Simon

Present day.

I sat quietly and listened to the fearsome pink dragon while she shared her story. The cloth bandage on her shoulder had grown dark, suggesting that one of her cuts was still bleeding, but I didn't interrupt to mention it. The expensive-looking supplies that had been stored in the saddle now lay strewn in the dirt around us, but I didn't make any move to clean up the mess.

Enola didn't need my help.

"I was not able to fly very far. The naga's spell was still suppressing my magic, and without magic it is hard for a dragon to fly. I was barely halfway back to the guard post before I had to land to rest. The Sea Guard found me there later that night." Enola grew quiet, and I had begun to think she was finished before she spoke again. "They dealt with the magic-draining spell and went searching for the naga, but they could not find them. Nor the egg the naga spoke of – it was probably hidden deep in the lake, deeper than we could search. And it seemed the naga sorceress was very skilled at hiding her spells. No one was able to track it down."

Enola shook her head and stared out at the lake, though I had the feeling she was seeing something much different than the water before us. "All they could find were the bodies of two dead humans. A man and a woman. Humans who had been killed by the naga. Naga I had been supposed to protect them from, as one of the Sea Guard. All so they could get something from me – either to fight off the naga who had invaded their home, like I should have done regardless, or for some reward of treasure and magic."

Enola grew quiet. We stared out at the lake in silence, until I was sure she had finished.

"Did you go on to join the Sea Guard?" I was pretty sure I knew the answer already, but I wanted to give Enola the chance to keep talking if she wanted to.

"No." The dragon slowly shook her head. "I did not deserve to join. Every time I see weapons or think about being paralyzed, it terrifies me. I ran from a fight and left naga free to spread pain. I am not fit to serve in the Sea Guard. I am a coward."

"No you aren't. Anyone would have run after that; it sounds horrible."

"Maybe a human would. But any other dragon would have turned and killed those naga, working magic or not." Enola shook her head again. "It did not matter anyway. My magic was already starting to drain away from the magedebt. I was too young to join the Sea Guard as a proper fighter, and only had a special exception made to serve as a healer apprentice. Without being able to cast any spells, and with what I had just done... they told me to go back home until the magedebt had cleared."

Another silence stretched between us, but something told me Enola wasn't finished. I waited, and after a few minutes she started speaking again. "I came back here instead. I cast one last spell with what was left of my magic. A 'web' of sorts. It covers the lake and most of the surrounding land. It is attuned to my magic – wherever it encounters it, it disperses it. As long as that spell has magic, whatever the naga tried to do won't work. After I set up that spell, the magedebt drained away what remained of my magic. And it kept draining me of any new magic, every day, for the last thirty years."

"That's why you're living around those crystals. They hide your lack of magic from mages." I frowned as I thought of something else. "And you can use them to recharge your web spell, if it is running out of magic."

Enola nodded slowly. "Yes. Most of a crystal's magic is lost to the magedebt, but I have learned how to move enough of the magic into the spell to keep it working. When my spell is strong everything is fine. When it grows weak, the land becomes sick. The humans grow ill. The crops start to fail. The animals migrate to somewhere else."

I stared out at the lake, thinking. Enola had been here for longer than I had been alive. She had kept a spell running even though she didn't have any magic left, all to help protect the town here from naga magic. And in return for that, instead of getting thanks or sympathy... people like Jack had blamed her for the very problems she had been trying to prevent, other humans had tried to rob her, and mages had tried to drive her from the only safe home she had.

Thirty years...

"Will your magic keep draining forever?"

Enola shook her head. "No. Magical debts are stubborn things and do not always make sense, but they are always 'fair' in some way. It demands an amount of magic based on the help that was given, and the danger to the helper. With various exceptions when the magedebt just decides to be a jerk." The pink wings lifted slightly in a 'shrug' motion before settling back against her side. "But there is always a set amount that it demands. Once that is paid – either through some favor or treasure, or by draining away our magic – then the debt will end, and I will begin to accumulate magic again. Since I have no way to give those humans anything to repay them, all I can do is wait until enough of my magic has been drained to balance out their help."

I chewed on my lip for a minute as I thought that through, and thought through the information Katerina had shared with us about the magedebt. "Shouldn't thirty years be enough? Especially with all the magic you've drained from crystals?"

The dragon beside me shook her head again. "Usually. There is no concrete timeframe with these things – the amount of magic I gain each day might be different from that of another dragon. Going hungry or being angry at someone might lower the amount of magic I make in a given day, too. So it is hard to say how much magic a dragon would generate in a month to apply to the debt. And the amount owed isn't the same between humans – one human might have had a family back home that depended on him, which would mean it cost them more to risk their life than did a knight with no family. A young human with their whole life ahead of them would be putting more at risk than an older human. A child might be weaker and less able to defend themselves, and thus be at greater risk than a warrior practiced at combat. And so on. So it is hard to tell how much I 'owe', and how much I am 'paying' each day.

"But for most humans, yes. When the Sea Guard sent me back home, they expected me to have magic back after a few years. Maybe ten at the most, if one of the humans had been a mage."

I frowned at that, thinking about some of the things Katerina had mentioned in her letters. "What would being a mage have to do with it?"

"Mages have a reservoir of magic in them. If they used their own magic to help me, the magedebt would require me to account for that. I would owe them an amount of magic equal to the amount they were risking, or an amount of gold equivalent to the spells they had cast. And the magedebt would consider the magic they had when they died as magic they used to help me. So if they had been mages, I would have to repay that magic. And human mages tend to generate magic at a faster rate than dragons do." Enola reached down with one hand and began to carefully gather up the pieces of cloth she had torn. I stayed where I was and didn't make any move to help her, even though it would have been easier for me to clean up for her. "I have thought about it a lot over the years to try and understand why it took so much. All I can think of is that the man and the woman were both mages, with a large family, and that they hadn't cast any spells in a while."

Or, I thought to myself, one of them was a source of enormous magical energy that they had no ability to use. "But still... thirty years?" I frowned as another thought came to me. "Can't you just take more magic from the crystals? Or the source of magic you said causes them to grow – surely that would be enough to cover the debt?"

"I do not dare risk it. Maybe at first I might have, but I was not skilled enough to move that much magic safely. Now..." Something hollow came into the dragon's expression as she shook her head again. "There is too much risk. If I take too much from the crystals, it will damage the river of magic that flows through this area. It is impossible to say how that may affect life here, but it would at least mean there would be no more new crystals that grow here. Not for a very long time."

"...and if there are no crystals here, you wouldn't have a way to hide." The same problem Wellsprings had, but in the other direction. "Mages would be able to tell you had no magic. They might try and capture you." Though she could always just go to the dragon lands. She would be safe from human mages... but... "And if your web spell ran out of magic, you wouldn't have any way to recharge it. The people here would start getting sick."

Enola nodded slowly, and I felt renewed sympathy for her. She was dragging out the time she went without magic to help the people of Lakeshire. Humans who didn't even know they were in danger. Some of whom had threatened her and tried to drive her away. No wonder she had such a low opinion of us.

And she thought herself a coward.

"But even without the crystals, it should not be much longer. A few more months, maybe. Or a few more years. It will not be forever."

That seemed strange. Shouldn't she know? The magedebt must have given a dragon some clue of how much they owed, in order to let them know how big a favor they needed to give someone. "Can't you tell how much more you owe?"

Enola shrugged her wings again. "Not anymore. The first few days I had an idea that it was a lot. But being so long without magic has dulled my mage senses. Sometimes I can tell if I am near a large concentration of magic, or when I take magic from a crystal, but the feeling fades quickly. The feeling of a magedebt is a fickle thing, and on the few occasions that I can sense it, I cannot tell how long it will take me to generate that much magic. But it shouldn't be much longer. The debt will end soon, and my magic will return."

Something in Enola's voice told me she didn't quite believe her last sentence. I wondered how many times she must have told herself that over the last thirty years.

"Can another dragon help? Or a human mage? Give you some of their magic to..." I trailed off as I realized the problem with that idea.

Enola answered me anyway. "They could. But that would change nothing. I would just owe the debt to them instead. A larger debt than before – payback for the magic they used, plus a little more for the favor they gave me. The only difference would be that in theory, I could give them something instead of magic to pay off the debt... but I have very little to give." She balled up the cloth and started to reach back to put it in the compartment of the saddle. I caught the hint of a wistful smile on her face for a second, but it faded almost as soon as it had appeared. "Cess tries. He is very careful to explain how he is not helping me, but he will fill crystals up with magic when he visits, or leave leftover food lying around. We do not know if it actually gets around the restrictions of a magedebt, but he tries it anyway."

I nodded and looked back out at the lake while Enola put her supplies back into the saddle. I thought carefully over everything I had learned about the dragons. The things in Katerina's letter appeared to be true. And the charm hanging from my necklace confirmed that I wasn't being trapped by a spell. I believed Enola when she said she didn't have any magic. I believed that she didn't want to hurt me, or any other Wellsprings. I wanted to help her, even though I knew any help I could give would be unwelcome, but I knew that wasn't anything she had tricked me into wanting. My time with Enola had convinced me the dragons weren't a threat looking to enslave us all so they could steal our magic.

She was a person, just like I was, regardless of how she looked. She had once had her own dreams. She had a dragon she had once had a crush on, and probably still did to some extent, and a dragon who had a crush on her. She had seen her dreams shattered, and she had lived here alone, for thirty years, with nothing more than a dwindling hope that one day things would be different.

I looked back up at her arm, where the bandage covered the wound from the weapon.

She had been hurt.