Young Swordmaster's Journey

Waking, unlike the quick and unwilling event that had been his fall to unconsciousness, was a harrowing struggle for the blue haired teen.

His body seemed to be wrapped in the chains of lethargy unlike anything he had felt in a couple months, and his head vibrated with a buzzing that seemed to rattle his teeth and blur his vision.

He knew that his mana had returned to him, or rather that his ability to control it had been returned to him, which probably had something to do with the buzzing in his skull.

Maybe, possibly.

Yet if his mana had returned to him, why was he this sore? And tired at that. Sure, he'd gone to bed absolutely exhausted, and he knew that even with his mana returning overnight he'd still wake up tired, but somehow, he actually felt worse than he had when he'd lied down.

As far as everything he knew told him, that wasn't meant to be the case, unless he had some kind of internal injury.

'Don't be stupid, you would have felt an injury if there was one and right now the only pain I can feel is this headache…' He thought to himself, slowly cracking one eye open.

Only to meet the green scales of the small dragon once more as it sat on his chest, getting a quiet gulp from the teen that seemed to reverberate through his own skull like a child hopped up on about six cups of coffee.

He wasn't surprised that he hadn't realized it was sleeping on him –again– considering how exhausted he was but the confirmation didn't help him in the slightest, in fact it only made his already terrible morning worse.

Why wasn't it leaving? Why had it moved onto his chest again? Was it awake?

Those questions, and many many more, floated through the periphery of his mind. Though the exhaustion of his body and the paradoxical energy in his head of having his mana returned –oddly empty considering his lack of use– made keeping track of any of those questions and holding onto them difficult.

Like he did the morning before, he tried to lift the dragon off his chest with slow, careful movements. His mana curling and pulsing rhythmically within him as thoughts of what would happen to him if the dragon woke up passed through his mind.

Just as the idea of being burned alive –not a pleasant thought– passed through his thoughts and his mana spiked in fear, the dragon's breathing shifted, and a low growl left its muzzle.

Alec was certain he couldn't have pulled his hands away from the creature any quicker than he did, his eyes wide and complexion pale.

He had nearly just died, or at the very least, nearly just gotten himself mutilated. Neither option was particularly nice to think about.

His panic over nearly dying spiked his mana once more, and the dragon on his chest growled yet again, its shoulders rolling slightly in its sleep. This, of course, only panicked Alec even more, and sent his mana into another surge of uncontrollable spiking that had the young dragon growling and shifting even more in its sleep.

He was trapped in a loop. The more he panicked, the worse his mana spiked, and the more it spiked the closer to waking up the dragon got, which made him panic more. A vicious cycle that would, undoubtedly, only end up with him dead and no one to blame for it except himself.

With great difficulty, and more than one fuck-up that nearly had the young dragon calling his chest home waking up, Alec tried his best to calm down, using every trick in the book he could think of.

He failed. Rather spectacularly actually.

However, it only took the harsh slaps of the dragons front left paw- hand? On his chest, the action clumsy and annoyed but the creature still mostly asleep, to shock his system enough to shake him out of the spiral.

Did it have anything to do with the mana that erupted from the dragon's hand with each slap that he was almost certain had gone directly through his chest each and every time? In all honesty, most likely. It may not have torn a physical hole in his abdomen like some spells were capable of, but the sheer density of the dragon's magic had definitely done some kind of damage.

'Alright, regulating my emotions is out of the picture, let's focus on regulating my mana then.' He thought, slightly hysterically.

It was a tough task to ask of himself, especially when he could still feel the fear that gnawed at the edges of his awareness and waxed and waned in time with the dragons breathing. However, he supposed that he did have to thank the dragon for something, the pain of whatever injuries it had given him helped to center his mind whenever he felt the panic creeping back in.

Finally, only when he was absolutely certain that he could keep his mana as smooth and steady as was possible –for the level of training that he had at least– did he attempt to move the dragon again.

As before, his hands –palm up– slid across his chest and slowly, gently, made their way underneath the sleeping reptilian. Grabbing the dragon with only the most gentle of grips and lifting it off of him.

Quickly he sat up and deposited the young creature on his bed once more, before he crawled to his feet and stood up straight, his eyes never leaving the creature's form for longer than two seconds.

Despite that caution, though, it was only a matter of a few minutes for him to be fully dressed and to have all his gear for the day on his person and making as little noise as possible.

Considering he still felt like he'd done a marathon run at a sprinters pace, he'd say that was pretty good progress, now all that was left to deal with was the injuries blossoming across the upper-left half of his body. What a truly marvellous gift the dragon had given him this morning.

Though not quite yet. He wanted to be at least two halls away from his room before he tried using any kind of spell. He could make it that far, no matter how much it hurt.

XXXxxxXXX

Olivia let out a long, aggravated exhale as she fixed her hair clip while waiting for the class to begin. Her fingers, deft and experienced, pulled her hair clip out before she swept her hair into position and placed it right back before moving to fix her ponytail.

She'd been a little hasty in doing them up when she had gotten out of bed this morning, so her workout –light as it had been– had been enough to through it out of balance enough to warrant her current fixing of it.

The chair next to her scraped out and she turned in her seat to instinctively glare at whoever had looked at the plethora of open seats and still chosen the one next to her, only for her expression to soften slightly as she rolled her eyes and turned away from them in mock exasperation.

"Huh- What'd I do now?" Alec spluttered as he sat next to her and gave her a confused look.

"Sit next to me. There's plenty of open seats." She scoffed quietly, gesturing to the seats around them to emphasize her point.

"Yeah but at least sitting next to you I can discuss what they're going over." He explained simply, gesturing towards the front of the auditorium-style class where the professor was writing something on the blackboard.

Truthfully, Alec didn't see why a sword academy needed theory classes but Olivia, Callum, and Xyn had all said that it was, so he deferred to their judgement in this case. Despite his confusion over why exactly 'Theories on body mechanics' was something that they were locked up in a classroom learning about.

Personally, Alec thought that a class like this would be a bit more suited to live-demonstrations and physical practice but once more he deferred to the judgement of those far more skilled and experienced than he. He was sure that there was a reason behind all of this, even if he personally couldn't see it.

"Hey." Alec grit his teeth and flinched back as Olivia's finger made solid contact with his forehead, more than a little mana infused in her digit.

Honestly it was like being slapped by the dragon again but far less- The Dragon.

"What's with you? You looked exhausted and your mind's wandering. Was yesterday too much?" She grouched, propping her elbow up on the desk in front of them and her chin rested on her palm.

"No- Well, maybe a little bit. But…" He looked side to side before gesturing her to lean in closer expectantly.

Had it been anyone else, Olivia wouldn't have given a second thought to ignoring them or even striking out if they were particularly slimy. Since it was Alec, however, who had managed to find the worlds tiniest crack in her defences and slipped through, she rolled her eyes once more even as she leaned in indulgently; her pen scratched along the page as she half-heartedly listened along to the beginning of the lecture while waiting for Alec to speak.

"There's a baby dragon in my room."

For a moment the two teens merely just stared at each other in silence. Olivia blinked slowly; Alec blinked slowly in return. Even as Olivia's hand idly scratched down notes on the professor's lecture at the front of the auditorium, none of his words actually reached her mind, entering one ear and going right out the other without resistance.

Olivia's face fell into the flattest, most disbelieving expression she could possibly make, "I don't believe you."

Alec's expression flattened to match hers, though there was still the distinct shine of astonishment in his eyes that kept him from looking as dry as her.

"Neither do I. But it's the truth."

"You expect me to-" The young woman stopped talking for half a second, realizing that she had nearly raised her voice out of the harsh whisper that they were speaking in.

She would rather not have to deal with being called out by a professor or another student about this conversation, thank you very much.

"You expect me to believe that someone you managed to get a baby dragon in your dorm room?"

"I didn't get anything. I left my window open a couple days ago and it's been in there ever since." Alec grouched, clearly about as enthused by the idea as Olivia felt.

Dragons were serious business, no matter how young they may seem to be. There was a reason that coming across a real, true, dragon was cause for an immediate emergency missive to the Guild and potentially even a complete exodus of whatever quest had them coming across the monster.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

"I understand that everything here is modelled after dragons, and we seem to have a small subspecies of them living on campus-" Olivia huffed, raising an eyebrow at the way that Alec perked up slightly.

He knew that those statues were alive! It soothed his paranoia to know that someone else had actually noticed as well.

"But a random baby dragon just appearing in your room is hard to believe. Especially given the fact that you're actually alive and talking to me." She continued monotonously.

"Because it's been asleep this entire time. But it keeps moving over to my chest when I'm trying to sleep, and it actually slapped me this morning." Alec explained quietly, shifting his shirt just a little to show the faint bruising still left over from this morning.

"You expect me to believe that it's a dragon when that's all you walked away with? Are you sure it wasn't a wyvern?"

"Because I healed most of it, I could barely lift my arm before without it hurting like hell." He grumbled, remembering his issues trying to put his shirt on earlier in the morning.

"I just can't believe that something so unlikely could even happen. Is it one of the stone ones?"

Alec wasn't quite sure what it was, or why she did it, but the faith that she had in him actually telling the truth –admittedly with some evidence shown– sent something warm and comforting flowing through his veins from head to toe. It felt nice in a way that he hadn't felt in a couple months by now, if he was honest.

"No. That's the thing." Alec shook his head, idly noting that his hair had gotten even longer once more, "Its not stony at all, its this real deep green."

"That's even more odd, green-coloured dragons aren't exactly the rarest of the lot, but I would have thought that finding a baby dragon in here of all places would be a stony looking one."

"Tell me about it." Alec sighed, slouching back in his chair.

"You're showing me after class." Olivia announced quietly, finally turning back to face the professor.

It wasn't a request or a demand, it was a statement. She didn't ask or push for him to show her, no. Quite simply she knew that he would, and so did he.

Not that he really had much of a problem with that. He was planning on showing someone eventually so he might as well show Olivia before he goes to the Headmaster to figure out what the hell he can do.

"I am, don't worry." He nodded in return, perking up slightly as the professor stopped speaking to look up at where the two of them sat.

"Miss Kio, what do you think the correct motion in this case is?" The professor questioned, tapping the board where a hypothetical had been written up while they were discussing.

Now, Olivia could only hope that her subconscious notetaking had been enough to get her through this without making an ass of herself.

XXXxxxXXX

Alec sighed as he slumped back against the chair he was sat in, closing his notebook with a loud slap that went utterly unheard over the small cacophony of identical book-closes and scrapping chairs.

"Grab your stuff." Olivia said, standing up beside him as she stretched her arms above her head.

"Wha?.." In instinct he followed the young woman's command, blinking in confusion at her a few times before yelped as she grabbed the crook of his elbow and dragged him out of his chair.

His yelp, high-pitched and surprised as it was, caught the attention of their fellow students rather easily. Tens of pairs of eyes following the two of them as she dragged him down the gently sloping stairs with a look of nothing but determination.

"Wha- Wait! Olivia why so sudden?" His question seemed to bounce around the classroom even amidst the still ongoing noise of other students packing up, drawing even more attention.

Attention that came in the form of quiet looks of disbelief, more than anything else.

"We're going to your dorm, idiot." She huffed with a roll of her eyes, hitting the bottom of the stairs and making a direct beeline for the door, still dragging her blue-haired companion along.

Eyes widened and eyebrows raised. A few jaws dropped as well.

Surely, they weren't seeing what they thought they were seeing, were they? There's no possible way, they thought, that they were watching a member of the Kio household pulling a boy across campus to their own dorm room.

The door clacked shut behind them as Alec absent-mindedly slid it shut behind him, leaving only silence in their wake.

XXXxxxXXX

"What the hell, Alec?" Olivia muttered, the both of them standing in the entranceway to Alec's dorm, staring at the small, green-scaled creature still curled up on his bed.

"I wish I could tell you." Alec sighed, his face in his palm.

Though he couldn't lie, the fact that he now actually had proof that someone else had seen the dragon helped him quite a bit as is. There had been a part of him, small and quiet, that was convinced that he had somehow gone crazy and hallucinated the entire thing, despite all the physical evidence to the contrary.

"I mean its one thing to hear about it to be see a dragon like this….You don't think it's parents are going to come for it, do you?" She mumbled, crossing her arms and turning to look at him.

For a moment, as brief as the blink of his eye, Alec saw Zenik burning in flames with screams that rang in the air as two dragons identical to the one on his bed, only far larger, flew overhead. However as soon as it flashed in front of his eyes it was gone again, and he blinked a couple more times to rid his sight of such an awful mental image.

"I can only hope that its parents are both asleep right now, or that they happen to fall into 'passive' territory." He sighed, running a hand through his hair.

Truthfully, he hadn't even thought about the creature's parents beyond a rudimentary 'how had it managed to get so far from them?' but he couldn't pretend like Olivia's question didn't have importance.

Dragons may, more often than not, work and live as solitary creatures but they are fiercely connected to their bloodline clans in the way that only some obsessive noble families could ever hope to match. It was common knowledge that taking on a dragon was always far riskier than any type of reward would ever hope to be, since there was an unknown chance that one could draw the ire of the entire bloodline on themselves.

Supposedly there was a [Platinum-rank] adventurer that had managed to do exactly that with a bloodline of Leviathan's, either an ancient offshoot of draconic lineage or vice versa, to the point where it earned her the nickname [Leviathan's Bane].

And as much as the thirteen-year-old child in his heart thought that getting a nickname like that would be the coolest thing in the world, he knew better than to allow such fantasies any further thought.

He'd be lucky if he managed to look a grown dragon in the eye without dying, let alone survive a blood feud with an entire bloodline of them.

"Well, we've got no idea who its parents are, so there's no way to tell. But considering that there hasn't been a mass-emergency called, I think it's safe to say that either both of its parents are gone, worrying in its own right, or sleeping." Olivia sighed, rubbing her temple with two of her fingers while propping her arm up by the elbow.

"It's only been two days." Alec pointed out, hoping that she was right but feeling the need to point it out regardless.

"With how many days of travel? I think it's safe to say that, for now, its parents aren't going to be a problem. However, that still leaves the problem of an honest-to-gods dragon living in your dorm room." She shook her head slightly, as if disbelieving the reality right in front of her.

Alec could relate, he wished this was all some kind of dream too.

"So, what's the plan to deal with this?" Olivia finally asked after a moment of silence, gesturing vaguely towards the dragon with a tilt of her head.

"Well, going to the Headmaster to inform him, first." Alec responded dryly, getting a quiet, but still audible, exhale from the other teen as she leant against the wall to her right.

"Oh good, I was worried that you were going to try and hide this or something."

"I rather like living, thank you very much." He shot back dryly, "Besides if I didn't, you would."

"Of course I would." She rolled her eyes, not that he could begrudge her for it considering that he would do the same if their roles were reversed.

"Apart from that, if it doesn't leave and we can't make it, I'll have to find another dorm to stay in." He shrugged noncommittally.

"Well, there's always plenty of empty ones." Olivia replied easily, though she did look rather put out by the idea, for a reason that Alec wasn't quite able to parse before she shook her head once more.

"Speaking of going to the Headmaster, we should go now." She said quickly, though Alec wasn't exactly in the mood in argue with that idea at the moment.

He wanted his bed back, godsdammit.

"You're coming along?" He opened the door and took only one step before jolting and stepping back as she cut in front of him, smirking over her shoulder as she walked through the doorway.

"Of course, I am. I'm a witness."

"Ah, of course. How could I have ever forgotten about that." He deadpanned while gently shutting his door behind him.

"Not sure, how could you?"

XXXxxxXXX

Dragon-Scale Sword Academy, Headmaster's Office

"Well well, I wasn't expecting to see the both of you in my office of all places. What a surprise." Xyn grinned, leant back in his chair as the both of them sat in the comfortably cushioned chairs placed in front of his desk.

"Who were you expecting?" Olivia bit into the prompt with a rather quick interest, though Alec couldn't deny his own intrigue on who the Headmaster might have been expecting, if anyone at all.

"Callum Korvek and Glenn Larstud, which if I'm led to believe correctly, the both of you know?"

"Yes."

"Unfortunately."

Alec and Olivia answered simultaneously.

"Glenn is pushing on Callum quite heavily and it's led to a few incidents. Nothing major but its been enough that I've asked to meet them a couple times."

"Sounds like him. Doesn't know when to leave a point alone." Olivia scoffed, crossing her arms and rolling her eyes.

"But enough about that, what brings the two of you here? I know that you've been getting along better recently but this is still quite a surprise. Got something fun to tell me?" He grinned childishly and leant forward over his desk.

How does one inform the headmaster of the school they're enrolled in that there is a dangerous beast on the premises?

Alec had asked himself this a couple times over the course of their walk over to the office, and the wait to be let in, and had come to a rather simple conclusion. He didn't have the people skills or silver tongue to smooth such a thing over, so he didn't bother to try.

"There's a dragon in my dorm."

The entire room descended into shocked silence faster a meteor fell from the sky, both Olivia and Xyn staring at Alec with wide eyes.

Olivia opened her mouth to say something only to freeze, her gaze sliding to the left as she pondered something before visibly deflating with a small huff of air. She wanted to admonish Alec for his blunt and, honestly, brutal delivery of the news but what point was there in sugar-coating the news; a dragon was a dragon after all.

Personally she would have given some cushioning to the declaration but neither of them were exactly poets with their wording.

"Huh? Did Fron decide to sleep in your room or something?" Xyn muttered, evidently trying to figure out some kind of explanation that made more sense.

"It's none of the stone-looking dragons like the ones that live on campus." She denied with a shake of her head, "I saw it right before we came here, it's a green-scaled dragon."

"There are no green-scaled dragons living on campus." Xyn denied, shaking his head.

"I'm telling you, Headmaster. It's a proper, green-scaled dragon about a meter and a half long. Its sleeping on my bed right now." Alec stressed.

"Look, I'll come down to your dorms and check it out myself. But dragons aren't exactly the most subtle creatures on earth. The chances of a foreign one sneaking onto campus grounds is zero." He replied confidently, standing up in one smooth motion and gesturing for the other two to do the same.

"In fact, I'll even give you both a gold coin each if it did. Because there is no possible way that a dragon of any kind has snuck onto campus."

XXXxxxXXX

"Well." Headmaster Xyn muttered, standing in Alec's doorway, "I'll be damned. A dragon snuck onto campus."

Behind the headmaster, both Alec and Olivia smirked at each other.