It’s the worst. It’s always the worst. Why do I ever expect to have good ideas? I’m a dumb guy with a dumb lizard kid brain. “Oh just go into a place with a lot of mana and see what happens” gods be damned moron!

How did all this start? Glad you asked because going through my insane actions is a great way to not think about what is currently happening to me!

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After realizing that I can’t mess with my mana capacity yet, I spent the rest of the day alternating between play fighting with my siblings and rehearsing the magic mother taught us. So far she went through the basic four: earth, fire, water and air, adding in light too since it was the first thing she showed the others, then went for more complex things: electricity, ice and nature. That’s as far as she went when it came to elements. One thing to note however is that the entire meaning of “electricity” revolved around lightning. Concepts like electrons weren’t passed through, meaning she probably has no idea about them. I wonder if that would make my electric magic better than hers… Or maybe worse?

Oh well, inane thoughts aside, she focused the rest of her time teaching modifiers. I think that’s the best way to put them: modifiers. There’s the base elemental runes that define what I control, then there’s the modifiers that change how that control is focused. For example the rune that she used to turn the light source into a beam of light? Movement, motion, direction, all those ideas are packed into a single nifty word and sign. It also works with sound… somehow. The entire propagation of the sound is aimed in one direction, which is weird since depending on where the rune is I don’t hear the sound until it makes the trip back, half as strong if not even less. It also works with other energy-based elements like fire, electricity and a particular brand of ice that only uses its heat stealing rather solid ice.

She also taught what I consider as the “I’m you but better” modifier. It means control, domination, it’s a demand that mana OBEY, which is funny since it sounds close to “obe”, but put through the draconic filter of deep, rough, crunchy sounds. It improves control, by a lot. It also somehow makes the magic a lot more efficient, like the matter isn’t fighting back as much. Sadly I have yet to use it in a slightly tense situation, I could only make it work when I was perfectly calm, it’s why it failed me earlier.

There’s also the even better version that combines this modifier with a subject. Because dragons of course have the word “Individual” which is used for any particular thing. Like saying Individual Earth ends up meaning any particular piece of stone you are thinking about. In the context of the spell however, Individual is supposed to mean “me” so it ends up like “Earth (as a whole) obey me (and only me)” which straight up robs people in an area from using that element. Interestingly she used this spell for nature and water, but nothing else, maybe you need to be really good for it? Ah, I shouldn’t forget that there’s a fourth word there too, a word that mother has been trying to make me understand but I failed so far, because it seems to not refer to a type of mana or a concept she can readily show. She only used it for those two spells and no other time.

Either way, those are the most widely useful modifiers, but she gave us a few more. There’s one that sacrifices strength in order to get control of a wider area or a larger amount of things. It’s like mass cure wounds, compared to cure wounds, you know? But instead of making it a more costly spell, it makes it a weaker one. Now if you combine obey and mass? That’d be enough to move a small mountain, especially if you have mother’s mana reserves. Trust me, she did, but with trees instead of stone. She kind of loves showing off.

Where was I? Ah yes, the opposite of mass: overwhelm, overkill, imbuing a waterfall into a waterskin, or at least that’s the image the word gives me when mother says it. It’s basically focusing so much on one thing that it eats up all the mana you have. Greater Fireball, basically…. I swear if these spells are somehow copyrighted… Meh, I’d love to see lawyers coming at me over in a whole different world for copyright infringement, that’d be funny.

Anyways, that’s basically all mother taught us. Elements, how to control them better, how to give a path to something that usually does its own thing, how to spread our control and how to tighten it.

Those are also the only words we know, which doesn’t help us hold great conversations.

Also, I am the only one that grasped all the words. My siblings got all the elemental words, eventually, but the modifiers were a bit above their capacity of understanding.

I also heard them speak and it sounds wrong. Even when they nail the sound itself, they mess up in meaning, or rather their meanings are flawed. Earth means dirt and stone and nothing else. Nature means grass and trees and leaves, but they don’t differentiate flowers or really differentiate between any species of plants. Fire is super muddled too, they get that it’s very warm, and that it kills things, but they don’t put in the meaning of being burnt or of energy or of anything more than superficial, visual things.

Lightning is their worst offense. They mean, specifically, mother’s lightning strike and mine. Since we were the only ones to make such a thing happen, and mine was pitifully small since I didn’t manage to pile up the mana for it at the time.

Basically they only pack in whatever they have seen and because of that their words fail. It doesn’t help their spellcasting and even when they try to talk it ends up being almost unintelligible. Though, I came to realize as I think this, it may be more weird from mother’s point of view that I just understand so much about the world already… Meh, I already failed spectacularly to be normal when I was weeks ahead of my siblings in rune understanding.

I do wonder why mother didn’t teach us any of the conversion runes… those would be useful… Oh well.

Mother has arrived. Just in time, I was taking a break after running out of mana in my lungs, so this is perfect. I take in as much mana as I can and make sure to saturate my body, then pick up the pace towards her with my siblings. Once together I climb up on her back and secure my claws in the ridges of her scales. it’s been a bit since she stopped carrying us, or at least since she stopped carrying everyone aside from Spots who seems to be a bit of a mama’s boy.

Oh well, let the kid enjoy his time, the more time passes without our father, or really, without any sort of other dragon coming by, the more I am sure that dragons are solitary. Once we are considered young adults, whatever that might mean in dragon years, we will be kicked out to survive on our own. Makes sense, really. We need to hoard an absurd amount of resources, it’s expected that we would have to spread apart in order to be able and harvest all we require.

Hell, we might need to be nomads, like male lions without a pride, until we find a spot we can claim and until we are strong enough to keep it safe.

I doubt that the human settlements in mother’s territory would have been alright with a dragon ruling over them if said dragon was me-sized…

Wait, ruling over others? Do I even want to do that? I mean, I’ve fantasized about being the boss once or twice, or about being rich instead of struggling with fitting in food and tuition in my finances… But do I really want that or is this dragon weirdness…

I let out a frustrated scream that thankfully gets muted by the rushing wind that mother displaces. I notice something that was hard to see before, she has a complex form of the air rune formed in her crown, that might be how she flies so fast despite her size. Also might be how she flies at all.

I sigh and stretch my body as she lands at the lake. My siblings already rush out to start hunting, but I don’t follow them. I instead go to the lake, under the watch of mother, and start drinking in water. I instantly get hit with the feeling of being bloated and gag, spilling the water back out. Alright, plan one failed. I shake my head and then take a cautious step into the water, then another, and soon enough I am in… and floating. My wings are spread out, increasing my surface massively and apparently working against my weight.

I don’t know how heavy I am, but going by my size, the scaled skin and the lack of fat? Very. I’m heavier than a normal human at least. Still, I don’t want to just float. I am a bit worried that mother will interfere, especially since she’s keeping a few eyes on me, but the second I see her turn to focus in the distance, probably seeing one of the others in the middle of a fight, I dip in.

Water instincts are working, somehow. My wings are tucked, my nose is plugged and my third eyelid is keeping the water out. My slightly longer neck and tails are causing me to move like a snake while also paddling with my legs. I am basically a meaner crocodile right now. A crocodile with wings. Idea stands. Either way I can feel the air in my lungs continuing to move, cycling between my multiple air sacks, despite nothing new coming in. This should help aerate my blood for a while longer than normal.

It’s been a few tens of seconds, I think, since I started swimming downwards and I am at least getting the feeling of mana pressing on me. It’s the inverse square law all over again. Mana is exponentially growing in strength the closest I get to its source, the gems and metals… It’s heavy. I am starting to sink without meaning to. This is a normal lake, I went swimming in something bigger than this and the pressure shouldn’t start pulling me in already.

I can’t move my left back leg. Something is wrong. I feel myself being squeezed, not my mana, myself. It’s pressure, strong pressure, and suddenly I see mana flowing in. That’s what I wanted but it’s doing it in a way I didn’t want. I let out an involuntary scream, losing precious air. I think some water flows into my lungs, I feel my body burning cold.

I hear snapping. Looking to the side my right wing extended outwards and grew. The tips aren’t normal, they’re a deeper blue, and not from the water shifting colors around. It feels wrong, my body feels wrong. I cough again and algae comes out. Fully grown algae that I don’t think I inhaled. I start feeling something pushing out of my chest right as a large thing wraps around my body and pulls me out in moments.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Back on the surface, laying on wet grass, instincts take over and I cough out the water, then a different instinct makes me expel the extra water mana by shooting a weak waterbreath. Once recovering I hear my mother speaking fast, lots of mentions of water come bearing images of the depths and how strong the mana was. I think I get images of her making the lake deeper particularly to protect us from the strength of the mana.

Right… It was strong… and it was forcing itself into my body but had no room… I thought it’d make room in the cells, but it didn’t. It made new cells instead. I look at my right wing, spread out, and compare it with my left one. Yep, much bigger. Not double, but bigger still. I try to get up and end up falling back down. My back left leg is longer. I also feel something new… a new limb was starting to sprout from my chest. It’s literally just a soft bone with some musculature right now, not even a proper ending, and it’s about 10 cm long, so not even a proper limb.

Damnit… I messed it up bad… I thought dragons don’t get mutations like humans do, and in a way we don’t, but our growth is tied with our mana. So what happens when you force in mana? You don’t get more efficient packing, you get expedited growth, but since it comes in a forced manner, it’s targeted in a few places that are more easy to mutate and shape. Like lightning, it spreads in a few different directions until it finds an easy path and it takes that one straight down.

I manage to get up, ignoring the fact that I now have a neural connection to the beginning of a limb, and do my best to get acclimated to the weight shift. It’s awful. I drift a lot to my right, even with my tails working extra for counterbalance. I sigh and sit back down, annoyed at myself. Well, I can still do some mana training even with my body messed up for now, so I do just that and start gathering the water mana in the air into a rune, forming a spinning circle. I add in the “obey” modifier, which helps me up its speed.

I am calm despite massively hampering my physical capability… I wonder why? I should be angry or despair at the fact that I am a freak, but even with my extra tail I felt like I am a bit ahead of the curve. Maybe this will end up the same… Fuck, but that’s still not normal. No matter how you view it, going from traumatic injury to acceptance so quickly is not normal.

Ignore the fact that I very quickly accepted being cut in two, at that point I was already dead, no point despairing or struggling. Right now however I am a kid, I should be terrified about being wrong for life, but it feels like this is a small mistake like pricking your finger on a needle, or falling down and getting scraped, rather than a permanent brand of shame.

Ah, my body will probably grow to compensate rather than continue growing at the same rate. That makes sense. This body is way too unnatural, having so many different strategies available, being able to manipulate mana so easily, it’s no wonder it would also have fail safes against mana oversaturation in case of a mistake like this.

I look at my mother and see that she is still somewhat panicky. I would expect the same calm I feel to be felt by her. She’s been awfully calm about us being almost dead every other day, so what gives? Meh, doesn’t matter to me, back to spinny disk. Why spinny disk? I want to see if I can get water to be fast enough to start cutting stuff. So far the answer is no, but less because of speed and more because upon hitting something the water just bursts.

I need even better control, huh.

I don’t get to try more. Mother picks me up and takes off. She’s actually rushing this time. I see just about everything zoom by, no time to take in the scenery, we’re like an arrow let loose towards the chaos pillar. The second we reach it she even pushes me right up against it, and I am just confused. This isn’t for a lesson, she doesn’t start doing anything. I just see her sit by the side while looking intently at me.

I breathe in and feel a weird calm as the energy of everything fills my lungs. Yeah, no single type of mana feels as well as this abominable combination of every little concept. I continue absorbing it while burning out the rest of the mana I had. The other mana was a mix, but this is like mixing the perfect ratio of everything, so it just feels like it’ll be more useful. An hour passes and I saturate my body with it. This mana, despite having its own mind when used, seems to want to cling to me, so I accept it.

But then something happens. I draw in more of it. That feels wrong. The saturation here is not so absurd, even if I am hugging the pillar… It is more than the cave but not nearly as strong as the lake, so what gives? Ah, my body is wrong, in the back of my mind I keep thinking that it is wrong.

My scales are wrong, my proportions are wrong, I need a fix and this mana wants to fix me. I don’t know if it’s a good idea to let it shape me, but it will probably be better than staying as I am, so I close my eyes and retreat partially into my library. I pull out my biological blueprint, something I made from observations and feelings. I don’t have vessels or the correct placement of my organs, but I have my outer appearance and a rough idea of the kind of modifications that would help me greatly.

Let’s see, firstly I need to even out my limbs, while making sure I keep my agility. I fix up my size and proportions, in relation to both my grown limb and my wings, then focus on the nub. I wish I could make it go away… but it feels like that won’t happen. A vague instinct tells me the only path is “more”. Be it bigger or more limbs, I won’t get less, so I decide to just get two. I may be able to shift their position later in life, as I did with my legs, so for now I focus on making small, but usable hands. I imagine a pair of them, link them with tendons and ligaments to my larger ribs, giving them a better range of motion, but focusing on dexterity and keeping them small, capable of folding like my wings to my chest so they don’t interfere in normal activity. I do add in some sharp claws, but flatter at the base and with wider fingers, so I can hold stuff but also claw away at things. Four fingers should be enough, humanity’s five is kind of overkill.

The blueprint is done and I feel drowsy.

My eyes close before I can see if mother is still around.

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I open my eyes, a day likely passed, mother is still here, I close my eyes.

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I open my eyes, mother is still here I close them.

That’s annoying. I was thinking of adding in actual different biology, like a gland for venom or something of that sort, but if I entered a loop of waking up and instantly falling asleep just from fixing my mistake, I think only bad things would happen if I go any wilder for now, so I keep focusing on this image of myself while feeling my consciousness ping ponging between my body and my library.

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It’s been five days. I am still not done. I get enough time to notice a second nub growing and my body elongation slightly. I didn’t think of growing out my back spines, but it seems this decision was made by the mana, so it’s happening.

I continue focusing on my image of myself and let it all flow past me.

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It’s been two weeks or so.

It seems the mana made some more changes. I’m no longer just blue. My scales shine now, and they do so mostly towards tints of blue, but there’s a few other colors mixed in based on the angle of the light. Pretty, but strange.

Also, only once was mother not there when I woke up and I stayed awake longer, feeling that I was in danger, but fell asleep the second I heard her wings. How much longer?

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Answer: two days. Two more days and I opened my eyes for good. My body was saturated in the chaotic mana but I felt my proportions were back to normal. My wings were also large enough that I got some lift as I flapped them… I might soon be able to fly, if only mother teaches me the flight spell.

Mother isn’t around. It makes sense, she has the kids to think about and care for… Hmm, what do I do until she comes here? I don’t think I can handle the walk home so I will have to wait, but I have a whole source of very strange mana for myself. And I have a body I need to test…

Something I saw the old woman do once, while casting her healing magic, was a hand movement that seemed to weave mana into an approximation of a 3d rune. I wonder, then, what happens if I do the same? I weave the chaos music rune and find it much easier using my brand new pair of hands. Really it feels like I have had them since forever and it seems they can touch mana just fine. Now while keeping focus on this rune, I decide to add in the rune that gives power. Suddenly the trees shake and the ground rumbles as a very, very loud concert of Queens starts playing. Not a song, a whole concert, with the voices of the audience being mixed in. It’s almost like I am there despite it being a recording I watched once when I was bored.

I stop it quickly, slapping at it until all sound stops. As cool as it is to be able to create a whole concert, I am now hearing a high pitched and annoying sound, but really I should have expected that.

Now, what else can I use this mana for? I mean, I didn’t really do anything with it aside from pulling in particular parts in order to mimic mother… but what would happen if I used the chaos version of the fire rune? If there’s one for sound there must be one for fire… and one for all the other elements, simple or complex.

The question then becomes, how dangerous would they be? I mean, you’d think that the sound version is harmless… until you realize that instead of following the directions given by mana manipulation, it follows whatever’s in your, or someone else’s mind. It literally reads people’s minds to pull out songs. I don’t even know what mind mana might look like, yet I am using it because of this one spell. What if fire gets combined with electricity or radiation and goes out of control? What if chaos water also explodes? I want to try it out, but I am also afraid because I have just finished fixing a fuckup, which took away two and some weeks out of my life… What happens if I give myself cancer because I mess with this?

Yeah let’s not. I will wait until mother teaches me more words so we can have a proper conversation and figure out exactly what’s up with chaos mana.

Or at least I would if not for the strange whispers. I breathe in the mana and instead of getting flashes of everything everywhere, I get soft whispers telling me inane things. The problem is that they are inane things that I don’t know, but understand. The temperature is 17.43 °C, common for continental temperate autumn, especially towards the evening. There are about 2 030 597 blades of grass within this clearing, there used to be more until we started hanging out and trampling them underfoot. Wild animals don’t ever get this close, they get mana sickness if they do. Nature can be snappy and sharp and somewhat poisonous under the right situation, it only takes a few nudges to turn a normal rose into something that can kill 50 adult human men with a single sting.

I shake my head and I pull back. That’s not what I expected… I decide to test something and I pull on one particular mana type, I filter out the fire from the chaos and make a small bubble of it, pushing away the chaotic mix. Once formed, I breathe in the flame mana and focus all of my senses on it. Oh how joyous it is that it starts whispering about heat and warmth and how big of a fire I would make if I were to rip off a tree, let it dry in the sun, and then set it aflame with a simple spark. Good news, chaos mana isn’t giving me ominous whispers, all of mana is! Ain’t that something. I take a nap and suddenly magic starts speaking.

You know what? Maybe I rushed things a bit too much, maybe I don’t need to immediately learn all there is to learn about magic, maybe I should just take a nap and fix my gods be damned mind because if I remember correctly, this is starting to feel like early onset schizophrenia and I doubt psychologists and psychiatrists exist in this world.

….

Not even five minutes of peace… I hear powerful thunder in the distance, like a massive storm is approaching. I raise my head and I hear an unnerving whisper “18.22°C” followed immediately by “19.1°C”. It was getting warmer, but why? My answer came in the form of a plane-sized thing, covered in flames and followed by a storm of red lightning, which began descending straight towards where mother’s lake was.

Did I sleep long enough for the end of the world to start?