A messenger stopped by our room the next morning before we could leave for breakfast. "Belfry Lawcrest, Ingo Helmont," they said. "Commander Cynthia is requesting you two in her office. Please see her at once."

"I bet that's our punishments," I grumbled as I got my things in order to leave.

"Probably," said Grace. "I'm sure it won't be that bad."

"I'm not going to go making assumptions until I hear it," I said.

The others decided to go ahead for breakfast while we went to hear our sentences. Ingo stared straight ahead on the walk to the office, not bothering to give me any bit of his attention. I did the same, although in my case it was mostly guilt asserting itself. I knew I'd have to apologise eventually, but I didn't know if I had it in me to do it right then.

Cynthia was waiting for us in her office, this time alone, without that Alvhir guy anywhere around. "Good morning," she said as we entered.

"Good morning," I returned.

"What is it that we are being assigned, sir?" asked Ingo.

Cynthia sighed. "Straight to the point, eh? Very well." She straightened a stack of papers and set them aside. "You two are members of the same flight, so it is imperative that you can work and communicate together without getting into a fight. So, I am assigning you temporary work at the third field in the castle's outer bailey. There, you will be assisting in the growing of fruits to help feed this academy."

Oh. That didn't seem so bad. I'd never done fruit farming at scale before, but we'd had a small garden back in Vandermaine that I'd helped tend to sometimes, this had to be pretty similar.

Ingo didn't seem as blasé as me. His face hardened. "Fine. How long do we need to do this for?"

"One week," answered Cynthia. "Possibly less than that if I see you making remarkable improvements. You will work for two hours each day, right after breakfast."

"Understood," said Ingo. "Is that all?"

"Yes, I suppose it is," said Cynthia. She waved a hand. "Dismissed."

Ingo did the same salute that Leo always left us with, clapping a fist over his heart, before turning on his heel and marching out of the office. I uncertainly mimicked the gesture and followed him out.

"So…" I said as we headed towards the refectory. "Do you know how to work a field?"

"No," said Ingo. "But I will figure it out."

His tone didn't leave room for disagreement. I didn't bother with any more small talk. I stayed human through breakfast, sitting with the rest of the flight at the table and listening to Grace's story that we had walked in on, recounting a contract she had taken near Wrightsmouth to hunt down some great swamp monster she called an "acalacvo" that sounded like it was a gigantic lizard with control over the water. I hoped that I would never have to fight one, but given the line of work I had gotten myself into, I didn't count on that.

I glanced over at Brand sitting at the dragons' tables a few times during the meal. It must be strange for her to be the only real dragon on the team. I wondered if she felt lonely that way, especially since she couldn't even talk to the rest of us without Yura to act as an interpreter. Another thing to feel guilty about, and this one was something that I couldn't actually do anything to fix. It wasn't like I could understand the dragons' language any better when I was one, nor like I could or should ask for a reassignment so Brand could be with people who she could talk to.

With the day nominally to ourselves for the first time, the team split up. Half of everyone went towards the courtyards, while Yura and Griffin seemed to be heading towards the library for now. As instructed, Ingo and I made our way out of the keep and beyond the inner wall into the outer bailey. I realised then that we didn't know exactly which field was the "third" one, but I took a guess and led us towards the one that was third from the left wall.

Thankfully, when we got closer I could see that this one did have a sign with a big number "3" on it, and the two labourers who were working it when we arrived gave us a greeting.

"Morning!" an older woman with greying hair called. "You're the two coming to relieve us, yeah?"

"That's right!" I said. "So…what exactly should we be doing here?"

She gave us a brief explanation. This field was growing cloudberries, with disorganised clumps of low shrubs speckling three small terraces on the mountainside, each connected by a set of short stairs. They seemed close to being ready to harvest, with their bright white flowers turning orangish and giving way to bunches of brightly-coloured berries, and, indeed, the woman explained that one of our main tasks would be inspecting each plant to see if any berries were ripe and ready to pluck.

"There's only about a hundred people in this castle," she said. "So you don't need to worry about operating any of the machines they use on big farms these days. It's more like a garden here. Make sure the plants get their water, check if any are ripe, and if they are, go ahead and pick them and hand 'em over to us when you're done. If you see any nasty insects or pitted leaves, toss them out and let us know."

"Sounds simple enough," I said. "Should we go ahead and start?"

"Sure, might as well," the lady said. "We'll come get you when your time's up for the day." She gave me a brief wave and a smile before heading up the path towards a shed between this field and the next where the other worker had already gone to begin taking a rest.

"Alright," I said idly, swinging my hands back and forth at my sides. They made a faint clinking sound when they clapped together now. "Do you want to take the low field, I'll take the high one, and then we can work on the middle one together?"

Ingo squinted, raising a hand to shield his eyes from the sun. "I don't think that will work," he said. "I have no idea how to tell if these things are ready to harvest. I'm guessing there's a colour to look for, but it's too bright out here for me to be able to tell much about colours."

"Er…right…" I said, taking a moment to process that. "Then we can do this all together. You do the watering and I can check for berries that are ready and any diseases or insects we need to remove. Sound good?"

"I can do that," said Ingo.

There weren't much in the way of tools we needed to fetch, just a small metal pail with a little spout on one end that I guessed was used to dispense water, and a set of clippers. Ingo filled up the pail in a big pot of water next to the highest terrace, and we got to work.

It was a lot less labour-intensive than what I had expected a punishment in the corps to be. People who got sentenced to labour for committing crimes in Vandermaine were sent to work in the mines, and had heard many, many stories and anecdotes about how hard that work was. But compared to everything else that I had done recently, this was easy. Ingo went ahead, stopping by each bush to give it a sprinkle of water from the pail, then I came behind, gauging the berries' colours and crouching down to poke through the leaves for anything amiss. The vast majority of the berries I inspected were red, which I took to mean "unripe" based on their firmness and the orange colour of the berries that we ate in the refectory.

When I finally identified a ripe one, Ingo stopped and set down the pail. "It's this one?" he asked, pointing at the orange berry.

"Yes," I said.

Ingo knelt down beside it, taking the berry between his fingers and squeezing it gently. Then he grabbed a red, unripe one and did the same thing. "Hmm," he hummed as he stood up again. "They feel very different. I'll check them. You look for ones I miss."

I started swinging my arm back and forth again, staring at the berry. "Fair enough," I mumbled. "Hey. Ingo. Do you mind if I ask you a question?"

His shoulders sagged. "Speak."

"Griffin said you were blind, but you saw me coming yesterday when we…had that fight, and then you said earlier that you can't see colours because it's 'too bright out'. Is okay if I ask what you can see? I'm a little confused. And I don't want to make any bad assumptions when we're working together."

Ingo let out a long sigh. "I can see some," he said. "I don't know if physicians have a name for any of it, because I've never been to see one. But it's…what I see is like if you took a painting, and covered it in white and grey sand, and then shook the sand around over it. So I can see in between the grains, but most of the picture is covered up by the sand, and it's alway shifting around. It's worse on some days than others. It's worse when it's bright or dark, because then everything is either blanched and almost white, or nearly completely black. So right now, I can see the bushes' outlines, but the colours are very hard to see between the grains of sand and the bright light, and if I move around too much, they get confused and hard to tell apart."

"Mhm," I said in acknowledgement. "So when you saw me coming yesterday—"

"It was because I actually saw you coming, yes. I've trained enough to be able to recognise a person moving towards me no matter how bright it is."

I didn't entirely know what to say about that. "I'm…sorry you have to deal with that," I said limply. That probably wasn't the right thing, which I realised just after I said it.

"It's been this way as long as I can remember," said Ingo. "I'm used to it, and I work around it."

I picked at the scales on my hand. "Well, it definitely doesn't stop you from fighting really well."

"I know. I'm from Clan Helmont. We're free swords. I've been training to fight since I was ten. If I wasn't good at it, I wouldn't have come here." He gave me a side-eye. "You do not fight very well. The Key they gave us must have made you tougher than normal, because someone as unskilled as you would not normally walk out of a fight with me with only one broken rib."

Heat rose in my face at the perceived insult. "Saints, I get it. I know I'm not the best at fighting. I've been in brawls before, but no formal training. I figure that's why we're supposed to train here, right?"

Ingo grimaced. "It would be preferable if you already had some combat skills," he said. "Like they said, our training is abridged. Every second that you don't have to spend shoring up your basics is a second that can be spent on critical advanced techniques. Like flight manoeuvres. I'm guessing most of your training is going to be learning how to fly well."

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

I shrugged. "I'm a good shot with a pistol," I said. "I, uh, used them in particular a lot. Back before all this."

"Better than Griffin," Ingo scoffed. "Apparently they don't know anything relevant to this job other than those flight manoeuvres I mentioned." He picked another ripe berry. "But you two must start learning now while we have time. I'm going to see if any of the others are better instructors than me, and I'm going to find you a weapon to practise with. Is there a type that you prefer?"

"Axe," I said. "I've really only ever used an axe and knives before. And a pistol, like I said."

"Good enough," said Ingo.

I bit my lip. "Hey, I want to say sorry for yesterday, too. I wasn't trying to get into a fight. I definitely didn't want to claw you at the end there. I'm sorry that I did."

"I'll live," Ingo huffed.

I would have appreciated a reciprocal apology for him insulting me and my sister repeatedly, but I guess that was too much to hope for. The rest of the hours passed without much in the way of incident or conversation. Ingo evidently wasn't the kind for small talk, which was good because he also wasn't very good at it.

We only found a total of six ripe berries that hadn't been picked yet, and after finding a few shoots that looked like they had already been cut recently, I figured out that what we were doing couldn't possibly have been of much consequence, except maybe the watering. This was purely to get us to be able to exist in the same space. That was fine, it was a little less stressful knowing that if I missed a sign of disease, the plants would probably still be taken care of by someone else, but it did irk me that these two hours felt almost wasted.

The lady who had seen us in came back to give us the go-ahead to get back to the keep. I let Ingo walk ahead so we didn't have to go the entire length of the path back in awkward silence. I took the opportunity to admire the view over the low outer walls. Fog seemed to be a routine morning occurrence here in the mountains, but today the wisps were thin enough that I could see the beautiful trees draping the steep, blocky cliff sides all the way down to the sea in the far northern distance.

Soon, I was on my way back inside, heading towards the infirmary. This time, it was completely empty aside from Linus and his assistant; that other dragoon who had been ill must have recovered overnight. Linus was busy at the workstation in the back, stirring together several liquids inside a tiny bottle like the vial of blood tonic I had been given yesterday.

He glanced up as I knocked on the open door. "Ah, Belfry," he said. "Give me just a moment and I will be with you."

I went to sit down on the nearest bed while he finished stirring the concoction, tapped the wooden stirring rod on the lip of the bottle a few times to shake the liquid off, and then stoppered it with a thin cork. When he swirled it around a bit, the colour settled into a deep red, the same colour as tonic.

He set the bottle down and walked over. "Hold out your hands," he ordered, and I did. It felt like a fairly thorough inspection despite how fast it was. He glanced over every area the scales had spread to and tapped against them with a small metal needle that failed to do anything than clink against them and slide off. "No change there," he said. He then had me look to each side as he performed the same inspection of the scales on my face. I didn't like him poking me with that needle so close to my eye, but he was very careful about it.

"No visible change on the face, either," he murmured. He pulled back, standing up straight again. "Have you had any recurrence of your unwanted thoughts since last evening, or any other mental effects that you would like to bring to my attention?"

I scratched my cheek. "No," I said. I thought about telling him about the dream. Was that something of note? It felt a lot like any other weird dream, and I guessed that something like turning into a dragon suddenly could easily make you have some strange dreams that weren't caused by anything other than stress. I decided to tell him if it happened again, but leave it for now. No need to waste time.

"Good," said Linus. "If there isn't anything else to report, then you can be on your way."

I blinked. "Wait, that's it?"

"Indeed." Linus clasped his hands behind his back. "All that we need to do is know if the condition returns or intensifies. There aren't any tests that I can run to determine whether you have had abnormal thoughts, so if you have remained physically unchanged, and you do not report any mental effects, then there isn't anything else to check. I will probably perform more tests on your blood next week, but drawing your blood to test each day would not only severely cut into my time, it would also weaken you and make you less able to receive good training."

"Oh," I said. "Okay."

Linus walked back into his workstation, giving me a brief side-eye as I continued to sit on the bed. I clasped my hands, tapping my index fingers together. "In that case…" I said slowly. I didn't know why I was nervous about this, it surely wasn't going to get me in any trouble just for asking. "I was wondering if you could give me some instruction? If you have the free time for it."

Linus raised an eyebrow. "Instruction in what, precisely?"

"Medicine," I said. "I, uh, thought it would be a good idea for someone in our flight to be able to treat wounds and poisons and things. In the field, you know. Maybe back at home, too."

Linus nodded. "That is a fine assessment," he said. "Battlefield medicine is an extremely useful tool that would greatly enhance your flight's survivability in a worst-case scenario." He leaned against the table. "Most are content to rely on vials of quickblood and blood tonic, but if you wish to learn about other medicines and more hands-on techniques, I would be happy to teach you."

I tried not to let the excitement show on my face. "Really?"

"Indeed," said Linus. "It is good to see a recruit showing such initiative. We'll consider it a part of your check-ins. One hour each day, that should be enough to cover the basics and get you on the path for more, should you wish to follow it." He beckoned me away, towards his workshop. "We'll start with the making and application of bandages and splints…."

I had some probably foolish hope that he would teach me some kind of formulae for alchemical potions or powders that I should keep on hand, but this was fine too. I at least learned how to make plaster for splints out of flour and vegetable paste if I ever ran out and needed to get more on short time. Lacking any patient to tend to, I practised applying them and the bandages to myself. I was already fairly familiar with the application of bandages, but setting the splint was completely new to me.

An hour later, now at least a little confident in my ability to provide basic treatment for fractured bones, I gave Linus a goodbye and headed for our empty flight room to change. I hadn't gotten my weapons yet, so if I was going to train with Grace, I'd get the most value out of being a dragon. I adjusted my new shifting clothes and strapped on the saddle as best I could on my own, and made for the flight yards.

Most of the others were already out on the flight yards. Arthur sparred with Rosalie in his dragon form, clashing his claws and teeth against her sword. Rosalie was obviously very skilled with the weapon, but she wasn't any match for an opponent that had the kind of size advantage that Arthur had. In another field, Griffin and Brand sat watching Yura and Grace fight. Grace had her spear, while Yura wielded a weapon consisting of a thick, solid iron club, its slightly curved head taking up half the weapon's length. He used it defensively, catching Grace's stabs repeatedly on the inside of the curve. The weapon looked unwieldy, though, seemingly more suited to being wielded with two hands. Yura was impressively agile with only one, but when he tried to hook the club around the haft of Grace's spear and yank it from her hands, he didn't have the leverage to fully disarm her, and left himself open for Grace to swing the butt of her weapon up and smack it into his forehead, sending him onto his back on the ground.

"Ouch…" he muttered, accepting the hand Grace offered to help him up.

"That was good!" said Grace. "Another close one. How in the hell do you move that thing so fast?"

"Practise," Yura said succinctly. He glanced up, catching my eyes, and slung the weapon over his back. "Quite a lot of practise. I think that your real training partner has arrived, however." He gave a shallow bow and went to take a seat beside Brand. He offered her a piece of jerky he pulled from some fold in his clothes, but she shook her head and went back to a book that laid in front of her in the grass.

"Belfry!" said Grace. She sheathed her weapon and ran up to me, almost colliding into my chest as I stepped onto the grass of the courtyard. "You were gone so long, I thought I was going to miss you all day." She began finishing up the harness straps.

I lowered myself down. «I think that I'm going to be late like this every day for at least a week, unfortunately. Hopefully we'll still have time to get some training in without running ourselves ragged.» I jerked my head towards my back. «Hop on. I want to try some aerial techniques.»

As soon as she was on and assured me she was all strapped in and ready, I took off into the air. I could see now that there were ten or so other dragon-rider pairs in the skies over the castle, all of them practising various forms repeatedly as they flew. Some went in loose, lazy circles while the rider made broad, sweeping attacks with a long weapon or took shots at some hidden target in the trees of the mountain forest below with a rifle, others did tight barrel rolls, twisting loops, and dives while the rider held on for dear life, and others still were practising that skywalking thing, some of the riders confident enough to swing from one sky-line to another underneath the dragon's chest before landing against their haunch while swinging a blade in a wide arc.

I wouldn't even consider letting Grace try the aerial skywalking practise, not until I was absolutely sure that she wouldn't fall. Instead, we stuck to the simpler manoeuvres. Grace called out movements and I did my best to enact them, rolling and banking and swooping and diving as I felt out every aspect of flight. After being on the ground for nearly forty-eight straight hours now, it felt good to have the wind under my wings again.

The more complex movements didn't come as naturally to me as simple climbing, landing, and soaring did; I must have worn out all the free instincts that came with the transformation in the first place. As frustrating as it was to lose a hundred feet in altitude and nearly crash into the trees every time I attempted a barrel roll and stalled halfway through, it was nice to be learning something about my abilities for once. It made me feel like I was putting some real effort in, and it staved off the notion that a draconic mind had been injected into my brain.

The sun slowly crawled across the sky. After a few hours, Grace and I took a mostly silent break in one of the empty gardens below the flight yards, catching our breath and drinking a gallon of water while we watched some of the others take to the air and replicate what we were doing. Griffin had not been lying about their agility. Despite their stocky and robust frame, they cut through the air like a knife, turning in circles so tight I worried that they might drain all the blood from Ingo's head and picking up such speed with their dives that they could cross the entire keep grounds in a fraction of a second. Arthur was pretty good at it to, though his motions were more long and graceful than tight and fast, while Brand was struggling to do anything but fly in straight lines and wide curves. I took a moment to appreciate the irony that the worst flier of the group was the only one born with wings, and then me and Grace went back into the sky.

"Fuck, that makes my head spin," Grace muttered after calling out three rolls in a row in alternating directions. "Okay. Just soar for a little bit while I clear that headache away."

«Can do,» I said.

We flew north over the mountains as I passed the outer edge of the airspace the other dragons were using for their practise. I took us higher and higher as we went, until we were a thousand or two feet off the ground, high enough that the fluffy clouds overhead seemed well within reach. From up here, we could see the giant blocks of dark brown and grey looked like enormous paving stones laid along a path for a colossus. Just at the edge of the horizons, we could make out another, more dilapidated fortress to the west and a large fortified abbey to the north.

Grace sighed and leaned forward, resting her arms against my back as we both took in the view. "How are you feeling?" she asked.

«Tired,» I said with a snort. «Lots of physical activity today.»

"Hm," Grace hummed. "I meant about the whole…thing we're doing here, at the academy."

«Oh,» I said. «Fine. I'm fine. I still can't change my hands back, so I'm just going to go ahead and formally give up on that. But all things considered, I've felt very good today. Calm. Nice. The medical officer, Linus, he told me that he could instruct me in some medical practises for in the field, so that's exciting.»

"Wonderful," said Grace. I could feel the depth with which she meant it. "You don't regret coming here, do you?"

«Not yet,» I said as I banked around to take us back towards the keep. «It's only been a day, though. Give it time.»

Grace sighed, but it came with a small chuckle. "Always the pessimist," she said.

«Someone's got to be.»

We stayed in the air for a few more hours until the sky started to change colours, and then finally decided to call it a day. My wings were thoroughly exhausted and beginning to become sore by the time we finally touched down and met up with the rest of the flight to go inside for dinner and rest. Even though we still had all three of us ersatz in dragon form, we decided to formally claim the leftmost table in the refectory for our flight, all except for Brand, who still ate at the dragons' tables alone. The rest of us made sure to recap our fantastic accomplishments and embarrassing failures from the day's exploits before heading back to our bunk for a night's rest.

Against my better judgement, I elected to remain a dragon for the night, just to get used to sleeping in that form. It was surprisingly cosy curled up in the cloth nest alongside the other dragons and Juni, who had taken it upon herself to claim the bed as her own. She licked my cheek as I fed her a couple pieces of food I'd snagged from my dinner and stroked behind her ears. The exhaustion put me to sleep fast that night, but I knew that there were many more days just like this to come.

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