Unbound Soul Side Story: Darren's Flames (Patreon)

This side story takes place some time after chapter 168, but before 191.

A very excited Darren was running in circles outside his village hut, watched by his grinning parents.

"How'd he wrangle a magic teacher, anyway?" asked David. "Is Kari coming back?"

"No, it's Kranakellicium," answered Lucy.

David took a few seconds to work his jaw around that name before asking the obvious question. "Who?"

"Hmm? Oh. Now that you mention it, I don't think anyone has ever called him by his full name around you. Peter calls him Krana."

David froze. "Umm... This Krana wouldn't happen to be red, scaly, and half the length of the village, would he?"

"He's bright! Like the sun!" exclaimed Darren.

"Why is Darren getting magic lessons from a dragon?! No, wait. Let me rephrase. What did Peter do this time?"

"Nothing. Well, nothing much."

David waited patiently to hear what 'nothing much' consisted of.

"Apparently, Darren tried to make a portal back to Earth," Lucy explained, giving in. "Peter told him he shouldn't do that, but he could learn 'other magic' instead. And then Peter ran off with Cluma and left Darren alone with Kranakellicium. Who is probably the best fire mage alive. So Darren begged him for magic lessons all the way home. At some point, Kranakellicium seems to have surrendered to Darren's enthusiasm."

David nestled his face in his hands. "Okay, I'll admit Darren takes most of the blame, but still... Peter really needs to start considering the impact of things before he speaks."

"Don't get too worked up, little one," called Lucy to her overexcited youngest child. "You don't want to wear yourself out before Kranakellicium gets here."

Darren came to a sudden halt before looking up into the air. "He's here!" he declared.

"Is he?" asked David, staring up and seeing nothing.

"Over there," said Darren, pointing at the rising sun.

The village darkened as the dragon flew in from the east, his bulk causing a localised eclipse. A flap of his wings kicked up a cloud of dust, sending Darren into a fit of giggles, before he crashed down onto the roof of their shack. Somehow, it not only didn't collapse, but didn't even bend or crack. Skills for controlling their size and weight were something that every dragon learnt early. At least, if they ever wanted to go outdoors without accidentally breaking things.

"Good morning," called up Lucy. "Thanks for taking the time out to indulge our child."

"Y... Yeah. Thank you," stammered David.

"I must admit to some amount of interest. Were he older, I would most certainly have enjoyed seeing what he was capable of. As it is... I would prefer him to mature prior to attempting serious magic, but I fear that with his impatience, leaving him to his own devices risks further incidents."

"Hah. I still remember the few weeks before his first birthday," laughed Lucy. "It's a wonder we got through it without our hut burning down."

Kranakellicium gave a slow blink. "I... must admit to some anxiety. Nevertheless, I gave the child my word. Besides, if we are to rely on him for transportation to Earth, some measure of training is advisable."

The child in question beamed widely, completely unabashed.

"Let us travel somewhere safer," stated the dragon, reaching down to lift up Darren.

"Behave yourself," called up Lucy to her child as Kranakellicium departed, flying with Darren south-east, to a meadow far away from any farmland or villages.

Darren enjoyed riding on the dragon, nestled among the streamers of mana that broke through his scales and wrapped around his body, but this time he was too excited to pay much attention. Now that he'd learnt the trick of how System spells disguised themselves, describing him as impatient to start learning would be akin to describing the sea as wet. "Fire! Fire! Fire!" he chanted to himself, his own mana reaching out and bursting into flames around him.

"This is not helping my anxiety," muttered the dragon as he deposited the [Pyromaniac] on the floor in front of him. "I suspect this grassland shall not survive the day, but that in itself is a lesson. Always remember the damage your magic can cause. Now. Show me your fire."

Darren looked up at the dragon and smiled. And then burnt. The air was flame and the floor lava, and in the centre of the conflagration a small child laughed, eyes wide as he danced among the flames.

"... I see that my suspicions of this meadow not lasting the day were, in fact, overly optimistic," muttered Kranakellicium as he watched on with interest, despite being engulfed by the fire himself. Darren hadn't cast a spell; he'd simply twisted all of the surrounding mana into fire affinity.

"Why does the fire not burn you?" asked the dragon, invoking [Athena's Insight] upon the child. His [Pyromania] trait conferred a small resistance to fire, and he had on an enchanted ring that offered more, but even combined they shouldn't offer complete protection. His skin should be blistered and his lungs full of blood, yet not even his clothes were singed.

"My fire protects, not hurts!" exclaimed Darren, ceasing his dance to glare at the dragon.

"I... see..." said the dragon, who didn't. It hadn't been a spell, but... perhaps it was not as simple as Kranakellicium assumed. Wishing he had Bruleggiamlixanax around to give a more informed opinion, the dragon was left trying to work out what he was seeing on his own. The mana wasn't completely unstructured. It wasn't enough to call it a spell, but Darren had woven enough order into the chaos to keep the heat away from himself. Yet he did not seem cognisant of what he had done. It was all completely intuitive, based on his feelings that his fire shouldn't cause harm.

The grass would likely disapprove of his narrow definition of 'harm'.

Kranakellicium sighed, adding his own heat to the raging inferno. "It seems that your definition of learning does not match what I expected. Yet perhaps that is for the best; your magic is, perhaps, the closest to a dragon of any human I have met. You operate purely on intuition. Rather than 'teaching' you, a simple display may be more useful."

Darren dropped his control over the ambient mana, staring owlishly at the dragon and waiting to see what he would do. Kranakellicium did not disappoint, facing up into the air and exhaling. A lance of flame pierced the skies, the few light clouds overhead melting away from it.

Darren stared in wonder. To his eyes, there was little of interest. The flame near the dragon's mouth was visible only as a bright white glow in the air. Above that it became almost invisible, before expanding out into a wider, red spear. But Darren never had much use for his eyes. To his mana sense, it was amazing. Kranakellicium was not drawing on the ambient mana, but circulating his own prodigious reserves around his lungs, pushing it into the air as he expelled it. Structure was imprinted onto the mana as it flowed through his throat.

Structure that was far too intricate for Darren to replicate, but structure that was meaningless. Darren had already learnt the trick; that the System disguised its spells. He ignored the surface and looked at the patterns beneath.

Darren took a deep breath and look upwards.

"Wait!" exclaimed Kranakellicium, cutting off his own breath in a panic, but Darren had already started. A second lance of flame pierced the skies, lesser than that of the dragon, and shorter lived, given Darren's small lungs, but nevertheless, it was undeniably a dragon's breath.

"Hehe," giggled Darren, as if he was merely playing a game, and hadn't just copied a dragon's breath after only seeing a single example.

Kranakellicium simply stared as his brief bout of panic gave way to a sort of morbid fascination. Just how far did the talents of this child extend? There was one obvious way to find out.

The dragon spread his wings and focused, exercising long-since unused spells. A beginner's [Flare], a basic [Fireball] and [Flame Lance] then moving up to [Inferno] and [Firestorm]. He even demonstrated [Hephaestus' Wrath], a rank five spell capable of vaporising a city. Darren watched in silence as he drunk up every minute movement of mana. And then he copied them.

A couple of hours later, Darren was starting to wind down, his boundless love of fire having exceeded his bounded stamina. Nevertheless, he was still standing and smiling as a few fireballs did orbits around his small body.

The surrounding landscape was not in such great condition. Pools of lava belched black smoke into the air, the surrounding ground dry and cracked. The sun had vanished behind the murk. There was no longer any green in sight.

Darren launched one of his fireballs at the ground, creating a new lava pool, but then swayed. The remaining two flickered and went out. Kranakellicium extended a clawed paw and caught the child as he fell.

"It seems I have kept you here too long," he said.

"Had... fun..." mumbled Darren.

"Yes. That much I could see," agreed Kranakellicium, looking around at the scene of devastation and having second thoughts about what he'd just started. The child had proven incapable of copying [Hephaestus' Wrath], but every other spell had been added to his arsenal. "I would ask that you do not attempt to repeat that display without supervision. And... perhaps it would be best to not tell your parents of this. Nor Peter. Actually, on second thoughts, just don't tell anyone."

"Secret..."

"Yes. Our little secret. And... perhaps next time I shall bring some others with me. Even if fire is your favourite, you do have other affinities, after all."

"Nn... Fire best..."

"Perhaps, but air affinity could be used to fan your flames. Lightning can cause them. Perhaps life could even make them real."

Darren blinked as the thought of living flames invaded his tired mind, but not even that was enough to stave off sleep. His eyes closed once more and remained so, leaving Kranakellicium to carry him home and hand him off to his mother.

The dragon took to wing, still thinking. His mate, Serlvrenalliacta, could offer air, but what of the other affinities? Bruleggiamlixanax had lightning, but no dragon had high-level life or space abilities. What of the other races? Rank four spatial mages were relatively numerous, many people taking that path due to the demand.

Life was rarer, not because fewer people chose the path, but because of reduced opportunities to level; they relied on people getting hurt, after all, and the sort of injuries that required high-level healers were only common among delvers. High level delving parties normally had their own healers, but healers entering dungeons needed some measure of combat ability of their own. They wouldn't specialise in healing at the expense of all else, and would never take [Life Archmage]. Off the top of his head, the dragon could only think of a single rank four healer. Perhaps he would do.