Alisa's spell blurred together into a useless lump of inert power and fell limply to the ground. The adjustments she'd painstakingly formulated after studying her dragon-tainted magic no longer sufficed.

She checked and double checked, drew the lines exactly the same way, and yet... nothing. The spell came out lumpy and vague, not the sleek directed bolt it should have been.

This wasn't the first time in recent weeks that her spellcasting had failed her, but it was the most dramatic. And very poorly timed. There would be another combat exercise today. Alisa dreaded being the only person incapable of casting the assigned spell. It had only been a couple weeks since she practiced it; there was no reason it should be failing now.

But unless she was reading her annotations incorrectly, or had suddenly lost the ability to draw a steady circle, then she just had to admit that her spellcasting was only degrading the more time went on.

"Zen, why," she grumbled, staring at the broken reject spells littering the ground. She'd sweep them together and toss them into the breakdown bins later. Right now, she had to get this to work. They only had a few minutes left until they'd need to join their classmates for the exercise.

'I am sorry. It is probably because of your connection to me.'

"Yeah, I gathered that much. But why does it keep shifting? Shouldn't it be constant?"

'You are not constant. Why should I be?'

"My magic doesn't change. At least not until..." she forced herself to stop before she got too angry. She'd been bitter at Zen in the past, and there may be some lingering irritation remaining in the corners of her mind, but she'd promised him and herself that she would move past it. She wouldn't hold it against him. It wasn't his fault. Even if it was his dragon fire corrupting her spells.

Zen's tail twitched guiltily, and Alisa caught waves of concern and remorse flicking through their connection.

"What is it," she asked slowly.

'I am learning to breathe fire. I didn't think it would have any effect on you, or I would have refused.'

“You’ve been breathing fire for months now.”

’Only fire. Now I am learning Fire.’

"Oh." So, learning to use his dragonfire amplified its strength, which echoed across the bond and further shifted the nature of her own power. "I wish you'd warned me in advance, that's the sort of thing I should have been correcting for."

Zen tucked his wings behind his back, landing beside her in a heavy coil, his head even with hers, looking quite contrite. 'I can stop.'

"No. No, don't ever think you need to hold yourself back for me." She thought of their plans to sneak away and fight, and shook her head vehemently. "No. Don’t even think about it. You need to be as strong as you can be. Learn everything you can. Don't worry about me. I can figure it out."

Knowing what was going on would be a start. She could work on charts, graph the shifts in power, correlate them to Zen's increased skill. Now she knew what to look for, she could record every shift, every change would be accounted for, and she could gain a solid understanding of this phenomenon which could be passed on to later generations of dragon mages. Perhaps one day they wouldn't even need to worry about the power shifting, but be forewarned and prepared with spells that could be used at every gradient of the merging power types.

Still, the promise of a new project to study for didn't quite make up for the fact that right here and now she desperately needed to be able to cast, and would not be doing so any time soon. She could cast blanks, but they'd moved on from blank spellcasting months back.

And, to make matters even worse, today she and Zen were paired directly against Francine and Gold. Tay couldn’t possibly come soon enough; Alisa could not wait to get out of here.

Zen refused to actually hit either Gold or her rider, regardless of how many times Alisa explained that it was a pretend fight and he wouldn't be making his crush hate him.

"You can show off how accurate you are. Gold would be much more impressed if you looked competent rather than missing all the time."

'I am missing on purpose, and she knows that.'

Francine had begun riding Gold whenever she could get away with it. Sometimes Alisa found herself staring up at them soaring overhead, caught up in awe at the majestic golden dragon against her will.

She could see why Zen was taken with the grandus, but it was one more complication Alisa didn't want. Francine’s smugness only magnified as Alisa failed to cast the spells correctly, and Zen failed to hit her or Gold a single time.

“Come on, Zen, they’re going to look down on us if you keep missing.”

Zen snorted. His flame was tinted faintly blue now and seemed to linger on the air for a long moment even after he stopped exhaling it. Dragonfire, not just ordinary flame. ’It requires incredible skill to miss such a large target so perfectly,’ Zen insisted. ’They will be impressed.’

Alisa glanced at the quietly sniggering Francine, then at the condescending and unbothered grandus, and sighed. She drew her circle and watched as the spell flew halfway to its target… then drifted upward haphazardly for a moment before going inert and falling to the ground in a lifeless lump.

Francine retaliated with a perfectly-formed bolt that splashed against Alisa’s enchanted breastplate, exactly in the center of the target marking.

“There’s no shame in giving up when faced with a truly superior opponent, you know,” Francine called across the field.

“I’ll show you superior,” Alisa grumbled, drawing furiously. Dragonfire could be worked around, she just had to adapt. She could do this. She could.

Four rapid failures in quick succession, and then Francine’s next attack splashed perfectly even though Alisa tried to evade at the last moment.

Zen continued to spit fireballs that conveniently landed to either side of Gold without coming close enough to even warm her scales.

“Zen!”

He stuck his long forked tongue out at her, then resumed his pointless and deliberate failure.

“You know, sometimes I really wish I’d bonded you properly,” Alisa hissed, anger getting the best of her. “You ignore me far too often.”

Zen twisted to show off the mark along his neck, then bumped Alisa gently with his nose. ’You did it perfectly. Now hush, don’t distract me. This isn’t as easy as it looks.’

Alisa wanted to scream.

After their one-on-one warmups, the grand climax of today’s farce could begin: a massive practice battle, complete with an illusionary army directed by five of the teachers working in concert, with a full array of spell triggers and ongoing active casting to correct for the battle's progress.

Alisa’s group would support the army, while Francine's side was tasked with assaulting it. This added a different dynamic, a non-static target to be protected or attacked, unlike the stationary fortresses they'd utilized in the past.

Alisa wasn't in command of her team, having neither the charisma for issuing orders nor the tactical sense required to make moment to moment adjustments to their overall strategy. She worked best either on her own or as part of a more discrete unit with simpler objectives. Her problem-solving abilities were best utilized in small, directed ways; trying to oversee the entire fight would only paralyze her with indecision.

She and Zen were joined by Gan Derris and his blaze, Vynd. They'd worked together in the past, even if Vynd and Zen constantly tried to one-up the other in showing off. Zen still hadn't fully gotten it into his head that the fights were play and not serious, and tended to vacillate between absolute focus and slothful negligence. He could be very focused, or very distracted, and no in between.

But at least it wasn't just Zen. The teachers regularly had to break up dragons to prevent them mauling each other. Occupational hazard of setting a bunch of young barely-tamed top predators against each other even in fake battle.

Alisa and Gan’s primary objective was to guard the army's right flank, shielding it from the attackers, with a secondary objective to ensure that a particular group of soldiers survived.

Designated as an undercover mage team, this group of illusionary soldiers needed to survive long enough to reach their position to assault the ‘enemy fortress’. That part of the scenario wouldn't be played out, since illusionary mages were hard enough, let alone illusionary spells.

The false army didn't move like actual people; the images shifted awkwardly from one position to another in sliding hops that looked all the more unnatural. But they were props, not intended to deceive.

Alisa forced herself to stop trying to calculate how to make an illusionary man walk properly (it would be very, very difficult) and concentrate on her task. She stood well away from the army, far to the right and rear, watching while Zen flew overhead to 'scout' the enemy. By 'scout' of course he meant ‘watch Gold admiringly’. She kept hoping he'd get over his newest, stupidest crush, but so far he'd shown no sign of coming to his senses.

"Alisa! Incoming!"

Alisa glanced up sharply at Gan’s warning shout. Adrien, one of Francine’s scouts, bore down on her from above. His gadori struggled under his weight, but it was an effective ploy. Since only a handful of dragons were big enough for their mages to ride yet, no one had been expecting a mage to attack from above.

Things would change a lot in the next year. Not every dragon species could be flown on - brownings, like Sadie's Mirva, could be ridden only on the ground and couldn’t support a rider while in flight.

Others, like the blazes several students in the class had, could be ridden and flown with, but only for brief periods, while the smaller breeds like silverback or aelanir were best suited to flying riderless.

“Zen!” If he were paying attention, it would be his job to deal with the flying attacker, but he was off twisting his long body into decorative patterns in the general vicinity of Francine instead. Alisa really wished she could control him better. Lia had warned her, time and again, but noooo, she thought she knew better.

“I’ve got it!” Keton shouted. “Sesknask! Go!” He threw his dragon, a dog-sized rajor, into the air. Sesknask tumbled a moment, then his winged forelimbs spread to catch the air and he glided straight into the attacking gadori’s face. There followed a brief, bloody collision, then the rajor glided back to his master’s side while the gadori and its rider retreated at a quick hopping run.

"On the right!" Gan shouted, fully occupied with defending himself from a pair of attacking lightrihn, and Alisa realized she’d been distracted from her duty.

She glanced to the side, and at first she couldn’t see what he was warning her of. Then she momentarily caught sight of a group of students behind a flickering barrier that imitated the landscape beyond them. Whoever was maintaining it couldn't keep up with how fast they were moving, leaving uneven patches that could be seen by anyone paying attention.

Alisa grinned and switched targets, lobbing a barrage in their direction. They shouldn't have tried sneaking up on her.

But, of course, in the heat of the moment she’d forgotten that things had changed. Her perfectly-practiced barrage of spells promptly went rogue and flew wantonly in every direction instead of hitting their targets.

The group of mostly-concealed students picked up their pace, running even faster toward the army’s rear. Clearly they’d decided it was more important to get past her and weren’t as concerned with stealth now that they knew she both saw them and could do nothing to stop them.

“Zen, get back here now!”

Thankfully, he listened to her. Maybe Gold was distracted, or maybe he sensed her desperation. Either way, he flew in a long undulating line back to her side, coiling affectionately around her as best he could.

“No, get them!” Alisa pointed at the poorly-concealed sneak attack. Keton hadn’t come back, and Gan was still fully occupied. With Alisa’s spells malfunctioning worse than ever it was up to Zen.

Thankfully, when he did focus, he was among the most dangerous opponents to a group of unprepared mages. His superior length and flexible strength let him do stupid things like wrap an entire group up in his coils and squeeze them into surrender or unconsciousness, whichever came first.

They all chose surrender.

Their dragons, on the other hand… more than one chose to fight to the bitter, inevitable end. Later, as they returned home after a thoroughly embarrassing overall defeat, Zen proudly showed off the bleeding claw marks where a particularly determined gadori had torn three of his scales free and succeeded in biting him quite viciously.

'But I won in the end! You should have seen how he squealed and whimpered.’ Zen flew in excited circles in midair, ignoring Alisa’s dour mood.

“I did see. I was standing right next to you, watching the whole time.”

’Wasn’t I magnificent?’

“Yes. You did a fine job. I wish you’d done it a little sooner.”

’It’s more dramatic to do it at the last moment! I’ve heard enough stories to know that much.’

Alisa groaned. Dragons were dramatic enough as it was. Adding literary cliches to their repertoire of stupidity would only make things more complicated. “Are you incapable of taking anything seriously?”

‘You’re the one who’s always telling me it’s just a game.’

“Why did I have to pick the smart one?” bemoaned Alisa.

‘Because I’m the best, and you know it.’

Zen promptly launched into another story, obviously exaggerated, about Gold's impressive feats on the battlefield. Alisa did her best to resist the urge to strangle her naive oblivious little dragon.

She really, really, hoped he outgrew this ridiculous crush soon.