The younglings gathered on the platform, where their Tenders awaited the arrival of the dragons who had offered to assist with their outing.

  Only two Tenders accompanied them now, down from the six that had been with them since they hatched ten years ago. The other four had moved to work with the dragons that had hatched under the Well's influence just a few days ago.

  The younglings had been allowed to see the hatchlings once the hatching ritual was done, adorable little wriggly balls of grey scales - and sharp fangs, as a few of the more adventurous younglings had discovered when they'd gotten too close and been mistaken for food. Their scales were too hard for the hatchlings to do any real damage, but the odd nip to the tail had encouraged them to leave the business of caring for the hatchlings to the Hatch-Tenders, who had experience in handling baby dragons - and mana-reinforced bodies.

  Though their grey scales and lack of horns would never change as long as they remained in the Mortal stage, they had the proportions of full-grown dragons now - although they were still only half the size of the adults around them. Nonetheless, twenty-seven half-size dragons were far beyond the capabilities of just two dragons to lift (at least, other than the Elders, but they could not be expected to be available at any given moment).

  So, a half-dozen other dragons had volunteered to assist the Tenders in carrying the younglings off the Wellheart for the first time in their young lives. Not all of the volunteers had arrived yet, but one of them had made the mistake of mentioning to the younglings that they were going for their very first hunt.

  The result was pandemonium. Half the younglings were busily practicing pounces and leaps that they knew half from instinct and half from watching the adults practice - on each other, in the absence of any other target. The other half were boasting about how much prey they would bring back.

  "I'm going to catch ten - no, fifteen sheeps!" Raan boasted to his friends, drawing himself up to his full height (which was close to six feet at the shoulders to the five feet of the others; the disparity in height had been slowly dwindling as they grew but was still enough to be noticeable.) "Four for me and four for each of you!"

  "That makes sixteen," Kuen pointed out.

  "Yeah?" Kese cut in, before Raan could retry his maths. "Well, I'm not going to bother with sheep, they're too fluffy. I'm going to catch twenty boars!"

  "I don't like boars," Quarv whined. "I'm gonna catch a whole pack of wolves!"

  "You couldn't catch a whole pack of wolves, silly!" Kese retorted. "They'd all bite you!"

  "Well, I wouldn't catch them all at once! And you're silly!"

  Kese flicked the other youngling with her tail, crouching down and preparing to spring at him - only to be interrupted by a grey blur that flew past and thumped into Raan, struggling for a moment to trip the bigger youngling up before realising who she'd tried to 'hunt.'

  "Did you really just try to pounce on Raan, Apome?" Kuen laughed.

  "I didn't realise it was him!" she whined, scrabbling up and draping herself over his back to look down at the others until he pushed her off with a casual flex of his wings. "You used to be so much bigger than us! Now I can't tell it's you!"

  "You mean apart from how he sounds, and how he smells, and how his mana feels?" Kese pointed out.

  "Well...I was busy trying to pounce! It's not easy!"

  "Yes it is!" Kese retorted, and tackled Apome to prove her point, knocking the startled youngling over as she squeaked in protest and wriggled futilely in Kese's grip.

  "Okay, everybody!"

  Tender Jinwirys's bark caught the attention of the younglings and they disentangled themselves, lining up eagerly near the baskets that had been deposited on the platform.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  "These are the volunteers that have agreed to assist you with your first hunt today. We'll be taking you to different areas of the same Domain. This Domain has been stable for centuries - most of us had our first hunts here as well - and the creatures there are just beasts. Who can tell us what differentiates beasts from Mortal stage monsters?"

  "Beasts don't have any mana at all!" one of the younglings answered, promptly. "But dragons like us have mana as soon as we hatch, because we're better than beasts!"

  "Except our mana comes from the adults," another youngling pointed out.

  "Well...but we can still use it!"

  "Now, now, little ones. You're both right. You are, from the moment you hatch, classified as being of the Mortal stage. However," the Tender added, a sharp snarl in his voice catching the attention of the younglings like a bolt of lightning, "that does not mean that the beasts you will be hunting will all be easy for you to best. Some of them will be bigger than you - some even bigger than us. More importantly, the difference between beasts and Mortal stage monsters is far smaller than the gulf in power between full stages. Some of the beasts you hunt will be stronger than you, or faster. Your guides will stop you suffering serious injury, but we will not stop you getting hurt completely. Your hunts in the future will be against far more dangerous things than beasts, and you need to learn how to hunt for real."

  "But we'll heal when we fight monsters once we Forge!" one of the younglings protested.

  "Mana isn't an instant cure," one of the guides interjected. "Our bodies are far more durable even after just one Forging, but that also means they take more energy to heal. If you get hurt in a hunt, you will still be hurt and you will still have to make it to safety with that injury." He opened his mouth to say something else, but then changed his mind at the last second. "You'll learn more about the powers of Forging your being when you come of age, though," he said instead.

  "Now, everyone get into groups of three or four and pick a basket," Jinwirys instructed. "Raan, make sure you're in a group of three, please."

  Raan and Kese looked between the others. "I'm not going with you!" Kuen said immediately. "If the two of you are in the same place you'll hunt everything and none of us will get anything!"

  She scampered off, immediately finding another group of two and joining them as they piled into one of the baskets, which was picked up by one of the adult volunteers and lifted up into the air.

  "I'll go with you!" Apome offered, immediately.

  "Well, that makes three, then." The idea that Raan and Kese might have split up hadn't occurred to either of them, and they bundled into one of the baskets.

  "So you're Raan, then," the adult dragon who glided down to pick up the basket handle in his forepaws commented. He had vibrant purple scales that reflected green in the light of the suns, and pale yellow wing membranes, making him one of the more colourful dragons the younglings had seen. "I'm Shushart. And you two?"

  "Kese," Kese introduced herself, planting her forepaws on the edge of the basket to get her head over it enough that she could bow politely to him.

  "I'm Apome!" Apome tried to follow suit, but lost her footing and tumbled to the base of the basket as Shushart flexed mana through his wings and lifted them off the ground.

  "Heh, you are heavy," he observed - not that the weight actually seemed to hamper him. "Just so you younglings know, our Will doesn't work in the Currents, so if you do something stupid like fall out of the basket, I will grab you in my jaws and it will hurt."

  Kese and Raan got the implied message and tucked themselves into the basket too, and Shushart nodded and banked towards the barrier that sealed the Wellheart off to prevent stray hatchlings falling off the side of the Domain and into the Abyss below. A roar and a pulse of mana carved a hole through the barrier ahead of him as the other dragons swept through the barrier, their precious cargo occasionally peeking out over the basket before retreating as the younglings travelled further than they ever had before.

  The trip to the edge of the Spanheart took perhaps an hour. Alone, the adult dragons could have flown it far quicker, but they were moving more slowly for the benefit of their passengers. It was a comfortable enough journey, though the younglings kept instinctively spreading their wings to catch the wind and being shoved around in the basket by the force. Luckily, none of them came close to risking actually falling out, so Shushart's warning of catching anyone in his jaws went unneeded.

  As the convoy of dragons came to a halt, the younglings poked their heads back over the baskets - to see the Currents ahead.

  A swirling mass of mana, visible even to the limited senses of the Mortal stage younglings, soared off into the distance. While they hadn't been formally taught about the stages yet, they knew enough to know that the Wayfinder stage, the Third Forging, allowed a dragon to fly where they willed, not where the Currents took them.

  Feeling the sheer, overwhelming power of the flowing mana before them, it seemed impossible for anyone to ever reach that level of strength - and yet, the adult dragons carrying them were all at least of the Wayfinder stage.

  None of the younglings dared peek over the lips of the baskets until they were safely out of the Currents and landing on the grass of the Domain.