Chapter 20: Grounding
Mid Evening - Mid Spring : Year 10 : Above The Nest | Home
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"That spell is completely off limits from now on, got it?"
Sitting in that pool of glossy obsidian like a guilty dog, I nodded with a hung snout.
Hours had passed since the incident by then—the sun had set, and with Mother's help, I had cooled off—but every passing second still felt like an eternity.
"That kind of firepower can easily sweep innocent people into it. If you weren't lucky you could have blown your neck apart, or just as easily injured your Mother or killed Ilios." But I deserved every second of the reprimand.
"I..I know, Father…" It was my first time wielding a power I didn't understand, and yet I had thrown caution out the window. "I'm.. sorry…" My stomach was still churning with guilt even hours later—my hide crawling as the understanding of what I had done sank deeper.
However, Mother had long-since calmed down by then, and while still blowing frost across the cracked scales on my neck, clearly showed she didn't want me to feel the guilt I did. "It's alright, sweetie, please. Even if things went wrong, I could take care of myself—I was just scared for you… That kind of power doesn't belong to an adolescent. A normal dragon your age wouldn't have a head left after that."
I was quick to nod with an eerie understanding—the image of my blood boiling in my veins resurfacing as I continued questioning how.
But thankfully.. the air was finally beginning to shift.
With just one more hour of warnings, cautionary tales, and explicit reminders that I was to never again use a spell without testing its safety first, the evening passed, and the sun rose once more.
Though, while trying to return to normal, the atmosphere was never quite the same after that.
"Hooh…" Though, passing a sigh as she finally let Ilios run up and jump all over me—licking where charred blood was dripping from my claws—the heat had settled. "Whatever the case.. let us merely be thankful you didn't seriously hurt yourself."
By then, Father had returned to the base of the mountain to tend to Krystallo, but we weren't far behind him.
"For now, let's call it there. We will resume the lessons at a later date, alright?"
Using her wing to rub my head, the stress finally started melting away within the wash of cold. "Okay…"
I was disappointed, but as we began the descent, couldn't find the words to object.
I had every right to be grounded and as I landed and saw Krystallo's terribly worried eyes on me, that fact only dug deeper.
"I'm okay, Krystallo." Letting down Ilios, he was quick to circle under me before firmly situating himself against the back of my leg.
"A..Are you sure..? Dad was really scared…"
"Y..Yeah… I just got carried away with my magic…" I hung my head as I subconsciously dodged her gaze. -I'm such an idiot…-
But her gaze changed as I looked away. "What shook the mountain was.. your magic..?"
I gave a slow, guilty nod.
And before I had even realized, her eyes had widened with a passionate, prideful fascination. "That's.. AWESOME!"
Hearing her tail pattering against the ground, I turned with an almost disturbed look. -W..What..?-
Mom and Dad's expression had warped just the same as well.
"Mom! Can I-"
""NO!"" Mother and Father yelled in unison before Father gently nudged his snout against her side with a wave of worry. "Please don't try to follow in his paw prints…"
But, she hardly cared to listen—opting to nod before turning her eyes to me with a particular gleam.
-Oh boy…-
Thankfully though, her attitude completely changed the atmosphere. With the passage of another long conversation out in the field, time seemed to return to its usual pace, the tension settled, and the sun once again started to set.
It was finally the end to a dreadfully long day.
Come the following morning, I was grounded—literally—though, less for punishment and more to just drive home the severity of what I did.
And truthfully, I didn't mind it. Whether it lasted a week or a month, I knew I deserved it.
Plus, it wasn't as bad as it sounded. While I wouldn't be granted any more lessons on magic or history for some time, I honestly needed the time to go back and digest what Mother had taught previously.
Though, in hindsight, that could have been why I was grounded to begin with.
Spending my time endlessly repeating the event of my 'breath', days passed like the wind.
Laid out in the field beneath the sun, my mind ran without rest—mathematics, graphs, and visualizations filling every moment for thought in search of answers for my ever-expanding web of theories.
To me, it truly felt like my understanding was advancing at a snail's pace, but over time, I started getting used to it.
And eventually, I started new experiments.
Though this time around, on a much, much smaller scale.
*crrrrrackle-ffffsssshhh* Creating a small, marble sized ball of fire, I stared into the churning blue flame with a mass of questions.
It was a simple spell, using wind magic to collect and concentrate hydrogen and oxygen, and igniting it with fire mana.
It was a tiny little thing, looking like a blue marble, yet sounding like a blowtorch.
However, it only seemed to grant me even more questions. -Mana is.. such a fascinating thing…-
Releasing the restraints containing the small orb, the spherical flame flashed with a violent burst before cutting off my ability to give it fuel, and promptly dissipating. -I wonder if we had discovered mana on Earth.. and we just didn't know it…-
From what I could tell, nothing about mana actually defied physics or science.. in fact, it seemed more like a separate foundation entirely—an unknown half of the universe's foundation. -Maybe everything we explained away with 'dark matter' on Earth, was just mana…-
It was.. an eerily fascinating line of question… -It's like magic and science are in a constant game of checks and balances.. and all spells do is blend them together…-
Gathering some hydrogen again to burn, only containing half flame to continually fuel the uncontained blue blaze from the back, my mind simply sank into it.
Quickly coming to learn of magic's limits, and understanding control, scale, and detail all came with their respective costs, it didn't take long for me to simply get consumed in a childish excitement.
An unbelievable eagerness to learn…
Though, it could only last until accidentally lit the grass on fire. "W-Whoops-" *Woosh* Forcefully snuffing my spell with the scatter of a vacuum, I hastily reached over and patted the fire with my paw, hoping no one saw.
Though, the moment it was put out, I became acutely aware of Mother's presence.
Even if she was, thankfully, more fascinated than bothered. "Your talent for magic really is otherworldly, you know that..?"
Quickly reigning in my adrenaline-soaked, conclusion-jumping mind, I tried to calm down as I turned. "Are dragons not all naturally skilled with mana?" Having used plain instinct for most of my control, I was genuinely curious.
But all Mother and Father could do was sigh. "Haah…" With Father especially dumbfounded, "Not all dragons are born so equal."
Turning to him, a tilt found its way to my head with a curious shift of my wings, "What do you mean?"
"Well, all dragons do have some instinct to manipulate mana, but they are a far cry from being able to play with and control spells even near what you seem to fiddle with.. even ignoring your 'breath'..."
-I see…- Truth be told, I didn't really understand it either. Messing with mana was extremely mentally taxing, but similarly, the more I did it, the more it started feeling like muscle memory.. like the circuitry was already wired in my head, and my mind was merely learning to use it. -I thought that was normal…-
However, it was just one of many countless oddities.
"Anyway," Quickly changing the subject, Mother pulled our attention to her. "Vasilias, would you like to come with me on the hunt tonight?"
Like a star had suddenly been created in my mind, all other thoughts were instantly snuffed—my eyes widening as they snapped to her.
"Hahaha," She couldn't hold back an air-warming laugh. "I'll take that as a yes?"
With my posture mechanically straightening, I gave her a fervent nod.
And somehow seemingly understanding the situation, Ilios quickly got up with a stretch before crawling over and laying between Krystallo's paws.
"Honey, can you watch over Ilios while we're gone?"
Father's eyes drifted over to him with an almost uncomfortable look.
But Mother was quick to continue more sternly. "He's part of the family now, so you need to learn to get along with him, alright? Try and see if he'll play with you some."
His discomfort hardly eased though.
…Not that Mother cared.
Eventually motioning me up, we started walking to the edge of the forest before Mother gave me some tips to reduce the impact of my takeoff, and we took to the air. *FWOOSH*
Even from the bottom of the clouds, the forest stretched all the way to the horizon—the oceans on either side of the peninsula looking the same—but since becoming a dragon, that sense of scale had been completely changed.
Somehow, in that moment, the clouds made the sky itself felt containing—that distant horizon looking like something I could cross in no time at all.
But that day, I was glued to Mother. "Alright, I'm not going to fly slowly, so be sure to keep up!" Giving me some warning, her posture sleeked, and air hung with tension.
But giving her an excited nod, I followed suit, and we zipped forth—scanning the ground as Mother explained how to search for prey.
"Today, we're looking for bison! Keep your eyes in the clearings, fields, and lakes, and keep your ears sharp for-"
"RAAAAAAAA!" Getting cut off by a distant, but piercingly load roar, Mother's expression fell.
"Tch… Of course there's more…" Her eyes inexplicably snapped to the side as if instantly pin-pointing it before pausing. "Actually, this works…"
Suddenly feeling a nervous chill ripple down my spine, she turned her eyes to me with an eerie darkness.
"A wyvern will be a good test subject. Bigger ones can be dangerous, but we don't normally get big ones around here."
-That roar came from a small one..?- Excitement and anxiety clashed in my mind like winds in a storm.
But feeling adrenaline sink into my muscles, I couldn't keep the smile off my face.
While my mind was trying to be reserved, my body was itching to burn some energy.. to blow off some steam…
And.. after coming up on a field where two wyverns, 14 and 16 meters tall respectively, were encroaching on a large bison and its young, a massive bullseye appeared in my mind.
By all means, they were hulking creatures.. only a few meters shorter than me…
But those few meters meant far more than one would think.
*Flutter* Folding my wings, I dove from the cover of the clouds, accelerating until the air screamed with heat before leveling out—ripping over the forest, the edge of the clearing, and the bison—before flaring my wings and extending my claws like a hawk catching prey.
But I had.. underestimated my weight class quite significantly.
*Crack* Sinking my front paws into its snout, its skull caved before my hind legs caught the body, and pulverized it—slamming and grinding it against the ground in a bloody, crunchy splatter. *-RRRRACKLEEE*
Carving up the ground with my bloodied claws as I skid and fluttered to a stop, I turned to find a cloud of blood curling over a streak of scattered flesh and bone, with one orange, slitted pupil peering at me through it.
It was feral.. a gaze that oozed with instinct rather than thought…
It wanted to kill me more than anything in that moment—coiling its head and body while its presence shifted and sharpened into a wall of blades dripping blood.
That was it.. my first time feeling bloodlust.. the skin-crawling sensation that the being before me was imagining itself ripping out my throat.
But matching its gaze, coiling around with blood dripping from my wings, my eyes were crystal clear.
*CRUNCH—SLAM* Smashing its wing spurs into the ground as it turned, it puffed its chest and flared its wings—flashing teeth as saliva dripped from its breathless maw.
However, when I opened my maw and flashed my teeth in a similar, taunting fashion.. something in my mouth glistened a metallic grey…
A metal rod, wrapped within my tongue.
Over the time I was grounded, I had made it to originally experiment with—a highly magnetized iron rod.
But as I rippled currents of electricity down my tongue with lightning magic, feeling the rod shifting and responding, I had a change of plans.
*Sizzle…* That day, I was going to try a new experiment.
…I was going to turn my mouth into a railgun. *SNAP*
*—CRRR—* The sound barrier screamed as electricity arced throughout my mouth, and the rod disappeared from within my tongue leaving an intense cavitation in its wake. *THOOOOOM*
Before you even blink, a hole appeared in the wyverns chest, only for its body to emulsify with the shockwave, and tear itself apart before the sound could even reach it.
*CR-R-R-R-R-R-RACKLEEE* Hearing its bones shatter as the dart narrowly missed the bison and tore through the forest, the noise of trees collapsing filled the air before, above the growing cloud of wyvern blood, a speck of light arced into the sky.
-Uh oh…- Not even thinking to aim it into the ground, it skipped up into the air, and though I wouldn't come to know for some time, would land in the capital city of the Sinder Kingdom, nearly seven thousand kilometers away.
Something that the people of that kingdom would interpret as a 'message from heaven'.. and spark chaos I could have never imagined…
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