Okay so I was thinking about the dragon prince, specifically episode one, where Claudia used Aspiro to mess with Callum and I know it was for plot, but am I really supposed to believe that that’s the first time Callum had ever seen someone do any magic other than dark?
Like, in the show, Viren canonically used the Primal Stone when he was taking Zym’s egg and he seemed pretty comfortable using it, which implies that he probably had it for a while before that. Also, the assassination of king Harrow was said to be around 6 months after the dragon king’s death and in that time Viren gave Claudia the Primal Stone, which also implies that he had it long enough that it was no longer interested in it and Claudia had it long enough that she was comfortable referring to it as her Primal Stone not her Dad’s Primal Stone.
Where am I going with this? Well,
I think that in another world, Viren got the primal Stone either shortly before Sarai’s death or shortly after and that’s why he wasn’t seen using it in the little flashback story. What if Callum saw someone, mostly likely Viren, do Sky Primal magic much earlier and something clicked?
What if little baby Callum, being young, is more sensitive and responsive to the world around him and is both instinctively aware of the difference between Dark magic and Sky magic because he hasn’t been around either long enough to become desensitized to one or the other, and has his mom’s wisdom of Dark magic being “too easy” helping him along. I imagine him absolutely loving it and, because no one’s explained to him that it’s ’impossible’ he starts practicing that spell and drawing it out until he can do it.
He goes to the library and looks up anything he can to help him, conveniently missing the part where humans aren’t supposed to be able to use Primal magic. Without that little annoying phrase holding him back, he doesn’t fall into the mind set that he can’t, he just thinks it’s really hard so he has to try really hard. He finds some information on Arcanums, and he debates on whether or not he should ask someone for help, but ultimately decides that if he doesn’t show he can somewhat do this on his own then maybe his step-dad won’t let him continue learning (he totally would encourage anything Callum’s interested in (except Dark magic) but Callum doesn’t know that).
So eventually he figures it out and he does the spell, it’s a little shakier than in the show, but that’s because he doesn’t have as many years of experience drawing (even though he’s really talented for his age) and he’s never had the bonus of using the Primal Stone to jumpstart his learning.
He runs to King Harrow to show him what he learned and to ask him if he can continue learning Sky magic and Harrow-
Harrow knows this shouldn’t be possible. This is only like 7 or 8 months after Sarai’s death after Sarai’s death so he’s still kinda in the ‘blame everyone’ stage and he kind blames dark magic for her death on top of the Dragon King. He knows the difference between Primal magic and Dark magic, not anything too deep, but he can definitely tell, so when Callum draws a Sky Primal rune in the air and actually does magic. He kinda goes 👁👄👁.
He does that for long enough that Callum maybe thinks he did something wrong and starts to apologize, but Harrow finally realizes and goes “No, no, no, Callum what you did is amazing, you are a very special boy and I couldn’t be prouder of you. I’m just surprised, who taught you magic?” Because if Viren used his son as some kind of experiment to see if humans could use Primal magic, if he did... something, he was gonna lose his shit.
Obviously, with this little bit of encouragement, Callum proudly states that he learned it all on his own, which baffles Harrow even more because what the fuck is he supposed to do with this? He knows that Viren got a Primal Stone recently and that Callum probably saw him use it and assumed that it was just a different kind of magic and tried to emulate that, but the fact that it worked? That’s what’s got him stuck.
Callum wants to continue learning magic, but Harrow knows enough about magic, dark magic specifically, that he definitely does not want Viren to know that Callum can do Primal magic, so he tells Callum that he can continue reading and researching Sky magic in the library, but that he shouldn’t practice spells without his supervision. Later he’ll probably add Opeli or someone else he trusts (not Viren because he keeps thinking back to what Sarai thought about dark magic) to that list because why not, but until then he tells Callum that he wants him to keep this between the two of them.
Callum doesn’t understand, but Harrow explains that it’s very rare (read: non-existent) that humans are capable of doing Primal magic. So Callum agrees to keep it secret and keeps learning Sky magic without anyone knowing.
Eventually when Ezran’s older he’ll tell him and Ezran will tell him about the Animals in return and Callum will actually believe him because fuck you.
I imagine that things are pretty similar to canon, but Callum and Ezran and Harrow are even closer, Callum grows up much more weary of Dark magic, and he grows up a little bit more confident because he found something besides drawing and memorizing details, that he’s good at. He’s still pretty insecure because that’s what happens when you’re the step-son of a king and you’re mom isn’t even there to reassure you, but less.
This ended up being pretty long, but I really love the concept
Callum would probably carry the group due to already having years of experience with magic.
