That being said, I was fairly confident that despite how carefully crafted this spell was, I could slowly alter it and eventually maybe even remove the collar altogether; however, that’d be a long way off given the intricate nature of the spell. It was hard to believe that the human had cast it so quickly. I’d expect a human to take at least a day to cast something this complicated.
“If you’re worried about the collar, don’t be,” I said. “I’m not going to try to take it off. It’d be much more effort than it’s worth. Besides, I’m a guest here. I’m not going to try and raise a ruckus.”
Her eyes practically glowed at my words as if she was proud of me. “O-Oh. Great! Well, let me show you to your room!” she said, walking through the mirage of a stone wall.
Of course, that’s a lie. I’m going to look for any opportunity I can to accomplish my objective, collar be damned.
As I walked through the mirage, I was greeted by a warm, well-lit area furnished with couches, tables, and a hearth at the opposite end of the room.
“This is the second-year girls’ lounge area. It’s not much, but it’s a very comfy area.”
“There’s even a fire,” I remarked.
“Yeah.” Then she nervously looked between me and the fire. “Do you...eat fire?”
I shot her a sharp glare. “‘Do I eat fire?’ Is that the stereotype you have of dragons?!”
“Aaah! I’m so sorry!”
Honestly, I’d only snapped at her out of annoyance. I do wonder what this fire tastes like, but there’s no way I’m going to perpetuate the stereotype. Though dragons didn’t eat fire to fill our stomachs, it usually served as a tasty snack. Maybe I’ll sample it later when she’s not looking.
“Moving on, the rooms are down the hall,” she said, gesturing to the right of the lobby.
I followed her down a long hallway lit by the same kind of candles I’d seen earlier, and a row of wooden doors lined either side at even intervals. I couldn’t sense any presence behind them, presumably because the inhabitants of the rooms were gone for the long break before the school year began, as the human had mentioned earlier. All of these are going to be filled with other students?
“How many people live here?” I asked.
“By ‘here,’ do you mean in the school in general or this floor?”
“Both, I suppose.”
“A couple hundred per grade, I guess. So maybe a total of five hundred at least. President Victoria probably knows the actual number if you want to ask her.”
“No need.” Presumably, there was an equal number of males and females per grade, so it’s safe to assume that fifty females will be on this floor. That being said, I don’t think I see fifty rooms. “Do the male dorms have more rooms?”
“No. Why?”
“It just doesn’t seem like there are enough rooms here to support all the students presumably in this grade.”
“No, there are. Twenty-six rooms total on this floor, thirteen on either side.”
“By my calculations, there should be about fifty students here, so shouldn’t there be fifty rooms?”
Something seemingly clicked in the human’s mind, and a bead of sweat dripped down her face. “Oh boy...” she muttered. “Well, this is the room,” she said, nervously pointing at the right side at the end of the hall.
Upon opening it, I was greeted by a modest room with two beds, two desks, two dressers... Huh? Why are there two of everything? Also, why are there already personal effects on one side of the room?
As soon as I took one step into the room, she quickly darted inside and kicked something resembling a cushy small bed underneath one of the two bigger beds.
She cleared her throat as if to distract me from what she’d just done. “So, the right side will be yours, and—”
“Wait. I have a lurking suspicion I know what you’re going to say next, and I’d like to give you the opportunity to amend it to an explanation of how you’ll be moving these things out of my room and leaving it in its entirety to me.”
“Sorry...it’s a school rule that everyone has a roommate. Also, I’m your overseer; I can’t let you out of my sight.”
“I don’t even need a room. Elder dragons don’t sleep on beds.”
“Huh? You don’t? How does that even work? Oh, so you sleep on the ground in your mountain caves?”
I shot her another sharp glare. “You really need to brush up on your elder dragon knowledge. We do not dwell in mountains or caves...solely, at least. We’re a nomadic people, and thus, we sleep wherever we like, whether that’s a field, a cave, or in the air.”
“The...air? Like a balloon?”
“A...‘bah loon’?” I had no idea what those two words meant together. A loon was a term describing those who were not of sound mind, while a bah was... What was a bah? Was she perhaps insulting my intelligence by calling me a loon and a...bah?
“You don’t know what a balloon is?”
“Cognitive Advantage tells me what the word is, but if there’s no equivalent in my language, it’s like looking at a blank entry in a dictionary.”
“So, it’s not like having omniscience? Well, in that case, a balloon is a kind of stretchy bag that you can fill with light gas to make it float. You have to be careful though, because if you don’t tie a string to it, they’ll fly away into the air, never to be seen again.”
“I’ll graciously ignore the fact that you compared elder dragons to floating, stretchy bags. At any rate, the only similarity we share with balloons is the fact that we can float. However, we do not gradually ascend into the atmosphere. Though I suppose, if we’re not careful, we can be swept away by the wind.”
“Have you ever woken up at a completely different place than where you’ve fallen asleep?”
“Me personally? No. But either way, I hope you understand now that this room is entirely unnecessary. I’ll simply sleep outside.”
“Like, in the air? Absolutely not! What part of ‘people can’t know you’re a dragon’ don’t you get?!”
“Do people in your realm not sleep in the air?”
“No!”