Thisbe’s eyes popped open. She stared at the blue sky, where a single fluffy cloud floated. The scales on her arms and legs began to tingle, and she sat up swiftly. “Could that be it?” she said softly. They’d been so focused on designing a physical spell to beat dragons and the Revinir. And that was definitely important. But what if the Revinir really was impossible to beat in a physical way? They had to come up with something else, or she’d have control of all of these dragons and people forever. Thisbe touched Florence’s arm to get her attention. “Florence, I know what we need to do.”

Florence stopped talking and turned to Thisbe. “What?”

“We need a different kind of magic.”

Another Direction

Yes. A different kind of magic,” Thisbe repeated as her thoughts came together. “Not just physical, like components that we throw to cause injury. We need mental components. Something that will affect the Revinir’s mind.”

Everyone looked at Thisbe with varying levels of confusion. “Okaaay,” said Florence after a moment. “I see where you’re going. But we don’t really do that kind of magic here.”

“Nobody did my kind of magic before I came along,” Thisbe argued. “Or Fifer’s.”

“True,” said Florence, still looking skeptical. “But you were born with that. You weren’t taught it. We didn’t create it.”

Thisbe wrinkled her forehead. “Good point.” She slumped for a moment.

“I think Thisbe is onto something,” Samheed said. “Obviously, different kinds of magic exist even if we don’t use them. Remember Gondoleery Rattrapp? Hers was element based. Fire, rain, ice, wind. And the Revinir definitely has a different sort of magic from us. When she was Queen Eagala on Warbler, she placed that silence spell over the island. And now she’s using two types of bone broth as her components.”

“Not everything we do requires a physical component,” Thisbe added, sitting up again. “Like the glass spell. We use our minds to send that. So why can’t we try to . . . I don’t know . . . develop that kind of magic some more?”

“Therrre’s a big differrrence between conjurrring up a piece of glass and stopping a drrragon-woman frrrom mentally commanding hundrrreds of drrragons,” said Simber. “We’d have a lot of experrrimenting to do.”

“And no time to do it,” said Aaron. “There’s no way we can develop anything of that sort in months, much less by tomorrow.”

“We can try, at least,” said Thisbe. “Maybe it’s easy. You don’t know.”

“I wouldn’t know where to start,” Aaron admitted. “I don’t even understand how her whole roar thing works.”

“I do,” said Thisbe.

“As do I,” said Drock from the water, surprising the others. They hadn’t expected the dragon to contribute to this part of the conversation, but perhaps he had some insight the rest of them didn’t have.