Khi’nai was restless, tangled in her sheets. Sleep eluded her, again.
She jumped out of bed and peeked into the corridor. With many students gone for the holidays, it was nearly empty. Her parents were coming to collect her in a few days’ time, so she had all the peace and quiet she needed to experiment freely.
“Where to go?”, she thought, “I could grab a quick breakfast, take a walk in the forest and experiment with whatever I find, always a lot of dead things there?”
“That’s a terrible idea,” a voice murmured from the shadows.
Khi’nai froze mid-step, her heart hammering in her chest. She spun around, scanning the dim corridor.
Nothing. No footsteps, no shifting shadows.
“Hello?” she whispered.
Silence. Only the soft creak of the old wooden beams above.
She swallowed hard and forced a laugh. “Must have been the wind.”
She hurried down towards the cafeteria, it too was mostly empty, besides a few custodians working to serve the handful of remaining students.
As she chewed on her breakfast sandwich she read the dairy on the side. None of it seemed too difficult, but it mentioned Dark Aether a lot more than she liked. She was a Light-Air hybrid herself, would that ever matter?
“It’s not in a Light dragon’s nature.“
She flinched. That voice again. Familiar, yet distant.
“Light dragons have a lot in common with Dark dragons, they are opposite yet very similar in nature,” she muttered, half to herself.
The custodians looked up, confused. Khi’nai forced a smile. “Sorry, got carried away reading.”
“You have no idea what you’re doing, do you?”
Voices. Was she losing her mind? Khi’nai shook her head. “No, I’m just tired, stressed. I need some air.”
She swallowed hard, shoved the rest of her sandwich into her mouth, and rushed outside.
Cold, crisp air hit her face as she stepped into the Academy’s courtyard. Wrapping a scarf around her neck, she followed the cobblestone path towards the forest. The towering evergreens were dusted with snow, their scent sharp in the winter air.
She meandered up the path towards the forest. Piles of snow had been swept to either side of it. It was quiet, outside of the soft tap of her claws on the cobblestones.
She took a deep breath of the fresh cold air. She had been letting her jet-black mane grow out for the winter to help keep her warm.
Air dragons had long thick manes that ran down the entire length of their backs from their heads to tails, a characteristic that she had inherited from her mother, Scalah.
Being exposed to fresh, crisp air the natural tattoo-like markings that formed from the roots of her mane started to show up more clearly on her pale silver scales.
With every deep breath the glowing green bioluminescent lines running down each side of her dark grey belly scales flared up more brightly. A trait she inherited from her father Prisma, a Light dragon.
Light dragons were almost always pearlescent white, grey or silver with red, green or yellow bioluminescent markings that glowed faintly and reacted to the flow of Aether in the dragon’s body. Their markings always matched their eye colour, in Khi’nai’s case, was a bright emerald green.
She enjoyed the fresh air and sunlight—two things that harmonized with her elemental Aether.
She stopped for a moment. “Would Dark Aether be doable for me?”
“Then go back to the school.”
Her breath hitched. “I’lain?”
Silence.
“I should’ve known the diary was cursed-“
“The one who’s cursed is the one that wrote that diary”
She took another deep breath, “this air is doing me good, I’m really starting to think about things”, she continued down the path.
“Don’t change the subject”
“When you were killed in front of me, it-“ she exhaled shakily, “it broke something in me.”
Silence.
“Since that day I haven’t quite had a grip on anything you know?” Her voice was quiet, but firm. “My grades slipped, my friendship with Flora feels strange. Everything feels like I’m living through a ghost. Like all the perfect moments in my life are just wrong. Then I found this diary, and what do I see? Your teacher didn’t have a grip on anything at first either did he? He just barely held it together. But one day, he took control. He wasn’t afraid to be inept.”
I’lian’s voice was sharp. “Why are you telling me all this?”
She stopped. A dark smudge in the snow caught her eye—a fallen bird. Khi’nai knelt, lifting the frozen body in her trembling paws. “It hurts, when somebody dies, even if you barely know them, because life, life is precious.”
She slowly waked off the path into the woods to a small clearing in the trees. A single tree stump stood on the far end of it. She laid the bird gently on the stump.
“Alright, I’lain,” she muttered. “If you insist on haunting me, you already know what comes next.”
“Don’t. You. Dare.”
She placed the diary open on the edge of the stump, tracing the runes in it around the circumference of it. She pulled a deep purple Aether crystal from her bag, pawing it careful. She felt her heart start to race. Dark Aether was antagonistic to Light Aether—this was going to hurt.
“Khi’nai, this is stupid, you don’t know what you’re doing!”
“You know I’lain, for once in my life I do know what I’m doing.” She knew what she was doing was wrong, even unacceptable.
She exhaled.
Then whispered the incantation.
Her eyes glowed bright green before suddenly switching to bright purple as the Aether crystal in her paw glowed. The lines on her body glowed bright purple as a spark of energy shot into the frozen bird.
A wave of agony crashed over her. Her body burned. She doubled over, retching, blood splattering the snow.
In front of her, the bird twitched.
Then it contorted, shuddered—
And jumped to life.
Gasping, Khi’nai collapsed into the snow, staring up at the pale blue sky. The pain was unbearable, yet beneath it, a terrible exhilaration. She laughed—weak, breathless, but victorious.
“So this is what it feels like. To be in control.”
“Control? You read a book and copied it. That’s not control. That’s just child-like imitation.“
She chuckled, “Nailed it first try, though.“
“This is just a game to you? If so—congratulations. You’re a faster learner than Din.”
She forced herself to stand, swaying slightly. Her muscles ached. Her mouth tasted like blood.
“Khi’nai, stop ignoring me-“
She snorted, “Later I’lain, I have to meet Flora in the town centre before noon so we can make plans for the holidays with my family.” She wiped the blood from her maw onto her scarf before slinging her bag over her shoulder.
“You’re just going to pretend like nothing just happened?”
She started her way over the clearing and back to the path towards the town centre. She walked slowly, her muscles tender, the metallic taste of blood lingering on her mouth. She took a deep breath of the cold air, her lungs burned, but it still felt good.
She’d have to walk it off before reaching the town centre, otherwise Flora would notice something was off and ask questions. She walked slowly, letting her muscles limber up as she reached the town centre.
It was much quieter today, mostly just locals. She checked the clock tower, 11:45. Enough time to catch her breath.
She leaned over the fountain’s edge. The reflection staring back at her looked, wrong. Tired. Hollow. For a moment, just a moment—her emerald eyes flickered purple.
Maybe she was just seeing things.
