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Octavian crept through the bogs outside of town, slathered in the ointment that his dragon mom, Olive, had insisted that he always wear outside. When he was a baby, he hadn’t understood why, but he was eight whole years old now, and he understood that the bugs could have sickness, and that monsters could eat people sometimes, and that the ointment would help him taste bad to both, so they wouldn’t bite him or eat him.He didn’t have his mana senses yet, so he had to just rely on his eyes as he crept along under the deep shadows of the half moon overhead. He paused to stare at a huge bug as it crawled along a fallen log nearby.He didn’t know anything about this bug. It kind of looked like a stink bug, but it had long, graceful wings that looked more like the ones that were on a bat than a bug should have, and there were faint pinpricks of orange splattered along the bug’s back.He studied it for several long moments, to make sure he could remember everything about it. His dragon mom, was really good with plants and bugs, and she could probably tell him about it, and if not, they’d have to go to the library and see if they had any books about it. It would probably have to be one of the grown up books, because he’d read all of the books about animals and bugs and plants and monsters that there were for people his age. He’d even gone to the other libraries in the city to look for more…There was a spot of light in the distance, and Octavian turned around, looking for what had caused it. Fireflies? Or something else?He finally spotted it when another flash of light appeared, darting among the trees, and Octavian leaned forward.It was a pixie, floating around and using bright flashes of light to drive away a bat, which was swooping down to try and eat it. The silly bat probably thought that the pixie was a really big lightning bug or something. A lot of people thought bats were blind, which wasn’t true. They did use sounds to see too, but their eyes worked just as well as people’s!His human mom, Thea, had told him to always help the small folk when you got the chance, so Octavian leapt up and swept his arms wide, throwing them around to try and spook the bat. The bat, probably confused by this entire thing now, fluttered to the side, then turned and started fluttering away. Octavian felt a little bad, so he reached into his pocket and pulled out an apple slice, then threw it in the direction of the retreating bat. He hoped the bat would be able to eat it.And if the bat couldn’t, something else would. It was good food, with lots of energy in it, and ants or other bugs or bats could eat it.And even if they didn’t, for whatever reason, then it would just become part of the earth again one day. It was an apple slice, not trash!The tiny pixie flitted in front of Octavian’s face.“Oh, you’re a small human!”“I’m eight!” Octavian said defensively.“Eight is eight and not nine,” the pixie said, and Octavian nodded his agreement. It was true, after all!“Well. Thank you, little human,” the pixie said, then darted in and kissed him on his forehead, almost like one of his moms tucking him into bed. There was a slight tingle from where the kiss was, and the pixie flitted away a moment later.“Bye!” the pixie said, and Octavian waved goodbye, and turned to creep deeper into the bog before his moms could find him and make him go to bed.As he wandered deeper, he heard his human mom calling for him to come in to sleep, and he pretended that he couldn’t hear her, and instead leapt onto a log and scurried deeper.That was when he saw it.There was a swirling blue light in the darkness, only about fifteen feet away from him.
A will-o-wisp!Wow…He had seen them in the bogs from a long ways away, but he’d never seen one that was this close to him before. Judging from the illustrations in the books he had read, this was the kind of will-o-wisp that would like to help people back to roads and even sometimes find treasure, not the kind that would lure people off the roads and be bad.It was the rich, royal blue that he expected, but it wasn’t the same color throughout. Its core seemed to be a slightly lighter shade, and it formed two tiny little legs. Octavian didn’t know why it needed legs, because it was entirely weightless as it bobbed there, but
it had them. It also had some even lighter, almost white, segments that made up a mouth, two eyes, and tiny dot-like eyebrows.Octavian stepped forwards, then waved to the will-o-wisp.“Hi! I’m Octavian.”The wisp spun to face him fully, then bobbed up and sat on top of his hair. Octavian giggled, reached up, and petted the little spirit on the top of its head-like flames. It tickled!“What’s your name?” Octavian asked. The wisp floated off his hair and then spun around Octavian's head three times.“Hmm,” Octavian said. “I don’t know how to say that. Is there something else I can call you?”The wisp bobbed left, then right, then flared a bright blue as it shot away.“Wait, come back!” Octavian called. He didn’t chase it, because even though it looked like the good kind, he didn’t want to do something he’d get in trouble for.Then a hand laid on his shoulder, and he realized that his dragon mom was behind him.
“You scared away my new friend,” Octavian pouted.“You didn’t listen to your mother,” Olive said. “She called you back to bed.”
“Fine…” Octavian said, scuffing his feet.Later that night, as he was trying to sleep, he spotted a blue light at his window, and leapt out of his bed, then threw the window open.“You came back!” Octavian said in a half-whisper, too excited to fully keep his voice down. The spirit bobbed over and landed on his head again, and Octavian shut the window, mostly, leaving it cracked only a little bit, so the wisp could leave if it wanted to.The following morning, when his klagmuhme mom, Granny Kater, woke him up, she sighed and ran a hand through her hair.“Octavian. Did you catch a will-o-wisp and bring it inside?”Some people found it weird that one of his moms was nicknamed Granny, but Octavian didn’t understand why. It was perfectly simple. She was old! She was forty-three, and sometimes looked like an old woman. His other moms were only in their thirties, and neither of them looked old, only sometimes like a dragon, so when he had been little, he had nicknamed her Granny Kater, and the name had stuck.“No,” Octavian said, shaking his head. “The wisp got scared when Mom Olive found me, and so they ran away. But then when I was in bed, they bumped on the window and I opened it.”A faint smile touched his klagmuhme mom’s face, and she shook her head.
“Octavian, you shouldn’t just start letting creatures come into the house…”“Why not?” he asked curiously.“You do with the dragons and estragons and drakes and hydras and lindworms and basilisk and dracones-herba and –”“That’s a conservation effort, and we rarely actually let them stay in the house,” his dragon mom said.“But the will-o-wisp can stick around as long as it wants, but don’t try to force it to stay, okay?”She extended a finger, which shifted into the shape of a chicken’s finger and poked the wisp.“Okay!” Octavian said, smiling. His klagmuhme mom smiled back at him and patted his head.“His name is Roh, dear,” she told him, and he gasped.“I thought his name was spinning around in a circle around someone three times!” he said.Kater tried to stifle a giggle as Octavian and Roh ran into the kitchen, and her wife, Thea, greeted the pair. A moment later, her other wife, Olive, stepped up next to her, and Kater turned.“Is the spirit’s name really Roh?” the dragon asked.“It doesn’t have much of a name, but that seems to be the closest to a self-identity that it does have,” Kater told Olive.
“Roh is an approximation.”“How long will it be sticking around the house?” Olive asked, no judgment in her tone.“I don’t know,” Kater said.“Probably a couple of days, before it loses interest and moves back into the bog to spread itself around and look at things.”“Four weeks,” the draconic arcanist responded.“I’ll take that bet,” Kater said.“You’re both wrong, dears,” Thea said, sticking her head in from the kitchen.
“It’s not leaving.”“No way,” Kater said, shaking her head.“I doubt it,” Olive said.Thea just smiled mysteriously at them, then pulled her head back in.Over the following days, Kater was proven wrong, as Roh kept sticking around, playing with Octavian. When Cettilyn came over to play with Octavian, Roh seemed quite amused with her long hair, and would duck in and out of it.Over the following weeks, Olive was proven wrong, as Roh still kept sticking around, playing with Octavian, and even going to school with him.That wound up causing a scene, and all three of them had to argue repeatedly with the principal of the school that they weren’t going to tear a spirit away from their child, just because it stood out a bit. After all, all three of them stood out a bit, and the dragon sanctuary stood out too.As the weeks turned into months, and the months turned into years, it gradually became more and more apparent that Octavian and Roh were developing quite the bond. The spirit’s face became more developed, and the two were rarely seen apart.When the public schools started training with ungated mana, Octavian and Roh took to practicing together, and as a fourteen year old Octavain and Cettilyn stood in the yard, bouncing Roh back and forth between them on currents of ungated mana, Octavian’s three moms gathered together in the kitchen.“I was right about Roh,” Thea said, and Kater smiled. So many years later, she’d almost forgotten the bet. Olive on the other hand, sighed, and drew a small silver coin from her pocket, flicking it at Thea, who caught it out of the air and put it away.“Do you think this means that he’s going to awaken death mana?” Olive asked. “I’ve heard that some humans with especially strong affinities for a certain mana type can show signs like attracting spirits to them.”“I expect his mana won’t entirely be human,” Kater responded. “My bet is that he’s going to have a legacy that grants him a composite that’s close to my own, or maybe close to the will-o-wisps. They’re not entirely dissimilar, you know.”Both of them turned to Thea, who seemed to consider for a moment.“A warlock,” Thea finally said. “I expect that he’ll be a warlock.”
“No way,” Kater said, and Olive shook her head.“Warlocks are too rare,” Olive said.
Thea just smiled at them and started putting on a pot of tea to boil.“Oh, and by the way,” Thea said.
“You should keep an eye out for poachers in the next couple of years, Olive. I have an odd feeling that the sky estragon migrations over the next few years will have some oddities, and the poachers will move first. They’re getting stronger, and I’m not sure when that will stop…”Kater and Olive exchanged a look. For all that they protested her bets, they also knew that betting against Thea was never a good idea. If this prediction was right, then they’d all be in for some interesting times.

Eira Talik sat in the roots of Yesgol, under the tutelage of the instructor of Druidcraft, Skyrr Lindson. Two other commoner students sat with her, listening to his lecture, not that it could be called that.She had never liked the adage that ‘those who can’t do, teach’, given that her mother was a teacher of mathematics for noble children, but was quite competent, having pulled herself up from being a factory worker.But Skyrr Lindson was making her wonder if there might be something to the saying after all.“Close your eyes!” the tall, elderly nobleman roared. “Just do it! Stop! Being! Stupid!”Eira shifted. Connecting with her familiar’s mind was easy, and seeing through its eyes wasn’t too hard either, but this was an order of magnitude more difficult.Having someone screaming at her was not helping her focus.She did her best to tune him out, reaching for the connection with Haren, her sand elemental scarab. He didn’t have much of a mind, being a scarab beetle the size of an apple, but what little there was buzzed in irritation, not liking her being yelled at any more than she did.If she pulled on that connection, she could manifest a vessel for him in the physical world, but she was trying to do the opposite here. She wanted to enter the Elemental Fields, the plane on which Haren resided, at least in mind. Doing as much in body was much harder – Skyrr had insisted that if they tried it, their simple minds would crumble under the effort of the other world, and they would assuredly die.She had her reservations about the validity of that statement, given she’d technically opened a portal, however briefly, when she’d used the summoning scroll to summon Haren, but she didn’t have an easy way to open a portal on her own.Which left her with the technique that Skyrr called intellect overriding or cohabitation for utilization of bargain creation.That name was pretentious. She had mentally named it fusion fishing.“Focus!” Skyrr screamed, and the connection she was making snapped like a cord stretched too far. Her patience snapped at the same time, and her eyes flew open.“It’s hard to focus with you screaming your head off at us!” she snapped, only for Skyrr to slam a massive staff into the ground. The gaudy thing was lined with gold and gemstones and glowed with enchanted power, and chains exploded from it, formed of force magic, then bound her hands to the ground.“Listen here missy,” Skyrr said. “As a–”“As a member of the druid focused house beneath house Heenling, you know what you’re doing,” Eira finished, looking up at him from where she was splayed on the floor. “You keep telling us that. But you don’t explain why you’re screaming!”“It is needed!” he huffed, slamming his staff on the ground again, and creating a massive, resonant boom, one that had to be magically enhanced. “Question me again, and you’re going to be serving a weeklong detention!”Eira shut up and crouched back in her circle, focusing her mind again.She found nothing in that lesson. She was able to connect to the thoughts and feelings of Haren easier and easier, certainly, but she couldn’t quite manage fully intermingling herself with him, and she left class having made no more progress, and her stomach rumbling.She considered for a moment if she could afford to eat at the cafeteria. She hadn’t purchased the package that came with free meals, having expected that she’d be able to get a job in town, but she could really only work on weekends, and everything in Hallowbrooke was so expensive…No. She’d be fine without dinner tonight.She returned to the suite of rooms she shared with three other girls of common stock, then locked herself in her room and prepared to do something stupid.She was falling behind her peers, and she could acknowledge that.The noble students didn’t need to rely on fusion fishing to get contracts, they could just summon up whatever creature they wanted, purchasing the instructions, or even ones that were already bound in magic and oaths.The noble students had the licenses to afford materials from other planes to use in their augmentation or summoning spells, which she couldn’t.
And even the poorest of noble students had stronger familiars than an elemental scarab.Eira took a breath and considered if she was really going to do this, then decided that she had to. She was falling behind, and if she didn’t take a risk, she wasn’t going to be able to even get halfway to caught up, let alone actually win. Life wasn’t a meritocracy, no matter how much people liked to pretend that it was.She took out a long roll of paper, a brush, and some paint, and she drew out the basic circle from memory. There wasn’t much use for rituals in Druidry – generally, it was thought that only portals and their ilk were needed. This spell was one of the exceptions, meant to mesh aura together, it worked on similar principles to portal magic, and should help her with combining her consciousness with Haren.It was also dangerous, for reasons she didn’t entirely understand, but the basics of which she thought had to do with damage to the aura. That was why they were only allowed to practice fusion fishing with the professor there.But Skyrr was as worthless as fangs on a cow. She had no choice. She had to do this alone.She submerged her consciousness into Heran, and felt their connection intimately. Again, she dug deeper.She failed, but without Skyrr screaming at her to just do better, she didn’t snap back to her body, and instead dove deeper again.It wasn’t the second, or the third, or the fourth attempt that succeeded. By the time she succeeded, she’d entirely lost count of which attempt she was on.But then she saw it.She was so small, and so low to the ground, warm sands around her. Her wings buzzed, shaking the sand slightly to stop it from lodging uncomfortably in her carapace.Her eyes snapped open, and she let out a gasp. Within her, Heran felt… distraught. He’d lost control of himself for a moment.She had taken it from him.She shivered.That… wasn’t right. Sure, he was a bug, but they were bonded now. She shouldn’t just puppeteer his body as if he had nothing.She dove in again. She had succeeded in accessing his body, his real body, not just a vessel.And this time, as she dove in, she also reached out, like trying to summon a vessel for him to pilot.
And this time, when she saw the sands, it wasn’t just her.Eira Talik saw the sands.Heran the sand scarab, saw the sands.Together, two as one, one as two, separate.In unison, they rose off the ground, Heran ceding control to Eira, but still able to guide and still able to move himself.They buzzed out over the desert, and Heran guided them even as Eira flew them. The scarab didn’t have conscious thought, exactly, but he did know things. The parts of the desert where danger lurked. He couldn’t put a name to the dangers, but Eira’s mind was able to sort the jumble of inherent instincts.If she flew too high, then metal birds that captured and rode on the hot winds of the desert would descend and consume her. If she flew too low, the serpents that wove through the sand would rise up and snap up. If she flew to the west, the desert went on and on like this forever, but to the east there was more and more heat, and slowly the sand became as glass. To the north, rocks began appearing, and to the south, there was the peace-water.Eira parsed that memory again.To the south, there was an oasis, where a powerful water elemental lizard lived. It allowed the creatures here to drink from its pool for a short time each day, but it did not allow violence. Any violence was met with the absolute destruction of the one who incited it, and any who overstayed their welcome was pushed out.Even thinking about the water lizard seemed to send spikes of panic through Heran’s mind, so Eira let that knot of instinct fade.
The sand scarab was one the least of the creatures within the desert, the smallest and least powerful of all things save for the shapeless ones who weren’t even creatures, some of the plants, and the sand itself.The instincts to command the sand were weak and thin. Eira had thought its mind was weak now, but compared to what it had been before the calling and the boding, its mind was supercharged.But the scarab did have some advantages. The sandy carapace allowed them to blend in and hide well, and their small size accentuated this ability.On its own, Heran had used these instincts to survive. To feast on a plant and evade predators and live another day.But together…Eira flew towards the oasis, stopping out of the range of its territory, but close enough that she could flee within its territory should the worst arise, and together, she and Heran studied the sand for predators.Heran spotted a vast sand serpent, so they left, scouting around the edge of the territory until, at last, they found the place for her plan.They buried themselves in a thin layer of sand and waited. Some of the iron birds flew down to drink, and the pair watched them leave. Serpents moved in and out, and the pair watched them leave.Then another scarab buzzed in to drink, and the pair grew alert. Eira tried to move Heran’s magic…And failed.Heran moved his magic, though, understanding what she needed.When the scarab left, they exploded out of the sand, and the grains that had been kicked up flowed towards the other scarab. It pushed at them, but compared to the combined might of Heran and Eira, it was weak.Heran and Eira dove at it, clacking their pincers in warning, but it bit back, snapping at them.And Eira suddenly understood the warnings she’d been given.Pain exploded through both Heran’s body and her own. She almost snapped back into her own body to check if she’d been wounded somehow, and it was only through sheer will that she was able to maintain the state of oneness with Heran. It was like being shouted at by Skyrr, but a thousand times worse.She took a breath and caught up with Heran. He’d pinned the other scarab, easy to do with her aura flowing to him and enhancing him.She sent her aura through him more, extending a trickle to the new scarab, and in it, she offered a temporary bond. Heran clacked four times, and the scarab clacked its own mandibles four times.Hesitantly, she felt the scarab’s aura intermingling with her own.Eria snapped back to her own body, and within her aura, she could feel a new spot of consciousness appearing. A tattoo of a scarab burned itself onto the back of her left shoulder, a mirror of the one on her right.This bond felt… shallower. The new scarab, Arrith, was only throwing in her lot with Eira because of the danger of saying no, and the rewards of the advancements from Eira’s far more potent aura. It wasn’t clear in words, exactly, but Eira understood.Arrith would leave, once she’d extracted what she considered to be sufficient benefits from Eira’s aura.But that was fine.Eira closed her eyes and started reaching within, looking to become one with Heran again. She could make this work. She had two scarabs, and with them, she could lay more complex ambushes.She might need to recruit a third, but once that was done, she intended to ensnare one of the snakes, and barter for its service.From there… Who knew? Maybe one day she could even explore more of the Elemental Fields, and forge relations in person.But she knew one thing.
Eira Talik would not stay behind for long.