Dragon 15, year 8690 of the Grand Wulin Era,Alexander Grandstar

As I finished cultivating, I reached out to ring a small, green metal bell that sat next to my bed. A mile or so away, in my parents’ courtyard, a similar bell was presumably ringing, alerting my parents. Within about ten seconds, I heard a loud thump outside my door, and then a comparatively quiet knock on my door. I assumed Mom had reached all the way to my courtyard in one jump, which wasn’t unusual, as she liked to show off the immense physical power of a Warrior at her level of cultivation.

I wasn’t sure how high it was yet, my parents told me they’d tell me their cultivations once I started going out to train and help people, but I knew it was at or above Shard Formation, which came after the Mana Sea stage. There were at least two realms of cultivation and an utterly immense power gap between me and my mother, which made even the gap between me and a normal kid of my age look barely different. It was as if a normal kid’s strength was a single bucket of sand, mine was a well-packed sandcastle, and my mother’s (and as far as I knew, the strength of both of my fathers) was a real castle, built with granite and mortared with concrete.

I walked over to the door and opened it, greeted by the imposing figure of my mother. She could be called..Amazonian, I guess? She was taller even than my Papa, and her body reminded me of a tiger’s, covered in lean muscle and appearing rather agile and flexible ,despite her broad shoulder and wide hips. Her face had a similar cat-like nature, refined and regal, sometimes seeming harsh, but carrying an undisguised playfulness and gentle joviality that made her come across as both a gentle,friendly type and a badass you did not want to be on the bad side of.

Which, after a few too many idiot bandits had assumed that being gentle and friendly meant she was a pushover, had become common knowledge and earned her an unofficial title : Thorny Axe Queen. Of course, I hadn’t seen any of this, and my mother had never been anything other than nice to me, if occasionally strict when I misbehaved, but I definitely believed it. I’d seen her anger after my companions and I had roughed up that kid (who I’d since apologized to and was trying to befriend). A redwood tree that had reached over 500 feet tall and with bark as hard as rock due to passive mana absorption had exploded from the sheer strength of her anger when she’d dragged us home and dumped us in front of my Papa. Fortunately, nothing other than that tree had been harmed, and the wood had been put to good uses, but it was still pretty terrifying.

“C’mon, Alex, let’s go to the Library.” She said, grabbing me by my waist and placing me on her shoulders.

“Mom, this is embarrassing. I’m 9, not 5.” I said, imagining the spectacle if we went to the library like that. Mingzhou would definitely laugh at me, and I was scared other disciples of the sect would make fun of me later for it.

“Look, Alexander, I know you feel like people will make fun of you, but a lot of kids your age wish their parents would do this with them ,or still play around with their parents pretty often, and the older kids did a lot of stuff like this when they were your age. Hell, when I was your age, your Uncle Gao carried me around on his back, and no one with a brain made fun of me for it. I understand all too well that kids can be cruel little jerks, but as long as you aren’t hurting people, you don’t really need to care what other people think.” She looked a little bit hurt at my words, but her general mood still seemed pretty good.

“Yeah, I guess I’m not quite too big for this yet, huh? Can you put me down when we get to the Library though? I’ve never met the Lorekeeper before, but I know she’s in charge of all the technique manuals and other important books and I wanna make a good impression.” I asked, smiling. After all, even if I was gonna play with Mom, I needed to be serious and respectful when it came to the library, or at least that’s what the librarians said after they chased out Mingzhou for carelessly getting the juice of some exotic berry on a signed copy of a powerful Warrior’s memoir that had required several spells, an expert, and an irritable, multicolored weasel to restore it to its former state. Said weasel was actually one of the librarians, and it was her job to ensure that books didn’t get damaged under her watch, which is already hard to do when you’re just an oversized ferret. Mingzhou had eventually been allowed back in, but she’d become unusually well-behaved in front of the librarians, and I figured it’d be smart to do likewise.

“Yeah, sure. Let’s ….” Her knees bent, and I prepared for what I knew was coming. “GOOOO!” She yelled, jumping into the air at high speed. Hurtling through the air at high speed, we flew over the sect in a blur. A blur that was screaming at a remarkably high pitch. It was fun and all, but going that fast, especially when I couldn’t remember a time when Mom moved that fast while carrying me, was a bit... terrifying for my young self. Near the end of it, Mom carefully slowed down and landed, though there was still a pretty loud thump when we impacted. In about a minute, we’d crossed the entire Sect compound that spanned several miles, and landed about 20 feet from the Sect Library’s door.

I’d been here so many times, but today was going to be different, it was going to be special. I knew that in the future, I’d probably go to that section of the Library a lot more, and it probably wouldn’t seem as special and amazing as it did today. The place itself would stay special to me,as the Library as a whole was, but a first experience with anything would always influence the rest of your experiences with that thing, at least according to my (pathetically lacking) life experience at the time, so I wanted it to be really special.

***

We walked in, and the Librarian at the front desk said “Hello, Young Master Alexander, how are you doing today? I see you’ve brought Head Elder Hilde with you today, I assume your business is important?”

I grimaced at the rat librarian. It wasn’t that he was untrustworthy or skeevy or overly rattish in appearance, he was literally a human-sized (well, a bit shorter, he was only about 3 feet 8 inches) bipedal humanoid rat. “Dmitri, I’ve been telling you to call me Alex. I don’t care if you’re on duty, we’re friends, and you didn’t show up to my party because you were working on your day off, so you kinda owe me that, I think.” I paused, collecting my thoughts. “But yeah, Mom and I are here to pick some combat techniques. Also, congrats on the body manipulation, I remember your back was a bit less straight and your hands were a lot more paw-y a few months ago.”

“Well, thank you, Alex, i’ve been practicing. Pretty soon I’ll be able to take on a fully human form and i’ll look just like Da-I mean Master. Pretty good for somebody who started out as a glorified pet,eh? But yeah, business. Since the Head Elder of the Sect Guarding Corps is with you, just go up to the fifth floor and knock on the blue door with the Taiji symbol on it, alright?”He pointed towards the stairs.

“Yeah, see you in a bit, Dmitri!” I replied.

As we walked up the stairs, I was thinking about Dmitri and his teacher/master/father. There were a lot of ways for Magical Beasts or for normal animals who had become Magical Beasts to cultivate, as many as there were for humans, but Dmitri sought a human form instead of his current, somewhat stronger beastman form or his original rat body, as he wanted to be the son his master, Andrew Summerwind had never had. There was also the fact that, at least for rat-type beasts and beastmen, it was easier to channel magic in a human form, and Dmitri walked the path of the Mage.

Andrew had assured Dmitri that he considered him his son anyways, but Dmitri felt he wouldn’t be worthy of taking the surname of the man who raised him and taught him about life and cultivation until he looked the part. The man who had helped him and guided him,raised him from a completely ordinary baby brown rat he found in an abandoned nest in the library, taught him to read and write and to cast magic,bandaged his wounds when those who were stronger than him bullied him for being a rat or for being weak or for not being a good enough shapeshifter to take human form. He’d infused the naturally clever and capable Dmitri with a thirst for knowledge and the same gentle nature he had.

In at least one instance, he’d beaten the father of a bully who refused to stop the unwarranted hateful behavior of his bratty daughter, and even attacked Dmitri and Andrew himself, near to death. He had to be pulled off the man by at least three Warriors at the peak of Shard Formation, when he’d barely reached the second layer of it.He was a kind, gentle Alchemist and Mage, who liked nothing more than making medicines and pills, various other alchemical products and experimenting with new ideas, but when he was angered, Andrew Summerwind was a force to be reckoned with. His gentle, easy-going demeanor would grow cold and icy, and he’d start to unconsciously influence the elements, causing a wind to swirl around him and an aura of heat to surround him, as if he were about to become the center of a blazing wildfire.

Andrew had become popular for his friendly attitude, his incredible medicinal skills, and the sheer terror he inspired in those who preyed on the weak or abused others. People called him the Stormbrewer, both for the magically powered storms that were likely to descend when he was angered and for the interesting methods he used to make medicine and pills, powders, and the like that would help in cultivation.He was one of my Dad’s closest friends, and on pretty decent terms with pretty much every other adult I spent time around.

At about that point in my thoughts, we arrived on the fifth floor, and I shook myself out of my thoughts and looked around. A tiled floor that had mosaics of various creatures and plants spread across it was under our feet, and scenes of humans, various kinds of beasts and beastfolk, and other races fighting, meditating, hunting, and doing all sorts of other interesting things were on the walls. Everything was in such stunning detail that it almost felt like I was looking at the scenes in person, and when I focused in on any given scene, it almost seemed to come alive. There was a short hall that split into 3 halls at an intersection, one going right, one forward, and one left. The left and right halls seemed to extend pretty far, and I really had no idea where they went, but the hall in front of us had the Taiji door at the end of it. The door was a deep cobalt blue, and appeared to be made of wood, though it was a bit hard to tell. The Taiji Symbol had been carved into it, and obviously had been painted, since it was a black and white ☯ on a blue door. People who didn’t know the name but had heard of the concept it embodied would call it a yin-yang symbol.

We approached the door, Mom flashed a badge with the Taiji on it, and it opened. A short, middle-aged looking woman with dark curly hair, brown eyes, and a skintone to match smiled at Mom as we walked in.From her appearance, I assumed at least a few of her ancestors had come from the Vermillion Bird Continent to the south. She gave off an aura of knowledge and power, something Mages of her caliber often did without realizing it. I had the feeling this woman who looked like someone’s slightly stern aunt would be pretty scary in a fight, and my intuition usually isn’t wrong.

“Hello, Head Elder, it’s been a while! Looking to drop off some technique manuals you found when adventuring or to do some research on those herbs you asked me abou- Oh, I see, you brought this little one with you? Hmm… let’s see.. Elder Alim’s skin tone, something like his face and build,Marcus’s hair and eyes, those slightly pointy ears you have and that mouth that isn’t thin or wide, but in between, like yours… this is Alexander? I haven’t seen you since you were a baby, young one. Probably something to do with me being so busy all the time, I’ve been out of the sect so often to look for books and the rest of the time I’m here.”

The woman, who I was pretty sure by now was the Lorekeeper, seemed as if she might talk on forever,and I looked over at Mom a bit desperately. Mom understood my look, and said.

“Hey, Makena, why don’t we catch up while Alex looks at techniques and picks a few he likes? You could have an assistant show him around or something.”

“I’ll be fine, I know about the grades of techniques and stuff, and I’ve done enough research that I have a pretty good idea what I can handle right now! I’ll be back here in like, an hour.”

I waved and walked into the rows of bookshelves, seeking techniques and maybe some new spells. Miss Makena and my mother watched me go, and as I began to browse I heard them start to chat about things. Didn’t really catch what exactly, but I was too immersed in books to care at that moment.