Tareche went over to his unlit fireplace and putting the back of his hand on the pot quickly to check if it was hot.

"You, Alexander, put the pot on the table." He commanded, sitting down at the table. I quickly went over to the fireplace and reach for the handle.

"No no no, the handle is old and rusted, it could break and fall if you use the handle, just carry it from the base, it's not hot."

I took my hand away from the handle and took it by its cold base. And quickly put it in front of Tareche.

"Ok," Tareche replied, "I can definitely teach you, something is happening."

"How do you know?" Thalia asked, intrigued.

"Well, Thalia, come pour me a cup of tea," Tareche told her, getting a cup from one of the cupboards and sitting back down with it.

Thalia walked over and reached for the pot, putting one hand on the handle and reaching for the bottom of the pot with the other.

"Ouch!" Thalia yelled, quickly taking her hand off the bottom of the pot, "That's really really hot!"

"What?" I exclaimed, touching it again, yet, this time it felt warm, not cold like before, just... warm. "It feels... warm this time. But before it, well, it felt as cold as this table."

"Yes, yes. This is the first stage of unlocking your powers. They help bend to your expectations. You anticipated it being cold before I told you it was hot, so you made it cold. Once Thalia reacted the way she did, you didn't know what to expect when touching it again, so you felt something in the middle." Tareche replied.

"So, does this mean I can never know if something is hot or cold again?" I asked.

"Oh, no no, you'll learn to control this in time," Tareche answered.

"Then... why me? Why now? Why am I getting magic now, and how do you know so much about it?" I asked, "Is it something that happens regularly or what?"

"Well, I don't know why this is happening now, it hasn't happened since, well, since... the infusion."

"The infusion? What is it?" Why have I never heard of that before? " Thalia asked.

"Well, not many people remember it. We were all forbidden to talk about it to anyone that didn't know, including children, after it happened." Tareche was breathing very hard and stuttering. It was clear it was very hard for him to say this, "Well, basically, long ago we used magic freely, and every human and monster went through magic training and all learned to master their powers.

"Eventually, people learned that, if done right, people could be killed and their souls could be harvested. It took a lot of magical power build up, but by doing this humans could absorb monster souls and vise versa. However, a monster soul was much weaker that a human soul. It took hundreds of monster souls to equate to just one human soul.

"After this, a group of human extremists thought monsters would use this to wipe out humans, so they rallied people and started a war, a very big war. After a while, a small group of humans were able to conjure enough magical energy to lock all magic into nine artifacts by infusing their own soul into each one and taking as much magic with them as possible. They then hid each artifact underground, making them inaccessible." There was a pause as we all took it in.

"Wow," I said breaking the silence, but still shocked. I touched the red gemstone in my pocket. "I do have one question though. If newborns weren't aloud to know about it, how do you know about it?"

"Well Alexander, I'm far older than you might think. I was 13 when this happened. I was there. I learned everything about magic before it got taken away."

"Can you teach me more?" I asked him.

"Yeah, definitely" he replied, "It'll be a fun challenge! Can you get me a leph stone? I think it's in that cabinet there." He pointed to a cabinet above a wooden bowl.

"What's a leph stone?" I asked, walking over to the cabinet.

"It's a stone that holds magical energy. I stocked up on them before, well, yeah." he replied, "They should be glowing a soft red. Actually, the ancient artifacts were leph stones, just with the souls infused in them they didn't glow and didn't have to be a certain type of stone. " I opened the cabinet and saw a bunch of red stones, glowing red of coarse, and a green stone in the front, glowing a very harsh red.

"Is it this one?" I asked holding up the green stone.

"No no no, it's not even glowing..." he replied, then stopped, taking a closer look at it. "Wait what? It's not supposed to do that... It only does that when..."

"What? What is it? Did I do something?" I was worried.

"No, it just means that you either have the power to literally control spacetime or you have an ancient artifact."

"Well, I did find something that might be it..." I pulled the red crystal out of my smock pocket.

"Oh yes, this is it." he held my hand with the crystal closer to the glowing lime stone. It got much brighter as the crystal got closer and much dimmer as it got further. "Yes, yes, this is definitely it! You need to keep this and protect it. Don't let anyone, human or monster, know you have it!"

"Ok." I replied, putting it back in my pocket

"Ok. So, can you get a leph crystal for me?" He said going back to the table.

"Sure." I got a red crystal and showed it to him, "It's this, right?"

"Yeah, yeah, just throw it down to me."

"Well, I wouldn't want to break it, but Okay." I threw it straight down to him, and much to my dismay, he moved aside and let it crash on the floor. Almost like ghosts, little wisps of red came from the shambles and tracked into Tareche.

"Oh my goodness! Are you okay?" Thalia called rushing to his side.

"Oh ho ho, I'm fine, I just love playing that little joke on people. You see, there are little bits of magical energy inside of each of these crystals. And the only way to get them out is by breaking the crystal itself. But anyway, once it's broken it's really easy to fix with just a little bit of magic." Tareche then waved his hands and the crystal pieces suddenly flew up and assembled themselves mid air! Tareche then stopped after a few seconds, and the fully fixed crystal landed softly on the ground.

"Anyway, if you're wondering what type of magic I have..." After saying this, Tareche closed his eyes and clamped his hands together. With seemingly great strain, he took his hands apart very slowly, and in between a ball of dirt and stone started to form, getting bigger and bigger taking from seemingly nothing. Finally, content with what he had done, he took one hand away but left the bottom one with the ball slowly rotating slightly above his hand.

"Earth. I can control dirt and rocks, but the bigger it is the less control, so my power tops of on relatively small boulders. Of course, this dirt is only temporary, I have to keep feeding it magical energy or poof, it's gone, yet it's still useful like this." the ball of earth slowly floated to the candle above the door, touched the flame, and put it out. "Yet, if I stop feeding it, this happens." Slowly the ball of dirt shrunk, it's extra particles going seemingly nowhere until it was gone. "I can pick up real dirt and stone and it and it does the same thing, just it doesn't evaporate at the end.

"Cool, will I have a power like that? Like, controlling some ball thing?"

"I don't know. Most people do, but it's different for every power type." He replied, "Well, Thalia, do you want to join in too? It will just be temporary, but you could always use a leph crystal."

"Well, sure I guess. Will I ever get magic, like, real magic?" She asked.

"Well, probably, but you've been much farther from the artifact than Alexander, so it will take longer." He replied, "Well then, let's start training!"