[Sig – 13 years]

"It was nice streaming with you guys!" I tell Xander and Lexi after we all meet back up at spawn. "I'm gonna head off now, got some stuff to do."

Lexi and I are kitted out in iron armor and we have them visible, while Xander has his armor invisible if he does have any on. He does have a straw hat cosmetic which is visible but otherwise, nothing else.

I wouldn't be surprised if he just doesn't have any armor on, though. From what he's said during the various times we've spoken over the past three hours, he's mostly just been farming. The straw hat was probably to go with that.

"I'm ending stream, too," Xander informs us. "Thanks for helping me test the transcriptions and stuff. It's not fully tested so y'all can keep coming back to the server and playing together. I might be back on here when I'm streaming the game. It was fun playing with y'all."

Playing with us? He was mostly away from us for most of it since he was setting stuff up on his Fairy Islands. But I guess he still enjoyed interacting with us during the times he did.

"I had a lot of fun, too!" I say. "Thanks for inviting me!"

"Same," Lexi says, then looks at me. "Been good to understand you properly for once, too. Well, even if it's by reading."

"I'm trying to learn English, too," I tell her. "So if all goes well, we won't need them after awhile!"

"I'm trying to learn Zrebzialan," she chuckles. "If you want, we can use this server to do some practice sometimes."

That's not something I'd considered but I might learn it faster if I'm actually talking with someone who knows it natively.

"Sure!" I say. "Bye, everyone!"

After I exit the game, I tell my chat goodbye, then pull on some socks and shoes, grab my backpack, and let Aunt Rachel know I'm going to meet up with my friends. My helmet's pulled on and I leave, then ride my bike to the meeting point.

About halfway there, something slams into the side of my face while I'm stopped at an intersection to check both ways. There aren't any cars here, but there's apparently a bear throwing balloons filled with honey.

"Hey!" I look at it, only to get hit in the face with another balloon. "Come on! I'm on my way to meet up with my friends!"

It throws another balloon, but I'm not really able to dodge it and the balloon strikes me in the chest. I sigh at that, then look at my right arm. Some of the honey's on there, and on the upper part by my shoulder, too. Splash from the first hit.

I lick some off to taste it. This is the same honey he always uses and it tastes really good every time. It's a shame the only way I can get it is by getting hit by balloons filled with it. I'll lick a little off to see if it's the same but I'm not gonna do that to eat it otherwise. This stuff would sell well in a store.

Though I guess magical bears with a high level of intelligence don't need money.

"Why are you wasting such good… aaaaand he's gone."

The bear disappeared in the few seconds I looked away. It does that every time, too.

When I reach the meeting spot, everyone but Xander is here. Chances are, he's taking a nap after talking with chat and us so much. He hasn't sent me his nap-ready pick yet but that's only a matter of time.

"Got hit by the bear?" Connor asks.

"Yup!" I answer. "Got me at an intersection this time."

"Ethan and Macy said they got hit yesterday," Sam tells me. "Bear showed up, threw a few balloons at them, and disappeared in the brief moment they weren't looking at him."

"I'm fairly certain he uses teleportation magic," I say. "Either that, or he turns invisible. We'll have to see if he ever shows up with us when we're with Xander. That'll really let us know what's going on. Anyway! Let's head off! I need to get the honey washed off, and ugh… I'm gonna have to get it out of my backpack again."

One good thing about the bear is that when he picks a spot, he stays there the entire day. We take an alternate route to avoid him on our way to my place and I tell my friends about the stream. It honestly was a lot of fun and I'm definitely logging into the server again in the future.

It's a shame Xander didn't come to hang out with us for this, but I'm sure he'll meet up with us after his nap. He did socialize a fair bit during the stream.

Though if he were here, I'd definitely have us go the route with the bear just to see how he reacts. There's no way he wouldn't stop the bear's attempts at hitting him with honey. He's too good a mage for that and he's just that incredible.

[Xander – 12 years] → starts during Sig's PoV.

"Hi, Grandpa Adrian," I say when he answers the phone, and I feel my tail swish a little.

"Hello, Xander," he says. "That was a nice stream you did, and it looks like the mod worked well. Are you getting ready for a nap?"

"I was going to ask you tomorrow if it wasn't solved today," I say. "But I'm really uncomfortable and I don't want to keep sleeping in Dad's bed until it's resolved. There's a monster under my bed and I don't know how to get rid of it. My bed's comfier, too, and I don't like having to move all of my stuffed animals before and after sleeping each time."

There's no way I'm leaving them on Dad's bed on purpose, just by accident, sort of like when I accidentally left the lightning wolf plushie Luke got me on it this morning.

"There's a… I'll be there shortly," Grandpa Adrian tells me.

"Okay."

I pocket my phone and wait for Grandpa Adrian to show up. When he does, I lead him (and Katie) up to my room.

"Yup," Grandpa Adrian looks under my bed with me. "That's a monster. It looks terrified."

"It does?" I ask.

"Yeah," Grandpa Adrian answers. "Let me just… I went into its mind. It knew this was a child's bed and so went under it. Monster-under-the-bed monsters feed off of bad dreams, so it encourages them in children as their dreams are easier to influence. That, in turns, allows them to eat better. They move around a bit to avoid detection. Seems he went under your bed and became frozen in terror upon realizing that you were a dreamsage of vastly superior magical power."

"Isn't Greyson the dreamsage?"

"There can be more than one," Grandpa Adrian says. "And that boy, I swear. I don't doubt he knows you're one, but he apparently didn't tell you. I didn't mention it under the assumption that you knew and had received some training from him."

"What's a dreamsage?" Katie asks.

"A type of mind mage," Grandpa Adrian answers. "Most specialize in dreams, but it's not a strict requirement. Magics relating to dreams are easier for them to use than for other types of mind mage. They can also eat dreams to recover some energy, move between people's dreams with ease, influence them, and so on. It takes zero mana for those actions, it's just a natural part of who they are. Most also end up in a state where they're in a sleep-like state most of the time, but can still act as if conscious. It's complicated.

"Anyway," Grandpa Adrian says. "A dreamsage is resilient to the magics of a monster-under-the-bed, and they can even eat them if one tries entering their dreams and is weak enough. This one seems fairly old and probably didn't expect to encounter a dreamsage with over 4,000,000 mana. Nor one here. You really did scare him frozen."

"Sorry."

"Don't be," Grandpa Adrian says. "They're creatures to be eliminated, anyway. Here, this is how you handle one if you're not using dream magics."

Grandpa Adrian reaches under my bed with a hand cloaked in a spell and grabs the monster, then pulls it out from under my bed. He then cloaks his index and middle finger from his left hand with another spell and jabs it into the wiggling monster's body. The monster begins collapsing in on itself, eventually becoming nothing.

"The first one," Grandpa Adrian tells me as we stand back up. "Was a spell to allow someone to touch the intangible. The second one was a spell to collapse the magics making up the monster. If another one shows up, just use those to deal with it."

I weave the two spells, the one for touching the intangible onto my right hand and the one for collapsing its magic on my left.

"Like this?" I ask.

"Good job," Grandpa Adrian summons a thin book out of nothing. I think he created it right then. "This goes into more detail on how to do those so you can practice them."

"Thanks," I accept the book from him. "Are you sure I'm a dreamsage? I don't really have much control over my dreams. They just sort of do their own thing. Sometimes scare me, sometimes make me hungry. Sometimes, they're just random and weird."

"As a dreamsage, myself," Grandpa Adrian says. "And a very well-trained one, I can feel the presence of other dreamsages. Yes, you're a dreamsage. And if you don't know how, you might not be able to manipulate your own dreams. That said, it's also possible you're affected by the dreams of others without realizing it. Your own dreams might be influenced by the dreams of those around you."

"They could be?" I ask.

"Indeed," he says. "And it's possible you've learned things from the dreams of others without realizing it. You live with two people who speak other languages. Do you know any Japanese or French? It's possible you've learned that from their own dreams intersecting with yours, especially if you learned you knew something from a dream itself."

I learned I knew Japanese and French because of my dreams.

"He learned from us?" Katie asks.

"I know both of them," I say. "And English and Swedish, too. But wasn't I just taught and then forgot? I lived near a researcher at a previous home, and I'm fairly certain he spoke English and Swedish."

"You never interacted with him," Grandpa Adrian says. "And no, you weren't taught then forgot. You picked up those languages from dreams. For English and Swedish, it was probably your parents. Your grandmother on your father's side came from Sweden and your father grew up knowing it. From what I could find, he spoke it better than he did Zrebzialan for a good portion of his life. And your mother was half-British. Dreamsages can even pick things up from the womb – they're essentially in a state of permanent dreaming there."

"Oh," I look at Katie. "Sorry."

"There's nothing to be sorry about," she says. "You didn't know you did that, though it's a bit weird knowing our dreams intersected."

"That's why it's important for him to be trained properly," Grandpa Adrian creates another book and hands it to me, this one a lot thicker than the previous. "This one will teach you how to control your dreamsage powers and avoid having your dreams intersect with others'. Since you aren't intersecting on purpose, you're not directly entering their dreams. Their own dreams are completely unaffected."

As he says that, I realize something. Yesterday, Sig was pretty certain he'd never told me about him liking turtles. He's open about liking snow leopards so I'd just assumed he'd told me about the turtles as well at some point and forgot, and that's why my lie-detection said he was being honest when he said he didn't.

But he also said he sometimes dreams about turtles. Did I learn that he likes them from that? His dreams and my other friends' dreams affecting my own definitely explains some of the dreams I have when I'm sleeping over with them.

I send both books into one of my bracelets, then look at Grandpa Adrian.

"Thanks for the books," I tell him. "Um. There was something else I was going to ask you tomorrow, but since you're here… maybe I can ask you now, before my nap?"

"What is it?"

"Um… so yesterday," I say. "When I went to let Dad know about the monster under the bed, I got reminded that ever since my mana started increasing, my hearing's gotten better, too. Just enough that I can hear stuff from the other side of the soundproofing enchantments on the house if I'm close enough to the room that's soundproofed. And Frank was telling Dad that my accident didn't make any sense. The one from when I was four. And now I'm really confused and wanted to know if you knew anything… if that's okay to ask."

I explain what Frank told Dad, and Grandpa Adrian listens quietly as Katie becomes surprised. Her surprise grows stronger as I explain things, too. She apparently wasn't told any of this. My tail's now curled up between my legs, too.

Did I fuck up by bringing this up?

"I knew something was off," Grandpa Adrian tells me. "But I hadn't looked into it yet. Whatever it was, it didn't seem to be affecting you in the current and that was more important for me to check on. Would you like for me to find out what happened?"

"Yes, please."

Grandpa Adrian nods and closes his eyes for a few moments, then I feel him weaving together a spell. Suddenly, we're standing in a street where some kids are playing. It's a cul-de-sac with nice houses, even if not fancy ones.

"Oh!" My tail starts wagging when I spot a boy standing on the curb. "It's me!"

That boy is about four years old and has platinum-blond hair, the same blue-green-grey eyes as me, and is wearing just a pair of shorts and is a little bit muddy. Kid-me apparently didn't mind getting muddy a little. He's looking down the street with a frown, too.

A man and a woman are supervising the kids playing in the street, though the man is looking at the kid-me with a frown. I can feel his confusion and concern.

"That's you?" Katie looks around. "Where are we? And why didn't anyone react to us?"

"It's a World Memory," I tell her. "Remember how I accessed it and accidentally caused the military to come out? Grandpa Adrian's pulled one up, but apparently managed to do it from a distance from the location it actually occurred in. And way more efficient, with no mana leakage. So he didn't set of any sensors that I know of."

Especially not the new ones being made and installed, since those wouldn't register a World Memory access as a Rift.

"A World Memory?" Katie asks.

"Yes," Grandpa Adrian says. "Everything which ever happens in the world is stored in its own memory. Mortals ordinarily cannot access it, but Xander apparently learned the spell at some point. Even most gods are incapable of accessing it. The world uses it as a backup in case of a disaster and can use it to restore everything, including faded souls. This is the day of the incident, about a minute or so before. And it seems four-year-old Xander could tell something was going to happen."

"What do you mean?" Katie asks.

"Xander's psychic," Grandpa Adrian informs her. "It's a passive ability which lets him foretell the future. His mostly comes in the form of gut feelings. Judging by your confusion, Xander, it seems you weren't aware of that, either. I doubt Greyson wasn't, so I'll be having a chat with him about what's important to let people know about themselves."

"I can tell the future?" I ask.

"Have you ever had a gut feeling that someone might show up?" He asks. "Even when you hadn't reasonably known? Or suddenly had a thought or dream about something, which turned out to be related to something which just happened or is about to happen? Or had a thought which seemed random but turned out to be related to something which would happen soon? Or knew about something beforehand and it turned out you hadn't been told?"

"I… yeah," I say. "But isn't that just me forgetting I'd been told?"

When Grandpa Adrian was first coming to meet Dad, I'd had a feeling something else was going to happen that I'd forgotten about. Then Ms. Johnson showed up for a surprise visit. In fact, I'd had a feeling someone was going to show up for pretty much every surprise visit she's done so far.

I had that dream about Sig picking watermelons, and he then went and picked watermelons. And I had the dream about the white-maned flaremane horse before he was born. Or like when I had those thoughts about Luke and it turned out that golems attacked his ride while he was sleeping. I had no idea why I told Sig to look for gold and the next day, he caught some hares which had gold-like pelts.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

"Oh."

"You've realized some stuff," Grandpa Adrian says.

"Yeah…"

"It's not too important," he tells me. "It's mostly you reading the flow of the universe, and it doesn't interfere in things. So you don't need to learn how to properly control it. Doing that takes an immense amount of effort even for those extremely talented, like yourself. Even I don't do it deliberately very often."

In other words, it's not worth the time to practice the magic and learn to intentionally use it. I'm not sure I'd know what to do with knowledge of the future, anyway.

Grandpa Adrian mutters something in a language I don't think I've ever heard before. I also don't know it so I don't know what he says in it.

"So I really did have almost as much mana at four as I did before my brain got fixed?" I ask.

"You did," Grandpa Adrian says. "And your psychic intuition has let you know that something's wrong, but you can't tell exactly what. It's about to happen."

He moves us off to the side and a few moments later, a car comes speeding down the road. The adults watching us try to get the kids out of the way, but it hits two kids before… kid-me casts some sort of spell and the car goes sort-of through him.

Then the kid-me is thrown to the side, covered in injuries and barely breathing. The car itself is severely damaged as well, as if blown apart from where I was in it. Within moments, I can sense the spells which kept me alive for years after forming in me.

I was subconsciously casting them almost immediately, and I'm fairly certain I never had any proper training. That spell I cast first was extremely crudely done, as if I was still figuring it out back then.

Grandpa Adrian immediately cancels the World Memory access and we're back to looking at my bed.

"What happened?" Katie asks, her mind filled with confusion. "Did the car go through Xander?"

"More like Xander went through it," Grandpa Adrian corrects. "And because of the brain damage, he probably forgot he ever even knew that spell."

"What was that?" I ask. "It's like it made me be… intangible, right? I became intangible, sort of?"

"Not quite," he says. "But close enough. It seems four-year-old you had figured out how to phase through objects. Judging by the structure of the spell, you barely knew it, and you lost control of it while inside of the car. That's what resulted in what happened. It's also why you suffered so much damage despite your body being so resilient at that age."

"Oh," I shudder. "I don't ever want to see that again. Um. How did I have so much mana, though? None of your other descendants are like me, except maybe Greyson. He's spent years building up his reserves, though. That already defies the logic of how much mana a person is born with. I mean, with how much you have, a quarter of the average would probably still be… many, many, many times mine even if my great-grandmother from your side had average mana."

"Indeed," Grandpa Adrian says. "I know a method of controlling how much of my mana is factored into that, and I taught it to your great-grandmother. This allowed us to have children who are powerful at birth, but not absurdly so."

"That's possible?" Katie asks.

"It's magic," I say. "When magic is involved, nearly anything is possible."

"Indeed," Grandpa Adrian says. "It normally wouldn't be possible for me to have children, anyway, so I needed to use magic to do that."

"You're impotent?"

Grandpa Adrian gives me an amused look. At least it's amused and not annoyed. I don't want to get beaten for being surprised.

"No," he tells me. "But being as I'm only one-quarter human after the thing I told you about, and with the vast amount of mana I do possess, it's difficult to find someone who's compatible with me. It is odd that you were born with so much mana…"

His eyes widen.

"I should've looked more deeply at your mana before."

"What do you mean?" I look at my hands. "There's nothing special about it, is there?"

"You're so used to seeing it that you've probably filtered it out," Grandpa Adrian says. "It does explain why one of the unicorn princes is so drawn to you, and why that old bird has kept an eye on you all these years."

Something tells me that Aurum is the prince and not one of the unicorns Grandpa Adrian's regularly chased off.

"That old bird?" Katie asks.

"Blaze?" I ask at the same time.

"I'm sure while you thought he was a hallucination," Grandpa Adrian says. "You talked to him a lot, maybe even told him about wanting to die, yes?"

"Yeah," I nod. "He always suggested I do it. But I just thought he was my subconscious. Now that I know he's real, I'm not sure why he was telling me to die. He gives off grandpa vibes."

"Yeah," Grandpa Adrian snorts and pulls out his phone. "I'm sure he does. Do you still feel suicidal?"

"A little, at times," I tell him. "But I don't feel like I need to die anymore, just that I should. And only when I get super depressed. Not most of the time now, though. I'm a lot happier than I was before I learned I had real skills."

"That's what I thought," he makes a call and when whoever he calls answers, they chirp like a bird. "Blaze, you old coot. Come to me right now before I pluck your tail. You've got some explaining to do about your grandson, you feather-brain."

Blaze has a grandson?

A few moments later, there's a flash of light through the window and a unicorn is standing in my bedroom, Blaze perched on her head.

"Whoa," I say as Katie takes a step back. "You're even bigger than Aurum."

She's about a foot taller than Aurum. She also showed up right in my room, which is really rude.

"Hello, Xander," she speaks telepathically, just like how Blaze and Aurum do. "This is the first time we've met. And yes, Aurum is a little on the small side."

"Blaze," Grandpa Adrian says. "Celeste," he points at me. "Please explain."

"One of our daughters left the herd and married one of your grandsons," Celeste tells him. "We were quite proud of her for finding such a stud, even if she changed her name to a more human one when she took human form."

"One of your daughters?" I ask. "You two are married? But you're not even close to being the same species!"

"Magic," Grandpa Adrian says. "Magical creatures can procreate if they know how, especially among the higher ones like these two. Most of their children take the form of phoenixes, unicorns, or pegasi – winged horses. It depends on how much of the power of each parent was added in. Blaze is the king of the phoenixes, and Celeste is the queen of the unicorns. At least, of the ones here on Earth."

"Xander's mother is a pegasus," Blaze says. "She has equal parts phoenix and unicorn. Her resurrection is a seven-year cycle."

"Resurrection?" I ask. "But she's dead? Wait. My mom's not human?"

"A seven-year resurrection?" Grandpa Adrian asks. "It looks like there's more for me to look into. And Xander? Based on what I can see when looking more deeply into you, the only human in you comes from me. You're only one-thirty-second human."

"Your wife's not human?"

"Nor is your father's mother, it seems," he sighs before looking at my apparent grandparents. "You said that as if Natalie is alive."

"She is," Celeste says. "Though she may not know Xander is her child. From what we can tell, he was born dead and she died giving birth to such an incredible child. It consumed more mana than she had and killed her. His father couldn't detect any resurrection energies in Xander, so he arranged for him to be cremated, then took his wife's body, manipulated memories and records to make it seem as if he'd died on the way to the hospital, and watched over her until she finished resurrecting. As far as he's aware, he's scattered Xander's ashes."

"It took us a bit to realize Xander was our grandson," Blaze adds. "I've been keeping an eye on him since encountering him and realizing it."

"I am so confused right now…"

"Me, too, Xander," Katie says.

Thank goodness there's an adult whose confused as well. That means it's not just me being dumb.

"Anything who is one-quarter phoenix or more," Grandpa Adrian says. "Has a natural resurrection ability. It's passive and activates automatically when they die. Though if their body is destroyed while they're resurrecting, they'll stay dead, and they have a limited number of resurrections based on their mana capacity. It can increase as they get stronger, but it takes more and more mana to add in each new resurrection."

"So I can come back from the dead if I die?" I ask.

"Yes," he answers. "But only a limited number of times. It starts at one million mana, then two, then three, then five, then eight, then thirteen, then twenty-one, and so on."

That seems random, but it means I have three resurrections total, and have already used at least one.

"How long it takes them to resurrect depends on several factors in their bloodline," Grandpa Adrian adds. "How long is Xander's resurrection cycle?"

"Minutes, we believe," Celeste answers. "Xander has sun dragon in him from his father's mother, and that amplified his mother's healing power in him. So it takes him maybe half an hour or so to resurrect. When Xander came back at the hospital, they thought they'd just misread him being dead. Since he was also clearly a Lumaria King, someone thought to take advantage of that. Unfortunately for them, they ended up failing and Xander went to an orphanage."

"Though I made sure to punish them appropriately," Blaze adds. "Once we learned of this and tracked down those responsible."

"I can resurrect?" I want to double-check this.

"Of course," Blaze puffs up his chest. "You've got my blood strong in you!"

"Yes," Grandpa Adrian's expression turns serious. "Did you ever stop to think that maybe you should tell Xander why you were suggesting he give in to that feeling like he needed to die?"

Blaze tilts his head.

"Feather-brain," Grandpa Adrian sighs, then looks at me. "Xander, the difference between wanting to die and feeling as if you need to die, at least for you, is that the feeling of a need to die stemmed from your phoenix blood. You resurrect with your body healed. It was failing to heal on its own, so it knew it needed to just die so it could heal. And the old coot sitting on Celeste probably assumed you knew it was your phoenix instincts trying to get you to heal. You'll need some training to know the difference."

"So if I'd killed myself," I say. "I'd have just come back from the dead within half an hour, all healed up?"

"Yes," Grandpa Adrian answers.

"But then I wouldn't be dead anymore… not that I want to be dead anymore," I add. "But it wouldn't have helped my want to die back then."

"Well," Grandpa Adrian says. "I'm very glad you didn't die for good, Xander. You're an incredible boy and I enjoy watching you grow."

"Even if I'm messing up your plans and causing you to be more direct in your interactions with the world?"

"I don't mind that," he chuckles. "Though it does mean I didn't need to worry too much about your presence affecting things. Well, it doesn't hurt to make the world a little more magical, anyway. It was bothering me it was taking so long for the common person to learn to wield magic."

"Excuse me," Katie's voice is a little quiet. "Can we go back to the sun dragon part?"

"Hm?" Grandpa Adrian looks at her. "Ah, right. Xander apparently also has sun dragon in his ancestry, the same kind of dragon which modified my own bloodline a little. And a queen of them, at that. I really should have looked into Xander's mana when I realized he was exceptional. His father's mother seems to be one of the sun dragons living on Earth," he directs his attention to the other magical creatures in the room. "Do either of you know if she's aware of Xander?"

"Her younger brother's been arm-wrestling him nearly weekly for a few years," Celeste informs him. "We were having wine with her just a few days ago as we talked about our grandson. He's really an extraordinary child, you know."

"Yes, I'm aware," Grandpa Adrian snorts. "Well, now I know why unicorns are so drawn to him. They can tell he's kin. And royalty at that."

"Royalty?"

"I did mention she's the queen of Earth's unicorns, didn't I?"

"Oh, right."

My face is burning now. That was so fucking stupid of me.

"Anything else we should know right now?" Grandpa Adrian asks.

"Depends on what you feel is important," Celeste says before looking at me. "By the way, Aurum is one of your uncles. He's especially fond of you and views you as his favorite nephew."

Why would I be his favorite nephew? I'm just me.

"The three of us are going to have a good, long chat," Grandpa Adrian tells them. "Then I'm going to pay a visit to Xander's birth parents and see what they say," he looks at me. "Since it seems they're alive, would you be interested in meeting them?"

"I-I'm not sure," I tell him. "I like living with Dad. He makes me feel safe."

"I didn't say go to live with them," he says. "Just meet them. You moving in with them would be a complicated legal affair, anyway."

That sounds like adult stuff that's not any of my business, so I won't ask. Asking an adult about adult stuff is a bad thing to do.

"Oh," I say. "Um… I'm not sure if I want to meet them. I like the mom and dad I have nowand don't want them to get replaced."

"Alright," he says. "Then we'll hold off on that for now. I'll let you get to your nap, you're swaying a bit."

"Thanks," I say, then look at two of the magical beasts who are apparently my biological grandparents. "Celeste, Blaze, please ask permission before entering my room, if you come visit again. It's really rude to just pop into someone's room. Okay?"

"Sorry," they both respond, and I can feel that they're feeling guilty.

"Enjoy your sleep," Grandpa Adrian tells me, then vanishes along with the unicorn and the phoenix.

I look at Katie.

"A nap will help me feel more awake because it helps my brain process over-stimulation," I tell her. "I don't think it'll help me process what we just learned. And Grandpa Adrian didn't even say what sort of creature his wife is, but did you catch what he said? The only human in my ancestry comes from him. So she's apparently not human, either."

"I did not catch that, no," she says. "And I'm not sure if I know how to process what we learned, so I can't help you there. Sorry, Xander. Why don't you go ahead and take your nap and when you come back from Sig's after it, you can help me figure out what to order for dinner? We'll be ordering in for dinner tonight."

"There's a pizza place I want to try," I tell her as my tail starts wagging.

"Alright," she chuckles. "Go ahead and take your nap now, and I'll see you before you leave."

[Xander – 12 years]

I decide to ride my hoverboard to Sig's instead of teleporting there. I'm still processing everything I learned. There's so little human in me that despite me looking human (when I'm not in my wolfkin form), I'm basically considered as not having any human in me.

On one side of my family, I have some mostly-human-but-one-quarter-dragon cousins. And on the other, I have a horse for a cousin. A horse who's a rare variant of a high magic breed, too. I have a great-grandpa who was born human but is only one-quarter human, a great-grandma whose species I don't know other than it's not human, a grandma who's a sun dragon queen, a grandma who's a unicorn queen, and a grandpa who's a phoenix king.

My family line is really confusing. I was right. A nap did not help me process this.

I stop my hoverboard and turn my head to look in a direction I sensed something in. The moment I meet its gaze, the big daddy of the bears stops moving. He's got one arm against his chest with a bunch of water balloons filled with some sort of mana-filled liquid. Not a mana potion, though, but a liquid that's just naturally filled with mana. His other arm is raised up with another balloon in his paw, as if he's going to throw it.

That's a lot of mana in him. What do I do? Especially since it seems he's got temporal, spatial, and mental magics in his bloodline. Fighting him would probably be complicated.

As I stare at him and try to figure out what to do, the bear slowly lowers his arm, setting the balloon onto the pile of others. Oh, wait. Maybe he was just wanting a water balloon fight and water wherever he's from is just full of mana? A beast like him probably isn't local but lives deeper in the wilderness.

"Are you throwing water balloons at people?" I ask. "Why?" I look around for a moment before locking gazes with him again. He's littered all over the place! "There are balloon bits all over the place. You clean this up right now! I don't care if they're biodegradable, that's littering! Littering is bad! Illegal! Do you wanna go to jail? Or worse, since you're a magic beast and not a person? I don't care if you got a local to play with you, you're still littering! Clean up your mess!"

The bear sags his shoulders and the balloons vanish, then he gestures with his paws and all of the balloon bits around vanish as well.

"Did you get all of them?" I ask. "And I mean all of them?"

The bear whines a little.

"I said to clean it up!"

Once the bear confirms he's cleaned them all up, he offers me a jar full of what looks liked mana-filled honey. From magic bees?

"I'm not accepting bribes."

He still offers it to me.

"Don't think this will get you any special treatment, you keep causing problems," I accept the jar. "Also, that's a lot of honey. Are you sure you can spare it? Okay, thanks."

The jar has a spatial expansion enchantment on it so even though it just looks like a 13oz jar, it's actually got about fifty gallons of honey in it. Looking at it more closely, the magic in the honey seems to be attuned to the same types of magic as the bear.

Oh! That means it might taste good to me. I sample a little of it and this is definitely the best honey I've ever had. With how much of it he said he has and how easily he said he can acquire more, I'm not going to turn it down now.

"Thanks," I put the jar into one of my pouches. "No more causing problems!"

The bear nods, and I continue on my way to Sig's house. When I arrive, Ms. Rachel lets me know my friends are out back, so I go around to the back and find them wrestling.

"Hey, Xander!" Sig says from the headlock Connor's got him in. "How was your nap?"

"It was good," I say as Connor releases him. "I gave up waiting until tomorrow and asked Grandpa Adrian for help with the monster under the bed. He dealt with it and taught me how to touch intangible things and even how to collapse the magics making up a monster-under-the-bed monster. That kills them and gets rid of them. Also, apparently, the reason it didn't leave after discovering whose bed it had gone under was because it became frozen with fear. That's what Grandpa Adrian said."

"So you slept in your own bed again?" Sig asks.

"Yeah," I answer. "And learned some other stuff. I'm still processing a lot of it, but I'm apparently also a dreamsage. It's a type of mind mage with extra power dealing with dreams. Without any control over it, my dreams just get affected by the dreams of those around me. You said yesterday that you sometimes dream about turtles. That might be how I learned you liked them, your dreams probably affected my dreams and made me realize it. Your guys' dreams affecting mine would definitely explain some of the ones I have during sleepovers around you. But Grandpa Adrian gave me a book on dreamsage magics so that I can learn to control it and not be affected by the dreams of others."

"That's cool!" Sig says. "Seems like you had an interesting afternoon after the stream!"

"A really confusing one," I correct. "Especially since I rode my hoverboard here and a massive bear was gonna throw a water balloon at me! I made him clean up all of the bits of balloon scattered around the street. I didn't want to do a water balloon fight so I'm glad he stopped before throwing it. I also made him clean up all of the balloon bits, because leaving them out like that is just littering, even if they're biodegradable."

Why do they all feel really amused right now?

"Xander," Sig snickers. "Those weren't water balloons. I mean, they were, but they're filled with honey."

"With… honey?" I ask.

"Yeah," Sam shrugs. "We don't know why he's doing that, but he's been popping up all over the area and throwing them at people. Sig even got hit on his way to meet up with us!"

"We've all been hit at least a couple of times," Sig tells me. "No one knows why he's doing it. I had to scrub it out of my backpack and take a shower when we got back earlier."

"He made it sound like he wants to play," I say. "He mentioned he got a local to play with him. Only one, though. He sounded disappointed it was just the one."

"Of course nobody wants to!" Connor exclaims. "He's a giant, clearly magical bear throwing water balloons filled with honey! Who would be crazy enough to play with him?"

"Greyson King," Isaac says, and we all look at him. "Travis has mentioned it. He says that before school started, he got hit with some balloons and ended up late getting home. Greyson wanted to try and 'deal with the bear', so he got permission from their dads to go take it on. Cal apparently had to pick Greyson up as the kid wore himself out – completely used up all of his mana – trying to take out the bear. And the entire time, the bear was just throwing more of those balloons at him. So the bear probably thought he was playing."

"Oh," I say. "Maybe? Yeah, I can see Greyson doing that. The bear has a lot of mana and has temporal, spatial, and mind magics in his bloodline, so he could easily keep up with Greyson."

If I remember to ask him the next time I see him, I'll ask Greyson about the encounter.

"I want to know why the bear's throwing honey," Sig says. "I taste it every time he hits me with some and it's pretty good. It's a shame he's wasting it, he could probably make a fortune with it!"

"You've got enough mana that foods with a lot of mana in them taste good to you," I tell him. "The market for his honey would mostly be for mages. And he's probably using honey because he probably views it the same way we view water. That's probably why he stuck it into water balloons – he probably thinks it's treating it the same."

"As… something you bathe in?" Sig asks.

"What?" Connor gives him a bewildered look.

"We bathe in water!" Sig says. "So if he views it the same way we do water, doesn't that mean he bathes in it?"

"Probably not," I say. "I meant for consumption. We drink water. He drinks honey. And speaking of consuming stuff, I brought some fruit and veggies to add to the snacks. If y'all want to get back to wrestling, you can. I can watch while I munch."

I do feel a little hungry right now.

"Oh!" Sig says. "Aunt Rachel said that we could go swimming if you got here and wanted to swim with us! Do you? If not, we'll play a game!"

"Wouldn't you be playing a game in the pool, too?" I ask.

"A game not in the pool," he clarifies. "So? Do you wanna swim?"

"Not really," I answer. "But I'll join you in the pool. Just don't roughhouse with me, okay?"

"Okay!"

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