Four days later, the blue light coalesced into her hand in the shape of a ball. “Rony?!” Jessica shouted from where she sat in the corpse of trees. “RONEY?!” The ball swirled with ever-increasing energy and she felt something pulse to life in its center.

“What? I’m reading about mana manipulation. Did you — Oh awesome! You finally manifested a spell! What did you cast?”

“I, I don’t know!” Jessica was started to panic as the swirling mass of energy grew in both intensity and speed.

“What? What do you mean you don’t know?”

“I mean, I don’t know! I was thinking about swirling energy like you said, and then this happened. Help!”

“Hold on, hold on! Swirling energy ball, light blue,” he swiped on his tablet through the different saved wiki pages until he found what he was looking for. “Right, here we go. You’re either about to manifest a ball of blazing blue fire, or you’re about to summon an eldritch monster from beyond the void gates of reality.”

“So it’s dangerous?”

“Yeah, you can say that. Throw it over there and stop feeding it mana already!”

Jessica cut the spell off from her will and she felt it harden into a bead of marble in her hand. It was cool to the touch and light blue, like the color of the sky on a cloudless summer morning. She tossed it into the creek bed she had been meditating at the edge of before diving behind a tree. Rony followed her lead and crouched behind his own thick tree trunk.

Half a heartbeat later wind suddenly gushed out in an explosion of force. There wasn’t any heat in it, despite what Rony had said, and Jessica felt better that she hadn’t started a fire. Until the wind started moving in the opposite direction. She peaked around the corner of her fallen tree log and found in the center of the creek was a large spinning blue almost white disk of pure energy. The energy spun faster and faster. The blue mana was forced to the edges of the disk like gravel in a centrifuge, leaving behind nothing but blackness at its center.

As suddenly as the wind kicked up around them, it stopped. The air was still, and the world seemed to hold its breath. Then, as Jessica watched, a tiny multi-colored ball of feathers fell through the hole to the void into the river. As the feathered creature splashed and spluttered in the ankle high water, the energy of the portal dissipated into nothingness.

Peep! Help, mommy help! A voice that sounded like a mix between a frightened child and a parrot filled her mind. Mommy, I fell, and I can’t breathe! Mommy! Jessica felt panic and fear rush through her, through her connection to . . . whatever was speaking in her mind. Then she felt herself being compelled towards the ball of wet feathers.

Half a heartbeat later she was picking up the screeching, writhing wet ball of multi-colored plumage. Plucking it out of the water and holding it to her chest, where she tried to dry it with her jacket. “Ouch!” Jessica pulled her hand away as a powerful pinch bit her fingers. Tiny bird-like creature fell back into the water and started splashing again.

PEEP! MOMMY! A Giant Is Going To Eat Me! The voice was nearly incoherent with fear, and Jessica reached down and grabbed the little bird thing. It bit her hand again, but this time she didn’t pull back. She winced at the pain but kept her hand there, unmoving. One of her friends, Matilda, had a pet parakeet growing up, and this is what you had to do to get the bird to realize you were not a threat.

“Stop, that hurts. I’m not going to hurt you,” Jessica said as she made her way to the shore of the creek and sat down. “It’s okay” she hushed it and rocked the little creature back and forth, wrapped in her jacket to keep it warm. It let go of her fingers, but more than once it lashed out, biting out of pure fear. The pain hurt, but she had done this before and it didn’t really bother her as long as he didn’t break the skin. She also felt something in the back of her mind prodding her to take care of this creature she had somehow brought to this world. As if she had made a promise, and she needed to keep it.

Rony sat next to her and tried to catch a peak, but the thing kept burrowing out of sight every time Jessica pulled back a piece of the jacket to reveal it. “Just sit back for a second, Rony, let me calm him down.” When she spoke she realized she knew the little ball of feathers and scales was a male.

Peep! You’re not going to eat me?

“No, I’m not going to eat you.” Jessica stifled a giggle as the little bird creature peaked its head out from under the jacket. It looked like a lizard, but instead of scales over most of its body it had feathers like the parrots she’d seen at zoos and on the internet.

Thank you, I’m scared! The little creature burrowed its head again, this time between the crook of her arm and the jacket. My mommy was fighting this big mean looking thing that wanted to eat me! And then a blue spinny thing opened up, and I fell out of the nest. Jessica got vague impressions of the scene and the little creature’s emotions of the memory as he spoke to her. Its mother had been a gloriously multi-colored creature that looked like a mix between a dragon and a parrot. The creature it fought was a fire breathing demon she was sure was much larger in the tiny creature’s memory than it probably had been in real life. It looked like a wolf, but its teeth were as large as daggers, and smoke rose from its nose and mouth.

“Is it speaking to you telepathically? Because I can’t hear anything.” Jessica shushed Rony. He gave her an annoyed look, but closed his mouth and waited.

The memory scene ended when the wolf clawed for the nest, and the dragon-parrot dug its beak deep into the creature’s neck, killing it. But the little dude’s mom had her back turned to a second smoke-wolf as it leapt at her from behind. She didn’t see the end, as the scene changed to the baby parrot-dragon falling into the creek and calling out for help.

Do you think mommy is okay? How was she supposed to respond to that?!

“Uh, I don’t know buddy. I think you’re very far away from home now.” She got the impression that his mother had done something in the last seconds of her life, to whisk him away to some place he might have a chance at life. And she, unknowingly, had accepted that task. “But I’ll tell you what. I’ll take care of you for now. Does that sound okay?” The little dragon parrot made a happy PEEP! Noise and snuggled into the crook of her arm again. When it did, Jessica’s vision was filled with a notification.

Congratulations! You have successfully formed a Familiar Bond. To summon a familiar this early in your training was a monumental risk, as such beings are usually powerful and have motives all their own. To bind one to a contract is altogether another impressive feat! You are #7,372 on your world to have successfully summoned a familiar. You are # 329 to have successfully bound their familiar. Reward: additional class options when the Class Store becomes available.

Jessica read the message out loud, and Rony whistled. “You’re lucky, cousin, that could have been bad.”

“What do you mean?” She asked as she smoothed the ruffled feathers on the little parrot dragon’s back.

“A guy summoned one of those this morning in Norwich, according to the radio, and lost control of it. Leveled half a town before police brought it down. Some kind of tiger thing, I guess. They announced it at the same time as the draft, didn’t you hear it this morning? We were all talking about it at breakfast.” She shrugged. If she was being honest with herself, she had practically forgotten the outside world existed for the last few days. She loved the feeling of controlling mana, loved the act of using it, even if it wasn’t very useful just yet. It made her feel in control of her life in a way that she had hoped collage and moving away from home would give her.

“You really have got to pay more attention, Jessica. Anyway, the wiki says you should be at least level five or higher, with a mental acuity score somewhere around the mid to high thirties to try it. Otherwise you’re almost guaranteed to lose control. But it looks like that little guy isn’t much of a threat. Sorry Jess, that sucks.” Jessica shot him a withering glare.

“What do you mean by that? He’s a perfectly healthy, dragon, parrot, thing. Do you think he’s sick?” She gently pulled the parrot-like wings on the creature out to check for injury. The little guy peeped unhappily when she released him and snuggled back into her arm. This time he gave her a huff of annoyance that nearly broke her heart. It was so cute! “I don’t see any injuries.”

“No, that’s not really what I mean. Here just, check out his stats.” Rony said, trying to find a way to express himself without getting on Jessica’s bad side. She had seen him do it before, and the effort usually went a long way with her. But today, when it came to the little dragon guy, she didn't feel too charitable. Jessica sighed and did as he asked. She found a small section in her interface that was new, labeled ‘familiar bond’ and with a mental command, it opened.

Familiar Name: None Given

Type: Draco-Quatil

Age: 3 weeks

Level: 0

Levels Unassigned: 0

Ethical Alignment: Infant

Galactic Affiliation: None

General Characteristics

Emotional Acuity: 3

Mental Acuity: 8

Physicality: 5

Health Points: 5

Mundane Skills

Ravenous Hunger: 5

This creature is young and must eat to grow.

Magical Skills

Mana Generation: 1

Magical Statistics

Mana Pool: 123 / 500

Mana Generation: 0.2 / minute

Mana Hunger: This creature only eats mana, and consumes 15 mana per hour to sustain itself. In order to grow to the next stage of development, its mana pool must be full. This will lower Ravenous Hunger by 1 skill point every time it is done. Once Ravenous Hunger is removed, the familiar will mature. Every point of ravenous hunger removed will lower the mana consumption required to sustain its life.

She read it out loud to Rony, who grimaced and patted her on the back. “Well, that’s interesting. Health points you say? I don’t see any in my interface, do you in yours?” She checked before shaking her head. “Too bad. Maybe the system is still integrating with us. Anyway, all that stuff says that little dude is going to be a drag on your growth.”

“Explain, I don’t understand. I know I’m going to need to feed it mana to keep it alive and to help it grow up, but that won’t be too much of a problem. He generates his own, and ours together will more than equal what he needs to keep growing.”

“According to the wiki, familiars are supposed to give the magic user an immediate boost in power. Like, in a big way. Either by training them, protecting them, or augmenting their own skills or abilities. One dude supposedly even grew bat wings. The video is crazy, want to see?” She waved it off. She’d watch it later if she got the chance. Right now, she was more concerned with her own little guy.

“Well, instead of that, this dude is going to require you to put time and effort into growing him to something useful. Until then, your own growth is going to slow down. Just as an example, you won’t be able to keep using mana manipulation as much as you have. Just do the math.” Jessica did. To circulate mana and try to manifest it outside of her body, cost her about 1 mana every ten minutes, and that’s if she didn’t mess up. She had grown her Mana Manipulation skill to 4 already, which made it easier, but she still made pretty regular mistakes. Rony had read in the wiki that skill rank 4 was the threshold for being able to cast spells properly, and not just create pretty light shows like she had been the last few days. Which meant she could start learning some of the formal spell forms the wiki talked about.

But that wasn’t the problem. The problem was her mana generation. She only generated one mana an hour, which meant she could currently do about two sessions a day like she had been doing. Probably fewer spells, depending on what she learned. And even then, only if she stayed up late and did nothing else with her mana.

“Well, that’s kind of simple then, isn’t it? I’ll just use my skill points to increase my mana generation skill.”

“You can do that, but that means you won’t be able to buy as high-level skills in tier 1 as you otherwise would have been able too.” They had talked about that. All the skills in tier 1 required that she have a minimum of 5 skill points in at least one of the corresponding skills in tier 0. She could purchase those scores right now, technically, and still have enough left to at least buy 1 level in every skill in tier 1. But that would slow down her progress into tier 1 and towards unlocking whatever was in tier 2.

Jessica saw what Rony was talking about. The more skill points you could pour into a single skill, the more time you saved in training. Uncle Max and tested how difficult skill gain was with a few of the other family members and found that higher skill levels were harder to get. Training and practice got harder, more grueling, and much more time-consuming to go from skill rank 4 to skill rank 5 for instance.

The plan they had come up with had been for her to ‘grind’ out as many lower-level skill points as she could through training on the relatively ‘easy’ skill gains. On the last day the store was open, she would make her pre-planned purchases. Catapulting her higher in skills than she would have otherwise been able to achieve in the same time, compared to if she had made the purchases before her training.

“This leaves you two options. You can either grind out the skill growth with the hobbler there,” he pointed at her familiar. “Or, you can purchase the needed mana generation skill points now, which will hobble you later on in your growth but prevent this dude from slowing you down now. It’s a tradeoff of negatives, all caused by that dude not being up to snuff.”

Jessica glared at her cousin, and he raised his hands in surrender. Sheesh, these over protective instincts are strong. Is this what mom feels like? She knew it was from their bond, but that didn’t make her any less susceptible to the flash flood of protectiveness that came every time he so much as criticized her familiar. “Sorry, I know. I get what you’re saying. I have a kind of bond with this guy now, that I’m going to have to get used to. I’m feeling very overprotective right now so just, be nice to him, okay?”

“That’s cool, I get it. Familiars in all of my games and in all the stories are like family to most spell casters. He means a lot to you. But that doesn’t change the fact that your growth has slowed a bit. Unless you want to let him waste away.” She smacked his arm a little harder than she had intended. He rubbed his shoulder “Ouch! Hey, I was just saying. I’m not actually suggesting it, anyway. Just making sure you know all your options.”

“Sorry” Jessica gave him her best ‘I’m sorry’ face and Rony rolled his eyes.

“What ever, just, don’t hit me okay?” She patted him lightly on the shoulder, and he continued. “Anyway. So now you know your options. Before you choose, what are you going to name him?” Jessica lifted the dragon parrot up so they could both see him clearly.

“What do you think your name should be, little guy?” The dragon parrot raised its long neck from her arm and let out a great loud PEEP! Then he shook his feathers one last time, getting rid of the little water that was still stubbornly clinging to him. “Peep it is!” Peep let out a triumphant bugle call that sounded like the instrument had inhaled helium. Then he used his needle-like talons to crawl up onto Jessica’s shoulder and latch himself there, draping his longer than expected form across her neck like a scarf. His tail wrapped around her neck like a loose fitting choker to keep him balanced. When his tail was in place, he retracted his claws.

Jessica winced, but it wasn’t too bad. Like a cat’s claws, she thought. “Alright well, I think there really is only one thing I can do if I want to maximize my training time without hobbling myself.” She pulled up her skill sheet and dumped 7 points into Mana Generation and 4 into Mana Pool. She felt an immediate change, like the power inside her radiated out for a split second before condensing around her mana pool. Creating a much larger pool than she thought she would ever have.

Mana Pool: 13 / 1,100

Mana Regeneration: 0.8 / Minute (48 / Hour)

“Well, I have more than enough now. Hang on buddy, let’s go show you off to the family.” Jessica stood, and Rony joined her as they walked back towards the road that led to the farm. A few minutes later they came into sight of the gravel road and as they walked towards the house, three large black SUVs pulled into the long driveway. As they did, Jessica heard metal striking metal.

“That’s the lunch cue isn’t it?” Rony asked, and Jessica nodded. She tried swallowing the lump in her throat, but it just stayed there.

“Let’s get back. That looked like the army crest on the side of the one in the front.”