Standing at the Winter's Dark Heart frenzy sands -- Updated also updated again 4.30.25 to remove any prior bad vibes

She'll be back to there once she finds something special at Arx Atra Mons

Calebrindra diCosimo, from Italy

4th Year

Specializes in charms and dueling

Worst subject is divination

Calebrindra was a miracle child. Daughter of what had originally been thought as normies, who turned out to instead be hidden mages... No one thought that magic could return to the diCosimo family. It had - with a vengeance. The chill pre-dawn mid-winter morning she was born had brought with it a flash-freeze. Up in the mountains in northern Italy it could turn so cold that animals froze in their barns...

Yet, unwilling to believe in a coincidence, the superstitious diCosimo elders brought the newborn girl to a church.

They never tried that bit again. Though the place was warm and welcoming, she herself seemed to freeze the batismal font - an event that the priests warned would only lead to trouble.

Calebrindra was brought up then, with a bit of distance. She'd been contacted by a distant family friend, whom no one in her parents' generation seemed to know, and informed that she was the first in her family to have magical blood in generations. Intrigued by the way that this was said, "in generations", she herself began tracing her family history back through the generations and finally found what she was looking for: witchcraft. Not just any witchcraft, but darker arts - not the kind that those idiots in the local wizardry school learned.

Yes, they'd tried pawning her off there too, for an elementary education to control her temper and her occasional acidic outbursts (literally acidic, she seemed to spit acid like a snake!) but they had to remove her for fear she'd injure someone too seriously.

So Cale, by the age of nine, was already considered an outcast in the wizarding world. She knew that the big prestigious school, some pig-pimple thing (what a ridiculous name) would never take her. Even the Snakey folks would have trouble taming this wild spirit. Too self absorbed, too unrelenting, she would not take orders from just anyone. And that kind of competition in a school environ would raise only disaster.

But when she turned eleven, a visitor from a newer school, House Domina, arrived. Eagerly she spoke with the strange woman, Zora, and found that while she might have to stomach a little too much patronizing 'toning down' of things, she would get something from an education there. House Domina it was.

So for three more years, the little beast (pride and joy!) of the diCosimo family studied and worked... Around others, she was always a bit hard to control. But one on one with instructors who cared that she wanted to learn - her way - she was actually a stunning student.

Except for that problem she had with divination. It was just perhaps a holdover from her weird birth circumstances... But every time she tried using divining bowls - anything with water - they froze up. A crystal ball? It frosted over and cracked. After the third such try, it was suggested that she not bother worrying about divining anything. She'd meet her future head on whether it liked her or not.

***

"Take that!" Cale said, uttering a spell with such force that when it left her hand a wall of force blew back all the clothes and hair of the students in a column. The spell shattered against her instructor's defenses, though. Disappointed, she narrowed her eyes, and tried another attack - but then found herself on her butt, on the floor, off the dueling strip entirely.

"Calebrindra," professor el-Din said, dusting off his robes with his dark hands, "you have got to remember to defend yourself. Dueling is not just about attacking. It requires tactics and a bit more forethought."

She snarled, "yes professor."

"Your spell was unable to pierce my defenses - why?" he posited, and the class began to talk about it. What had gone wrong? The force of her spell was outrageous - it might have blasted him through the stone walls! But it didn't.

"Because..." She shrugged. "I do not know."

"Because all of my defense was put into protecting me. Another important part of dueling," he smiled and offered his hand to help her up, "is knowing your opponent. I would not enter a duel with a person I knew nothing about."

Calebrindra thought about that. "But wouldn't you be able to tell what kind of duelist they are, by starting a duel?"

"Perhaps, but by that time it might be too late to know. If you were paired with another person of your ... aggressive abilities, which would survive long enough to win?"

Calebrindra nodded, "thank you sir," she said, and began picking the debris off her robes. Before class ended, she was given a specific task, to start defensive studies in earnest. Because the next time the class met, she'd be the target of everyone else's offensive spells...

***

"Just once," Cale growled, "I would like to have a cup of hot tea that doesn't turn into ice!" She threw the cup down and it bounced - it was all frozen solid and didn't even shatter. She grunted and sat heavily on her bed. "Sometimes I wish I didn't have that stupid birth-curse on me..."

"If y'ask me, ma'am," said a strangely disembodied voice, "y're gifted beyond most."

She looked around, "you're a ghost?" The apparition came a bit clearer, it was a young man, perhaps a farm hand or simple peasant from centuries ago. "What would you know about it then?"

"M' mum had a curse 'pon her," he said. "She was never t' speak. When she died, I died too... Inside..."

For once in her life, Calebrindra's heart went out to someone else. "Because she could never speak to you?" The ghost nodded. "That... is a curse I would not want to have. You're right."

"Y' could use y'r curse to y'r advantage..." He suggested, and then vanished when someone else entered the rooms.

"They've got dragons! Dragons!" Yelled one of the other girls, and then bolted out again. Thus started Domina's dragon bonding race...

***

At the end of her fourth year, Calebrindra was ready to duel properly. And she'd kept reminding herself of certain things she'd learned. Just because she was a hot headed selfish bitch, didn't mean she couldn't learn from other people's suggestions!

So when the dueling club ended up with her at the top student end, and her professor Photha el-Din at the instructor's, she gave a broad smile.

"Now, you know I've been practicing..." She said. He nodded. He was a handsome Arabic man, instructor of the Defense and Recognition of the Dark Arts, as well as the Dueling professor. He knew his stuff.

They began by lobbing simple spells at each other. Nothing serious. But then when Cale saw he incanted for a shield she knew what she could do next.

"Aqua Parietis!" she shouted, and a wall of water trembled in the air over her professor. He made the silly mistake of looking up at it as it gooshed downwards.

By the time it hit him, it was halfway frozen. It looked as though he was covered in a sheet - draped from above with the water slowly crystalizing around him in a cascade.

They could see his hand, twitching, his wand feebly attempting to work some kind of magic... But without the verbal component there was precious little he could do about it. Someone else melted the ice, and he came out of it laughing so hard they could barely understand what he was saying.

"Good work, hehhahah!"

Good work indeed.

***

Shortly after the dueling final, was when others started to get interested in those dragons. And one night, well, early into the morning, was when Calebrindra was approached by Bhaktar the necromancer. He wanted to bring her to a place he knew was having a rather special set of dragons. She agreed of course... he was cute, and she enjoyed his company.

They went to Clan Akelara's darker side, where the Winter's Dark Heart frenzy sands were trembling with action. Once there she realized that perhaps ... she really did know what fun a curse could be...

(((Updated)))

The waiting was unbearable. Cale stalked around, occasionally freezing things or letting a hex loose in the halls. There were fewer and fewer people to be hexed, though. And eventually, she confronted Zeramar and Bhaktar about it. It turned out that Leny had already left, but might come back, she'd left a note to that effect.

Perhaps they would have to be back later too. But for the moment, Bhaktar and Naspeth would port the pair to a new place. One which was if anything even darker and more forbidding. One which both students were almost unduly comfortable with.

Arx Atra Mons, a place filled with beasts of many heads, tails, and spitting poisons like they never did anything else.

Cale chuckled. Now this - this would be fun.

And fun it was. Because those beasts here were really really vicious. Even at birth, they were able and apt to eat their weaker siblings. Or gang up on their equal ones. Or even take chunks out of stronger ones...

What an event. Calebrindra's blood was singing when they all started munching on each other. They had cunning, the later ones, they had some sense to themselves. It was after Zeramar had already found his feisty friend, that a marked blood and black female exited the carnage and headed toward Cale. They sized one another up, these two. Well, Cale sized up the middle of the three heads, while the other two waited for their central one to decide.

They decided, she decided, that Calebrindra was strong enough for her. Any human which could stand there unblinking in this mess of blood and screaming hatchlings was all right in her book. Zenan sat down, cleaning herself of the mess that she'd discovered on her paws.

Back to the Winter's Dark Heart celebration at last? What will anyone think about this pair?

** had been on page 2, continued below dragon **

Zenan wasn't all that old, not quite half a year old, when Naspeth announced that they ought to come along back to Akalera. Back they went, indeed. She, Leny, Bhaktar and Zeramar, all waiting to see what these new eggs held. They had experience now, and Cale was pretty sure that while she might want to hold off on creating a magic school just yet, she'd definitely be up with Zeramar to do it after their dragons were grown.

One cowardly hatchling had found that his instincts were correct and that having his back against a wall was indeed the best way to stand, as he grappled with a hatchling with far too many heads for his taste. Four, to be precise, and all intent on taking a chunk out of his hide, and the paws that glowed an eerie icy pale, like blue fire, burned and yet froze anything they touched. It was surprising, and rather disturbing, that if the beast had gotten him from behind he might not have managed to fend it off, between its surprising weight and size for a hatchling, its many heads, and the chill fire that shrouded its paws.

The hatchling was suddenly ripped away from him, though, and tossed aside by another, its body fading from red all the way through to a deep midnight blue, that then chased the four headed dragoness a ways away before returning.

~Aashuyrn, will you permit me, Lershan, to guard you and be a second pair of eyes for you? Between the two of us, no one shall slip past unseen.~

The four headed dragoness, having been cheated of her prey, slunk over to Cale. ~You and I will practice together, won’t we? I don’t want to ever lose again. Oh, I’m Nezatah by the way.~

"Nezatah," Calebrindra said with a wide, slow smile on her lips. "We will certainly practice. You and Zenan had best get along though," she lowered her tone, "because I will not tolerate losing either one of you. You are both my prizes, so if I lose one of you, I might as well lose both."

~.... I understand. If that beast does as well.~

I know her better than you - heed her words. You look like you could do with something to eat... Let me get it for you, dear newcomer...

The bipedal hatchling wasn't all that convinced that Zenan'cza was out for her best interests, but she was hungry.