Emerald dragons are frail and have very little combat ability aside from the latent talent all crystal dragons have in psionics. Their instinctual magics lie in the realm of emotion manipulation. They are the most amorous of the crystal dragons and are often found near other crystal dragons.

Adrian

I have a terrible headache once I begin to wake up. I need to make sure to never have to do that again. With a groan I pull myself up and look around to see everyone awake, K and Ria are here but why am I in the same position as when I fell?

There is also a soldier sitting on the stairs, waiting but doing nothing. Did the government follow K or find some way of tracking us?

“What’s going on?” I ask softly, even if that soldier can hear me he won't know elven.

“We couldn’t move you so we stayed here to guard as you recovered from mana depletion. The vampire you were fighting is staked and waiting for you to get whatever information you need and the Terrans found us with something called a radio echo. They weren’t hostile or at least haven’t acted as hostiles” K answers. Everyone but her and Ria seem to be in a similar exhausted state as me.

I had mana depletion? So my dragon stuff really is mana. I really need to find some entry level books to get a foundation then. Maybe have my girlfriends teach me. This is not the time to think about this though, I need to figure out how the government tracked us down.

Radio echo? There isn’t any electricity where it shouldn’t be on us so how does that work? Also why didn’t they follow us before? I create a burst of static along the frequency used for radios, no doubt disrupting a lot of transmissions but as I try to sense any echoes I actually find one in K's pocket.

“What’s in your pocket?” I ask K while pointing to the one that has whatever made the echo.

She pulls out a sheet of plastic and passes it to me. It’s the room key for our hotel. I try to find out where in the card is making the echo with another tiny burst of radio waves before pulling what seems to be a small computer chip out of the card with Translocation Grasp.

I hold the surprisingly small object between my thumb and pointer finger and show it to the others.

“This is how they found us. I’ll check our stuff for more later and remove them” I say before placing the chip in Void Cache.

“Are we going to sneak past the soldier?” Ria asks and I shake my head.

“No it’ll be more trouble than anything else. We already got caught, the point of sneaking is lost.”

I walk over to the priest with a piece of wood impaled in his heart and place the body in Void Cache. He is only a corpse right now so there isn’t any risk.

I nod to Ria and somehow she knows what I want and dismisses the illusions I assume she has been holding. The soldier quickly stands up and faces me before speaking.

“Sir, I apologize for tracking you down like this but I’ve been ordered to make sure you are safe.

You were also scheduled for a medical exam today. To make sure you are all healthy and . . .”

I tune out the last portion of his explanation. That isn’t the real reason anyways. Should I avoid it? No, I still need to be in this city for a while. I have to play their game to find what we need still. They want to know our capabilities, I'll need to falsify them. Make them underestimate us or they might suceed when they betray us again.

“Just show us the way” I say before turning to the others. “We should try to keep from showing our full ability. I would rather we not do this at all but there is still stuff we need to do here and it would be a problem when we go elsewhere if we don’t.”

They all nod as we begin to follow the soldier out of this basement museum crypt thing. We end up being driven to a hospital that is either under renovation or is still being repaired from the chaos of the first weeks. None of the soldiers say a word and I notice an oddly large number of them are not fully human in our escort. More than the other groups of soldiers I have seen. Is this a ploy? Why place us near them?

No one bats an eye as we arrive with our armed escort, even the civilians, as we enter the hospital. Maybe this is standard procedure for new arrivals. I still have some doubts but this isn’t targeting us directly. No they want to know about all the non-humans.

My mother and Abagail join us at the door, both giving me a glare but not saying a word as we move onwards to a waiting room on the third floor. An attempt to prevent escape?

A doctor meets us in what used to be the waiting room for a children’s doctor. What is the specific name for that? Pediasomething. I check for undead and find nothing in the building as he goes over the simple tests that I remember from having a physical done in the past.

I interrupt the doctor when he begins to explain about how blood samples will be taken, “no. Blood is too dangerous for you to have.”

“What? It’s more dangerous for you to be unaware of the issues that blood work tests will. . .” the doctor begins before I cut him off.

“There is only one person in our group that might still have normal human blood. Do you know what an elf's blood should contain? How about a shade or dragon?

What would you do when you hit some of our blood with radiation and it disappears? Or worse when some idiot decides to infect themselves with lycanthropy and goes on a murderous rampage in an attempt to become stronger?”

The doctor doesn’t respond for a moment before asking “how is that even possible?”

“Magic is a part of our physiology so everything about us carries some of those traits.”

Damû's books go into this subject extensively. And that is without the dangers that giving away a focus like your blood can be.

I find myself overly bored with the rest of the physical, that is until the boring strength tests ended and I was brought to a machine that performs a full body scan. My results weren't good but I''m not human anymore so my scores mean nothing to me. Blood preasure is high but I'm stressed and have no reading for normal anyways.

“This can’t be right, that’s impossible” I hear the technician say.

“What is?” I ask but my question is ignored as he starts the machine up for a second scan.

The results must have been the same as I hear a door slam shortly after the machine finishes. I get up and move to the now unoccupied side room with the computer that has the scan.

What I find truly does not make any sense, not from a human anatomical standpoint. My circulatory system is disjointed yet I have blood passing through vessels that doesn’t contect to anything. Ligaments and muscles that vanish into nowhere and some of my organs do the same. Truly not possible.

The only way I can think of this Working is by a lot of spatial manipulation or passing through an additional dimension. I shouldn’t leave this sitting around for anyone to find so I delete the files and get back to the patient's side before the technician returns with the doctor who I convinced not to do any bloodwork. I should make sure everyone's information is destroyed before we leave. I can't let anyone have the advantage this could mean.

“There is nothing here. Have you even . . .” the doctor reprimands the technician.

“The machine is malfunctioning on me. We’ll have to skip it” I interrupt and aside from another frown I and released back into the waiting room to wait for the others. As I pass leave the machine I create a small surge, just enough to fry some of it. It won't be getting any readings, at least not accurate ones anymore.

I feel like this is mostly a waste of time, so many other things could have been done in these hours. But I have to make them think I don't expect them or they may be more careful. Sneakier than they already are.

While I wait I keep going through what I need to do in town. The questions to ask my captive vampire and how to get every advantage I can against the other Ravnos.

I need magic resistance to make it harder for them to affect us and additional power to help overcome the skill difference that must exist between us. I should also find a way to use more than one magic at a time. Another reason to look into mana effects.

Lysan is the first one, aside from me, released. From the look on her face I do not think she enjoyed the experience.

“I don’t like this place” she says as she sits down next to me.

“You'll never have to go through that again then. Did you learn anything though?” I say as I rub her back.

“I’m a lot stronger than I thought and your people’s machines can do a lot of stuff.”

“Lysan, can I ask you for something?”

“Anything.”

“I know this is going to make me sound like an idiot but I have no idea of the basics for mana based magic. I would like you and the other girls to help me.”

She smiles and hugs me before responding, “sure, when do we start and do you want to learn Arcane or Divine magic? I don’t know how Raw, Wild or Blight work.”

“Arcane and you can start now if you like.” Now I’m going to have to look into what those other kinds are, I can probably assume wild magic is frayed normal magic but I actually don’t know what the others could be.

“The basis of Arcane magic is to take advantage of the energy field that is the Aether and channel its power and mana through your own. Divine magic is similar but holds an extra step of asking a deity to assist.

The first step for all mana based magic is to identify where you store it in your body. The fastest way to find out is to recite cantrips while an emotion related to the effect you want is stimulated as you use a wand to force your mana to perform a spell. Repeating the exercise until you happen to figure it out, the safest and beat way is to meditate and mentally try to move energy around in the body.

Once you can use mana, memorizing the gestures and incantations which will shape your mana in the correct manner.”

I can see why the latter method is better. The person would actually have to understand rather than just knowing how. The shortcut probably cuts off the higher end of a mage's potential.

“So I need to acquire conscious control of my mana, preferably through meditation.”

Lysan nods, “you may want to ask Kythia or Ria for help with this part. I only know an elven meditation and it takes years.”

“I’ll ask them later then but for now I guess we will have to just wait.”

She nods and Talia joins us soon after. I turn my mind inwards and feel the energy that I spend when I use my dragon abilities. This should be mana, yet as I try to force it to move it sits and does nothing. Mental pushes and pulls are not working so I just sit and stare at it as I think over what Lysan said.

A hand touches my shoulder and my unplanned and unfruitful trance is broken. Ria is smiling at me and everyone else is standing. It’s time to go then. Once we reach the hotel I pull the soldier who is in charge of escorting us aside and place the radio wave bouncing chip in his hand.

“Spying on us is illegal and a good way of damaging what little trust I still have. I don’t want to have to mention this again.”

The soldier frowns in confusion before I turn and ignore the apologies he recites. They sound familiar, like I’ve heard them before in a press release or something.

I follow everyone else back up to see my mother waiting in the hall in front of one of the two rooms I may be staying in. I can also hear Abagail talking rather loudly.

“You promised not to run off anymore” she says in her you disappointed me voice.

“I told Kythia and Ria. I gave notice like I promised, it was too dangerous for you and Abagail.”

She sighs, “I still worry too much to sleep when I don’t know you’re safe.

And now I feel bad but I won’t change my actions on that alone. I was right to leave her behind even if I did not bring enough people with me.

I enter the open door to see all four of my girls waiting for me.

“Do you all remember the thing the dwarves wanted from me?” I ask to all of them as I close the door.

Everyone but Ria nods and I continue, “I want to give all four of you it but I don’t think I can manage all of you at one.”

“Give us what?” Ria asks.

“Blessing of the Dragon but first I would like to talk about other things.

I want to have you all teach me like I teach you.”

“Teach what?” Talia asks.

“I want to learn or at least try to learn mana magic and my martial skills are still far below most of you.”

“We have no place to spar” K states and that is unfortunately the case at the moment.

“I’ll see what I can do tomorrow about that. For now, we can go over magical stuff.”

“Who’s teaching?” Ria asks.

I answer her with a question, “can you make other fires than those green flames?”

She nods and I continue “then we'll work on trying to copy the flames Lysan and Talia can make. I also what to see if I can figure out that green flame and see if I can teach you the fire I use to burn negative energy.”