Diamond dragons are the physically most powerful of the crystal dragons and use this to their advantage in their aggressive fighting style of rushing opponents while blasting others with their psionics and other magical capabilities. They have powers similar to the other crystal dragons that have similar coloration to them. A black diamond dragon for example will likely have the powers of an onyx dragon among a few others.

Me-but-not-me

I walk through the halls of my host’s mind. The mirrors where I would watch his memories are broken, almost all of them anyways. I pick up one of the fragments and place it back where it should be. This mirror was a good memory.

I sigh at how much time this is going to take, even just to bring him back to being functional. At least we are drifting through the void rather than somewhere threatening. I could leave but even if there were other hosts available they would not be as good as mine. Unlike all my previous he has the potential to actually reach my goal.

Time passes but it means little to me until I realize the direction it is passing in, backwards. So those who have enslaved my kind are sending us back in time to another world. There is now even less reason for me to leave my host. The period of greatest growth is youth, he gets to go through it twice since the idiots didn’t fully shield this body from the timestream.

Even more potential, I smile and continue to work. Knowledge and the basic parts of who he is come first. I probably won’t have him fully back to normal by the time we reach our destination but that can also be a benefit to him.

Eventually the timestream begins to slow and turn to its normal path, we are when they wanted us to be.

“What is this?” I hear through the ears of my still sleeping host.

“Some idiot probably botched their summoning ritual again” another voice answers, this one female.

I recognize the energy that they are emitting. Like my kind they cannot withstand the void physically and have to expend energy but they are not as I. I manifest some of the power I have grown over the years within my host and take a form similar to these beings near this body.

The same form that I show to my host in his dreams and when we talk takes shape next to my host and turns to the two who have stumbled upon my host.

“Not quite” I say interrupting a sentence I did not bother to hear.

“What is one of your kind doing here?” the male entity asks I his black wolf skin coat.

“What we are always doing. Existing within a mortal and giving that mortal our power.”

“If your host is that boy he’s dead and you should find another.”

“He is still very much alive and even if there was another host available I would not change.”

“So, Terra is no longer the domain of your kind?”

“Idiot mortals did a stupid thing to try to be immortal and ruined it for my kind, so no.”

“How did you even manage to get out of the barrier that was set up?” the woman interjects, her dress moving ever so slight to catch the eyes of any who would appreciate her form.

“The same idiots trying to be immortal had to break it to send us away” I answer.

“Really, it seems like all problems are caused by such actions. Care to know what our idiot mortals have done?” the man asks.

“I don’t need to ask because I already know. They have torn open portals to the Abyss and hired demons to consume your world.”

“How can you know this?”

“Knowledge from the future, your current plans of using the devils is going to go poorly.”

“And why would you tell us this? I do not doubt that you can have this knowledge but wouldn’t the cost of acting like this destroy your host?”

“Not if we are not responsible for how we have this knowledge at this point in time. Call the rest of your pantheon as well as the others if you can.”

“Why are you doing this?” the female asks and the male vanishes in a flash of power.

“Because it is in the best interests of my host. Most of those he cares for are from your world.”

She woman nods, “girls?” she asks with far more interest than she has earlier shown. One of her domains must be associated with relationships.

“I’ll show you some of it” I say as I extend a finger to her body and share a few memories of his love and care for the small harem he managed to amass.

She smiles, “I do not recognize any of them. Is this an event from the future?”

I nod and the wolf skin clad man returns with several others. He defers to another male who is dressed in robes with a caring but stern face under the beard. This man addresses me, asking the question I had hoped he would open with.

“How do you know these things you have told the Black Wolf?”

That must be the title of the wolf skin clad man. I pause for a moment making it seem that I am taking care about which words to say.

“Because your current course of actions results in most of you fading. Terra suffered for it and the mortals with the souls of my kind decided to send my host to you now under compulsion to destroy everything. That compulsion did not happen and my host would have let you know what your current path would bring, since he is currently indisposed I am acting on his behalf.”

I share the memory fragment of one of the first conversations he had with the trio as well as a few more to let them see the state of Althrá at his time in what is not the future. While they are still recovering from the shock of what their current fate is I continue.

“I also have a solution but for it you will have to make a sacrifice in the short term. Help me form an avatar to do as you were planning to have the devil do.”

“Form an avatar? You want us to create a new deity, there isn’t enough faith to go around as it is” the leader of their group nearly shouts.

“So, you turn to devils who will twist and subvert what faith your followers still have in you. You will be corrupted faster and further than you already are as your people become what I have shown you. But following this plan with a better set up than the devils would have given would let you increase the fervor of your follows over time. Rather than cutting cost you must invest, that is why you grant miracles to and through your clergy. Do the same with this, you can turn this method into a way of generating the energy needed to do so.”

“She is right” some of the less powerful beings say as they whisper and discuss amongst themselves.

“We don’t have the energy to do such a thing” the head of the human pantheon counters.

“But I do, I also have the knowledge of what such a thing should be. I only need your help in making the bridge” I interrupt him before he goes further.

“A mortal might have inexhaustible power when bonded with you but acting on your own you don’t have this much power” an older more intelligent member of this gathering says.

“Like I said, a bridge” I point towards my host and continue, “take a part of him and use it as the medium.”

“You want us to damage him?”

“He will recover and I already know a way to more than erase it. The avatar will make sure of that among other things. A price I add to our deal.”

Many of them frown but they know this is the path where they can continue to remain themselves. Where they can increase their ability to mold those who sustain them.

“What other things?” the head of the human pantheon asks.

“Ensuring my host a life where he will be happy and come to fulfil my only wish. I care not for other things.”

He nods, “who is in favor of this?” he asks calling his fellow to vote.

Each gives their approval and I am granted their access to the raw essence of reality to do this. As what I take from him will be erased from him, I take memories of little value; pieces that my instructions to the avatar will see replaced in time. What I form the avatar with does not matter, not when neither of us are paying the true cost of this action. None of them will have ever done this before so the higher than normal cost will go undetected.

Just before my work is complete I take a shard of myself and add it to the avatar. A body forms of a young man similar in appearance to my host and he will perform his function. Weakened I return to my host and the shattered halls of his memories to piece them together while he waits to enter a world which will be different than the one he read of.

I reassemble almost everyone but some I do not hang back on the walls. It is better for him to heal before remembering all of his past even with most of it sacrificed to form an avatar. When the time comes for my host to reenter the world I nudge him through an opening formed by the avatar. We will be in a time and place where he can recover that which he cares about.