Susan lay on her back inside of a magic circle. She tried to ignore the uncomfortable warmth of the sun above, paired with the seeping cold of the clay below. She breathed in, then out. Her heart thrummed in her chest. She felt uncomfortable… and not much else.

She distantly heard the cadence of Luthera’s voice. She was currently lecturing the rest of the group on the other side of the courtyard.

The first thing Luthera had done once she finished her initial lectures was to split the group between those who had experience sensing mana, and those who did not. Susan’s group, including Takeo and the two farmers, was the latter.

Luthera had carved a set of new mana circles into the ground for them, apparently designed to help them sense their mana. They were supposed to sit still and listen to their heart, trying to feel a ‘second heartbeat’. Luthera said that mana followed the motion of the body so intrinsically that the first step in sensing it was simply learning to differentiate it from those ordinary motions.

Clay crunched a few meters away. Susan opened her eyes to see Takeo striking a pose from just outside his own mana sensing circle.

“Only four hours to get familiar with mana, what do you think?” He said with a grin.

“Uh, cool,” Susan said, trying to hide the irritation in her voice.

She was officially the last person to sense her own mana. The other two people, the ones dressed as peasants, and as it turned out- were peasants, had finished quickly. They already knew what they were looking for, just needing a bit of guidance. They had already left to join the other group, which alternated between lessons from Luthera and practice with the proper Dragon making magic circles.

Takeo had actually sensed mana for the first time a few minutes ago, but had stuck around to get the feeling down. Now he was done too.

Unlike Susan.

She really didn't want to start getting jealous of him, that wouldn’t help anything.

She glanced back to Takeo who was… still standing there looking at her. She raised an eyebrow at him.

“What, no reaction? Luthera seemed impressed,” He said with a shrug.

“Sorry, I’m still having trouble.” Takeo could probably hear her irritation this time. “If you have some advice I’d be happy to listen, but otherwise I need to focus.”

“Fine, be that way,” Takeo snapped back and stalked off.

Susan breathed in deep, and let out a heavy sigh.

Takeo was definitely a bit high strung. Overall though, he seemed to be taking the whole ‘interdimensional kidnapping’ thing better than she was.

Susan wasn't entirely sure. She had only barely confirmed her suspicions when he had made an offhand comment mentioning the internet.

Well, at the very least, one of them wasn't actively freaking out. Takeo in particular seemed eager to become a dragon. Susan couldn’t really blame him, it wasn’t every day you got handed a chance to become a creature of legendary power.

She just wished she got a choice in the matter.

Or could sense whatever this ‘second heartbeat’ thing was.

She turned her attention back to her body.

Her heartbeat thrummed in her chest.

Her lungs rushed with air, in and out.

The ground was cold beneath her, the sun beat down overhead.

She felt her bones itching!

A shadow blotted out the glow of the sun. Susan opened her eyes to see Luthera’s face looking down on her.

“Sorry, did I wake you?” Luthera asked with a grin.

Susan could only shake her head, “I still can’t feel it,” She whispered.

Luthera’s smile twisted into a frown.

“Are you sure? The magic circle should delay the movement of mana in your body slightly. It can be subtle, but it should be there.”

Susan’s grimace was enough of a reply. Luthera stood up from where she had crouched over Susan. Susan scrambled to her feet to see what she was doing.

Luthera reached into her pocket and slipped out a small white stone.

“Here, take this,” She said, handing it to Susan.

Susan took it and looked at it for a few seconds.

She looked back at Luthera, “It’s… a rock, right?”

“It’s, well… I’m sorry,” Luthera said with an ugly expression.

Susan stared at her, half in fear, half in confusion.

“What’s wrong?” She asked.

“If you cannot feel anything different about that stone, then you must be mana blind,” Luthera replied.

Susan gulped, “Then…”

“You cannot use the magic circle.”

Susan felt the hope in her chest wither. If she couldn’t become a dragon then within a month she would be…

Insane.

Susan didn’t want to go insane. Her mind was the best thing about her. The idea of it slowly betraying her was something she would have had nightmares about if she was able to sleep.

She had only a month of sanity left. But the way Luthera talked implied the rest of the group would be in the Caldera for years at least. Since they needed to be taught from scratch, Susan thought that might have even been a more conservative estimate of how long the transformation would take.

Except…

Luthera had mentioned the four humors at one point in her lectures. Specifically to explain how they needed to avoid upsetting them.

Susan turned to look Luthera in the eye.

“So, I have about a month before I go crazy, right?”

Luthera sighed, “I’m sorry, but yes.”

Susan nodded, “I guess I should show you how to design a proper thermocirculatory system, then.”

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Susan carved a zero into the clay beneath her. The last two weeks had been… excruciating.

She hadn’t been able to sleep. Every time she tried, she couldn’t get past the prickling in her bones. On top of that, she just didn’t feel tired.

Her eyes didn’t feel heavy, her muscles didn’t hurt, but there was a fatigue just beyond any of her senses that told her she needed sleep. She could understand now what Luthera meant by madness. It wasn't the straight jacket and padded room kind. But if she didn’t escape the caldera soon, she knew that she would just find a corner and curl up in it. Just laying there desperately trying to get any kind of rest until her body gave out or the elements took her.

The others at least didn’t have this problem. The magic circle they used agitated the stagnant mana that kept them awake, so they could sleep after a session of body shaping. Which at least were going decently well.

The process was surprisingly simple. They lay in the magic circle, which apparently gave them the ability to view and shape their body, then started changing things.

This was where Susan came in. Over the course of their first few days in the Caldera, she had managed to design a theoretically functional Dragon body. Then she spent the next week after that coaching everyone on how to follow her design. The end result had the group transforming into dragons at a speed that stunned Luthera.

At the rate they were going, Susan’s tutoring would have everyone transformed into dragons just a few days before her insanity deadline. In fact, Takeo was already going through the process to finalize his dragon transformation. His surprising talent for transformation magic had him already resembling a dragon while everyone else just looked like large, scaled humans. He was now a fifty foot long dragon that resembled a Komodo Dragon from back on Earth.

Everyone had gathered to watch at Luthera coached him through the last step; transforming his heart into a high efficiency furnace designed by Susan. They had actually had to leave the fortress to do it. According to Luthera, the results could be rather explosive if done wrong. Though she assured everyone that there was practically no chance of that.

She had still decided to be prudent by leaving their one remaining pure human inside the fort. Then creating a clearing outside for Takeo to transform inside of.

Susan had found herself left to her own devices for the first time in three weeks. Which if the group had taken a second to think about, was probably a bad idea.

She was not doing well. It was obvious to everyone, herself most of all. She had found herself losing time. Snapping out of a stupor to realize that minutes, or hours had passed without her realizing it.

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Luthera had taken to chatting with her whenever she had the chance. Discussing math, science, and especially, magic.

Which was when, in the dead of night three days ago, she let something slip she probably shouldn’t have.

The runes weren’t necessary for magic circles to work.

Magic, apparently, needed three things to work. Mana, instructions to follow, and a path to flow through. As long as you fulfilled these conditions, the magic would work. It didn’t matter if you sang a song, a chant, or even wrote something down, as long as you gave the mana motion and directions, you were good.

Runes worked because the mana was drawn into the concentric circles, followed the instructions given by the runes, and then performed the spell. Apparently even Susan could theoretically do magic, she just couldn’t do it with the high precision necessary for the dragonification spells.

The runes used in the magic circles were actually an entire language. The runes weren’t words, however. They were entire concepts summarized and distilled into a single symbol.

But that’s all they were, symbols just like any other.

Luthera had, of course, warned Susan against any attempt to write her own spells without the use of runes. There were all number of different ways things could go wrong, and homemade spells had a way of following instructions to the letter. To the detriment of the person casting the spell.

Except there were two things pushing Susan to try it anyway. One; Luthera’s descriptions sounded suspiciously like writing code, which Susan had a good amount of experience writing.

And two; Susan wasn't going to escape the caldera.

Luthera had said there was a way to predict how long you would last before the mana induced madness set in. Susan hadn’t dared to ask her to elaborate. Such knowledge would just be another straw on her back, joining together with everything else in this nightmarish caldera attempting to crush her.

Susan knew with a certainty that terrified her that she had about five more days. Not the two weeks the others needed.

So she waited until they left. Then she summoned every scrap of scientific knowledge she had available to her, grabbed a stick, and started drawing.

She knew she would need space, so she drew her outer circle large enough to fill the entirety of the clay covered courtyard she worked in.

Her plan was to supplant her lack of magical knowledge with scientific knowledge. She had no idea what a unit of mana was even supposed to be or how to measure it, but she had a workaround. As long as she ensured that the conditions around her body stayed the same, the amount or the flow of the mana she was using shouldn’t matter.

That meant that as long as the temperature of her body needed to stay at 36 degrees celsius, and no forces acting on her other than gravity changed. As long as those as well as a thousand other conditions stayed the same, then she should be safe.

This was where her good old friend the metric system came into play. The metric system was a system of measurements based on several fundamental forces of nature that didn't, or that Susan hoped didn't, change between universes.

That was the problem of how not to die solved. Now onto her real plan.

Susan was gonna become immortal.

Well, not really. But at least immune to aging. There are several suspected causes of aging in the human body. So she was gonna take care of all of them.

A few changes to how her body processed DNA, creating more stem cells, and a few other changes. And with that, Susan would be… Well not immortal in the truest sense of the word, but she would definitely live much longer.

She carved another zero, and then a one. A look up showed an enormous spiral of ones and zeros scrawled madly in the clay within the outer circle. Maybe she shouldn’t have written this in binary.

It was safe though. Words and letters could be misspelled or misread. Modern coding languages were easier to work with, but a single misspelling could break the logic chain. Ones and zeros on the other hand? If she was misspelling those she might as well give up.

If only it hadn’t taken her six hours to write all this out.

The others would be finishing soon, she had to hurry.

A series of movements from her arm finished the last line of text. Susan had to force herself to walk slowly, carefully tracing the inner circle.

She had to deliberately ignore the chafing of her clothes. She couldn’t sweat due to the mana, but that didn't stop her pajamas from accumulating grime and wrinkles. They now resembled freshly skinned roadkill pelts more than anything else.

She jabbed the stick into the ground at her side. With the completion of the innermost circle, the mana began to flow inwards. The letters on the ground began to glow faintly and she felt the spell begin.

Her body immediately heated up, then cooled back down. She breathed a sigh of relief.

The circle would run for about thirty seconds before automatically deactivating. In that time, her body shouldn’t run hotter than 36 Celsius. So it should be a matter of waiting it out and-

Susan got a mild brain freeze. She breathed in and out, waiting for it to leave. Her breath hitched when it instead got worse.

Wait, oh no. Her sleep deprived brain had managed to screw her over one last time. The average body temperature was 36 C. The average BRAIN temperature was over 38 C.

Oh, she was such an idiot. Only Susan Hill, scientist extraordinaire, could remember the full DNA sequences required for this, but forget about brain temperature!

Her breath picked up, and she collapsed to her knees in despair.

Warmth seemed to flow through her body.

Her panicked brain could only think one thing. Feeling warm when you were experiencing hypothermia meant you were going to die.

Her mind ran in circles. She was going to die!

Her body grew warmer, then the pain started to recede.

No no no! She wasn't ready to-

Wait a second, she felt fine. Her brain finally caught up to the fact that it felt warm because it was actually warm. The spell had already run its course, it was no longer trying to freeze her.

The air rushing in and out of her lungs as she slowed as she calmed down. She was alright. She was an idiot, but she was alright.

She pushed herself to her feet. Susan breathed in and let it back out. Her bones didn’t itch.

Her bones didn’t itch.

A look around showed the field looking mostly the same, but the scrawled writing around her had been muddled by the mana pouring through it. It appeared the magic circle was one use only.

A splash of color to her right caught her attention. It was the tree branch. Its bottom had taken root in the clay while the top grew a few scraggly leaves.

It occurred to Susan that she knew very, very little about magic, and she was very, very lucky.

A wave of tiredness ran over her for the first time in two weeks. Susan smiled as her knees wobbled and she felt the urge to lay and sleep for the next three days.

A roar and yells of triumph echoed from the forest just outside the gates. Susan smiled, turning towards it. Sleep could wait a little bit.

There were two victories to celebrate now.

The roar came again. So did the yells, except this time they didnt stop.

Wait a second, those weren’t yells.

Those were screams.

Susan’s feet had her running towards them before her brain had even caught up to what was happening. Despite now feeling her exhaustion, the supernatural endurance given by the mana stayed.

So it was barely a minute before she was getting close enough to see the enormous bulk of Takeo through the trees. Was he okay? He hadn’t exploded, what had everyone so panicked?

Susan burst into the clearing to see a fifty foot black dragon rake a handful of footlong claws through Graff’s chest.

The sight locked her legs in place as she skidded to a stop. The clearing wasn't as big as the fort, barely large enough to fit both Takeo and the magic circle he was using. Maybe seventy feet across with the enormous glowing trees of the forest serving as a border.

Bodies littered the ground.

They weren’t quite human anymore. Each one of them stood ten to fifteen feet tall, covered with scales and with inhumanly large torsos to contain their forming mana hearts.

At least, that’s what the various members of the group had looked like when they left the fort earlier that day, laughing and cheering Takeo as he and Luthera led the way to the clearing. Now they lay in twisted shapes, unmoving on the ground as the violence continued around them.

The one screaming was Edith. She had been standing paralyzed behind Graff as he fought the dragon. Her shrill voice cut off when the dragon moved past the fallen form of the former mercenary and backhanded her through a tree.

Susan’s eyes desperately looked for Luthera. She could fix this, she would have some sort of plan. She was one of the shorter ones, only ten feet tall but with a unique rainbow scale pattern that made her stand out.

Her eyes landed on an unmoving form in the middle of the clearing. The shape was right, the color too. But the twisted form on the ground contained none of Luthera’s animation, wit, and… life.

The dragon’s head turned towards Susan with a predator’s grace.

Susan ran.

She made it barely ten steps before a clawed hand the size of her torso crashed down on her. Pinning her to the ground.

“Hello, Susan,” The voice of Takeo came from above her.

“Takeo? What are you doing?” Susan shouted from where her face pressed into the dirt.

Takeo’s voice now much deeper and heavier came again. “Really? Hasn’t that brain of yours figured it out?”

Susan’s panicked breaths stilled as her panicked, sleep deprived mind slowly put the pieces together.

“We were going to get out! What’s wrong with you?”

“I made the smart choice,” Takeo retorted. Susan’s chest buzzed as his words echoed with incredible force through his body. “These idiots were going to follow that wizard and throw away the chance of a lifetime!”

Susan couldn’t help but sob as he threw Luthera’s death back in her face.

“The Atlan Empire is willing to give us anything we want for the secrets of Dragonification!” He crowed, “And I’m all set to cash in!

“In fact, I should probably be happy none of the others agreed with me,” He continued, “Now there’s no need to share the prize.”

Susan’s hands gouged furrows in the dirt as she fought to get out from underneath the monster’s claws.

“WELL WHAT DO YOU WANT WITH ME!” She screamed as loud as she could. She didn't want this, laying here surrounded by the bodies of people she was beginning to call friends. Didn’t want to acknowledge that the only one of them that wasn’t dead had become something far worse.

“I just wanted to have a little talk with the only other Earthling here.” Takeo rumbled.

“So you finally decided to tell me you're from earth?” Susan yelled back, “Is that supposed to make me agree with you? It doesn’t make you any less of a monster!”

“Oh please,” Takeo laughed, the noise echoing around the clearing, “There was nothing for either of us on that planet, we were just bricks in the wall there. Drops in the ocean of humanity.”

“No. That was just you, I actually had a life! I don’t need to turn into some brain dead monster to be happy you piece of-”

Susan’s tirade was cut off as Takeo pressed down with his hand, forcing the air out of her lungs. He let up after a second, leaving her gasping for air.

“No need to be rude, Susan. Now where was I?” A breath of blistering hot air blew over Susan as Takeo leaned his head closer, “See, you can escape anymore without us to piggyback off of. And you’ll go mad in a few days anyway, so there’s no problem for me if I let you go.”

“SCREW OFF!”

“Aw, it looks like our resident scientist doesn’t like me, how sad. Well, either way, I’m a dragon of my word.”

His hand came off of Susan’s back. She was running before she even fully got to her feet. Rushing away as fast as her legs could take her.

The dragon’s booming laughter chased after her.

“Why don’t you come and watch me leave, I could use an audience,” Takeo roared after her.

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

Susan only stopped when she hit the wall of the caldera. She barely noticed it in time to get her arms up, and crashed into it. Her back hit the dirt before her brain could catch up to what was happening.

A sob escaped her throat. A second later she was curled up in the dead leaves and dirt of the forest floor, crying for all she was worth.

Everyone was dead.

As she sobbed, her mind would keep trying to parse this fact, then stutter. Then the image of their bodies would pop back into her head, and the misery and horror would come back even stronger.

Something rumbled in the distance. Adrenaline carried Susan to her feet in an instant. Takeo was still out there, he might be coming after her.

Motion caught her eye. It was the lift, Takeo perched on top like an Egyptian sphinx. Susan wondered if the blood was still on his claws, or if he had cleaned them before leaving.

It probably wouldn’t matter to the Atlans either way.

For an instant, Takeo’s body lined up with the setting sun and his entire figure glowed as the light reflected off his scales. Susan was reminded of the symbol on the chest plates of the soldiers.

The three-headed dragon, consuming the sun moon and stars. Takeo had become the monster Altus had asked for.

Well, if he was going to become the symbol of their empire, become the sun eating abomination, then she was… she was going to stop him.

Takeo was from her world, and she had helped teach him Dragonification. He was her responsibility.

At that moment, a tiny flame started in her chest. Fury joined the fear and revulsion.

The Atlans were going to get the dragon they asked for, they just didn't know it yet. It didn't matter if it took her a hundred or a thousand years. She could become a dragon, and there was nothing they could do to stop her.

And Takeo? A tiny bit of inspiration wormed its way into Susans head.

She smiled. It wasn't a happy smile.

She was going to make Takeo eat his own hubris.