"While the ability to heal is available to any dragon who has undergone the First Forging," Elder Beolkyax-Tahi continued, "the first three aspects you will Forge - Flame, Scale and Blood - each allow you to wield your mana in a different way. These can be Forged in any order.

  "By Forging your Flame, you gain the ability to stoke your internal fires with mana. Aside from allowing you to gain mana from consuming objects that would otherwise be beyond your ability to digest, mana-enhanced fire can be used to refresh your bodies - not healing injuries, but instead simply banishing fatigue and exertion. So long as a dragon with Forged Flame has mana to spare, they can exert themselves without tiring in the least. The most important benefit of Forged Flame, however, is that it can be used in conjunction with alchemical supplements to allow us to unleash powerful breath weapons. These alchemical supplements will have different effects upon your internal fires when you stoke them with mana - some will allow you to produce a single, immensely powerful jet of flame, while others might allow you to unleash a flame in a shorter range but much wider area.

  "When you Forge your Blood, you will be able to pool mana through your scales and bones, shielding them from harm. Provided your body is hardened in this way, you can withstand any attack without suffering any permanent harm - although, of course, it costs mana to mitigate the damage, and if you run out, you will be as vulnerable as any other dragon.

  "Lastly, Forging your Scales will allow you to etch spells upon them and accomplish effects that are far beyond the limits of our bodies. Many of the feats you will have heard ascribed to dragons in legends were accomplished through spellcraft.

  "There is no small amount of overlap between the three. Dragons with Forged Blood can display mutations that permit them abilities akin to the breath weapons of Forged Flame, and dragons with Forged Flame can burn spells into their internal fires. These abilities will, by the intention of the creators of the Bloodlines you will cultivate, synergise with each other as you grow stronger, but most importantly, they all consume mana.

  "The rate at which you will find your abilities drawing mana varies between dragons, even dragons cultivating the same Bloodline. Your mana will naturally recover over time, but is best supplemented through food. After a hard battle, you will find your appetites increased drastically. If you expect a challenging hunt, you would be well-served to bring some food with you to supplement the body of your kill.

  "Now, what does all this mean for you right now?" Unsurprisingly, the dragons - whose attention had been starting to drift at the swathe of information - was immediately brought back. "Bloodlines are fundamentally a set of instructions on how to Forge your being to new stages, derived from what few records that survived the Shattering.

  "As I said earlier, the first three stages involve Forging your Flame, Scale and Blood, although the exact order varies between Bloodlines. The fourth stage is Forging your Core. The Fifth and Sixth Forgings involve Forging Mind and Magic, though the order can again be swapped. The Seventh Forging, according to records from before the Shattering, involves Forging the Soul.

  "Not that any of you need to worry about that yet," he added. "The last time anyone successfully achieved the Sixth Forging was during the Second Darkness, before even Elder Akarial-Eshouj hatched. What you little ones need to worry about is accomplishing your First, and then Second, Forgings.

  "The First Forging will bring you to what is referred to by the Well as the Willworker stage, though you may hear it informally called the Chromatic stage, as the Well consistently names every species of that stage with a colour. Its true name comes from the power of the Will that it grants us: the ability to move objects, as well as store inanimate objects within our Will." He flexed his Will out over the young dragons, lifting them a few inches into the air as they wriggled and yelped in shock before gently lowering them back to the ground.

  "The Second Forging," he continued, "leads to the Immortal stage. While our society encourages pushing yourself to reach higher and higher stages in general, reaching the Immortal stage is absolutely critical, as it is what permits us to live forever. I have seen dragons who fail to reach the Immortal stage wither from age and die," he added, grimly. "It is a horrific - but mercifully rare - sight."

  He very carefully did not look at Raan. The Archivists will find a Bloodline that can bring him to the Immortal stage, at a minimum. We have hundreds of millennia worth of knowledge. We can help one little hatchling.

  "All that said," he continued, "do not neglect the opportunity to learn for yourselves, to seek out hobbies. Once you reach the Immortal stage, your Talents will make it far harder for you to learn entirely new tasks, and once you reach a century in age, it becomes close to impossible. Living millennia without any source of enjoyment is a poor life indeed."

  Tender Jinwirys spoke up again. "When your name is called, accompany the Archivist who calls you to one of the private chambers. There, you will learn what Bloodlines you have been offered. You are under no obligation to accept any of them, and may, if you choose, enter the Hall of Bloodlines to search for a Bloodline that calls to you. Once you have picked a Bloodline to cultivate, you will learn the ritual required to perform the First Forging, and what reagents you will need. You may claim a lair of your own from the Archivists when you are ready to begin your Forging.

  "You will have to fly to Mortal stage Domains and destroy Mortal stage monsters in order to collect some of the reagents you will need, but all the reagents of the First Stage should already be supplied for you, or will be given to you by your mentors - if they are not, go to the Archivists. Do not, under any circumstances, try to enter a Domain of a higher stage to your own without accompaniment from a dragon of that stage," he ordered, punctuating the command with a sharp snap of his jaws. "And if you find yourselves in a pack split across stages and choose to enter a more dangerous Domain, I suggest ensuring you have one member of the Domain's stage for every member of the lower stage. There are plenty of older dragons in the Spanheart who will be willing to ensure your safety while you harvest what you need for your Bloodlines.

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

  "With that said...Archivists, if you are prepared?"

  The Archivists stepped forwards and started calling the young dragons forwards. Kese was one of the first to be called forwards, and Raan shifted awkwardly as the number of dragons decreased.

  He was not the last to be called, to his relief.

  The fact that he was collected by the one Coalesced Archivist who had been in the group, though, worried him.

  "I am Dilphoge," the Archivist introduced herself. "Normally, I would tell you this box -" she tapped a small chest, with 'Raan' etched into it in ancient runic "- contains the Bloodline Orbs offered to you by those dragons who believe you can inherit their Bloodlines. However..." She paused and sighed. "When you were tested as an egg, there were no dragons who sensed any potential for inheriting their Bloodlines."

  Raan stared at her, blankly, as his dreams cracked and broke apart in front of his eyes.

  "Since you were born, a few dragons whose Bloodlines give them a gift for sensing potential visited you," Dilphoge continued, "but none of them were able to sense any latent potential for you either."

  She was waiting for him to say something, he realised.

  "I...see," he lied. He didn't. How was it possible to be born without a connection to a Bloodline? "Has this...happened before?"

  "Yes," the Archivist answered bluntly. "During the Second Radiance. The records show she tried to create her own Bloodline, but the ritual failed and damaged her core enough that she could never again make the attempt."

  Raan flinched. "So...what happens? What...what do I do?"

  "The Archives will aid you as much as we can," Dilphoge promised. "And the Hall of Bloodlines is open to you as it is any other dragon. Explore its corridors. Thousands of Bloodlines no longer cultivated by dragons lie there. Perhaps one of them will resonate with you."

  "Thank you, Senior," Raan said, after an awkward few moments of silence. "If you will excuse me. I would...like to think."

  If any of the Archivists were surprised by the sudden clatter of claws on stone as Raan fled from the Well and dived into the Currents beyond the Spanheart, none of them showed it.

  Domains passed beneath him, Willworker stage ones almost close enough he could see the monsters upon them.

  Monsters that would, forever, be an existential threat to him, that could kill him as easily as breathing because he would never have a Bloodline. Would never be able to fight.

  Would wither and die to simple age.

  The Domain they'd used for their first hunt had - after centuries - drifted out of the orbit of the Spanheart. It hadn't yet left the Currents, nor fallen enough that Mortal stage monsters would start to form there, but it would only be a few years.

  Raan ignored the sheep, and boars, and wolves, and lions, and even the elephants that fled from him as he crashed down heavily into the grass. He didn't bother to land properly. Minor collisions like this were harmless to him now.

  How long had he trained for, pushing his body to its limits to amplify the effect of his future Bloodline?

  What was the point of it all now?

  At some point later, an elephant dropped out of the sky and landed in front of him.

  "I'm not hungry, Kese."

  She circled around, gliding down and landing next to him with barely a ripple of air. There was a little bag dangling from her neck like a necklace. "How'd you know it was me?"

  "Nobody else is strong enough to fly an elephant carcass around." He took a bite of the fresh kill anyway, letting its blood trickle down his neck. Kese draped a wing over him and flexed it, squeezing him gently. "How much do you know?" he asked, hollowly.

  "The Elder said you weren't compatible with any of the modern Bloodlines that reach up to the Fourth Forging," she replied, quietly. "That most of the Bloodlines that aren't cultivated today are ignored for a reason."

  Raan sighed, craning his neck to snap off one of the tusks, crunching it in his jaws. "Yeah. That's about it." He paused mid-chew. "Wait, why were you talking to the Elder?"

  "Oh." Kese ducked her head. "I...the Bloodline I'm inheriting is his. Or the one he cultivates, anyway. It's even older than he is. So once I chose that Bloodline, he...offered to let me become his disciple."

  Raan perked up. His excitement wasn't even faked. "Are you serious? You're going to be an Elder's disciple? That's amazing, Kese!"

  She gave a little smile. "I know, but you..."

  "I'll find something." He could see the doubt in Kese's eyes, cast around for something to say, something to convince her. "The last time there was a dragon like me, the Hall of Bloodlines wasn't open for anyone to look at. The Bloodline ritual she invented didn't work, but if she could get close enough to making one that it triggered with practically nothing to base it on at all, and I've got thousands of Bloodline rituals to look at, I'm sure I can find one that I can adjust to work for me."

  It wasn't until he finished speaking that he realised that that could...actually work.

  Kese leant over and nuzzled him gently. "I really hope you're right."

  So do I.

  "Besides," he said, aloud, "I don't need to be a Willworker to help gather the resources everyone needs for their Forging from the Mortal Domains. It's not as though I have a Bloodline of my own to work towards yet."

  Kese snagged the last bone from the elephant before Raan could, snapping it and sucking out the marrow with a purr of satisfaction. "Well, on that topic...everyone else already went diving off to the Mortal Domains, but Elder Beolkyax -" she omitted his Elder Name, as was her right as his new disciple "- told me of a Domain that will have one of the resources I need, Fire-Petal Roses. And apparently, it has Mortal stage monsters in it that will be a good challenge for us. Some might even need us to work together to bring down." Her tail swished excitedly at the thought of a proper hunt.

  The last time they'd actually had to work together to hunt had been the first time they'd killed an elephant. They'd barely been half its size back then, and it had been one of the few times Raan's strength had proved insufficient to overpower their prey through brute force. He'd still been able to hold it to a standstill, though, and give Kese the opportunity to get at its throat, and the threat that had seemed almost insurmountable when Raan had failed to knock it down had died after less than a minute of brawling.

  Beasts were just too weak to be a real challenge to a dragon. But a full-fledged monster...

  "As long as we're careful."

  Kese grinned. "Who needs to be careful? We have you."