All of the memories related to my name are gone. It’s like somebody took some scissors to a film and then patched it back together, adding some blurr to attempt a seamless skip of any moment when I heard it, said it or looked at it written down. That’s terrifying. I can remember the exact number of creases my shirt had during my first day of highschool and yet I cannot remember my name. I thought I had a perfect memory but what if I am missing a lot more, yet I don’t remember what I don’t remember so I can’t notice all the missing parts?

Panic was threatening to take me at the notion that somehow, something so interwoven with my identity was just gone. And yet I wasn’t alone, in a dark room, stuck with my thoughts. I was surrounded by worried faces. Well, about three worried faces, but still, that was much more than ever before. It is what it is. I can’t solve something I don’t even know the cause of. Better to move on and keep this in the back of my mind. My perfect memory isn’t perfect. Well boo-fucking-hoo, I’ve managed to get by with much worse.

I decide to shake my head, stretch my body, and then go back to looking for the core. Reactions are mixed, I hear some worried whispers and them talking about some sickness, but I decide to ignore it all and instead focus on whatever gem this thing was hiding. If it was even hiding anything special. Once I reach it and tear into it, I get the distinct feeling of hunger. It was a simple thing, so mundane that it couldn’t even compare to the ideas inside the other, more magical animals I’ve eaten. It simply held the idea that eating something will give you more of it… or at least I think that’s what the ominous whispers mean. I’m guessing that this is why the bear was just so huge and powerful. Every bit of muscle it ate, every bone it crunched, all of it went to build its body into an unstoppable, starving, killing machine. Until I zapped it to death.

The idea goes down into a deep part of my body, the mana having a strong enough flavor to not lose its particularity as I absorb it. It is a sad thing that I only get fragments of what these animals acquired in their lives. I only get…

Ah, they’re still worried. I think for a bit on what’s the best way to calm the spirits, then decide that going out to get some sun and play in the snow might not be a bad idea. They’re all wearing mismatched clothing made out of fur held together by dried and hardened vines, so they’re pretty equipped for winter, even a harsher one. The fact that three of them have some innate resistance to the cold also helps. Granny Yvonne stays behind, as does Meredith. The former is old and has wood growing out of her, makes sense why she’s not left this room since the cold came. As for the latter? She’s healed, but it seems her scar still causes discomfort pretty often. It’d probably suck to be hit by frost.

Either way, I manage to drag out my three… friends? I guess that fits somewhat. I drag them out into the snow, Alek getting a ride from Ayrah and Edith getting a ride from me, since I was a bit too excited to wait on normal human speed. Alek’s the happiest about this, somehow able to tightly pack up snow with a single hand, and then throwing it much faster than I’d expect from a scrawny, one armed, sitting kid. Right, ice magic in humans is weird. He’s young but he’s been accumulating mana pretty quickly. He’s almost at triple the pool he was before and that didn’t come with any strange mutations so far, aside from being a small source of cold air and his skin turning even paler.

Alright, I compare him to miss scorched demon, grandma dryad and the amazonian catgirl, obviously it seems small… Ah, my brains just burning with needless thoughts, so I bury it in the snow, then roll on my back and try my best at making a snow angel with my current body. It might have ended up better if I didn’t ruin half of it by getting up. Guess that’s one benefit humans have. Still, it’s big, and that’s a win in itself.

You know what? I should see if they know how to make a proper snowman.

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Winter is nice. I ended up building a makeshift sled with Ayrah’s help, with which I pulled the younger ones along. Turns out that Edith, despite her more sinister look and the fact that I’m 90% sure she’s an adult, is still very much a kid at heart, so she loves sledding at a decently high speed.

Sadly, the sled survived all of two days before it hit a rock wrong and broke apart. Regardless, it was fun! I’m having fun! I get to be a kid again, without murder or cannibalistic tendencies or a giant eldritch dragon breathing down my spine! I get to just relax and enjoy the place. I’ve been building a small army of snowmen with details made of dead wood and strips of frozen fur for clothing, I’ve thrown snowballs using my magic, as my hands are still lacking in that aspect, hell, I’ve even done some flight acrobatics to just enjoy myself.

I love winter!

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If things continue at this rate, winter might just vanish in the blink of an eye. We’re already in its last few weeks, if the year is still the same as back on earth, as my observations so far indicate.

Stolen story; please report.

Regardless of that fact, though, I am currently doing something mildly important. Mother hasn’t been doing much during the winter, but that doesn’t mean she’s been hibernating. I don’t know what she’s been doing, but every so often I’d see her fly about, or focus on me if I ever passed by her somehow still green oasis, sometimes she even went down the tunnel. I still couldn’t follow her, as I had tried only to lose a few days to making multiple ice statues of everyone I have seen in this world. Weird fixation, but alright.

Regardless of all that, I once again find myself in front of her, and she’s been teaching me some very important things, including how to properly use the life rune that I haphazardly guessed. It’s somehow different from both energy and matter runes. I need more focus to keep one simple life rune under control than it takes to control a spell formed from three runes. Still, with so much focus I am actually able to simply feel the mana as it clings to things that should be alive. If only my senses were a bit better, I think I could feel the cells in each organism!

Either way, this is an interesting step… maybe she’ll teach me about any of the other organic mana types. That would certainly be useful, far more than the many ways I’ve learned to damage something with magic.

As I focus on my magic, I suddenly lose the rune as my focus is drawn by the large boulder of snow that was thrown straight at my head, knocking me a few meters away by sheer momentum. Thank whatever made dragons for giving them such sturdy necks. I look around for the cause, but soon realize the obvious. Mother… threw a snowball at me? I look at her tendrils as they smooth down a ball bigger than my head, and I retaliate by using my hands to form snowballs and magic to launch them up, most of them missing by getting too far from me.

She laughs and I am surprised. She’s just.. having fun. Huh. That actually surprised me. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she’s a pretty normal mother. Watches from afar as I play with my ‘friends”, teaches me important things, plays with me… Sad that she’s a tyrannical overlord that has probably eaten humans before… She might have been nice if not for that… or for the many attempts on my life, really it’s easy to sober up whenever my instincts make me mushy for her, though it is annoying when it keeps happening.

Seems she wants to play some more… alright, let’s see how you handle a proper snowball fight!

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Would you look at that… Train, experiment, play, hunt, rinse and repeat… As always, a bit of routine and time starts flying. But, like all times, routine breaks.

Winter is ending. Greenery is already sprouting here, the trees are budding leaves and flowers, and the temperature is actually nice enough that I only need a bit of fire mana to move around. My siblings have started being more active, and that alone is enough to make me realize that I have somehow been lagging behind. All of my siblings changed in one way or another, most specifically they are all almost as big as me. I don’t understand how them napping brought as much of a boon as my constant training, but that’s dragons for you.

Regardless of the biomechanisms that go into all this, I find myself leading them out into the last few days of snow. Mother has yet to come take us anywhere, so I just hover around them as they figure out their new proportions during their hunts. Boars, rabbits, nothing really escapes. Anything that is dumb enough to be out and about, is taken and devoured.

Barely after the snow properly melts does mother come by to lead us somewhere….

Are you fucking kidding me?

She leads us to the hallway that’s protected by her mind magic… Of course, with her here, the spell doesn’t trigger and we just get to see the rest of the place… without having to struggle at all, just… just had to wait. No, I will not scream, as much as I want to.

The place is simply beautiful. Once we make the bend, the place becomes even wider and with even more artwork. Not only art of Mother, but art of a few other dragons. The murals are overgrown and cracked, so most of them aren’t visible, But I see one that looks like a sort of huge sea serpent, wrapped around what could only be an island. I see another that looks like someone saw a brachiosaurus and decided that its mouth needed to extend all the way down to the base of its neck, among many other horrifying things about this particular one. There is another that looks… weird? That one looks much grander than many other pieces, but its composition is all wrong. It has the rough shape of a rather classic dragon, but it is made entirely out of clear gems that might actually just be glass,, with some kind of humanoid being put in front of it all.

There’s a few others, but I can barely see pieces as we walk past. The place was also decorated with human sized furniture… looked a lot like a church if I was being honest. Strange place.

Following that there is more tunnel, which leads to a door, which she opens with some use of mana. When I finally see what was hidden that made her so guarded… yeah, makes sense. this place had a proper dragon hoard. Actually, no, this place was absurdly magical from all points of view. There was the pile of gold and cut gems that put to shame the nest’s resources as well as mother’s entire water, but that wasn’t all. Multiple pieces of fancy weapons and armor, I can even see that sword mother took a while back. Next there was a pile of books and scrolls, as well as what could only be actual magical potions.

Really, all, these things would have affected me more if it wasn’t for the giant pillars of magical crystal. There’s fire, water, earth, nature and even metal. I stare at it all, a weird hunger setting in my chest. My siblings start milling, trying to find something. I, on the other hand, am not looking for anything. I am instead looking at the giant water rock in the middle of the room. I also see the beam of water shooting upwards… that explains why the water in mother’s river is so full of water mana… damn.

Now… what are we supposed to do here?