Half a year old, and only now was Svartis making his first venture into the core regions of these caves - in search of further magical practice.

His grip on ice and darkness grew firmer and steadier with each passing day, but he still suffered from inconsistency. In a life-or-death scenario, a weak stream of slush would get him nowhere but a quenched thirst. Bone didn't like to practice on moving targets like the lessers (not that he blamed her) but he felt a need to do just that. Dread was a dead-eye shot when it came to the deer and smaller wildlife in Monoceros.

Svartis knew he'd need to get on that level, even with the... apparent deadly threat? of orthoclases and purple behemoths gone. They could still come - and his father would surely reject them at Tunnel J's entrance - and Svartis still feared some for his life.

... well, some would say that practicing the art of self-defense does wonders for one's confidence.

Sweeping into Polaris on swift wings, the massive reptile looked down below. Icy eyes near-immediately found the almost incandescent glow of the Spire dead-ahead, though he quickly distracted himself with the sound of rushing water. Magicka buzzed harshly against the bridge of his nose, shockingly strong, even with being so close to the source of it all. Svartis drew closer to the river, too far to skim its surface but not so that he couldn't see his dark silhouette in its rippling surface.

Ice glowed coolly in his throat, and promptly spewed in a strong flurry; so much that it coalesced into a veritable chunk mid-air before impacting the water's surface. The current, though, immediately sucked it beneath and broke it apart on a crystalline bed. "Huh..."

I wonder...

Svartis tilted, spinning almost perfectly on the axis of his wingtip towards the massive river's shore and alighting once his tail was out of its reach. Icy eyes did a cursory scan of his surroundings; and with nothing in his immediate vicinity, he awkwardly wing-waddled to the side, shifting and tucking his chin into his chest for a moment. Shaking out his head and focusing on the rustle of his fins for a moment, he settled into place.

Stance, it seemed, was everything when it came to magic - that, and having a target. In this case, his target was the floor.

His tail thumped against the floor as he reared up slightly, shifting balance back to get the maximum spread of pure ice across the floor. In a pathetically short billow of his lungs, he had a sloppy oval about three feet in diameter and an inch thick.

Shifting weight back onto all fours, the black dragon rounded his magic's results, eyeing it critically and frowning as best his reptilian snout could manage. It was... a decent start, sure - but, he'd meant to conjure up something bigger, mightier. There needed to be grand beginnings for this impulsive project of his. Go big, or go home... and think about making it harder for yourself by attempting to conjure snow in the hotbed that was Fornax.

No, not yet.

Svartis circled the ice once more, breathing deeply until he prepared for another stuttering inhalation. Just when his lungs seemed close to exploding, he unleashed another billowing stream of ice - which coated the inside of his mouth within seconds and glued his mouth shut in a frigid muzzle.

If he squawked, it was stuck in his mouth like every other part of his mouth. Svartis - in cat-like fashion - swung his head one way, then the other. The cycle repeated a few times before he came to the slightly oxygen-deprived conclusion that perhaps the ice was lodged into his scales too much to simply be shed like a paper bag.

Twisting and stooping so that his muzzle was propped against the floor, he pawed at it with a set of wing-claws. Finding that to not work, Svartis tried a series of increasingly frantic taps on stone. Each one sent an unpleasant vibration through his skull and he shuddered.

Magic... maybe?

A push of magic, and his icy muzzle sloughed off in an overzealous cloud of steam. Svartis's eyes watered, and he shuffled backwards even if a breeze quickly swept it away - it and his already-melting oval. He looked at it mournfully, before shaking himself and pawing at his snout.

Caves, even touching it hurt. Steam burns were the worst. They reminded him faintly of razor teeth in his calf and his inability to escape.

Hurrying to the river and clutching its edge for dear life, the dragon leaned down as if to take a quick sip, igniting cooling magic on himself. He paused for just a moment, then plunged right in.

Mineral-laden freshwater was soothing and tooth-achingly cold, but Svartis had to surface and expose his blistering scales and gums to the air at some point. Eyes dulling with a grimace, the dragon shook himself. It'd heal over just fine, and the worst of it had surely passed.

The lesson was learned, anyways - the lesson being don't get too cocky with your magic, idiot. If it decided that an oval on the floor would be only three feet on its long axis, then so be it.

He shook himself, tail thumping again on the floor. His prior attempt was already a half-melted mess, now just a puddle for someone to splash in than anything of substance. Working quickly was the best bet, and he strove for it with another deep breath...

... and a series of hacking coughs.

Come ON! he hissed balefully towards his stone, as if it were an animate object to get frustrated with and not little more than his conduit to the lifeblood. Svartis shook himself for the umpteenth time, bobbing weight between his wings and making a series of short hops - a bit like the star quarterback gearing up to make a game-winning play.

In this case, gearing up to make a damn circle on the floor.

Fixing a harshly focused glare on the stone, the dragon inhaled.

This time, his breath sent a crackling spread of ice across it, some six feet across - nearly perfectly circular - and three inches thick. A strong, dense base precisely-aimed and shaped. Svartis didn't bother to hold in his low rumble of pleasure. Finally... a good cast.

Alright, working quick enough, Svartis paced back some few feet, then paused, or... working smart enough.

When constructing a den in the blisteringly-hot Monoceros, he and his mother'd employed a great deal of icy breath, but also a strange class of magic that seemed to make that ice eternal under any circumstances. Even when the orb-light stole in and refracted off the thousands of warps and aberrations, none of it melt. Their palace of rime would remain intact until stated otherwise.

So, here - he could do that, too. Make each part of this perpetual as he went. It was energetically expensive, sure, but it would grant him the time to make this perfect and make up for that.

He set a wing upon the disc, and pushed at his magicka.

The ice didn't seem to change one bit, but it hadn't exploded into a million pieces or been destroyed in other ways (a harsh lesson learned by the both of them.) Svartis hesitated on lifting his claws from it, but figured that it was... okay?

He paused a moment, watching it with a surprising amount of eagerness for someone observing a process as slow as paint drying. It didn't become any slicker-looking.

On to the next stage, then: breathing a steady, precise enough beam to form walls.

Hobbling forwards, the wyvern shifted so he was awkwardly straddling the circle, claws hooked into a ragged edge like picks. Breast swelling, he started with his snout close to the edge and worked his way around, ensuring that every bit of ice was as dense as possible.

Through this process, Svartis was learning two more important things: one, he was impatient and not well-suited to this precise work, especially without any actual aim; and two, he was getting fairly headache-ridden and hungry. His teeth and snout hurt somewhat, the former not quite as much.

Hopefully grabbing a bite to eat would assuage both of those problems.

The dragon stepped over his three-odd foot tall ice walls, careful to pick up his claws and his tail to avoid knocking them over. Pausing, he carefully considered between fishing or hunting. The former would surely grant an abundance of lessers to potentially catch, but it required a sharp eye and patience - only one of which he possessed.

In any case, he was more familiar with a chase on land or aerial tangles with dragonbats. He might be looking to overcompensate with magic, but certainly not finding a meal.

Fins instinctively flaring up with muted excitement to eat, Svartis lifted his head as high as it'd go while grounded, sniffing the air.