The largest of the pantheons is known as the Althaen Pantheon, though several of them are worshiped by the beastkin rather than the human Althaen or are considered dark gods. Every member of the pantheon is only ever mentioned by their title and only some of their higher priesthoods have mentioned knowing the personal name of their god. Each member of this pantheon is marked by the naming scheme in their titles of the followed by something that shows either their position or domains.

Adrian

K follows me outside without a moment’s hesitation while Bryan and the short girl are still confused. We find Kylana and Ragnan outside where he was no doubt trying to get his way.

As much as I dislike Ragnar, he is needed at a time like this. I need to get him back here or establish K and me as the new alphas. Which can only be done by challenging him or the other contenders if he is dead or banished.

“Has Analais returned?” I ask only for him to speak up from behind me.

“Just got back. The hunters got ambushed but I can’t find any remains so they were captured or the remains were taken by the soldiers” he says less than a foot behind me, both startling me and giving the information I would be asking for.

“Do you have to do that at such a serious time?” Kylana asks.

“Yes, I do” he answers as if offended that she would ask.

I just shake my head a bit before saying, “I know where their camp is and who to get more information out of.”

“Perfect, now I can. . .” Ragnan begins before Kylana pulls on his ear and says, “you’re not in charge.”

“How well defended is their camp?” Analais asks ignoring Ragnan.

“They have no defense from the air” is all I say with a smile before the others catch on to what I mean.

K however says, “you can fly while carrying me, right?”

I think so, I don’t have a problem carrying her in human form and my draconic form is stronger . . .

I nod and say, “yes, but I don’t think I can carry more than just you” as I revert to the hybrid form. My voice deepens as I do so. The darkness of the night brightening before my eyes as all that surrounds me becomes smaller. My wings and tail unfurl and I stretch a bit before holding an arm out to K.

She takes my hand and I jump into the air, struggling for a bit to gain altitude but I manage to climb upwards and then glide towards the camp. K holds onto me tightly as we leave the sight of the others. I rather enjoy the feeling and should try to do this again later but I can’t keep thinking of how I forgot something in the short few minutes that it takes me to reach the Althaen camp by flight.

Just before we pass over the border I ask, “you wouldn’t happen to know a spell to cause lots of damage in an explosion of fiery death?”

I think K just shakes her head as I do not hear her answer. Unfortunate, but I am going to have to resort on the strange power that is apparently from my family. There has to be a reason why my past double didn’t just rain down fire and various other forms of death on them. He hated them enough to do it, but why didn’t he?

Morals? Fear over how his friends would act? A drawback of the magic itself?

I can ignore the first two but the possibility of the third would be a problem. Then again nothing did happen when I used it in blind rage earlier. Could that be another mistake that he made? Magic not restricted by the amount of energy available has to have some other sort of restriction. . .

Still there is no choice but to rely on this strange power I do not yet understand. My mind shifts, much as it does when I fall into the trance I called battlemind but I push in a different direction, pushing my will onto the world around me as I mirror the actions of the images in my mind on a larger scale. Fire appears from nowhere around me before raining down on the general area of the camp. The screams of people burning to death break out and panic ensues. The flames dim and weaken as the flames reach the ground. As if something is pushing my power back.

In the growing chaos I land among a group of tents that should be the command structure unless it has changed in the last few hours. In all the chaos and destruction, we are not immediately noticed, though I doubt that I will be unnoticed for too long. Even if I do return to human form, my tattered clothing and how this is not an area that I am supposed to be in would give me away.

K looks around with a smile before asking, “how did you do that?”

“A magic that isn’t based on mana” I answer.

“Can I learn it?” she asks as I throw a blast of flame at some soldier who I do not recognize and I continue to walk towards the tent where those in charge should be.

“I don’t think so, but perhaps I can help you figure out how to do the same with mana.”

K follows me as I enter into the tent as she draws the blade her mother gave us the morning after the last full moon. Oddly enough the only person who is in the tent is not surprised by our arrival. The old man in the tent just sits there.

“So, a draconian from another world is why the attack did not reach my foreseen conclusion. Care to introduce yourself or will I have to waste the mana for it?” the old man asks.

“Do you not care that burning death is still raining down on your soldiers?” I ask to taunt to old man.

The old man’s eyes flash with an unnatural light before he says with a smirk, “Called Adrian, by the bindings of the contract kneel before your better.”

I smirk as I ignore the tingling in my mind that must have been some sort of compulsion that I absorbed with the memories of my past self, or a remnant left over from however long it was that I traveled back in time. I take a step forwards and shift to human, for dramatic effect, as I say “you really have no idea who you pissed off do you?

I am Adrian Ravnos, and you pissed off someone that can command the world around you and it obeys.”

A moment later, a blade of black fire appears in my hand. The air in the room turns stale and the color in the room begins to bleed away around the blade. A blade of compressed death, which is what I so very much want to inflict on this man.

As the man panics I finish walking up to him. My blade passes through his right arm, leaving no cut but where the blade passes is desiccated flesh. The old man screams and I ask, “who told you where the village would be?”

“You think an old man like me is afraid. . .”

I let the form of the blade of black flame dissipates as I coat the man in its flames. Stopping the moment before his death and inverting them. Forcing the man to return to his prior age, healing him of all the damage I have done, only to repeat my question. I do this a few times before the old man gives into my ridiculous attempt at torture.

“Tynar Vithrá, he's a priest who lives in a hut near the edge of the forest” he eventually answers.

“And where are the prisoners you managed to capture?”

“Sent to him. He was to handle the prisoners.”

“Then you really don’t know anything and were a waste of time” I say while forcing his heart to stop.

I don’t know exactly why, but it seemed so easy to do this. Like there was nothing that protected him from it; unlike the resistance the flames suffered earlier. Why? The camp’s supernatural protections?

I turn back around to K and rather than seeing her looking at me like I am a monster, she is smiling and asks “can I finish him off then?”

“Sure” I answer not wanting to ruin her fun.

I don’t bother to watch as she guts him. There won’t even be a shower of blood since his heart has already stopped, and he will die shortly even without her actions. There is no scream or splash of blood from her actions as I do something that I don’t think my past self ever thought of trying, I begin to build and weave a construct of power as I did mana when I first started learning from Kylana.

Fire and Death spun and shaped into an oversized malformed capsule not unlike a Magic Missile. I shift back to hybrid form and say, “Kythia, it is about time for us to get going.”

“But I didn’t even get to fight” she complains as I smile.

I let out a sigh and look at the ball of black flames in my claws. There are too many for the two of us to fight normally, but maybe I can just kill most with this, rather than all? Actually, I have no idea how much damage this thing could do.

I spend another few moments to fill it with more death before I throw it up in the air and will the energy to not touch K and me. A wave of darkness that is not the lack of light spreads from the ball of black fire as it breaks and passes over us.

Somehow, the strange fire does obey my will and pass over us without touching either of us but everything else dies and rots in seconds as the wave expands outwards over the camp. Then just as K begun to speak the world goes silent, a building tension that I had not noticed snaps within me. I feel myself begin to fall before the world goes dark.

In an empty void I find myself standing, surrounded by multiple creatures. A dragon the size of a house with pitch-black scales that glow a color beyond human perception, two girls identical in every way that look like the me-but-not-me girl each frowning as they glance to each other, and a man who looks just like me in human form save for his hair is the same color as the dragon's glow and the eyes are like the dragon’s.

One of the girls says, “really? A few hours and you go and cause a backlash?”

“One of the stranger ones too” the other girl comments.

“What’s going on?” I ask and the strange looking almost me answers, “reality backlash. Is this really me with most of my memory erased?”

“I think he's done well” the dragon comments.

“That’s just because his solutions of eating anything draconic he comes across and bedding the girls are the vast majority of you” the human mocks the dragon.

“Those are the two most important things mage, food and the hoard” the dragon comments.

I just stand confused, trying to figure out what is going on. Something to do with the magic I used to probably wipe out the Althaen camp but how could this and that be connected?

“So how do I get back to. . .” I start before the human cuts me off, “the answer is not going to be to tear everyone else apart and eat them.”

“That’s always worked before” I mutter and the dragon laughs.

“Can we just do something productive?” I ask and the two girls smile.

“Sure, go meditate and piece together your memories so you don’t do something too stupid again with the power you hold” one of the females say while the other nods

“Why are there two of you anyways?”

“Time travel duplication” they say simultaneously.

“Shouldn’t the two of you combine like the current me and the past me from this timeline?” the human asks.

“We will when we get around to it. There is ever so much to discuss with each other first though” one of them answers before the two of them walk a bit further away from me, the dragon, and the human.

I sit down on whatever it is that we have all been standing on. I am not sure why but I do not feel as if any of those here would do anything that is not beneficial to me. That said whatever is going on does not make sense.