Kese and Raan didn't push their luck staying and trying to find the remaining four Fire-Petal Roses she needed for her First Forging. They were almost certainly available in the Span somewhere, but with both of them injured - and Raan unable to fly on his own - it was too risky to try to collect them.

  Getting back to the Spanheart was a task in and of itself. As she'd demonstrated during their duel, Kese could carry Raan, but not through the Currents, and certainly not for the hours it would take them to get back to civilisation. In the end, after some experiments that left Raan's injured wing more hurt than it had been, they settled on an awkward-but-functional solution of staying side by side, hooking their legs together, and flying with one wing apiece. It was an ungainly process, practically useless within a Domain - but for just gliding on the Currents, which could keep a dragon aloft without them ever needing to beat their wings, it worked.

  And so, nearly five days after their visit to the Well and the distribution of their Bloodlines, Kese and Raan returned to the Spanheart battered and bruised, and all but crash-landed on the first piece of land they came to before being whisked away to the ministrations of the Healers.

  The first thing Raan felt when he woke up was a strange pressure on his wing.

  The second thing was that it didn't hurt any more.

  "A nasty break," a dragon said, from beside the cosy nest he was tucked in. "I am Healer Jerarvxile."

  "You..." He craned his neck back to look at his wing, which had been trussed tightly to his body by some sort of white binding. "You fixed my wing? Thank you."

  "I and others, though 'fixed' may be an overstatement. It will likely take the better part of a year for it to heal."

  "A year?!" Raan yelped. "What am I supposed to do until then?"

  "Yes. As I said, a nasty break, and you do not have mana to hasten your recovery. Do not worry. It is rare that any dragon seeking their First Forging goes through the process without suffering an injury. In past decades we have seen far more grievous wounds."

  If that was meant to be encouraging, it wasn't - instead it just made him worry about his friends. "But...how am I supposed to help my friends find reagents for their Forgings if I can't fly?"

  "You and your friend managed to fly the Currents to return to Spanheart," the Healer pointed out. "And not all reagents require fighting a monster near the peak of the Mortal stage on your first day of hunting as adults." Raan could feel the disapproving look even when he looked away from the Healer's gaze. "Such foes would more normally be a hunt for a pack of Mortal stage adults like yourself. Perhaps two packs, if one were being cautious, much as caution seems to be anathema to driven young dragons. Besides," Jerarvxile continued, "while concern for your friends is admirable, ought you not be concerned with your own Forging?"

  Raan blinked at him, surprised. From what Kese had told him, every other dragon he'd spoken to seemed to have known about his lack of affinities in advance. "I don't have a Bloodline to Forge," he admitted. "I need to try to find one I'm compatible with in the Hall of Bloodlines."

  "Well, then," Jerarvxile smiled beatifically. "That strikes me as something you can do without requiring both wings."

  Raan gave the Healer a suspicious look, before sighing and letting his head drop back to the comfortable nest he had been arranged in. "I understand. Thank you for your guidance, Senior."

  It wasn't as though the Healer was actually wrong, after all.

  When he left the Healers' tunnels, he was immediately ambushed by some of his friends. "Are you okay?" Apome asked, nosing at his bound wing.

  Ada pushed her away gently. "He won't be if you break the bindings," she pointed out.

  "I'm fine," he sighed. "Have you not left to hunt for reagents yet?"

  "No, because we're actually being sensible about it," Pahyx grinned, flicking him with her tail playfully (taking care to avoid his injuries), "and gathering information about the Domain we're going to be heading to from the older dragons before diving in."

  "We had information!" he protested. "Elder Beolkyax-Tahi sent us - or sent Kese, anyway - to that Domain. He gave her all the information we could need."

  "And yet, you managed to end up fighting something that would've been a death sentence if it was anyone but the two of you."

  "How do you even know -"

  "Two Mortal stage dragons showing up beaten to a pulp worried people, oddly enough," Apome snapped. "And Kese's injuries took a lot less treating than yours, so she told everyone what happened once the Healers released her."

  "A Wayfinder with a tracking Bloodline flew back to investigate," Ada added, "and brought the body of the snake back to give to you two once you were okay. We all saw it when they brought it in. Everyone in the Spanheart probably knows about you two killing it on your first real hunt by now. There's even talk of giving you a deed-name, 'Bowyb' - slayer of serpents."

  Raan sighed.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  "What's the problem with that?" Pahyx asked. "Wouldn't you rather be known for some insane hunt than not being given a Bloodline?"

  That earned her a swat from Apome's tail. "Pahyx!"

  "It's fine," Raan said, before his two friends could start bickering again. "Just because I don't have a Bloodline yet doesn't mean I won't have one at all. I've got a whole year stuck without being able to fly, apparently, so that's plenty of time to look at the Bloodlines in the Hall of Bloodlines." He paused and looked around. "Do...any of you know where the Archives is from here?"

  They did. His looking around for Kese on the way was too obvious, and they told him she'd already left to hunt for more reagents - ones that were less risky to collect, this time. The others left him alone once they escorted him to the Archives, giving him some time to think for almost the first time since he'd been told he hadn't been offered any of the active Bloodlines.

  How likely was it, really, that there would be a Bloodline conveniently ready-made for him, that nobody had yet found?

  He shook his head and stepped in through the great door.

  "How can the Archives assist you today, Raan?"

  He jumped, instinctively trying to stretch his wings to balance himself and wincing as his injured wing pressed against the bindings.

  "My apologies," said an Archivist he could swear hadn't been behind the door a moment ago. "It was not my intention to startle you."

  Raan shifted his good wing awkwardly, trying to recover his composure. "Um, I was hoping you could show me the Hall of Bloodlines."

  "Of course. This way."

  The Archivist's papyrus tendrils rippled as he turned to lead Raan away. Raan tried to ignore how much they looked like writhing pythons.

  "Every Bloodline cultivated by dragons, since the foundation of the Archives, is passed to us," the Archivist explained as he walked. "However, you will not find every Bloodline in the Hall. Bloodlines currently being cultivated remain the possession of their bearers, while rituals for the Fifth Forging and above - those few that are not in the possession of one that cultivates the Bloodline - are kept secluded, as per a longstanding code. Lastly, Bloodlines that are considered unsafe to use, that have stringent requirements that are not possible to fulfil, or that simply do not work at all, are referred to as Lost Bloodlines. You may be able to request permission to see a Lost Bloodline, but I suggest you focus your efforts on the successful Bloodlines."

  They turned a corner. Raan froze for a moment.

  He wasn't sure what he'd expected from the Hall of Bloodlines. Long lines of the Bloodline Orbs he'd seen the others carrying, perhaps.

  Instead, there were long rows of wooden boxes, each neatly labelled and the shelves stacked on top of each other so high that Raan doubted even Elder Akarial-Eshouj would have been able to reach the top shelves from the ground. Distantly, he could see a couple of Archivists flying around, using their papyrus to swarm over the shelves as much as their wings.

  "Is it always this quiet?" he asked, in a hushed tone that nonetheless seemed far too loud.

  "It is," the Archivist escorting him nodded. "Very few care to come here - they have no reason to, after all, beyond idle curiosity. No-one would risk destroying their foundation with an experimental Forging."

  Except someone with no choice. Like me.

  Raan stepped over to the nearest box, glanced back hesitantly at the Archivist, and opened it. Inside were a neat stack of notes on papyrus. The top-most one was a foreword from the Archivists, describing the 'Beautiful Frostcarver' Bloodline, with references to dragons Raan had never heard of. The next few pages were some sort of diagrams that he didn't understand in the least, while the remaining papers seemed to mostly be transcriptions of journal entries from the dragons who'd presumably cultivated the Bloodline.

  "Is this...the Forging ritual?" he asked the Archivist, showing the older dragon one of the diagrams.

  "It is. Your friends' Bloodline Orbs will carve the ritual circles for them, but without such an Orb, you will have to manually carve the sigils into the stone. I should warn you that failing to properly draw such a sigil is one of the biggest causes of a Forging failing either wholly or partially, forcing the unfortunate dragon to reattempt their Forging and settle for a far weaker result."

  "What does it all mean?"

  "That is not information the Archives hold, I am afraid."

  Raan blinked in confusion. "But...you have so many rituals here. Surely you could work it out?"

  The Archivist smiled gently. "That is not our purpose. The only reason we are trusted so completely, by dragons who might otherwise be reluctant to share their knowledge with us, is that we only collect information. We sort, transcribe and categorise it according to the laws given to us. But that is all. We do not add our own knowledge to the Archives, or modify anything given to us."

  "But...why not? The Archivists know everything in the Archives, don't you? You could add so much to the Archives by just putting the pieces together."

  "Our ability to know the contents of the Archives is a gift given to us by our Bloodline," the Archivist nodded. "But..."

  His papyrus swirled about him, and suddenly a few dozen pages floated in front of Raan, with scrawlings in runic script that he had no hope of reading. "Suppose we find a record with a simple error in spelling. An easy thing to correct, and no harm done." One of the pages glowed, and the black ink on it changed to red. "Well, then, should a record refer to a dragon who we know from other records could not possibly be the one spoken of - perhaps they were not born at the time the record was written - that too is a simple mistake, and easy to correct." Another record flashed and changed colour. "Then it is a simple task to correct records that claim that an individual was in one place when other records say they were in another. But then, if the false records must be edited to be correct, why keep them in our Archives at all, where they will merely confuse the reader?" Another record changed colour, but as the Archivist continued to speak, it tore itself into shreds. "And if we cannot trust one record by a certain author, then we logically ought not trust anything else written by that author." More records ripped themselves apart, the pieces cascading down around Raan. "And what of their friends? If we have declared that one dragon is willing to submit falsehoods to the Archives, perhaps their friends are willing to do the same. In fact, any records whose authors disagreed with our source of truth should be expunged, to ensure that we only keep information we trust." The records flashed and tore until Raan was almost completely surrounded in a whirling storm of paper. The Archivist's eyes glowed with the power of his Bloodline, visible through the shards of papyrus as they layered themselves upon him like armour and weapon all at once, making him seem twice his original size. "All perfectly logical decisions, one stemming from another, and yet by their conclusion, our Archives are left with almost nothing."

  The whirling, shredded papers whipped back into the Archivist's papyrus ribbons, as suddenly as they had appeared.

  "That is why we do not make excuses," he said, calmly. "It is why, to our order, the Archives are immutable. That has been the case since the very earliest days of the Archives.

  "That said, if you have any questions whose answers are recorded in the Archives, I will be happy to assist you."