Kese slipped to the side as Raan charged at her.

  She turned, claws out, but abandoned the feint at his flank as his tail whipped towards her and jumped, catching his tail as he tried to yank it back and letting the movement flick her away from him before he could finish his spin and slam her with his head.

  She slid to a halt at the far side of the duelling arena and prowled back towards him. The others from the same hatching were cheering their champions on - opinion roughly split between Kese and Raan, and often changing second-by-second - but the two young dragons ignored the noise, focused on each other as they circled.

  There was a Fifth-Forged Elder watching them, after all. They would not give anything but their best.

  "They are skilled," Beolkyax-Tahi observed.

  "This is why they did not take part in the tournament, Elder," Hatch-Tender Jinwirys said. "None of the others can come close to matching either of them."

  It was tradition for dragons at their fifteenth year to compete in a tournament to mark the moment they ceased to be hatchlings. But a tournament where all but two of the participants knew they stood no chance of winning would not have been appealing. The actual winner of the tournament had been Kuen, whose sudden, explosive strikes had been near-impossible for any of the others to defend against.

  "I had heard that Raan's strength was impressive," Beolkyax commented. "But to throw a dragon almost his own size across the arena like that..."

  Jinwirys nodded. "In truth, in a test of pure strength, only one of the Tenders can challenge him," he admitted. In a duel it would have been another matter, of course, but even the youngest of the Tenders was at the Immortal stage, and no Immortal would ever duel a Mortal. It would simply be cruel. "Kese's strength is impressive in its own right, but she has trained to get around his power where the others still try to compete with him on instinct."

  "Smart."

  "That said, Raan has learned to adapt to her speed and stamina just as she has his strength and durability. They have been rivals almost since they have been old enough to understand the term. Their competition has honed them well."

  "Who has won more duels between the two?" Beolkyax asked.

  "Ah..." Jinwirys beckoned one of the other young dragons across with his tail. "Apome, what is the record of the duels between Raan and Kese at the moment?" he asked, when she scampered over - with a nervous look up at the Elder.

  "I only started seriously keeping track when we were twelve," she admitted, relaxing slightly at the question, "but Raan has won seventy-eight to Kese's seventy-seven. And five draws."

  "Such an even match?"

  "Every time one of them wins, the next time they duel, the other one's come up with a way to counter whatever made them lose," Apome explained.

  "Thank you." The Elder dismissed her before looking back to Raan and Kese. "The only other times a Bloodborn has found an opponent that can challenge them amongst their fellow younglings, it has been another Bloodborn. In any other situation, I would be expecting incredible things from Raan as he Forges his being. As it is..." He sighed. "How do you think he will take the news?"

  "Not well," Jinwirys admitted. "I cannot say that any dragon would take it well, but he knows Kese is Bloodborn, knows what that means, and knows that he's her equal. To know that with a Bloodline he could likely reach the Fifth, or even Sixth Forging, and have all that ripped away from him...it will hurt."

  "The Archivists have not found a Bloodline compatible with him in the Hall?"

  "They say there is a chance that their circumspect divinations might simply have missed something. But I fear they simply do not wish to crush his hope completely by telling him that there is nothing for him in the Hall of Bloodlines."

  Their conversation was interrupted by a sudden explosion of movement in the duel. Raan pounced at Kese, tucking his wings under him to shield himself from any claws to the underbelly, clearly aiming to simply knock her down by dint of sheer mass and momentum. Instead of dodging like she had before, she ducked, furled her wings, and as he landed on top of her, erupted back to a standing posture and shoved her wings out, flipping Raan off her and sending him tumbling back across the duelling ring.

  Raan rolled to his paws in a heartbeat - but in that heartbeat, Kese leapt at him. He wasn't dextrous enough to roll and slash at her belly like she had his in previous duels, so instead he ducked, forcing her to land on his back, where she was relatively harmless - like all dragons, the scales on his back and limbs were the toughest, and he could easily guard her attempts to claw at his side and belly.

  Or at least, he'd thought she was harmless. But instead of trying to attack him, she wrapped her legs and tail around his, as though she was trying to force him to the ground. The moment of confusion as he tried to work out why she'd try something they both knew she couldn't do was all she needed, and by the time he realised that she wasn't trying to pin him but simply to get a good grip on him, her wings had unfurled.

  He yelped in shock as a mighty beat of her wings lifted them both into the air.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  His own wings were trapped between them, and she had too tight a grip on him for him to break free. He twisted his neck to see her smirking down at him - and then another beat of her wings slammed him head-first into the ground.

  The duelling arena's magic diffused the blow with a loud gong and flash of light and Kese leapt away, grinning as he stumbled to his feet, muzzle covered with sparkly glitter - the sign that he had been the one to be protected by the arena, as though there was any doubt.

  "Since when could you do that?!" he half-whined, half-laughed.

  "You thought I was going to let you have more wins than me when we came of age?" she retorted.

  They remembered themselves after a moment and bowed to Elder Beolkyax-Tahi as etiquette expected of them - and were then mobbed by the other younglings as they chattered excitedly. Both Raan and Kese made a point of congratulating Kuen on her victory in the tournament, making her paw embarrassedly at her muzzle at the praise, until the excitement died down enough that Kese could flick Raan with her tail.

  "So...rematch?"

  "Absolutely," he grinned, mind already spinning with ideas of how to stop Kese abducting him into the air again.

  "Everyone!" Jinwirys called, interrupting them. "The ceremony will be starting shortly, and Elder Beolkyax-Tahi has offered to teach you all about Bloodlines. Follow us."

  "After the ceremony, then?" Kese grinned mischievously. "As long as you're okay with your first experience as an adult being the introduction of your muzzle to the floor again."

  Raan swatted her with his wing. "You do remember what happened the last time you came up with a move that I would 'never be able to handle,' right?"

  They fell into line behind the Elder and the Tenders as they headed down a deep, winding tunnel that felt like it stretched on for so long that it couldn't possibly have fitted into the Wellheart. It was an eerie experience, and the younglings huddled together a little closer as they walked through the darkness -

  Until a radiant, prismatic glow began to illuminate the tunnel, reflecting off the scales of the adult dragons and bathing the younglings in colour.

  "You will come here regularly when you are adults," Jinwirys said, "to receive Insight into your progression, and your nature after your Reforging. You will also come here, if you take a mate and wish to give your mana to future generations, or if, sadly, you lose someone you care about. This is the most important place in our society.

  "The Well of Our Futures."

  The Well occupied the centre of the cave, a swirling mass of colour easily big enough that the Elder could have submerged in it without any limb touching the edges of the pool, casting light across the cave and to the tunnels beyond. Near thirty Archivists stood silently waiting, their papyrus rippling across their bodies as they bowed in greeting to the Elder.

  "One by one, you will put your heads into the Well," Jinwirys instructed. "From that moment on, you will be respiring mana on your own, instead of receiving it through the Well's bond. That will also allow you to receive the Well's Insight and leave the Wellheart on your own. You will be considered adults in our society."

  Kese stepped up to the Well, the others forming in a line behind her, hesitated a moment, closed her eyes, and stuck her muzzle into the prismatic radiance. For a moment she wriggled as though the light had somehow caught hold of her, and the younglings' eyes widened in fear - and then she stumbled back, casting prismatic drops around her that dissolved into sparks and glitter before they touched anything.

  "Are you okay?" Raan asked.

  She nodded. "It's just an...odd...feeling."

  'Odd' proved to be the way most of the younglings described it - and when Raan's own turn came, he found why. It wasn't unpleasant, but not enjoyable either. It should have been terrifying, exposing himself to such monumental power, but it filled him with an unmistakeable peace and calm, and he knew it was no more a threat to him than the Elder, even though both could have trivially destroyed him if they wished it.

  He felt, through some sense he could never have explained never mind been aware he possessed, a tiny mote of mana form, etching something in an ancient script he didn't know and yet understood perfectly.

  Thy unforged self names thee Mortal Dragon.

  "The Well does more than just allow our species to continue," Elder Beolkyax-Tahi said, once all the younglings - no longer younglings, he corrected himself mentally - had initiated into the Well. "It guides our advancement and allows us to understand our abilities and their limits. No doubt you all heard the Well name you Mortal Dragons. That is the stage of life that every dragon begins at. Even a dragon like me was once a Mortal Dragon.

  "What makes dragons what we are," the Elder continued, "is our ability to ritually Forge our being to strengthen ourselves with mana. The Forging alone makes us vastly more durable, to the point that even if Jinwirys lacked even the slightest amount of mana in his scales - which I shall explain shortly - you could all attack him with all your strength and barely leave a single scratch.

  "When you achieve your Forgings, the Well will name them, along with which conjunctions of the seven suns you carry an affinity for, as well as your species. Species and conjunctions are useful for an overview of one's abilities, and you will find those regularly shared once you accomplish your Forgings and begin to interact with the older adults. Most scholars agree that you should reach the peak of each Stage, or as close as you can, before undergoing your Forgings, though that is not something for you to concern yourselves with immediately, as your mere nature as dragons and the training your Tenders have put you through puts you on par with high Mortal stage creatures by default.

  "Once you reach the Immortal stage, you will find the Well assigns you Talents. They are the Well's means of keeping our minds intact as we age, at the cost of restricting our ability to learn and improve beyond the most general knowledge to a small number of topics. There are but a few things that can be learned without a Talent for them, and all of them are those things the Well recognises as essential to our strength - spellrunes, martial arts, and the like.

  "Now, most importantly, once you accomplish your first Forging, you will be able to rapidly heal yourselves by consuming your mana. It is a general rule of thumb that if your mana is as full as it can be, consuming it all will be sufficient to heal you from near-death. However, do not think that mana makes you unkillable." He released just enough of his mana to ensure the attention of the young adults snapped to him instinctively as he spoke. "Some lethal wounds will be beyond your mana to heal no matter how much of it you possess, and some monsters will possess dangerous abilities that will interfere with your healing. Healing in this manner is also not instant. I myself have had to spend centuries healing from wounds in the past," he added, pointedly, and he could see the wide-eyed looks on the young dragons' faces as they tried to comprehend something that could have hurt a dragon as big as him so badly.

  He wasn't going to tell them how weak even a Fifth-Forged Elder was in comparison to some of the monsters out there. They would never dare leave the Wellheart if they knew - and it wasn't as though they would ever encounter such monsters before reaching the Fifth Forging themselves in any case.

  If indeed they reached the Fifth Forging at all.