Fledgling Developments part 2
Jarzyl gets sent back from her training hunt early
Mini-series first chapter (chapter 1): https://sofurry.com/s/Rnoz2Yxm
Less than a minute’s flight away was a large lake, beautifully glistening in the midday sun. Small waves were lapping away at a gravel beach as Jarzyl touched down on the shoreline, and without hesitation the fledgling charged into the water and jumped in with a big splash. Jarzyl paddled her four legs and flapped her wings to swim around in the lake, enjoying the feel of the cool water against her scales as it washed away the green and black paint that had been camouflaging her natural orange colours. It was a delightful feeling, though briefly disrupted by a tinge of her headache returning.
Going back towards the shore, Jarzyl returned to the shallows and rolled about to wash her scales all over. Dipping her head underwater, she rubbed her paws over her head and neck to wipe more of the paint off, then she stood up and blinked her eyes open. Atlas was standing on the beach, watching her with a mildly amused expression. Unlike her or most of the other fledglings, his natural scale colouration was so dark that he didn’t need to wear camouflage paint for training hunts.
Jarzyl waved her wing. “The water’s nice and cool. Join me?”
“You know I don’t like swimming…”
“Don’t swim then. But come stand in the water at least?”
For a moment Atlas hesitated, then he stood up and slowly stepped into the water, taking care that only his paws and legs got wet, not his wings or body. He came over and stood beside Jarzyl, who was grinning at him.
Atlas gave her a suspicious look. His dark goggles reflected the sun, keeping his sensitive nocturnal eyes protected from the bright daylight, but Jarzyl could tell he was looking at her. “Don’t splash me!” he hissed.
That made her burst out into laughter. “Haha! I wasn’t going to splash you. I just wanted to…” She took a furtive glance around, then she shifted closer to Atlas and sat up on her hindlegs. Touching his chin, she bumped her snout against his in a quick, affectionate peck. “Wanted to do that.”
Atlas smiled. “I wanted to do that too. I’ve been thinking about that all morning during our training hunt.”
Jarzyl flicked her neck frill playfully but pretended to frown. “You weren’t paying attention during the hunt?! No wonder we didn’t catch anything.”
Atlas nodded at her. “I was paying attention during the hunt, just less so to the deer and more to you. You look so intense when you’re focusing on hunting something.” He leaned towards her, and Jarzyl’s neck frill perked up, but then he pulled back and glanced at the sky. “Oh, you can see the others flying from here. Look, I think they’re starting to swoop.”
Jarzyl let out a dissatisfied grunt. She’d have liked to kiss Atlas, but they were out in the open, and the other fledglings might have spotted them from the sky if they did anything. “My head feels fine now. Maybe we could rejoin their hunt? But no, let’s just get back to the city. I’m sure we can find something else to do.” She glanced at Atlas and grinned at him again. “My parents won’t be home. You could come over to my place.”
Atlas nodded. “Your mother isn’t home? I thought she would be resting after laying an egg last week.”
Jarzyl shrugged. “The second egg was a bit smaller and came out easier than the first one did. Then her magic came back fast, so she’s healed right up. And you know the medical centre is always short staffed and needs more healers. Then my father had to go to the clan headquarters for some important meeting today, so it’ll be no one home except you and me…! And also those two eggs, sitting in the incubator box. But they can’t watch. Oh, but it’s hardly even midday—we could find something else to do rather than sit at home all afternoon…? Let’s just get back to the city first.”
The dragon fledgling stood up and leapt out of the water, spreading her wings to take into the air in a single energetic leap. A quick backward glance confirmed that Atlas was following her—his wings beats were much quieter than hers, given that he was a nocturnal dragon while she was a diurnal. Together they picked up speed even as they climbed higher, soaring into the air as they headed home.
The two fledglings cleared the treetops and continued climbing, with Jarzyl immediately taking the lead. If it had been overcast, she would have followed her internal compass to lead them back to the city, but with today’s clear visibility their destination was easily visible.
“Avaeria flies on” was the unofficial city motto, literally and figuratively true. Their home was floating in the skies to the east, amongst scattered clouds, and it was a majestic sight to see.
The ancient dominion of the drakken—Avaeria was a massive flying city, high up among the clouds, occupied by the majority of the drakken population. Gleaming brightly in the late-morning sun, the City of Wings was a huge disk-shaped structure of metal, glass, and stone, with countless buildings constructed on both its upper and lower halves. At such a distance the city’s immense scale was difficult to comprehend, but the dragons flying near it looked so tiny they seemed like tiny insects or specks of dust around a vast, flattened metallic flower.
Like a mountain that had torn itself free of the ground, or a thundercloud that flew against the winds, Avaeria floated through the skies flying far slower than a dragon’s flight. Careful engineering coupled with complex enchantments kept the city aloft, with its propulsion systems relying on an intricate combination of ice, stone, and electric magic was used to defy gravity. But not air magic, ironically, for the city flew entirely differently from how a dragon would. Drakken high technology in action.
Even having lived there all her life, Jarzyl felt a sense of wistful awe as they headed towards their home. Avaeria was the only city of the dragons, but what a city it was. The centaurs had dozens upon dozens of their own cities sprawled across the rainforests, and the humans controlled even more territory in their own realms—yet none of the other civilizations had anything like the City of Wings. While the other sapient species had to use spells, incantations, or runes to access the arcane, dragons used magic as naturally as they could breathe. No other civilization could have hoped to construct such a wonder, but then no other civilization would even have tried. Who else but dragons would want to master the skies?
Jarzyl continued to beat her wings, ascending on a gradual slope so that they would match the city’s height just as they arrived. Off towards the west, the other fledglings from their training hunt were visible in a loose formation, holding a lower altitude as they flew over grassy plains and circled around the breakhorn herd, each taking turns to dive down. Jarzyl briefly slowed her flight to spare them a longing glance and a wish that she was with them, but then she looked back to the city and sped up again.
Their training hunt hadn’t gone too far out from the city, so the return flight was of modest distance. They would be back in Avaeria within a fraction of an hour, and Jarzyl quickly planned out her afternoon now that she was no longer going to be on the day’s training hunt. First order of business was to find lunch with Atlas. After that, perhaps they could roam the marketplaces looking for interesting things, or maybe Atlas would go to the library and she’d follow him. Her afternoon was free, and the possibilities were endless.
The young dragon shook her head slightly, trying to ignore the faint pain in her head. What was up with that, anyway? Maybe she’d eaten something bad in her breakfast. Jarzyl hoped her headache would be gone by the time she reached the city. She had better things to do.
Despite initially wanting to take point, Jarzyl soon let Atlas lead their flight as they made their way back to Avaeria. All the way through her flight her headache had continued, despite her expectations that it would just fade away. What had started as a mild headache had grown into a serious annoyance, then outright discomforting pain. It was hard to focus on flying straight through the sharp, prodding pain in her head.
Flying up through the vast gap between two adjacent city sectors, the two dragon fledglings turned towards sector one—the largest, oldest, and centremost sector of the city, where Jarzyl lived and where she went to school with Atlas and her friends. Jarzyl glided back down towards street level, heading for a landing, but the distracting pain of her headache made her misjudge the wind. With her wings spread wide and her legs stretched out, she instead ended up floating through the air rather than touching down where she’d been aiming.
Instead of landing in the centre of an empty street, Jarzyl crashed into a building wall, barely turning at the last moment so her legs touched the wall instead of her head. Hitting the wall one body length above the ground, she slid down the wall and crumpled up against the street.
A gust washed over her scales as a dragon landed right beside her—Atlas, who made a perfect landing. Of course he did. “Did you crash?! Are you alright?”
“Hatchlings crash, fledglings land!” Jarzyl retorted. “That was a landing! I’m fine. I’m not injured, just… just my head is…” Her headache was bad—an invasive throbbing pain in her skull, jabbing again and again. The fledgling groaned and clenched the side of her head with her paws. “Go away, go away, go away!” she muttered under her breath, but the pain didn’t stop.
“Jarz,” Atlas asked, his voice sounding concerned.
“I’m fine,” Jarzyl insisted. This wasn’t really true.
“You’re not fine. Go see a doctor. Do you need the paramedics? I can go call for a displacer to bring you to the medical centre,” said Atlas.
Jarzyl hurriedly snapped her eyes open and tried to jump to her feet, though she ended up looking twitchy instead of energetic. She swayed for a moment, bumping her half-unfurled wing against the wall, before she steadied herself. “No! No, I’m fine! Don’t call the paramedics. I’ll…I’ll go see a physician, but I can walk! And it’s just a headache. Nothing serious. It might go away by itself!”
Her resistance was half-hearted, for it really was a very bad headache. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to see a doctor and get some medicine. She let Atlas lead her to the medical centre, in the heart of the city.
“Yes, come in. Good morning, I’m Healer Avison. Please take a seat.”
Jarzyl entered the consultation room and sat down on the cloth seating mat, trying not to instinctively raise a paw and hold her head. The healer was seated down on his own mat perpendicular to hers and behind a desk. Now he peered over a sheet of paper, on which various things were scribbled. The healer was a fully grown drake, around a fifth bigger than a fledgling, and he had an air of calm intelligence about his gaze. “Jarzyl Mintaka? Your name is very familiar. Are you related to Zilarin Mintaka, by any chance?”
Jarzyl normally would have nodded, but today her head hurt too badly. “She’s my mother.”
“Ah, how pleasant! I used to work with your mother, you see! Back when I was in the surgical ward, rather than general consulting. She’s told me so much about you.” The healer adjusted the thick pair of correcting lenses covering his eyes as he frowned at his paper. Since he was a healer, Jarzyl wondered how come he couldn’t cure his own farsightedness—on some other day she would have asked curiously. Today she didn’t bother.
“Now what can I help you with? You told the medic you have a bad headache—could you tell me more about that? Has this happened before or is this a new development?” asked the healer.
“It started a few hours ago when I woke up this morning. At first I hardly noticed, but then we went out to the fields on a training hunt and it got worse and worse.” Jarzyl recalled how she’d barely felt a tinge of discomfort when she’d woken up. That seemed like so long ago, and the idea of being free from constant pain was a distant memory. “It was nothing when I woke up. Now it’s hurts so bad, I can’t think of anything but how much it hurts. Ow, ow, ow, my head.” She rested her paw against the side of her head.
The healer gave a sympathetic nod and questioned her further. “Does the pain come and go, or is it a constant thing?”
“It used to come and go, but now it’s constant. Just really… ow.”
“Is there any particular location? The front of your head, or the left side, or somewhere?” prompted the healer.
“Inside. The inside of my brain hurts. It—it really, really hurts,” mumbled Jarzyl, unable to provide a more descriptive response. The healer started writing on the sheet of paper, dipping the tip of his tail in a bottle of ink and using its dextrous tip like a brush. He went on to ask her if Jarzyl felt dizzy, nauseous, or sensitive to lights, and she answered in the negative to all three.
“Hold still, let me feel the side of your neck… Heart rate is quite fast, but the beats are still in good sync. Alright. I’m going to use my magic to see if I can sense anything wrong. If you experience any discomfort, say so immediately. Checking your head, you might feel a prick from the magic…” The healer placed his paw on the side of Jarzyl’s head, and she felt a faint tingle at the point of contact as he used his healing magic to try and probe her for illness or disease.
While he was scanning her, the healer (Jarzyl had already forgotten his name) started shining a light in her eyes and asking her to tilt her head to the left, or the right. He took out a small bar of metal and waved it around her head—Jarzyl felt her internal sense of direction spin, and she realized it was a magnet.
“Your pupil and balance reflexes are all normal. Let me try something. I’d like you to tell me if the pain lessens at all, or if it gets worse. How does this feel?”
“Same,” replied Jarzyl.
“That’s very interesting. Let me try something else. How about now—any change in the headache?”
Jarzyl faint the tingle on her scales intensify as the healer did something with his magic, but her headache continued unalleviated. “Still nothing,” she told him.
“Third try?”
“No, same. Still hurts.”
The healer nodded, and then he took his paw off her head and resumed writing on the sheet of paper. “No fever, no indication of infection, and minimal immune response. And healing doesn’t seem to have any effect. Jarzyl, as far as I can tell using my magic, there doesn’t seem to be anything abnormal. I’m inclined to believe there’s nothing wrong with you.”
“What? Hey! You think I’m faking this? I’m in an awful lot of pain for nothing wrong!’” Jarzyl glared angrily, her neck frill jumping up in agitation.
The healer hurriedly raised his paw to placate her. “Patience. Hear me out please. I’m not accusing you of malingering. As a general rule, pain that cannot be alleviated by a healer can mean two things—either some very rare and complex diseases, or magical cross-interference. I am inclined to believe the latter is more likely, given the circumstances and lack of other symptoms.”
“Huh? What?! This is a magical headache? What does that even mean? Whose magic is messing up my head?!” Jarzyl demanded.
The healer stood up and walked over to a shelf at the side of the consulting room and returned carrying a thick book with an aged spine of leather. He sat back down on his mat, gently placed the book down on the desk in front of him, and started flipping its pages. “It would be your magic, of course. It says in the records that you are right about the right age for you to develop magic. Often the body reacts in strange ways at first. You’re having a magical surge. It’s very common among fledglings. It’s not a bad thing.”
“I…wait, you mean this is supposed to be a good thing?” asked Jarzyl incredulously. The healer’s diagnosis came as a shock. All this time she’d assumed there must be something very wrong with her, but for years she’d been eagerly anticipating getting her magic.
What marked the difference between an adolescent fledgling and a mature adult drakken was the ability to use magic, so the development of magical affinity was considered the final part of growing up. Jarzyl had heard all the rumours spread amongst the fledglings—there was ample discussion about the perks and disadvantages of every different affinity, as well as endless speculation about how to supposedly increase or decrease one’s chances of getting a particular affinity.
Swim too much and you’d end up with hydro affinity, it was said. Another rumour was that sleeping on a bare floor would give you stone affinity, while getting injured often could give you healing affinity. Cold and aloof fledglings became icebreathers, while hot-headed and impatient ones became firebreathers, and so on. There were rumours and guesswork about every single affinity—why any particular type was the best or the worst type of magic, as well as how to get it or avoid it. Jarzyl’s mother (who was a healer and knew about these things) had insisted that it was mostly hereditary and there was no proven way to influence the type of magic a dragon received, but nevertheless Jarzyl had always hoped for something special.
Having healing magic like her mother would be useful—she would be able to undo wounds and erase injuries with a touch, helping lots of people. Or would she get teleportation, like her aunt? Jarzyl imagined what it would be like to be able to vanish from wherever she was, only to instantly reappear somewhere else in a flash of magic—displacer affinity, rare and highly useful. Even if she didn’t get one of the rarer affinities, Jarzyl was at least hoping for something interesting. Firebreathing was the quintessential example of draconic magic and it was very showy, but useful for cooking too. Even being a rockshifter like her father would be fine—maybe she would go work with him as a clan architect, or as an airship engineer working on their crystalline levitation cores.
However, pondering the future was made hard by how badly her head was currently hurting. Jarzyl had heard that firebreathers sometimes got toothaches when they first got their affinity, while dry scales were associated with water affinity. “What does a headache mean? For magic? Which affinity is it?”
The healer frowned and started flipping through his medical encyclopaedia. “A headache? That’s not a common affinity transient, but not unheard off. I believe cognitive affinity is the type of magic most associated with altered mental states.”
“What? You mean I’m suffering through all this pain just to get cognitive affinity? You’re sure?” Jarzyl didn’t bother to hide her disappointment. Cognitive affinity was magic associated with the mind—it let a dragon communicate and influence simpler, non-sapient creatures, or vaguely try to sense the emotions of another dragon. In her opinion, it was entirely useless.
“Nothing is certain—magic is a finicky thing, and we won’t know for sure until you actually start using your magic in whatever form it takes. At your age, the magic is nascent, it is blooming… its form is wild and undecisive! You might manifest one type of magic, only for your affinity to finally settle in as another type of magic. How fascinating!” The healer kept flipping through his big old book, making the occasional ‘hmm’ noise.
Jarzyl wrapped a wing around her head and groaned. Of the many different affinities, mind magic was the one she had least wanted. Jarzyl’s grandmother had cognitive affinity, and the elderly drakka seemed to enjoy talking to her various pet birds more than she like talking to other dragons. Jarzyl was fond of her old grandmother, but she didn’t want to end up like her. “Ahhh, that sucks! I don’t want to talk to animals, and I certainly don’t want to work on some farm. I guess this mean I’ll have to start keeping a hoard of cats and carrying a bird around on my shoulder?”
“Don’t be like that—instead, think of this as a new phase of your life! And if it turns out that you do have cognitive affinity, you should look forward to the opportunities it presents and embrace who you are!” The healer’s attempts to console weren’t very effective, and they certainly didn’t distract Jarzyl from her headache.
“Cursed nullfire. I’ll have to become a vegetarian too. Just kill me now, please,” said Jarzyl, her head still tucked under her wing.
“Unfortunately I’m afraid that becoming an adult is not an acceptable reason for euthanasia! Hehe.” The healer chuckled to himself, finding his little medical joke highly amusing. “Don’t be so pessimistic, and try not to focus on the typical stereotypes and prejudices. The animal hoarders, vegetarians, and other extremists aren’t representative of the affinity—most cognitive drakken are just normal dragons like you and me. In the meantime, I recommend you get some rest.”
“Can I get medicine?”
“Normal medicine won’t help. But I can give you these to help with the pain.” The healer offered her a small paper packet. “Chew on one of these every few hours.”
Jarzyl unfolded the top of the packet and found it contained a dozen pills, in a bright assortment of colours. She picked one up. It felt squishy, and slightly sticky. “Is this just candy? Are you giving me a placebo?”
The healer looked impressed. “You know what a placebo is?”
Jarzyl nodded. She ate the candy. It was sweet, but didn’t distract much from her headache. “My mother told me about placebos before. Its where you give useless medicine but that tricks the body into getting well anyway.”
“Clever young drakka, you are! Unfortunately I can’t offer you any more effective medicine than that. Affinity transients—magical surges—are just something that often happens to fledglings. Drink more water and get some rest, but no, no medicine.”
Jarzyl resisted the urge to sigh. “That sucks! My head hurts!”
“But you’re getting your magic, so look forward to that! Now your headache might end in a few hours or it might continue for up to a week,” said the healer, “If you get any other symptoms—especially vomiting, giddiness, or a stiff neck—come back to the medical centre immediately.”
Jarzyl groaned again, then she dropped her wing and furled it onto her back. “Up to a week? This is just terrible. Thanks anyway, I guess.” She stood up to leave.
The healer rolled up the piece of paper he’d been writing on and pushed it through a slot in the wall. “If I might just say—may I be the first to congratulate you on coming of age! Welcome to the rest of your life. I wish you a quick recovery.” With a dull thump, he closed his scholarly book.
Ever the loyal, patient friend, Atlas was waiting outside the consulting room. He stood up as Jarzyl butted the door open with her head and grumpily marched out. “Are you alright? What did the physician say?”
“The healer says it’s a magical surge. He thinks the headache is caused by my affinity developing,” Jarzyl replied.
Atlas went through a quick progression of facial expressions—first surprise, then thoughtfulness, then relief, then excitement as he processed her explanation. “Affinity devel—oh! Then you’re fine? That’s good. And you’ll be able to use magic soon? Wow, that’s great!”
Jarzyl sighed. “No, it’s not great. My head hurts and there’s nothing they can do anything about it… I’m going home.”
She started slowly walking towards the exit of the medical centre and Atlas followed along beside her. “I’ll walk you home. Is your headache that bad? I’d have thought you’d be happier about getting your magic!”
“It is quite bad. But that’s not it. The healer said it’s probably going to be cognitive magic. I’m going to end up on some smelly farm, taking care of a bunch of stupid animals.”
Atlas had often listened to Jarzyl talk about her preferences on the different types of magic, and he knew about her distaste for mind magic. Yet whenever she’d asked him for his opinion on what magic he’d want to get, Atlas had always insisted that he’d be fine with any kind of affinity. Jarzyl wasn’t entirely sure if Atlas was truly so calm that he didn’t mind having any kind of affinity, or if he just didn’t want to get his hopes up only to end up with some other affinity he didn’t want.
“Oh. But don’t be so sad. Maybe the healer was wrong and you won’t get mind magic. Or maybe you’ll end up with dual affinity and you’ll have something else, like fire affinity together with cognitive affinity—you’ve always told me you’d like firebreathing.”
Jarzyl blinked. From the constant stabbing pain in her head, she’d forgotten the simple fact that even if she did get cognitive magic, it was still entirely possible for her to get a second affinity. Four out of ten dragons had two affinities—it wasn’t the majority, but it was still very common for drakken to have two different types of magic at once.
Seeing her perk up, Atlas nodded his head encouragingly. “There’s a good possibility you could get some other type of magic. And your just having a magical surge anyway, so really you don’t know for sure that cognitive magic is what you’ll end up having. Who knows?”
As they walked out of the medical centre and into the street, Atlas slipped down his dark goggles back down from his forehead, shielding his sensitive eyes from the sun. “Are you going to fly home? If you aren’t feeling well maybe it’s safer for you to just displace.” He gestured with his tail towards a series of large circular demarcations inscribed into the ground just beside the medical centre’s entrance. All of the circles had large numbers written in the middle, sized to fit at most a dozen or so dragons inside their boundaries.
This was the Displacer Transit Network, a carefully planned and coordinated system that used dragons who could teleport (called displacers) to provide quick transport to anywhere in the city. It was a great convenience, although in Jarzyl’s opinion teleporting around wasn’t anywhere near as fun as flying.
Right on schedule, a shimmering sphere of magic spun into existence over the closest pad before imploding one second later, revealing three dragons. Two of the dragons hurriedly rushed into the medical centre, but the third folded his wings shut and sat down at the side of the pad. His harness had large cloth sections attached on each side, inked with the same number as the pad he had just arrived on. “Eight-Seven-Five! Intra-capital express, northern circuit. Departing in three minutes to the Central Library, then Leviathan Docks, then Hasilt Heavy Industrial… Eight-Seven-Five.” After quickly announcing his route, the drake leaned over to the adjacent pad and started chatting with a fellow displacer (route One-Nine-Seven) who was waiting on her own pad.
Jarzyl felt a slight pang of jealousy watching the displacers with their numbered uniforms. Why couldn’t she have gotten displacer affinity instead? She would get to meet and chat with so many new people every day, being helpful and teleporting people all around the city. But no, she was probably getting cognitive affinity. Smelly farm, stupid animals—what a waste of magic.
It would be much faster for Jarzyl to teleport right to the transit pad near her home, but magic hadn’t been working so well for her today. “I’ll walk! If I’m messing up healing magic then I might mess up displacer magic as well. Who knows what could go wrong—we might end up teleporting into a wall or something. I can’t believe I’m going through all this trouble just to end up with cognitive affinity!” she grumbled.
Walking beside her, Atlas cleared his throat. “Ah, technically, that can’t happen. Displacer affinity is one of the safest types of magic. You can’t teleport into solid objects or into other people. If you were going to disrupt their magic, what would probably happen is that you would find yourself left behind and sitting all alone on an empty pad, exactly the same as before.”
“Oh,” mumbled Jarzyl, “left behind on the pad, minus the transport fee that I paid for a displacer to teleport me. Yes that would be just wonderful.”
Atlas held back a laugh but he still kept trying to cheer her up. “Don’t feel so bad about mind magic! Even cognitive affinity isn’t that bad. Did you know that some of them make it a hobby to control the way a spider spins its web? They make it weave weird patterns, or spell out words, or even draw basic pictures with the silk. I’ve never seen it myself, but I’ve heard it’s quite relaxing to watch.”
Jarzyl’s grandmother had certainly never mentioned that she could control spiders, let alone use them in art. “I didn’t know that. That actually does sound interesting.” Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad to have mind magic, but she’d still have preferred to be a firebreather. “I suppose it could always be worse—at least it’s not nullfire.”
Atlas bobbed his wings up and down in a shrug. “Antimagic affinity is extinct. Have you ever even heard of a dragon having nullfire? The archive registries don’t even have it listed anymore.”
The two young dragons went on chatting about the different aspects of magic, or about what sort of magic they imagined their fellow fledglings would eventually receive, or about how Knaster Taslin was an arrogant loudmouth who couldn’t hunt to save his life. And they walked towards Jarzyl’s home, together.
TO BE CONTINUED
Mini-series next chapter link (chapter 3): https://sofurry.com/s/rnaQK05n