The ache in my wrist was dull and faded by the time I got back to Dragon Tower. The main area was empty and I sat on the cushioned space underneath the stained glass window with the dragon. I closed my eyes and leaned back.

With the wood at my back and the cool glass next to me I felt the exhaustion seep in.

Why were people so tiring?

"She's a menace with no place in this school."

"Unsafe and a terror."

"I knew you'd be trouble from day one."

I startled awake. The sun hadn't moved so I couldn't have been out for more than a few minutes. I tucked my knees to my chest.

Deep breaths.

Red cushions. Dark oak wood. Stained glass.

Three thousand miles away.

But some things never change, do they?

There was a rustling nearby.

"Is this what you do all day? Sit around and sulk introspectively?" Jarec sat down on the sill across from me. I then noticed the motion scrambling up into the space between us.

"Can't always be getting chased by spiders now, can I?" I commented.

The thing between us was a dragon. A thing of folded paper. A mess of colors with no pattern that I could see. Reds, blues, pinks, greens, oranges, purples. A rainbow dragon about two feet long that was mostly tail. It moved on its own.

"I suppose."

"Who's your friend?" I asked.

"Oh him? I made him when I was in Pegasus."

Him? Would it be presumptuous to ask if he had a name?

He walked in a circle in the space between us and settled down as if he was trying to take a nap.

"Cute."

His tail thumped and his face I could swear was smiling. Though it was hard to say for sure. It was harder to read the features of a paper creature that didn't even have human-like traits.

"Scraps, say hi," Jarec poked the back of his paper friend's head.

Scraps, huh?

Scraps opened his jaw and a torrent of white paper triangles blew into my face. I plucked one out of my hair. "Really?"

"I didn't teach him that."

I rolled my eyes. "Sure. Okay. I'll pretend to believe that for your sake."

Scraps thumped his tail twice. His movements weren't very fluid, either by the nature of whatever spell brought him to some semblance of life or a limitation of the medium of being made of paper.

There was a shimmer of sky blue light and the confetti it vomited at me vanished.

"Self-cleaning? Good. Otherwise I might have been actually annoyed at you."

He laughed, "More importantly, how do you feel about playing a proper Dubium tournament with us?"

"Us? Who else is playing?"

"Dragon Tower bonding exercise," Jarec said in a clear mocking tone of what sounded like a Vivian Hearth impression. "As long as we're not using coin she's content to leave us be."

"She certainly seems relaxed with us, makes me wonder if she's that busy or if she just doesn't care."

Jarec shrugged.

"Either way, things should be easier for us."

I followed Jarec into the hallway and into the secondary room where the others were already waiting.

Scraps followed by riding on Jarec's shoulders. It looked stiff as it moved to a laying down position around his neck.

Russel was sitting closest to the door, on the left side of the table and was shuffling the same deck as before. The back of the cards were painted in reds and blues. Simple geometric shapes woven together.

I hadn't noticed last time.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Who's dealing?" I asked as I sat next to Fethris.

He was sitting across from Russel while Celica was sitting two seats away from where Russel sat.

"Me," Jarec sat down next to Russel and picked up his cards.

Jarec dealt the four of us hands of seven cards each.

I had the Page of Wands, the Five of Wands, the Ace of Wands, the Ten of Wands, the Ten of Swords, the Nine of Swords, and the Four of Swords. Okay, lots of Wands and Swords.

"Fethris, you start," Jarec announced.

"Ten Pentacles," he said before looking to Celica.

"Boring, thirty."

Russel looked at his cards and sighed, "Thirty Wands."

My turn. Okay Celica most likely had Pentacles, Fethris probably had at least a few. Russel likely didn't or he didn't have many. "Thirty Swords."

Fethris had a soft smile that I instinctively did not trust. "Forty-five."

Celica laughed, "Fifty."

Russel shrugged, "Sixty-five."

I had serious doubts there were that many Swords on the table. "Dubium." I placed my cards on the table.

They all followed my lead.

Russel had the Two of Swords, the Eight of Wands, the Nine of Wands, the Three of Wands, the Ten of Cups, the Knight of Cups, and the Page of Cups.

Not nearly enough Swords for me to be in trouble.

Celica had the Knight of Pentacles, the Two of Pentacles, the Five of Pentacles, the Six of Pentacles, the Queen of Pentacles, the Five of Cups, and the Nine of Cups.

No Swords. Perfect.

But then I saw Fethris's hand. The King of Swords, the Eight of Swords, the Five of Swords, the Seven of Swords, the Page of Swords, the Nine of Pentacles, and the Seven of Wands.

I was in trouble.

I ran the numbers in my mind. "I think seventy?" I commented as I looked at Jarec.

A few seconds passed before he nodded. "Yep. Serafina loses this round."

I shrugged, "Can't win them all. I'm going to go make some tea. Anyone else want any?"

"Isn't the teapot downstairs magic? Can you even use it?" Fethris asked.

"It's enchanted, not runic. I'll be fine." Enchanted objects didn't need energy from the user to work, thankfully. "Offer still stands."

There was a low rumble of disinterest from my friends.

Fair.

(*********)

Dragon Tower, as far as I could tell, had three floors. Technically three and a half if you counted the hatch to a presumed attic that was locked. The top floor was our bedrooms, the main floor had the seating area and workroom, and the bottom floor consisted of the doors to men's room, the lady's room and a small kitchenette stocked with everything one might need or want to make tea with along with a table just big enough for six chairs.

The magical enchanted teapot didn't even need a stove. Though setting on wood was ill-advised according to the instructions that hung on the wall. I couldn't see any adhesive nor a hook of any kind so presumably that was also magic.

The teapot looked the part of an old relic. The metal was dull despite the faint glowing from the enchantment, it looked like an iron alloy to me. A dull dark grey. The top half was cylindrical in shape, leading to a nine-sided base where the spout was attached. Each side had an image of a dragon painted red, with each side its position shifted. If I was capable, I could probably spin it to make it looked like it was moving.

But it was far too heavy for me to try without magic.

I sighed as I opened the cupboard to see what I was in the mood for.

Dried and in very neatly labeled containers was what had to be almost every kind of flower and leaf a person had ever thought to put in boiling water and drink.

The organizational system was entirely by the color of the resulting tea.

Feeling almost adventurous I decided something citrus.

Lemon blossoms, hibiscus, and a hint of lavender.

The result was a liquid somewhere between pink and red depending on the light that tasted like a floral lemonade.

I didn't bother with honey or the other unfamiliar sweeteners available.

Though it made me wish for the bakery two blocks down from the house. A family-owned shop that sold cakes and donuts. I wondered what I would have to say to talk Mom into bringing something with her for the parent weekend in November.

"You look very pensive, mind if I ask what you're thinking about?"

I blinked and looked back to the stairs to see Vivian Hearth stepping down.

"Chocolate-filled donuts," I replied flatly.

"And here I was worried you were upset after your first student council meeting."

I held back a groan, "I am trying very hard to distract myself from that."

"It couldn't have gone that poorly, I didn't hear many complaints."

"I'm fairly sure Anubis hates me."

"Krakens are notoriously resistant to change."

I sighed into the tea mug. "I knew it was a bad idea from the start."

"I didn't mean to upset you. I came to check on you all to see how everyone is settling in. You all seem to be handling Dragon Tower and its quirks better than your old ones."

"Do you know why I was put in Pixie?" I asked. "Everyone with eyes seems to know it was a bad fit. Was it chosen randomly and I got unlucky?" And wouldn't that be par for the course?

"Not random. Pixie Tower itself liked you. Not as much as Dragon does, but it saw something in you it liked. If I had to speculate I would suspect your earnestness was probably a factor."

"You mean my inability to play nice?"

"I've been told you're perfectly capable, unless provoked. Lucinda's not good enough of a liar for me to disbelieve that."

"You've been talking with my mom?"

"We've been trying to think of a plan to figure out what to do about your curse."

Wish someone had included me in those plans.

"How would you feel about me mentoring you?"

I set the mug on the table, "I'm sorry, what?"

"From what information Curse Breaker Filo was able to collect the curse works by feeding on your mana as soon as it's produced at the same rate. The breakthroughs happen in moments where your body is producing more mana than it normally does."

"Like Awakening?"

She nodded, "Precisely. If we can get to the point where you can enter that state at will you should be able to tear down the curse."

I could already see at least one problem, "Doesn't it take most people years to figure out how to do that reliably?"

"Yes. It won't be easy-"

"Okay then," I told her.

"Really?"

"I didn't come here expecting anything to be easy," I told her. "I knew going in this was going to be difficult. But I tried the other option for nine years and it didn't work out. I'm here because I wanted to learn magic. If you're offering to teach me and help me get rid of this thing," I waved my hand for emphasis, "then I'm all for it."

She let out what I could only describe as a sigh of relief.

"What did you think I would say 'no'? I don't exactly have options here. Plus, I would really like to get rid of this thing before it gets me killed. It's nearly happened twice and I don't feel lucky enough to give it a third try."

Her gaze flashed to my ankle before returning to my wrist. I was still wearing the gloves but I could feel the phantom pain of the curse after it had been probed.

If I was ever going to be a witch, that thing had to go.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.