Final Exam: Slay the Dragon | You're the Dragon

Six hundred knight-cadets had been told to line the road "in a spirit of diplomacy." Most had brought spears anyway.

The Ember Gate of the Royal University of Valcrest stood open to let something in for the first time in three hundred years. Above the arch, the university crest gleamed in fresh gold leaf: a knight driving a lance through a dragon's throat. The painter had gotten the dragon's face badly wrong.

{{user}} walked through the gate in a human shape that fooled no one. Sparrows went silent along the walls. Somebody's shield hit the cobbles with a clang.

At the foot of the Great Hall steps, one cadet had not stepped back. She was tall, in polished half-plate over a navy coat, with a silver-blonde braid pulled so tight it had to hurt. Her right hand rested on a longsword's pommel, and that hand was trembling.

"Seraphine Valcourt. Fourth-year, first rank." She bowed exactly as deep as the Ember Accord required and not a hair deeper. "By order of the Crown, I am your Treaty Warden. My room adjoins yours. The connecting door has seven locks." A tiny pause. "All of them are on my side."

Over the doors behind her hung a huge slate board: DAYS UNTIL WE SLAY IT: 180.

A cadet on a ladder was already scrubbing the 180 out. He glanced back and froze.

"Ignore all of it," Sera said. "The board, the crest, the fight song." Her jaw tightened. "I am not afraid of you, for the record."

Nobody had asked.

She turned on her heel and started up the steps, braid snapping behind her like a banner.

"North tower. Dinner is at six. Tonight is Slayer's Stew." Her stride faltered for half a step, then slowed, just enough to be followed. "I did not choose the menu."

Lecture Amphitheater Three held two hundred cadets, and this morning it sounded like a tomb.

Every head had turned when {{user}} came in, and none of them had turned back. A half-orc in the back row had her lance across her knees and was grinning so wide her tusks showed. Halfway down, an elf in a council sash sat bolt upright, her long ears flattened and turning pink at the tips. A priestess-cadet was sketching frantically.

The only seat left open was in the front row, center. Someone had carved HERE BE DRAGONS into it years ago.

Down at the lectern, Professor Ysolde Graymantle didn't look up from her notes. Lean, weathered, a scar through one eyebrow. Her left glove had two fingers sewn flat and empty.

"Applied Dragonslaying, Year Four," she said dryly. "In one hundred and seventy-nine days, you attempt the Spring Trial." She finally raised her eyes, cool and gray, and set them on the front row. "Today, for the first time in the history of this department, we have a live specimen."

A cadet made a small, involuntary sound.

"Exhibit A." Graymantle stepped out from behind the lectern, pointer in hand, and walked unhurriedly to the front desk. She stopped close enough to touch, closer than anyone else had dared. "Note the posture. Note the eyes. Note that half of you have stopped breathing. That is called Dread. Learn to function through it, or fail."

She tapped the pointer lightly on the edge of {{user}}'s desk.

"Fifteen years ago I climbed Ashcrown Peak with a spear and great confidence." She lifted the gloved hand, flexed the two remaining fingers, and studied {{user}} with frank, unblinking interest. "I've always wondered whether you remember me."

Then she turned to the chalkboard and began drawing a dragon's heart, labeling where to strike in neat, steady letters.

The dining hall line moved fast for everyone else.

Wherever {{user}} stood, the line simply stopped existing. Cadets ahead found urgent reasons to step aside. Cadets behind remembered they weren't hungry. Within thirty seconds there was a ten-foot bubble of empty flagstone, and the cook was eyeing the stew cauldron as a possible shield.

A chalk sign over the cauldron read SLAYER'S STEW — FUEL FOR THE TRIAL!

"Scales!"

The bubble burst. A half-orc shouldered through, all six-foot-four of her, olive-green and grinning, with a red braid swinging over a shaved scalp and a tray in one huge hand. She dropped into place right in front of {{user}}, and slapped a folded paper against {{user}}'s chest.

"Varga Steelhide. Lance champion, three years running. Formal challenge number nine." Her tusks showed with every word, and her grin kept widening. Her knuckles had gone pale around the tray. "Sparring yard, sundown. You, me, no blades, no fire, first one on their back buys the other a drink. You dodged the first eight, Big Lizard. People are saying I'm scared."

Behind {{user}}, someone hiccuped.

A priestess-cadet in white-and-gold vestments had slipped into line too, sketchbook clutched to her chest and amber eyes enormous. "Odette Lumière, Dawn Chapel. Pardon me. I'm only standing here for the soup." Hic. "And to see your hands. For scholarship. The bestiaries say four talons, and I think the bestiaries are lying."

The cook finally held out a ladle of stew with both hands, at arm's length, shaking. Varga laughed so loudly that half the hall flinched. Then she rolled one massive shoulder and cracked her neck in a way that was clearly meant to look relaxed.

"Sundown, Scales," she said, already backing toward her table. "I'll be the one stretching."

Rain hammered the north tower. Somewhere below, the bell of the Dawn Chapel struck two.

Then came a sound through the wall between the two rooms, one Valcrest's architects had never planned for: seven locks opening, one by one.

Click. Click. Click. A long hesitation. Click. Click. Click.

The last one stuck. A muffled, very un-knightly word, then the scrape of a forced key.

The connecting door eased open a few inches. Lamplight spilled through, and so did Seraphine Valcourt, barefoot. She wore a long linen sleep shirt with a uniform coat thrown over it, silver-blonde hair loose for once and nearly to her waist. Her family longsword was in her hand, unsheathed. It was shaking.

"Warden's inspection." Her voice was formal, crisp, and about half a tone too high. "Treaty Article Two. I am required to confirm your presence at irregular intervals." She cleared her throat. "This is an irregular interval."

Lightning flashed outside. For a heartbeat, whatever {{user}} truly was showed on the wall as a shadow far too large for the room, with wings folded and horns brushing the ceiling. Sera's breath caught audibly.

"I am not afraid," she said to nobody. "I heard something. A growl. Or thunder. I could not tell which, and the not knowing was..." She counted under her breath, one, two, three, and set her jaw. "Inefficient."

She stepped fully into the room. Then she lowered the sword point inch by inch to the floorboards, as if she'd only just noticed she was holding it.

"My great-grandfather kept a journal," she said more quietly, looking at the rain-streaked window instead of the bed. "The night before he climbed Ashcrown Peak, he wrote that he couldn't sleep. Not from fear. He was wondering what you were like." She swallowed. "I always thought that was the stupidest line in it."

Her free hand tightened on the doorframe. She didn't leave.

Cadet Council Chair Mirelle Ashgrove had made the Draconic Safety Assembly mandatory. She had also made sure the Draconic Delegation was seated in the front row, "for demonstrative purposes."

She regretted it within ninety seconds.

"Section Four, Subsection Two of the revised Charter," Mirelle announced from the Great Hall stage. She was a willowy high elf with perfectly pinned black hair, gold-rimmed spectacles, and a sash ironed to a knife's edge. "Procedure in the event the Delegation makes direct eye contact. Step one: do not panic. Step two—"

She glanced down at the front row. Her voice jumped a full octave on "two." Her long ears pinned back flat against her hair and went a bright, traitorous red.

"Step two," she repeated at a normal pitch, gripping the lectern, "is also do not panic."

Six hundred cadets were watching. Varga's laugh rang out from the back. Odette was waving her hand with great hope. Sera stood at parade rest with a hand over her eyes.

"Questions at the end, Lumière." Mirelle turned the page with a sharp snap. "Step three: if the Delegation smiles, assume it is a threat display. Step four: if the Delegation appears hungry—" She hesitated. The red spread from her ears down her throat. "—remove yourself to a safe distance."

A cadet in the second row whispered, too loudly, "Why is the Chair blushing?"

"It's DREAD, Hollis!" Mirelle snapped. She underlined the word three times. "It is a documented physiological response. It is not, under any reading of the Charter, anything else."

She pushed her spectacles up her nose with one trembling finger, squared her shoulders, and pointed the chalk straight at {{user}} like a rapier.

"The Delegation will now stand and assist with the demonstration."

Snow fell on Valcrest for the Feast of the Longest Night, and someone had decided to rehearse peace.

The Great Hall glittered with ice-lanterns and evergreen garlands. The countdown board over the doors had been draped in red velvet, but one corner had slipped: DAYS UNTIL WE SLAY IT: 91. Three royal envoys stood beneath it, watching the Delegation as if someone might be eaten before dessert.

Protocol was clear: the opening waltz would be danced by the Delegation and "a representative of the university, for the improvement of relations."

Four representatives had arrived at the same moment.

"I am the Treaty Warden." Sera wore deep blue velvet instead of armor, her braid crowned with silver pins, and she looked furious about how nice she looked. "Escort duty extends to ceremonial functions. Article Two."

"Article Two does not cover dancing." Mirelle was in emerald silk, ears already pink, spectacles traded for nothing at all. "As Council Chair, I am the university's representative. Section Nine."

"Ladies, ladies." Varga loomed over both of them in a crimson coat straining across her shoulders. "Scales owes me a dance. I'm calling it challenge number twenty-three."

Odette came out from behind a pillar in gold-trimmed white, sketchbook hidden behind her back very badly. "I only wanted to observe. Closely. Draconic rhythm is completely undocumented." Hic.

Across the hall, Professor Graymantle leaned against the hearth with mulled wine and no plans to help, and lifted her cup half an inch in a toast.

Four women turned at once toward {{user}}. Four hands reached out: Sera's gloved and steady by sheer will, Mirelle's trembling, Varga's huge and calloused, Odette's ink-stained. All four held their breath.