Lunara looked at the grass beneath her boots, then at Okamihana.
Whatever pleasure there might have been in standing outside the bracelets disappeared from her face.
Derpy had just lowered his hands when she bent toward him. Her red eyes came level with his. For a moment he thought she meant to check what maintaining two manifested bodies was doing to him.
Her fist answered that thought.
The blow sent him sliding backward. Grass folded beneath his heels, and a sharp ache traveled through his jaw before he managed to stop himself.
“Of all the places you could bring me out,” Lunara said, “you chose here? And you brought my counterpart out as well?”
Derpy touched his mouth. He looked from his birth mother to Celica, then toward his grandmother, who remained seated beside the books.
Nobody appeared surprised enough for his liking.
“Luna, stop,” Celica said. “He must have a reason. He’s using a lot of energy just to keep us here.”
Derpy could feel exactly how much. Holding them outside the bands required attention that did not become easier because one of them had decided to punch him. The connection pulled steadily, demanding more whenever his concentration shifted.
He reached into his shadow.
His fingers closed around glass, and he brought out a bottle. The last one from the Elven Empire. The queen who ruled there had given it to him, and the sight of it brought an unpleasant tightening through his shoulders.
For an instant, the field seemed too bright. He remembered another place, another set of expectations, the feeling of being watched while people decided what he could endure.
He shuddered and shook his head.
“Celica.”
She turned toward him. The movement caught her dress beneath one foot. She gathered the fabric, adjusted it enough to walk, and tried again.
“When we were in the Elven Empire, you told me a rhyme,” Derpy said. “It made me question things. And when I was in that other world with you, you told me I had to remember what I lost.”
Celica’s foot caught again.
She stumbled, spreading her mismatched wings to recover. The red feathers disturbed the petals near Okamihana’s knee while the blue-scaled wing steadied her on the other side.
“It’s been forever since I could walk like this,” she muttered. “I feel like a hatchling again.”
Derpy waited for her to find her balance. He was still waiting for an answer when Lunara moved.
“You summoned us and wasted this much magic bringing us out—”
He barely had time to put the bottle back into his shadow before her hand came toward him.
Derpy caught the strike against his forearm. The next came from the opposite side. He turned with it, felt the impact through his shoulder, and retreated a step.
Okamihana watched over the top of a closed book.
“This gives me a clearer understanding of what he’s capable of,” she said. “I won’t stop him.”
“I wasn’t asking you to,” Derpy managed.
Lunara pressed forward. He blocked again, feet shifting through the grass, trying to keep enough attention on the manifestation that she would stay solid long enough to answer him.
“I know you’re angry. But I need to know why I’m the special one.”
Her fingers passed his cheek. He knocked her arm aside.
“I don’t fully understand my own powers. The skin-shedding ability—how does that benefit me? I got it from you, but nobody explained what I’m supposed to do with it.”
He glanced toward Celica between blows.
“And you. The ice came from you. When I’m stressed, or when I want to flee, it activates. How do I reach it without having to feel like that first?”
Lunara’s fist stopped inches from his face.
Derpy kept his guard raised. He had been hit too recently to trust a pause immediately.
“Continue,” Okamihana said.
He breathed in, then slowly lowered his hands.
“Divine Judgment came from the harpies. Poison came from Blight. There’s something from Phantasm too, but that feels different.” He looked down at his fingers. “I feel like an amalgamation. A chimera.”
A lion with a snake passed through his thoughts. Different creatures joined in one body, each belonging there by some arrangement he had never been allowed to read.
Lunara laughed.
The sound startled him more than the stopped fist. She sank into the grass, one hand braced beside her, and kept laughing while he stared.
“What is so funny?”
“Because you are—”
“You are a bridge,” Okamihana interrupted, “between dragons, wolves, and harpies.”
Derpy looked at her.
“Rabbit as well.”
His grandmother tilted her head.
“Rabbit? That isn’t possible.”
“I thought so too,” Celica said. She had finally arranged her dress well enough to stand without fighting it. “Then I watched him beat the odds over and over again. I saw him transform into a wolf-rabbit in Briar Glen.”
Lunara’s amusement faded into interest. Okamihana opened her mouth.
Derpy spoke before either could begin.
“Regardless of what I am, I need to learn how to use it.”
They looked at him.
He found that he had been waiting for their complete attention, and now that he had it, admitting the rest was harder.
“I can summon things. Create things. Do things that shouldn’t make sense.” He flexed his hands, remembering the wings, the bodies and weapons that had answered him when he had not entirely understood what he was asking. “It frightens me, what I’m capable of.”
The admission left him feeling exposed. He made himself finish anyway.
“I’d prefer you taught me how to wield these abilities instead of waiting for them to activate on their own.”
Celica stepped closer.
“I can teach you,” she said. “If you trust me.”
The connection between them pulled harder. Derpy had to steady one hand against his knee. Keeping both dragons outside the bands was already using the strength he wanted them to teach him to manage.
A blue haze came off her.
Derpy watched it. His expression changed before Celica understood what he had seen.
“You’re lying.”
Her next step stopped.
“Maybe next time I’ll summon Lilly,” he continued. “The doll dragon. I can learn from her.”
Celica went pale.
How was he doing that?
She had watched him grow, watched him survive things that should have ended him, but this particular certainty kept getting beneath her skin. He did not sound suspicious. He sounded as though he had caught her moving a piece across a board while she believed his eyes were closed.
She wanted to know what had betrayed her. The question irritated her almost as much as his accusation.
“Derpy, you don’t—”
“Celica, if you aren’t honest with me, I’ll leave you with Mk.1 or Riven.”
She stared at him.
“I only just started trusting you again,” he said. “We’re supposed to be partners. But you keep lying and telling me things that aren’t true.”
His voice had grown quieter. Celica found that harder to dismiss than shouting.
“If there's something you can't teach me, say so. If there's something you won't tell me, at least stop pretending you've answered. I'm asking because I need help.”
Celica's eyes moved toward Lunara. That small hesitation told him more than another assurance would have.
“You can teach me your ice,” he said. “That doesn't mean you know how everything in me works. Is that it?”
“I know what I gave you,” she admitted. “I don't know what all of it has become together.”
The blue haze thinned. Derpy let out a breath.
“Then start with what you know.”
Celica drew breath to respond.
“What you’re experiencing is my ability,” Lunara said. “It’s called Shed.”
Derpy turned toward her without entirely taking his attention from Celica.
Lunara had stopped laughing.
“It allows you to shed your skin and memories. What you leave behind can become a living being, one that carries out your will. You can summon those beings. They can fight in your place.”
Derpy considered that carefully.
“Skin and memories,” he repeated. “So it isn’t just another body.”
“No. And from what I’ve heard, yours think they’re the original.”
He looked away for a moment. That part of the explanation fitted too well.
It was one thing to imagine creating someone who would obey. It was another to imagine waking with his memories and being told that someone else was the real person. He understood why certainty might become a problem before he understood how he was supposed to solve it.
Lunara rose and stepped close enough to flick his forehead.
“You would have a better chance of controlling it if you hadn't ripped your dragon horns out of your head.”
Derpy’s ears flattened.
“Your power is still growing,” she continued. “Sooner or later, your new set will grow in. But you stunted your dragon side just to make a statement to your birth mother.”
Derpy touched one of the musical horns he still carried. Those had not been the horns he had torn away. Having something left did not mean he had escaped the damage.
He crossed his arms and looked away.
“Because I didn’t know how to process you appearing out of nowhere and calling me your son.”
Lunara’s hand lowered.
“You started acting like my mother,” he said, “when you weren’t there to take care of me when I was young.”
The field seemed abruptly quiet around them. Celica stopped adjusting her dress. Even the little movement of Lunara’s tail ceased.
Derpy kept his eyes on the grass. He had wanted an explanation of his powers. Somehow, he was back defending what he had done when hurt had arrived faster than understanding.
He did not know how to make her hear the difference.
“All right,” Okamihana said. “That's enough family feuding for now.”
Derpy heard how easily she moved past it. He had asked for help twice. Nobody had asked whether she had answered him.
She drew one of the books onto her lap.
“You need to learn about the dragon-wolf war and the Alpha Wolf Festival.”
Petals lifted around her. They circled the book, slipping between the cover and the first pages as it opened. Derpy watched them move, grateful for something to look at that would not demand another explanation of his childhood.
Okamihana waited until he was listening.
“Long ago,” she began, “there was a wolf and a dragon.”
Lunara remained standing.
“The dragon traveled with a maid. Neither showed affection toward the wolf. They beat him, repeatedly, and he continued to return.”
Derpy glanced toward his birth mother. Her expression gave him nothing he could comfortably name.
“Eventually, the dragon began to feel something for him,” Okamihana continued. “The maid showed no such change. She had no remorse for what she did to the wolf.”
A page turned beneath the moving petals.
“Days became months. Months became years. Years became centuries.”
Derpy glanced toward Lunara. She had not disputed this part. He could not decide whether that made the centuries easier or harder to imagine.
“Until, finally, the wolf defeated the maid.”
Okamihana paused. Derpy waited for Lunara to speak, but she did not.
“For a time, the dragon and the wolf continued their fighting and training together. Their relationship deepened. Eventually, they wanted a child.”
His arms loosened across his chest.
“There was a problem,” Okamihana said. “A child of those two races could not be created through ordinary means.”
“So they found another way,” Derpy said.
“With help. Three other dragons, and three divine feathers.”
The petals passed over the page.
“An egg was made.”
Derpy looked at the book, then at Lunara. He had come into the conversation asking how to use what lived inside him. Now his grandmother was reading an account of how those different pieces had been brought together in the first place.
He wondered whether they had imagined a child who would need teaching, or only the impossible thing they wanted to create.
Okamihana continued before he settled on a question.
“But when the egg existed, the dragon factions wanted it destroyed. What had been made defiled what they believed their bloodlines represented.”
“That’s not entirely accurate,” Lunara said.
The book closed.
The sound was small. The way Okamihana looked up was not.
“I’m reading what happened from our side. Accurate or not, he needs to learn this.”
“If you already know it isn’t the whole account, why tell it as though—”
Derpy sighed.
“How about I hear both sides?”
Neither looked at him immediately.
“The dragon side and the wolf side,” he continued. “Let her explain what the wolves recorded. Then you can tell me what the dragons say happened and which parts you disagree with.”
His wording seemed clear enough to him. He had not asked either of them to surrender. He had asked them to take turns.
Lunara did not back away.
Okamihana kept the book closed beneath her hand.
“Then she should make clear that she is reading their account,” Lunara said.
“I believe I just did.”
Derpy looked at Celica. She was watching the two of them with none of the confidence she had offered when promising to teach him.
The pressure of maintaining their bodies pulled at him again. He tried to gather his attention around it, but Lunara stepped toward his grandmother, and Okamihana began to rise.
His focus slipped.
Both dragons vanished.
Lunara’s unfinished words broke off as her shape collapsed into light. Celica went with her, blue hair and mismatched wings disappearing before she could react. Black and gold bracelets took their places.
Derpy stared at them for a moment, then retrieved the bands.
“I’m going for a walk.”
He stood and turned away before another discussion could begin.
The book came toward him from behind.
Derpy caught it against his side and looked back.
“Your homework for the week,” Okamihana said. “Read it. Then your training starts again.”
“Yeah, yeah. I get it.”
He had taken only a few steps when she moved.
Okamihana crossed the grass and caught him, beginning the same turning motion that had put him into the ground earlier. His white tail swept between them. It met her attack before she could complete the throw, shifting to intercept the next movement as she tried to regain the angle.
Derpy remained on his feet.
He sighed.
“This is going to take longer than I want it to.”
Okamihana let her hand fall back. He had blocked from behind without turning to follow her feet. For an instant, eyes watched her from his back. Then they were gone.
Derpy shifted the book into a more comfortable hold.
“I need a bit. Let me walk around and talk to people. You’ve kept me and everyone who came with me in this area. I want to explore.”
He continued walking.
The sight of those eyes stayed with Okamihana, but his dismissal irritated her more immediately. A young pup could become powerful and still need to learn how to behave when someone was trying to teach him.
Especially this young pup.
Her divine wolf authority settled over him.
Derpy fell to his knees.
The book struck the grass beside his hand. He caught himself, shoulders tightening beneath the force, and remained there for a breath.
Then he chuckled.
He lifted an arm.
A weapon formed in his grip, smaller than the shape he had once carried, proportioned to the white-wolf body holding it now. Blue and green traveled across Crescent Eclipse 2.0. Eyes crowded the blade, opening toward Okamihana.
“Don’t let me down, Hollow.”
He fired.
Poison and ice struck together. Okamihana sprang backward as blue-green growth tore across the ground in front of her. The first shot forced her to move; the next filled the space where she might have stepped.
Ice climbed rapidly, its color deepening toward green within the blue. She drew her face back as a sharp point advanced to within inches of it.
For a moment, neither moved.
Derpy’s arm remained raised. The eyes on the blade watched his grandmother through the branching ice.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said. “And I know you’re preparing me for the festival. But I’m more than capable. I have plenty at my disposal.”
The weapon vanished from his hand.
Okamihana watched him collect the book. Her command had failed to hold him; he had answered it with enough control to stop inches from her face.
“A couple of hours,” she said. “Then we get back to work.”
Derpy tucked the book beneath his arm and walked away.
A cloaked wolf nearby watched him go.
“You’re not worried about—”
A cough interrupted her. She paused, then tried again.
“You’re not worried about the boy?”
Okamihana turned toward the voice.
The figure scratched an ear beneath her hood. The movement loosened a little blue-and-pink hair, letting it fall into view before the cloak settled again. Her tail wagged behind the long fabric.
“Give him time,” the hooded wolf said. “He’ll come back. He always does.”
There was enough familiarity in the words to hold Okamihana’s attention for a moment.
Then the pink wolf smiled.
She looked toward the path Derpy had taken and followed after the dragon-wolf.