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I groaned lightly. My head was pounding, as I hoisted myself up to sit straight on the bed. I couldn't force my eyes completely open, so I just let them be half-peered. I swinged my left leg over the edge of the bed, then the other leg. I stand up. Strange... Is the floor further down, than it should be? Must be just the fatigue.

I make my way down to the bathroom on the left side of my room. I open a cabinet and examine the mirror, as I yawn, still trying to wake up.

Fangs!

I yelp in surprise and punch against the glass. Reflection?

I examine the remains of the mirror, pick up a big enough piece and stare into it. I see my familiar blue eyes but a non-familiar face. Whatever I'm looking at is, it has a small snout. Not really something that'd look too different from a humans face. I study the eyes, again, and they're not normal. They look like a pair of snake's eyes! But... This is a reflection... That'd make this snake-person... Me!

I stagger back and look at my hands. I have long black talons! Almost half an inch long, each! My hands are covered in crimson-red scales and as I run my fingers against my throat, down to my stomach, I feel that my whole body is covered in the same dark scales. I look down to my feet and realize why I felt so tall. I've grown double-jointed legs in the matter of just one night! My feet have the same dark claws. Five toes, that much at least seems normal.

I look back at a reflection and open my mouth, carefully. I see two long fangs, slightly pressed against the roof of my mouth. I slide my tongue out in the open and instead of a normal, red, humans tongue, a two-tipped, black tongue slithers out. I'm starting to panic. I open my mouth further and feel a strange muscle in my mouth. I decide to try it out. My two fangs dart out and spray a light-blue liquid against the remains of the mirror. As the blue substance slides down against the edges of the mirror, I meet my own gaze and my blue eyes aren't as I remembered. They were the eyes of a snake, with slits replacing the normal, round pupil of a humans.

I nearly cry out and stumble back into the bedroom. I trip on a tail. No. Two tails? I look at my back-side and notice two long tails wrapping around my legs. There's a pattern covering both. The same, black smokey trail, I saw in the room yesterday. The pattern climbs up against my spine and forms a sickly black set of wings on my shoulder blades. It continues over my left shoulder and stops on my fore-arm, leaving a black, flame-like impression on the arm. I felt my head. At least my hair was my own, long, dark regular hair. I tied it up into a clumsy ponytail out of habit.

Iris walks in. She simply smiles at me and leaves a tray on a coffee-table on the other side of the room.

"I apologize. I didn't realize that you weren't dressed"

I look at her, puzzled at her comment, then look across the room, realizing that my clothes are hanging on the back of a chair.

"Uhm... Not your fault" I dash for the clothes and start getting dressed. My black cargo-pants look more like shorts now, with my double joints. My pants cover up to my knees and halfway down my newly appeared joints. My black t-shirt didn't seem to be in too much trouble. It fit almost perfectly, leaving just a little bit of my belly showing. "What happened?"

"You discovered your magic. It was subconsciously keeping your human form, as a disguise. Now that you have no need for that, it dropped. If you want to get that form back though, you'd have to practice with the illusionists" She keeps on a smile but it turns into a frown quickly. "But now. The Council wishes to address you. Follow me" She walks off, not giving me any time to eat the bread on the tray she set up on the small table.

As we walk up the stairs, I think back to my thoughts last night. Even if she were part-swan, she looks more like an angel with those wings. I wouldn't have been able to tell her as half animal. She doesn't possess too many qualities, apart from the wings, that'd show her off as anything other than a normal person.

We stop in front of the familiar, massive door. Iris knocks on it and I hear a frustrated grunt, telling her to enter.

What I see, is all of The Seven. This time, they all had serious faces. Even the jolly Third seemed downcast and he only nodded to me, as he saw me. The Fifth wasted no time and sneered at me.

"What is this? Where is Niten Ichi-Ryu?"

"This is him" Iris politely interrupted. "I told you that he wasn't human, did I not?"

The Seventh (The one with the giant robes covering his appearance) simply nodded.

"You did. However, we did not expect his kind to appear within the Mirror's premises"

"I agree. It is most peculiar for a dreichoon to seek our tutelage" The Fourth agreed. "Do you know what you are, Ryu?"

"No. I have no idea... I'm sorry..."

"That is quite all right" The Sixth waved his hand at me, smiling. "Simply put, dreichoons are strong, wise and from recent events with faith, dead. Congratulations! You are now the last living-" The Seventh coughed. Sixth only nodded shyly at him. "One of the last living dreichoons"

I shifted my gaze towards the man covered in thick robes. He was like me? That'd explain the tail I saw earlier.

The Fifth only glared at me.

"You forget. He isn't just dreichoon. He is also a Shadowcaster. By law, he should be ex-"

"Quite enough. We all know where you stand, Diligence" The Second interrupted, crossing his hands with an amused expression on his lips "You are the one forgetting here. He is dreichoon, sure. That means that his abilities on controlling his own magic are tenfold better that any others. This would be some reason for concern, yes. But he also has showed another element, which is rare within Shadowcasters. The Shadow consumes any other element, making it impossible to host two in one body. Yet he has. Does this mean nothing to you?"

"It means nothing! Are you forgetting the threat we're faci-"

"We are not. Which is why we should only embrace this one. He might prove useful to us, if nothing else" The First interrupted.

"Shut up! Stop interrupting m-" River was obviously getting closer to bursting, clutching to his massive sword with his right hand.

"We will do no such thing" The Third smiled, now getting into testing River's self-control. "I vote that we should let Ryu practice mastering this Shadow. If he can, great. If he can't... Well" He nods at River.

"I agree" The Sixth smiled. Along with him, the rest of the Seven showed their acceptance. But the Seventh pointed a finger at me.

"You will not, however, be allowed to let the Shadow loose in this tower. Or any place for that matter, until you have it under control. Do you understand?"

I nod. River's expression only turns more murderous but he controls himself. The Seventh approaches him.

"Are you done expressing your thoughts?"

"Yes" He huffs, obviously straining to put the sentence together.

"Good. Now. Since it is custom for each of us to have an apprentice. How about it, River? The boy obviously uses swords, so it'd be to his advantage, if you taught him"

The shark slowly moves his eyes to meet mine. He cracks a smile. I'm not sure what to read in it. "Well. If he can handle it, sure. I can teach him the ways of the sword"

I swallow and try to respond with equal resentment. "I can handle whatever you throw at me"

"Oh? Believe me. I'll be throwing plenty. Be ready. We start tomorrow. I want you in the training grounds by 6am. Got it?"

"Yes, sir"

"Good"

Iris and I walk out from the room and as the doors close, I let out a silent curse.

"Are you ok? He isn't usually this wary but he does have some history with Shadowcasters... I'm sure he didn't mean to-"

"That's it. I want answers. What is this 'conflict' they spoke of?"

"That'll take some time... I'm not sure where to start..."

"I have plenty of time. Don't worry about that" I crossed my arms, smiling at her gently.

"Well" She started walking down the stairs. I followed quickly after her. "Lately, there has been some small arguments between the technicians and us, mages. We've managed to stay out of trouble with them but now there's a new problem, which has flied under the radar of the Zero Division"

"What's that?"

"The Seven"

"But... Aren't they good guys? I mean... We just spoke with them and apart from River, they seem pretty collected"

"Yes. These Seven. But there's another group, called The Seven Deadliest. From what we can tell, they're all powerful mages and want to overthrow the technicians" She stops and looks into my eyes. "If they attack Zero-D, they're going to think that the Council sent them after the technicians. That'll risk war and we're not prepared to fight the big Zero with magic, since we're outnumbered by thousands"

"Can't we just tell the Zero Division that we're not behind any attack that might occur? Jack seemed smart. I'm sure that he'd listen"

"He does listen. But. He's just a general. The admiral of Zero Division doesn't listen to generals, no matter how important they have been. Jack isn't exactly the admirals favorite either. He has been working on a project, which has taken him from his other duties. If he keeps this up, the admiral will get rid of Jack, for good"

I didn't manage to say a word. We walked down the stairs in silence. As we got to the third floor (dining area) I heard a familiar voice, cocked my head towards it and saw Raven. He walked up to Iris, shook hands with her and chatted for a moment. Then looked at me and back to Iris.

"Seriously?" He placed his hand on my shoulder. "Ryu? Hi dude!" He pats me loudly, grinning widely. "So. They didn't whack you off, hurt you in any way and they even let you practice here? With us? Awesome!"

"I guess so..."

"Were you assigned to a house yet?"

Iris speaks up. "No. They didn't even bother to inform him. But I can pull some strings and place him in Delta-House. If that's fine by you?"

"The big D, eh? Sounds great!" He winks at me. "I'm there, so of course it's the best choice."

"Who else are in Delta-House?" I asked, smiling at Ravens boasting.

"Not too many... Me, my sis, Draco, who you shouldn't worry about..." Iris coughs. "Oh! That's right! Iris is also in the dog-house! She's the best Seeker there is and she's all ours" He smiles.

"So... What's with the 'houses'?" I ask, grinning at the thought of spending more time with Iris.

"Hm? Oh. Well. It's just a controlled group. Usually they're the size of twenty people per house but Delta is different. We only take the best" His grin only widening.

"But you said that your sister wasn't too good with magic. Why would she study it?"

"You'll see. She is a technician, mostly. We call them pioneers. She uses small amounts of magic, mixed with technology. But she's a tamer, which will be obvious, once you meet Draco. But enough of that! Lets eat!"

We took plates, stuffed them with ham and mash-potato along with some high-quality tea. We walked around for a moment, searching for a quiet spot and sat down. We munched up our food quickly and just chilled out.

Eventually, Raven decided to open his mouth again. "So... Dreichoon... Gotta say, you look more like a snake, than a dragon" He laughs. Iris gives him a warning glance. I snicker a little. I feel a hand on my shoulder and hear a familiar voice.

"You definitely have good scales. Nice to meet you again, Ryu" Shay-Lee sits down next to me, smiling.

"Not as good as mine though, no offense" I look behind me and blink once. Twice. A raptor? Not even half-human! A full raptor! I stumble against my seat and let my jaw drop.

"Hey hey! No need to be rude!" He offers his scaly, talon filled paw at me, smiling with a nasty row of filed down teeth. "I'm Draco, Shay's pet" He grins towards Shay-Lee and sits down on his hind-legs. "Ryu, right?"

"...Yeah... Draco?"

"That's what my mama called me" He laughs. I look at his face. It's definitely a raptor. He has dark-blue scales and a steady pattern of jet-black squares on his back, running down towards the tip of his tail. He has some sort of feathers covering his head, making him look like a punk-rocker. His eyes are a very dark green and his teeth are pure white. I bet that they didn't look that white, after feeding time...

We sit around for a while longer, chatting with each other. Mostly about my sudden transformation. Draco seems to be most interested and I felt bad, for not being able to answer any of his questions. I told the group about how I had simply woken up, broken a mirror and jumped at seeing my own face. To this, Raven had (naturally) a comment. "Yeah? I wouldn't be surprised at that. I mean. You're no charmer, that's for sure!"

I also told that I had an early morning, due to the practice I was supposed to be doing with River. The whole table gasped.

"You're going to be training with him?" Shay-Lee was the first to speak.

"Yeah. I wouldn't be too worried though... Iris says that he's cool"

"Haha... No. Bad joke Iris" Shay tuts, then looks back to me. "Luckily, I'm working in the nurse's office, so I'll be seeing you later then. I've gotta go now. Take care!" She picks up her tray and smiles at Draco. "You coming too?"

"Of course" He grins happily and follows suite.

I get up, along with Raven and Iris and we head towards our rooms. Raven lives on the fortieth floor, so he's closer to home than Iris and I.

It's almost a quarter hour climb but eventually we manage to get there. Iris looks at me and sighs happily, before she retires to her room. I smile back and do the same.

After studying my room closely, I find it quite large. Bigger than any place I've visited, by far. I had my own bed room, bath room and even a small kitchen! I walked up to a balcony and almost fell over, as I looked down. It didn't look real! I don't even remember seeing any balconies, when I looked at the tower, to begin with!

I stumbled back to my room, dizzy from staring down from the heights. I grinned, as I noticed my two swords in perfect condition. I picked them up and cleared out a small area. I tried getting used to my new boy by practicing familiar techniques but it was no use. I kept on tripping on my own feet or one of my tails. I'd need a teacher and I already have one. For tomorrow. I sighed, placed the swords back on the pedestal and only did a short muscle practice. Afterwards, I took a shower and headed to bed.

I thought about what the Seven had said. 'Control the Shadow'... That didn't make any sense. I rolled on my stomach and my tail slammed against the back of my head. Damn! That hurt! I couldn't help but smile though. I couldn't wait, until I could fight using two extra limbs! I opened my mouth again and squirted out some of that clear liquid from my teeth. It shimmered eerily in the dark. I tasted it. Nothing. No flavor at all. I wondered what it was and decided to ask that first thing tomorrow... From someone who knows... My thoughts started drifting again and I found myself falling asleep with Iris in my thoughts. I couldn't get her smile out of my head and it followed me to the darkness of my dreams, lighting my thoughts, guarding me from the dark.