Soleil had always dreamt of wielding fire mana shaped into spells alongside her three mothers in defense of an ever shrinking world. When those dreams trended towards nightmares, mana tended to respond erratically to her intent before turning against her.

She awoke with a start to find herself clutching her favorite plush of a violet feather-tipped drake.

Her magic had burned her, or at least she suspected that was what burning had felt like. As a daughter to a powerful Flame Demon, Soleil had always been resistant to heat and burning in ways that her other two mothers relied upon magic or enchanted items to replicate.

Today would be the first step towards making her dreams a reality. Her mothers had all promised to be here for her when she channeled mana through her soul for the first time. No more relying entirely on magitech devices to channel mana for her. Today she would finally begin to gain Soul Levels.

It was not that anyone was helpless at Level One. Magitech was useful and ubiquitous enough in Soleil’s life, but she craved being able to do more. The material costs of constructing and maintaining mana engines was finite, while directly channeling mana was as infinitely reusable as one could grow their Soul’s capacity alongside their understanding of the world. Soul Levels in the high hundreds were common enough, even souls in the thousands were not unheard of.

With that capacity came opportunities and responsibilities that kept her mothers busy. As a result, having her mothers all under the same roof was somewhat uncommon. Soleil had to make peace with the idea that today might also be the last day she would get to spend time with all three of her mothers in the same place for a while.

As Demon Lords, her mothers all carried the weight of countless promises on their shoulders. But today they intended to give their daughter undivided attention. She would receive training in the fundamentals of wielding mana before picking which mother to follow out into the world and learn under.

Soleil gazed into her bedroom mirror.

An ashen skinned girl with a face half hidden by curtains of blazing red hair peeked awkwardly back at her. She set to the task of fussing with a bed-addled head of shoulder-length hair until she could pull it all evenly back through a black band. Satisfied, Soleil flashed herself a sharp fanged smile before slipping into a dark red skirt spun from the silk of Cinder Spiders.

Local only to her volcanic home, Cinder Spider silk was highly coveted for the rare [Fire Affinity] skill attribute providing resistance to fire and heat. With her heart set on shaping fire mana into spells, she was going to need every piece of fire resistant equipment she could get her hands on. The skirt had been a gift to celebrate her twentieth birthday.

Her ensemble soon included Cinder Spider silk arm wraps, a tight black top, leggings, and ash gray boots. Everything not already made out of the rare silks had been treated with a minor fire resistance enchantment.

One could learn and master as many skills as they desired from books, trainers, or years of practice. Rare skills like Affinities for specific elements demanded establishing a relationship with the matching mana type.

For this reason, it was more often affinities were cultivated and passed down from the soul of a parent to a child. This resulted in less potential to raise the skill, requiring that one possessing the affinity to embody whatever requirements the mana might otherwise demand before bestowing others the affinity.

The available world for humans and demons to share was shrinking. That much was no fiction of dreams. Understandably, affinities were rare and opportunities to pursue gaining them were few.

The door to her bedroom shuddered as a powerful entity knocked as gently as they could upon the petrified wood.

“You can come in!” Soleil said before turning to greet a red skinned demon with a Fire Affinity skill maxed out at Rank 10.

Her towering mother strode into the room. Flame Champion Brigid tended to eschew clothes almost entirely. Her size, curled horns, tail, and fondness for bathing in lava pools often made clothes more trouble than they were worth. In the mornings at least, she tended to favor an apron. Afterwards Soleil expected her mother to cover herself in chitinous plating.

Brigid would be administering Soleil’s combat tutorial.

Brigid cast a sidelong glance at an open skill book on Soleil’s desk before flashing an excited grin. “Getting an early start?”

Soleil shook her head. The skill book in question on [Mana Shaping] had been left open since last night. “If you’re asking if I’ve used any skills yet, no. Not yet.”

Seeming to read something in her daughter’s tone or expression, Brigid’s voice softened as she began to brush Soleil’s hair into a smoothness she herself lacked the patience for. “What are you waiting for Little Sun?”

Soleil turned back to her reflection in the mirror. It was a good question. She had picked out books and requested training in order to gain nine skills in preparation for this day. All of them were perfectly usable at rank 0. Gaining Soul Levels and investing into ranking them up only made them more effective or efficient. Not to mention reaping the attributes that would come with them.

Brigid was always the first to encourage her to test boundaries and try new things, but it was always at a pace Soleil set.

“I’m not sure if I’m ready.”

“We all have to start somewhere. There’s no shame in being Soul Level One.”

“It’s not that.”

“I’m not pushing you, am I? There’s no reason it has to be today. I can speak to your mothers if you need me to.”

Soleil shook her head. “Thank you, but no.” She could have channeled mana and used skills she had learned at any point in the last couple of years. Soleil turned away from the mirror and gave her mother a reassuring smile. “Having you all here feels right. This promise to be here always felt like such a small thing compared to the big threats that always keeps one or two of you away from home.” She drew her mother into a hug, but found something in her mother’s golden eyes that she did not expect.

Fear.

“Mother? Is something the matter?”

Brigid fell into Soleil’s offered arms, drawing Soleil into a firmly protective embrace of her own. “There was a moment where you had that tired look of Veilura’s in your eyes. Like you were weary and wary beyond your years. When I first entered your room, I was worried we had missed your first channel. But I see it now. It is the weight of expectation bothering you, isn’t it?”

There was a heaviness building up in Soleil’s chest that had nothing to do with the pressure of a Demon Lord’s intense embrace. Her voice barely managed more than a whimper. “I know you said I’d be an equal, and that levels are rarely the deciding factor in a confrontation. But I don’t feel ready for this."

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

Brigid tightened the embrace.

Soleil took a deep breath before continuing. "Skills read like the easiest thing in the world. Letting me tap into the muscle memories of everyone who has used the skill before me to accomplish things with an ease sounds good on paper." Annoyed, Soleil blew a stray strand of hair away from her eyes. "Why doesn't everyone just spend weeks learning skills instead of the years of practice it would take to reach the same levels of proficiency without using mana?” Some books alluded to varying degrees of unpleasantness, but no skill book could agree on a common enough experience worthy of recording in the books themselves. Soleil could only conclude there was no consensus to reach.

She would just have to channel mana herself and find out.

And yet her mothers treated their promise to be there when she channeled mana for the first time like it was a grave responsibility. That fear in her mother’s eyes startled Soleil in its fierceness. She had once seen Brigid wrestle a fully grown Drake to the ground before.

Brigid pulled away from the hug before resting hands atop both Soleil’s shoulders.

The sad smile her mother wore frustrated Soleil. What could possibly scare the Flame Champion Demon Lord?

“First, I need you to understand that we’re all proud of you." Brigid said, clearly intent on building up to something. "That we could break a hundred promises while still managing to raise a child as happy and content as you is more than any of us could have ever hoped for. Whatever happens, your mothers and I will know that we always did right by you.”

A little flustered and pushed further off balance by the weight of Brigid’s words, Soleil's words fell to a ghost of a whisper. “Is something going to happen?”

She had read that mana was supposed to be aware of everything it came into contact with, not that she could see it without magitech or channeling mana. Seeing as it was rich and abundant in the air at all times, she had to assume it was in the room with them. Anything more beyond that was not recorded in books so much as experienced by all who welcomed mana into their souls.

Brigid brought her forehead to rest gently against Soleil’s, her own words matching the volume level set by her daughter. “You will never be able to see the world in the same way again. There is a good reason why some choose to stay at Soul Level One and rely instead on magitech. The rest of us embrace mana channeling with all our being.”

Soleil stared into her mother’s eyes. Deep gold irises gazed back at her from within black pools of sclera that marked her mother as a greater demon. All three of her mothers channeled mana long enough to reach Soul Levels into the six or seven hundred range. And then they chose to pluck pieces of their souls, each sacrificing hard won Soul Levels at that point. All in to pass on a rare Fire Affinity to their own child.

Brigid could see her daughter bracing for what came next.

There was no need for words, not when Soleil already knew a number of skills.

Both demons took a deep breath, before turning to face the mirror.

“I would recommend the skill [analyze.]”

That made sense. It would be nice to see herself in the same way that mana did. There was more to do than just picking which skill to use. Brigid offered only enough advice to narrow her options, leaving her to decide how far out of her comfort zone to travel.

Her theoretical understanding of the skill gained from reading a few choice books suggested that [analyze] drew upon her soul’s attributes of Focus and Sensitivity in order to display a System of details about the skill’s target. Both attributes could be thought of as a currency or fuel to pay for the skill’s effects. How much of each she invested combined with the skill’s rank would alter the final result.

Brigid did not need prompting to step away from the mirror. Special caution was to be taken around attempting to [analyze] entities too powerful or complex, as the Focus and Sensitivity cost would grow wildly with the target entity’s Soul Level. No amount of Focus Soleil would gain within a hundred levels would likely be enough to make sense of the waterfall of information that [analyze] would try to project into her brain if she attempted to glimpse any of her mothers’ souls.

No. It would be better if she kept it simple and simply got a peek at herself. If nothing else, it would be a nice frame of reference for when she took stock of herself a few days or weeks from now.

One point of Focus should be enough for her first skill. If it went well, she’d try again with a point of Sensitivity.

No sooner had she willed it, she could feel something well up from within her.

A ball of dim red light overlaid itself atop her mirrored reflection. Text slowly translated itself into something she could read. Suddenly the ball of light made more sense, as it was stretching in three directions that must have lined up with the three attributes of hers that lined up with those her mothers donated in crafting her soul.

The part of the top attribute sunk a little, no doubt representing the point of Focus being lost in order to use the skill. Slowly but surely, words began to overlay the various information.

Name: Soleil

Presentation: Ash Demon

Soul Level 1

Skill Points available: 0

~Soul Attributes~

Vitality: 10/10

Endurance: 10/10

Focus: 14/15

Intensity: 15/15

Sensitivity: 15/15

Adaptability: 10/10

~Soul Skills~

Fire Affinity: Rank 1

What was an Ash Demon? Maybe spending Sensitivity would tell her more information.

Soleil looked up and away, beaming at her mother. “That was the easiest thing I’ve ever done.”

The beginnings of a smile teased the corner of Brigid’s lips. Soleil did not read the expression as hesitation.

“I wonder what else I can do.” Soleil turned back to the mirror, once more visualizing the shape of her soul. She reached for Sensitivity next, hoping to learn more about the world of magic she had just begun to open herself up to.

Soleil felt immediately crushed by a deep and profound sadness. Before she could even parse why, the world around her grew rich with feeling and memory. For the first time, Soleil opened her heart up to the world around her.

She heard it scream. Every mote of mana suffused into the mirror, walls, and the very air itself cried out from a persistently agonizing pain.

Soleil began to scream as Sensitivity shared impressions of the memories responsible for the pain felt by the mana around her.

Something was deeply and fundamentally wrong with the world. It had never been fixed. The wound was still open. Somewhere, the world was still bleeding.

Screaming. Soleil and the world’s mana could not stop screaming. How much Focus, Adaptability, or Endurance could she throw at these sensations to make them stop?

One by one, her soul's attributes drained to zero as she tried to shut out the shared pains of a dying world. Being Soul Level One was just nowhere near enough.

Her soul ached, before thrumming with a newfound potential.

Soleil’s Soul gained a level.

Soleil gained a deeper understanding of [Analyze.] The skill can now be raised to Rank 1.

Before Brigid could take the few steps needed to close the gap between her and her daughter, the room went dark.

Nadir, Demon Lord of the Empty Night entered from beneath the door to Soleil’s room and expanded to fill the space. Xe drew every last drop of ambient mana within xemself, shifting the mana’s aspect to darkness and making it xer own.

As Nadir’s shadowy self withdrew into resembling a humanoid form enough to join Brigid at Soleil’s side, the sensation of shared pain with the agitated mana subsided.

The overwhelming sensory overload was replaced with the gentle touch of her mothers.

There was no ambient mana left in the room to connect to. But phantom sensations and a memory of the pain remained just out of reach like a half remembered nightmare.

Soleil’s reflection in the mirror began to change. Blazing red hair grew out and darkened into black strands ending in white tips. The reflection traded height for a slowly expanding volume filling out until it matched her final mother’s dimensions. A pair of sun-kissed arms reached up and out from the now liquid mirror’s surface to tenderly hold Soleil’s face.

Demon Lord and Mirror Witch Veilura stepped out from within the mirror to join her concerned wives in embracing their child. Three long fox tails spilled out from the mirror behind her. With a flick of one of her white tipped tails, Veilura dismissed the spell that allowed her to travel between nearby mirrors.

Her soul now drained of Endurance, Focus, Adaptability, and Sensitivity, Soleil sagged into the arms of all three of her mothers. She wept and leaned into their embrace, finally understanding the weight of their promise.

"We are here Soleil.” She heard Veilura say.

Nadir’s voice came as a whisper from everywhere at once. “You are not alone."