Frozen Desert | A WoF Fanfiction

(Chapter 5) Butterflies and Celebrations

A/N: guess who's back! i may i spent forever on this chapter but it is really long compared to the rest of them, so enjoy it! also, i feel like i didn't make this clear enough in the previous chapters, but currently, Gator and Tundra are about two or three dragon years old. they're still just kids

(Tundra's POV)

It was a busy few days after the magic test thanks to my father. He wouldn't let me leave the house at first, as he was scared that I might tell someone or cast a spell without his permission. It was awful since I couldn't go see Gator, but he kept me busy with his own tasks. Usually once a day he would give me an extensive speech about animus magic and its history, and how many great things I could do to benefit everyone. However, I soon noticed that he never spoke much about any of its downsides and given how intensely he got into his lectures, I never questioned him about it since I was too scared to.

His lectures were interesting though, namely when he spoke about the Icewing's royal family. No matter how much he hated his former kingdom, the one thing he respected about it was their use of magic. To the Icewings, magic was a rare gift that they preserved. Whenever an animus dragon reached their seventh birthday, it was their duty to the kingdom to use their magic and create a gift to benefit them all. There were never many gifts that left the Ice Palace, but Father dearly adored the few that did, such as Caribou and her gift of infinite seals to the outskirts of the kingdom, and Frostbite with her gift of light that could be spread across the kingdom.

Sadly, this magic had been lost generations ago when the infamous Prince Arctic ran off with a Nightwing. He had had two dragonets, one which Father called Darkstalker. I gulped at the name, thinking about what Gator had said about the dragon. He scared me, and luckily Father didn't expand on his story any further.

There was a point in time when the royal family believed there was a new animus prince, but they never publicly announced it, not even when this prince went missing. His name was Coldspell, Father said, and he was our ancestor from a few generations back. His being an animus wasn't a rumor, and Father told me that he selfishly cast a spell to prevent any of his ancestors from knowing their true potential. When he had found out from his own father, he had destroyed the scroll and ran away. Now, thanks to Father, I had magic and knew I had magic.

The closest thing to a flaw he told me about was how animus magic worked, or at least, how the Icewings believed it worked. Because he grew up in the Ice Kingdom, there were plenty of stories told about magic since it had been so prevalent in previous generations. They had believed that magic worked in a point system of sorts. As an animus lived their life without casting any spells, their power would grow over time, resulting in an energy bank of animus magic forming within them. Spells themselves had a cost that depended on how much it would cost. Big spells, like forming a mountain from a pebble or building a palace from scratch, would cost a large amount of magic and take years of saving for it to be performed successfully. A smaller spell, like changing the color of an apple or writing something on a wall, would take significantly less magic and be much easier to cast. Because of this, Father made sure it was drilled into my head that I was to never use my magic until the time was right. I had to save it, because you never knew when someday you'd need to completely rewrite the universe.

After all the bad things I had heard, I was happy to have an excuse not to use my powers. It honestly scared me, and the less I had to think about it, the better. I was sure I could easily live the rest of my life without casting another spell, and just being a normal dragon, but Father had other plans.

About a week into my house arrest, I was sitting in the living room with Mother. She had seemed twitchy ever since the day I discovered my magic, and she refused to look me or my father in the eye. It surprised me that she didn't leave when I sat down on the floor with a pencil and the journal Father had bought me a while ago.