Dragon Sorcerer 1- Chapter 42 (Patreon)

Chapter 42- All In

Cami and I stared at one another as the weight of what I had just said sunk in. Dragons are not followers of the gods in the same way that the lesser races are. Nor are we ignorant. The gods are powerful and going against them might be something that a wyrm could do, but not a dragon such as myself. As dragons are prone to say, I might have been hatched at night, but it wasn’t last night.

“Why would they do that?”

“It’s something that Temulara said to me.”

Cami sat there, waiting for me to clarify.

“She said she was prohibited from killing the creature which possessed the kraken by the pact.”

Cami said, “So she has a pact with someone which keeps her from helping you?”

“No, she helped me plenty. She gave me four new spells, although I still need to select them. But, I don’t think it was just some random agreement she was talking about. The way she said ‘the pact’ rather than ‘a pact’ makes me think that maybe all the gods are party to some agreement, which limits what they can do on Ileria.”

“But why would the gods make an agreement like that? The priests always make it sound like the gods can do anything.”

“A better question might be, who did they make the pact with? But before we go too far down that road, I was wondering if… no… sorry, never mind.”

Cami stared at me intently. “You can’t start out like that and then not tell person. Trust me, I’m your friend at least, and maybe more. Err… I mean maybe the bond is more.”

“Well, I was wondering if you wanted to help me select the best spells. I find myself questioning things I’ve taken for granted up to this point. What if the dragon way isn’t the only way?”

She leaned in and hugged me. “That’s big. It’s like the priests say, “You can’t judge another until you’ve walked their path. And of course I’d be happy to help you learn more spells, plus we can share spells with each other. Oh, and maybe you can help me decide how to spend the DKP I have. I already spent my XP, but that’s a whole other issue.”

I was extremely anxious to go through the new spells, so while I knew I probably should have asked her what she meant about her XP, I just couldn’t wait and sent the descriptions of the spells over to her. But then a thought hit me. I weighed it for a moment before I opened up my full stat sheet to her.

A notification popped up.

You have offered to share your full stat sheet with your companion, and she has accepted. In return, she is offering to share her full stat sheet with you. Do you wish to accept?

I immediately triggered my acceptance and was greeted not only by her stat sheet, but by another notification.

By sharing your stat sheets, your bond has become closer. You have reached the 7th level of the bonding process. As a result, you will now be able to see the other’s stat sheet at any time as part of your own. The range of your telepathy has also been increased to 2000 feet.

By sharing the secret of the dragon dream with your bonded companion, you have displayed a rarely shown trait amongst dragonkind, the ability to trust another.

Your bond has increased to 8th level. Your bond will not gain 3% of your stats added to her own.

Your bond has increased to 9th level. You will now gain a 25% bonus to all DKP you earn rounded up to a minimum bonus of +1 DKP each time. This represents the faster growth your human bonded is capable of and how her nature now influences you.

The bond goes both ways. Each of you will affect the other. Warning once you reach level 10 in your bond, it is irreversible and may only be ended by the death of one of the bonded companions. In order to reach the 10th level of the bond, your companion must upgrade her class to Dragon Rider. She will still maintain her secondary class and as a onetime benefit she will gain all the stats she would have gained if Dragon Rider was her class from the very beginning. Reaching level 10 in the bond will also affect your growth rate.

She must have gotten the notifications too because she gasped and had that look like she was staring off at a distant place. I took the time to look at her status sheet, too. It wasn’t that bad when compared to my human form, but we both needed to power up. I had the feeling that greater and greater threats were going to be coming.

“Thank you, I knew the dragon dream was a big secret but didn’t realize how big it was. Thank you for trusting me with that, and you must be ridiculously strong, because even that extra 1% of your strength makes it hard for me to stand up without jumping. Oh never mind, I can just look at what your strength is for myself. Hmm… 340. That is just crazy. I only gained an extra point of strength, but it still makes a big difference at this level. I bet if you gained a single point, you wouldn’t notice.”

“I actually gained 10 points as well as 3 DKP for the battle and strangely enough, I gained a title which upgraded my Shape Change ability. Apparently, because I cast a spell learned in my human form while in dragon form, I achieved a new level of synergy. The funny thing is that some of the dragons in the dragon dream had titles too, but I didn’t think anything of it. Now, I’m wondering if storm wielder was just something one of my ancestors called himself or if it was a system title that came with perks.

Then I looked at the title again, but this time I knew that Cami was looking with me.

Morfi Apprentice- you have displayed basic synergy between your forms. Gain an extra 5% of your greater strength while in lesser forms. The time it takes for all transformations is reduced by 50%.

I had already tested it out and discovered that the partial transformation to create claws was now something I could do in one second. It would be useful in combat. Thinking about claws, though, made me remember part of Cami’s stat sheet.

“Have you tried your claws yet?”

She grew pale suddenly. “Uh, no… I wasn’t able to before. It was just something I had the potential for, but now, since our bond increased, it feels like I could do it.”

I was all excited. Something about her being able to get dragon claws seemed significant to me. It wasn’t just that it would help her defend herself better. No, I think it must be that because I was living in a human form all the time, it would make me feel better if a human, actually my human, were to display a draconic trait.

When she hesitated, I asked, “Is something wrong?”

She blushed.

I shook my head slowly. “Oh, you’re afraid that getting claws will turn you into a monster.”

She reached out and grabbed my hand. “Never that. I don’t think you’re a monster.”

“You haven’t seen me in my true form for a long time. Maybe you’ve just forgotten.” The words came out slowly, feeling like they were being yanked out. I didn’t want that to be the case, but I feared it. This connection was already messing me up.

“Never that. You were the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. I’m actually ashamed of what is scaring me, but… um, it looks pretty painful when you did it. I’m worried I’ll cry out.”

Suddenly, it was like a weight was lifted off of me. I couldn’t help but laugh, which caused her face to go from pale to red.

“Don’t laugh, you didn’t see the expressions on your face when you were making those claws the first time.”

I brought my laughter under control and said, “Okay, fine. It did hurt a fair bit the first time, but it was much easier after that. And since I got the title, I’ve tried it a few times. Partial transformations don’t seem to count as one of my three per day limit, so I practiced a bunch. It is actually pretty easy.”

She grimaced, but then held up her hands. The nails of her fingers were so flat and pointless. I never understood this about the way the gods made humans. Even a good claw would have made them more effective as hunters, but no, they had to be soft in just about every way.

I saw the strain on Cami’s face, and then her fingers transformed. They grew scales, and the nail disappeared to be replaced a moment later by a thick, strong claw. The pain on her face made me feel protective, but she needed to master this on her own, so I sat back. Eventually, when she sucked in a deep breath, I knew she’d completed it.

Within a few seconds, she was practicing swinging the claws through the air.

She squealed, “This is so cool!”

“Good to be a dragon, or at least have dragon claws.” My confidence came through my words, and she nodded in eager agreement.

After we discussed that a bit further, I decided at some point I'd need to tell her about the orc with wings, but no reason to get her hopes up now. And of course, I wanted to pick my spells. I’d been patient and encouraged Cami, but it was Nico time now.

We discussed it. Airy Water was picked first since it was one of Temulara’s conditions for the gift.  We weighed out the various options. I kept wanting choose Primal Senses because I missed my keen senses while not in my dragon form. Cami argued that I wouldn’t be able to keep it up all the time, and that there were other spells which were necessary.

“Don’t you want Wizard Eye? Think about it. We’re going to need to be able to spy on people when we get to the university. It seems like the best choice for that.”

“Hmm… I do like the idea of keeping tabs on anyone who might oppose us. We will want to rise to the top of the university. None shall stand against us.”

Her eyes got wide at that. “Uh, yeah, and we’ll want to make sure no figures out who you are.”

I chuckled as I had visions of us crushing the other students. I’m sure what she said would work too, but I had to envision that the university at least in part consisted of competing against other students.

Unfortunately, that was all my available spells for 4th Tier, so I had to give up on Ferocity. Oh well, I still wanted some of the others. “We can discount Soul’s Light.”

“What? Won’t that be necessary for fighting the horrors?” Cami asked.

“Uh, I think they’re pretty rare and I don’t really like the idea of a spell which could damage my soul. Besides, I haven’t met anything yet, that a good lightning bolt won’t handle. Yeah, that decides it, I definitely need, Call the Charge.

After talking it through further with Cami, I agreed that Path of Frost was likely the spell, which would be most useful to me now. Of course, I then went on to choose Adoration of the Fearful. I mean what was the point of having dragon fear if I couldn’t use it in creative ways. I just knew there were going to be moments at the university where I’d feel the urge to make someone bow before me.

I actually shivered in anticipation while Cami just shook her head. She opted not to learn that spell from me. Based upon my limited knowledge and what we could figure out, sorcerers could only learn a limited number of spells and she didn’t want to have to expend DKP later to change out a less useful spell.

Frustratingly, I wasn’t able to share Lesser Regeneration with her. The only conclusion we could come up with was that it was because the spell belonged to the domain of a specific god.

“By, the way, I think I may be responsible for calling Temulara down to you,” Cami said out of the blue as I was looking my stat sheet over once again, while toying with the idea of whether I could test out Call the Charge on board the ship safely.

That got my attention, though. When I was looking at her, she explained about the temple in Cloverdale and how the two old priests there taught about all twelve gods. It was the only reason she had gotten to learn to read.

“I don’t think you did anything wrong, but we should probably be careful involving the gods moving forward until we figure out what this pact is and what they’re hiding. Who knows what they might be keeping from us.

“Besides, don’t we need to focus on figuring out how to turn you into a dragon rider? That will give both of us big upgrades.”

“I thought you were unsure about letting anyone ride you,” Cami said.

“Um, not gonna lie. I like you more than anyone I’ve ever met, and I’m still not completely sure about it. But my mother taught me that if you’re going to attack, you don’t start and then stop. You either attack or you don’t. I’ve decided to go forward with this bond thing and so I’m all in on it.”

She smiled. “That makes me happier than you can know.”

I laughed in response. “You just want to ride me.”

“Can you blame me? Not all of us get to fly, but now I’m going to get to fly and on the back of the world’s most gorgeous dragon at that.”

Her enthusiasm pleased me a great deal. I’m certain it had nothing to do with her flattery.