Fire. Liquid, molten, excruciating fire. That is what awakening my dragon soul felt like. I don’t have the proper words to explain what it felt like, I simply wanted to die. For those of you that would understand the reference, imagine turning into a vampire from Twilight, at the same time that Alduin rips your soul out of your mortal body and keeps it as a torture plaything.

-Excerpt from Celestia Ravenclaw’s journal, on becoming Dovakhiin.

-

I’m not sure how long I was unconscious, I could only take that kind of pain so long. I won’t even try to put it into words. I simply lay there on the animal rug, feeling the fur molding around my body, becoming damp from the sweat pouring off me. Blank mind, zero thoughts. Blinking eyes. Staring and the gray ceiling.

“Are you alright?”

Alright? Am I alright? How dare daar joor vahdin ask foz zu’u los alright. Wait, that, oh.

“Celestia, sweetheart, your eyes are turning orange. Try to calm down, your mother did say you would gain a dragon’s ego and mannerisms, but you need to reign in your temper.”

There is so much to unpack in that sentence I don’t even know where to start. I suppose I’ll start with what I am most curious about. “I really need a mirror”. I mumble out loud.

With a slight pop a mirror hovers a meter or so in front of me. Ignoring for now the magically appearing mirror, I stand up to my full length of, well that can’t be more than a meter. I’m short, even for a five year old.

Taking in my appearance, pale almost translucent skin. Slender limbs and torso, yet defined muscles, for a five year old. My hair is long and wavy, reaching to my butt, as black as the midnight sky, or a certain infamous house of the same name. My iris receding from a fiery orange to a royal blue. I suppose I am very pretty for a five year old. And vain? When did I start caring about my appearance? Sil do aan dovah. Soul of a dragon.

Composing myself I turn towards Rowena, my mother, yet again ignoring something that should alarm me, why I am accepting and thinking of her as my mother.

“I’m alright, you know except for waking up from having my soul, whatever happened to it, thinking in a mix-mash of two different languages, being told I am the 5 year old daughter of a Goddess and a woman I am talking to in a portrait, that to the best of my knowledge has been dead for a millennia or more. Don’t even get me started on how I even ended up here!”

Mother looks at me with what I can only describe to be pity, and I can feel my dragon rage emerging again. Taking deep breaths I try to calm down, this is going to take a lot of time to get used to.

“Did you get it out of your system?”

She’s going to be infuriating isn’t she.

“Yes mother.”

A small smile adorns her face when I address her as my mother.

Taking another deep breath I start asking the questions I need to have answered. “How am I five years old and your daughter? I thought Helena was your only child, and she’s a ghost, centuries old.”

A mischievous glint appears in mother’s eyes. Oh no.

“Well, you see when two people love each other.” She starts, before erupting into laughter. I walked into that one I suppose.

“In all seriousness, you are my biological daughter, but neither I nor Hecate carried you. Your genetic makeup is from my wand, which had both my DNA on it, as well as a soulbond from having used it my entire life. Your other mother took those parts from me, and then inserted her divine essence to create, well you.”

“So I’m baby jesus?”

She laughs yet again, but I am sort of confused. Biological? Genetic makeup? DNA? How does she even know these things? Not only that, she obviously knows I’m from a different world where this one is fiction, and there has been nothing that points to this being an accident or coincidence.

“Well, to start from the beginning. Hecate is old, older than you’d think. While mythology in your world would place her as a Greek Goddess, that is not how it works here. Much like the Greek's Roman counterparts, Hecate is the Goddess of Magic, Crossroads, Witchcraft, Necromancy, Choices, Boundaries, Ghosts and the Moon. Her origin is magic, the others came afterwards as people prayed and she was given more domains. She is as old as the planes of existence.”

I interrupt her. “Planes of existence?”

She gives me a smile and emulates a professor once again.

“While your world has a multiversal concept, that is not exactly how it works here. There are different planes of existences, much like how Mundus is encompassed by Oblivion, or the world tree of Yggdrasil.”

Okay, understandable.

“My next question is then, me. Why did I wake up as a 5 year old? Did I devour the old soul of this body? Why am I here?”

She looks sad for a moment, but it’s so short I’m not sure if I imagined it. A portrait isn’t exactly the same definition as the real world.

“No, rather this is your original body. Your life as Emma was for you to gather experience and knowledge, as time dilation enabled you to live almost thirty years for the five that have passed here.”

Is she avoiding certain questions on purpose? I’m also way too calm to have been told my life has been a lie. There are so many things I’d want to ask, but right now there is one thing that is more important.

I look around the room before turning back to the portrait of my mother, “I’m famished.”

How dare daar joor vahdin ask foz zu’u los alright = How dare this mortal woman ask if I am alright. (Mix of English and dovahzul)