Chapter 25: Chapter 25 – Iggy’s Secret

A few days later, Thenio was sitting at the desk in his room, studying a book on enchanting theory. This was one of several books that Ariom had assigned him to read—an academic treatise written by a well-known magic researcher more than a century before. It was interesting, but it was much denser reading than the watered down magic theory textbooks he was used to. He had to progress through it slowly, making notes and writing down anything he didn't understand and needed to look up in a reference book or ask Ariom about later.

He reached the end of a passage and paused to stretch and look around the room. When he turned to his right, he saw Iggy lying on the back of the sofa. He was holding Obby in front of him and resting his head on the chicken's back while he stared listlessly out the window.

Thenio frowned slightly. Iggy had been feeling a bit down ever since Bero and Humerus had left. Thenio had been making an extra effort to pay attention to the little dragon the past few days, but he still clearly missed having another familiar around. Humerus might enjoy arguing and teasing, but he'd spent a lot of time playing with Iggy and teaching him various things.

It didn't help that Ariom had been extremely busy lately. In addition to working on improvements to Thenio's insulation bands, he'd been researching the Order of the Ravener and studying the enchantments the Royal Guard had shown him, as well as doing some kind of remodeling work on an unused room down in the basement. It had apparently been a magic practice room that Ariom's apprentices had used in the past. Thenio wasn't sure exactly what the purpose of the remodeling was. Ariom hadn't told him, and he currently wasn't allowed in the area because there was too much magic power floating around.

"Iggy, I'm almost done. I just have a couple more pages to read. Then we can play for a while, all right?"

Iggy glanced in his direction. "Mmm. Okay."

He didn't sound enthusiastic, but his tail waved a little. He probably just wasn't thrilled about the wait and would perk up once it was actually time to play.

Thenio gave him an apologetic smile and then turned back to his book.

He couldn't help feeling a little frustrated that he wasn't more useful to Ariom as an assistant. Studying and looking after Iggy were the only things Ariom had asked him to do so far that week, not counting his regular physical and magic training, which was all for Thenio's benefit anyway. He had also volunteered to take over the cooking, but Ariom had said he didn't want Thenio to get too overwhelmed, and in the end they'd settled for just alternating meals.

Thenio knew there was no reason for him to feel guilty. Ariom was the one who had offered to hire him, and he had written up the terms of their employment contract himself. If he was willing to pay someone to just read books and play with his dragon, what reason did Thenio have to complain?

But...still.... A grandmaster wizard could surely have his pick of magic assistants. How long would he be willing to put up with a teenage boy who hadn't even made it past his first year of magic school? What if Iggy got tired of him? What if Ariom decided to take on a new apprentice? What if—?

Thenio shook himself, interrupting his own thoughts. No. He should be focusing on what he could do right now. Worrying about the future wouldn't help anything.

Especially not if he got too upset and made his magic explode....

He let out a sigh and refocused his attention on his studying. A little while later, he finally reached the end of the chapter. He jotted down a few last notes, then set his pen down and pushed his chair away from the desk.

"Thenio's done studying?" Iggy asked, lifting his head and perking up his ears.

"Yeah, I'm all done." Thenio stood up and stretched his arms up above his head. "What do you want to do now?"

"I want to look at Seyli's dragon book!" Iggy said eagerly, jumping to his feet. "Oh. Sorry, Obby. I didn't mean to drop you...."

The chicken had been knocked off the back of the sofa by Iggy's sudden movement, but he only fell a short distance before coming to a stop in midair and then floating up to hover over Iggy's head. Thenio knew that the dragon must have activated Obby's 'float' and 'follow' functions. Ariom had recently let him look at the enchantment diagram he'd used when he made Obby, and it was absolutely ridiculous how many magic formations he'd managed to pack into that matrix. It was easily one of the most impressive pieces of enchanting Thenio had ever seen.

And it was on a plush chicken....

Thenio shook his head and went to get a book from one of the bookshelves next to the fireplace. Seyli had lent him two books about dragons the last time she'd come over. One was a very technical book on dragon anatomy. Thenio found the text in that one hard to understand, since he didn't have any kind of medical background. But it had a lot of useful diagrams. He was already pretty familiar with dragon bones, thanks to Humerus. But copying images from the book was teaching him a lot about how a dragon's musculature worked, and he had already seen some improvements in his drawings as a result.

The book Iggy wanted was the other one, though. This was an illustrated encyclopedia of dragon breeds. Iggy was fascinated by all the different types of dragons in it, and the two of them had been reading through it together. It wasn't as complicated as the anatomy book, but it was still a bit too difficult for Iggy to read by himself. And he enjoyed having someone read to him, no matter what kind of book it was.

Thenio was also enjoying learning more about dragons. He'd known there were different kinds, but he'd had no idea just how many breeds there were. The Azure, Sunset, and Violet Flares that Seyli's family bred were all in there. There were also others like the cute little Golden Zephyrs, which looked similar to Iggy but with shiny gold scales and bright blue eyes. Then there were the elegant Frostfeathers, which resembled living ice sculptures, and the bulky Bronzehearts, whose skin was covered in tough plates instead of scales. Iggy liked the Inferno dragons, which had black scales over bright red-orange skin. And Thenio was rather fond of the fluffy Storm dragons that had feathered wings and branching, deer-like horns. They reminded him a little of the dream beast.

Today they read the section about sea dragons. These were actually a whole different species, but they had enough in common with dragons that the two were often lumped together. As the name implied, sea dragons lived in the ocean. There were several different varieties, but they all had long, snake-like bodies and short legs with webbed feet. They didn't have wings, but most of them had fins on their backs and tails.

"Tropical breeds of sea dragons typically live in colonies of between fifty and a hundred members. They build nests in undersea rock formations or coral reefs, which provide shelter for the eggs and hatchlings."

"What are coral reefs?" Iggy asked curiously.

"They're....well, it's a little hard to explain." Thenio paused for a moment, wondering how much detail he should go into. "Corals are things in the ocean that look kind of like plants. They're not really plants, but...well, they're sort of shaped like that. And a reef is a whole bunch of corals all living together. Kind of like trees living in a forest. I think there was a picture somewhere...."

He flipped a couple of pages forward and found a drawing of a coral bed with several black and yellow sea dragons swimming around it.

"Those bumpy things are corals?" Iggy tilted his head, looking at the picture with interest. "Oh! And there's a sea dragon egg!" He pressed his nose up against a part of the picture that showed sand and plant debris gathered into a nest in a hollow in the coral, with a single black egg partially visible inside it. "Thenio, look! It looks like my egg!"

"Does it?" Thenio leaned forward to look around Iggy's head at the egg in the drawing. "Oh, I remember Seyli saying something about that. 'Black with a rough surface,' wasn't it?"

"Mmm!" Iggy looked up, his tail waving excitedly. "Thenio hasn't seen my egg yet, right? Let's go look at it now!"

Without waiting for a response, he jumped off the sofa, where they'd been sitting to look at the encyclopedia, and ran toward the door, with Obby trailing along behind him.

"Hey, Iggy! Wait!"

Thenio hurriedly put the book down and chased after the little dragon. Iggy was waiting for him out in the hallway, tail still waving vigorously. When Thenio caught up to him, he turned and trotted purposefully down the hall.

"Come on! My egg is in the glass thing in Ariom's room. I'll show you!"

"Um...that's.... I'm not sure if Ariom would want me going into his room without asking him first...."

"It's okay! Ariom is in his room right now. So we can ask him when we get there!"

"Huh?" Thenio blinked in surprise. "How do you know? Didn't he go to the workroom earlier?"

Iggy paused and looked back at him, Obby bobbing around over his head. "Because I feel him being in there."

"Oh. Is that because of your familiar contract?"

"It's because Ariom is Ariom. I can always feel where he is." Iggy tilted his head, looking puzzled by the question.

"Ah...okay...."

Remembering what Seyli had told him about silent eggs and how Ariom had managed to help Iggy hatch, Thenio realized why the little dragon was confused. He probably didn't remember ever not being in a familiar contract, so asking him about its effects was a bit like asking a fish how it had learned to swim.

When they reached Ariom's room, the door was half open, and Iggy went in without hesitation while Thenio hung back awkwardly.

"Ariom, hi! I brought Thenio to come see my egg, okay?"

"Hmm? Oh. All right."

Hearing Ariom's voice coming from inside and apparently consenting to the visit, Thenio cautiously opened the door a little further and stepped into the room.

The layout of Ariom's room was similar to Thenio's, but it had a much more lived-in appearance. The bookshelves were full of books and other items on display. There were more decorations hanging on the walls. And in the spot where Thenio's room had a desk, Ariom's had a large display cabinet with a glass front. It also had several empty wooden shelves running along the front side. Thenio thought that was a little odd until he saw Iggy flying up to land on one of the shelves and realized they were actually platforms for the little dragon to sit on while he looked at the contents of the cabinet.

Ariom was sitting on the sofa, and he turned halfway around to look at them as they came in. "Iggy's things are on the middle and lower shelves in the cabinet," he told Thenio, pointing to where Iggy had just landed. "His eggshell is right in the center there."

"Are you done with work for the day?" Thenio asked as he crossed the room.

Ariom shook his head. "Just taking a short break. I was working on that stuff for the Royal Guard, and I can only stand to look at pictures of mutilated corpses for so long at a time...." He glanced at a clock sitting on the mantle. "I'm also expecting a delivery in a few minutes. I'll have more work to do once it gets here."

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"We're getting a package? Is it things to go in the storeroom?" Iggy asked.

The third floor of the east wing of the house was a large storage area for magic materials. Thenio hadn't actually seen it yet, since there were a lot of things that emitted magic power in there, so it was off limits for the time being. But he'd seen the locked door just outside the workroom and the heavy security features that were installed on the magic lift at the east end of the house. Knowing that something as valuable as Iggy's space pocket was simply hung up on a rack in the dragon room when it wasn't in use, Thenio didn't even dare to think about what kinds of treasures Ariom might deem worthy of keeping under lock and key.

"No, we don't have another materials order coming until next week," Ariom said. "This is some equipment to go down in the basement. You can help me check it for magic leaks later."

"Okay!" Iggy waved his tail, apparently happy at the prospect of helping Ariom with his work. Then he turned back to the display cabinet. "Thenio, look! This is the shell from my egg, okay? The egg I came out of when I was a tiny baby!"

Thenio looked in through the glass. There seemed to be a lighting enchantment built into the case, and the soft white glow clearly lit up a small platform covered in silver velvet. On this platform was an eggshell about the size of a duck egg that was broken into two large pieces, with a few fragments lying around it. The shell was completely black, with a rough texture on the outside, reminiscent of lava rock.

Wait...lava rock? As he looked at the eggshell, something clicked in Thenio's mind.

He glanced over at Ariom. "Hey...does 'Iggy' come from 'igneous,' by any chance?"

"Wow! You guessed it!" Iggy started hopping up and down excitedly. "Thenio is super smart! He guessed my real name!"

"Your real name is Igneous? Seriously?" Thenio stared at the excited dragon. It was true that his color matched, but giving such a cute and rambunctious little creature such a serious-sounding name was kind of....

Ariom cleared his throat a bit awkwardly. "Well...yes. It's pretty much what you're thinking. His egg was like that. And he's a purebred Violet Flare, so at first I assumed he was going to have a fire primary. So 'Igneous' seemed like the obvious thing to name him. I didn't realize the familiar contract formation I used on his egg would end up turning him into a void morph. And once he got a little older and I realized what his personality was like...well. 'Iggy' seemed like a better fit for normal use. He still likes the name 'Igneous,' though, so that's how he's registered with the Magic Beast Office."

"Hey, what about Obby?" Iggy scooped up the toy chicken, which had been sitting on the shelf next to him and held him up in front of Thenio. "Can you guess Obby's name, too?"

"Um...." Thenio stared at the chicken, his thoughts scrambling around for an answer.

Iggy...Obby...black chicken...black dragon...black egg...lava rock...Igneous...fire...lava...Obby....

"...Obsidian?"

"Yay! You did it!" Iggy's tail was waving wildly, thumping against the glass of the display cabinet. "Did you hear, Obby? Thenio guessed your name, too! He's super, super smart!"

Unfortunately, the enthusiastic tail waving combined with standing up on his hind legs holding Obby was a little too much for Iggy to handle. He wobbled and lost his balance, toppling over the edge of the wooden platform. Thenio hurriedly reached out and caught him before he fell.

"I'm glad you're happy, but calm down a little...." Thenio set the little dragon back on the platform. "Um...why don't you show me the other things?" He glanced back inside the display case. "Those are lifemimics, aren't they? Is that you when you were a hatchling?"

To one side of the black eggshell was a small figurine of what looked like a newly hatched baby Iggy, his bright orange eyes looking upwards with a happy expression. It was highly realistic and detailed, so Thenio guessed that it must have been made with lifemimicry, a magic technique that produced a replica of a physical object or creature. He had heard that a lot of wizards liked to make lifemimics of their familiars as babies. Ariom obviously did. Looking along the cabinet shelf, Thenio saw that most of it was filled with figures of Iggy in various poses and stages of growth.

"Mmm!" Iggy nodded. "That's me! It's me when I was a tiny little baby!"

He had been tiny. If the figurine was true to size, newborn Iggy would have been less than four inches from nose to tail tip. He could have curled up and slept in the palm of Thenio's hand with room to spare.

"You've really grown a lot, haven't you?"

"Mmm! I have!" Iggy puffed out his chest. "I'm a big, strong dragon now!"

Actually...Iggy was still unusually small for his age. Thenio had suspected that was the case from the beginning, but now that he'd read halfway through a dragon encyclopedia, which included average measurements for each breed, he was sure of it. Not that being small was a bad thing, since with magic beasts, a smaller physical body tended to correspond to higher magic power.

But Thenio knew better than to mention it to the 'big, strong dragon.'

"And look down here!" Iggy said, jumping down to the lower shelf. "This is where I keep my special treasures! Thenio is my friend, so I'll let you look at them, okay?"

Thenio bent down to look. The bottom shelf contained an odd assortment of things. There was a glass bowl filled with colorful marbles, and a wooden tray with small rocks spread out on it. There was also an arrangement of various feathers and another of dried seed pods. Along the back of the cabinet was a cloth-covered board with pressed leaves fastened to it and several picture frames that held what looked like finger paintings, though when Thenio looked closer, he saw the marks of tiny paws, rather than human fingerprints.

Having two younger brothers, Thenio understood right away what this strange collection was and how he ought to react to it.

"Wow, these are really nice treasures. Did you collect all these?"

"I did!" Iggy said proudly, waving his tail. "I found them out in the garden...and at the park...and at Uncle Bero's farm...and when we went to visit the school...and all kinds of places! I'm good at finding treasures, huh?"

Thenio smiled. "Yeah, you really are. What about those paintings? Did you make those?"

"Mmm! I did!" The little dragon puffed out his chest even further. "Those are fireworks that I painted with magic paints! They're good, huh? I told you I was good at painting with magic paints, right?"

"Yeah, you did. And they are good. You're a really good painter."

Iggy looked extremely happy with the praise. His tail was waving hard enough that Thenio was worried he might knock himself off the cabinet again.

"The picture frames have magic insulation built in, and the magic paints that Iggy uses aren't high in magic power, so you don't have to worry about them affecting you."

Thenio looked up to see that Ariom had come over to join them. He bent down and pointed to one of Iggy's paintings.

"The style of painting that Iggy does is based on what's called 'elemental enchanting.' It's a blend of enchanting and alchemy, really. Rather than relying on formation shape to control the magic effects, it uses the interactions between paints that are each charged with a different type of magic power. It can be very powerful, but it's difficult to learn, and the paints can be very dangerous if you don't handle them properly. Well, since they emit magic, they'd be dangerous for you no matter how you handled them...."

"Oh, Humerus said something about Iggy really liking elemental paints," Thenio said, nodding. "But he said you made a special version that was safer."

"That's right." Ariom gave a wry smile. "Iggy caught me working with some real elemental paints once and was absolutely smitten with them. Well, I can understand that. With the way they emit magic, they're quite beautiful when you look at them with magesight. It's similar for dragons with their high magic sensitivity. But I couldn't just let him play around with the real thing. So I worked on it for a while and eventually made a version that was less powerful and more stable, so they’re safe for him to practice with."

"Mmm! Ariom makes good magic paints!" Iggy said brightly. Then his ears drooped a little. "The real ones are still prettier, though...."

Ariom reached out to pat him. "If you keep practicing, maybe you'll be able to use the real ones when you're older." He turned back to Thenio. "He's actually pretty good at the elemental painting style already. His magic sensitivity and intuition give him a natural understanding of how the different magic types will interact. It's just that dragon paws aren't really built for things like painting, so he has some trouble getting the design just right. He's gradually improving, though, so he'll probably be able to control the paint well enough eventually."

He patted the little dragon again and then straightened up. He looked like he was about to say something else, but then he suddenly frowned and looked back at the painting.

"Interaction between different magic types, huh...?" he muttered.

"What?" Thenio asked, puzzled.

"Oh. Nothing, really." Ariom shook his head and turned away from the display case again. "Talking about elemental paints just made me think of something I was working on earlier. It gave me an idea for a way to approach the problem that I haven't tried yet."

Something he was working on? Was that the enchantments from the Royal Guard? What sort of idea would the elemental paints have given him for that? Curious, Thenio was about to ask Ariom more about it, but just then a chime sounded, indicating that someone was at the front gate.

"Oh, that must be our delivery," Ariom said, glancing out the window. "Why don't you two come down with me? The guy I'm expecting mentioned that he was bringing his familiar with him. You can show her around the atrium while we're setting things up downstairs."

He held out his arm so that Iggy could climb up onto his shoulder. Then they left the room with Thenio following along behind them, wondering what kind of magic creature he was going to be dealing with this time.