Null's dreams were strange and nonsensical. Full of tiny orbs of light saying bad puns and shadows reaching out to hug him. If there was a meaning there, he couldn't find it. Except maybe that he found Sparx annoying.

Yeah that was probably it.

He rolled over, or at least tried to, only to find that something was weighing him down. The early morning light was streaming through a window in odd patterns, and it struck his eyelids in the most unpleasant way. He shoved at the thing on top of him, grunting with effort as he did. It was heavy, and way bigger than him. He shoved harder, and the thing on top of him slowly rolled away, tugging his leg with it.

Null could feel dampness at the base of his claws.

His eyes snapped open immediately, and he stared in horror at the scene in front of him.

Apex was laying on his side, shoved off of the cushions by Null's pushing. Red slowly trickled down his side, from the spot where Null's claws had broken his scales and embedded in his flesh. He was awake, confusion in his eyes, but his breathing was labored.

Null pulled, frantically trying to remove his claws from his friend -

His claws came off, sticking in the wound.

"No, no, no, no…" Null scrambled over, his clawless paw slapping against the stone floor. It itched an irregular amount, but he didn't have time for that.

"I feel… so tired…" Apex tried to put one paw under himself, only to slip and fall back to his side. "Ow."

"Give me, one minute." Null had to carefully grab the nubs of his detached claws and extract them, pulling them out one at a time. The bloody claws dropped to the floor, clattering across the stone. He reached for the last one -

His claws had grown back.

It had only been moments, but his claws were back already. That shouldn't be possible. It-

No. He would have time for this later.

He pulled out the last claw, and Apex gasped, blinking rapidly. "Oh. That's better."

Null nearly collapsed, falling back on his haunches as he stared at his bloody paw. The claws were fully-grown, as if he'd never lost them in the first place. But the ones on the floor begged to differ. He felt exhausted in the aftermath of the adrenalin rush. But he also knew that he couldn't have pushed Apex off him under any normal circumstances. The wind dragon was just too heavy. And that had been before the adrenalin. So what…

"Are you okay?" Null asked instead. Priorities.

"I feel like I've been stabbed," Apex observed drily, "But otherwise I'm just tired."

"Good. Good." Null nodded weakly. He let out a sigh of relief. "Why… were you on my bed?"

"Uh." Apex cringed, averting his gaze. "I might have, uh, gotten used to sleeping right next to you, and I just… wanted to do that again."

"Apex, it was two days. Before that you were stuck in the gladiator cells, and before that we slept in separate beds at the beetle village."

Apex didn't say anything, but Null could tell that he was embarrassed based on how he tried to flatten himself into the floor. Null sighed.

"You are my best friend, and I love you like a brother, but I need personal space, Apex. At least when I'm asleep, if at no other time. I'm…" Null looked down at his paws, then at the blade on the end of his tail. He glanced at the cushions he had been sleeping on, noticing that one of the pillows near the end was sporting a gash the length of his leg. That hadn't been there last night. "I'm very sharp."

Apex mumbled something under his breath.

"What?' Null frowned.

"I always thought so," Apex repeated, just a little bit louder.

Null looked at Apex in confusion for a little bit before the words finally registered properly in his mind. "Oh. Not the time for flirting, Apex. I'm serious. You could get hurt, and much worse than this."

"I dunno, the danger has its own allure."

"This isn't a good time to joke, Apex! You might have died! For all I know I just poisoned you, or something!"

"I wasn't joking."

Null drew in a deep breath to shout something else, only to pause. His frown deepened. "We've talked about this before. I care for you, but I'm not interested in that kind of relationship."

"Maybe-,"

"Apex," Null interrupted, "My thoughts on this haven't changed. Okay? It's not up for debate."

Apex went silent.

Null huffed and took another look at the punctures in Apex's side. They weren't that bad, thankfully. Just in and out, rather than jagged slashes as would be expected of a claw wound. They also weren't too deep, due to Null's comparatively smaller size. They were even beginning to stop bleeding, thankfully.

Oh. The blood. What would Teneris think -

The door to the room creaked open.

"Apex, Null, I've got breakfast," Teneris said, poking his head into the room. The door was situated such that he first saw Apex's empty bed, and when he frowned and turned to look at Null he gasped. "What happened in here?!"

"An accident," Null answered with a sigh.

Teneris looked at Apex, bleeding and exhausted on the floor, then at Null, blood dripping from one paw, then at the dislodged claws on the floor. "...Right. Well. I suppose this is the sort of thing Spyro and Cynder wanted to talk to you about…"

"Yeah." Null sighed again. "Do you have some spirit gems? I think I might have just messed up Apex's internal mana supply, in addition to poking holes in his skin."

"Sorry," Apex said.

"...I'll get some bandages, and I think I have some green spirit gems somewhere. No reds. They're a lot harder to get in the city. Let me just… I'll be… right back."

The door closed with a soft click.

"Thanks Dad," Null muttered under his breath.

Not the best start to the day.

O-O-O

"Are you guys hurting yourselves already? Training hasn't even started!"

Null glared at Sparx as he buzzed around both Null and Apex's heads. He was tempted to try to swat the dragonfly out of the air, but after this morning he was more than a little worried he'd just slice Sparx to ribbons. So he settled for ignoring him instead.

"Now Sparx, don't be rude. Accidents happen," Spyro chided, "That said, it would be good to know how severe your injury is so we can avoid straining it."

They had come to pick Null and Apex up from Teneris' home, just to guide them to the place they would be training. From the looks of it, they were heading towards the temple in the middle of the city.

"I'm fine. Should be healed by the end of today," Apex replied, patting his side with one of his lower wings. He winced, then amended his statement with, "Although it does hurt right now."

"My claws are a lot sharper than either of us thought they were," Null said, "We're lucky it was just in and out with minimal jostling."

"So what happened, lovers' quarrel?" Sparx put his hands on his hips. "'Cause I've been there."

Apex visibly flinched at that suggestion, Null noticed. He felt guilty for making Apex feel bad, but he wasn't going to change his position. Null was not interested in a romantic relationship. With anyone.

"It was an accident." Null stopped walking for a moment to lift the paw he had done it with, using his other paw to gently tug one claw from its socket. It came free with a slight sting, and he flicked it at Sparx. The dragonfly caught it out of the air, then reeled with a disgusted look on his face. "Go ahead and test it for yourself."

"Yeah, I'm… good." Sparx grimaced, but didn't drop the claw. "This thing's probably some kind of biohazard."

"Did that hurt?" Cynder asked, furrowing her brow and leaning closer.

"Barely. Like removing a dead scale. My tailblade does the same thing, although I'd rather not demonstrate right now." Null continued walking, but waved his whiplike tail above him. "My claws grow back quickly, but my tailblade doesn't. Fortunately, I can reattach the blade."

"...Interesting." Cynder hummed to herself and returned her attention to the street, lost in thought.

"Yo, anyone want this?" Sparx asked, holding up Null's claw.

"You could always carve it into a sword," Spyro suggested, "It certainly looks sharp enough."

"As cool as that would be, I'm not feeling too good about this." Sparx frowned, then buzzed away. He returned a moment later without the claw. "Made me feel bad so I put it somewhere safe."

"...Huh." Null tilted his head. Did his magic negation extend to his detached claws? If that was the case, did it extend to his tailblade as well? He imagined it would.

"I'm going to head out now. I have a job, like, an actual day-to-day, so I can't hang around while you show these kids how not to hurt themselves. You guys have fun." Sparx jabbed one thumb over his shoulder.

"Alright. Good luck with your work today Sparx." Spyro nodded.

"Don't have too much fun," Cynder added.

"You know it's not a party without a giant lizard trying to eat you." Sparx made a clicking noise with his mouth and pointed at Cynder with both hands. "Alright. Love ya both."

And the dragonfly buzzed off, vanishing quickly into the streets and alleys of Warfang.

"So… what does Sparx do for a living?" Apex asked eventually.

"Well, he started out by trying to leverage his fame - and our fame, really - to get himself a cushy position doing nothing," Cynder said, "Things like professional model, writer, etcetera. Except he couldn't write, and he didn't like being objectified. Then he tried artistic hobbies for a while, and he's actually not bad at sculpting and sketches, but that wasn't holding his attention. Now he runs a pest removal service with a couple other dragonflies and a handful of grublins."

"It's not the most glamorous work, and he doesn't exactly get the recognition he wants out of it, but he does get a free meal out of most successful jobs so maybe he put more thought into it than expected." Spyro shrugged. "Either way, he's happy with it."

"Huh. I'd have thought he'd be, like, a comedian or something," Apex said.

"He'd have to actually have a sense of humor for that," Null muttered under his breath. Not quietly enough, apparently, because Cynder let out a light huff at his comment and Spyro fixed him with a frown.

"While I can understand that Sparx does tend to get on peoples' nerves, he is my brother. I would appreciate it if you didn't speak of him that way," Spyro said seriously.

"I would appreciate if he would stop bullying me," Null shot back, meeting the purple dragon's gaze.

Spyro frowned. There was no anger or frustration in it, just… confusion.

"In your village, were there any others around your age?" Cynder asked suddenly.

"Yeah," Apex answered before Null could say anything, "Two other drakes."

"I take it you two didn't have very good interactions with them."

"Null got the worst of it. They started picking on me after I told them off for it, but I was always better at fighting than them."

"I see." Cynder shared a look with Spyro, and the purple dragon nodded.

"I'll have a little chat with Sparx."

And they left it at that. Null was half-expecting to be chewed out further, but neither Spyro nor Cynder brought it up again.

Instead the rest of the short trip continued in silence. As Null predicted, they headed to the dragon temple. It was a grandiose structure, the centerpiece of the entire city. A massive construction of polished stone and glittering gold, with stylized reliefs of dragons carved across the building's front. The inside was just as well decorated. A long hall with nameless memorials lining the walls. The dragon temple served two primary purposes: nursery and place of remembrance. The nursery was beyond one of the many doors off of the main chamber, safely secured to protect the eggs incubating within. Traditionally all dragons brought their eggs to the dragon temple for safekeeping by the Guardians, but after the war with Malefor, many had lost faith in the old tradition. And of course, many were too far away to safely bring their eggs to the temple. The main chamber held countless blank memorials, each marked with a symbol to represent one of the common elements. They were for paying respects to the Ancestors, and to any other dragon who was no longer among the living.

Spyro and Cynder brought Null and Apex through a door in the back of the main hall and down a flight of stairs. A long, long flight of stairs, followed by many winding passages that seemed designed to destroy one's sense of direction. They eventually wound up in a room with all sorts of blinking lights on one wall. A lightning dragon was sitting on his haunches and making notes as he watched the lights blink on and off. On occasion, he would reach over and turn a dial or push a button, causing the pattern of lights to change.

"Volteer," Spyro said. The lightning dragon jumped, turning towards the group.

"Oh my, I had gotten so absorbed in my ponderings I'm afraid I didn't properly perceive your approach." The dragon was later in years, but by no means elderly. Spyro had called him Volteer, which meant he must have been the lightning guardian of that name. Volteer gestured at the blinking lights. "I was performing an analysis on these ancient machines, you see. Now, they match no known production of mole design, and the scale of all interactable tools on them leads me to believe-,"

"They were made by dragons."

Volteer blinked in surprise, seeing Null for the first time. "Why, yes. Very astute observation there, young dragon. Tell me, what else here has brought you to that conclusion?"

"Not… much. I was mostly looking at this." Null padded over to the machine and traced one claw across a symbol branded into the side. It was a pair of interlocking angular spirals, one starting at the bottom and one starting at the top. "It was on a scroll I was forced to read. One that explicitly stated it was for the eyes of a dragon. The scroll had blueprints for a beacon -,"

"Which would be the signal we received several days ago!" Volteer exclaimed, 'Spyro, Cynder, are you hearing this?"

"We, uh, already heard this," Spyro said sheepishly, "The plan was to tell you today, but it seems Null got to it first."

"Ah I see. The ever present limitations on communication strike yet again." Volteer sighed. He shook his head sadly, looking at the machine

"Yes, well, I'm sure a constant telepathic link would drive everyone insane. We're not designed for it." Cynder cleared her throat. "Do you have the Orb on you? We need to check something with these two before we begin."

"Ah, yes! One moment while I retrieve it." Volteer padded across the room to a table, retrieving a spherical device with tiny bars in various colors on it. A purple bar on top of the device remained perfectly parallel to the floor, no matter how he tilted it. He brought it back and held it up in front of him. "This, young dragons, is the Orb. Well, it's an elemental energy differentiation detector, so I wanted to call it the EEDD, but the name didn't stick. So the Orb it is called. A brief showcase, example, er, demonstration I do believe is in order. You see, I designed it to identify a dragon's primary elemental affinity. Observe."

Electricity crackled along Volteer's claws, and on the orb a tiny yellow bar lit up. The bar on the top gently tipped one direction, the side with a slightly lighter hue.

"As you can see," Volteer explained, "The Orb correctly identified that my magic is lightning, with a tilt towards light due to the affinity lightning has with the 'light' elements. While that would be easy enough to tell at a glance, the Orb was designed to discern what element a more ambiguously elementally charged dragon is closest to."

Apex slowly nodded, then leaned over to Null for an explanation.

"It tells you what element you have, or which of the twelve most common elements is closest to yours, if you have a rare sub-element," Null said.

"Correct! Now then, would one of you like to try it?" Volteer held the orb out.

Null leaned away. He wasn't sure if it was a good idea for him to touch a magical device like this. The other machines he'd touched - or made, in the case of the beacon and the mana bomb - had worked fine. But this one specifically took in magic. And Null had none.

Apex stepped forward, taking the Orb in one paw. He channeled magic in, causing wind to whirl around the room for a brief moment, and a white bar on the device lit up. The bar on top of the Orb tilted towards the darker-hued side. Then, for a brief moment, every light on the Orb glowed ever so slightly before dimming back to nothing.

"Well." Volteer squinted at the device. "How positively peculiar, vexing, odd, perplexing. Wind is one of the light elements, which it is properly displaying, and yet the Orb is reading darkness. Perhaps it's calibrated incorrectly?"

"No, this is what I was expecting," Cynder said, nodding, "Don't worry about it too much, I'll explain later."

"Oh, well, now I'm going to be wondering about it all day." Volteer frowned, then sighed. He nodded at Null. "Well, nothing to it. Your turn now, young dragon."

Null cautiously accepted the Orb. It was kind of heavy, made of metal and filled with mechanisms. The bar on the top of the device leveled out again as he touched it. And it sat in his paw, doing nothing despite Null's best efforts.

"...When you're ready," Volteer encouraged gently.

"I don't have magic." Null held it out, shaking his head. "I can't activate it."

"Have you given it a try?"

"Yes," Null said bitterly, "Hundreds of times over many, many years."

"I see." Volteer took the orb, nodding slowly. "Well, that's quite possibly the most interesting outcome I never could have foreseen! A dragon with no magic, what an intriguing occurrence! Of course, it was always theoretically possible, but any dragon hatched with no magic tends to be non-viable, perishing due to organ failure within a matter of days…"

"Now you know why we've brought Null to you," Spyro said, "He's a unique case, and hopefully we can figure out the extent of his condition. He negates magic."

"Apex, could you come with me to the meditation rooms?" Cynder asked, "There are some important things we need to talk about."

"Uh…" Apex looked nervously at Null, then slowly nodded. "Sure."

"Follow me."

Cynder left, moving with graceful steps as she exited the room. Apex shot one last look at Null, who gave him a nod, then followed the dark dragoness.

"Let's get to testing then!" Volteer was practically buzzing with excitement. Or, literally, given the sparks that flew from his clawtips as he walked. "Spyro, if you could retrieve my equipment? This is going to be exhilarating!"

"I think you're scaring Null," Spyro commented with a concerned expression, "You might want to tone it back a bit."

Volteer paused, looking at Null. "Oh, yes. My apologies. Nothing to fear here, Null. We shall be empirically determining what your capabilities are!"

"Is it going to involve… that?" Null pointed at a monstrous device in the corner, all gears and cogs and sharp points.

"What?" Volteer followed Null's pointing. "Oh no, not unless things get really out of hand."

Null wasn't sure he was going to survive the day.