I didn’t see much of Kalli that next week. She took up staying with the littles with Wendy and Shiviria while they got settled into the castle. Queen Celestea decided to take charge even though the people didn’t recognize her in the way that they once did. She insisted on meeting with them every morning.

She informed us that it was going to be a few weeks before we heard back from Dabia. That left a lot of free time. Joe and Rundell convinced me to explore the castle.

It was huge. The parts of it that we knew were just the living quarters and the area near the entrance that was meant for the general public to visit. The deeper we ventured, the more bizarre things got.

“Why do you think this is back here?” Joe asked as we walked down a long hall that only seemed to serve as a maze.

“I don’t know but this is kind of exciting,” Rundell replied, taking the lead.

I was busy looking at my map. It was strange because the passageways seemed to be in constant motion. Also, there were treasure markers everywhere though we hadn’t been able to find any. Every time we got close, a wall would appear to block our passage.

Attempting to delete or edit the structure was also met with an error.

THIS ITEM CANNOT BE MODIFIED BY THE SYSTEM

The castle was also refusing to cooperate with [World Editor] mode. While I could use it to get a bird’s eye view of the castle, I could not modify it or any part of the city.

I lagged behind the others and chatted with Kalli.

You really should see this. I’ll bet there are all sorts of clues from your childhood down here.

Kalli looked up from a group of children. I’ll go explore with you later, Mel. The littles need me right now.

I frowned and kicked a rock down the hall, causing Joe and Rundell to jump out of the way. Joe sat up and shouted, “Don’t do that!”

Rundell laughed and pointed at Joe. “You should see your face. You looked so scared.”

Joe ignored his friend and stared daggers at me. “Why did you do that?”

I shrugged, walking past the two of them to take the lead. Suddenly, something pulled me in the opposite direction. Spinning around, I marched back the way we came, directly past my two friends. Rundell gave me a curious look and asked, “Had enough?”

“No,” I replied, trying to sound confident. “The castle wants us to go this way.”

“You talk to castles now?” Joe asked with a chuckle.

I laughed, unable to articulate that while I couldn’t speak to the castle, it was speaking to me. Walking with purpose, I didn’t hesitate when I came to intersections. The sounds of walls shifting around us didn’t phase me. Our path through the castle felt like a dance. We would walk two rooms forward then one back.

The map was useless, tempting me with treasures at the ends of halls that weren’t there when we arrived. However, this was different. No path was barred to me when I got there. All I had to do was go where the castle wanted me to.

“Do you think the castle is alive?” Rundell asked while running his hands along a wall.

I wasn’t sure. It was definitely magical. Stopping for a moment, I touched the wall and allowed my mana to flow into it. It was met by a mysterious mana that felt somehow familiar. Like Kalli. I knew it almost instantly. Someone in the past had left their mark on the castle. Someone related to my girlfriend.

Mana channels ran through walls and ducts that seemed to be carved into the stone. The mana that flowed through them felt primal as though it came directly from the source which all mana came from.

While I wanted to follow it, I was also in the middle of a hunt for treasure so I reluctantly withdrew my mana and answered Joe. “Yep, she’s alive.”

“She?” Joe echoed back, looking suspicious.

I thought about my answer. “It only makes sense. Think about it, the queen rules this place after all.”

Joe laughed as I set off at a brisk pace. “Boy castles and girl castles would imply baby castles existing somewhere.”

The thought of a tiny castle made me laugh too. “Well, castles have to start somewhere, right? Castle mating rituals would be something fun to watch on the Discovery Channel.”

We were so caught up in our joke, that it didn’t register right away that we had arrived. The room at the end of the hall was not like what we had encountered up to that point. The stone room was filled with old furniture covered with dusty tarps. Boxes filled with various items lined the walls.

Lit sconces on the walls told us that the castle had prepared the room for us. A metallic glint coming from one of the boxes caught my eye. I wandered over to investigate as Joe and Rundell explored deeper into the room.

I fished through the box until I uncovered the source. A small coin, about the size of a silver dollar, rested at the bottom. I picked it up and examined it in the light.

The coin had a perfect likeness of Kalli on it. Flipping the coin over expecting to go find Kalli’s tail side, I was shocked to see my face looking back at me. Inscribed on the bottom of the coin was a message.

IF YOU LOVE HER, YOU WILL LET HER GO.

I flipped the coin back over, expecting to see another message on the Kalli side but there was nothing. Suddenly, Joe startled me by calling out. “Melvin, did you find something over there?”

Pocketing the coin, I shouted back. “Just junk.”

Kalli had seen though, questioning me about it through mate chat. Mel, what was that? Did that have our faces on it?

I’ll show you later.

That seemed to placate her, so I resumed my exploration. The room turned out to be some kind of man cave. Several couches and a shag rug sat around a fireplace with a mounted monster head on the mantle. It looked down at us with lifeless piercing eyes that seemed to look into my soul. We uncovered the furniture and used various types of magic to dust everything.

On the other side of the room was a strange billiard table. It looked a lot like someone had combined a pool table and a game of mousetrap. The table had several levels and balls sunk on the top table would drop to the lower table and have various effects on the balls down there. We spent ten minutes debating how the game should work.

When we finished restoring the room, we all sat on the couches and I used magic to light the fireplace. Joe stretched out and said, “I wonder why the castle wanted to lead us here.”

I absentmindedly ran my finger over the coin in my pocket as Rundell said, “It’s the room of requirement. You know, from Harry potter. It’s a magic room that becomes what you need it to be.”

“Really?” Joe asked, not sounding convinced. “How does it work then?”

“Well, it’s simple,” Rundell explained, starting toward the door. “We have to go outside and think about what we need. Then the room will, um, transform or something.”

As we followed him out the door, I asked, “So who required the room to be trashed like it was?”

Joe laughed and added, “I just hope we don’t have to clean it again.”

Since the room didn’t have a door, we walked away until it was out of sight. Joe looked at us and asked, “Okay, who wants to make it change?”

Rundell pointed at me and said, “It’s your castle. You should do it.”

Feeling skeptical, I closed my eyes and wished for a room with nothing but paintings of Kalli. I could feel her blushing through our bond as she scolded me. Melvin! Cut that out. If you make that room and they see it, I’ll just die!

When I opened my eyes, Joe asked, “Well? Did you do it?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Let’s go find out.”

The room was just as we left it when we returned, the monster above the fireplace gazing at us impassively. Rundell looked at me with a smirk on his face. “Did you actually try?”

“What was I supposed to do?” I asked with a shrug. “I did make a wish. It just didn’t come true.”

Kalli giggled. Thank the gods!

I briefly wondered what god they worshipped on Gaia but decided not to ask. Joe and Rundell dragged me back outside so that they could make a wish properly. I decided to probe the castle again, so I knelt in the hall and pushed my mana into the cold stone wall.

Once again, I felt the mana flowing like life’s blood through ducts in the walls. Not only did it outline the castle but it stretched under the outlying city and ended at the massive walls that surrounded the area.

However, the source of the mana was underground. That much I could tell. I followed the mana through a complete circuit before finding where it terminated. Kalli and I both gasped as we felt the room beneath the castle. It was the same room where we had touched the artifact to restore celestea in the first place.

Feeling the mana funnel into the artifact, I noticed that it looked a lot like the sword in the stone. The only difference from the legend that I was familiar with was that we didn’t have to pull the sword out to be recognized. The simple act of touching it had bestowed us with the magic to restore Celestea to its former glory.

Following the mana through the artifact led deep underground. At first, I thought what I was seeing was the planet’s core. However, it was much too shallow to be something like that. Kalli and I gasped together as we realized we were looking at a massive ball of mana.

It was the source of the raw unrefined mana that I had felt the first time I inspected the castle. I wondered if Celestea drew its mana from the citizens or the planet itself. When I reached out with my mana to touch the core, Kalli warned me. Melvin? Are you sure about this?

I didn’t get the chance to answer. The core was enchanting me, drawing me in. I knew it wouldn’t hurt me. The mana told me so. The instant my mana made contact, the world grew smaller. We were no longer on Gaia. Kalli and I were launched into the sky and up through the atmosphere.

Once we reached space, it was apparent just how small Gaia was next to its planet, Luna. Kalli and I watched in amazement as we shot through the atmosphere of the much larger planet. We sailed through thick layers of clouds to discover a green world hidden beneath.

We descended on a set path toward a continent in the center of a vast green sea. The closer we got, the more apparent it became that nothing lived on Luna. Whether that was because of a hostile environment or some other reason was beyond us because our mana projections couldn’t tell if our physical bodies could survive there.

Once we made it to ground level, it was obvious that somebody had lived there in the past. Structures similar to Celestea castle went on for miles, though they all looked abandoned.

As we approached, the two of us realized what the castle was trying to tell us.

Celestea draws its mana from Luna!

Kalli gasped and agreed. Yeah. I wonder if I am originally from here. I think we need to ask my parents.

I laughed as I had a thought.

This takes the women are from Venus thing to a whole new level.

Kalli seemed confused. What is Venus? I thought this was called Luna.

It’s a planet in my solar system. There is a saying that women are from Venus and men are from Mars.

I knew what she was going to ask before she said it. What is Mars?

Fortunately, we were distracted as we reached our destination. A clone of Celestea castle stood against a mountain looking just as majestic as its clone back on Gaia.

From the castle, I could see tendrils of mana rising into the Lunarian sky heading through space to where I knew they linked the planetary mana core to its Gaian doppelganger.

Once the mana had shown us what it wanted, Kalli and I found ourselves back where we started. Joe yelped and jumped back. “Dude! You did it again.”

“What?” I asked, trying to get my bearings.

Joe cleared his throat as he composed himself. “You vanished the same way you did when you used my baseball portal to call your mother.”

“Oh,” I replied, still too stunned to speak.

Rundell was more composed than Joe as he asked, “Where did you go this time?”

“You won’t believe this,” I replied. “We went to Luna, the planet in the sky.”