her, a pulse of power unlike anything she had ever experienced before. It was a heat, that rolled across her spine upward, then down both her arms to her front paws, which then exploded into what looked like purple lightning. She yelped at first, not understanding that this power was hers and would not turn on her, thinking she would surely be electrocuted as the shark was beneath her, body bent in a "C" shape as it convulsed in undulating waves. It was more than a little horrific for her to see, and a little more horrific when she realized that she, in fact, was the one causing it, and didn't know if she could stop. Her mind, though, was quickly taking stock of things, and once she realized her own lightning wasn't hurting her, she began to calm, and she was able to rein her power in.
By this time, an audience had gathered on the beach, and all bore witness to the birth of a Lightning Caller, a very rare kind of magician, the last known having been Merlin the Great himself.
Once the electrical discharge had faded, a few big males hauled the shark and Faline up onto the beach, and she was hailed as a hero and ogled at for having magic, which she didn't particularly like.
Thankfully, someone who Faline never got the name of had thought to bring first aid and set to disinfecting and wrapping Faline's savaged paws up in bandages. She honestly hadn't realized just how badly her paws had been cut up with adrenaline coursing through her veins, but as it wore off, they felt like they were ripped to shreds. She was carried back to the orphanage on an adult's back, and they had a megalodon feast for days and day on end.
The nets at Sundown Beach, as well as the rest of the beaches Thymeris had to offer, were replaced by reinforced metal grating.
It always bothered Faline, what had transpired that day. It was so very odd in an almost unsettling way. True, it could have been a freak happenstance, but there was an inkling in her heart and mind that there had been something more behind such brazen behavior, though she couldn't have said what.
She tried to put it from her mind as she transitioned from her normal, quiet life to one as a local celebrity. From that day on, she got special schooling for the rest of her formative years from different professors sent by Calibraxis itself, and, when she reached the age of eighteen-the age she would have left Seaside, anyway-she was expected to attend Calibraxis proper for her higher education, as were all magic users.
There were some mutterings about how it was unfair that magicians-also called mages for short-had no choice but to attend Calibraxis, but Faline didn't personally mind. She had magic, why on Thymeris wouldn't she want to learn about it, and how to use it?
But now-now, she was being told that her beautiful, wonderful, shiny magic was something to be feared? Something that may kill her, even if not directly?
"And here, I have your mentor assignments." Professor Leightpenny said, patting the stack of scrolls on her desk with a kind of tenderness she clearly didn't reserve for those in her charge. "When I call your name, come up and receive your scroll, and then report to your mentor. The room numbers will be on the scroll. Let us make this process expeditious, shall we? I have better things to do than babysit you all day."
Being too afraid to slight her, and probably happy to escape Leightpenny's clutches all together, nobody dilly-dallied when it came time to get their scroll. They fled like their tails were lit on fire.
But Faline, she didn't need to move at all, for when she sliced the seal on her scroll with her talon and gazed at the information upon it, it said that her mentor was to be Leightpenny herself.
She gulped, more than a little frightened, and when she met Leightpenny's eyes, the older dragon smirked in a not at all kind way, showing nearly all her teeth.