Academy Obscura: The Flame Within by Briar Cassia

Author:Briar, Cassia
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wednesday Ink LLC
Published: 2019-09-10T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

May said she was going to look into my scaly skin episode, but I decided to do my own research too. It couldn’t hurt. And I hadn’t heard anything from her in days.

The library was on the third floor of Sorrentino Hall, which had no windows. Row after row of ten foot tall bookcases seemed to go on forever. At the end of each case, was a plaque stating the subject for that section. The place smelled of dust and old paper.

I gathered books from several sections, including mythology, history, and sociology, plopping the heavy volumes down on a desk. The student at the next table over glared at the loud noise.

“Sorry,” I whispered, taking a seat. Their glare deepened. People really took their studying seriously around there.

Black scales, heat, and the look of burning coals. That’s what I had to go on, and assuming that it wasn’t a disease…and keeping a completely open mind about it…my best guess was salamanders or dragons. Liam had lectured on dragons once. He’d said that they were on the uncertain list. Were they mythological or actual supernaturals?

A part of me balked at that line of thinking. I wasn’t a freaking dragon! That would be mind-blowing and impossible. Right? But so was being a witch—at least that was what I’d thought a couple of months ago. For the sake of my investigation though, I was going to keep an open mind until I could rule out the most obvious explanation, given the clues that I had.

For several hours, I dug into those books. It turned out that there was no such thing as salamander supernaturals. And I’d only thought of them because I’d once read about salamanders being associated with fire. So I moved on to dragons. My research reiterated what Liam had said in class. More specifically, no one had seen a dragon-shifter, apparently that was what they were called, in the past several hundred years. Yet, several authors refused to rule out the possibility of their existence because of some old folktales, which were mentioned, but not covered, in the books.

One passage I found particularly interesting…

Dragon-shifters, a rare type of supernatural, choose a home and rarely leave it. As we know from various legends, they adore and collect jewels, gold, and other treasures. They are hoarders. One of their obsessions is protecting their hoard of goods, the other is accumulating more. They are greedy beasts. Female dragon-shifters are rumored to often take several mates.

That passage seemed to rule out dragon-shifter as the answer. I didn’t have a home, or mates, or hoard any kind of valuable treasures. I closed the books and put them back on their shelves.

I needed to see May, and at least ask her for an update on her research. She’d know more than me what to look for. My patience of waiting for her to come to me was wearing thin.

In the Academy Hall, I headed toward the hallway that led to the teacher’s offices. It was late and the building was quiet.

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