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Three-hundred-one of the eleven-and-thirty-third cycle, about three-forty moonshine.

An egg glistens in a bar of moonlight come from the blinds of a dormitory window. The egg is silvery, slightly blueish, and patterned with rain-like zags. It was recently unearthed on the edge of campus by Thelonius, four-year student of Draconology.

He holds this egg, lying mangled on his ribs in the bedsheets of his lower bunk. His almond eyes shimmer with engagement as he studies the egg; in his hand feels the egg’s constant bounce, feels its anxiousness, feels its blood pounding hot against the shell. He writes hastily into a journal propped on his egg-holding wrist:

1133.301
egg pulses
chitters, too
as i hoped - robe pocket by my belly was warm enough to simulate incubati

A crack shoots down the side of the shell, a tiny cloudburst. Startled, Thelonius capes away the bedsheets of the leftmost bottom bunk — the journal hitting the rug. He pilots out of the dorm-room, the pulsing egg secure at his breast. The door clicks shut. One of the upper bunks stir. A dorm-mate in pajamas mumbles meaninglessly in the blue-black, screwing his fists to his eyes.

Back against the hallway wall, Thelonius stares into his palm, puzzled. A zigzag, rooting off of the last crack, cuts across the egg’s circumference. The upper shell is ejected, shattering at Thelonius’ bare feet. A tiny dragon peeps his head. He gazes around. A pea-sized gaze of lemony eyes settles on Thelonius. The gaze is ill-tempered. The hatchling sassily flitters his head, coughs an impressive gale at Thelonius’ head. The student’s down-to-the-brow locks sweep back, combed into curly waves.

He flaps his lower lip feebly. “Wings and horns developed already . . . by the Seven. You look just like . . .”

He remembers an encyclopedia entry. The myth of the Storm Dragon, every soul in Sagretia knows all too well.

Farath the Storm Dragon
Lands West of the Irreverent Divide - Sageretia
Lived approx. 534.0 - 780.0, 830.0 - 875.0

Was this adorable adolescent once a god-like dragon? Thelonius looks like he’s seen a — well, mayhaps he has.

Tek-tek-tek go the hatchling’s feet in the crackling lower shell. Suddenly infuriated, the small dragon hisses, attacking it with rapid pecks. The rest of the egg’s chiseled away, shredded and spat to the floor. The student watches, soberly baffled, and small Farath turns his gaze on him, a spirit-crushing gloom under his eyes.

Could this truly be Farath Destroyer of Lexic and Lyzandre?

The doors creaks open. Scrabbling into composure, Thelonius stuffs small Farath into his robe pocket — causing the disapproving hiss of a shadowy bulge, and a blinding pain to Thelonius’ finger.

“Yeehp!” Theloni hiccups through clenched teeth.

“Is anything the matter, Thelonius?”

Sam, one of Thelonius’ dorm-mates, stands in front of the door in moonlit pajamas. She is worried.

Thelonius’ hand fidgets in his bleeding, bulging pocket. He gulps down the pain, red-faced. “Nightmares about the thesis on a dragonkin of our ch-choosing. I have no idea what I’m going to do . . . with you.”

The whisper is directed at small Farath. Sam doesn’t hear it. Nor does she see the blood puddling down Thelonius’ black pocket. But she raises a brow. Thelonius is acting even more peculiar than usual.

“Alright . . . well . . . you’ve got a month, yet. Plenty of time to observe a friend’s dragon, or a dragon in the menagerie. Anything else eating at you?”

“Scryyck!”

The two students stare stupidly at each other for four rapid beats of a small, thrashing dragon’s heart.

“Thelonius? Was that your pocket?”

“I must be going on a walk — goodnight, Sam.” Unceremoniously, Thelonious turns and hurries down the hall.

He bursts from the University’s porticoed entrance. Netheral storm clouds smother the moon. A clap of applause from the sky, as if to greet the Storm dragon, triples the rain; it’s really hammering, now. Thelonius darts onto the vast, grassy campus-ground, wrestling his hand out of his pocket. “Alright, alright!”

Out flies small Farath, like a bat. Raindrops flak his body, causing it to undulate. The dragon begins to jellify and let light inside himself.

Distant lightning flashes, shedding light on Farath grinning, a contrast to his usual grumpy demeanor. Free and a-flight, he stretches his wings like a champion. This pose is broken by Thelonius’ hand, which slips under the dragon like a landing pad.

“Farath? You are Farath, aren’t you?”

The dragon brusquely nods, a reaction he immediately spites himself for.

Thelonius frowns. Is he really, or is he merely responding to my voice? For the sake of my degree, he MUST be! Ah, but how can I test such a myth-bound hypothesis?

A tiny stomach grumbles in Thelonius’ hand. Piqued, the student drifts off . . . and remembers something his encyclopedia mentioned: an absorptive, voracious ability imbibed by the Farath of myth the first time he was reborn. Two-a-fifty turns ago. If true then, how about now?

There’s no better proof than that which is demonstrated, echo his professor’s words.

“Art thee hungry, O Farath?” he says with a smirk.

Thelonius’ words perk small Farath’s head-fans. Wings flaring, Farath stares viciously at the human’s palm, then begins to melt over it.

“Woah, woah.”

Farath goes idle, looks up with an impatient countenance.

“Thy hand is not nourishment for thee!”

Thelonius threads through the forest outskirts, carrying Farath. Coming into a drizzling circlet of moonlight, he searches the chalky-white trees for critters but finds only rustles of the branches caused by the malevolent weather.

Suddenly, Farath’s eye sights something. The dragon bounces out of Theloni’s grasp, followed by a concerned shout of the student. Crossing the lawn Farath climbs a tree-trunk, weaseling into an oaken hole.

“What are you — where are you — ?”

Mystified, the student shoves his eye into the hole. Instantly, two squeaked screams erupt. Two squirrels cannon out of the buckling tree-trunk — Thelonius pedalling backwards, nearly tripping over the tree’s gnarled roots. Small Farath leaps out of the trunk, pinning his two disoriented prey. Both squirrels are narrowly bigger than him.

The dual drumming of heartbeats, the fear that smells of salt and nut and oak, the chittering screeches, the little paws swiping desperately to defend their owners: all of this reminds Farath how puny and powerless he is. He is a bully scrapping with degenerates, whelps. But he is victorious, nonetheless.

Farath’s jaws fire down; they come up wringing the body and long tail of a possessed, traumatized squirrel. The student watches small Farath’s throat expand itself thin: a silvery, elastic film stretches over his prey almost opaque in his throat. A wet burble of pleasure sounds out, the dragon’s closed eyes now great black bows of content accentuated by the rain [just as misting fruit with water makes it more visually palatable]. What with Farath’s size, the sound of each juicy gulp is lost to Thelonius. He hears only shrill, dampered shrieks; sees the squirrel’s head [its expressions difficult to read] expanding the small dragon’s belly into an oscillating bubble. Thick-lipped jaws hyperextend, unbound by anatomy. A slurp slings the squirrel’s question mark tail into an exclamation before it disappears into Farath’s throat. The dragon’s belly explodes with size, gurgling, burbling, irregular in shape.

The free squirrel slashes at Farath’s face. Goo flecks the wet ground, but, as if galvanized by the rain, quickly leaps up and meshes into Farath’s muzzle to fill his scar. Unamused by the squirrel’s antics, Farath snaps his jaws, levering the twitching squirrel’s half-swallowed body into the air. A gulp, and it joins the one in the belly.

Paws floating alongside the swollen silvery oval, Farath lets out a cute sigh. He belches.

Thelonius watches with huge eyes. The dragon’s belly slowly deflates. As the prey inside his translucent belly melt into an increasingly grey wax, Farath grows. With his evolution, his joints crack, spine crackles, muscles ache and moan. Thanks to his gooey form, Farath not only digests his meals but absorbs them into himself; the struggling shadows disintegrate. Farath’s tail thickens, curling into a question mark while retaining its draconic style.

By and by, his body swells to the size of a rabbit’s. The dragon stares up at Thelonius with apathy, then belches two grotesque little critter skulls at the student’s feet.

Thelonius chuckles nervously. “I take it you had your fill? I hope? . . . I am not next?”

Farath ignores his comment. He turns to depart, spreading his wings.

“Wait,” Thelonius says. “Why don’t you come back to the dorm-room with me? Surely you haven’t a place to go, yet. I can provide shelter.”

* * *

A beam of sun tickles sleeping Farath’s nose. He wakes up, greeting the dorm window with a hiss!

A groggy sound comes from Thelonius. He fumbles upright in the bedsheets, removing his arm from around Farath.

“Good morning, Fa —”

One of Thelonius’ dorm-mates [on the opposite upper bunk] blinks awake. His eyes meet the hare-sized dragon. Farath returns the dorm-mate’s bewildered look with a silent snarl.

“Lexic Ghosts! It’s a fuckin’ hatchling, you guys! Theloni has got a hatchling!”

Thoroughly woken by the dorm-mate’s shouting, everyone wakes and reacts as though a fire alarm went off to hallucinogenic smoke.

“Theloni! What the fuck — get that dragon out of here.”

“We’re gonna get expelled, dude —”

“What makes you guys think I didn’t document him?” Thelonius shouts.

“Umm, honestly? Because you’re living off scholarships and free lunches, but you’re broke?”

“Oh, hike it up your back-vent, Clancy!”

Farath’s head-fans and wings flare, and a hiss way more threatening than the one at the sun leaves the room in a controlled quiet. Thelonius’ dorm-mates continue their dismay in whisper, pleading him to get the dragon anywhere but there; with Farath not backing down, Thelonius breaks under sweat.

“Okay — I’ll get him out of here — maybe get him documented — just not eat for a while . . . C’mon, Farath.”

Everyone hears him call the dragon ‘Farath,’ but of course it’s merely a nickname — no?

Thelonius enters the hall with Farath, but he does not go for his documentation. He passes familiar people. They give his dragon funny stares. Some of them have dragons of their own. Theloni doesn’t stop long enough for them to ask him how he got a dragon.

Keeping his composure, he strolls with Farath into the school menagerie. All down the aisles, there are these grilled animal cages on long, cubby-like shelves of three tiers, each cubby five feet wide. Rain patters against the menagerie’s vaulted glass ceiling above.

Thelonius waits for the last student in the aisle to pass. He nods to Farath, lets one word slip from his smirking lips: “Food.”

Farath licks his chops. He vaporizes into a semi-solid shape, then his goo forks through the grille of a sleeping cat’s cage. Theloni watches two wiggling silver tendrils snake over the cat. Lightning quick, the tendrils jump the cat in unison, and fuse together over the screeching, clawing form of the sticky furball. A sound like to alert the menagerie security someone’s taunting the animals rings down the aisles.

Theloni thinks to warm Farath to hurry, but the thought is anticlimactic. He can only awe and smirk in spite of himself.

Cat limbs go tearing through the suffocating goo. But as time wears on the goo grows in mass, density. A whiskered nose drowns into the sloshing goop. The cat shadow inside of the amorphous gel grows increasingly stagnant in its movements, as if wading through tar. It ceases to move. Its shrunken form grows smaller yet, disintegrating into the contentedly wobbling gelatin. Surely, steadily, reforms Farath, having stolen — rather, claimed — the cat’s size for himself. The small dog-size dragon’s gut shrinks down to bear only a pawful of pudge. He considers his gut, then, with a smack of his lips, belches up the cat’s skull. The sound of the skull clattering against the grille reminds a moment-ago mesmerized Thelonius of their need to get out of here.

When Farath oozes to his side, they go dashing out of the aisle, Thelonius chuckling to himself. A security guard shows up late, waving his flashlight through the morning gloom.

(“H-hello?”)

Theloni and Farath try a dog-cage next. It happens same as last: Farath shoots through the grille, his voracious goop butchering the yelping, yapping, gurgling dog bruiselessly; the second next, Farath hops out of the cage, the height of a golden retriever. Theloni pats Farath’s head, jots some notes down in a journal, then hears the shouts of a burly [yet slightly craven] voice down the line.

“Kid — or kids — unless you want to be expelled, you best show yourselves! I have got a flashlight!”

The voice is terribly close. Thelonius freezes up, not at the harmless word ‘flashlight’ but at the painful word ‘expelled.’

“Oh no, oh no, oh no . . .”

The dragon sharply visors his eyes up at the human. He reacts quick — pounces the human. There’s a muffled gurgle — a hand sinking into Farath’s growing draconic form — then naught. The Storm’s shadow leaps out of the aisle, a second before a flashlight sweeps across the floor of the aisle. No one.

The guard is stunned. There’s no sound of footfall, nothing. “It must’ve been my imagination again,” he says, waddling out of view.

A goopy Farath drips from the vaulted glass ceiling. He springs down, transfiguring into his normal form. The amorphous goop spits out Thelonius and shrinks back to golden retriever size. On his butt in a slimy puddle, Thelonius sighs, wipes sweat off his face.

Having just washed his skin in the basin across the hall, Thelonius twists any excess juices from his now-wrinkled robe, then with Farath enters the dorm-room.

Terror masks the face of everyone inside. They had seen the dragon before — and now, he was abnormally huge. Needless to say, they knew Thelonius hadn’t documented that dragon so quickly, either: so it was like seeing a fire erupt from said hallucinogenic smoke [see “Dorm-Mates’ First Reaction”], and begin to burn up the room while it was at it.

Thelonius, he tries to placate the cries of anguish with a voice like harp strings snapping and curling. Things only escalate. An undocumented dragon, see, will get everyone in the room expelled under the precedent of a potential group-effort of hiding said dragon. A life ban from documenting [a.k.a. being able to have your own] dragon, on top of the end of your academic life, is not a fire someone can extinguish while under the impression that fire is harmless.

“I just haven’t had the funds,” Thelonius tries, grabbing at his hair now, “but I will, soon as my next funds when they come in a week, yet . . . he won’t bother anyone, he won’t bite . . .”

But he knows Farath has eaten things, including himself. The knowledge gives his words a tone of uncertainty.

“Dude . . . I’m sorry, but I can’t . . .”

“We can’t . . .”

“Either you let him go, or we’re gonna have to report you. I’m sorry, Thelonius.”

“Sam . . . really now. Like you wouldn’t do the same thing in my scenario, if you found a legendary storm dragon on campus . . .”

“I,” Sam is speechless. “Uh, neither have you?!”

Thelonius wants to scream. He wants to tell them all about Farath, about the absorptive qualities, to show them. A nasty creak of the window disrupts his thoughts.

His dorm-mate of the upper-bunk, Georjay, thrusts open the window. He begins to dismantle the screen, hoping to sneak out and alert administration about the undocumented dragon.

Thelonius blurts, “Traitor George!”

Farath has been waiting for a reason. At Thelonius’ scream the dragon dashes across the room with a beastly quickness. His jaws catch the student’s leg. And he hunches down, growling, beginning to pry the student’s hand of the latch on the window.

“Thelonius! You gotta do something, man!”

Thelonius rushes to Georjay’s side, but stops. Is he really on Georjay’s side?

Flashback, and Farath saved him but fifteen minutes ago. He hesitates, his gaze switching between the dorm-mate and the dragon every breath. Would you pay back Farath — the legendary storm dragon — by letting Georjay go? He meets the Storm’s amber eye. My friend . . . the trust of Farath . . . the fate of my research . . .

Thelonius feels the pressure of the Storm’s gaze. He knows he has to make a decision now: help Farath, or help Georjay. Make clear and irrefutable his allegiance.

“Sorry, man,” comes Thelonius’ voice, flat.

Theloni squeezes his hand into Georjay’s, as if to say goodbye. He peels Georjay’s fingers from the window latch. There’s a scream, and two shocked gasps from the other dorm-mates. Georjay loses grip — loses more of his leg to the dragon’s maw.

The dragon’s gooey mouth stretches and splits into spidery ropes on one cheek, rounding up the human’s second leg. A rumble of pleasure, of power and energy being restored to Farath, shudders the small space now, as the dragon drags himself backward; backing his hinds into the door, he gulps the human, whose hands claw at the air helplessly. That is, until they each find one hand of the dorm-mates [whose names aren’t “Thelonius”] trying to pull him out. These dorm-mates, see, act out of reflex, and out of the pre-assumed knowledge that, should their hopeless gesture of friendship fail, they can simply let go. Farath, however, only smirks devilishly; he launches globs of goo from behind his shoulders, super-glueing the hand of each dorm-mate to his immediate prey.

Their allegiance has, too, become irrefutable.

Farath happily devours the first human, his thick oily lips slurping over the human’s nose. Cheeks bulging, the Storm gulps. The impression of a college student descends his slimy, minutely see-through gullet; and the hands of the bound other-two-students pitch into the dragon’s throat presently, along with their heads. Crazily warping facial expressions fall down the translucent esophagus, powerful muscles working them down. The stomach below Farath lifts him off his feet, the bulbous shape of a man squeezed between his heels. Next to cramp beside the shape comes Sam [still in her pajamas], and Clancy. Swallowing the last of each dorm-mate’s feet [shoes plopping to the rug], Farath rises on his belly: an ovally sack of humans, two shelves in height. Shapes twist and contort and make indiscernible pleading sounds, all therapeutic to the Storm’s fleshy insides. They knead, knead, roll into the large prey with the help of orthodox stomach acids; however, the human bulges quit moving far before they melt away entirely; the Storm adjusts his metabolism, slowly its rate to a casual stride so as to enjoy his first great victory.

During the first minutes of digestion, the cocooned, compressed dorm-mates make cries loud enough to give concern, should anyone walk by the dorm-room. Globs of condensed goo wrap around their mouths, muffling, asphyxiating them in their last moments.

“Farath?”

Sleepily, retriever-sized Farath looks at Theloni. What, with the bags under the eyes, he always looks sleepy. But now, it’s an “-itus from breakfast” sort of sleepy.

“Could you roll over?”

The question strikes the dragon as insulting; Like a dog? His flash of teeth seems to say.

Thelonius quickly grabs his journal from his bunk to clarify. “I’d like to take some notes . . . A thesis for my class on the physical qualities of a specific dragon. I’m . . . writing it on you.”

The Storm gazes inwardly, conflicted. To be looked upon as a homework project offends half of him greatly. The other half of him objects: should the thesis receive renowned acclaim, perhaps history shall treat his name with a deal more truth. Curtly, he nods. With an effort to hide the effort it takes, he finally tumbles onto his flank, exposing his bloated, flabby blimp of a midriff.

Thelonius shakily steps closer. He marvels at the dragon’s stomach. Its veiny, milky surface of gel holds the patterns of constellations above the shapes of purgatorized humans. Guilt trickles into him, but he shakes it off; starts to take notes, absently. Now and then he’ll look up and pause. The belly is so fat, so round, so jiggly. A stern look he shoots himself. Then, Thelonius sets the journal aside. A hand he lays tenderly over the dragon’s belly, and gives one single, goo-rippling rub. At first the dragon freezes (all save his gut, what with its constant glorps), and slants his head at the human critically. Thelonius nods then smirks, fearless. Both hands, now, rub into Farath: calmly, curiously, amiably. Farath rumbles, and relaxes, enjoying the touch of another.

Over the course of hours, the dragon digests his meal of humans, growing to 3’-tall, then 4’-tall, and not stopping there; evolving so as to lose the squirrely curl of his tail and regain a more draconic one. A gross gurgle of his gut, and he reels dizzily. He lets out a loud belch, splattering remnants of bones over the carpet.

* * *

Trust.

Maybe. Farath wants to distrust the student, but sees no similarities between him and the megalomaniac who betrayed him in his past life. It is been long since I have trusted. I have now a place to gather strength, and one whom I can rest easy beside. Is there any ulterior motive? There’s the thesis . . . but naught else . . . Hm . . .

“A little to the left,” an incapacitated Farath with his tongue hanging out says. The human looks surprised that he can speak — then obeys, eagerly. Farath grumbles to the rubs. With the encouragement, he melds the over the rest of his prey in just a quarter-hour more. Left with a belly of nothing but pudge, the Storm has grown to 5’-tall: the size of a young mare.

“So you can speak,” Thelonius says, after a while.

“Well, I did not hatch from my first shell yesternight. Speaking of the day, what’s it on the calendar this time?”

“Eighty-eight. Of the eleven-thirty-third.”

“Mn.” Would that I added all my lives together, I’d be what? Seven hundred years of age? Eight hundred?

“So you’ve retained your memories? Is it true that you defeated Lexic? Is it true you became so powerful, you left the Lands West of the Irreverent Divide in search of new rivals?”

“. . . Was that it?” Either the coma has me, or my mind is still shaking off rust. “I . . . don’t recall. An image keeps coming back to me.” The image is of the dragon who ended his life: how that happened is a secret not to be revealed at this time.

But this spore of my old self I planted into the earth . . . to rise up, and reveal itself two-fifty turns of the cycle from then . . . He knows this much: he was wise of planting it where he did.

He stands. Thelonius’ fingers slip away from his belly.

“Thelonius are you?

“Thelonius, I’ve seen dragons wandering the halls of your school, with students, just like you and I. How can this be? . . .” The tone of his next question signals to disregard the previous question. “Where are the most powerful of these dragons?”

Automatically, Thelonius cloaks his enthusiasm with an appalled tone. “You’re not suggesting?”

But he’s not appalled. He just wants Farath to say it again.

The dragon is blank-faced, but his voice smiles for him. “You know your history well enough.”

* * *

That night, the storm dragon circles over the university. Belligerent storm-clouds smother the sky.

Earlier, Thelonius said that the Patrollers of the school grounds, three armored Common dragons, soar the skies of the school, unalert, casual; so Farath searches for them now, amber eyes homing through the billows of sky-smoke.

Thelonius rides the dragon’s sticky back. He has insisted on coming.

A draconic shape is unveiled. Farath recognizes the shape as a Patroller. He dips into the dark-grey. On the Patroller’s tail, the storm dragon reemerges. A distant flash of thunder is distraction enough. He makes a forward dive. Claws rake the Patroller’s foreleg shoulders. A bugle of pain gets lost in the heavy, maelstrom-like ambience. They go whirling toward the spruce-blue domes of the University. Claws go flashing! Jaws go gnashing! But Farath’s prey only hitches them uncontrollably in their descent, unable to attack the Storm atop his backside.

The Patroller’s armor sizzles, starting to dissolve into Farath’s gooey composition.

Farath whirlwinds, landing recklessly atop the roof of the Uni’s arcaded courtyard. Night-owls walking the school grounds below spot the Patroller being masked over — being assimilated into — Farath. They run and scream, and wake many with their voices echoing into the nearby dorms. Shortly, someone inside the University pulls an alarm, which blares on the neck-medallions of the Patrollers ‘cross campus. Rerouting themselves, lock in on Farath’s location and appear in the sky, two small roaring shapes.

Farath’s head-membranes twitch to the sound. The first person he worries for is not himself, but Thelonius. They will expel him if the Patrollers or anyone else recognizes him after tonight. He encases the student with a blanket of silvery goo. Thelonius’ form bubbles, surrounded in a protective cocoon above Farath’s belly.

There, Thelonius gets a front-row seat to the digestion of the Patroller next door. He pulls out his journal, documenting quickly:

gelatinous, yet breathable inside
the prey, in a wall of semitransparency next to me
digesting
scales flecking away
in a sourceless jet of foamy bubbles mixed with the acids below
surface level of the acidic pool rising
rising as the dragon — dragon now roaring, helpless, looking at me
digesting still
scales flaking away and flesh bubbling before changing into more of Farath in a heterogeneous amalgamation
of writhing, wriggling, sentient globs of goo soaking into the semi-flesh, semi-goo walls
Farath I think grows bigger
I know my cocoon does
the withering dragon husk crumples next to me, decaying quicker than the humans did, metabolism accelerated perhaps 100x

Thelonius stops. By the Seven . . . I’m enjoying this too much . . . He looks thunderstruck at his notes, then tucks them away, and simply watches the rest of the Patroller corpse corrode, decay, feed, build Farath into a greater, more powerful dragon. Rotten, smelly sludge [like charcoaled drippings] stew in the next chamber over.

Bluwblrblr . . . . blwuwlwlwbl . . . The sounds reverberate against his ears, tickle his skin, rock him in his gelatinous encasing . . . It’s soothing, resemblant of a lullaby. But Thelonius is wide awake.

And Farath himself lowers his snout, slightly panting from the rewarding labor of dissolving his dragon meal. As his stomach muscles clench over the shrinking shape, he feels his stomach acids churning over the beast, energy being sapped away from the beast, becoming part of his own body. He sucks up the vigor, the power, the life-force of the dragon, his body glowing with the excess energy.

Gradually, with the slow swell of a large helium balloon, Farath grows to 15’5”. Spreading his wings proudly, he releases a bugle of challenge to anyone who dares to confront him.

It’s a short wait. The Patrollers turret down from the sky, stomping the roof on either side of the 15’5” storm dragon. The University’s coppery iron armor gleams under the moonlight on each of the dragons. One of them snarls, “What license have you to be on these grounds, dragon?” The other spits a stream of firebreath. In response, Farath belches out the bones of the digested Patroller: a sheet of bony shrapnel crackles across the roof, like popcorn spilled from a kettle.

Seeing this, the two Patrollers turn to each other and share an unspoken agreement of fear. Their hinds back up to the edge of the roof above the vacant, fountained courtyard, and Farath bullies forward with a smirk on his face. A sparkle in his eyes goes off like a dance of distant lightning. He feels great to be in control again, to be a threat to two grown, armored dragons. Feeling playful, he says:

“Should either of you decide to flee, I vow, just as surely as I ended Lyzandre Lord of Magic, I will end you.”

And like two anvils cracking, so the two Patrollers’ steely resolves crack; the Patrollers, recognizing Farath the Storm Dragon Destroyer of Lexic and Lyzandre, from Legend, they sputter disbelief, progressing into cries of “Mercy!” “O Ghost of the Past, forgive our ignorance!”

And Farath answers, with an air of intrinsic authority: “I shall deal with you both, but not mercifully. What say we decide your fates with a feat of strength? Whoever overcomes the other, I will let live for another day.”

One of the Patrollers, Duteous and Virtuous, hesitates, disbelieving the words he has just heard; the other, however, only Duteous, thinks naught of the immoral implications — only of his primal instinct to survive. The necessity of his living to warn the University is an afterthought. In a blink, he shreds triple gouges through the other’s breastplate. Streaks of fresh blood jet from the staggering dragon’s exposed, tawny breast. A howl breaks out. Tipping off the roof, the other goes dead-weight into the courtyard, his shadow befalling the fountain. Then midair, the attacker tackles him. A grassy quadrant of the quad detonates, a SPWOSH of wet, green-brown clay. Pinning the other down, the attacker lets open his jaws large, preparing to tear out the jugular and muscled ropes of his inferior.

The other’s adrenaline skyrockets. The other springs up. Flopping over his attacker, he drives the dragon’s skull into another quadrant. Three times he bangs the attacker’s head. Green-haired chunks of earth fleck the columns of a rounded archway and statues of deceased professors.

The Patroller on the ground feels his attacker let up. In a blur of black and blue, he looks sideways at the other’s claws hooked into his neck. For all his tough hide, he feels now like a rubber toy in the talons of a rabid hound. “Surrender,” the victor hisses; “you have three seconds before my claws go through your throat like a shredder at semester’s end.”

The attacker chokes for his life. “S-surrender . . .” He spreads his limbs, balls his claws and straightens his neck in a contemporary dragon’s gesture of submission. The counter-attacker rips the Patroller Medallion from the loser’s neck, stunning him for up to twenty seconds.

Stepping back with a trickle of his own blood, the counter-attacker looks up. Farath descends, flourishing his wings on landing. Through the thickening curtain of rain, he eyes the winner of the bout with both pleasure and pity.

Wordless, Farath steps over the stunned Patroller. The loser has not been bloodied: merely incapacitated. The Storm’s stomach slowly unthaws over the Patroller. Tendrils of goo unfurl, latch, grab and haul in their meal greedily, Farath lays himself down, so his belly captures the rest of his prey, such as a bubble bumping into another, assimilating it.

Curious about the Storm’s digestive process, the free Patroller pads dangerously close, watching. Farath peeps an eye open at him and scowled contentedly; “If you plan on hanging around then I’ll put you to good use. Will you push your weight against me?” The Storm pecks his gut with a talon to clarify.

Choosing to not bite the paw that feeds him [bade him freedom], the Patroller strolls forward and begrudgingly lays his paws over the gooey dragon’s stomach. It sickens him at length — to be benefiting the dragon who’d just eaten his partner of two weeks — treacherous! Yet, the Patrollers rolls his eyes, tuning out the thought; and so too roll his paws, working into the viscous dough of the dragon’s dragon-corroding middle. By and by, Farath’s growth forces the Patroller into a half-standing. The larger storm dragon rumbles, growing to 18’ and continuing from there. The shape of his previously dragon-shaped gut becomes more egg-like; and, at length, he lets out a coarse, reverberating belch.

And the human inside absorbs it all — the experience, that is. He awes, watching the dragon immaterialize before his eyes, this time jotting everything down mentally.

An entire body waxing away . . . turning to bubbles, rising to the top of the belly, the belly swelling . . . like yeast in a brick-laid oven . . .

The warmth of the dragon’s belly, caused by the digestive process, cools into additional energy and mass for Farath to absorb. Armor, scale, flesh, and even bone gets utilized in some way, giving bulk and strength to the storm dragon.

And inheriting traces of physical traits of the dragon, Farath grows to 20’2”. Triumphant, he releases a short jet of flames, courtesy of his absorbed Patroller meals. He now looms remarkably larger than the small Patroller and could consume him in a bite or two. This he does not do. Recollections of his past stay him against such a betrayal. My word is my oath. I regret freeing him, but I said I would and I will not sway from that now.

The dragon looks down upon the Patroller, and says to him, “You’re free to go.”

The Patroller flies off into the night, the grey clouds above beginning to disband. Thelonius knows the Patroller’s sworn an oath to the administration, and bound by his neck-medallion to warn the University of Farath. “You shouldn’t have let him off so easy,” the human inside of Farath says. “Now he’ll bite you in the back, and you’ll suffer the venom of it.”

Farath holds a stern countenance to the stars of the clearing sky. He licks his lips palpably. “Be that as it may, do you really think I do not anticipate a feast of enemies coming my way?

“Besides, just because I bear resemblance to a snake does not mean I am one. I am their better! Where are their bone-crushing gales? Where are their wings-like-hurricanes?

“Still, you’re right about the Patroller. Your school will know the whole story of me, soon enough, and I’d rather not need to destroy it.” So Farath jumps into the sky, crowning the lower layer of the atmosphere with a crescent of wings.

Experiencing the rhythm of flying, Thelonius thinks Farath means to take him wherever he’s bound.

The Storm dips through the great green spear-heads up north. In a moonlit enclave he gently plants his scaly feet. The goo of his back spits out Thelonius.

“Farath?”

“Thelonius,” the large dragon says, musing down on his days-long companion; “I wish you a long life no one will take from you before your time is come. Stay here at the University and complete your studies. Turn in your thesis. Tell the world the truth on my name. . . .” And with that Farath turns to leave; lets his wings reach to either end of the silvery circlet.

“Wait, Farath!”

Farath peers back, quizzically.

“When shall I see you next?”

The bags beneath Farath’s eyes double. You imply much in six words, student. He had intended to permanently part with Thelonius here, being the lone recluse he is. He prepares his words, then recites them with what quietus a storm can offer: “I have a way of waking up generations into the future. But if all goes well, I will find you before you’re dead.”

“Truly?”

Farath sighs a long, tired sigh. He gives a curt nod. “My word is oath.”

Thelonius, unsure how to say goodbye to a dragon, holds his palm up to Farath. He meant to wave, but doesn’t; would the centuries-old dragon know a wave’s meaning?

Farath squints, studying the student’s palm for a second. He dips his head. He rubs his head’s webbed membranes against Thelonius’ hand: a token of respect.

The moment next, Thelonius stands alone, staring up at the shrinking shape of the storm dragon. A shape that feels already unreal, like the stuff of dreams.

Maybe this will turn out to be a dream. Maybe I will wake up and Sam and Clancy and Georjes will be in the other beds, and no one will be asking me about what has happened to them.

Something radiates warmth in Thelonius’ pocket. He reaches inside.

Out comes a fistful of Farath: live, wriggling, semi-solid.

By the seven . . .

Proof for my thesis . . .