Despite my disappointment, I would be lying if I said that this was a waste of time. Two very important things were slapped in my face, and despite how different they are, I would say they both are just as valuable. On one side I got a rough idea of how humans use magic and how it differs from dragon magic. I think they can only influence mana with their cores, as such they pull in mana directly into it, then shoot it out to cause an effect. I do something similar yet different with the way I used magic. Unlike them I could move mana with my entire being so I pulled mana into my lungs, exhaled a particular type, and got to shaping it with will alone. Similar yet different.

The second, and equally important thing? I need to do fun stuff with magic, not just practical stuff. That is exactly why I leave the human room and go straight to collecting light crystals. It takes a few minutes to have five shiny crystals gathered up, causing the lighting in the cave to be a bit wonky. Sorry everyone, but I need to figure this rune out before I can move on to something else.

I breathe in the mana… and fail to pull any of it in. Why? My entire body is pumped full of magic already. Never thought this would be a problem, but it seems it is. Thankfully, unpacking is always easier than packing, so I manage to force a chunk of mana to escape, freeing up some space in my lungs.

Once again I begin by gathering up mana, then I breathe it out as I imagine it moving to form the shape of the rune. The light rune is the least complex one I have seen so far, really it's a few oval shapes connected together at weird angles. However, something is quite obvious as I stare at the way the mana mist flows. It’s a single loop. A closed circuit that moves mana in a particular way, pulling in similar mana from nearby, while expelling some of the active one by causing light. Basically, the motion itself is what causes light. If I think about pushing the mana faster just a little bit I can get better brightness, while if I make one loop longer, I get a hue more towards red. I start fiddling with the size and speed of every little thing, seeing how it changes it, manipulating the rune both mentally and physically, with a claw.

It takes me a long time to realize that I stopped being the one giving it mana. The excess mana of the other crystals was enough to feed this one, despite my constant changing of the thing. Good to know… Ah, well, now that I think about it, it did feel like mother’s use of the nature rune wasn’t exactly a use of her own mana. It was like she was telling all of mana to act a certain way. Actually, that makes me think… her rune wasn’t making trees appear right on top of it, but rather it was twisting stuff at a distance.

So, speed affects brightness, size affects hue… What happens if I mess with alignment? After all, it is a 3D shape. I do just that and find that the rune itself is no longer emitting light, only as much as mother’s rune was, making its shape visible. Instead the light it should create was now a few centimeters to the right. I think I just found the offset button. Huh, this is a lot more intuitive than I expected…

A flash of the rune that translated words across any language passes through my mind.

I shudder as I imagine what it must be like to try and get the correct settings for that abomination. In a way it feels like I am right back in highschool, learning how to print out “Hello World!” while looking at videos of people making entire games from scratch in a notepad. I was already planning on abusing my… soul memory? Sure, let’s call it that. I was already planning to abuse my soul memory to learn runes much faster than I have any right to do, despite the momentary pain I will no doubt feel, but even then I think the amount of experimentation needed before I can be sure I understand one of these things is going to be insane.

Regardless though, I go right back to my rune. So far I did my best to modify things while still keeping its rough shape. The offset is pushing it a bit, but still it functions. So what happens if I try to radically change things around, like undoing one of the loops? It breaks. The entire rune broke. I bring it back and try to change the alignment radically. It breaks again. Really the farthest it lets me move the light from me is halfway across the room, which isn’t really a lot. I focus on making a light at the edge of my range, then I make it shift through each hue of light I can make, until it stops. The rune itself remains visible in front of me, so it didn’t break, but I am now making light that my eyes cannot detect…. Let’s see, it was shifting towards purpl- ULTRAVIOLETS!

I rip the rune and I close and open my eyes repeatedly. Thankfully I wasn’t looking directly at the ball of light I was conjuring, since it was uncomfortable to look at, so I didn’t get hit badly by the invisible light. So, I can exceed the limit of my eyes when it comes to the hue of light. How far does that go? I don’t know. It might be the entire electromagnetic spectrum, but I doubt that, so it is more likely that I can go anywhere within the full spectrum of light itself, so between infrared and ultraviolet. Still dangerous, but it’s better to not have to deal with actual radiation from the single simplest rune around.

After calming down from the realization that I can end up messing with really dangerous things if I try to modify runes without a plan, I decide to go back to the basic form of the rune. Just normal white light. I look at it for a while, until I am certain that it really just functions because of the movement. And yea, it does. Even during the offset, the energy for the light comes from within the loop, it just travels basically instantaneously to the point it is aimed for, like a car taking a tight turn and falling off course, and it creates the effect there.

So what would happen if I make this exact rune from air mana instead? I actually try that. I do the exact shape but next to three air crystals. Nothing happens. I am visualizing the rune, I am actively moving the mana around in that shape, but it doesn’t click like the light rune does. When I make the light rune it feels like I am creating a path that the mana wants to follow and so it does even with no further input, but if I change that path too much it suddenly gets pissy and stops.

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I am guessing that air mana and light mana like different paths. So, then, is my only option here to guess what the air mana’s preferred shape is? No, that’s stupid. There must be a rule here, but this is the only thing I know how to make…

Wait, that girl made magic without moving mana in a shape like this, so then are the runes that appear on their body something similar? I didn’t look closely enough, but I think the mana moved, at least partially, through them, and that’s how the effect was formed. But while this rune makes the effect continuously and kind of dictates it, the 2D version is more like giving directions to a clump of mana? That feels right. So then is that why her magic is slower and weaker than it should be? One makes mana do what it likes but in a controlled manner, while the other forces mana to do something? Or maybe I am wrong, and it is the other way around. Argh, I wish we’d be able to speak already so I could ask someone! Anyone!

I sigh and look at the air mana crystals. I wanted to start working on manipulating sound next since it is also a wave function of sorts, but it might take a long while…

I return the crystals, thinking about what I can do next. I look around the place and notice that my siblings are asleep. That gives me pause. I am not tired at all, not even a little bit, yet they’re snoozing away like it’s midnight… Weird.

I decided to leave quietly, after getting a rather strange feeling in my gut. I visit the human room and the light around is now dim, more like moonlight than actual sunlight. I frown, or at least I think I do. They are all sleeping… no, wrong, I see the faintly glowing left eye of the beast woman. She woke up and is staring at me curiously. Is it actually night? Might be. Hmm, I take a step in and see her rising upright. She was sleeping a second ago but seems to have no problem with waking up, no grogginess to slow her down. Guess she’s a lot more like a cat than I thought.

Hmm… Eh, why not. It’s night, I am not tired, and she’s awake, so I might as well lead her out. Staying in here can’t be good for her health even if there’s fresh plants all around, and I imagine mother will come and mess up any plan I try to make. So to hell with it, time for a relaxing walk in the night. I approach, quietly, and gently bite her bindings, pulling a bit. She tilts her head, but after the following tug she gets up and follows me. She’s quiet for how huge she is. her legs and feet are human still, yet she makes no sound as she steps, and after we get a bit away from the room, she manages to keep pace with me despite the fact that I am trotting and she’s just power walking.

So, despite her inability to manipulate mana, she’s clearly superhuman. Might be a benefit of using a lot of meat, bone and blood mana, the effects are lingering. Well, thanks to that we exit the entire cave in about 15 minutes, and we are graced by a half lit behemoth. I was hoping for a starry night, but I realize my mistake now. After all it is light pollution that makes seeing the stars hard. What better source of pollution than a giant mirror? It is a white moon, just like the one back home, but it doesn’t seem to be the only one. There’s a very small black moon orbiting the white one. It is a shiny kind of black, one that is clearly visible like someone’s shining a lantern on a piece of obsidian. The other moon visible around is a red one that seems more in line with my old one in size, meaning it might also be pretty damn big. Yeah, tides here must suck.

I hear a voice. Despite being so large, I haven’t heard the beast woman speak. Really she didn’t speak with any of the others, merely made a few grunts once or twice. And there might also have been a snarl when she body slammed that one wolf. Despite all of that, however, I hear her speak, in a voice much softer than I imagined she’d have. She has a sad expression, unlike the stoic look she kept until now, and she speaks as she looks up at the moons, specifically the white one, actually.

She quiets down and looks down at me after a bit. She shows a faint frown, then schools her expression back into neutrality. One thing I did manage to notice, during her speech, is that her language is different. More vowels, more pleasant sounds, really a couple words sounded familiar… Huh, she’s from really far away, no wonder no one is talking to her. I should have been able to tell by the fact that she looks naturally more mediterranean, while everyone else looks central european.

Oh gods, is it racism? It might be… Damn now I have to worry about inter-human relationships and culture clashes and I feel like I want to scream my brain into silence.

I rub against her leg and then sit down, looking at the stars. She blinks and does the same. My mind is loud and it’s getting harder to quiet it down by just remembering music or focusing on sparkly stuff. I need something new.

I hum.

I am bad at it, my voice is raspy and crackly, my hum is uneven, I am not used to making such sounds, but slowly I adapt. I manage to fall into a tune I did not expect. I’m not exactly the patriotic kind, but I guess the song of my country’s union is a bit catchy. A bit lively, but not too much, just enough to feel merry in an otherwise quiet night. I am joined by a second hum. It is a bit uncertain and off tune, but she slowly gets the rhythm and we end up singing it three times over.

That feels nice. I turn to her and she looks at me with nothing but pure curiosity. I blink, and then I hear her start to sing. Actually sing. She taps a foot against the ground, making just a bit of sound so I can get the rhythm, but most of the work comes from her voice. It’s simple, but powerful. It is rough, yet beautiful. I feel my tails sway to the rhythm. It is a war song, a music dedicated to courage and glory. I can feel the missing drums, then I can hear them. She stops singing. I stop too and turn to where she’s looking.

It’s a rune.

A rune I have never seen before.

A rune that, with a bit of push from me, makes the sound of a drum. She starts singing again and I join her with the drums. I listen to the song and look for missing parts. No, “look” is the wrong word. I feel for the missing parts, and I add them. I imagine an uneven chorus accentuating the last word of each verse and it feels right. I imagine the sound of different drums, the sound of horns and they all fit nicely. I imagine the people moving and I follow, spinning and hopping all around the majestic vocalist that looks like a ragged warrior.

It all culminates in a hundred howls and I feel my strength leaving me.

My mana ran out.

I was filled with mana of all kinds, but somehow I am dry. I wonder why and then see it as five different runes float above my head, each slightly different from the others. Each apparently sucking in any mana they could to function. each draining me of hours of tightly packed energy.

But it doesn’t matter. The runes break and I am just laughing, or rather squeaking, as I roll in the grass. I look and I see the beast woman wiping her tears as she laughs to herself.

Yeah, this was worth it.