It was a pleasant, late spring night. At least, it was pleasant for most of the town of Tiamarr. There was one man who was having a decidedly miserable evening.
Karrel Damorny, seventh generation of Khazatren's bloodline, was sitting on the roof of his house, staring into the starry sky, a half-emptied bottle of cheap rum in hand.
"What can I even do?" He asked no one in particular. "She's the duchess, what she says, goes."
As he took a sip from his bottle, he decided that his life had reached the lowest low, where nothing worse could happen to him.
Of course, such convictions are an excellent way to make oneself the fate's next target, the gods always eager to prove that things can always get more complicated.
Karrel heard a weird rumbling. It wasn't his stomach, as that had grumbled a second later. When the man realized the sound was getting louder, he looked around for its source. Nothing was accompanying him on the rooftop, and the streets below were empty, save for Peter, but Peter's noises were much higher pitch, and everyone in the town had long ago learnt to tune them out.
Finally, he looked above, and just in time, as some small object was apparently falling in his direction. He rose to his feet as quickly as his reflexes allowed. The alcohol was not helping him, but after several moments he was standing on the roof and trying to ascertain a place where he would be the least likely to get hit by whatever it was that was falling down from the heavens.
Fortunately for him, the object wasn't big; about the size of his own head. It was still an object falling at terminal velocity, though, so it ripped a hole in Karrel's wooden roof that was twice as large as he was tall.
"Goddess' tits! What the fuck was that?!" He screamed.
The man quickly ran to the window through which he originally got onto the rooftop, and made his way down to the ground floor of his house.
The object was laying on top of a jumble of smoldering metal that just moments prior used to be Karrel's anvil, an implement that has served him well for over eight years since he has moved into the town to escape the boredom of his hometown village, now reduced to less than scrap.
The intruder was seemingly undamaged by the crash, however. The smoldering rubble provided little light, so Karrel muttered a quick incantation and summoned a flame into his free hand.
The fallen object looked like an egg. A giant, black egg, polished so well it reflected the blacksmith's shocked expression back at him.
He sighed deeply.
"Of fuckin' course. Of all the places on the entire fucking planet, an alien egg falls right into my smithy. Right. Great."
He had received basic education, so he knew about other planets, some of which were rumored contained life. It was also explained to him that interstellar travel was at least theoretically possible, so he assumed other planets' societies could do it.
[This is the first time I've even thought about this stuff since I left school.] He mused in his mind.
He stared at the black egg for a full minute before deciding he could not deal with this while drunk, and stumbling to his bedroom.
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Several hours after Karrel passed out in his bed, the curious object stirred in its nest of scrap metal. A small shudder, then another one, before the egg started vibrating violently. After a few moments, it exploded.
Shards of the egg shell flew like shrapnel, lodging themselves in the walls of the blacksmith's workshop. The inside spilled all over the floor, a black goo the consistency of blood.
In the place of the egg laid what can most accurately be described as a bundle of dark blue muscles. The mass uncoiled slowly, separating into vague shapes of a torso, head, and four limbs. Two eyes emerged from the head, soon followed by a humanoid face of androgynous features.
"Where… am I?" The freshly-formed mouth spoke. "And who am I?"
The answer came to mind immediately. She was the Trader, or Trey for friends. Her species was classified as "parasite" - a symbiotic being capable of bonding with a sentient host to empower each other. The derogatory name came from their tendency to disregard hosts' wishes, often hijacking the body for themselves.
The being blinked.
"How do I know this? From what I can tell, I was just born. Or, hatched, I guess. The newborn know nothing, is the point. On the other hand, I definitely have a personality. Babies don't have that. So, two options: I was made artificially, already shaped as a full person, or someone tampered with my mind. Either way, the culprit didn't want me to know them." She continued thinking out loud. It helped her focus.
The Trader looked around, noticing the forge built into the wall, the scraps of metal beneath their feet, and a large hole in the ceiling.
"It seems I fell into someone's workshop. Other than the obvious debris, it seems well-kept, so it's not abandoned. On the other hand, they would have investigated the loud noise."
She decided to look around the building. Right next to the smithy there was a ladder leading up to an attic. There wasn't anything of note there except for dust, and a hole through the roof and into the workshop. The window was open, too.
"They got scared and left through the window?" Trader tried to guess.
The creature went back to the lower floor, and entered the room opposite to the smithy. There were two wardrobes in there, as well as a bed currently occupied by an unconscious human man. The advanced senses of the parasite provided them with a strong smell of alcohol coming from the man.
The Trader approached the bed, and to their relief the human was still breathing.
"Okay, a quick application of healing magic should fix this…"
One part of the apparently implanted memories about the world was knowledge of several schools of magic, though she wasn't an archmage by any means. It was as if the higher expertise had been forgotten by her. Or blocked off by her maker/assailant.
The symbiote disregarded that and instead focused on the things she knew. Gather a bit of mana that her soul was storing, and pull it through an intent-shaping array. This would change mana from neutral to a kind that resonated with the body. Then push the body mana into the unconscious man with an intent to heal, to rejuvenate. A very simple piece of spellwork, one taught to body magic beginners. The Trader knew there were more efficient ways, but she would have to think about it for a bit, and she wanted to interrogate the man on what he knew as soon as possible.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
After a few minutes of feeding mana into the spell, the man stirred and woke up.
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Karrel's eyes opened slowly. He was lying on his stomach. The smith was surprised to find he wasn't feeling any hangover, just a bit of back pain from the awkward sleeping position. He sluggishly turned to lay on his back, until he saw someone standing over him.
There was a dark blue skinned, naked person in front of him. The large breasts and wide hips made him sure it was a woman, until he saw something between her legs that made him less certain.
"Hello, this is your home, correct?" she asked.
"Who the fuck are you and why are you in my house?" Karrel replied with a question of his own.
His first instinct was to throw a bolt of fire at the intruder, but uncharacteristically for his state, the smith thought about the situation, and realized she would have killed him in his drunken slumber if she had wanted to hurt him. He was not injured nor bound in ropes, so he assumed she didn't mean him harm, at least for now.
"I assume you noticed the egg that fell into your smithy? I hatched, and, to be honest, I'm probably as confused as you about the whole situation. I am Trader, by the way. Nice to meet you."
"Karrel Damorny, seventh generation. Again, why did you wreck my house?"
"I don't know. I have a lot of implanted information, but no memories as to my origin. I've only been alive for about ten minutes so far, at least as far as I can recall."
The recently drunk man sighed.
"Great. So we don't know anything, just that you fell from the sky and destroyed my workshop. Fucking wonderful. It's never just one thing, is it?" He stood up and kicked the bed in frustration.
"So you have recently had a different tragedy happen to you. Would you like to talk about it?" She asked with a concerned voice.
"It's not a long story, so sure. I fell in love, she loves me back, but her mother is the local duchess, so she won't allow her daughter to be with a commoner, so she put her on house arrest and fired me. So I lost over half of my commissions and the love of my life. I was trying to drink until I was brave enough to jump off the roof and die, when a fucking meteor hit my house, and now you're here. There, you're all caught up."
As Karrel finished his rant, Trader put a hand on his shoulder.
"I'm so sorry this happened to you. If I could-"
"I don't need your sympathy." He shook off her hand. "At this point, all that could help me would be seeing Lady Tiamarr's corpse. And that's not gonna happen, 'cause she's a fucking dragon."
There was silence for a few moments. Trader understood what might a dragon represented, and even though she was more powerful than most regular people without even considering her magical potential, that was orders of magnitude beyond her.
However, the parasite found she was not the sort of person to give up when the most obvious option was unfeasible.
"Are you sure there is no way to convince the mother to let you be with your love?"
Karrel sighed. "The duchess wants Lucienne to marry a noble. Luci said it's because she resents her father for marrying an elf and «diluting the bloodline». This made her awakening much less certain. Add to the fact her own husband left her, and you've got a misandrist bundle of issues where nothing and no one is ever good enough for her. Though she's not above pettiness and spite, as I know for a fact the only other enchanter in town is much less talented than I am. So, there's not really much room for discussion. I'm a «filthy dirtblood», so Lucienne is not allowed to be with me."
He shook his head. "You probably didn't even understand anything I just said, didn't you? Since you're a newborn, and not from this planet."
Trader stroked their chin.
"It's complicated. I have no recollection of a life lived before today, but the knowledge I do have only makes sense as memories, not some instinctual understanding. I can cast spells, and that's something that can be innate, but my method is more like that of a learned mage than a sorcerer. I must have had practice, but at the same time that's impossible. You know, I think it makes more sense if I assume I have lived before, and am suffering from amnesia. But a very selective kind, probably induced by mind magic rather than head trauma, especially considering my regenerative abilities… sorry, I went off a bit there. To answer your question, I think I need more explanation on how nobility works in this country. And what was that about «awakening»?"
"Oh, Goddess, what did I get myself into… alright, so, you know what dragons are?" He decided to start with the basics.
"Giant, powerful, flying reptiles possessing advanced magical abilities." Trader answered.
"Right. And do you know how dragons come to exist?"
"I assume they reproduce sexually, like most biological sapients, yes?" She guessed.
"Correct. But here's the thing: no one is born a dragon. When a dragon has a child, the child is a dragonkin." Karrel stressed the last syllable. "To become a true dragon, they have to awaken that potential. The less direct the ancestry to a true dragon, the harder it is for someone to awaken. From what Lucienne told me, it's impossible after the ninth generation. Naturally, the people that can turn into giant death lizards are the ones that usurped the power, so now «noble» and «dragonkin» mean the same thing. This isn't what's being taught in regular schools, by the way, the official version is that dragons invented basically everything and are divinely destined to rule the world. I always had some doubts about that, but knowing the less sanitised version from Lucienne really put things in perspective."
He sounded very proud of himself for knowing the "true" version of how the world worked.
"Okay… so, since Tiamarr won't let you marry her daughter unless you're a noble, you have to become one."
"No, marrying into nobility or adoption doesn't work. You have to-"
"We'll make you awaken your draconic heritage." Trader cut him off.
"What? That's not gonna work."
"You're seventh generation, right? And the limit is ninth, so it's still possible." She reasoned.
Karrel sighed with exasperation. "Not even every first gen awakens, and every generation after that is exponentially less likely to. The likelihood of me awakening is like…"
"The likelihood of an alien falling from the sky onto your house?" Said alien countered. "I understand that it's not going to be easy. But from what you've explained, it is simply our best course of action."
"Our… you really want to help me? Why? We only met five minutes ago. What's in it for you?"
Trader grinned deviously.
"Yes, this is the perfect time to discuss what I'm going to get from this. If I help you awaken and marry the love of your life, you will be in quite a position of power. Power that I'm going to need to learn more about this world, and myself. If my amnesia hypothesis is correct, then a powerful piece of mind magic has been placed on me. I need to learn how to unravel it. In short, what I want is knowledge and magical power. You will help me, as I will help you."
The blue humanoid reached out their hand to offer a handshake.
Karrel stared at the hand, but ultimately shook it. He had already decided that life without Lucienne is not worth living. A human like him becoming a dragon was unheard of, but more so was a commoner defeating one. He would subvert lady Tiamarr's will or die trying.
The man looked up at his partner in crime with courage in his eyes, which quickly turned into embarrassment.
"What's wrong?" Trader asked.
"You're naked." He meekly replied.
she blinked.
"Oh, right. Sapients usually bare themselves only in front of others during intimate encounters. That was not my intention. Not that you aren't attractive. Actually, if you wanted-"
"I'm taken." He cut them off.
"Ah, monogamy. Your loss." she shrugged.
"Besides, you were born today." He continued.
"That's true, but my body is fully developed, as is my mind. Despite my lifespan and lack of memories, I am an adult."
An awkward silence followed, until Karrel cleared his throat.
"My clothes won't fit you perfectly, but they should be enough to go to the seamstress on the other side of the street and buy something for you."
"That's going to be a problem."
"You have anxiety? I get that."
"No, it has to do with my species. Or more precisely, the species' taxonomic class. While humans, like you, belong to the hominid class, parasites, of which I am one, belong to the class known as «the forsaken»."
"I've never heard of that class. Sounds ominous."
Trader smiled, happy to have her turn as the educator. "The species that are considered forsaken were not created by the gods. We didn't evolve, either."
"Gods created everything. That's impossible." Karrel shook his head.
"And that's why some zealous folk might want to target me on principle. To fix the stain on reality I represent to them."
"So wait, you're, like, a universe-devouring monster, or something?" He took a step back.
"I am entirely capable of some horrific deeds, but so is every sapient being. My ancestry should not dictate how I should be treated."
"Okay, so if you want to keep your existence a secret, how are you going to help me awaken? My house isn't exactly a magical laboratory."
"I am a parasite, remember?"
"So what?"
"Don't resist." Trader said, and grabbed Karrel by the shoulder.