ATTEMPT #2/PET?

Clause 8 of the Mortal Accords: No Immortal creations capable of self-replication in the Mortal worlds may be allowed to roam freely in the Mortal worlds. Includes but is not limited to: Magically enhanced plagues, Nanites/Robots, Zombies, and other forms of magic/high technology that were created using Immortal level powers. Special exception for Immortal/Mortal hybrid children, but limited to 1 per Immortal at any given time, unless in the case of twins.

I was travelling through the realm of souls towards the planet I had planned on visiting next when I detected the mortal souls on another planet rapidly leaving the physical realm and entering fully into the realm of souls. The planet in question also had a relatively high amount of energy fluctuations, so it seemed prudent to check out this anomaly. Upon arrival, I quickly determined what the cause of both the energy fluctuations and the large number of deaths.

            I was dumbfounded by what I saw. A large NEON PINK DRAGON was rampaging around what appeared to be the only remaining inhabited city on this world. It spat what looked like freaking rainbows at buildings. Upon closer examination, the rainbows were made of high-energy lasers, so it was a decently powerful attack even if it looked ridiculous. Quickly I thought of how I was supposed to stop the thing with my heavily restricted power usage. I could of course use a small portion of energy and transform some of the ground under the creature into antimatter, but that would be counterproductive. I could likely fight the thing with only my enchanted clothing as a weapon and win, but that was such a crude method that I instantly discarded that notion.

            I supposed it was time to break out some of my supplies from my storage ring. I had a few binding collars that could easily allow me to capture this dragon. Plus capturing it would allow me to gain the respect of this world’s native population. I reached out with my powers towards my ring, when I felt the binding on my soul flare up a bit once more. No, don’t tell me that accessing my dimensional storage ring required the usage of my true Immortal Powers!

            Cursing to myself I thought of how I was supposed to get to my stuff now.

            I softly mumbled to myself as I thought out the solution.

            “Well, its not like mortals can’t use dimensional manipulation magic, they just need more efficient methods to do so. Hmm, if I tune a spatial warping ritual with a dimensional shifting one and use the link binding my ring to me as a guide, that should allow me to access the compressed space of my ring and should be within my current capabilities. I’ll need to use my blood to anchor the ritual in this realm, but its doable…”

            Quickly I manifested a small blade of energy and used it to cut open my left thumb. I maneuvered the blood into the appropriate ritual arrays then empowered them with the energy I could access. The more efficient usage of energy allowed me to access my storage ring and I quickly summoned one of the binding collars from it. Turning to look at the city once more my vision was quickly filled with the glowing mouth of the pink dragon. It had apparently finished with the city and was now focusing on me.

            Dang it, all my hard work had gone to waste. I was highly annoyed by the situation, and this was compounded by the fact that the beams of laser-breath could actually singe my hair.

            The breath of rainbow lasers almost blasted me back into the void, but I was able to use the energy of the recently activated spatial warping ritual to lock myself in place as my clothing absorbed the power of the laser-breath. Lasers, after all, were a form of light and my clothing naturally absorbed all light in its vicinity. It was actually quite a powerful attack for a mortal creature, and I decided that it could likely wipe out what was left of this worlds bipedal population if left unchecked, so I really did need to stop it. Since I still had my spatial and dimensional warping rituals active, I decided to not waste energy and simply locked it in space much like I had myself. It was larger than my current physical body, so it took more energy to keep in place. I needed to end it before my power use violated the Accord. Binding it was an option, but since it wasn’t an immediate threat to anything and I didn’t really want to deal with such a large and pink creature all the time ending it was a better option. I could just cut off its head or something, but my experience had shown me the limits currently upon me. If I wanted to be more effective, I would have to start utilizing external power sources to get around the limiter on my power, and there was currently a rather large and highly magical creature with a powerful soul right in front of me.

            “Well, guess its time to get to work. Maybe I should animate the beast when I'm done with it? Nah, who would take a necromancer who rode around on a neon pink draco-lich seriously? Better to just drain the body of its magic and store the soul for later use.” I mumbled to myself as I set up multiple ritual arrays around the bound dragon. This time I used tools and components from my ring to increase efficiency and draw in additional energy to perform my tasks.

            A few minutes later and I had the magical energy of the dragon stored in a small gem and its soul in another. I would be able to use both to power rituals and spells without calling upon my own power. Paltry amounts compared to my full power, but significant compared to my current state.

            “Well, I suppose I should track down some of the natives. Maybe if I give them a gift they will like me, but what kind of gifts do mortals like…” I thought about the mortals of the previous world that I visited. Their leaders were worried about the lack of food in their area, so food must be something that mortals like. I could prepare a gift of food for them, but what food? Maybe an omelet?

            I looked around for an egg to make an omelet, and after some searching I turned up a decent sized egg in a large cave in a nearby mountain. This would make an omelet bigger than my current body. I rubbed my hands together in glee before preparing to cook the omelet. Thinking to practice using ultra-low power rituals to get used to my limited powers, I started drawing out rituals on the cave floor.

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            One ritual to hold the egg in place, another to crack it open. Another to heat it up and a final one to place it in stasis when done.

            Once the final one was done, I activated them. The egg rose into the air before a cracking sound rang out and it opened up, spilling its contents onto the holding spell. That’s when disaster struck. Instead of lots of egg white and a yolk, what I got was a mostly formed baby dragon covered in slime. Yuck.

            For a moment I considered cooking this dragon, but even I wasn’t evil enough to kill a baby for food. This decision had nothing whatsoever to do with the mewling noises it made while it struggled to breathe or its cute looking violet face. Nope, those factors had no bearing on my decision at all.

            I wondered what I would do with it. It was a nice red color unlike its mother who I presume I had just killed. Leaving it here would be the same as killing it, but I didn’t want to care for such a messy creature. I stood pondering for quite a few minutes before I realized that the baby dragon had stopped making noises. Wondering what was wrong with it, I glanced at it through the realm of souls with one eye and through the entire electro-magical spectrum with the other. That told me the problem. The dragon’s lungs weren’t finished forming, so it died. Suddenly, I realized that I had a golden opportunity here. If I acted quickly I could get a powerful minion that wouldn’t have any messy physical maladies.

            I used my power to latch onto the newly departed soul and quickly bound it back to its body. I used much of the gathered magical energy from its mother to reshape and reinforce its body. I completed its lungs and saturated its flesh with magical energy to reinforce them. I then ripped the instinct type memories from its mother’s soul and implanted them into this young dragon, ensuring that no actual memories or thoughts made it through. I wanted it capable if using its body, not to hate me.

            The newly reborn Draco-Lich looked around a bit before focusing on me. The slimy residue from being in the egg had been burnt off by the same magic that had completed its growth. It chirped at me, but I could sense what it wanted thanks to the bond of magic created during the dragon’s reconstruction. It wanted to know what I wanted it to do.

            Creatures of magic are born with a great deal of inherent knowledge. This increased with the power the parent or parents possessed, so the child of two Immortals of my level of power would be born with all the knowledge of a millennia-old Immortal of a much lower tier of power. This dragon already had several hundreds of hears of knowledge regarding how to hunt and use its wings, claws and teeth. Thanks to the infusion from its mother’s soul it also knew how to utilize its magic, so it could recognize the bond between us and could sense that I was its master. Or at least that’s what I hoped it saw me as. I wasn’t very experienced with binding entities that were flesh and blood and its possible that the baby Draco-Lich saw me as its mother. A possibility that I disregarded immediately.

            “I want you to accompany me as I track down another group of mortals.” I certainly wasn’t going to waste any of my energy conversing through the bond, no matter how miniscule that amount was.

            The Draco-Lich chirped at me once more, this time conveying a sense of hunger and amusement. This wouldn’t do at all, it needed to learn to communicate in such a way that I didn’t need to put in effort to understand it if the beast was to be a proper minion. I sighed, a small investment now would likely save me much trouble in the future, and so I quickly used a rather significant amount of my current power to modify both the brain and soul of the Draco-Lich to resonate more closely with the Psychic plane. This would allow it to transmit its thoughts quite easily.

            One the modifications finished the Draco-Lich communicated once more.

            Are we going to get some snacks? I feel like I should be hungry but since I'm not then we can just play around with them right?

            “No, I have a task to complete that involves the lesser mortals of this world. Besides, you don’t need food anyways now. Magic will be enough for you. Now come along, the sooner I finish the sooner I can leave this place.” It looked confused, but it could deal with that.

            I took off, my clothes forming wings once more that carried me high into the sky. The Draco-Lich tried to imitate my flight, but even with its inborn instincts it still had to get used to the differences between it and a normal dragon. It struggled to get more than a few feet off the ground before it enhanced its wings with magic. Then it shot up into the sky so fast it left a sonic boom in its wake.

            I ignored it as I began searching for mortals once more. This world seemed strangely empty, as if the city that had just been destroyed had contained the last of the mortals. After half an hour of futile searching and barely holding in laughter at the struggles of my minion in mastering its powers, I decided to cave and look through the realm of souls. What I saw disappointed me. There were barely a few hundred people left on this world, making it not worth the effort to save at all in my opinion.

            Still, it was a decent testing ground for a few of my ideas. I located one group of 103 mortals, the largest remaining group, and began studying them. Once I had amassed enough information on their physiology, I brought out some items from my storage and began creating a permanent ritual array near their dwelling. It was designed to modify any of this world’s mortals that entered to array, making them far more likely to survive and rebuild their society by giving them increased, intelligence, magic capacity, strength, and genetics that would survive their limited genetic pool. After all it wouldn’t do to have them die off in a few generations from inbreeding effects. The ritual array would operate off the energies present in the environment, so it would need a short recharge between uses, but I certainly wasn’t going to use any of my limited supply of power cores on this experiment. Hopefully this would be enough on this world. I’ll check again in a few hundred orbits of this planet to see the results of my experiment.

            Taking off once more I noticed that my minion had finally mastered using its magic along with its wings to fly. Good, flapping around pretending to be a member of the Angelic cohort made me feel stupid in my opinion. The Draco-Lich would be an adequate steed while I was in the Mortal world.

            “Get over here, were moving on from this place.”

            Where do you want to go? I can fly really fast, just tell me and I’ll show you!

            The Draco-Lich’s voice was filled with pride at having mastered such a basic skill, and I had to hold myself back from laughing.

            “Its cute that you think you can fly fast. Just be a good little undead dragon and fly straight while I take us from this world.”

            I hopped onto the back of the confused beast before directing it into the void. I would need to leave this world before I could muster the energy needed to travel to another with my minion in tow without violating the agreement I was under. Time to look for more experimental subje—I mean mortals in need of aid.