The Extra's Rise

Luna sleeps like rain after thunder—spent light tucked into itself, hair spilling like a dark-violet stream across the pillow Arthur carried her to. He left the door half-closed and walked away on quiet feet. Good. He knows what to guard.

I sit on the central rise and listen to my lair breathe. The crystal sings when he moves. It hums a different tune when she heals. I have lived with these sounds long enough to tell mood from footstep, pride from pain. Today the lair sounds hopeful and tired at the same time. That is an Arthur sound.

Not the first one. The first Arthur made Luna—stitched a being the world had never seen from dragon marrow, basilisk nerve, and phoenix heartfire, then steadied the seams with his will until the world accepted it and wrote a new word for it: qilin. Some would call that "fake." I call it craft, and duty, and love shaped like a person.

I looked at the bright child who didn't know how to be a person yet and decided I would be her grandmother. No one asked me. I didn't ask the world. I do not ask when the answer should be yes.

This Arthur is not that Arthur. The soul wearing his bones is from another world. I can feel it in the way he argues with fate. The first one had already made a long, quiet deal with despair, and kept it. This one still fights the clerk who wrote the contract. He laughs more. He is kinder to himself, and also harder on himself. He has not given up. I like that about him.

He wants the next step—mid Radiant. He keeps reaching for it like a shelf just above his fingers. He can lift heavy things. He can run faster than most men can think. He can cut truth out of lies with his arts. But that step is not about more force. It is about how he stands in the breath before a thing happens. He still splits his pieces—sword here, speed there, mind here, heart there. He is learning to put them together. Not fast enough.

I try the honest tools first. I always do.

I make him drink water before and after. Humans skip the simple rescue and then complain when they drown in harder seas.

I watch his foot set on the smooth crystal. "Too much heel," I tell him, and then I tap that heel with my toe hard enough that he wobbles, so the lesson lands in bone and not just ear.

I change the air so it stops catching him when he takes a wrong step. I change the room so the echoes he uses for timing are late. I show him the three places where his guard falls asleep when he breathes. He wakes them one by one, then forgets one, then finds it again with a curse and a grin.

Valeria curls as liquid armor over his ribs, then unlocks into a blade in his hand when he needs a cut. She is quick, smart, and protective to a fault. Erebus sets out his city of bone-script with tidy care, then turns his Choir low because he has learned to respect other people's homes. Their work holds. I push through it anyway in low ways that do not break them, only show them where they bend. They do not sulk. They adjust in the next pass. Good companions.

We spar the long way for days. I keep it simple so the simple things stop lying to him. He opens with God Flash—pure speed in Purelight—no shouting, just the world losing a frame and then finding it again with my wrist in the way. I meet it without blinking, not to insult him, but to make him stop leaning on speed like it is a crutch. He does not sulk. He threads speed into the next thing.

He drops Hollow Eclipse like a hammer. It is power done right—no sugar, no show, a piece of night wrapped around a cut. I touch it with my fist and let the force fall into the floor. He feels the give and does not argue. He resets. He brings me another clean truth. Better.

He loads Stellar Cascade—star-like cuts falling in a pattern that herds my steps. He tries to herd me toward a mistake. I am a dragon. I do not need to pretend to be clever to avoid pens. But I let two stars land where they might matter to anyone else, then walk out of his pattern on a line he did not draw. He watches the walk. He steals the walk. The next time he sets a Cascade he leaves that line out. Much better.

He plants Valeria's tip, breathes once, and sets the Pond of Tranquility. The calm ring eats my push like a lake eats a stone. I step across the edge and the Pond does what it promises—turns heavy into hush. So I do not give it a chance to matter. I change the timing. He feels the miss, shuts down the Pond, and moves his feet instead. That is the lesson.

He keeps the World's Edge sheathed most days. Good. That one drinks him even when he wins. He knows it.

He calls the Grey wings he remade—pages instead of feathers, refusal instead of shine—and they turn the room into short cuts and near doors. He jumps across adjacency and arrives at my shoulder with a line that starts behind the idea of a guard and ends where scale would be. I move the scale a finger's width. He feels it and does not fight the miss; he chains into a knee, a palm, a short punch with a bite hidden inside. He is learning to let his body talk while his mind listens.

I do not hold back my eyes. He deserves the full weight of being seen. When he strings four movements clean and quiet, I nod once. When he removes a flourish on his own, I say nothing, which is more.

Between rounds he sits with Luna and drinks water like an obedient soldier. She feeds light into his ribs and scolds him for being made of pride instead of caution. He tries to argue; she wins by pouting; he loses by laughing. I watch them and feel a tug in my chest that has nothing to do with rank. If I were only a grandmother, I would take Luna's face in my hands and tell her every truth I own. But she is a qilin born for duty. She serves the contractor she was made for. Her fate runs next to his like two rails. If I tell her all, I steal choices from her. I have done enough stealing in my long life.

'I am sorry, child,' I tell her in the room where no one hears. 'I should give you cake and long stories and a lap to sleep on. I am giving you war instead.'

She calls me "Great Guardian" in public and "grandmother" with her eyes. I will answer to both. I will fail at both. I prefer the honest failure.

Arthur keeps brushing that ceiling. I can hear it—the small, flat sound of a hand meeting a surface that refuses to let him through. He hates that sound. Good. Hate is a kind of fuel. I would rather he fed on hope, but a dragon does not judge the meal when he sees the road length.

I try other doors. I sit him down and make him breathe until his shoulders drop. I tell him to hold Valeria in his hand and not swing at anything for a hundred breaths. He fights himself harder than he fights me. He shakes. He wins. He learns to stop making noise inside his own skull when he needs silence.

I set a rhythm in the lair—slow, then quick, then pause, then rush—and make him move only on the second beat. He hates it. He learns to love it. He stops jumping at the first drum. That saves a life later.

I have him spar against his shadow while I watch. He tries to please me. I turn my back so he stops playing to the audience. He sighs and fights a cleaner fight. I hear it in the footfalls.

Night comes and the lair quiets. I walk the halls where the first Arthur bled, and the place where Julius laughed, and the corner where Luna stood small and angry at the world for not being kinder. I touch the walls with my palm. The crystal warms my hand. I have taught many, but not all of them made me worry like this. This one is stubborn and brave and so tired of being told "later." He makes me want to hurry and be gentle at the same time. I cannot do both.

I think about asking someone else to push him. Lucifer would be a clean mirror. Alyssara would be a dirty one. The idea makes my lip curl. No. I will not feed him to anyone else's lesson while he wears my roof.

There is a last door. I know it works. I do not like it. I put my hand on the latch and take it away twice.

I sit and watch Luna sleep again. Her light is dim and steady. She looks younger like this, which is a joke time plays on immortals. I want to wake her, tell her I will be awful in the morning, and ask her to forgive me in advance. I do not. She needs sleep more than I need absolution.

'Tomorrow,' I think. 'Choose tomorrow.'

I drink water, open the lair's lungs so it breathes clean, and stand on the rise when the boy wakes.

"Now," I say when he looks at me.

He nods. He does not smile. He does not ask what changed.

He will learn it with his body.

We begin as we began all week—polite, honest, simple. He tries speed. I turn the speed into a miss without making him feel small. He tries power. I give it somewhere harmless to go. He tries shape. I walk out of the shape. He watches, steals, repeats. Good.

I do not choose the last door yet.

I watch his breath. Still shallow on the fourth exchange. Still trying to hurry the lesson to the finish. 'Slow,' I think at him the way old birds think at fledglings. He doesn't hear it. He will.

He sets the Pond. I take one step into it, let it erase my shove, then leave. I see his eyes flick to Luna in the corner, question in them. He worries if the Pond will fail her, too. I step closer on purpose so he has to stop thinking and start moving.

He does. He moves better than yesterday.

I let him touch my sleeve once. I do not let him land the second touch. He grins anyway, blood happy on his lip. He is a child and a man in the same skin. It makes me want to be kind. I will be kind later. Not today.

He bows at the end without being told. Respect is not posture with him. It lives in his bones. I am proud and annoyed in equal measure. I dismiss him. He stares at my face, trying to read it. He gets nothing. He leaves with his shoulders square and his mouth set.

I watch his back and think, 'Not enough.'

I go to Luna before she wakes fully. I stand in the doorway and say nothing and everything with my eyes. She looks at me the way only grandchildren do when they know you are about to do something they will forgive later and curse you for now.

'I am sorry,' I tell her where words cannot go. 'I will not kill him. I will show him the edge of it. He must meet it now, with me, or he will meet it later with someone who wants him dead. I choose me.'

She nods once. A tiny, hard thing. She is brave in ways that do not make noise. I love her more than is good for a dragon.

Tomorrow, then.