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The cage was dark, cold, and damp: three things that Qifrey hated. He didn’t know how long he had been there — long enough to grow exhausted after ramming at the bars for ages, for his throat to ache every time he tried to shout.
His wrists were chained to the ground, thick, heavy shackles on them that connected to a collar around his neck, all spelled with magic to keep him from turning into his dragon form, or so he’d been told. Every time Qifrey tried to change, he was faced with an impenetrable wall blocking him, so there must be some truth to it.
Because of the chains, Qifrey could barely move his head to the side, and even then, he could only see things on his left. His right side had been plunged into darkness long ago. Or perhaps recently — Qifrey had no way to tell, for his memories stopped a few days back.
The furthest thing he could remember was a coffin buried underground, rainwater pooling inside, and the voices of the hybrid poachers as they dug him out.
They had kept Qifrey in a locked room for a couple of days, up until he regained some of his strength and tried to turn into his dragon form. Then, the poachers started talking about auctions, business opportunities, and pets for wealthy patrons.
You will fetch me a nice price, the man who put him in that cage had said. That had been maybe a dozen clockmarks ago, and Qifrey hadn’t seen or heard anybody else in the time since then.
He hated everything about this place. The damp cold made him shiver underneath the tattered robes they put on him, and not even his tail curled around himself could offer some semblance of warmth. Qifrey was forced to wait for whatever happened next, for someone to come get him and... what? Sell him?
Then he heard it: the creaking sound of a door opening just a fraction. His ears perked up, and Qifrey stood very still, trying to discern the direction it was coming from. He didn’t move a muscle, barely even breathed as he waited.
The noises that followed were most peculiar. A sort of hiccuping sound, wet and distressed, not dissimilar to a child’s crying. But what would a child be doing there? Qifrey shifted, trying to see anything, and in doing so, the chains rattled.
The sobs stopped.
“Hello?” A voice called. It sounded small. “Is anyone there?”
Qifrey tried to call back, but his throat failed him, producing an ugly, rasping sound instead. Great, he really sounded like a beast now.
Shuffling footsteps approached, and Qifrey winced as a light suddenly appeared in his field of vision, his eye accustomed to the brightness after so long in the dark.
“What…?” The voice said, much closer.
When Qifrey opened his eye again, a boy was standing right outside his cage. He couldn’t be much older than Qifrey, with shaggy dark hair and wrapped in a strange furred tunic, holding up a lit lantern. His eyes were wide and his cheeks were wet, streaked with quickly drying tears.
“Hello,” the boy said, very slowly. “Can you understand me?”
Qifrey nodded, chains rattling again with the movement. The boy’s eyes traced them under the lamplight, surprised and a little bit horrified, and Qifrey thumped his tail against the ground, uncomfortable under all the attention.
“You’re a dragon hybrid,” the boy whispered. “Why are they keeping you here? Where are your parents?”
Qifrey stared at him, and the boy blinked before huffing out a humorless laugh.
“Yeah, dumb questions, sorry. Want me to get you out of here?”
For the first time, Qifrey managed to rasp out an answer, voice faint.
“Please…”
The boy smiled, eyes full of determination.
“Right on! You’re lucky I’m a witch — hold on a sec.”
Curiously, he turned around and seemed to scribble something, but Qifrey couldn’t quite see what from where he was. Then, the boy faced him once again, and pressed a hand to the lock of his cage.
Flames sprouted from the point of contact, so hot they started melting down the lock in seconds.
Qifrey gasped, but the boy withdrew his hand before it could hurt him. The fire danced and licked at the metal, and left behind a perfectly melted hole where the lock had once been. It only took one push from the boy for the door to swing open, and he cheered victoriously.
“Great, now for the chains…” He was muttering to himself, and Qifrey watched with curiosity as he applied the same magic to the iron bolting the chains to the ground, carefully keeping the flames away from Qifrey’s skin. There was something in his hand — white, like paper, but Qifrey barely caught a glimpse of it before it was gone.
Slowly, Qifrey raised his hands for the first time in what felt like ages. They were still weighed down by heavy shackles, but he could move. And it was all thanks to that strange witch boy.
Something echoed in the distance; loud voices approaching and the sound of a large door opening. Immediately, the boy grabbed Qifrey’s arm, panicked.
“They heard us! We have to go now!”
Qifrey stumbled after him, keeping his balance only thanks to his long tail. The boy led him in a complicated zigzag between crates and empty cages, his lantern casting long shadows around them, and through a narrowly-opened door at the far end of the warehouse.
The biting cold was almost too much for Qifrey, who shivered violently as his bare feet stepped on the street outside and the wind cut through his thin, tattered robes. They were in a dirty alleyway, tall houses on both sides and the moon shone down on them from above.
Still, the witch boy led them further down the alley, into another, darker one, and then gestured for Qifrey to crouch with him behind a stack of empty barrels. He extinguished the lantern’s light.
“Shh.” The boy motioned for him to stay quiet, bringing one finger to his lips. Qifrey nodded silently and curled his tail around himself.
They stayed there a while, hiding and listening for any sounds coming their way. At some point, Qifrey’s teeth started chattering loudly from the cold, and the boy cursed under his breath.
“Here,” he whispered, unclasping the cloak from around his shoulders and giving it to him.
Qifrey automatically pulled it close over his body, sinking his face in the soft fur adorning its collar. Some body heat remained from its previous owner, and in the aching cold, it felt almost like a warm hug. Qifrey couldn’t remember ever experiencing one of those.
Running footsteps suddenly approached, adult voices following. Qifrey huddled closer to the boy subconsciously, and felt him do the same against his arm. They shivered in fear together, waiting with bated breath for the moment they would be discovered.
Something shifted against him; the boy was doing that strange scribbling motion again, although Qifrey couldn’t quite see it when his hands were concealed behind his back.
A wind current suddenly appeared at the other end of the alleyway and kicked a few stray rocks with great force, sending them clattering across the ground with a great deal of noise. Immediately, the footsteps turned to that direction and quickly faded away.
Qifrey forced himself to breathe again, eye wide as he stared at the witch boy next to him, who grinned.
“Let’s go, before they catch up. I know a place I can take you to.”
They ran away, hand in hand, Qifrey’s bare feet slapping against cobblestone hard enough to hurt. He endured it anyway, because the only other option was to go back to that cage. And he never wanted to go back there.
Eventually, they reached a building on what looked to be the outskirts of town, a hanging sign proclaiming it to be an inn. The boy led him around the back and sneaked them into a private patio, then pushed Qifrey lightly so he was hiding in the bushes.
“Stay here,” he said, breathless. “I’ll get inside and let you in.”
Qifrey stared at him for a moment, then nodded. He trusted the witch boy. There was kindness in his eyes.
“Great, okay. I won’t be long.”
The boy disappeared around the corner, and Qifrey waited. He was still draped in that comfortable cloak, his thin body practically engulfed by it, tail peeking out from underneath the hem. A gust of cold wind rustled the leaves around him and Qifrey shivered again. The shackles around his wrists and neck were steadily getting colder, freezing and chafing against his skin.
Some time passed. Qifrey could hear the calls of nocturnal animals nearby, the rustling wind, and the occasional voices of people at the front door of the inn, but nothing from the boy that had saved him. He wondered if maybe he had forgotten about Qifrey. Or perhaps he’d bumped into his parents and they wouldn’t let him go, and the boy would realize he shouldn’t really be helping Qifrey anyway in the first place.
What if the men from the warehouse had found him? He would be in trouble then, maybe they’d stuff him into a cage like they had done to Qifrey and put him in chains too—
“Psst!”
The sudden noise made his head snap up, body straightening. Qifrey hadn’t realized how fast he was breathing or how much he was curling in on himself, hands fisted around the soft material of the boy’s cloak.
“Over here!” Said the voice again in a hushed whisper. Qifrey tried to place it, and finally his eye zeroed on a window up high, where an arm was waving at him.
Qifrey quickly slipped out of his hiding spot until he was standing right underneath the window, clutching the cloak around him. The boy grinned at him, face small and blurry in the distance.
“Stay very still!” He said in that whisper-yelling voice. Qifrey nodded, eye wide.
A burst of wind suddenly erupted all around him, strong enough to lift Qifrey into the air. It whipped at his hair and cloak, but it wasn’t cold nor cutting. In fact, despite its fierce strength, the wind was strangely… gentle.
Qifrey flew upwards, a strange feeling when not in his dragon form. He let those gentle winds envelop him, pulling him up, up, up… and into the boy’s arms.
They both fell back into the room, the boy laughing as his magic stopped and Qifrey dropped like a stone on top of him.
He was warm. Qifrey could feel the rumble of the boy’s chest against his cheek, his arms around him over the cloak. Safe, his mind whispered.
Qifrey flinched back.
“We did it! I’m so glad I saved you! I can still save people!” The boy exclaimed, overjoyed.
But Qifrey wasn’t listening, his heart pounding at the unfamiliar, scary feeling. He didn’t even know his name! How could he feel so safe in the arms of a person he just met? Confused, Qifrey withdrew from the boy’s embrace and knelt on the floor a ways away from him.
“Hey, are you… okay?”
Qifrey nodded, perhaps too fast, and looked around at their surroundings as he hugged his tail. They were inside a small, rustic room, furnished only with the basics: a bed, a dresser, and a chair. It was warmer than outside, mostly due to a small fire contraption off to the side.
“This is my own inn room, no one will bother us here,” the boy explained, sitting up and noticing Qifrey’s glancing around. “I’m Olruggio, by the way! What’s your name?”
“Qifrey,” he said absentmindedly. “But you can forget it. I should go.”
“What?!” Olruggio exclaimed. “Why? I just saved you!”
“Those men are still after me. They could find you.”
“They won’t, not here! And besides, what are you going to do out there in the cold, huh? Human beings —and, er, dragon hybrids, I suppose— are more fragile than they look! Plenty of things could kill you.”
Olruggio was breathing hard by the end of his little speech, one hand fisted on his own robes over his chest. Belatedly, Qifrey realized he was still wearing the other boy’s cloak, but he made no move to take it off.
“Then… What should I do?” Qifrey asked, confused. Olruggio relaxed and let go of his robes.
“Well, first of all,” he said, shuffling closer. “We need to get you out of these shackles. Let me take a look at them?”
Qifrey nodded again, and sat very still as Olruggio examined the metal around his neck first, then his wrists. His dark blue eyes had a keen look to them, clever beyond his years.
“Alright, I think I know how to get them off,” Olruggio said at last. He hesitated. “Just, um… Could you close your eye?”
“Are you going to do magic?”
A faint blush darkened Olruggio’s cheeks for a moment, but it was gone fast.
“Yes! And, you know, it’s a secret. So you can’t see!”
Qifrey really didn’t want to close his eye. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Olruggio —he did, terrifyingly so—, but that he didn’t want to go back to the darkness, even for a moment. His hands trembled and he clenched them into fists.
“I saw you do magic earlier,” he said. “You were writing it on a paper.”
“W-What?! You were just— seeing things!” Olruggio stumbled over his own words, but Qifrey just stared at him. It didn’t take much more for him to crack. “Alright, you caught me… But you can’t tell anyone, okay? It’s secret.”
The distress in his eyes seemed genuine, and his hands reached out before he quickly aborted the gesture. Qifrey appreciated it; he didn’t feel like getting touched at that moment.
“Okay,” he nodded. “So you really write it down?”
Olruggio’s shoulders sagged with defeat, and he mumbled something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like I’m so dead if anyone finds out. Then, he pulled out a small, round notebook from his tunic’s pockets, and a pen.
“It’s not so much writing as it is drawing. Look.”
Inside the notebook were countless circles inscribed in black ink, filled with all kinds of symbols and sigils. Qifrey watched, wide-eyed, as Olruggio kept flipping the pages.
“This one creates a small flame,” he said, explaining some of them. “And this one is for drinking water, very useful to have in hand. This one makes the grasping wind I used to get you up here, but smaller.”
“Whoa.” Qifrey stared at the drawings, fascinated. “And you made all of these?”
“Yeah!” Olruggio grinned at him and rolled his sleeves back, then uncapped his pen. “I’ll make one to break through those shackles too.”
Qifrey watched as he drew a perfect circle on a blank page, not fully closing it, and scribbled an array of symbols and arrows inside. Then, Olruggio tore out the page from the notebook and flapped it in the air so the ink dried.
“Here, give me your hand,” he said, and Qifrey obeyed.
Olruggio pressed the paper against the metal, then closed the circle. In a flash of light, the magic activated and created a clean crack underneath, leaving Qifrey’s wrist finally free.
“Amazing,” Qifrey gasped. Olruggio hissed out a sharp breath upon seeing the welts on his wrist.
The other shackle fell apart in the same way, and then came the collar. Again, Qifrey held himself very still, Olruggio’s breath fanning against his neck when he leaned in closer to finish the spell.
Careful fingers touched the underside of his jaw, gently tilting Qifrey’s head up. He shivered, but the touch wasn’t entirely unwelcome.
“Sorry, I just need a better angle here…”
Pen scratched against paper, and the collar fell apart.
Two things happened at once: Olruggio cheered victoriously, throwing the collar away with almost vicious smugness, and Qifrey, in his newfound freedom, turned into his full dragon form.
Olruggio gasped loudly. Where the small, white-haired boy had been kneeling a moment ago, a beautiful pale blue dragon had taken its place.
Qifrey spread his wings, ecstatic at finally being in his own body again. He wasn’t much bigger than before, but he felt longer, complete with his tail and wings and rows of baby teeth that would grow into sharp fangs one day.
He chirped happily and Olruggio took a step towards him, hand half-raised and eyes wide in awe.
“Is this… the real you?” He asked. Qifrey nodded and chirped again. “It’s— You’re— beautiful.”
Qifrey couldn’t resist it — he launched himself into Olruggio, almost toppling him to the ground again, and wound his long body all around him like a particularly clingy snake. His wings covered Olruggio’s shoulders, tail curling around his legs and muzzle pressed up to his head with a contented purr.
Olruggio laughed and scrambled to take hold of the dragon, dwarfed by his size, and Qifrey used his not-yet-sharpened claws to curl tighter around him.
“I like your scales,” Olruggio said, running a hand over them. “They’re… shimmery. I’ve never seen a dragon this close before.”
Playfully, Qifrey nipped at his ear. He was exhausted after all that running, his body crashing down after the long day. Something sleepy must have shown in his gaze, because Olruggio walked them to the bed.
“C’mon, you can rest here tonight. But you’ll have to get off of me!”
Reluctantly, Qifrey let go, but not without getting in one last squeeze first that made Olruggio laugh again.
He curled up at the end of the bed, contentedly nuzzling his head on his scaly body. The last thing he felt was something soft covering him, and then Qifrey fell into a dreamless sleep.
Olruggio woke up to warm sunlight streaming in through half-drawn curtains and directly on his face. He mumbled something unintelligible against his pillow as he stirred, rolling on his side and hoping to fall asleep again.
His foot made contact with something warm as he moved. Something warm and breathing at the end of the bed.
It took all of Olruggio’s willpower not to scream.
He blinked rapidly, trying to make sense of the teal, scaly shape curled up beside his feet. Soft huffs of breathing could be heard coming from the dragon, a sort of contented expression in its muzzle — could dragons make expressions?
To make matters worse, Olruggio’s cloak was half-draped over the dragon.
All at once, the events from the past night crashed into Olruggio: sneaking into an empty nook to cry alone, finding instead a warehouse with a caged dragon child, rescuing him and running through the streets with poachers in tow.
Meeting Qifrey, giving him his cloak, showing him magic in the privacy of his room. Olruggio groaned out loud and dragged a hand down his face.
He had really messed up.
The dragon shifted at the noise, slowly blinking awake. Olruggio grew very still.
Qifrey yawned, and was the most adorable thing Olruggio had ever seen.
They made eye contact and suddenly Qifrey was twisting and turning into himself, and in place of a dragon was the small kid from last night, rubbing his eye. The dark cloak was slipping off one shoulder, not unlike a particularly furry blanket.
“I fell asleep…” Qifrey mumbled, confused. Olruggio nodded.
“Yeah.” He cleared his throat, feeling a little out of his depth. “Last night was… a lot.”
Qifrey looked around, much more alert under the morning’s gentle sun. Now that he was seeing the dragon hybrid under a source of natural light, Olruggio couldn’t help but notice the many scars that his tattered robes couldn’t cover, all over his arms and legs. Some looked like rope burns, others were welts or scars of indiscernible origins in varying stages of healing.
“Do you live here?” Qifrey asked, pulling his attention away from them.
“Here? No, just staying the night,” Olruggio explained. He averted his eyes. “Village chief is takin’ me to the Great Hall tomorrow, so I can study there.”
“The Great Hall…” Qifrey repeated, clearly not understanding. He crawled across the bed until he was sitting next to Olruggio, tugging the cloak around himself. “Where is that? Is it a place for witches?”
“Yeah, it’s where most witches live. They have all the best masters and amenities and everythin’.”
“But you aren’t from there?”
Olruggio cleared his throat, uncomfortable. Qifrey’s inquisitive stare was too much.
“No, not really. Anyways, we should think of what to do with you before the chief comes knockin’.”
Qifrey huddled into the cloak a little, looking scared.
“Is he going to take me away?”
“I don’t know,” Olruggio said honestly, shrugging. “But I don’t want him to know I snuck out last night, so for now you’ll have to hide, okay?”
“And then?”
What a loaded question…
At Olruggio’s silence, Qifrey reached out a hand and tapped his shoulder.
“I want to go study magic with you.”
Olruggio’s head whipped around so fast his neck creaked ominously. “You can’t do that!”
“Why not? Is it because I’m a dragon?” Qifrey put his fingers on his head as if they were horns. Olruggio shook his head.
“No, there are witch dragon hybrids. It’s because you’re an Outsider.”
Qifrey frowned. “And? I know the secret now. I can study.”
Olruggio sighed and fought the urge to smother his face into a pillow and scream.
“Listen,” he said, very slowly to get his point across. “If anyone knows that I showed you how to do magic, we will both get our memories wiped. The Knight Moralis don’t play around— Qifrey?”
In a sudden burst of motion, Qifrey had scrambled away to the foot of the bed, pressing himself against the wall and watching Olruggio with one very wide eye. His entire body was trembling furiously, more than when out in the cold the day before.
“No! Please don’t erase my memories again!” He cried out desperately, tears brimming on his eye.
“I’m not— What do you mean, again?!”
Qifrey hugged his knees, rocking back and forth slightly.
“They erased my memories… They took my eye…” He muttered, barely loud enough to be heard.
Olruggio felt his insides twist in horror.
“Why? Who did that to you?”
But Qifrey only shook his head. Olruggio pressed his lips together in a thin line, overwhelmingly concerned for this dragon boy he had practically just met. He scooted closer, as much as he dared, and placed a tentative hand on Qifrey’s knee. A wide blue eye followed the movement.
“I won’t let them erase your memories,” Olruggio promised, injecting as much determination in his tone as he could. “I will protect you, Qifrey. I promise.”
Qifrey’s mouth wobbled. “You promise?”
Olruggio nodded.
“I do. We’ll find a way for you to study magic and hide from the Knights.”
“So I can go with you to the Great Hall?”
“If you want… sure.”
“Okay.”
A small smile blossomed on Qifrey’s face, warm and hopeful. Olruggio couldn’t help but match it.
“It’ll be like an adventure!”