Fewer children were participating in the punishment now. It was usually Tiger, the roommates he persuaded now and then, and occasionally the snakeborn girl. I always spent training wondering where they found the courage to beat the dragon girl when she glowered at them like that.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Ah.”
I was wiping my tail down in my room that day when I felt something break off. A thin piece of skin came away from the surface. I was shedding. I guessed that explained why my tail had been feeling itchy lately. I did have memories of shedding, but I couldn’t remember what happened before or after, so I never made the connection. My memories also informed me that, if I was shedding, so was somebody else...
The dragon girl was scraping her tail over the ground and trying to tear the skin off. It made a grating sound. Hers was thicker than mine, and so was the skin that shed. That made it a real ordeal for her.
“Let me get it for you.” Leaving my flaking tail be, I picked hers up instead. It flinched out of my grip, and I thought she was about to protest, but then she let it rest in my hands again.
I soaked her skin with a sodden towel and started peeling away the surface. Underneath were glossy scales that shone as vibrantly as platinum. Her back proved more difficult because of the fur there, but after working at it with the towel, I managed to start removing the old skin. I became highly focused on what my hands were doing—it was like trying to peel a sticker from furniture.
That was when I felt something rub along my back.
I let out a yelp. I didn’t have time to parse what was going on before I saw my own tail in her hands. She pressed her tiny palms against its surface as she worked slowly to remove my shedding skin. I wasn’t sure what to make of the sensation. It wasn’t something I ever experienced in my previous life.
It seemed that snakes shed easier than dragons; she held a large layer of my tail skin before I even finished with hers. It felt like someone had just pulled a thick sock off me. She must have had nothing better to do after that, because she picked up a wet towel and started wiping the few remaining flakes from my tail. Given its current state, it was sensitive and ticklish, and I couldn’t help whimpering at the sensation. When she started trying to scratch away a half-loose scale with her claws, an especially loud cry escaped me, and I threw my hands to my mouth. I looked over at her to check if she had noticed.
She was glaring at me suspiciously. She then turned her back on me and sat, apparently bored of cleaning my tail. So, I finished peeling away her old skin and started on the remaining scales just like she had. They were stuck tight—friction wasn’t going to be enough. I resigned myself to scratching them off with my nails.
Now and then she would squirm. Her freshly shed tail was just as sensitive as mine. Feeling guilty, I finished as quickly as I could.
I only realized later that it probably would have been better to get the last scales off by myself.
✦ ✦ ✦
I was face-to-face with Sister in the meditation room. In between us was my shed skin.
“Is that one the dragonborn’s too?” Sister asked.
“No, it’s mine.”
“Oh. Then I will return it to you.”
I had been looking for a place to dispose of both our skins when she found me and brought me here. Sister took the gleaming silver scales in her hand and studied them from every angle.
“Can you use that for anything?” I asked.
“Mm-hmm.”
No wonder. She didn’t seem the type to appreciate an object for its beauty alone. Compared to Konji, who was adept at direct combat, Sister struck me as someone who killed using less direct methods.
“Poison. Medicine. Maybe an arcane tool.”
I wasn’t sure what that last thing she mentioned was. Sister quickly pulled out her trusty knife.
“This is an arcane tool. Try holding it.”
I reached out for it, but she pushed it forward and left a small incision in my fingertip.
“Ow! What was that f—” I collapsed before I could finish my sentence.
I couldn’t feel my limbs. The air around me felt thin, like I had just finished running a marathon. I gasped for breath.
“This knife has the power to exhaust whoever it cuts. That’s the intent I imbued it with.”
In other words, she’d probably made the knife herself.
“You’ll be learning about them soon enough, so it’s not a problem if you hear about it from me.”
It didn’t take long to figure out what paranormal power gave rise to such weapons: essence. Essence could imbue objects with certain effects. Whether that happened during production or once the item was complete wasn’t yet clear.
“Would I be able to make one too?” I gasped.
“In theory, though it won’t be anything impressive with how little essence you have. All you need to do is imbue your essence into it.”
Imbue my essence, my intent. Sister didn’t explain any further. My best guess was that she released her essence into the knife while intending for it to become a weapon that physically weakened whoever it cut. I couldn’t see where the dragon girl’s scales played a role in it, but I doubted I would have been able to draw the answer out from Sister. Her specialty might lay more in offensive uses for poisons and medicines, since those were what she mentioned first. I decided that, from now on, I would change where I sat in the dining hall for every meal.
I left the meditation room and returned to my own. Along the way, I ran my finger over the scale I had hidden in my clothing. Sister could keep the rest as thanks for sharing such interesting information with me.
✦ ✦ ✦
For once, I didn’t fall asleep easily that night. I stared at the ceiling, focusing on my pit organ. Eventually, my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, and I began to see colors against the monochrome. That wasn’t to say that the darkness disappeared. I was still in a room surrounded by heavyset walls. Though I could see temperatures, it was more like they were fuzzy patches layered over my vision. Doing anything with my eyes closed was still impossible. That was how this organ worked. In the wild, it probably helped snakes to seek out mammals’ hiding spots.
I could see the shape of the ceiling’s structure, probably because it was made with more than one material. It looked transparent, but that might just have been a result of the difference in temperature making it through the surface. I decided to focus on my other senses besides those provided by my eyes and pit organ.
I worked to lower the amount of essence I was emitting. As I did so, the volume of essence I could sense around me steadily increased. At first, I thought that suppressing it was pointless, but I learned that it actually made you more sensitive to other sources. It might be similar to how a sniper could turn their heartbeat into background noise or how shouting deafened you to other sounds around you. Just like sound, you could sense essence through walls. If I really wanted to, I could scope it out from the next room over, even with the level my abilities were at now.
I tossed around in my bed and turned to gaze at the wall. There were three kids beyond it. I couldn’t pick up much essence, so they were probably all asleep. They didn’t seem like they were Tiger’s lot. I was fairly sure that group was occupying a different room. What with all their punishing of the dragon girl, they’d have needed nerves of steel to sleep so close to her. They weren’t that brave.
When you had a pit organ, you learned that humans had a lower body temperature when they slept. I knew that before, but I could physically see it now. In the corner of my vision, I could also see how the dragon girl’s body temperature was increasing. It seemed my suppression of essence hadn’t escaped her notice. The reclining beast flipped over and shot a glance in my direction. I returned my essence to its baseline level and lay down on my back again. Dragonborns might have had a particular organ for perceiving essence, much like my pit organ for temperature.