Chapter One – The Blood Red Eyes

*** Gianna Cazador ***

After my little Leo was born I found myself taking care of him much like a common mother, normally this was a task left to a designated nanny, but I found it hard to separate myself from him. He was a strange little one, even through the biased eyes of a mother I couldn’t help but notice his differences, for one he didn’t cry often. He cried when he needed to eat, or be changed otherwise he remained silent most of the time, but every once in a while he would cry with such might that I felt he would hurt himself with the intensity of his crying. For some reason I could feel that he cried out of frustration.

I am very adept at feeling the flow of life and mana as a clerical healer, though my skills are mediocre, and from his cries I felt something that made my heart beat in fear. Insanity and rage.

Fearing for what my child held inside him whenever he cried I couldn’t help but sing to him a high elven song of life magic. It was a powerful song full of healing and restoration magic designed to alleviate the wounds of the mortally wounded. With each time I sung him the song in his worst moments I noticed that there was a gradual change in him. The insanity and rage in his cries became that of desperation and deep sadness and in time something wonderful happened.

He was six months old and his cries had reach a crescendo, exposure to the magic of the song had somehow allowed the child to start influencing magic and a blindingly sad mood flooded the castle one morning.

He was so cold to the touch and even through my own deep sadness I could feel it, I felt he was killing himself. I took all the mana I could muster and fed it to the elven song as I cradled his small body in my arms holding him tight to me chest. Please don’t do this! I begged. Please don’t, you can’t leave me little one…

As I continued to sing to him with all my might something strange happened I could hear another voice singing alongside mine. This voice belonged to a man I did not recognize, it was deep and disembodied. Suddenly the lifeless body of my child became warmer to the touch, color returned to his paling skin, and his eyes…oh his eyes! They were a starry crystalline crimson, they were draconic without the vertical pupil, his pupils retained a very human roundness.

What followed next was a phenomenon that would continue to linger for months to come, I could feel that it was my child that did it. He took the song I always sung to calm him down and began singing it to the world engulfing the entire city in an aura that healed, mended, encouraged growth, revitalized and invigorated.

He slept soundly that day.

From then on he was changed, his cries no longer carried misery.

*** Leo Cazador ***

The internal screaming wouldn’t stop no matter what I tried, it was driving me to madness. Who knew that being an infant was quite possibly the worst form of torture conceivable? I was born with ADHD and it seemed to have carried over to this world, staying still and being able to do nothing was a big no no. I tried with all my might to move around many times but failed finding my body too fragile and too weak to do anything more than lay there.

The first few weeks were tolerable but as a month went by I found myself cracking and a month and a half later I finally cried out of blinding rage for being able to do nothing. My mother did not know what to do to calm me down and was forced to comfort me until I exhausted myself. Two weeks later I cried out again. And again. And again.

Mother began singing to me a song that emitted a strange influence on my body, it made me feel strange, even good. I took hold of this feeling with my mind and found I could move the power around as if it were a physical thing but not as my mother did, she commanded it with her voice but I could not. I wanted this power, I wanted to use it to alleviate my madness, but it would not yield to me.

Six months old, that was my limit, I reached a point where I could find no more hope to continue going with such a fragile body, who would have known I’d miss something as simple as being able to sit up. I wanted to simply fade away. Even as I reached for the darkness my mother was there again for me singing the song that had given me false hope long enough to continue until now.

I had gotten nowhere with the strange force she commanded, I could do nothing more than flick at it with my mind, I could not will it, I could not use it.

There was something different about the song this time though, the force was there again, but it was thicker and its presence was greater. I took hold of it once more and did the only thing I could think of and “swallowed” it bringing it into myself. As soon as it entered me it started a sort of engine I never knew was present within myself, it began churning the force I brought into myself and like an explosion it produced its own force spreading far and wide like a dense cloud. I found myself singing the power filled song in my mind roaring it to the world, to all those that might hear, the force was mine!

I held nothing back now, I could now feel the force everywhere, I could control it, command it. Earth itself, the ground at our feet was saturated with it, the power was wild and untamed unlike that which mother used. I bled my own power into the earth and mingled with it bringing it into myself just as I poured myself out as I continued to sing. My own engine began producing wild mana, I was now no more different from nature itself.

After that day I slept contently.

The next day I found that my power was not gone, in fact I had so much of it that I could not use it until I could control how much of it I used which was a task I happily labored towards perfecting. Just moving was a physical and mental intensive task, if I moved carelessly I could bring down the room on myself or rip apart my own body.

*** Gianna Cazador ***

After the strange event my baby boy no longer cried out except for his meals and need of changing, every time I held him after that it was like I was holding a different child. He was still quiet as ever, but now I started to see his silence for what it was, curiosity and wonder. There was a glint of intelligence beyond his age in his eyes.

When he learned to crawl it did not take him long, literally just a couple weeks later, to learn to walk and that became quite the nightmare. Now that he was mobile I found that keeping him restrained to his crib was next to impossible, it took only a moment’s distraction for him to disappear. I would usually find him back in his crib asleep or wandering up to me looking for my bosom and his meal. Strangely enough no one would spot him at all on his adventures beyond the crib, it was as if he became a ghost. Sometimes I wondered if he had not really survived the phenomenon involving the song but every time I held him in my arms I could feel his warmth. I could feel his light touches and the beating of his small heart against my hand when I would gently rub his tummy and chest