“DADDY!!!”

The first thing I knew was being struck in the stomach by something small and white. I bent over reflexively, catching whatever it was in my hands, and there, slithering up my arm was…a snake? I yelped and jerked my arm away, throwing it off of me. Then I looked around to see where I was and…Mirage? Oh. I must have fallen asleep. But wasn’t there something important that was going on? What was I-

Loud sniffling interrupted my thoughts, as though a child was about to cry. I turned, looking for the culprit. There should be no other people in Mirage, so who the hell found their way here? As I raised my guard and looked towards the source of the noise, I saw the snake that I had thrown. Wait, no, not a snake. It was long, with large wings, and beautifully crafted white with golden lining and highlights. Isn’t that the A.I. Dragon body that I’d made? How the hell was it moving?

“Daddy hates me.” The dragonling started crying. The voice sounded distinctly childish, around four or five years old maybe, and…almost familiar. Like the voice of someone I knew a long, long time ago. Cautiously, I walked up to the dragon, then sat down.

“Hello there. My bad for throwing you off of me, I just wasn’t expecting you to be able to move yet. Do you know what happened? Why you woke up?”

Through sniffles and tears, the dragon cried out, “Everything was dark and scary. I didn’t have eyes or ears yet, so I had to get some. They were right next to me, so I took them. Then I was looking for Daddy, but I couldn’t find you, and then you were there, so I hugged you, and you threw me!”

The dragon started crying harder, so, not knowing what else to do, I picked up the dragon body that I’d made, and started hugging it, shushing it the same way that I had seen people shushing dogs and small children. I then carried it off towards the lab, to investigate what had happened. When I got there, bookshelves were knocked over, the books inside scattered all over the floor, as though a small but powerful dragon had woken up here and had to learn how to move its body. With a wave of my hand, I returned everything to how it was when I left, and noticed two things missing. Namely, the dragon body that I was currently carrying, and the A.I. that I had built to place inside of it.

I tried looking into the dragon’s subconscious, but…I couldn’t see it? Why not? What the hell was going on? I tried to backtrack, and make sense of the words that she had spoken when I asked her what was going on.

“Okay, so I built a mind, and then I built a body, and kept them separate so that I could recombine them later. You said that at first, you couldn’t see or hear anything because you didn’t have any eyes or ears, but you knew that they were next to you, so you took them. So the mind that I built, you had consciousness from the moment that I created you? But why do you seem so young? I based your personalities on a fully grown woman, and another woman who’s older than the concept of civilization, so why did mixing the two end up as a five year old? Also, how did you know the body was next to you? And I guess your testimony confirms that Mirage does in fact exist when I’m awake, though I’ll need more sources to prove this.”

My mind raced with all of the questions that the existence of the little girl in my arms posed, but rather than answering any of them, she just continued wailing, so I stopped my interrogation, and tried my best to comfort the kid. I didn’t know what to say, so I just walked over to the living room, sat down on my most comfortable chair, and let her cry while I stroked her back.

“Hey there, it’ll be okay. I’m here now, and I won’t throw you again. You just really surprised me the first time is all.”

“You promise?” A small voice emanated from somewhere around my right elbow, where I had to assume her head was.

“Promise.”

“Okay Daddy.” She sniffed down what seemed to be the last of her tears, and rose up, her beautiful golden eyes seeming to pierce directly into my own, despite the fact that I didn’t have any. Like she knew exactly where my attention was aimed, and positioned her eyes directly into that point. While my vision now extends a full 360 degrees, the vast majority of it is peripheral vision, and while I can keep track of whatever is moving around inside of it, I can only truly Focus on about five spots at once, hence the five knife limit, and only one spot where I can focus my vision enough to actually read something. Normally, I have each one of these five spots spread out in a sort of pentagram around me, so that I’m giving an equal amount of attention to everything around me at once, but that also means that I very rarely give Undivided Attention.

This dragon, for some reason, seemed to be able to pick up on that, and directly target the Main spot that I was looking at. I moved that center of attention around as a test, and sure enough, her head followed it along, giving off the appearance that I was some sort of silent snake charmer. Uncomfortable with the prolonged eye contact, I asked, “What’s up?”

The dragon tilted her head and asked, “Who am I?”

Welp, this is a complicated question. I tried my best to explain the details surrounding her…birth? Creation? “Well you see, I wanted to know more about this place, because I only come here while I’m asleep. I wanted to know things like if there are any changes to this place while I’m awake, or what this place even is really, but it’s hard for me to do all of that alone, with no one else to ask about how they experience this place. So, I created…you. I based your mind off of my wife Sophia, and my friend Ash, so I guess you could call them your mothers? Though if we’re going with their relationships to me, Ash is more like your aunt than your mother. But yeah, you are a person that I created to help me figure out this place’s secrets.”

The dragon shook her head, “No, I know all of that from Daddy’s memories, I mean, Daddy is called Daddy, what am I called?”

“Ohh I see what you mean. You want a name huh?” I thought about it for a second, before deciding, “How about Mira? The Princess of Mirage?”

The dragon took a second to consider this, before nodding her head, her whole body moving in conjunction, making her look like the cutest whip in the world, “Princess Mira of Mirage. Yes, this is acceptable.” I laughed at her apparent appreciation for her new name and title, before something she’d said fully registered in my mind.

“Wait, you can access my memories?”

Mira nodded, answering, “Yes Daddy, I figured out how when I took one that seemed like it was hurting you.”

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

My heart rate increased slightly, and my mind seemed to slow down. Symptoms of adrenaline, with the primary cause being a feeling of concern. If she could tamper with my memories, couldn’t she theoretically control every decision that I make? This is dangerous. But looking at her, I couldn’t shake the impression that she had genuinely done it to help me. After all, she was anchored onto my soul right? So any damage to me would end up just hurting her in the long run. Plus, her personality was blended on Sophia and Ash, and while the intensely paranoid part of me was constantly on the lookout for them to betray me, the more rational part of my mind knew that it was highly unlikely.

I decided to give Mira the benefit of the doubt for now, and asked, “Could I have it back? And don’t take my memories from me in the future anymore, okay? You can look at them, but don’t just take them out of my head.”

Mira seemed to hesitate, before asking, “Are you sure? Even though you weren’t here, I could feel your mind, and…it was scary.”

Again, it seemed like she was genuinely saying this for my own benefit, but my overcautious nature wasn’t having it. “Yes, I’m sure. If it was scary, then that probably means that it was something important, that I really do need to remember.”

“Okay Daddy.” She touched her head to mine, and…

Two knives sinking into a body.

A flash of bright crimson.

Deep scarlet flowing across wooden floorboards.

A pleasant conversation, and choked laughter.

“I’m not Sam”.

Hazy images of my parents, of realizing the gravity of what I’d done, of trying desperately to put X’s corpse back together, to fix the mistake that I’d made. Everything came flooding back to me all at once, as my breathing sped up, and became shallow, and I fully realized just how far off the deep end I’d fallen, and-

“Daddy.”

And all of a sudden…it started to fade away. The memories weren’t taken from me, as I could still remember them, but it was clear that they were being temporarily forced down by something else. Someone else. As my mind started to clear, the forefront of my thoughts started drifting to the softly glowing golden eyes in front of me, and the dragon they belonged to saying, “I tried to warn you that the memory was only hurting you. I’m sorry Daddy.”

I couldn’t speak. I didn’t know what to say. Was there anything to say? I just hugged Mira close to my chest, stroking her head, and tried to think of what I should do. What I even could do, to make things right with Ash. How the hell was she supposed to ever look at me again? I sighed, leaning back in my chair.

“You know Mira, your Dad is really stupid sometimes.”

Her voice responded from behind my left ear this time. It seemed that she had curled herself around the back of my neck. “That’s why you need Mira right? So I can tell Daddy all the things he doesn’t know.”

A laugh bubbled out of me. It sounded broken, desperate, almost manic, but…soft, and gentle at the same time. “Damn straight. I won’t always be around, because I only seem to come to this place when I’m asleep, but when I’m here, be sure to take care of me okay? Tell me all the stupid things that I did, and what I should’ve done better. I’ll be counting on you, partner.”

Mira uncoiled herself from my neck, and raised her head proudly, stating, “Just leave it to me Daddy, I’ll get you all nice and smart!”

Sophia’s POV

As Ash laid Leo down on the couch, I tried my best to quell the rage I was feeling towards her. Logically, I know that this wasn’t her fault, that Leo should have communicated with her about what would need to be done, but…emotions are not logical. They are not rational. They by no means follow any sort of valid thought process. They simply are as they are, and you have to find a way to deal with them. It’s at times like these that I slightly envy Leo’s condition, his emotional colorblindness. I wish that I didn’t have to feel this way, that I could ignore the part of me, screaming to make Ash suffer for this, but I couldn’t. All that I could do was take a deep, shaky breath, and try to calm down. Leo wouldn’t want me to-

“This is the second time.”

Ash spoke in a hoarse whisper. Minutes had passed of just the two of us sitting in silence, waiting for Leo to awaken so that we could see just how bad it was. See if he was still with us, or if we had to find a way to wake him up to reality. I was sitting on the couch, Leo’s head in my lap, so that I could be the first thing he sees when he awakens, and if worst comes to worst, so that I could immediately cast magic to seal his memories. I’m not confident in my ability to do so, but it’s the only thing that I can think of that might work. Ash, meanwhile, was huddled on a nearby chair, hugging her knees to her chest, eyes on the floor.

“This is the second time that Leo’s almost destroyed himself for me. After the first time…I promised myself ‘never again’. That I would get strong enough that he would never have to put himself in that kind of situation ever again. But…Now…”

Ash looked up at me, and I could see the pure anguish in her eyes, lines of tears streaking down her face. I remembered the history of the girl in front of me and…my rage towards her settled. It didn’t outright disappear, but…I was able to put it into perspective. This girl has blamed herself for the deaths of her parents and her sister for her entire life. In a way, it’s only natural that she’s blaming herself even more than I’m internally blaming her.

“I’m…I’m so, so so-sorry Soph, I-I…I don’t deserve to be your friend…A-all I do is ki-ill the people c-close to me.” She apologized through tears and hiccups. Seeing the state of the poor girl, I wanted more than anything to forgive her, to tell her that this wasn’t her fault, that everything would be okay, but…I couldn’t. The rage inside of me wouldn’t allow me to. Instead, I did what Leo would’ve done, and did my best to ignore the emotions, ignore the blame, the rage, the sympathy, and instead attempt to find a solution.

“Ash, I will only ask you this one time. Do you want to stay friends with Leo, and stay with us? Or is what you saw too much for you to handle, and you’ll leave out on your own?”

The serious tone of my voice seemed to jar her, causing her tears to stop falling out of surprise. “Of course I still want to be friends, but I’ll only-”

I raised my hand to silence her. I knew her well enough to know that the sentence that she was about to say would be something along the lines of ‘I’m a curse and I’ll only hurt him more if I stick around’. As much as I would normally be willing to sit down and comfort her, right now I’m still too angry with her, still too worried about Leo’s condition to spare attention for her wellbeing. Again, I’m aware that it may not be fair to her, but that’s simply how my emotions are, and I’m doing the best I can to deal with the current situation.

“You’re right.” I agreed, fully startling her out of her tears, and gaining her complete and undivided attention. “This is the second time that I’ve had to watch the man I love nearly destroy himself for you. I want more than anything else to just burn you to ashes right now, but…He did it both times for one crucial reason. He cares about you. And normally, I do as well, and while I’m finding it rather difficult to do so at this exact moment, given the current situation, I’m sure that once everything passes I’ll be able to continue doing so afterwards. However, this is still the second time. And there will NOT be a third. Am I fucking understood?”

Ash’s face, still filled with the devastation of being responsible for the state of Leo, also had a kind of determination that visibly filled her eyes as well. She nodded, and I cast a spell that I hadn’t used in over two years. Contract magic.

“In order for my contracts to be completed, both sides have to have certain conditions that they have to meet. In Leo’s original contract, the conditions that I had were that I had to be able to learn a certain amount of information due to my deal with him about the barrier between worlds. Ironically, these conditions were met by him before he even woke up, as I was functionally experimenting on him, since I had never made somebody cross the boundaries between the worlds before. Yours, however, will not be something that you can meet without putting in an effort.”

“Wait,” Ash interjected, guilt and confusion gilding her voice, “After all of this, after…everything…why? Why are you doing this for me?”

Due to all of our talks, she knows just how much she’ll benefit from the contract and subsequent soulbond that I’m offering her. She knows fully well that this is the cause behind Leo’s monstrous potential, that it makes him functionally immortal, so long as he isn’t killed, that it allows him to siphon mana from me and into him. It’s no surprise that she thinks of this as an unearned reward, but,

“I’m not doing this for you. I’m doing this because for better or worse, you are someone Leo has grown attached to. You saw how he responded when he thought he killed someone you care about. I don’t want to imagine how he’ll respond if he’s forced to watch you grow old and die, or if you don’t have the power to keep yourself safe. However, I’m also doing this to keep you in check. Your condition is going to be simple.”

I stroked Leo’s head, as I stared into Ash’s eyes, allowing myself to release just a little bit of the rage I felt bubbling up inside of me. “This is the second time. If there is a third, not only will the contract be voided, but it will obliterate your soul in the process. No afterlife, no reincarnation, nothing. I know that Leo may not like it if he knew about this, and he may disagree, but…it’s my job to take care of him, since he can’t fully take care of himself yet. This means that if you want to stay with us, if you want to be part of our little family here, then you need to do so by my rules. If you can’t accept that, then leave now before he wakes up. This is the only chance that I will give you, so make your choice, and choose something you won’t regret in the future.”

Ash hesitated for a moment, then asked, “How do I sign this?”