[Kliss Eliza Cessna]

I was dreaming that I was lounging on my pile of gold, treasure and bones. It was a hearty pile, deep in the glacier-capped mountains. Then came the little vile creatures that walked on two legs. I burned their flesh and added their bones and the treasure which they carried to my trove.

It had been a mistake, a vile trap. The round treasure coated in gemstones and gold exploded beneath me, set my lovely hoard alight and filled my lovely cavern with vile-tasting poison. I roared and wailed as my trove burned, melted away. The little critters had tricked me. They had destroyed my home, reduced my power considerably. They were going to pay. I would hunt each and every one of them down, not rest until I took the sky away from them.

They would learn what it was like to challenge the Master of the Heavens, Storms and Fire.

I set out for the hunt, spinning the black, all-concealing storm around myself. My wings filled with the power of the wind produced by my storm.

It was harder to hunt without drawing magic from my domain and hoard... but I wasn't going to give up so easily. I would do unto them as they had done unto me, burn them all to cinders.

. . .

I woke up with a gasp of pain. My body twitched as I tried to rise but my muscles refused to move. Being trapped in my own shell felt unnerving, annoying... but I was no stranger to such a sensation. The Vows had used me often for their means.

Dante's sister... Delta had been taking care of me for the past several days, feeding me a steady diet of soups with tiny chunks of meat. With every sip, my experience rapidly ticked up and up which was... very odd. In just a few days I had levelled up to level 1 and yet I still had no skills. I had no idea where to put in my investiture points.

"Did I just dream... that I was an-Equality-damned Dragon?!" I murmured. My lips were able to move now, but they felt wrong, different somehow. I was slowly regaining control of my… new muscles, but it was a hard path that felt entirely uphill, akin to recovering from the most extreme soul and body damage.

"That's because you are technically a Dragon, Kliss," Delta commented. "The Dragon was still alive after the crash, just unable to move. My idiot brother fused your soul to that of the Dragon to rid you of your Vows forever."

"My soul... is no longer human?"

“Yeppers,” Delta said.

I opened my eyes with incredible difficulty, looking at her… freakish body. The ‘girl’ sat beside me, staring at me with goggle-covered eyes. All of my new senses practically screamed, somehow determined that Delta wasn’t human. Oh sure, she had a human shape about her, slender and curvy… but the things that I smelled, heard inside her were nothing like that of a human.

I glanced at Delta’s metal-covered foot. A trail of black ants emerged from her ankle, heading into a small hole in the wall.

“I see you’ve moved onto controlling ants. Bees weren’t enough for you?” I commented.

“Bees suck at lifting things. A level twenty ant can lift and withstand pressures of twenty thousand times its own weight,” Delta said. Her face stretched into a resemblance of a smile. It looked unnerving, wrong. There were no muscles beneath layers of what looked like thousands of white silk threads. Her teeth looked far too white and sharp too, like that of a shark.

“Right…” I whispered with a shudder.

Delta didn’t say anything. She simply sat there, not moving, not breathing. I somehow heard the ants moving inside her. Thousands of them. A whole colony of them.

“How are you here all the time? Do you not sleep?” I asked, trembling.

“No,” a brisk reply came. “Sleep is for weaklings.”

The silence between us stretched on and on.

“Where’s Dante?” I inquired.

“I dropped him off at our parents house. Mom can take care of him for a change. I’m quite miffed at him.”

“Is he…?” I opened my mouth.

“Alive? Barely. He managed to nearly fry his brain making you that body. He was already quite injured after he pulled you from the dragonfire-covered skyship.”

“He pulled me from the burning skyship?”

“Yeah… at a great cost to his health. Whatever. He can use Modify on himself to slowly heal his burns and the damage from the smoke. I pulled most of his other skills out of him to teach him a lesson.”

“You pulled his skills out of him?!” I gasped.

“We are connected more than you’ll ever be,” Delta said. Her mouth barely moved as she spoke. My strangely-sharp hearing determined that the sound emerged from somewhere inside of her chest.

“I am in the Almn-Inian tower, right?” I looked around the room formed from wooden branches, roots and old, moss-covered bricks.

“Yep,” Delta replied. “I’m keeping you away from Dante for as long as possible.”

“I… uhm… do you hate me?” I asked, trying to stay as stoic as possible.

“Hate? Hmpf. The problem isn’t you. It’s Dante. Simply put, when it comes to you or even saving random idiots… it’s like his brain turns off and he makes the most idiotic decisions possible. It’s like he doesn’t even realize how special he is.”

I sat quietly as Delta started to ramble on about Dante’s unending stupidity. She went on to describe in great detail how many terrible mistakes Dante made thus far, how he rushed into the burning skyship, how he refused to listen to her.

“I see,” I said when she was done ranting.

“Do you?” Delta leaned forward.

“I have been of clear mind, free of the Vows for the past eleven months,” I said. “I do agree with you. You could have gone in alone to check the ship… he didn’t need to rush in there. The Overseer’s cloak could have caught fire. He could have suffocated from dragonfire smoke and lack of breathable air. A bulkhead could have fallen on him. The ship’s hexagrams or core could have detonated.”

“I’m glad at least someone agrees with me,” she lamented.

I tried to nod. My neck didn’t want to work properly.

“Why did you come back to Skyisle, Kliss?” Delta asked.

“I tried to make a life for myself in Cessna. It didn’t work out,” I sighed.

“You clearly didn’t try hard enough,” Delta commented.

“I… couldn't fit in,” I said. “I felt that… I didn’t belong. Felt alone, isolated. Everyone had Vows on their souls and I didn’t. The healers repaired my soul as much as they could, but I was still incredibly weak, almost out of skills… and couldn't, didn’t work for the Empire anymore. Everything I knew was a lie. I hate the Vows. Dante was the only one who ever gave me hope, made me free. I sold everything I’ve had and I…”

I paused, feeling that I was out of breath.

“Yeeees?” Delta leaned in closer, her pale face hovering in front of me.

“I bought Skyisle,” I whispered hoarsely, my voice trembling.

“You did WHAT?!” Delta barked.

“I bought Skyisle. I own the entire valley,” I repeated after a minute. “After my ‘retirement’ report got to the Imperial Bureau of Land Oversight, Skyisle became practically worthless. Nobody else wanted land that’s practically sitting in the expanding Magogenic fault. Skyisle belongs to the Empire and a Legionnaire like myself can buy land anywhere in the Empire… to retire.”

“Why did you buy Skyisle?” Delta asked, her voice cold. “You want to own us or something?”

“No! I bought it to give it to… you two,” I said. “I was slowly dying from the soul-damage and cellular-decay. I wrote a will in Cessna… which stipulates that when I die, the land ownership will pass to Dante Alan Skyisle.”

“So if you die… all of Skyisle will belong to Dante?” Delta mulled.

“Yes,” I whispered, trembling. “I am the Baroness of Skyisle.”

Delta started to laugh. Her laughter was clear, beautiful like a river brook, but her barely moving face made it extremely terrifying. I expected her to stop laughing and to tear my head open with the metal-covered, armored hands or perhaps unleash an army of ants or bees or some other horrid insects to consume me whole.

“Pffff, Baroness,” Delta choked out, her laughter ceasing after another minute. “Can I ask a favour of you… Baroness?”

“Yes?” I gulped.

“Don’t tell Dante that you own Skyisle.”

“Um… alright,” I said. “I don’t want to deceive him forever though.”

“Not forever,” Delta shrugged. “Just for a bit. He’s grounded and doesn’t deserve to hear such great news.”

I exhaled. Delta didn’t attempt to kill me. Perhaps, I was safe for now?

Delta’s arms grabbed my body, lifting me into the air. I yelped as she carried me with far too much ease across the room.

“D-don’t hurt me!” I cried as the unnaturally-moving, steel-covered figure pushed me into a large wooden basin filled with water.

“...hurt you?” Delta paused. “I’m giving you a bath, you dolt. The Baroness of Skyisle should look and smell presentable. Pfff.”

“I… uhm… okay,” I blushed. “Right.”

“It’s not like you can wash yourself. Can you move your arms or legs yet?”

“No, I cannot,” I sighed.

“You’ll get there. Your soul is currently weaker than your body.” Delta said. She grabbed a wooden tube, pressed on a wooden knob and hot water poured from it like a summer rain shower.

I sputtered as Delta washed my head. My hair felt wrong, weird, heavy… like some kind of small lumps were growing there.

A strand of my wet hair passed by my eyes. The strand was far too thick for a normal human hair and there were small, ruby gemstones sitting on it.

“Why are there tiny rubies in my hair?” I gasped.

“They’re batteries,” Delta replied.

“What?”

“Crystalline-organic lattice microstructures, to be more precise,” Dante’s sister said. “They’re absorbing ambient magic out of the environment. They consume nearly all types of radiation too, so now you won’t have to worry about losing your skills, being level-limited or getting cancer from the Magogenic fault.”

“You designed these?” I blinked.

“I designed the Monster to Human Converter,” Delta answered. “Dante improved on it. These crystalline mana-gathering structures were already on the red Dragon… as its scales. Now they’re hair-scales? Hair gems?"

"Uh-huh," I said, staring at the sparkling string covered in gems in utter befuddlement. “Is it just me or have these gotten bigger over the past week?”

“Oh they’re definitely growing,” she replied. “You’ll have a full-on-gemstone mane in a few months.”

The girl made from ants, silk and metal started to sing a strange, beautiful melody as she washed me. I didn’t understand a single word in it. Somehow she wasn’t just singing, but also adding musical accompaniment that emanated from deep within her body. It was as if there was a tiny orchestra inside of her. I momentarily pictured a thousand tiny ants playing tiny violins and chortled.

In a few minutes, I let go of my worries and relaxed, lost in the song. The bath became pleasant, if only somewhat worrying because I couldn't move much.

"Do I have wings too? A tail?" I asked.

“None of those,” Delta pulled me out of the bath and sat me on a chair made from roots, drying off my body and facing me towards a wall made from very polished wood that was as reflective as a mirror. “Behold!”

I stared at the face in the mirror and didn’t recognize myself at all. I was no longer pale. My skin had a rich, deep, shiny orange tint to it. Multicolored, gold-emerald-orange eyes stared back at me, featuring purple-tinted pupils shaped like gemstones. The girl in the mirror was young. Too young... just a small, skinny teenager. Black strings of hair covered in ruby crystals sparkled on my head. My freckles looked like they were made from black gemstones too. My ears looked long and sharp. I smiled and discovered that my teeth looked like that of a feline. I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry, felt like the face in front of me didn’t belong to me at all… and yet it was now mine. There was no doubt about it, I was now something other than a human…

I was something completely new and incredibly…