Page 6 of The Witch & the Dragon

And he remembered the weird oracle girl who’d run after him, yelling that it wasn’t worth it. So absurd, her arrival.

So needed.

Chapter Three – Chloe

Lessons went smoothly, and Chloe’s magic remained stubbornly absent of anything relevant. Also, her gut-reaction magic only worked a few more times, but mostly, it seemed to concern students doing illicit deals in the gardens late at night or someone throwing lightning in a corridor or sending out a disturbing cloud of dark magic from the science labs.

There was also the business about the statue in the Triscor garden, which all the students speculated was the actual body of a former student turned to stone. No one actually knew for sure, and not even the teachers seemed able to confirm or deny anything. However, Chloe suspected that the teachers might also be a part of the conspiracy.

After all, if the rumors of how scary a school happened to be drifted around, passed from student to student, spreading the image of the dangers if you were foolish to wander into the wildlands at night – perhaps that alone might be an effective deterrent.

At times, she thought of the student she’d raced after, the one she’d talked down from the ledge, ate dinner with, and listened to. She knew she’d done the right thing – it was just – the trouble with doing the right thing is that you seldom got to experience the results of them.

Since that time, the student had simply vanished – she never saw him in the corridors. Maybe he’d left because the grief was new and too much to bear. She considered asking Professor Umber about his whereabouts but didn’t know how to do that without appearing nosy and intrusive. Still, the image of the dragon shifter flitted across her mind’s eye at times. She recalled his slumped posture, his immense struggle to neither cry nor snap at her, those amber eyes locking on hers as if he was using her presence to cling to reality, to life.

Hopefully, he’d be okay.

“What’s up with you, Chloe?” Her friend Holly hovered over with her eyebrows lifted. “Are the lessons hitting harder?”

“Not as hard as yours,” Chloe replied, with a small smile that she thought would reassure her friend. “At least I’m not a medium who needs to go around and talk to people’s spirits or anything.”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t…recommend it.” Holly shuddered. “People don’t really treat you nicely when you have those sorts of powers. I mean, it depends on the people, of course…”

“Honestly, my powers feel like a joke at times.” Chloe sighed, shrugging for emphasis. “I’d hoped that summer camp might unlock some unknown but super-awesome element of the powers, like, I could be predicting with more accuracy than I do now. But it’s the same for everyone, really. Being an oracle is not reliable.”

“But what about those oracles in ancient Greece they talk about?”

“Oh, they found out the oracles were using some kind of artifact to help make their visions more relevant. That artifact is no longer around today.”

Chloe knew exactly what had happened to it, thanks to Kati and Harrow gossiping after all the drama that had gone down. Those two had been right in the middle of the action. Chloe couldn’t help but feel somewhat envious of them. Normal people like Chloe (well, normal enough, anyway) didn’t get to experience those things. The intuition/premonition side of her magic was a little cool, but it had very limited use, and just like actually peering into the future, it couldn’t be activated on a whim. So, she couldn’t just go through her life as if she was dosed up on luck potions.

The subject of their talk soon drifted. “Have you seen or heard anything about that student you helped out, the one whom you said was going to jump?”

“Nothing.” Chloe could almost see a cloud of gloom hovering above her head now. “For all I know, he might’ve quit. It’s not like we exchanged numbers or anything. I was just helping him out, letting him know someone was listening, even if they were a total stranger. I knew somehow he needed that. But… what exactly would you do if you found out your parents died in an accident?”

“I don’t know,” Holly replied soberly. “This… it’s not something I want to think about, really, because then I have to start picturing something I don’t want to picture.”

“Exactly. It’s a problem. I… I guess I wouldn’t be surprised if he dropped out of the school.”

“Why not ask that professor about him? If you’re so curious?”

“Because.”

“Great answer, Chloe.” Holly didn’t pursue the matter further, however, likely sensing that Chloe didn’t want to keep speculating or want to intrude on the professor without making it obvious she was simply being nosy. She had no reason to approach him, no permission to ask about Tiran. Still, she couldn’t help but wonder about him all the same, maybe because it happened to be one of the few genuinely good uses of her otherwise obscure powers. The long evenings lying in bed, trying to delve into her gifts, were fruitless. The meditations they made people with her type of magic do, the incense sticks they burned, the ritualistic aspect of trying to work their way into the “right” frame of mind so that their powers might actually manifest…

Yeah. It didn’t really work that well. Still, she had set up a small corner of her assigned dorm room so that it might act like a small shrine that would allow her to concentrate on her powers. A little table, some candles, and a long lighter to help with the ones that had burned down a narrow waxy tunnel, a small wolf figurine that looked suitably dramatic from a souvenir shop in the nearby village… and she was encouraged to meditate to help access her powers. Hell, they even had a meditation room in Dreadmor Academy, but she preferred the comfort of her own space without having to share it with total strangers.

A vision journal sat on the desk as well, just in case she received one out of nowhere, so it could be jotted down quickly before the memory faded, and she’d instead need to take a potion that helped enhance her memory.

A lot of measures to take for ironically unpredictable magic. A few days more passed, and she still hadn’t mustered up the nerve to approach Professor Umber and ask him about his nephew. Then Professor Umber himself was absent for a week, and it seemed to her to be linked with Tiran’s plight, and the mystery continued to grow without answer.

Almost the same day Professor Umber returned, dominating his classroom as if he’d never left, Chloe finally glimpsed Tiran in the corridor with a group of fourth-year students. Had he been here before? Or had he, too, mysteriously returned like the professor, and conveniently at around the same time?

She observed him from a distance, still between lessons. All his friends were superbly good-looking, but he…something about his features, combined with the memory of his expression in the dining hall, made him stand out compared with the rest, at least in her eyes. But she might be slightly biased toward him, so…

As if sensing her stare, he looked away from the group, and his eyes swept in her direction, fixing on her.

Ah. Best not to stand here and continue to be creepy. She pretended instead to be engrossed with something on her phone, trying to resist the urge to stare. She walked closer and closer until she passed the gaggle of students blocking one side of the corridor. Her neck prickled from unseen attention. She made it to class without incident, but she knew he’d been watching her the whole time.

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