Blue windows cascaded through my field of vision, multiple notifications vying for my attention as I felt a surge of power flow through me. The surge wasn’t enough to soothe all my aches, especially that feeling of light-headed ache that settled somewhere within my skull, but it helped to drive away the exhaustion of the night.

Noticing that my creation had broken eye contact with me and appeared to be reading blue windows of her own, I quickly looked through mine.

You performed a miraculous feat of creation. As a reward, you gain five levels. You have reached level twenty-five. Trait gained You gained the trait: Titanic Ambition

When Mortal Hubris joins Draconic Desires, Titanic Ambition is born. You desire to look behind the curtain of reality, to challenge and explore its very foundations. Some will see you as an inspiration, and others will see you as a heretical creature that needs to be destroyed.

When engaged in your exploration of the unknown, all your attributes are increased by 100%.

Your Path has permanently shifted. Title gained You gained the title: Primordial Mother By your will, a new race was born into this world. All offspring of that race will recognise you, as they are part of your domain. Skill Increased You increased your skill: Mind Magic [11/100] Skill Increased You increased your skill: Blood Magic [14/100] Mark of the Lone Traveller You have marked a creature as your travelling companion. You can currently mark no other creatures and will regain the ability to mark another creature during the next full moon. Astral Depletion Your actions have severely depleted your Astral Power. For the next twenty-four hours, your Astral Power is halved and will recover slowly afterwards. Further strain to your reserves, before your Astral Body has fully recovered, will result in severe, permanent harm to it.

For a moment, I was utterly stunned. I thought I had healed and improved the Shattered, but from the looks of it, I had done a whole lot more. Just the five levels were insane but adding the two traits and altogether seven points in two magical skills, and I was completely blown away. The Astral Depletion was worrying, as was the rather ominous warning that my Path had shifted, but it was something I would deal with. While the term Astral Body didn’t ring immediately ring a bell, I could make an educated guess that it referred to the pool of Astral Power within me, but I wasn’t certain. That I apparently had marked the previously Shattered creatures as a travelling companion was a distant concern, but nothing I wanted to even think about now. It was, quite frankly, the least of my concerns and considerations.

The Titanic Ambition was easily my biggest concern, trumping even the state of the Shattered I had mended. An insane bonus, that was for sure, but knowing that ‘my path had shifted’ was worrying, to say nothing about the other part. Titanic Ambition, and what it implied, was as awesome as worrying.

“Thank you, mother,” the no-longer Shattered quietly spoke, pulling my mind from the rabbit hole I had fallen into. For a moment, I didn’t fully comprehend the words she had said, as if she was talking in a foreign language but after a moment, my mind finally caught up. If I hadn’t been lying on my side, my chin would have dropped at the address. Suddenly, even the promise of being chained up on a mountain and having my liver eaten repeatedly faded to the background of my mind, at the prospect of suddenly turning into a mother.

Being called mother by a person no more than ten, at most twelve, years my junior was something I had never expected. Hell, I had never expected to be called mother by anything, at least not outside some weird jokes.

“Huh?!” I spluttered, trying to catch my bearings, while the crimson eyes simply stared at me, as if my sputtering emissions were the grain of all truth.

“Why do you call me that?!” I finally managed to synchronise my mouth and my brain, at least to the point that I could string words into sentences.

“What else would I call you, mother? You gave me life, where there was only desolation. You brought order into the chaos and allowed me to think once more. I am yours, for without you, I would be nothing,” the Shattered quietly intoned, her words spoken with a solemn sincerity that made me listen with equal seriousness.

“Not mother,” I couldn’t help but insist. I didn’t want to become a mother, certainly not without Sigmir. With her by my side, I might have considered but alone? No.

“Mistress, it is. You are my Lady, the one I will follow,” the Shattered decided and again, there was no hesitation, nothing but acceptance. As if I only had to say a word, and this creature would do its best to accomplish whatever I asked of it. I wasn’t sure I liked that tone or the quite obvious devotion in her gaze, it was intense enough to send shivers down my spine. The trust she was displaying, open, unguarded, made me feel responsible for this creature. But then, judging by the title I had gained, I was quite literally the creator of her whole species, just like Loki was supposedly the creator of the Firn Elves.

“Do you know who you are? What do you remember?” I asked, still trying to gather the facts and understand what was going on. The Shattered had gone from mindless, starving beast to conversant, devoted… follower in a matter of minutes, the change intense enough to give me whiplash.

“I…” she paused, her crimson eyes flickering close for a moment, “I remember…” she continued, her voice hesitant and insecure.

“My name was Chantalle, my parents own and operate Apple Gate Farm,” she slowly continued speaking, weaving the biography of a rather ordinary seventeen-year-old. But there was something in her tone that felt familiar, a distance to the tale she was weaving, as if she was talking about a person she knew, not even a friend she was emotionally invested in.

“And now? Who are you now?” I couldn’t help but ask, interrupting her report on her schooling.

“Now, I am whoever you want me to be,” she replied, her eyes opening again, staring at me with intense focus. I had no idea how to react to her actions or behaviour, but I needed to make a decision here. Her mother had asked me to heal her and that had, at least partially, worked. She was lucid and remembered her life, only that it didn’t look like she remained the person she used to be.

“For now, you shall reply to the name Chantalle and act as you did before the change, at least to your mother,” I ordered her, getting an immediate nod of acceptance. I had expected a bit of hesitation, but there was none, she simply obeyed. Looking at the creature before me, and realising that her body was still very much changed from a human one, I was tempted to Observe her. But before I did, I remembered that there might be an easier way.

“Can you call up your status-sheet and show it to me?” I asked, before having to explain to her how to do that. Moments later, she reached out, her status-sheet displayed above her hand, allowing me to read it with perfect ease.

Only for my eyes to widen when I got to the second line of her sheet. The first, her name, was simply blank, making me wonder what needed to be done for her to have a name displayed. But the second line, the line recording her race, was a major surprise.

Primordial Vampire

Somehow, just reading that line brought my headache back with a vengeance, pulling a groan from my lips.

“Mistress?” the Vampire I apparently had managed to create asked, her voice filled with worry and vulnerability. Shielding my eyes for a moment and rubbing my temples, I tried to push on, to ignore the implications, as glaring as they were and look at the rest of her sheet.

"Nothing, just trying to make sense of what happened," I admitted, before focusing on her sheet again.

It was, quite frankly, incredibly impressive. High stats across the board, especially her Strength, Agility, Endurance and Vitality, all sixteen or higher, but even her other stats were high for her rather underwhelming level four. Nothing below a ten and an average around fifteen, higher than even my own rather impressive attributes. The attribute bonuses applied by the Vampire-racial template were, frankly, insane.

However, as with everything, there were drawbacks. When I had her show me the details of her regeneration, I realised that while she had good stats, her Astral Power regeneration was a negative value, she constantly lost a small amount of Astral Power, simply for being who she was. There was a mention of feeding on Astral Power, taken from blood and I didn’t have to be a genius to realise what that meant. The newly created Vampire needed to drink blood in order to replenish her Astral Power and while the constant drain wasn’t high, it was there. A brief moment of calculation told me that, if she had a full tank, she could go about twenty-six hours without replenishment, before she was dry. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what happened then.

In addition, her sheet had the same Curse of the Sun as mine, though I wasn’t sure if the mechanics were the same. Not something I wanted to explore just now, not with everything going on. There was more, affinities mirroring my own for example, a couple of interesting traits that I wanted to look into some more and even a Title declaring her as First of her Kind, which was partially responsible for her incredibly high attributes. All interesting stuff and worthy to be explored, but later. For now, I just wanted to withdraw into my mind and come to grips with this new reality. I was just not ready to be a mother and certainly not ready to be the mother of the Vampire Race. Or face whatever Titanic Ambition implied about me.