I wonder if I’m looking too deeply into the hearts of these men. Definitely expecting too much from their puny little brains.
“Okay,” I say. I swing my gaze around to the other teachers. “The Empress is most likely to approach the academy from themoorland. That’s where I’d launch an attack. The forest and the slopes of the Highlands protect too much of the academy on its other side. The moor side is its vulnerability. We want to weaken her army before it reaches the academy, ensure their powers have already been drained before they reach the academy grounds. How can we slow them down?”
“The dragon?” the potion mistress suggests.
“The Empress will blast that creature out of the sky first chance she gets,” Cornelius says, making Briony gasp.
“It’s our best weapon,” one of the Titan twins says.
“Which is why the Empress will target it first chance she gets. Best we hide him away until we’re sure we really need him.”
“What do you think, Briony?” I ask her. “It’s your decision.”
“He’s still a baby.”
I nod. “Okay, then what else?”
“Some kind of physical barrier,” Cornelius suggests.
“I can help with that,” says the botany professor. “I can grow vines and bracken.”
“Like right out of a fairytale,” Briony says.
The teacher gives her a stern look. “There’s no such thing as fairytales, Briony Storm.”
“We can move some of the equipment that way too,” the Titan twins say.
“It won’t withstand shadow magic for long,” I say.
“No,” Cornelius agrees, “but it will slow them down and they will have to use their powers to get through. Every little helps.”
“Okay,” I say, nodding, and the botany professor and the Titan twins leave immediately to get to work.
“What else?” I ask.
“I already have several potions brewed,” says the potions mistress, “for emergencies like this.”
“You do?” I say.
“Better to be prepared,” she says.
“What exactly do they do?”
She taps the side of her nose, beckons the astronomy teacher, and they leave to do whatever they intend to do.
“That just leaves me, Cornelius, and Briony.”
“What else can we do, Cornelius?” I ask.
Cornelius sweeps his clouded eyes around the Great Hall.
“If only we had more dragons,” he says, his eyes dropping to the floor, obviously thinking of the skeleton that lies in the crypt below.
“Oh,” Briony says. “Actually we do – well sort of. We have two more firestones.” She shakes her head in the next moment, dismissing the idea. “What use would that be, even if we can get them to hatch? They’d be baby dragons. It took weeks and weeks for Blaze to grow as big as he did.”
“Then we’ll just have to make do with what we have. I assume the dragon’s somewhere nearby.”
“Out in his cave,” I tell them.
