Ohshitohfuckwtfisthisthing?!

My mind is running at full speed while my body is frozen into the scared cat pose. Arched back, tails wrapped around me, one wing slapping at the ground in front of me while I can only let out low growls and roars that claim ownership of these people, my eyes trailing upwards at the imposing figure.

No, not a figure, this is pure nightmare fuel. There’s quite a difference between seeing a giant flaming snake from almost an hour’s flight away, and seeing it towering over you. Time is moving painfully slowly, probably from me overdosing on fear, so I can see each and every grotesque detail of this being.

It looks like its head and torso are one singular piece, a pretty wide and long but flat oval, with those wings and many arms, but up close it was worse. For one, it had a lot of eyes. I lost count when it came to how many small, beady, black eyes dotted around its mouth, almost like a circle of sensory organs. As it stretches out its clawed hands, I see a slit opening in each palm and eyes pop out. Each one different in shape, color and even in size, though they are all bigger than the beady ones, and there is a rough symmetry to their placement.

It opens its mouth, suddenly seeming to be 3 times larger from just how much that thing can move. The teeth are strange, like an angler fish’s with no serrated or flat ones, so maybe this one is more specialized in what it eats… or maybe it is so strong it doesn’t care. It does however have less rows than mother, only 2, but with the rows being so much longer it might still have more overall teeth.

Oh, joy, I can see the meaty bits inside shifting… Why? That’s an eye. An. EYE. Why? Why would you need an eye in the middle of your mouth? No, it’s not in the middle. It moved into the middle but it came from somewhere above. It is large and the pupil is shaped like an eight pointed star. It tightens and every single eye this thing has is suddenly focused only on me, from every angle it has. It moved swiftly, even for my slowed perception it moved so quick I couldn’t see it.

It blinks with its entire mouth, then goes back to observing me. Are we trading looks? I guess we are. No, wait, it’s looking at me… but it’s also looking at my mana. My ability to perceive mana has improved with time and with my growth. If logic tracks, this thing should be able to perceive it much better than I do, maybe even see every single cell in my body by what and how much mana it holds. Speaking of mana….

A storm. It is a vicious, unending storm which aims to grab hold of all that it sees. I can see landscapes of all kinds, I see villages, I see the dark clouds reaching down from the sky and flooding them with flames and lightning. I see migratory destruction with an unending appetite.

If I was still a human this would be the moment when I’d be puking. At least if the sounds behind me are any indication. However I am not wholly human. Just a terrified human in a draconic body.

The thing in front of me is a terror, a true mythological dragon that destroys and plunders anything it so desires.

This thing is also my father.

I knew from the second I could feel the scent of its.. his mana, from the moment I looked into those eyes up close, but I am still terrified. Mother, for all her attempts to murder us, has always been restrained and calm. Even when dealing with the humans she embodied the picture her mana paints. Tranquility, a serene scenery that doesn’t care about what animals might pass through, for it will remain as it always was.

The living storm in front of me is not like that. The mana doesn’t cling to his body, he actively pushes it away, as if to showcase the might he possesses. The air itself is hot, despite there being no flame nearby. It takes me a painfully long second to look back, and what I see is terrifying. Ayrah is standing over the kid, guarding him from the heat, but I can see her fur letting out smoke. The old woman also looks like she’ll be set on fire in a couple seconds, with the poison woman holding onto her so she doesn’t collapse entirely. The scorched girl is the only one still able to stand, but she’s frozen in fear.

My siblings, on the other hand, seem to be oblivious to the standoff between me and my apparent gene donor. They grew a bit since I last saw them… and it seems they noticed I grew a lot. They’re jumping from me to him and back, sniffing, booping, but Satan’s tapeworm continues to be fixated on me, and I am doing my best to not move from under his scrutiny.

Until he shifts one hand towards the humans and a wave of mana pushes outwards. Animals were evading the highest concentration, my body rapidly mutated from being close to dense mana… This monster… He’s trying to kill them with mana! Mother, this would be a good time to show up… No, of course she won’t.

What can I even do? I try to wield the absurd amount of fire mana around us, I try pushing it away, I try forming it into a ball, I even try to just make it shiver, but it fails. It fails entirely and I do not know what to do about it. This is fire mana, but not really. It’s electric mana, but not really. This is HIS mana, and it won’t listen to someone that’s not him.

I wish I had time to study the understanding and concepts floating in the air, the ideas this old dragon formed, but I need to keep him from torching the people… But what can I do? A huge dragon that literally flooded the tunnel with his mana, to the point where even the plants started combusting, against me.

I am tired.

I am exhausted.

My mana’s at the level where I can just barely function… I don’t know if I even got one breath attack left in me… What am I supposed to do? How… How can I make him stop… What could make him focus on something else..

A stupid idea just barely materializes in my brain and I have no choice but to execute it. I feel for the mana throughout my body, I make sure I have enough to pull this off, then I jump into action. Literally. I go from scaredy cat to jumping and flapping my wings like my life depends on it. My flight, without active use of air mana, is shit. I start stalling out quickly, but I do not actually want to fly. I just wanted to reach the eye that was so fixated on the humans.

This dragon did not care for the rule of hoard. I claimed them as mine with my roars, yet he wanted to kill them regardless. In cases like this, instinct demands that I take a violent stand, even against an overwhelming enemy. So I do just that. The eye that before looked down at the humans had a fraction of a second to focus on me, then, seeing my claw wind up, it closed.

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Scales, the ultimate defense. Not because they are hard, but because of this innate magical ability all dragons have. The thing that made the hour long fight between father and mother result in father standing here without even a scratch or a bruise. Even the thin scaled eyelids would absolutely protect that eye from a strong attack.

But I do not have a strong attack planned. I don’t have the resources, size, age, understanding, I do not have anything that would add up to enough power. So I cheat. There is a reason I’ve gotten a taste for specialized mana cores, and it’s not just the actual taste. The buck I ate held the understanding of using earth for steady footing, and to turn the mass of stone into an unstoppable force through charging. Basically the understanding of being blunt with earth mana.

The rat from before however had a more tricky thing. It was related to metal, but not innately metal-aligned. It was more of a general idea slapped on top of metal because it was better at it than anything else that rat had access to. “Defenses can be pierced by sharp, stabby things” squeaked the core that I devoured. And it did. It ignored my defense even while triggering it. I don’t need it to do too much, I just need to make him bleed for harming that which is mine.

So I swipe. My claws are sharper than the needles of that beast. They are empowered by esoteric mana I have no true understanding over. Yet despite it all, I grimace as I feel my strength draining yet see no mark on the enormous hand.

I fall.

I see the beast pointing his eyes at his palm, then I see the activation of its defense for a moment.

Hah…

So weak… Even though I evaded the defense I still couldn’t harm him…

Sorry…

----------------------------------------

I open my eyes and I see that the nest got a renovation. I get up, stretch, look around at all the new shinies that I am certain weren’t here before, then I start sniffing the air. My siblings aren’t here… Mother was here a while ago, as was father….

WAIT!

I frantically run out of the nest room, following the path. My mana reserves are decent, though my cells aren’t packed. Still, I am able to run faster than before, and I very swiftly find my way to the human room. I look inside….

It’s empty.

I see the basin filled with green water, standing surrounded by ashes and charred wood, as well as some half cut fruits that started oxidizing. I blink away tears and run out again.

It takes a few minutes, but I get to the entrance, noticing that the plants around it are either mostly destroyed or just plain dry, turned a brittle yellow. There’s no bodies. I sniff around… Blood. I look at a small splatter… blood. Human blood. It’s not Ayrah’s… It has traces of fire mana in it, and not father’s flavor of flaming storm, but a more general fire…

That girl’s blood…

My tears are gone already. I try to feel sad, but I can’t feel any sadder. They likely died, then got eaten by my siblings. I try to cry more, but I can’t. I try to shout, but I just let out a shaky hiss. I try to rage, and that I succeed. My new hands clench and I feel the stone around me cracking.

He killed them. Innocent, kind... He killed them regardless. I feel something in me vibrating, something that resonates with my wrath. I feel the trace amounts of chaos mana still left in my body, migrating towards my center, towards my heart. I feel it pumping stronger. I rush out of the cave, trying to hold onto that feeling, but instead I freeze.

Right, the fire.

The forest is… well, not gone, not fully, but it certainly looks worse.

It is autumn, fully autumn by now. No greenery in sight, just slowly drying trees, which made the job of the fire much easier. Now, in front of me, there’s a forest of white ash and dark charcoal. I see the bare earth with no rusty leaves dotting it. I see no moss or lichen… It’s all gone. And so is my rage.

How can I be angry at something that shapes the world? How could my anger survive being pointed at a nuke? I just sigh, trying to gather my thoughts enough to form a spell. I don’t have a lot of air mana, but I should be able to take a short flight, so I take to the air and look down at the desolation. I cannot quantify the destruction. My mind fails to recognize just how much was lost because of this battle between my parents. It will probably take a few decades of active restoration, or even more, for the forest to go back to how it was. Or who knows, mother might just fix it with a snap, she does that sometimes.

Speaking of, I think I see her, but not where I expected to. She’s not at her lake, but rather upstream. I try to focus my vision, empowering it ever so slightly with mana, and I notice smaller figures below her.

Many smaller figures. Or at least more than 3, which was manny. Did somebody survive? Are they planning on eating them regardless and just hiding the fact that they survived?

Anger ignites once more and I rush there… or at least I start doing so as mother’s head points towards me. She then takes flight and comes over my way, outspeeding me by a lot, and plucking me out of the air with her tentacles. I struggle, of course, clawing at her, throwing a tantrum while hoping she’ll release me so I can go to the others…

But instead she takes me there. As she finally lets go, I look around and see a sight that is both horrifying and the best thing I could hope for. They’re alive. All of them. They are also bearing scars on the level of the fire girl’s. Pure charcoal skin, tight to the bone. They all lack clothes and instead seem to be bathing in the water to wash away the pain, if their expressions are any indication.

I look at the boy and I can literally see the place where his old shirt melted together with the left side of his chest. His eye doesn't raise from the water. I see Ayrah, furless, having her arm somehow even more hideously malformed than before, but she’s still stoic. She glances at me, nods, then goes back to carefully washing her painfully raw looking arm. The poison lady has half her face completely disfigured, her one good eye looking at me with a sort of hatred that I cannot help but accept. The old woman actually fared better than I expected, noticeably missing some branches, but lacking any real burn mark… hen I remember the poison woman protecting her, and the fire girl standing in front… She looks like she cried a lot.

Speaking of the flame girl… She’s bad. Not only did the scorch grow all the way to her face, burning away the right side of her lips permanently, but it seems to have developed all the way from her sternum to her arm. Despite looking like two face, I can only see sadness in her eyes. They’re all… They're surviving.

I also see that my siblings are as clueless as always. They’re around too, playing, throwing little balls of fire and water at one another, which harmlessly deflect away when they hit. Are they recreating mother’s battle? Maybe. Speaking of… I wonder where father is. And what happened… He seemed intent on watching them slowly die, yet the humans are still alive, mother and my siblings are right here, and there’s no enormous worm snake thing to be seen.

I throw one last look at the humans and I feel pain, shame and sorrow welling up in my chest. This is the result of weakness on my part. There must have been a way to stop him before they got hurt, maybe if I wouldn’t have crippled myself into a coma I would have been here from the beginning, able to hide them somewhere so they would be safe…

Errare humanum est, but I am a dragon and lives are in my hand. I need to find a way to fix this… and to be prepared in case father returns.

I can't fail them again.