To cut a long story short, every kid she was paired up against surrendered after she went for their throats. Me included—I had a nice set of fingermarks on my neck to show for it. I had managed to dodge her first attack, but then she knocked my weapon from my hand with her tail before throwing me over her shoulder. She was probably getting back at me for yesterday, but she did so beautifully. It impressed rather than frustrated me.
I walked away from combat training that day being aware of my weakness. At least it was something I could improve on. I wasn’t using my body to its full potential yet. It seemed, without realizing it, I was moving like this body was the same as the one from my previous life. This was most obvious when it came to my tail. It was a new part for me, and I found it awkward to control.
Since it had the thickness of an arm, if I used it right, I should be able to launch myself forward or use it in combat like the dragon girl had. I was sure I could do more than that with it too. I knew how frustrating it was when an opponent of a different race used their physically superior body against you. The dragon girl taught me that.
A fight was not won with raw essence alone. If it was, this building would have been filled with nothing but dragonborns. I decided to refine my strategy for dealing with the dragon girl. Unlike the boy, I regarded her as a potential enemy. As far as I was concerned, she was the next greatest threat after the instructors.
✦ ✦ ✦
The children who had made an enemy of the dragon girl must have found the news that she was joining training rather upsetting. The former slave-slash-punching-bag was suddenly their equal. I doubted they would let it slide; it made their position less secure. They would become aggressive.
Humans were always watching to see what was below. Rarely did they overlook anyone climbing up to their level. I pondered the philosophy of society’s cruelty—filtered through the experiences of my previous life—as I filled my bucket with water and returned to my room.
Drawing water would continue to be my job. I couldn’t see things ending peacefully by any stretch of the imagination if I sent the dragon girl to go do it. That said, though I didn’t know what part of the boy’s speech had inspired her, she had obviously changed. I suppose you could say she mellowed out. And I was more frightened of her than ever.
I used to fear one simple thing: her anger exploding at any moment. Now, it was like the beast that used to only be aggressive had learned to conceal itself. That was what terrified me. Hopefully, I would never end up at the wrong end of its fangs. My only means of avoiding that right now was to go to sleep after her and wake up before her.
It wasn’t long ago that I might have managed to trade rooms, but these days everyone saw me as the dragon girl’s follower. I couldn’t envision much of a future for myself outside of everyone walking on eggshells around me and being shunned in the same way people avoided venomous cobras. That made me think of scorpions and how I had yet to see a race that resembled one...
✦ ✦ ✦
I collected water for us to wipe ourselves down and opened the door to my room. What greeted me was an overwhelming pressure weighing on my whole body, rendering me breathless. The dragon girl slept as far as possible from the entrance, whereas my bedding was closer to the door than the room’s center. Usually, she would either be relaxing on her stately pile of mattresses, or she would be punching the wall in an intense bout of anger.
This time, she was on her mattresses. But she was sitting quietly with her legs crossed, just like I did every morning. She noticed me coming in, and one of her lightly closed eyelids cracked open to glance at me. She was clearly trying to copy my form, which left hers slightly imperfect, but it seemed that she understood what I was trying to achieve when I sat like that. Her essence was quietly roiling off and floating around her. Now I understood why the adults were so desperate to control her. She was in a completely different league to the other children.
Even when the instructor beat her in the mornings, even though his movements were visible only to her when he punished her, it was obvious to us that she was superior.
After a short spell of meditating, the suffocating atmosphere vanished, and she took a towel from the bucket I was holding. “What are you staring at?”
Her question pulled me from my stunned silence. I wrung out my own towel and turned my back to her. As I wiped away a day’s worth of exhaustion and dirt, I went through what I had seen over and over in my mind. The dragon girl was probably aware that her essence differed from that of the instructor’s. That was why she had chosen to emulate me to improve her handling of it. Not that she would admit to following my example.
I started to clean the length of my tail gently. It had been itchy lately, indicating that I probably wasn’t taking enough care of it.
I was cleaning it a bit more firmly when a towel landed in the bucket. I heard the rustling of cloth and then the dragon girl lying down. I looked over my shoulder. Her tail was coiled around her, creating a wall between us.
I put my towel back in the bucket and left the room to return it.
✦ ✦ ✦
“What sort of ideas has Konji been putting into your little head?”
Along the way, I was apprehended by Sister, who escorted me to a nearby room. It was similar to the meditation room—curtains were drawn over the windows, blocking any light from coming in.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“You don’t need to know.”
As I studied her, I paid close attention to what my third eye could see. There was something cold, sharp, and metallic under her clothing. I pretended to be unaware of it. “What’s ‘Konji’?”
She paused. “The name of your combat instructor. He went to your room, didn’t he?”
“No.”
The adults had names after all, then. This was the first time I had heard any of them use them to refer to one another. Sister probably let it slip by accident. Her right hand was restless, twitching toward the concealed knife and back again. This could be bad. Though I didn’t understand her intentions, it seemed like she wasn’t the dragon girl’s biggest fan. It sounded like she believed that the girl’s transformation had something to do with our combat instructor, that Konji had allied himself with the dragon girl. I had no idea if that was true or not.
Did that mean there were factions within this organization? If so, it would have made more sense if the adults in charge of the same children banded together.
Sister’s hand stopped wavering and slowly found a resting place on the knife handle. I had learned the name of one of our instructors, and that was bad news. She was now inclined to kill me. Goose bumps sprang up over my flesh. I needed to say something, anything to distract her.
“You’re going to...leave the punishment to me?” I asked.
“What’s that?”
Her emotions were running high. I could see it. Her body temperature rose just a touch.
“You’re here to ask me to punish her. The girl who’s been giving the instructors attitude.”
Sister was afraid of me figuring out her true intentions. All I needed to do was to behave like my IQ was a few points lower than it really was.
“Yes... Yes, that’s right. Really, I came to ask you to monitor her.”
“Oh, monitor her. Anyway, about your question. As far as I know, she’s not in contact with the combat instructor.”
Another pause. “I see. I thought that they... Hmm.” Sister regarded me with her hand resting on her lips, her composure regained. She was no longer touching the knife, nor did she seem agitated anymore. Either she had decided that a child wouldn’t be a threat after all, or the act of killing a child presented a weighty risk. In any case, it looked like I would get out of here with my life. “That’s all. Go back to your room.”
“Wait, so do I need to punish her?”
“Forget about that for now. Just wait for the right time, okay?” She was back to behaving like the kindly Sister I was used to. It seemed forced.
The act came too late. I already knew her true nature. I put my hand on the door, keenly aware that she was still watching me.
I’m going to use you until I’ve squeezed every last drop of value from you.
Till then, I hoped she would keep thinking I was just some dumb kid.