After these past four years I’ve also read the majority of the books and have started wandering the house. I was intrigued at the intricate designs and found various trap doors and hidden rooms. The books that she gave me explained the basics of each magic and the various branches that they extended into. For instance a different more advance branch of water magic is ice magic, and another example is how lighting is a more advanced application of air magic. I was eager to start learning at two years of age. Unfortunately my mother said that I needed be older before she could teach me magic.
“Why is that?” “I pouted, eager to learn something that seemed so limitless, new, and exciting. She explained to me that although someone’s set of mana and the amount they can use and store is pre-determined by birth, it takes many years of training to tap into that ability and requires your body to mature to a certain rate. Due to the fact that your body is directly co-aligned to how much of your natural ability one can draw out, I started training at a very early age and have started to improve dramatically since the crawling days.
Obviously it was a bit weird to be doing training meant for a male’s body but it was much easier to improve then I had first anticipated, in fact it was much quicker as well. It took until my fifth birthday that my mother reckoned I was ready to learn how to manipulate elemental essence.
By then I had trained my body for three years with a mix of push-ups, pull ups, climbing, and running to build up my body strength and a blend of Maui Thai, tai chi, and judo on a wooden practice dummy that my mother made.
I was elated to finally learn about magic. While there were many different wondrous things about this world, the stories and tales about magic in my former world were so… magical.
“Tell me little one, which colors orbs do you see around the air?”
“I see… blue and red orbs the most.” I squinted, ”some gray and transparent ones too, but they are very faint.”
My mother seemed very surprised and slightly excited over the fact.
“Can you show me some magic mom?” I pleaded….
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Felicia POV (Mom)
My daughter was born prematurely. Thankfully my little angel was delivered safe and sound. I needed somewhere to hide her until she woke up so against my better judgment I decided to sneak into the church and drop her off.
I was exhausted from child birth and unfortunately fell asleep in the church. I awoke to the sound of something crying. I looked around still a bit dazed and saw my little angel. I felt joy washing over my exhaustion and swiftly lifted her up and instinctively named her Lucy. Lucy Fir, my daughter.
I quickly gathered myself and fled the church with Lucy. We arrived at the cabin after I had allowed access to all of my kin. She was a quiet one, only crying when she was hungry or hurt. I always thought that it would be a lot harder to take care of a child. When she finally learned to crawl I was overjoyed. After she found her way into my study I was surprised to find that my daughter was flipping over a book. Seemly looking for pictures I smiled as I watched her through a small crack in the doorway. Soon it became her usual zone. I could almost always find her sitting there small hands struggling to lift the heavy book, feeling the urge to help but never doing so in the end.
Many years passed by as I went outsides to lure my pursuers after me, hoping to keep this place a secret even if a bit longer. I traveled to nearby cities showing glimpses of myself before rushing back home to my baby, hoping that one day she would talk.
It read somewhere that babies are usual talkative before a year. It’s been two and half years since I’ve heard sound coming from Lucy, she just sits there and flips through books. At the start she would still cry when she was hungry but soon that stopped too, she just came and tugged on skirt making the most adorable eyes towards me. This was the only signal she was hungry, besides her growling stomach. I sat there thinking long and hard about why she seemed mute, as I was deep in thought Lucy came up to me.
“What’s wrong mommy?”
An angelic voice came out of nowhere, shocked I lost my train of thought and looked for the source of the sound. As I realized that it came from Lucy tears started gathering and words started to overflow, “You…” as tears dropped down my face “You finally talked! I’m so happy!"
It seemed as if a dam broke loose, Lucy kept on asking so many questions. I answered them to the best of my knowledge and ability. Soon I took to calling her little one; she showed a strange face whenever I called her Lucy. As I tucked her in and was about to leave, her tiny hand grabbed mine. I promised her to answer all her questions and smiled as she fell asleep with a peaceful smile. I made an oath to myself to spend more time at home with my daughter, and to protect her from anything that might harm her.
Over the course of several years I taught Lucy about this world. How dungeons contained monsters to the classifying system of money. I also told her about the four neutral empires and the best public schools in them. I did not tell her about all the secret powers or organizations that existed and merely explained about the four safer empires, the ones that I will most likely escape to with her.
As I spun tales of magic and adventure one day she asked me to teach her magic. This surprised me as it took me until my teenage years to develop an interest in magic. I explained patiently to her that you needed to wait until your body was ready to hold and develop mana. As her sixth birthday drew by she got increasingly more and more excited about the prospect of learning magic. It was so cute to watch her.
I found myself shocked at the fact that my daughter possessed affinity towards not two, but three elements. Even more so she had the rare natural gift of being able to use two opposing elements, water and fire.
“Can you show me some magic mom?” she pleaded.
Unable to refuse her adoring eyes I decided to show off a bit. My strongest attribute was fire, I created multi colored balls of fire forming a rainbow pattern, after some effort I also manipulated to the elemental essence to create a mini firework show. Her eyes were glowing and filled with astonishment and wonder at my skills and I felt pride rush into me.
I taught her everything I knew about fire magic and the basics of wind, unfortunately I had no experience in the field of water magic but I gave her details on some of the basic ice spells. Before I knew it, my daughter somehow managed to skip the basics of water magic and go straight into the more advanced branch of ice magic. I felt so proud of her and wished these peaceful happy days would last forever. Alas that was not to be.
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Lucy POV
Mom’s display of magic was incredible; it was a wonderful awe inspiring display of fire magic. I knew now how impressive it was to be able to manipulate magic to such an extent being able to change the colors of fire and explode it into tiny pieces required a very high level of elemental manipulation.
Thanks to that I had a strong urge to learn to become as strong as my mom one day and managed to grasp the way to manipulate the elements rather fast.
I suppose reading all the books on the basics of elemental magic was useful
After I had mastered the basic my mother taught me more advanced fire magic and soon I became proficient in the art. I kept training my body and reading in the morning and spent time with my mother learning magic in the afternoon. Four years passed by slowly like this. As I reached my tenth birthday I looked back on my time in my past life and the one I now live in Riveria.
I enjoyed the feeling of having a family and found myself enjoying the company of animals. It was something that I never got to do as a child or adult in my former life. During my eighth birthday as I wandered around the woods I found a pattered egg within the bushes. After taking it back to my mom I was shocked to find that it was a magical beast’s egg. My mom suggested to take care of it as it was close to hatching. When the strange patterns are all over the egg, the baby is about to be born she explained. It was also most likely going to be a winged beast.
On my ninth birthday I found out more things about my mom. How she was scared of calling me Lucy because of the strange faces I made when hearing the name. As I assured her that it was the not the case and I loved my*grimace* name. We became closer on that day and I also learned something very important.
My mom can’t cook. After tasting the fresh fruit she bought, sadly it tasted better then anything she has ever cooked for me, although it was filled with love, it was still bland and tasteless. Not bad by any standards just lack of taste.
It was on this day that I started learning how to cook. Or more accurately the day I started taking an interest in this world’s ingredients and applying my pervious knowledge. Today was also the day that the egg finally hatched.
I watched transfixed as the black markings started swirling and covering every inch of the white egg, they rotated and spun furiously showing different shades of black and the patterns within. (Not sure how that’s possible but ok.)
Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.
Eventually the spinning inscriptions stopped and a small crack appeared in the now pitch black egg.
A tiny white talon appeared and broke its way out. As it shattered the surrounding egg shell I saw a small white… dragon? Yes it was a dragon, a pure white tiny baby dragon. As it opened it’s eyes slowly I was greeted with clear electric blue eyes.
“Apa!”
The small creature left out a small sound and trembled. Did it… have hiccups!?
No it was just breathing fire....
Oh crap.
As I panicked my mom quickly took control of the situation and doused the flame. She once again looked surprised.
“What’s wrong mother?”
“Nothing Lucy just that…
Well…
...dragons are extremely powerful magical creatures and intelligent. Even the weakest white dragon will be comparable to a 3 circle mage and warrior. However…
they tend to imprint on the first thing they see, thinking it’s their mother. As such dragon eggs are closely guarded by their parents…
In other words Lucy, you’re now her mother.”
WTF! OKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK so I just got socked in the face with the fact I became a mother… just as I turned nine….
Well at least the dragon is cute.
I sighed, thinking about how to take care of the dragon it surely wasn’t going to be easy. But then again we couldn’t abandon the adorable little bugger so my mom and I took he/her home with us.
After researching slightly about dragons once we got back, I found that the white dragon was the weakest dragon at birth, and only slightly above average potential for dragons. Also that HE was a male. Despite the lack of genitals, he had the small markings on his forehead of a male. However the marking were different as were the color of his scales. They were a tad bit different from normal white dragons.
The baby dragon scooched up to me and looked up with his clear blue eyes. On impulse I started stroking his head, finding it much more smooth and pleasant than expected. He closed his eyes and I swear, I could almost hear purrs coming from him.
“What should I call you? How about Alpha?”
"Al?"
“Alpha”
“Al-ha”
“Al-pha”
“Al-fa”
Close enough I guess.
I spent a year with Alpha and he was really attached to me. I enjoyed the company but his presence seemed to scare away all the other forest animals. I learned that he can glide for a short period of time and he eats a lot, and I mean a lot, of meat. This caused my mother to go out and… acquire (kill, bought? I dunno.) large portions of meat.
This helped me increase my cooking skill and soon I took over the kitchen. My mom was worried at first but accepted it as my skills increased. Also a lack of cutting myself with a knife probably helped. While continuing my training I soon became much stronger than anyone else my age. At least I hoped so or everyone in this world is going to be able to kick my ass. I experimented with many herbs and spices and found a batch of berries looked blue, but tasted like strawberries. After some tests I managed to create a batch of strawberry flavored shaved ice.
On the morning of my tenth birthday I woke mom up and served her my masterpiece. Strawberry shaved ice...
She started crying.
Panicked I had no idea what I did wrong. I could piece together…. Something about… my father?
Alpha seemed to sense my emotions as he too began move in an irregular and quite funny way. I stifled a laugh along with my mom. The atmosphere became a bit better after that as she got up and explained.
“I’m sorry Lucy it just tastes so similar to what your father used to make.”
“What happened to my father mom?”
Showing a pained expression on her face my mother began “Well you see your father is……”
BOOM
My mom’s head instantly snapped up. She wiped her tears and closed her eyes. I could see the red orbs going into her at a furious rate.
All of a sudden she got up. She grabbed me and told me to get everything I valued quickly. I felt her shaking hand on my shoulders and instantly ran off into my room to get everything I needed. I took all of the birthday gifts my mother got me as well as a few books. I stuffed it all into a bag and ran back to my mother.
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Felicia POV (Mom)
My daughter woke me up today.
The past four years have been so peaceful and relaxing, although it got slightly more chaotic when that little baby dragon appeared. I watched them jump around and play in the woods and naturally smiled at the expressions on their faces. I felt worried at first about how the dragon would treat Lucy but they soon became close, like friends and family.
As I rubbed my eyes, I awoke to a cold feeling on my cheeks. Lucy handed to me a bowl of… shaved ice? Trembling I took the bowl and tried a bite of the cold refreshing ice. It was slightly sweet, an old nostalgic flavor… As I remembered him tears naturally came back to my eyes. My daughter seemed panicked, trying to gather myself I laughed at how Alpha was moving. That helped ease the tension and relieve me of some stress.
I was going to explain to Lucy about our heritage today, about the special blood that runs in our veins. As I was about to talk to her about her father a large explosion was heard as I felt my barrier being broken.
I quickly gathered my mana and tried to reinforce and fix the barrier but it was too late, I could only slow it’s destruction.
“Get everything pervious and dear to you Lucy. HURRY!”
Without waiting for her response I ran into my study and grabbed the two birthday gifts for Lucy. There was a small leather book and a container filled with black liquid. I quickly snatched the presents off of my desk and unlocked a secret switch.
The wall shifted and for the first time in a decade I once again donned my battle equipment.
Lucy swiftly gathered everything and arrived next to me with a small brown bag in hand. I told her to take Alpha and keep on heading towards the tunnel. I also told her that I needed to stop someone and would meet up with her later.
“Head to -------------- school”
My voice was overpowered by a large blast.
“RUN LUCY RUN! DON'T LOOK BACK JUST KEEP GOING!"
After pushing her into the trapdoor I didn't even have enough time to say goodbye as I locked the door shut preparing for battle.
“HAHAHAHA WE FINALLY MEET CRIMSON WITCH”
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Lucy POV
I was pushed into the trap door by my mom. After pounding at the door and getting no response I had to follow what my mother said and take the trap door…
It was a long tunnel and lead to a nearby hill. I knew as I had long found and explored it. It contained a magnificent view of our little cabin and the nearby woods. The entrance or exit was nearly hidden by large boulders.
Crying and confused I ran as fast as I could outside. I tripped over a small rock and landed on my face. After the face plant it was a bit harder to get up, I think I fractured my leg.
Thankfully Alpha was there and hovered under my arm and supported my way out. The speed I was going at decreased dramatically as I slowly wobbled my way outside.
When I finally got out, the sight that greeted me was devastating.
“No… It can’t be…”
I collapsed to the ground as my conscious flew away.
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The sight clearly conflicted with nature. In the dead of winter within the snow covered woods, the cabin was burning with a deep blood red. It had gone up in smoke and quickly spread to the trees like wildfire. Except this one was a magical everlasting flame. The animals fled from their homes and a loud maniacal laughter could be heard over the crackling inferno….
Author note: Sorry about how long this took. Some things came up. There might not be any updates for quite some time as spring break is coming up! Anyhow I hope you enjoy this 3000+ chapter, things are starting to “heat” up. Hope you enjoy and don’t forget to comment on what I did wrong! Hope you enjoy the new format! Now tell me, (Since I have no clue how to make a poll) Where of the four introduced empires would you like Lucy to end up in first? Comment below and I'll quickly count all the people who cared and that's where she'll head first.