Ambient Mage

A week had passed since the assassination attempt.

Aura and I realized we had some shortcomings in our power gaps and resolved to change that.

I realized I needed better control of my anger.

My emotions had began run rampant and the dragon blood had only rationalized my power, so I had to learn how to leash the power.

I needed to understand how to calm myself down without losing myself in the blood.

All I needed was an opportunity to present itself where I would be angered beyond thinking.

Unfortunately I got exactly what I was asking for not even 2 weeks after my recovery.

***

I got out of bed after I had returned from my mentoring class.

My mentor was a girl this time around.

She was neither outgoing nor awkward, she was decent at teaching, and good at problem solving.

If I had a preference I would say I preferred Armen over my new mentor Aika.

But that's not to say she was bad, in fact she was good.

I could only hope others would be as good as these two.

After I got out of mentoring class I would go back to my dorm room and take a shower and rest my body.

I would enter the mind realm with Isla and practice there.

She guided my sword movements in a spartan like regiment.

Even though I was in a mind realm I still felt part of the physical effects of the realm.

So, some fatigue and muscle memory transferred over, but in comparison to what I gained, what little soreness and fatigue I had were okay drawbacks.

Afterwards however, I would leave for a training room on the 6th floor.

In there I trained my dragon blood ability.

I couldn't control it's activation properly, and that caused issues in my fights, so I needed to be able to at least be able to lock and unlock it at will.

I had 2 more weeks to go until I needed to have the power under some control as the second episode begins then.

So I had 10 more days to work with Aika with my secret problem.

I pretended that one of my magic abilities wouldn't work with the same problems as the blood, but instead of blaming it on the unwieldy nature of the dragon blood, I told her it was because of my knights oath.

So apart from working with me on general mana control and pushing towards the 4th circle, Aika worked with me on my 'sealed magic'.

I learned that my dragon blood had similar activation requirements as my ambient mana.

When I secured enough fatal damage, or I had my emotions completely overwhelm my ability to think, or I was mentally unable to forge my way, the blood would activate.

The problem was when we had found a way for me to use it at will to a certain extent, the blood would rationalize my emotions, or let me rage in my mental sickness, until I lost it.

Dragons were not creatures easily lost in madness or human emotions, so it made sense that I would have a difficult time with it.

In the end, I couldn't get the mental part to work, but I managed to make the blood completely take over the parts of me responsible for my overwhelming emotions.

It was a little dangerous since it could cause me to lose some emotions when I left the draconic mode, but it was better than doing something irreversible in a rage, or depression.

So now all I needed to do was have a situation to test it out.

And it would present itself very soon.

***

A few weeks had passed since I had received the cradle and placed the once small now massive dragon egg in it.

More than once I had to answer Mark's growing concern with a egg the size of a human torso in our room.

Aura thought the white-purple egg was cute, and it's pulsations seemed to match her heartbeat when she wrapped her arms around it.

It had been 11 days since the assassination.

I was going to the grounds once again to train my draconic control, but the egg was ready to hatch soon.

I wondered what the dragon would look like in real life.

In game Fiadh was a black dragon which made many new players assume she was a dark attribute dragon, but in reality she was the spacetime dragon.

When obtaining her child, one of the legendary companions in the game, the player's actions and attributes determined the color.

Some dragons were unicolor, some were striped, some were spotted, and a few were spirit dragons somehow.

The attribute of the player determined the color, so a fire mage would be a red dragon, a knight would have a corresponding metallic dragon.

A mixed mage would have a mixed color dragon.

The patterns were determined by random chance.

The deeper the shade, or more cloudy the metal, meant the player's actions weren't good aligned.

As for how to get the spirit dragons, I assumed it required a high affinity with the spirits.

The dragons also were born with different sprites. Since in the game the dragons could polymorph, they often came out of their egg in the easiest state.

Often times this meant coming out as an amalgamation of animals.

Almost all were cute, since they were babies, but some were downright terrifying, showing off the regality of the dragons.

If I had to explain two separate instances one would be a cute baby tiger-dragon hybrid.

The second was a goblin shark mixed with a Venus flytrap with the body of dinosaur.

That thing gave me nightmares.

I say there were tons of dragons, but in reality there only about a few thousand at most.

Of the millions of players very few managed a dragon companion.

So to say I was nervous was an understatement.

I was a mess of nerves.

Soon however the egg started to crack and a snout peeked out of the egg's biggest hole.

The white snout had a few whiskers on it, and looked like a cat.

Before I was completely anxious and excited, now I was even more so.

I didn't even understand how.

It started to mew.

It sounded like a baby cat.

It's paws came out and while they weren't completely cat like, I was glad to see no genetic dominating traits.

Finally it popped it's tiny head out of the shell.

It was a ferret mixed with a cat. The overall face shape was a ferrets but the eyes were larger like a cats, and it's ears were more in line with a feline.

It's pupils were all black with silver accents.

It was staring at me, I could tell.

It climbed out of the egg, and to my surprise it had wings.

Dragon wings at that.

Weirdly enough those wings didn't dominate the other genes.

The wings at the top were white before turning gradually to a deep purple terminating in a midnight black at the bottom of the wings.

The dragon aside from it's wings, was completely white.

Aura was going to absolutely freak out over this new addition to the team.

Dragons by and large are creatures with no gender markers until you hear their voice.

It's the only way to tell as they can polymorph.

The baby dragon perched on it's eggshell had yet to speak, so obviously I couldn't tell.

 As I began to stand away from the eggshell to give it room to destroy and eat the rest of the eggshell.

Dragon eggshells contain vast amounts of mana for dragon babies to eat.

So I stepped back to leave the baby dragon to it's own devices when it jumped off of it's perch and onto me.

It landed on my chest, and as soon as it had traction it began to climb up and around to reach my shoulder.

I patted it's head with my hand.

It's body was long like a slinky I noticed.

It had to almost coil some parts on my shoulder.

'Daddy?'

What.

Who?

'Daddy?'

'Where's Mommy?'

Ah. it's the dragon.

And the gender is confirmed.

It's a girl.

'Daddy, where's Mommy?'

I needed to go find Fiadh as her baby had just hatched.

'Mommy isn't here right now. I need to go get her.'

'Okay.'

Although her face didn't show it, I could feel her contentment.

A plus side of a bond.

It was still afternoon and I should have had time to go see Fiadh, but I couldn't yet as the eggshell was still around.

Before I even mentioned eating the eggshell, she got off my shoulder and began to eat it.

I realized that I couldn't keep calling Fiadh's daughter just 'her'.

So I needed to think of something.

If Fiadh meant wild, and this baby was an extension of that, then this child was wild and adventurous.

It also made sense as a dragon that she was extremely strong, in fact.

When she hatched I felt my body begin to start moving towards the 4th circle.

This was the second time, I could attribute my magic growth to a dragon.

But back to the name, a name meaning wild, adventurous, and unbreakable.

Wait, instead of giving her a name based on her traits, what if I give her a name based on what those traits would entail?

Problems. Lots of problems.

Alea.

On earth this name had roots in Arabic meaning exalted.

But in Italian, it means hazard.

I thought it also sounded nice.

'Alea'

I called out to the dragon chewing through the eggshell.

She paused and raised her head over the remaining eggshell to look at me.

'Daddy?'

I could feel parts of her confusion.

'Alea is your name now.'

'Okay.'

I could once again feel the happiness radiating from her.

It was like having a 4 or 5 year old child.

Not that I a 20 year who was alone would know.

At this point maybe 30 minutes had passed and Aura would have a few choice words for me if I didn't show up on the 6th floor training room.

We always had rooms close by to each other, and occasionally split one room if our trainings didn't conflict.

So I took Alea, who had finally eaten the entire eggshell, and left for the 6th floor.

I wondered what else was inside the dragon egg for it to grow to that size, yet the dragon be so small in comparison.

Perhaps the polymorph caused the dragon's body to grow smaller.

As I arrived at the 6th floor, I got some looks as I walked over to Aura's room with a new companion in tow.

I knocked on the door and Aura let me in.

"You're almost 40 minutes late you know?"

She sat crisscross facing away from me.

"Are you angry, because I have something here that will change that."

"Lucas, the chocolate cake will not appease me today."

"Mew.."

"What was that?"

She turned around to face me.

"Lucas, is that?"

"Yes, this is my new companion."

"Oh my god it's so adorable."

Aura's voice lost all of its anger, and her face full of smiles.

"Her name is Alea."

'2nd Mommy?'

"Lucas, I may be going crazy but I swear I heard her call me mom."

"Nope, she's a spirit, and a high ranking spirit, so she can communicate with humans fairly well."

"Wait so why is she calling me mom?"

'Because 2nd Mom is daddy's wife.'

"Wait, Lucas, who is the first mom if I'm second?"

"Well that would be the actual mother of this child."

I sent her a mana message as to not hurt the dragon.

'The spirit is not related to me by blood, well technically she is, but I'm not the true father, we're like adoptees, in this situation.'

'What does that mean?'

'I have a little spirits blood in me remember?'

'Right.'

"So, Alea could you just call me mommy?"

She pointed at herself.

'Mommy is Mommy, but 2nd mommy can be Mommy Aura.'

"Lucas did you tell her my name?"

"Sorry. It slipped out while I thought about how you would react to her."

"Hey, Lucas are you just gonna have her talk to everyone here?"

"Couldn't that be dangerous?"

Right.

'Hey Alea.'

'Yes, Daddy?'

'I need you to only talk to me and mommy Aura okay?'

Her mood sank a little.

'What about mommy?'

'You can always talk to mommy.'

'Okay.'

And her mood shot right up again.

It was so cute.

I honestly have never felt this happy, not in a I feel happy kind of way, but I have never felt this way due to someone else's happiness.

Maybe this is what it's like to have a child.

I handed Alea over to Aura, and they began to play together.

I found myself staring at a new family.