A Benevolent Evil Dragon

Well this flight is at least interesting. My eyes are slightly better than before (that’s faster than I expected), so I get to see a tad more detail, though I still can’t make out much more than what kind of trees we’re going above. I look with a growing pit in my stomach as we pass by the lake, above the forest, yet it doesn’t seem like mother is planning on stopping. We instead keep on going over the sea of green, making me sigh. Who knows what she has planned this time around? Another life or death situation?

It takes a few minutes but something draws my attention. In the distance, the tall trees end abruptly, making way for hills and fields. There I notice a rather large thing… an unnatural thing. Once again, my eyes suck at such distances, and we are starting to drift away from that place, but for a moment I manage to notice exactly what it is.

An actual town, a place where people live. A place where humans live… and maybe where mother got everyone from… I look at it, somewhat taken by the beauty. Large fields painted different colors are mainly arrayed around the river which passes straight through the heart of the town. If I strain even more I think I can see the many large bridges built over it, connecting the two sides. I also notice that the bigger houses with the largest courtyards are closer to the river and things get smaller and simpler the farther out you go. Guessing mother’s river is pretty important for them, probably because of the mana infused in it.

The place is also a lot more protected than I am used to seeing, as there’s a wall surrounding it. If only I could see a bit more detail I’d probably notice people or something, but instead I am forced to turn as it gets too blurry for me to see anything anymore. My eyes burn from the strain, so that’s mildly annoying.

Let’s see… where exactly are you taking us..?

Gods this took forever. We went over the forest to… another forest. Or maybe it’s just a deeper part of the same one. The trees are larger, probably older, definitively weirder, and I start actually seeing mana, or at least I think I do. We eventually start going down and I notice a clearing with a giant pillar in the middle of it.

We land and as mother puts us down I look at the tall pillar of rainbow crystal, with swirls of color, patterns that turn to chaos, even its form is strange as its base looks like cubes, similar to pyrite formations, yet as you move up it turns into different shapes, straight lines, I think I even see a few crystal flowers at the very top of it. It seems to have no clear pattern, no clear look... It also looks like someone took it and impaled it into the ground, making it share its mana with the world around, since it looks so out of place. The plants surrounding the pillar are absolutely strange, taking in absurd shapes, sizes, and even colors. I see one of them having rainbow leaves, yet somehow still living.

Finally I decide that I need to see what kind of mana this thing has.. I take in a deep breath and I feel everything, but a different shade of everything.

Back in the cave, the mana mostly smelled like “everything and nothing with a pinch of dirt”, and in that case it felt like everything was neutralizing everything else. Here, it is different. It is like everything is exciting everything else, nothing managing to cancel other things, and as a result I am assaulted by an explosion of stimuli that might just fry my brain. I see everything. From the deepest seas to the tallest mountains, molten rives, thick, toxic mists, I see the stars and the moons, I see all forms of rocks and crystals, I see beasts so diverse I cannot even name them all and I see… nothing.

I am back and I forgot. I saw a lot but I forgot most of it, my brain simply couldn’t memorize it all. I look on at my siblings and they have a similarly confused reaction, looking a bit drunk as they waddle around, Spots even hits his head on a plant as he seems to forget how to see.

Dangerous thing…

Now, why did mother bring us here? I turn to her and I see her waiting to have everyone’s attention. When she does, by rumbling to make the others look at her, she starts weaving the mana. I see the mist as it separates from the crystal, is split apart until only a sliver remains, then she uses that to make a light rune. It is fully functional and she even turns it into a rainbow gradient. Alright, that’s nice, but what’s with… She then weaves a second rune and makes the two occupy the same space. They seem to combine in a way, the mana moving between the two, and suddenly the source of light turns into a spotlight.

Huh… When I was messing with the light rune I kept trying to find a way to make it go into a certain direction, it seems all I needed was to add a completely different rune to the mix… Great. At least it is a simple thing instead of some complex abomination.

I do not get to properly memorize it, as mother breaks it apart and instead makes a rune I have not seen her use before. It makes a floating flame. She adds another rune to it, it becomes a flamethrower that just barely doesn’t reach the vegetation. She makes a few other examples but none slow enough for me to properly memorize any of the runes…

Alright, I get her point. She’s not using her own mana for these runes, she’s using the mana from the crystal. That means that the crystal has just about every mana you can think of, and it’s a giant pillar, meaning it has a lot of it. I actually look on at my siblings as they try to mimic her. They did try to make light runes and the like when I was playing with the concept, but they failed, which makes sense since it wasn’t an easy thing to accomplish. However, it seems that seeing it done at a larger scale, but a much more competent dragon, gave them some insight or something of the sort since it takes them a couple minutes to just make a light rune.

Huh. Guess I’m a shit teacher, even though I didn’t even try to teach them. Either way, I get to work. I can feel the mass of chaotic mana just wanting to do something, anything, and I first try to separate light mana, then air mana, and finally sound mana. Turns out it does, in fact, have sound mana, so I use that for the rune. The other mana types try to butt in and mess a bit with the sound I do make, somehow distorting it just by existing, yet I am somewhat able to make things work.

Actually…

A bad, bad thought pops up in my mind. Technically I could try the weird version of the sound rune and see what happens, right? I mean it was made from a weird mix of mana, so maybe this thing will let me use it?

I try it. I weave the mana and make the rune again, this time using all sorts of mana, with no filtering. It… seems to work? It’s a lot more unstable than before, and it does absolutely nothing, but it is there and it is shining.

I try to mess around with its appearance, but it refuses.

Wha?

The mana straight up refuses to move and I am confused. I made it work, and I can stop it, but I cannot mess with the shape of it? Plus, it isn’t making sounds, despite last time doing a whole melody that I didn’t even know beforehand… Alright you weird little bugger, how do you work..?

I think back to when I had used it, and all I can remember is feeling what should be and making it manifest. Right now there’s no song happening, but if it’s just based on what feels right to my mind, shouldn’t I be able to play a song outright if I focus?

I try just that, first thinking about just using any song that comes to mind, but with mother here I decide to go for something else. I use the beast woman’s voice. I remember her singing, even though I didn’t understand it, it was too beautiful to forget, so I think back to it. Suddenly I feel like somebody splattered rainbow paint all over my eyes because the world looks wrong as I hear her singing, accompanied by the whole chorus that I made last time. My siblings startle for a moment then turn to me, but I can’t move. I didn’t want to make the whole song, only her singing, but the rune plays regardless. It takes a few minutes for it to end and for me to be able and move again…

That was… weird….

After a few hours (actually it was most of the day, but it only felt like a few hours) where we played around with runes, mother decided to bring us back home, skipping the meal entirely. Guess no fighting today… Honestly it’s better like that. I still have to arrange my thoughts about this song rune…

So I got two versions, one that functions in a very mechanized manner, where I need to try hard to even make the simplest beat function, and another that just rips songs straight out of my mind, but requires a very specific kind of mana that our nest doesn’t imitate. I tried to make it again when we got here, but it wouldn’t even keep its shape… it was like that combination of mana types was a mana type in and of itself… I wish I could try more but I am certain I am already stretching the limit of what seems feasible for a child, so I will just shut up and let it be for when I can go there by myself.

For now I need to try and learn more at a somewhat normal rate. Genius but not “why does he know things nobody taught him” kind of genius. I wanted at first to be more normal, but now I realize that trying to “lay low” while being a god damned dragon is a stupid idea in the first place.

It is the following day and mother picks us up again, takes us to the Chaos Pillar (might as well give it a cool name) and showcases the earth rune, using it to move around a tiny stone. This time she actually lets us see it long enough for me to memorize it and all its absurd complexity, and I get to work putting it in practice. I manage to get it first, of course, but my siblings are no slouches and they start throwing pebbles around with their minds without care. One thing I notice is that their rocks are wobbly, and I think their aim is off. When I try to lift one, at first it doesn’t work at all, but the second I apply even a bit of my many years of physics into the visualization, the mana just does as it is told. This rune is strange, since it doesn’t seem to make something, like how the sound rune make sound, and trying to influence the rune itself is borderline impossible, but thinking about moving the rock and how to move it, will make the rune shift appropriately to follow my thoughts.

A few hours of just moving bigger and bigger rocks and mother gives us a meal, finally. She took off for a moment, but then came back with a few mutated animals wrapped in vines. Now that I think about it, this might be where she gets them… interesting.

Either way, we eat and then swiftly leave, with mother refusing to pick me up until I ate at least half of a deer, and then she got the other half to bring back, knowing exactly where I was planning to take it.

Next day, same deal. Turns out we’re starting dragon school, and apparently magic comes before we even learn how to talk. Ain’t that wild? One thing I do notice however is that mother isn’t using her words this time around. Up until now she’s been using words that literally shake the world, yet for these she just makes them. Interesting… Also, we're still on the earth rune, but mother does show me the fire rune after seeing how quickly I grasped moving stones around. Never thought I’d actually be eager about going to school again, but I am loving this! Two runes are already added to my repertoire, and more are on the way!

I do wonder why mother brings us here instead of just doing all this in the cave... Oh well, she probably knows better.