Twilit Mage

Chapter 17: Here Be Dragons

Without another word Mercury sat down on the bench at a safe distance from Raoul, not looking at his face, not saying a word. Georgiana had alerted Ms. Cole, but they had only been suspended from this expedition because she couldn't control her powers. It was her fault that they had been kicked out. And from the way everyone was looking at her, it was her fault if they all saw them both as monsters too.

Tears stung at her eyes. Any sane person would be mad at her. Any sane person would hate her now. Raoul was so good at magic, he would never have made such a stupid beginner's mistake. He had to be furious.

The first friend she'd made in ages, and now she had ruined it all again in less than twenty-four hours.

"Hey, did you see their faces?"

Mercury blinked back her tears and slipped a careful glance at Raoul. "Hm?"

"You didn't, huh?" Raoul grinned from ear to ear, pointing at the rest of the class where they listened to Ms. Cole's explanations. "I've never seen anybody so freaked out in their life! I mean, dude. Those hand thingies were creepy."

Mercury took a moment to process his words and tone.

He wasn't upset. He wasn't even annoyed or disappointed, not in the slightest. On the contrary, he looked like he'd just had the time of his life.

"You..." She swallowed, hoping her voice didn't sound as raspy as it felt. "You're not mad?"

"For what, scaring the crap outta the whole class?" Raoul snickered under his breath. "Dude, that was amazing. That Riley kid looked at your shadow hands like..." He made a mock imitation of Riley's face, opening his eyes wide and looking as horror-struck as humanly possible.

Mercury couldn't help giving a little laugh. "No, but..." She glanced back at the ground. "Didn't you want to find your familiar too?"

"Ah, that!" Raoul laughed even louder. "Fun fact, I already found it years ago."

Mercury nodded, paused, blinked, and did a double take. "You what?"

"I got mine," Raoul said simply. "Together with my big bro. We thought I wouldn't go to a magic school anyway, so, y'know..." He shrugged. "It's a wolf. This big and floofy, his name's Howl."

Mercury chuckled. "Howl the wolf, huh?"

"Yup! I'm gonna let you meet him sometime." Raoul stretched out his legs. "So the only one who's missing out on their familiar is you, Mercy."

Breathing a sigh of relief, Mercury nodded, gazing into the distance where their classmates had started to open small Otherworld gateways, stepping through and disappearing to search for their familiars. Ms. Cole stayed behind staring at a curious-looking device on her wrist that seemed to consist of countless tiny screens, all of them dark and blank.

"Man, I should've brought popcorn," Raoul muttered next to her. "This is gonna be fun."

"How long do you think they'll take to find them?"

Raoul made a vague gesture. "Uh...dunno? My bro took ages. I found mine pretty fast. So, it probably depends. On...something."

Mercury stared at the gateways that had shrunk considerably without closing. Something seemed to be keeping them from closing down, Ms. Cole perhaps, or the navigators. For some time nothing happened.

Then, one by one, people started coming back. All of them had a strange glow to their faces, and all of them were smiling, as if they had just seen the most wonderful thing in their lives. Creatures filled the gym, mythical and mundane, as people crowded together to talk about their familiars and compare their species and sizes. Mercury spotted several cats and dogs of varying sizes, a crow, an owl, a giant spider, a panther, a phoenix, and even a giant black snake slithering around the leg of its owner, a wavy-haired, surprised-looking girl. Not two of them were exactly alike. Not two of them acted exactly alike, either.

Mercury found herself staring at the array of familiars, wondering what her own was like. A cat maybe, like that large and fluffy black one making itself comfortable on its owner's struggling arms? A bird, like the raven sitting on Riley's head? Or maybe even a magical creature...A unicorn would be nice, or a pegasus, she had always dreamed of having one of those. Were there familiars like that? Could they talk? A talking unicorn, that would be a dream...but she was still a beginner, so it would probably be a foal. Could unicorn foals talk already? What if she had to teach it? That would be cute, like teaching a baby–

Raoul nudged her in the ribs, snapping her out of her thoughts. "Hey, look," he whispered, pointing to the lone Otherworld gateway that was still open. "The Dragon Lady hasn't come back yet. Maybe she got lost in there," he added hopefully.

Under normal circumstances Mercury would have told him off for wishing something that awful on her, but right now she was still so furious at Georgiana that she didn't care. If she got lost and met her worst nightmares in there, all the better. Maybe that would give her a much-needed dose of humble pie.

But just as she started to imagine the Otherworld forming a huge jagged mouth and closing in on Georgiana, a form appeared in the gateway, followed closely by a giant writhing black shadow.

A gasp went through the rows of the class. Mercury stood up, blinked at the figures and caught her breath.

Georgiana was standing in front of the rapidly closing gateway, tall and proud and perfectly calm. And circling around her, round and round until it finally found a position to lie down, was a giant, wingless black dragon.

"A dragon!" Raoul burst out, jumping onto the bench and throwing an accusatory gesture in her direction. "Why does this get a freaking dragon?"

Georgiana ignored him. Some of the others nodded reluctantly, as if they didn't want to admit they were feeling the same.

Mercury ignored them all. She was staring at the dragon, long and sleek and graceful, its eyes a bright, warm gold, its obsidian scales glowing in the light. Georgiana remained standing next to it with one hand on its scales, fearless, elegant and unblinking, the living image of a brave warrior maiden who had tamed a powerful beast.

"It's beautiful," Mercury whispered, not sure if she meant the whole picture or just the dragon.

Raoul sighed dreamily. "I know, right. I want it."

"Mhm. A dragon familiar sounds amazing..."

Raoul continued to stare at the sleek scaly form. "That's not even a normal dragon," he said quietly, pointing to the slender back that was missing its wings. "That's a shen-lung, a Chinese spirit dragon. Didn't know they came in black."

Mercury looked up. "How did you know?"

"Saw it," Raoul said. "In a documentary."

Mercury smiled slightly as she continued to watch the dragon, calm and perfectly quiet as Ms. Cole went up to it, inspecting it closely and speaking to Georgiana in an awed voice. Unfair. But not surprising, somehow. Georgiana was smart, maybe smarter than anyone else in the grade, and from what Mercury had seen she had to be powerful too. It was no wonder she had such a powerful familiar.

Then what would Mercury get, she wondered? Any chance of getting a dragon too? Maybe a baby dragon? An egg?

"I wonder what her name is," Raoul muttered next to her. "I bet the robot girl's got no naming sense."

Mercury looked up. "How do you know it's a she?"

"See the face?" He pointed to the dragon's head, every bit as graceful and elegant as the rest of the magnificent creature. "The face looks different. The males got a longer skull and like, straight eyelids and the females' eyes are more, uh..." He tried to show the shape with his hands. "Cur...vy?"

"Curved?"

"Oh yeah! Damn, I was close."

Raoul laughed, and Mercury smiled, looking up at him in curious admiration. "How do you know so much about dragons?"

His eyes started sparkling. "I love dragons," he said. "Dragons are awesome. I suck up everything about dragons, they're the literal coolest!"

Raoul probably would have loved to have a dragon familiar, Mercury thought. But he hadn't got one. The one who had got it was Georgiana, who was now quietly ignoring all her classmates fawning over her and definitely didn't seem to deserve it at all.