The white dragon is the smallest of the chromatics and as such has the highest quantity who manage to reach sentience, that said they are considered the weakest of dragons, their instinctual magics are all centered around ice. Preferring to live in artic environments they warp the weather around their layers into a continuous winter when they have the power to.

Adrian

As I turn to leave the Althaen who lead the trial against me shouts something about me being a monster that he will exterminate for the safety of all. I don’t catch all of it as I barely manage to turn whatever it is that he threw at me into a lesser blow.

Even so whatever it was put chill through my right shoulder and torso. He cut through my collar bone and down into my torso. As I roll away I swap to my dragon form more on instict than on purpose.

I jump into the sky and fire a breath of light at him, but he blocks it with the sword. The light just enters the blackness and vanishes like my flesh must have. I can feel death wafting off it but not what the sword is.

I need to stay out of melee unless I get a counter to that thing. The trio are fighting some of the nearby Althaen soldiers, it is only a matter of time before they would be overwhelmed and there is no way for them to run. I have to do something quickly.

The lead judge throws his black blade at me and by some sort of instinctual reflex I spit out my void breath at it. The two collide and aside from an eruption of negative energy the two simply destroy each other? Is the void able to negate spells? Consume the mana? Or whatever it is he used the mana to form?

No time to think about that, I have to do something while he is still confused like me. I warp light and darkness to conceal myself from the sight of those below me, hopefully they will accept the fake me flying around for at least a few seconds.

I close most of the distance before a bolt of red lightning passes through the false image and as my enemies no longer believe that it is me. As I reappear according to their view, I release a shockwave of death and lightning that washes over the Althaen who attacked me.

Several of them collapse on the ground, paralyzed or dead. I’ll check on that later. The man I was hoping to kill was protected by some shell of energy. Why does everyone seem to have one of those? I need some sort of antimagic.

I rush at my target, he unleashes a bolt of red-black lightning. I don’t dodge it and scream from the pain of the electricity and negative energy coursing through my body. Muscles wither and begin to suffer paralysis as I physically crash into my opponent. The cracks of breaking a layer of Stoneskin spread from our point of impact. He must have been casting protections to cover everything I have done so far.

So I do something I haven’t, I warp the flesh of his body. I stop his heart, collapse his lungs by puncturing them with his ribs, sever the neurons between his skull and spinal column and have his blood form clots. I don’t know how much the Althaen can heal or how much of my desired changes worked, but I want this man dead before he unleashes another spell. I can’t feel a third of my body and human form is in worse shape.

Those left of the Althaen flee as I stumble to stand, one leg refusing to move as I will. There are only a few people who stay, the trio who immediately begin to fuss over my injuries, as well as Thrane and those who appear to be his body guards.

I don’t pay much attention to him as I check the trio for injuries and find nothing lethal. Only once I am sure that they are fine do I turn my head towards Thrane and begin to actually hear him.

“. . . for not managing to defend you completely in the trial. Please forgive me Dragon Lord Ravnos.

If I had known you were a dragon I would have made sure the trial would not have wasted you time. Please forgive me for my negligence and ignorance.”

“I’m not upset at you Thrane, we can talk later but could you please handle the cleanup and give this to Secretary Jasmine somehow, as well as a method to understand Althaen?” I ask in an interruption to his groveling, my voice deeper than I am used to hearing. The phone Lysan used to record the trial falls out of Void Cache in front of me.

He bows and begins to direct his dwarven bodyguards in their own tongue. They quickly begin to gather the corpses and strip them of their possessions. Why is Thrane suddenly even more respectful of me? My power is not enough for him to do this right?

I frown as I look at the third of my body that is unresponsive with every method of perception I can use. What I find is alarming, chunks of my flesh were starting to rot and some sort of negative energy parasites are feeding on my life. I try to expel the negative energy but it resists my attempts to warp reality to its detriment.

“What is it, why aren’t you getting better?” Lysan asks with worry in her voice.

“Not sure. Whatever that man did is resisting my magic and spreading. I need someone to cut the damaged flesh out.”

Lysan looks terrified at that idea but K simply nods and takes out a knife I did not know she had.

“Shouldn’t we move to another location?” asks Talia.

“No time, whatever that men did is killing me and my other form is in worse condition. Burn the wounds to cauterize them, I’ll try to heal me as you cut out what’s keeping me from healing.”

I don’t feel anything as K's knife passes through a patch of withered and rotten scales. I only watch as she pulls pieces of rotting meat out until she finds meat that is not rotten. An irregular shaped hole just smaller than my hand is what is left as she finishes pulling out the diseased flesh. I also feel the negative energy whatever fade away once it is no longer in contact with living flesh.

I can see some sort of discomfort in K's eyes as she continues. She isn’t comfortable tearing chunks of flesh out of me, still she continues until the other necrotic infections are removed. I begin to start my method of healing while pulling the cut pieces of the red dragon from void cache into my mouth so that I could eat them to fuel the metabolic processes involved.

We are in the shadow of the courthouse once I am well once more. I don’t know why but everyone avoided our immediate surroundings.

Secretary Jasmine

I watch the footage I had the NSA take of the courthouse today. Something blocked us from telling what went on during the asset's time within it but that wasn’t what I was showing the others of our committee. This is the second time I saw it and I can’t believe that the earlier reports left out so much.

Everyone is silent as those who were supposed to be protecting our citizens try to murder one instead. I can’t believe the powers that are being thrown around, not that they cannot be real but that we had no idea that they had so many of them.

“It would appear that neither the information on that youth or what the Althaen are capable of was completely accurate. You said Adrian was going to record his interaction with the Althaen?” Director Talmage questions.

“Yes” I answer.

“We need that recording. We cannot sit between him and the Althaen. We cannot afford to get suck in the crossfire between such beings as we are struggling to piece our nation back together. Our other alternatives lack the might that these two options have shown. Find me which one is better for our nation.”

It is not long before there is a knock at the door. After a second a soldier walks in with a vacant look on his face and three items, a cellphone, piece of paper and a silver necklace. The soldier after handing them directly to me turns and leaves without saying a single word. No one speaks as I look through the three items, the writing on the paper is what surprises me most.

I don’t know the language but somehow, I understand what is written. Is this magic? I pass the note to Director Talmage, the message of “Amulet of Language Comprehension” echo in my mind as I pick up the silver necklace. I put it on and press the power button on the phone.

There is no password lock, it opens up to a video player. I touch play and somehow, I understand the meaning behind each and every one of the words that are part of the accompanying audio to a very poor-quality video. I pause it and pick up a pen to make a transcription of what I hear.

Once the transcript is made and the video is playing once more on the screen and I am reading the translation the silver necklace gave me there is some commotion in the hall outside. Then the door opens without a knock or any of the other ways of letting us know that the person entering is.

The door swings wide and all of us in the room draw and aim a sidearm at the intruder, clicks follow and it is a single figure that walks in the pair of now unconscious guards in sight behind him. A tall man with unkempt brown hair wearing what appears to be the tattered remains of someone else's army uniform. He has the dirt of weeks of travel on him and there are more than a few blood stains over his closes.

“We need to have a talk about your more recent actions” the man says, the voice familiar but the tattered uniform and rough appearance prevents me from immediately recognizing him.

I hear Director Talmage mutter something but I don’t catch it as I realize who just broke in, a person who happens to be an agent to one of my colleagues.

“Agent Johnson what are you doing here?” I blurt out.

“I know that you are tasked with solving the monster problems. I know that you have been struggling over multiple bad options for days. I know that you are think of using my son to solve your problems and that he just killed your only other option for the most immediate threat.”

Silence, no one speaks in response to his words. That is until someone decided to throw a knife at him since our firearms are somehow disabled. The knife is dodged even though he was not looking at it, his reaction starting before the blade leaves my contemporary’s hand as if he already knew it would happen.

Randy Ravnos

“Being hostile to me won’t work and even if it did what would happen when my son found out? You're terrified by what you have seen but I’ll let you in on a secret. My side of the extended family is full of people with such power. Leave my firstborn out of your schemes or you'll end up with more than just me fighting against you.” I say after dodging one of the fourteen possible sneak attacks. I let the weight of what I said settle with the threat that accompanies it. Next, I have to offer them an exchange, their response will let me know which path fate is following. If they follow the path of schemes against my son I will kill them here and follow plan D.

“Just let him do what he wants and sell him anything he asks for. In exchange, you can have this.” Rather than pull anything out I touch the wooden table and speak a command.

Water and earth blend together within my mind and the grain of the wood changes, an intricate pattern spreads through it and forms another alchemical circle. A flash of light follows and I turn all of the pens and pencils on their table into rods of gold and diamond.

“What? How?” many of the military personnel say but I know which two are really of importance in the room. The next words that matter will come from either Talmage or his secretary. If she speaks next then he is against me and vice versa.

“What is it that you really want?” asks Talmage.

I smile he is willing to work with me. With that I can manipulate everything from here. Even if Jasmine is against me she will not go against Talmage, at least not openly and she alone is not a threat to my son.

“Exactly what I said. That and the safety of my wife but that is not what you care about. You need help and that is what I can give, sir.”