“Other… dragon…?” Daddy followed my gaze to the massive – much larger than the red that had chased me – black dragon that looked something like a cross between a xenomorph and a dragon with green flecks within its ebon scales and wings that seemed to hold the starry skies within.
My parents acted immediately. Daddy cast a spell and I found myself within an immobile sphere of magical force. Meanwhile, Mama grabbed a necklace and closed her eyes momentarily. The necklace activated and unfolded into an incredible suit of high tech adamantine and carbon fiber armor.
The dragon charged Daddy, but Mama was faster. She clenched her fist and magical circuits all over the armor activated. I’ve taken classes and the amount of energy that would have been required for that many circuits is incredible. Like, ‘more than enough to power a helicopter for hours’ incredible. But she focused it into a single moment.
She punched forward and went flying towards the dragon faster than my eyes could follow. I later had Juiz help me do the math. She hit harder than a freight train going eighty miles an hour. If I had punched with that much force, I would have shattered every bone in my arm. But it didn’t even seem to faze her.
The math also revealed that if she had punched a human in the chest with that much force, their ribs would have shot directly out of their back. But, while the dragon felt it, it survived the blow. It felt it, though, spinning to face Mama.
That was a mistake. Daddy pulled out a rod and began spamming summoning spells. The sky filled with small spherical creatures I recognized from my ‘summons identification’ class as Lantern Archons. They did nothing but take up positions Daddy directed them to.
“Juiz!” Daddy said once he judged he had enough. “Darude Sandstorm, timestamp thirty seconds!” Techno music from before I was born began playing and the archons began pulsing to the beat, unleashing concentrated volleys of light in a rainbow of colors at the dragon, which roared in pain and turned from Mama.
That was another mistake. Mama held out her hand and a hammer materialized in her hand. Special note, I learned later that the damn thing weighs more than twice what I do. Magical circuits – fewer than before, but still quite a few – flared up and she swung with all of her might. I heard the dragon’s bones shatter under the force of the blow.
The dragon roared and spun back on Mama. It breathed an icy breath at her, which she just weathered, at least partly protected by her armor. Meanwhile, Daddy pulled out a metal ingot of some kind – looked like it weighed a couple pounds – and began casting a spell. The ingot was consumed and dozens of small missiles formed in the air around him. He pointed at the dragon and the missiles flew off in a massive barrage.
Each rocket struck and exploded into a small ball of fire. The dragon roared in pain and began pumping its wings, attempting to retreat. Mama took advantage of its distraction and struck it directly in the head with her hammer. The dragon’s skull crumpled with a sickening crunch.
The body twitched for several minutes after it died.
Daddy dispelled the protective barrier around me and gave Mama a potion of some kind, which she gulped down. All signs of injury had faded by the time she reverted her armor into a necklace. They both checked on me to make sure I hadn’t been hurt. As if that had been possible in that protective field.
“That was cool!” I enthused. “You two dominated that fight!”
“Yeah, more than we should have. They’re not usually that stupid,” Mama said.
“It’s almost like something else had subjugated its mind and overridden its self-preser-.” Daddy stopped speaking for a moment. My parents exchanged a glance. “Samantha, get out here!” he said, sounding annoyed.
I’m not exactly sure how to describe this, but I saw what I can only call a tear in reality. Through the hole, I could see stars. A bombshell of a blonde woman in a tight, midriff baring babydoll shirt sporting an image of a cutesy Cthulhu stepped through the hole, then zipped it shut behind her.
She held out her arms towards me. “What’s wrong, Lyr? Not going to give your favorite godmother a hug?”
Confused, I looked at my parents. Daddy nodded. “Go ahead. We can yell at her after.”
I walked over and gave the woman a hug, still a bit nervous. “What’s wrong?” she asked me. “Oh, right, your memories are locked.”
She booped me on the nose and I felt a rush as a bunch of memories came flooding back to me. “Auntie ‘Mantha!” I said, remembering what I used to call her when I was little. I hugged her tighter, suddenly remembering how much I loved my favorite aunt. Apparently she was together with Daddy’s twin sister, who I had also forgotten about. Remembering the anime, I realized why. She didn’t exist, legally. She had been trapped in the same body with Daddy until he had found a way to clone a body for her and put her soul in it.
I have the weirdest family.
And my godmother is a half-elf from the same world my mother is from. She tousled my hair. “How are you enjoying the magic?”
My eyes grew wide as realization dawned. “You were the lady in my vision!”
She grinned at me, then looked at my parents. “Don’t give me that look. I just gave her advice, like any good godmother.”
We chatted for a while. Apparently she had dropped the dragon into Daddy’s created demi-plane to get back at him for scaring me with the dragon illusion. And now that the truth about my parents was out of the bag for me, they decided I didn’t need my memories of Auntie ‘Mantha locked between visits.
It also let me realize that a number of items I owned that I had emotional attachment to had come from her, including my favorite stuffed animal – a stuffed shantak, in case you’re wondering. It was a representation of the shantak she and Daddy had ridden all the way to Golarion.
I also got an idea. “Would it be okay for me to visit Golarion?” I asked. “I think it’d be fun to be an adventurer.”
Daddy sighed. “I’m entirely against the idea. Aside from meeting your mother, it was hell for me. But since your mother has already decided to let you go, you may. But not until you’ve reached competency with several first level spells and all cantrips. And not until you’re nineteen. And you will register with the local adventurer’s guild when you get there to avoid getting in trouble with the local authorities. Finally, you will continue your regular schooling and enjoy your time as a teenager.”
That seemed fair enough. I quickly agreed to the terms.
By the time my suspension was over, I had learned my first cantrip. Daddy called it prestidigitation, more of a multipurpose tool for practicing magic than a proper spell, but he said it was one of his favorites for day to day use. At first I could only use it for levitating very small objects, but with practice I could clean or soil objects with it, alter the flavor of foods or beverages, lightly warm or cool small objects or even recolor things for about an hour.
As my suspension had rendered me ineligible to be on the student council, I didn’t have to worry about that when I returned. Which gave me more time to focus on the protestors who constantly picketed our school now. The signs they held were more than a little offensive. They still considered me some kind of abomination. And I can’t find fault with their logic. They were wrong, of course, but I was the world’s first born sorceress in hundreds of years. I had a high resistance to electricity and cold – Daddy said acid was likely too, but we didn’t feel like testing it. Oh, and my eyes glowed with a golden light while my hair glowed in the moonlight – that was an interesting discovery. So, yes, there was logic there.
Those who had decided I was obviously the Anti-Christ, however…those people were reaching a bit. I mean, well, I guess my ancestors included fallen angels. And I enjoyed fire magic. And I was a bit, um, liberated, when it came to my sexuality. Okay, yeah, I guess there was some logic there, but they didn’t know any of that. They just decided based on surface level things.
After high school, I continued training. In addition to magic, I spent time with Mama learning very basic combat skills. She also taught me languages. Specifically the common tongue of Golarion and the language of dragons, which added to my English, Japanese, Russian and Chinese understanding.
With the sudden influx of free time after high school graduation, Mama decided to spend time teaching me how to ride a horse. I had never wanted to learn before – horses have a smell to them that I’m not fond of – but now it seemed like a good idea.
As part of my training, I went through the Mystic Knights’ secondary boot camp. It was designed to teach you to defend yourself from magical threats as well as counter attack using both magic and non-magic. I was one of the top in the class, having been trained by people who had learned how to fight against magic the likes of which hadn’t been seen on Earth in centuries, if ever.
My favorite part was the sparring. Daddy had created a type of magical force field generator that allowed us to go not just full contact, but full auto. And I’m not being hyperbolic. If guns had been part of the focus, we could have used them on each other with no worry, though only within the arena in the complex – something about the system needing an external power source made them non-functional outside. They were designed to allow us to feel the pain, but not take any actual injury to best simulate actual combat without getting actually hurt.
I had the second highest record, having incapacitated or gotten my opponents’ shields down to ten percent in eleven of my sixteen formal matches. Only one person was better, with a win record of thirteen out of sixteen. I don’t remember his real name, but we all called him Hot-Shot because of his amazing accuracy with the spell identified as Scorching Ray.
I also ended up with a nickname. They called me Witchblade. Apparently I get, um, excited, by combat.
For my nineteenth birthday, my parents took me on a trip to the moon and Mars. Hand to God. We took a sled and bounced around like idiots. All I was wearing beyond normal clothing was a necklace that would let me breathe and shielded me from temperatures too cold even for me.
Then the day came and I found myself on Golarion. My parents moved me into their house in Magnimar. They took me around and showed me the city, and then got me registered as an adventurer. An official adventurer. I could take jobs in any country with an affiliated adventurer’s guild.
The weirdest part was that no one even seemed to bat an eye at my presence in Magnimar. They had become so used to the strange that the six foot tall girl with the lavender hair – my bought me those cybernetic hair color implants – didn’t stand out all that much. I mean, a little. But regular trade with Valor’s Triumph and becoming the headquarters of the Adventurer’s Guild had brought so many weird faces to town that I was simply another.
I hear that’s more or less what it’s like to live in Portland, actually.
Of course, with so many adventurers in town, it was hard to find jobs in Magnimar. I ended up signing on to assist a bounty hunter on a number of jobs. That wasn’t bad for a while, but eventually I discovered that he was the son my father suspected might exist but had never been able to find.
We ended up getting into a huge fight. He disapproved of my carefree lifestyle, particularly the wenching. I mean, bar wenches are there to be seduced, right? Anyway, my half-brother fought and I ended up storming off.
Smooth move, that. Now I had nothing to do. That left me only one other option: The Voidstrife Cartel, a continent spanning trade group owned in part by my father and mostly managed by his adopted brother, Chadwick Voidstrife. I popped into the Magnimar office to see if they had any remotely interesting work.
So here I am, sitting in the back of a wagon on my way to a tiny ass town in the middle of nowhere – they call it Heldren, I’m told – to see if I can find out why caravans going through the area keep disappearing. Maybe when I’m done I’ll go through Taldor and see the country my mother saved when she was about my age.
Eventually I’ve just got to find something fun to challenge me. It’s either that or go to Absalom and go to college. If I’d wanted to go school, I could have stayed on Earth.
I just had to work at it. Search high and low. It’s not like you find the beginnings of an adventure just lying in the middle of the road. Right?
<HA!>
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