his neck and immediately felt a strange warmth, as if he’d come close to a fire for a split second. Slightly dazzled by the flash, he blinked a few times and began to examine the green colour enveloping his attire with curiosity. Up close, the colour looked strange, unnatural, and gave the unsettling impression that something was not quite as it should be. The longer he looked closely at the individual elements, the stronger the feeling of artificiality became.
‘You’d better not dwell on it.’ Zane tugged the dragon by the shoulder. ‘If you stare at it up close for too long, you’ll feel queasy.’
Draco nodded, beginning to feel an unpleasant twinge in his stomach. Interestingly, when looking at the elf, he didn’t have the same feeling, but one glance at his hand, still clenched around the reptile’s shoulder, was enough for the green coils to make his insides somersault.
‘It’s all about distance,’ he hissed through clenched teeth, trying to calm his stomach.
‘Exactly.’ The elf was pleased with his quick grasp of the situation. ‘From a distance, everything looks normal; it’s only up close that the spell stops deceiving the senses so effectively.’
‘What’s on the map?’ A voice from the gathering group of cadets caught Draco’s attention; he was in desperate need of something to fully absorb him.
‘It seems things have changed a bit.’ Cedric studied the sheet of paper he’d received from the instructor carefully. ‘The lake is bigger and more central to the Crater; it looks as though there’s an island in it. Trees are marked all around, so we’re dealing with mostly wooded terrain. In the north-east, there are some rocks and fortifications. Apart from that, there are only a few small hills or knolls marked here and there.’
‘A stream?’ Adam tried to look over Retfield’s shoulder.
‘It’s not marked, but that’s where I’d try to regroup anyway.’ Cedric tapped somewhere at the bottom of the map. ‘Reconnaissance from here to the lake, and then south-west.’ He traced the proposed route with his finger. - We’ll make our way along the
