Free Web NovelChapter 18: HeadMaster
By the time the group of boys made it back to camp, dragging their battered freind’s body between them, every other student who’d wandered off earlier had already returned, the whole group gathered uneasily near the main tent under the bright midday sun.
The four instructors were waiting.
Instructor Selene stood closest to the tent entrance, her mage cloak hanging loose and unbuttoned over a deliberately skimpy uniform, fishnet tights catching the sunlight, purple hair falling messily past her shoulders. She looked bored, idly twirling a strand of hair around one finger.
Beside her stood Instructor Brogan, built like a wall, his tight shirt straining across his shoulders, short spiky hair practically standing at attention. He carried no staff or wand, just a heavy sword resting against his hip.
A third instructor, Cassian, stood with perfect posture, his mage cloak worn properly and buttoned to the collar, rectangle glasses catching the light, every hair on his head in disciplined order. He was clearly the one in charge of this particular line of questioning.
The fourth, Instructor Ash, leaned against a tree off to the side, red hair wild, sleeveless jacket showing off arms wrapped in glowing magical bands, an expression of pure restless boredom on his face right up until the moment he spotted the boys carrying their unconscious leader.
"What happened here," Cassian said immediately, voice flat, already crossing the distance toward them.
The boys hesitated, glancing at each other, shifting the leader’s weight between them, until one finally cracked under the weight of Cassian’s stare.
"There was, there was a dragon," the boy stammered. "An infant dragon. It, it talked. It attacked us"
Cassian’s expression didn’t change, but something behind his glasses sharpened considerably.
"A dragon," he repeated slowly. "Talked."
"It threatened us," another student added quickly, words tumbling out fast now that the first confession had broken the dam. "Said if we hunt monsters in this part of the forest, it’ll kill anyone who tries. Master William attacked it with fire and it just, it just roared, and he went flying into a tree."
"It’s weird that the dragon attacked only one of you, are you sure you are not lying to us?" Selene asked suddenly, eyes narrowing slightly.
The boys exchanged uneasy glances.
"No no, we would never, the dragon only attacked after Master William did, it did not seem interested in fighting us."
That detail landed differently across the four instructors, a flicker of something passing between them that none of the students caught properly.
"Alright," Cassian said, turning back to the boys with sudden crispness. "None of you are to repeat this to anyone outside this conversation. If asked, you were attacked by a wolf pack. That is the entire story. Understood?"
A ragged chorus of yeses followed, and the students were dismissed quickly, carrying William off toward the healer’s tent, leaving the four instructors alone in the clearing.
"A dragon," Ash said, the moment they were gone, grinning wide, practically vibrating with excitement. "An actual dragon, here, in our forest. Do you have any idea how rare that is? I want to see it. I want to see it today."
"Calm yourself," Cassian said. "We don’t even know what we’re actually dealing with."
"We know it’s an infant," Brogan pointed out, arms crossed, voice rumbling low. "That much the boys were clear on."
"An infant that wounded one of our top first years without effort," Cassian said. "That detail matters more than its age."
"William is a cocky noble brat who’s barely survived his first year due to talent ," Selene said, finally looking up from her hair. "I wouldn’t call that proof of anything substantial."
"It’s proof of something," Cassian said, patience thinning slightly. "We simply don’t know what yet, and acting recklessly before we do is how people die out here."
"So what, we just pack up and leave?" Ash said, throwing his hands up. "After one warning from a baby lizard?"
"We can’t move forward without a proper assessment," Cassian said firmly. "Especially not with any confirmed dragon presence this close to a training site full of unranked students."
They went back and forth a while longer, weighing the risk, the politics of pulling an entire academy hunting expedition early, whether this even fell under their jurisdiction at all, voices rising and falling in overlapping argument, until a quiet voice cut cleanly through the noise.
"What’s this I’m hearing about a dragon?"
All four of them froze mid-sentence.
They turned in near-perfect unison and bowed deeply as the headmaster stepped out from beneath the shade of the main tent, an old man with deep blue eyes and a long grey beard, his presence settling over the clearing like a physical weight despite his unassuming, almost grandfatherly appearance.
None of them had heard him approach. None of them ever did.
"Headmaster," Cassian said, straightening fast. "We were just discussing it. A student encounter, an infant dragon, apparently capable of speech."
"I heard that much already," the headmaster said, smiling faintly, eyes glinting with quiet amusement. "Go on. The rest, if you please."
They relayed it properly this time, every detail laid out cleanly, the threat, the warning, Garrick’s injury, the dragon’s clear protectiveness over something in this section of the forest, and the fact that two students remained out there even now, apparently spared deliberately.
The headmaster listened in silence, stroking his beard slowly, his expression unreadable.
"Intriguing," he murmured once they’d finished. "Very intriguing indeed."
Then his expression shifted, something colder settling behind the warmth.
"That said," he continued, "we do have existing arrangements with the forest lords regarding threats of this nature within their domain. Such matters typically fall to them to resolve, not to us."
A flicker of relief passed through a few of the instructors.
It didn’t last.
"However," the headmaster said, "should this dragon choose to interfere again while our students are conducting their hunting practice, I want it captured. Brought back to the academy, alive."
Cassian blinked. "Headmaster, capturing a dragon, even an infant, the risk involved—"
"It’s been a very long time," the headmaster said, his smile returning, sharp now beneath the grandfatherly warmth, "since anyone has gotten their hands on a real dragon."
