Chapter 1- Chromatic Disposition
When she awakes, Crystalia finds herself in the very world she had been seeking for her entire life. She looks in amazement at the scenery around her. The ground was a shimmering expanse of fragile, crystalline grass; the sky, an ever shifting swirl of dancing chromatic energies. She gasps in awe as her eyes dart around, eventually landing on a massive spherical form, surrounded by hundreds of thousands of small crystal shards, hovering above the ground as it combs the area around it with planes of energy.
Crystalia looks around frantically as a plane of energy reaches out in her direction, trying desperately to find a place to hide.
The plane of energy reaches her and turns from green to red and a mysterious, echoey voice speaks in her head. "Hello Crystalia. I've been looking for you." The massive crystalline orb shoots towards the relatively tiny dragoness, scaring her.
"W..wh...what do you want?" Crystalia lowers her head submissively and she makes herself look as small as possible.
"It is okay, daughter of magic." Another plane of energy scans her form, stopping on the crystal she wears around her neck. "I see you've solved my eldest daughter's challenge, well done."
"T..t..thanks." Crystalia is still uneasy with the current situation, and her posture betrays as much.
"Look, I promise I am not here to hurt you." The entity stops speaking, as if searching for a reason for her to believe what it says. "Why would I hurt my own child?"
Crystalia suddenly snaps out of her shock. "You're not my mother!"
"No, but I did have a hand in your creation. Why do you think you are so well attuned to the chromatic magics?"
"Luck?" Crystalia tries to rationalize her powers, but comes up empty.
"If only you knew the extent of your abilities." New images begin to whiz through Crystalia's mind, each one showing a different color of chromatic energy and one of its uses. "See, my magic is infinitely combinable. You can mix any number of colors to achieve any effect you wish." The images stop flowing through Crystalia's mind.
"So you're not going to kill me?" Crystalia gulps.
The entity's voice rings out with a distinctly feminine laugh. "No, I do not wish to harm you."
"S..so why did you bring me here?" Crystalia stutters shakily.
"Because I needed to reactivate your conduit." The entity begins to radiate a series of colors, and the crystal around Crystalia's neck begins to do the same.
Crystalia watches in awe for the few moments this lasts before the entity stops and speaks to her again. "Goodbye, daughter of magic."
Crystalia opens her mouth to ask what exactly the conduit does, but she finds herself back in the secret room before she can get a word in. She ponders the recent events for a few moments before speaking to the assistant system. "Assistant, what exits are safe?"
The assistant's voice suddenly speaks from the far end of the room, "Currently, the royal quarters, and the library."
Crystalia glances around the room before speaking to the system again, "Where is the exit to the royal quarters?"
A portal ignites on one side of the room. "Portal established to the royal quarters."
Crystalia walks over to the portal before jumping through. Upon exiting, she finds herself in her loft in the queen's chambers; she then runs to the bathroom to relieve herself, sighing contently as she does. Crystalia happens to glance into the mirror as she passes by it, so she stops and looks at herself for a moment.
A knock on the door shocks her from her enjoyment, before Adinia hollers from outside the room. "Crystalia, are you in there?"
"Yes, I am."
"Well do be quick, I need to freshen up before I go to bed."
Crystalia looks out the glazed window and finds no sign of the sun, and she realizes just how long her quest had taken her. She walks to the door and opens it, letting Adinia in before exiting, leaving the Queen to do her business. She removes her fabric and climbs in bed, falling asleep almost immediately after a stressful few days.
. . .
The next day sees Crystalia join her queen in the grand hall for breakfast.
"Good morning Adinia." Crystalia smiles at the older female. "How was your night?"
Adinia looks over towards her student, "Good morning, Crystalia. My night was very restful, yours?"
Crystalia takes her seat next to the queen. "I don't even remember falling asleep. I feel like I got in bed and, one second later, I was waking up to the morning sun."
"That's good. I always love it when I have that kind of night." Adinia pulls the lid off of the platter before her and digs into her breakfast.
Crystalia does the same, wolfing down her food, but still enjoying every bite. "Are we going to train today?" She asks Adinia excitedly, her voice almost squeaking as she jitters happily.
"Yes, we are, but you do seem overly excited for it. Would you mind elaborating as to why?" Adinia responds inquisitively.
"You'll see!" Crystalia shakes her body excitedly.
"I guess I will." Adinia chuckles uncomfortably, turning to head back to her quarters.
They start their journey walking, but they quickly increase in pace, both laughing happily and pushing eachother playfully. They force themselves to calm down and look dignified as they approach the queens guard posted outside Adinia's room.
The guards open the door without question, and close it quickly behind the two females.
Adinia hops up to the loft and opens the portal, Crystalia in tow.
They hop through one after the other and land gracefully on the other side, laughing goofily as they immediately resume playfighting. After a few hours of pouncing, scratching, and nipping, they both crash to the ground, completely exhausted.
"Th...that was amazing!" Crystalia pants, still giggling to herself.
"Indeed, we should do that more often!" Adinia chirps from a few feet away, giggling and panting as well.
The two 'nesses rest for a while, both eventually recollecting their wits and standing to face the other.
"Okay, I want you to throw everything you can at me, all at once." Adinia grins at her student, unaware of the power she now possesses.
Crystalia, also oblivious to her power, does as she's told. What she unleashes, though, is a mystery to her, as she faints immediately due to the rush of energy coursing through her body.
. . .
Crystalia wakes around midday, and finds herself still in Adinia's training grounds. She hops up quickly, wincing slightly, and quickly spots Adinia. The older female is laying on the ground, her back pressed against the magical barrier that encases the area. Crystalia rushes forward, seeing, to her relief, that the Queen was still breathing. "She's just unconscious, she'll be okay", Crystalia reassures herself; reaching forward, she places a paw on Adina's neck, checking her pulse. She finds it and sighs; she then begins what she thinks will be the laborious process of casting a revitalization spell. Instead, white magic energy flows from the crystal around her neck, reaching out and surrounding Adinia's head as her eyes start to twitch; the energy dissipates as Adinia wakes.
"What the hell was that!" Adinia shouts as soon as she gathers herself.
"I...I don't know..." Crystalia's voice trembles as she speaks.
Adinia groans painedly and Crystalia helps her up. The younger female happens to look over the Queen's body as she helps the other 'ness up, and she gasps when she sees the damage she had caused. She had broken both of Adinia's wings, singed her entire front end, torn the membrane of one wing, put a gash down Adinia's side, dislocated a shoulder, and broken at least one paw.
"Adinia... I'm so sorry, please, let me fix this!" Crystalia quickly sets the Queen down on her better side, and waits for a response.
After a few minutes of huffing for breath, Adinia is still unable to speak. Crystalia takes notice to the fact that her breaths are getting less and less frequent, quickly getting to worrying levels.
"Oh god..." Crystalia thinks to herself, "I must've broken a rib and punctured her lungs!"
The younger female does everything in her power to stay calm, and she places a paw on Adinia's chest.
When she does, the spectacle that unfolds before her eyes will stay with Crystalia forever.
A sudden wave of white energy runs over Adinia's chest, extending down her body to the tips of her snout and tail. Immediately, the Queen's breaths begin to return to normal, and her wounds begin to seal, her broken bones putting themselves back in place and growing back together, as if nothing had been amis.
Adinia first gasps for air, then looks at her student, who's form was obscured by the shifting energy covering her eyes. She eventually gives up on this and rests her head on the ground, letting the magic do its work as it extends to cover her legs, first replacing her shoulder in its socket, then working down to her paw, healing the bone as it went.
The paw itself took quite a bit longer, at least five minutes, as its relatively delicate structure had been completely shattered under the impact force. The magical energy does its job though, and reconstructs the paw perfectly.
Although, the process isn't painless for Adinia; when the magic reaches the paw, she screams in agony, and is only quieted slightly when Crystalia consolingly rests a paw on her chest. She shivers as she forces herself to bite her tongue, quieting her vocalizations for Crystalia's sake.
As soon as the energy disperses, Crystalia throws herself into Adinia's embrace, whimpering apologetically.
Adinia almost speaks, but she decides against it, instead just nuzzling her student, wordlessly accepting her apology. She pulls Crystalia in close, cuddling the sorry dragoness, purring affectionately.
A few hours later, Crystalia finally begins to realize that Adinia isn't mad, and she gathers the courage to look into the Queen's eyes. She lays there, looking into Adinia's eyes for a few minutes, before she speaks for the first time since the incident, "Adinia, I'm sorry."
The older female starts to cry, tears running in rivulets down her face as a saddened moan escapes her maw. She pulls Crystalia closer, throwing a wing around the younger girl, yet another symbol of forgiveness, this time in the willingness to protect.
Crystalia immediately begins to squirm, forcing Adinia to retract her wing, which then allows Crystalia to lick the tears from her teacher's face. She does this for the next few minutes before Adinia begins to calm down, the tears stopping fully after nearly five minutes.
"Cr...Crystalia I...I don't want you to be s..sorry, I want you to be p...proud." Adinia barely manages to choke her words through her gasps for air.
Crystalia resumes licking Adinia's face, this time in an attempt to convey to her the understanding that she is accepted.
"S..stop! That tickles!" Adinia starts laughing and rolling around, playfully trying to shake off the other dragoness.
Crystalia ignores the feint crunching sound that barely reaches her ears after Adinia playfully rolls her away, not noticing her inability to move her left wing. "There's my Adinia!"
"That was some impressive power you've got there!" Adinia's smile suddenly vanishes. "Although, one has to wonder where it came from..."
Crystalia starts to reply truthfully, but she holds herself back, understandably scared to upset a god; because of this, she takes a few moments silence to formulate a proper lie. "I don't know, although I dreamt of the strange world again last night."
Adinia, having no reason to mistrust the word of her student, smiles brightly. "Good, tomorrow we shall have a day of rest, so you can go say hello to your mate. Does that sound fair?"
Crystalia winces at the use of the word 'mate'. She was still underage, so her mateship with Nol was still technically Illegal. She knew there were unwritten protections in place for two underage dragons, especially those her age, but it was still a huge social taboo to have mated before you became of age.
"Don't worry, if someone were to find out, I could order that it be wiped from their memory." Adinia offers Crystalia all that she can in terms of protecting her secret, solely because she disagreed with the social taboo surrounding the issue; in her mind, if two underage dragons wanted to explore each other, they should be allowed to. Adinia shakes herself out of her thoughts, wanting to restart training with her student.
While Adinia had been lost in her thoughts, Crystalia had realized that her wing was broken and was was in the process of fixing it as the queen started moving in her direction.
Adinia sits and waits patiently, and when her student finishes healing her wing, she nods apologetically, realizing that she had probably been the cause of the injury. "Crystalia, do you think you can do that again?" Adinia looks questioningly at her student, genuinely curious about what exactly she had unleashed earlier.
Crystalia nods, turning to face the far wall as she steels herself, preparing mentally and physically for the surge of chtomatic energy. She then opens her stance, lowering herself to the ground before she concentrates on the crystal hanging from her neck. Taking a deep breath, Crystalia exhales a beautiful burst of red chromatic energy from her maw, channeling the additional energy from the crystal through her body and into the ground below her, dispersing it harmlessly.
Adinia, standing just behind Crystalia, watches in awe as the beam of energy, about five feet in diameter at its widest, careens toward the magical barrier surrounding the training grounds.
At first, the beam just splashes out against the barrier, like a stream of water against a curved wall; after only a few seconds, though, the dome fails in a spectacular flash of light, leaving Adinia stunned.
Crystalia pokes Adinia with a stick a few times before the Queen responds to the touch.
"I...But...How the hell did you manage that!?" Adinia is completely awestriken, and her stuttering betrays as much.
Crystalia just laughs happily, unable to put into words her feelings about the situation.
Adinia finds the laughter unnerving, but she quickly starts work on putting the barrier back up. Her efforts are quickly abandoned, though, as a blue energy eats away the field as quickly as Adinia can get it up. "Crystalia, whatever you've done put a damn countermagic enchantment on this area."
Crystalia stops laughing. "Oh, let me try and fix that." Nearly invisible tendrils of chromatic energy begin to distort the view of the outside world as they surround the area, leeching the extra ambient blue energy into themselves before vanishing completely. Crystalia makes a mental note to herself, realizing very quickly that she had not done that, and making certain Adinia knew as much. "That... Wasn't me."
Adinia opens her maw to speak, but she takes a sudden breath and interrupts herself, "You know what, I don't even care." She opens a portal and walks through it, closing the portal directly after herself.
Crystalia tries to holler to Adinia that she had forgotten the barrier, but the portal closes before she gets a chance to speak. Opening her own portal, Crystalia walks through, appearing in her room on the other side before closing it. She takes a cold shower before climbing in bed, falling asleep almost immediately.