Mana Dragon like Void Dragons have very few known members to exist. They unlike nigh every other dragon do not suffer from mindlessness before adulthood, instead they have dietary requirements to consume both flesh and magic. They lack affinity for any other than pure mana manipulation but have such control and talent in it that watching a spell use mana to manipulate another energy tends to be enough to be able to duplicate such manipulations later. Other than that they are eccentric in some manner there seems to be no correlation in how the species acts.

Adrian

I uncap the flask and take a swig before filling a small cup with it. As much as I want to chug the rest of the flask, what I had was enough to restore whatever draconic essence I spent yesterday and my mother needs as much as possible; so I pass it to her.

“What do I do with this?” she asks.

“Drink it” I answer. Does she not feel it calling to her?

She starts choking down more and more of the flask but it seems like it is disgusting to her. Why?

“That’s enough for now, sit.”

“Thank goodness, this is disgusting.”

I frown at that; how can she think that? I pull the small cup over and cut my thumb with a claw to mix some of my blood into what will be a focus for both my magic and draconic power; at least I hope this will be the case. It should work.

Dragon-me guides me as I draw a symbol without meaning other than my intent. Just as his magic begins I push at the essence of what my mother is in the fabric of reality and have it absorb the foreign things that occupy her same space. I ignore her screams as I hold what she is constant, it would be far worse if I stop.

She falls to the ground and her skin convulses, there are no changes however until ever so slightly blue silver wings and tail erupt from her. I close my eyes and tell myself this is necessary until it ends.

I open my eyes to a dragon a little smaller than the size of a horse. I don’t immediately recognize the kind but she is not a void dragon. Why isn’t she a void dragon like me? How can I be a different race of dragons than my own mother?

Why am I different? The cannibalism? Devils’ interference? My impossible awakening to Ravnos magic?

I set aside my questions for the moment and walk over to my very confused dragon of a mother. I touch her head and her eyes focus on me. “Once you get used to your body you should be able to simply will yourself to return to human form even if there are some differences in that form.”

There is only a glimmer of intelligence in her eyes, that’s right dragons are supposed to have this problem. I thought it wouldn’t happen because I didn’t have it but my assumption was apparently wrong. I need a solution. I hear her stomach rumble and I know what I need to cause, growth.

I start dumping all kinds of meat from Void Cache and start using Translocation Grasp to put small amounts of draconic essence into it as she swallows.

“Is this supposed to be how it turned out?” K asks.

“No, I didn’t think this would happen. I’m working on a solution though.”

All too soon the gorging ends and I twist reality once more to accelerate the speed at which growth can occur. It is not a healthy natural growth, but that will fix itself over time.

This repeats a few times until she is half again the size of a Clydesdale. Then the familiar spark of intelligence surfaces in her eyes and I breathe a sigh a relief.

“Try willing yourself into human form, I’ll leave the room and have one of the girls bring you clothes.”

I turn and leave, most of our food is now gone. Will food consumption go up or down with this? It went down for me but I cannot use that to make assumptions anymore.

I glance at Ria who is standing in the hallway with a pile of clothes in her arms. She smiles at me as she comes to the door and opens it, I walk back to the front room. I don’t want to accidently catch a view of my mother.

I sit on the couch and close my eyes, I feel slightly tired but there is still too much to do. My mother will need to be taught both control and how to fight, the twins’ awakenings, gather more food, find a place to stay, my dad's journal, and making plans on how to find out who Frank was working for. . .

It is not long before everyone ends up sitting somewhere in the room, “team meeting?” I ask.

Everyone nods and I continue, “alright, as we all now know the plan to move towards the mountains of Colorado are not going to work. I don’t know where we will be safe but here will have to do as we organize.”

“We need to raise our combat strength” Bryan states and I nod.

“Any ideas on that? Aside from what I’m already doing.”

“We need numbers, we can’t individually match multiple people with power like yours.”

“We can’t match them in skill but we may be able to in power.”

“How? You’ve become powerful in what a bit over a decade? They have had far longer.”

“They’ve lost most of their raw power. A curse of some sort, we can beat them in raw power or numbers if not skill. Another thing I’ve noticed is certain things are harder change than others. Dragons have been harder to affect for example just as they are harder to affect with other magic.

We may be able to use that to our benefit. They also don’t have access to the Grey Dream, or any racial characteristics aside from human. Unless they mutated their own bodies but that would have hurt them more than they could benefit.”

“We don’t have magic resistance” Talia interjects.

“But you may be able to get it from the Grey Dream, there are elves who have it.”

‘What is this Grey Dream?” my mother asks.

“Something the gods of Althrá set up to help their people fight against demons. It’s a dream filled with grey mists you can use to improve yourself.”

She just looks at me in confusing frown, she doesn’t have it either then, like dad. Why? She probably wouldn’t accept it anyways; it could go against her religion’s ‘no other gods before me’. At least it is only a crutch to speed development.

“We don’t have the time to . . .” Abagail begins before I cut her off.

“Then I’ll make time move faster within the building. Whatever it is that we need I will get us.”

“How?” she asks.

“I’ll figure that out when we know what we need. For now we need time and I know how to provide that.”

There are several nods before I stand up, they know how to train in their own abilities. I can add theory but they have enough to work with for now.

“Anything else?” I ask as an open question.

“When can you help sister and me?” Talia asks, Lysan clearly wants to know as well.

“In a day or two” I say with a smile, I’ll need a bit of time to recover whatever it is spent with Dragon’s Blessing. My draconic essence?

They smile and I can see an eagerness for it before I pull out the thinnest markers and pens I have. The more intricate and extensive my focus the better this will work.

A few days pass though I am unsure of how much time has elapsed within the house having spent a lot of time raiding stores and houses for nonperishables.

My mother has mostly adjusted to the physical strength of being a dragon if not the form. She talks to herself in her sleep now but otherwise has had no other changes. No magical abilities have shown up on accident either through but she isn’t a silver, she doesn’t like the cold.

I walk into the room that Talia has turned into a training area, padded floors and walls for when people get knocked down. I frown at the corner where our spare weapons are currently stored. While I was out more of them have been broken.

“What happened this time?” I ask.

“Your mother keeps putting too much strength into parries” Talia answers with a frown.

“Any improvement?”

“Aside from ruining the edge of any blade she picks up, she is doing decent. She isn’t going to accidentally lose her weapon or hit the wrong area. Her defense is better, mostly because I force her with how I fight.”

I nod, it’s an improvement but I’m worried over her lack of supernatural powers.

“When can you teach me how to fight in dragon form?” my mother interjects.

“Your inner dragon can do a better job than I can. She'll also know how to use whatever instinctual magic you have.”

“She doesn’t make any sense. It’s just do it, and stop thinking and act.”

“Mine isn’t any easier to get stuff out of, you have to kinda give in become more like a dragon while shaping your dragon to be you.”

“Like accepting suppressed feelings?” Abagail asks breaking away from her spar with Lysan.

“That’s a good way to put it.” There is more to it, but I’m not going to bring up how I convince dragon-me to do stuff.

“Anyways, I’m going to take a passage I found in the sewers past the gate and see if I can’t find what I’m looking for in the occupied section.”

“You’re going after that Charles Del Mon guy?” K asks.

“Yes, we need resources. We don’t have enough food and if my guess about him is right then he could also be a source of information.”

“You can’t trust bloodsuckers” both K and Ria say at the same time. Something they both agree on and talking with something that considers you food is a bad idea but I don’t have much of a choice.

“I’ll be careful, if we’re lucky I’ll know where we should go next when I come back.”

I need to gather some people to experiment on too, I won’t risk anything going wrong like it did for my mother. I still need to soak dad’s journal in blood too.

“I’m going with you” Bryan says and I nod, experiments may have to wait but having an Undead Hunter at my side will be a good thing if this ends badly.

I jump down a manhole, I’m maybe thirty minutes to the nearest exit inside the gates. They will likely be guarded and watched but I can sneak by any normal human and probably most other things with magic.

The vampire I’m looking for rules or at least has some status amongst his kin so he has probably been around for a while

Roughly fifteen minutes into our walk Bryan stops turns and impales a deformed human on a quick drawn blade. The creature hisses at us with distended fangs.

“I think I found you a vampire” Bryan says and I frown I didn’t feel the creature approach. I should have at least heard him.

“Do you know a Charles Del Mon?” I ask the creature as it removes itself from Bryan’s blade.

There is no response but another charge. Has this vampire lost its mind? Was it driven mad by the cursed disease or starvation? I don’t know enough about real vampires to be sure.

I snap my fingers and create the dark purple flames that burn negative energy in my hands and toss it at the creature as it somehow managed to get past Bryan’s guard.

It screams before it is reduced to ash in a burst of light. My flames didn’t do that, is it an effect of returning it to the grave or a distraction to allow escape via something like gaseous form?

“You really got to help me duplicate that strange fire with a spell” Bryan comments.

“I’m going to try to get Ria to figure it out how since she already makes nonstandard flames but it is kinda like Kythia's darkflame spells.

Did I kill it or did it escape? I assume you sensed it just before the attack.”

“I felt it for awhile but wasn’t sure if it was what you were looking for. I can't determine what type of Undead it was before actually seeing it but there are more of them nearby. Three in fact in front of us” he answers before pointing his sword at the path I was about to start walking down.

Two more deformed men and the ugliest woman I’ve ever seen become visible, pulling themselves together from blurred shapes.

“Interesting, a mortal could see me. What do you want?” the woman states.

“To speak to Charles del Mon, we were told if we ever needed his assistance to ask any child of the night to bring us to him” I say.

“And why would I waste my time with such a thing? I’m no fledgling and Charles has no authority over me.”

“Then what is it that you want?” I ask.

“The real question is what do you want to meet Charles for Adrian.”

I frown and shift my stance slightly. I release a pulse of energy to catch the echo of living things to find nothing in the immediate vicinity. A second release for the echoes of undead tells me what I wanted to know. There are only these three nearby.

“Care to guess?” Bryan asks without lowering his guard.

“Power, resources and information. Unfortunately, he only has some of the second, and would never share the first.”