Nothing. Then screams inside me. So many thoughts, so many memories, so much noise.

They raged inside me until they are silenced by a single voice. It’s calm and causes everything to stop. He tells them to blend and blur together within me.

His voice reigns supreme over the others. He is their king and absolute overlord. Fragments of his soul are within the strongest of them and echos remain within the armoured types.

Am incomplete, want more, need more to be complete.

They/he guide me, teaches me, telling me stuff I need to know. Sharing with me how to use the memories of the ones that became me to make myself better.

There were so many of them, so much to thingy. Remember?

He takes me out for testing.

I get alone time with Him. He speaks to me without words, mind to mind. I see a glimpse of the depths of his mind and it is vast and powerful.

I must prove myself to master, he is my creator, he is my everything and everything must be his, he is mine, and I am his.

I listen to his orders with utmost attention.

He tells me that I need to fly and there are memories within, of flying, its part magic and something called physics.

I fly around in circles, doing various things for daddy. He tells me to dive, I dive, he tells me to ascend, I ascend. I have to make sure he knows that I’ll do whatever it takes to make him happy.

He tells me to fire off bone spears and I do so, it feels weird at first, losing bits of myself but they grow back so quickly, that the loss is brief.

Memories within the bones tells me how to make them stronger, slimmer and stabbier.

They rain down into the waters. Memories of the people within me tell me it’s name. The East China Sea, sounds dumb.

I make more soldiers for daddy but they’re not good enough, they don’t move, they don’t think, they are just mindless meat. Daddy guides me as to how to get better results, how to take the pieces within me, of those who were sacrificed to make me and fashion them new bodies.

MasterDaddy teaches me that a soul is one of the most powerful things in existence and that if I master the soul, I can do great things. So I take the souls and use them as templates to create thoughts for new soldiers so that Daddy will be pleased with me.

After another couple of attempts I get it, it’s not too hard, now that I understand what I’m supposed to be doing. The voices within help me. They have done these things before.

The body is fragile but the soul is eternal.

Daddy is busy with others, it makes me grumpy but I like having a chance to fly around, trying new stuff, without worrying about making mistakes in front of daddy. It's confusing, feeling two different things at the same time, that feel good and bad.

I collect bones to make myself better and stronger, suggested by some within, those who relied solely on bones for attack and defence. Skeleton Knights I think.

With the new bones I can create new things, with new bodies and new thoughts. I like the birds, they know how to fly better than the flying things I was made of. Bone Dragons? Their flight was an imitation of something else. The birds know not just how to fly but to soar and glide and live in the air itself.

There’s a lot of thoughts inside of me, echoes from those before me. They have a lot they can teach me, so while Master is busy, I practice flying, thinking about ways to be better, to be stronger and smarter and satisfy Daddy. The voices keep me company.

Time passes quickly.

There’s a brief moment of excitement as Daddy’s enemies try and stop him from taking over a place but they don’t last long before they are conquered.

He wants to go on a journey, just the two of us.

This gives me a chance to show off, how much faster I’ve become and how much I’ve learned since the last time he tested me.

I opened myself up to him, letting him inside me, where he’d be best protected from anything that might want to hurt him. His body isn’t as strong as mine. It makes me wonder why he doesn’t just change bodies but I’m afraid to ask him as he might get angry. I know that there’s so much rage within him from the echoes of echoes.

I weaken myself a little, near where he sits, so that he can see the outside, I know he can abandon his body for a time to see outside barriers but this allows him to sit and view the land beneath.

I watch the land unfold as I fly, it’s odd. It’s both new to me and familiar. There are memories of this place from the disembodied people inside me, but most haven’t seen it from this angle before. Some have though, while on planes away from here.

I want to know what it’s like to be like Daddy, to move on feet, rather than on wings. I search the memories and I think.

There’s time.

After some thought and some practice with moving around and altering the bones of my legs, which aren’t too important during flight. I think I have a way. Changing the flesh will be a bit harder but a lot of my bones are from humans, maybe all of them, so it should be easy to use them to create a human body.

After reaching the place that Daddy wants, I let him out of me and I pull in my bones, making them much smaller, merging them with others, rearranging them, growing a layer of flesh over them, according to the pattern within.

Success. I am humanoid now.

“Clothes. Now.” Dad said.

I think and I remember that humans are often clothed. I grow a layer of bone over my flesh, according to the memories of the Skeleton Knight Captains.

Small humans try and grab on to me but I pull one of them up to face me and I use the memories of the other Liches in order to create a link between us. Mind to mind.

He wants to play. He’s not afraid, like the larger humans. There’s an odd feeling within, similar to what I feel for Daddy but different.

Fondness?

I’m not sure. There are so many memories within me, sometimes it’s hard to place.

Before they were Liches, they were human and some of them were quite fond of small children, though usually they liked them from a distance, which was safer.

I resisted the urge to chew on the child’s bones. Dad had standing orders for all of those within, that children were to be exempt from slaughter. Something to do with a deal with a demon.

The child didn’t look strong but his mind was busy and eager.

He wanted to play and I wanted to see what that felt like. It had been many years for those within since youth and those memories were hazy, they only felt a sort of longing for a time gone by. They remembered it being fun, though not why. I was curious, what it’d be like to play with him.

I placed the first child on my back, Lee, he wanted a piggy back ride, I could do so much better than that. I grew out out wings of bone from either side of Lee and took flight with the small ones on me.

I didn’t fly too high, this form wasn’t suited for flight and the weight was poorly distributed with the caterwauling children clinging to me.

The boys, laughed and screamed in excitement.

It was fun. They were fun, if noisy.

We left and went to another place, a different building. There didn’t seem to be any children who wanted to play there. At least I remembered to put the bone around me as I transformed from dragon form to human form. I remembered that nudity was bad, though I couldn’t remember why that was the case.

Didn’t they love their creator? Didn’t they want to show off his design? Humans were weird, they had so many rules and confusing thoughts.

We went to a new place again, this time filled with bones. Except that the bones tasted weird and old, with only a trace of actual bone within.

Daddy gets annoyed with me and a part of me is amused when he does nothing to me but glower. I’m hungry though and I want to try something, Lee liked dinosaurs, he was sad that there were no living dinosaurs to ride on.

I wanted more Dinosaurs, they could be much more useful than the bones of children, maybe. I wanted to try something different.

I took the traces of the living thing it used to be, forever ago and regrew it’s bone within my human form, inside my belly. The single bone became many, then it was covered in layer of flesh, then skin, leathery skin different from a human’s.

I spat it out fully formed and alive.

It wasn’t too smart, I just gave it some basic thoughts, it was so long since the original had died, that no trace of it’s soul remained within. I had to guess, what it might have thought and felt, based on the stuff I'd eaten/made before.

I sent out the first of my pets? Soldiers? Servants? to gather more bones for me, even if they tasted bad, I could use the traces to create better things later.

Thanks to all the Skeletal Sorcerers within, I knew instinctively how to do many magics, including a little bit of spatial magic, mostly from the females who used it to expand their purses to contain more stuff.

I created another dinosaur to serve me from bone dust. It was large, though not as large as when I’m in my true form but still big enough to ride when I’m in human form. It seems more durable than a horse and better armoured. This way I can keep Daddy company while he rides something other than me and I can try out different things on the land. I’m too big normally to play with all the tiny things, like cell phones.

I have a lot of memories of cell phones. Mostly of brightly flashing games and particular noises that brought satisfaction.

Another place, has monkeys, smaller versions of humans, but hairier. It gives me a chance to see if human children would make for good soldiers without angering father.

I eat a monkey, savouring it’s taste and recreating it to serve as a new leader of it’s troop. It has human intelligence. It should be able to stake a claim over the less intelligent kin.

Monkey soldiers might make useful pets/servants for later.

Dad directs us to a large rock, I don’t understand why but it gives me a chance to show off my new idea. I have converted each of my major summons into finger bones. I can simply tear a finger off while in human form and throw it, to create a decoy or have extra help during a fight.

As a dragon, I can just rain down minions easily, as a human I’m limited but fingers are very useful. I like fingers, they make it much easier to wield weapons and toys.

The next place is even better, it has more animals for me to eat and even better, lots of small children to play with. They run from me though, which is fun, I like chasing them, I let them race ahead, to let the game last longer.

I like eating living things, it’s much better than eating the dinosaur fossils.

The longer I’m alive, the more I can do. I seem to be getting much smarter and stronger.

Soon I might even be stronger than Daddy. Then he’ll be proud of me and give me fun new things to do.