Chapter 21

Eva Lemuria

I feel like my mind is covered in a fog. I can barely think right now for some reason and I feel so tired. I slowly open my eyes and see that everything is blurry so I keep trying to look around until my eyes start to refocus and I see that I am inside a cave. It's just a plain old cave with no signs of mana beast anywhere. I notice that I am lying on some leaves and grass. I don't know where I am or why I'm here, but my body hurts and I feel exhausted. I decide to check my mana, but something is wrong. Everything inside me is different from before. It's hard to explain what exactly is wrong. It's like the mana in my body before was like a small stream flowing through my body, but now it's like a giant jet of water flying through my body at incredible speeds. My mana has seemed to have evolved into something else entirely. I then check my mana heart and notice that my damage from my forceful awakening has almost completely healed somehow.

It's too weird so I force myself to sit up and I grab my chest where my heart is. What I first feel is a sharp pain from where my fingers touched my chest. I look down at my hand and my eyes seem to bulge out. My hand is covered in black scales and my nails seem to be like small claws. They aren't huge enough that they'll be inconvenient, but they are sharp enough that they pierced parts of my chest. I follow my hand up my arm and see the scales keep going up my arm. The further I follow my arm the more I panic from what's changed. I get to my shoulder and notice I don't even know where the shirt I'm wearing came from. I take it off and see that I have scales covering my right side of my body. It covers part of my right breast and keeps going up. I follow it with my left hand to feel the scales go all the way to my face. I also seem to have scales covering where my heart should be and I start panicking because I remember now.

I should be dead. I had definitely died from having my heart pulverized by that dragon tail. I had died. I am dead. I shouldn't be alive, but I can feel a heart beating under those black scales. That's impossible though because I saw my own heart splattered on that dragon's chest. I begin to freak out and unconsciously leak my new mana. It's like a dam breaking and water trying to pour out all at once. The cave starts to shake from the raw force as my panic attack seems to increase. I keep freaking out until I spot my halberd leaning against the wall. I run to my halberd and grab it with my left arm. I raise it up above my right shoulder, but before I could bring it down I am tackled from behind.

“Stop! What are you doing? Why would you try to do that?” Unknown Female

I'm lying under a girl I've never seen before. She has dark blue hair with some tints of green and eyes that match. She's a very beautiful girl, but I have no idea who she is. M instincts are to push her off so I do that with both arms. I feel as if it's incredibly easy and she actually flies backward out of the cave. I walk back over and grab my halberd except for this time it's with my right hand out of habit. I walk out of the cave to see the girl standing up.

“Who are you? Why would you stop me? Did you do this to me? What have you done?” I feel my anger, pain, and frustration is coming out when I usually try to keep calm, but I don't care.

“Please calm down. I saved you because you had freed me. You had died while saving me so I gave you one of my hearts.” She tells me this, but all I realize is that this is the dragon in her humanoid form.

Instead of speaking I form a destruction edge and swing quickly towards her. I still feel groggy and unfocused so my attack misses her, but it completely destroys rows of trees and boulders. It's like a force has pushed away everything in front of me. I go wide eyed before refocusing on the dragon and charge towards her.

“Wait, stop I'm not being controlled anymore since you saved me! I don't understand.” She keeps dodging my attacks but I won't give up!

“You killed me! I had never offended you and you came after my life! And then you turn me into this! What is your game? Why are you doing this to me?” I pause to wave at the scales covering my body while also realizing that I'm still shirtless, but it's okay because I don't care and dragons can't tell anyone. “Why would you turn me into a mana mutant? Am I just an experiment to you? Are us humans just play things to you dragons?” I can feel some tears coming from my eyes as my emotions keep spiraling out of control.

“I didn't want to do any of that! The nail was forcing me to do those things. You then fought to free me from its control, but you had died in the process. I couldn't let my savior die like that so I gave you my other heart so you can live. I just didn't know what the repercussions of that would be.” Dragon

“Free you? I was trying to kill you! I thought it would kill you! I wanted you dead then as much as I want it now! So I free you so you turn me into a mana mutant?”

“What is a mana mutant? If anything you've become even stronger now. Please stop attacking so we may speak.” Dragon

I stop attacking her and drop to my knees because I still feel completely exhausted. I can barely even move, but I keep glaring at her through my blurry eyes. I don't care what her reason is for attacking me. She had killed me in her rampage and then brought me back to life. I don't even know how to feel about it. Being brought back from the dead feels wrong somehow, but at the same time, I feel that it would be too early to die for me. I wanted to keep living so strongly before I passed out, but now that I am alive it feels wrong.

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“You turned me into a mana mutant! A person will gain body parts from wild beast because of too much mana exposure and eventually, they will lose their mind turning into a wild beast themselves. You have turned me into a mana mutant! Why?”

“Dragons are not a beast! You can't turn into a beast because those are dragon scales. This only happened because of the heart I gave to you became yours. It had adapted your body so you can survive. I don't know exactly what happened or why the scales are black.” Dragon

What she told me made me start to think. If I'm a mana mutant right now does this mean I will turn into a dragon eventually or will I really just stay as is? I am so confused right now because I don't know what's going on. What she said about my scales only surprised me a little, but I don't think I can feel that shocked about the black color as much as the scales themselves. I have always been covered in blackness so that's not what bothers me. Even if what she said is true no one else will believe me. If I go home I will just be exiled anyway because I will still seem like a mana mutant. I still don't believe that I'm not a mana mutant either way. Everything that I have worked hard for will have been pointless once I turn into a mana beast. All the strength I have worked hard for will have been pointless when some adventurers are sent to subjugate me.

“Whats the point? It seems like you don't even know. You killed me and then gave me your heart because you felt guilt over it. You turned me into a monster for your own selfish guilt because you claim to have been controlled. You are a dragon. Who could control you when you're are at the top of the food chain?!”

“Please, I only wanted to help you by giving you your life back. You were strong enough to have beaten me even if I am a young dragon I am still a storm dragon. With such strength and determination to live, I couldn't let you die because of me.” Dragon

I realize that the entire storm was caused by her. I thought that the storm seemed unnatural, but for a single dragon to create such a large and violent storm shows just how strong she is. I really want to go home now. I feel as if all my energy is being drained from me as this feeling of hopelessness keeps weighing me down. I stare blankly at this dragon as I drop my halberd because I don't know what to do anymore. This dragon should have just let me die instead of cursing me like this.

“I can try to take you back to the dragon tribe. They might be able to do something about this if you want. I can't think of anything else to do to help you. Please don't try to hurt yourself anymore because I owe you too much so let me try to make it up to you.” Dragon

I guess this is my only option at this point. I just nod at her and remain to kneel where I am blankly staring forward. I know the dragon tribe is powerful and have been relatively secretive about where they live. They keep quite not because they're afraid of people knowing that, but because they will find it annoying if people always come to bother them. Before I would have been excited about this opportunity. Now I just don't care about where I am going. I just wish that they will be able to help me with this problem. I want them to return me back to how I was before or else I don't know what I'll be able to do anymore. The dragon comes back to me while holding all the stuff left in the cave. She has hand made a basket filled with fruits and nuts that she must have been collecting earlier. She is also holding the shirt I was wearing earlier towards me, but I ignore it because I simply don't care about modesty right now. She realizes I'm not responding so she starts to put the shirt on me while blushing.

“ I will transform back into my real form so I can carry you back to my home as quickly as we can. Even in my real form, it will take about two days to arrive. I hope you can endure with just this to eat because I will fly us there without stopping. By the way, what is your name? I am Saras Skyclaw.” Dragon

“I am Eva Lemuria. I don't care so just take me. I’ll probably be fine.” She shows a shocked expression before a concerned one.

After that, there is a flash of a dark blue light and then there's a dragon in front of me. I shiver a little when I realize that she really is the one who had killed me. I feel her tail wrap around me before I am picked up and placed on her back. The same tail that had pierced my chest had now gently picked me up and moved me around so carefully. She then walks over to my halberd and grabs it with her claws. The starts to flap her wings and begins to fly up.

This is the first time that I've flown through the air without using my lighting shift. In my shift form the world is only seen through a weird static sight so I can't see anything that isn't solid, but while riding on her back I can see all the clouds underneath us and the blue sky. It’s definitely a beautiful sight for sure. If only I wasn't so consumed with my feelings of helplessness and despair I could properly appreciate this feeling of freedom.

We keep flying till it gets dark out. I then remembered Saras said she would keep flying continuously. I move my head for the first time in a while to look straight up. The night sky is beautiful tonight with bright stars and the moons are both crescents tonight. I remember learning in school that some people believe that the moons were two powerful beings that had each split apart their bodies to create our world and now they watch over us in the night sky. There is a small portion of the population that believes this and warships the moons to show their gratefulness. Their symbol is the two moons next to each other but to me, it's just a blue and red circle next to each other. Tonight they're both crescents facing each other while surrounded by stars. It's a beautiful sight, but I focus between the two moons. Between them, there are no stars or any light at all. It is only pure pitch black darkness. I keep looking into the darkness while watching it as if it is watching me too. I feel myself focusing more on the darkness as I become lost within it. All of a sudden I feel as if I'm surrounded by nothing but darkness and I look around me to see nothing at all. When I look forward there are to giant eyes looking at me with a look I can't even comprehend. I then realize the eyes are both black like mine and I begin to panic for some reason.

I snap out of my daze and tumble backward from my sitting position. I roll right off of Saras back and begin to free fall. I still feel myself shivering and my mind is hazy. I don't know what I just saw, but it seemed to have been a really weird hallucination. I must still be tired from this experience if I'm seeing a weird thing like that. I look up to try and see the two moons again, but all I can see is Saras diving towards me with one of her claws stretched towards me. I remember how sharp these claws are as they were previously trying to kill me and I begin to panic. I cross my arms over my face to protect myself. I don't feel the death I was expecting. Instead, I'm held carefully as if I could break with the slightest movement. Saras seems to be trying to say something to me, but I can hear. I am too tired. I can't even struggle in her grasp as I feel my conscious start to fade. The last thing I do before I pass out is to look past Saras towards the darkness between the moons, but all I see is a starless night sky.