"...As favored children of the All-Mother, Dragons enjoy a far more robust connection to the laws that bind the world and its magic, while we know of many who acted as brave warriors for the All-Father's armies across the cosmos, we also know of those who live among His children, imparting knowledge and power in equal measure, some even falling in love with mortals, leading to the creation of Dragonkin...In this tome, we will begin the journey that many mages from ages past started on how to tame and use this Draconic Essence to empower oneself, be it with powerful summoned entities like the almighty Pheonix of the Red Deserts, or the Two-Legged Abyss Jackal of the Principality"

Dragons and their Power, a Primer for Mages and Ki Cultivators Volume 4.

Lucrezia was in the middle of an unnatural blizzard that raged in the capital, partly thanks to her and Hope who had broken a truce with the Summer Spirits in charge of the land and let the Winter ones roam free.

The Spirits sang around her, and her mana replied back as she leaped and floated in the air, dodging the projectiles Kaine was lobbing at her with deadly precision, if one of those landed she would be in for a rough afternoon!

"Lucrezia for goodness sake do not waste mana like that!" he muttered a spell and she nearly fell onto the ground "See! you aren't a Mana Fountain woman, optimization should be important not Flair!"

Lucrezia sighed, landed, and sat down on the soft snow The better part had a flair for the dramatic and I can't help it! "Alright Kaine, what do you have in mind then? I may be gifted but I am no Hope with a Greater Magic Blessing..." Kaine floated towards her, a nasty smile on his face as he said "No excuses, You called me here in the middle of my weekly attunement rituals, very important rituals mind you to appease our friend up in the skies"

"Is Gwennarius still giving you grief?" Lucrezia asked as she got up and the young man nodded "Plenty, she doesn't like Hope can just assert control over parts of the River of Time, nor the fact you of all people have knowledge only she is privy to about the mechanics in place, but that's neither here nor there, stand firm and tall Lucrezia"

She did so as Kaine's voice grew in power "Turn your mind's eye inwards, feel the elements who blessed you run across your mana channels, each node of power has its tune, its song, listen to them and breathe"

Letting his power wash over her, Lucrezia turned her mind inwards and focused down as her mana flowed through her entire body, from the top of her head all the way to the toes, cycling in a perpetual motion, Her focus grew sharper and she could see the strands of her hair shine with mana, yet dark spots appeared across her chest and hands, they flared with an unnatural glow.

"The Rage makes sense given you can only reach the Shallow-Walker stage" Kaine nodded "Focus again, this will take a few tries but we will need to tune both the Rage and Your Internal Mana Supplies"

"A song" Lucrezia spoke and Kaine nodded "Indeed, Music is the best way to do it, alas I am no musician nor do we have Hope here to hijack a blessing, so you will need to come up with something, a good thing you are quite good at it" he nodded with a bit of pride in his voice.

"Is that pride I hear Kaine?" Lucrezia teased him a bit, the mage laughed "What can I say? A friend of mine makes the best songs the realm has seen in ages, it does make me feel a bit prideful"

Lucrezia focused again, her mind flaring as two distinct memories came and a tune was born of them, the first from her childhood as she for the first time in her life heard the winds outside the palace howl together with a mighty winter blizzard.

The second came from Terra, as her Better Half sat on a porch alone, the metal chimes up in the beams playing a lonely tune for him, she focused on both and with a bit of brainstorming came up with a song.

"Your elements sing their tune, one complements the other" Kaine nodded "Now comes the hard part, as a Shallow-Walker the Rage will not want to cooperate with the Mana born out of the All-Father, the other two stages can brute force it to do so but you will have to fine-tune the Rage's own song to match yours, tricking it essentially to optimize mana usage"

Lucrezia closed her eyes and found herself in the Shallows of the sea, there were many an instrument from this world and from Terra, many a style and unique ways to express one's rage, one's anger.

Every style she tried failed, she could feel the Rage-that-Dwells reject it in contempt, the waves crashed against her ankles as if to mock her and so she turned her mind to the stolen memories of William.

"Wrathful...Primal...Unrelenting..." With which word a song came to her mind, the droning of synthetic waves that build into ancient drumming from the ancient people of Tera, and screams a billion, trillion voices of every being that lived lives, and will be born in that cursed rock floating in space, Rage distilled to the very essence of its people, Anathema to all that was good and kind across the cosmos.

A song was born, and as Lucrezia's mind played its macabre tune the waves churned and crashed against the shore, on the Horizon's edge she saw a twisted face her face smiling with canine teeth flashing pure ivory.

"Lucrezia!" Kaine held her in his arms "Godsdamned woman, you nearly died!" she opened her eyes in confusion and said, "What are you on about, it only took..." She watched as the sun was starting to set "Oh..."

"Hours and your Vitals dropped like a rock in the past 5 minutes, I had to cast a number of Healing Spells on you" Kaine sat her down "Wait" he cast more spells that washed over her "All Fine now, minus a deficit on your total Mana, and I can feel the circuits inside you more clearly now, the Rage is no longer denying the Mana"

"I am sorry Kaine, I did not mean to make you worry" he waved her off "Don't think about it, I had to deal with stuff similar to this in the past, but at least the first part of the training worked so congratulations my friend, now get up, we have formulas to learn"

Lucrezia did so as Kaine cast a spell that refreshed her "Convenient" she said and he smiled.

"Now, Blessings" He tapped his finger into his staff "Lacking any magical one to increase your pool we will have to make do with All-Mothers, a dangerous proposition as I am sure you know, I do not wish to anger the Goddess after all"

"Velkarius?" Lucrezia asked, the Goddess did dabble on many a magic after all.

"Ah, a good choice but the Lady of Vengeance is locked squarely into elements that would not work with this generalist approach we are taking with you" he nodded "But once we get through this I can see if I make a more focused course with her special brand of magic"

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

"With the All-Mother blessing, if my calculations are right we should be able to give your soul a false boost of mana capacity" Kaine clicked his tongue as an illusion of Lucrezia's body appeared "This is your soul now, the latest scan shows that all the pathways are cleared of Rage influence" he pointed to them as he kept talking "Now we just need to enable the boost from the blessing"

"As you also know, that is exclusive to dragons and dragons only, a way to even the odds for their younger shock troops I reckon, but given your special relationship with Kallista, and the blessing itself this should be possible"

Lucrezia hummed "It's not like you to bet on a should Kaine" He nodded "Yes, the math is right but with Gods, and ones as powerful as the literal ruler of the universe we are in math and rules become more of a poorly kept guideline"

Lucrezia got a good gulp of air in her lungs "Let's do it"

Lucrezia closed her eyes, and focused her entire being on the Great Blessing that flared upon her back, asking for its power was a simple thing she felt, almost like the Blessing itself wanted to test her with it.

"It's working, a bit too fast, All-Mother must've put that in then, she wants to test you" Kaine echoed her thoughts "Full Blast it, see how it flows"

Lucrezia felt her toes curl as pleasure hit her straight in the brain.

Red of face and holding a mighty moan the woman felt Saal'Xhir's blessing interfacing with All-Mother's, she bit her lips as the heat went up to her ears, Kaine had a particular expression on his face, as if he was calculating what the hell was going on.

"Please" Lucrezia whispered to her Greater Blessing, the sheer stimulus was too much for her as every mental exercise she knew was deployed to keep her shit together at this critical juncture.

There was no response from Saal'Xhir as Lucrezia stood there stiff as a spear, a battle of will versus base needs ensured and she did her best to endure the trial, on top of pushing her other blessing to its utmost potential.

Lucrezia felt like she was drowning, a force invisible to the eye barring her from whatever was beyond it, At first, she tried smashing it, throwing her power like a hammer but it proved ineffective, she grunted in rage and frustration.

Then she tried a more focused approach, The force had its weak spots, she felt them with pokes and probes carefully at first, then when she found the weakest link she punched it with all her remaining might.

A crack formed, and she was back in the real world, Kaine looked deep in thought at first before smiling "It worked, but I know not why Saal'Xhir decided to interfere with the process, You sure are beloved by the Divines Lucrezia"

Lucrezia laughed "Blessed, yeah sure we can go with that" she tried to take a few steps but nearly fell down "I can feel the new reserved of raw arcane being filtered, and it feels off somehow, False indeed"

Kaine nodded "Aye, It will take some exercising, mathematically and physically exercises should be enough to remove that feeling from your mind in time" he walked closer and held Lucrezia's arm "Hold on tight"

In a flash they were standing inside one of the many rooms the castle in the Fields had "Sit down, the dizziness should wear off shortly" Lucrezia did as so and Kaine went on pulling many books, parchments of fine paper and skin, and empty wands "Now I am a firm believer of applied education, learning the theory is good and all but we learn better if we can see progress in real-time and know where our shortcomings are"

"Off we go then" Lucrezia said with a grimace and off they went, learning math only Kaine and his parents were privy to, she felt a weird sense of resentment against the numbers before realizing this was bleeding off from her better part.

Ill likes math she thought to herself as the calculations and theories were quickly put to practical test, both on the papers in the form of magical scrolls and in the wands. Lucrezia quickly learned where her skill ended when that part started.

"I wanna say this is a first, but it's far more common than you imagine" Kaine sighed "Too much output, dense concentrations of mana that make tunning spells a nightmare" he sighed.

"Your father is a specialist on this, isn't he?" Lucrezia said and Kaine nearly jumped "Ah! How did you...of course you know" he paced around the room "Yes, the old man quite literally wrote the books we are using today, not for dearest sister or me, but for a select number of noble scions who while having regular mana quantities for their noble lines, had an issue of just overcharging the shit of every spell they cast"

"Getting flashbacks from those days?" Lucrezia asked and Kaine nodded "One too many haughty noble kids needing to be yelled at, Forgive me let us resume this training shall we?"

And so they did, Lucrezia wrote what Kaine told her to write, shaped and weaved the arcane the way he said she should do it, and did so much math she felt her brain was about to combust into arcane fire, Saa'Ryu dropped by when night fell, food and coffee on her to boost her Lady's attention, a small break was had with Kaede also dropping by to check on her boyfriend.

Afterward, they kept at it well into the night as Lucrezia's blessing of the All-Mother flexed its divine muscles and fully let her take control of the mana reserves added to her, combined with her newly minted skill of manipulation and fine-tuning of the arcane, progress was visible by the minute, something that left Kaine visibly shaken as he took a small break to pour himself more coffee.

"Impossible, Impressive, only..." he muttered under the cup as his hand raced across the notebook, calculations flowing from his mind into paper in such a smooth motion Lucrezia wanted to call it an art form rather than Mathematics, then she recalled a curious trivia from the Elven Principality, they did have art that used numbers like this! but she didn't recall Kaine being adept at it! or any form of Artistic endeavor really.

He looked up with a puzzled face before noticing Lucrezia's gaze "Ah, this? A hobby dearest Kaede taught me this past month, from the Principality I believe" he smiled at the mention of the Kitsune "It helps soothe the mind and soul, balancing the mana flow of the person that is sufficiently skilled at it and also being incredibly pleasant to the eyes, while I was never much of an artist I always found a..." his voice trailed off.

"Beauty in the numbers?" Lucrezia finished his thought as the young man nodded "Ah so this is how those 3 feel whenever you do your thing on them, and here I thought I was used to it given our shared history, but yes math is the language of reality, so she had me learn it and now I do it to focus on particularly difficulty tasks...but I have a feeling you know something else about it"

Sharp as ever.

Lucrezia pulled a plain crystal from her person "A standard mana crystal, but with no charge and still intact" Kaine nodded "Hard to do that, need a special forge and skilled people on it"

"Charge with Temporal Energies," Lucrezia said and Kaine did so, the crystal hummed as he blessed it with Gwenariu's powers "Now do the calculations necessary for a Haste Miracle but using the Elven method" Lucrezia explained and the young man started immediately, the crystal glowed with a strong intensity, and then hummed a tune akin to a bird's call.

It was the Call of River Dove, an ancient bird said to nest at the end of the river of time, a symbol of Gwenariu's most loyal followers who would literally follow their Goddess to the end of times, together with her in the grim work that would follow the end, said work was a reset of cosmic scale, approved by the All-Father of course but the one doing it would be her and her alone.

Kaine sat down, his face betraying many emotions as he took an entire minute to compose himself "For once that bloody Goddess is pleased, really out of everything we tried to please or even humor her, fancy scribbling? Divines I swear..." Kaine composed himself again and continued "Thank you, my friend, I'll make sure the would-be priests of Gwenarius are trained on this, What is a religion without a ritual or morning prayer, Let's get back to work"

And so they did, until the sun rose again and Kaine called it off, Training would continue along the week he said and Lucrezia was glad he could keep helping her like this, Wanting to test her newfound optimized powers, she saw the early birds of the Academy made their way through light snowfall towards the Fields as she found a nice empty flat piece of deserted land.

Red Lighting, Iron Spires was a combo William was fond of, it sucked up a ton of mana but her better half loved the show and spectacle of it, so with concentration that would earn her an arrow to the head, or a sword blade to the belly she focused on the minerals on the ground, where William's spirals tended to be grotesque and showy she got perfectly or at least good enough iron rods from the ground, thin and tall, unlike the earlier renditions.

"Come, Levin of Crimson" A red bolt of lighting hammered itself to the ground, it was like a missile, Lucrezia felt her mana drain considerably but not as badly as before, She smiled and dismissed the Iron Rods, turning her hand clockwise. In a few more weeks she would be able to fully optimize her power! the enemies in the shadows would come in time, she knew that.

And she would be ready.