Spoiler (click to show/hide):
I seem to recall that a lot of the crystal magic mimics Talren's natural draconic magics. I think my current plan is that mana can be 'burnt' to give temporary boosts to physical abilities and such, but it's horribly inefficient. Crystals do all of the functions, and 'normal' magic just focuses on slurping up the mana around you, feeding it into the crystals, and controlling the crystal outputs.
I also didn't think of it till later, but nano-tech would be incredibly vulnerable to extreme heat, something a dragon's immune system would likely try. The nanotech isn't 'immune' to magic, but magic doesn't see it and can't target it with any kind of 'smart' spell effect unless the user knows what to look for (and none of them do).
Relaxing a bit, you feel the supply of magic around you... it is faint, almost like it's being repulsed by your draconic form. With a sigh, you begin to gather mana from around you, swallowing it up and letting it flow. You're weaker at this than you were as a human. You can barely pull off what you would expect from an Amazon, much less what a Bright should be able to do. Still, you barely feel the warm glow of mana begin to form within your chest, and you decide to look for something... ah, a power cable. Moving to a charging station, somewhere that quickly converts various types of energy, fuel gas in this case, to useful mana, you begin drawing pure mana directly from the castle. You're a bit rusty, and the way the magic tends to bend away from you is annoying, but you manage. Without even focusing on it, it starts to flow out, coiling around specific points in your body.
Your wings have strong wind magic components to them, and bits of your bones and joints seem to focus on mass manipulation with small bundles that create the hardened armored scales. It's both familiar and strange, many of the features of this form mimic the magic you're familiar with, or could it be the other way around? There's also a tightly wound bundle of fire in your throat and healing magic in your chest, and the latter bundle is what's slurping up your magic right now, doing its best to patch you back together. The wound on your shoulder is still healing, the incredibly toxic silver poison the Amazon blades have were no match for the natural defenses your body can put out now, but the damage they did before your immune system decided to try applying a generous amount of heat are still present. Even your bodies natural ability to digest it makes you mildly ill.
The lack of common gems, even the ones that are implanted in your bodies early on to give you something to defend yourself with, makes it difficult to know what to do, but your body seems to be able to handle some of the basic magical effects you'd want anyway. You hear a soft snap, finally noticing that your bodies' sudden growth had pushed the borrowed clothing a bit beyond what it was built to handle. The shoulders and thighs barely held on, covering the necessities as your sudden expansion of muscle and growth of body parts tore them. Your forearms and legs seem to be okay... although the hand and feet region are total losses as the sudden emergence of the scales and claws shredded them. The tatters you feel on your back show that your new wings and tail did something similar back there.
Jillian watches you, and seems to be following along, although she frowns at the idea of trusting Talren. It seems she either doesn't like him, or simply doesn't trust him as a stranger. While your experience with her is rather rosey, you do recall that it takes her a while to warm up to strangers. Of course, now that you've got horns and scales, you could probably walk around at least a little bit without triggering rumors of ghosts. People do tend to notice that kind of thing first, especially if they aren't particularly close.
