“Mardella?” I asked, both nervous she might be crazy and a little excited to speak to someone I knew outside of Origin. “Are you sane again?”

“Bah!” She spat in outrage. “I was always sane. I was simply mourning the fact I let myself be defeated by a whelp of a boy.”

“You realize you’re speaking to the whelp of a boy right now, right?” I asked, wondering if it wouldn’t be better to just leave her to rot. “How about you try being nice to me for once?”

“Will you let me out if I do?” She asked in a silky voice.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” I replied, walking over to her door. Mardella was peeking out through the window slit. “How are you holding up? Is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable?”

I didn’t know why but I felt friendly toward her. Mardella looked around for a moment as though she was scouring the hall for a way out. Finally, she heaved a sigh and said, “I wouldn’t say no to some more furniture and perhaps a tasty cake. While I’ve grown accustomed to not eating or using the toilet, I still crave those things. It’s like my mind doesn’t know it’s been separated from my body and wants to do all the things it did before.”

“Ah,” I hesitated, not sure how to broach the subject of my skills being locked down by my father. “Unfortunately, I can’t do anything about your living situation at the moment.”

She disappeared from the slit, dropping out of sight. It only then occurred to me that she was shorter than the window on the door. While she’d always seemed imposing in battle, it probably had a lot to do with the suit of armor she always wore.

She sighed, “Very well. I suppose I can hold out for the time being. So, what brings you here today without your girlfriend? Did the two of you have a fight?”

Without knowing it, she managed to hit me in yet another sore spot. I felt a strange need to tell someone, and Mardella wasn’t exactly in a position to tell anyone my secrets. “Kalli exploded when we fought an M class man from Earth and I don’t know what happened to her after that. When I tried to teleport to her, I ended up on a planet called Origin and met my dad. Everyone there calls him The Creator and he sort of grounded me.”

I wanted to add “from my powers” but I was worried she might try to use that info against me. After realizing I wasn’t going to continue speaking, Mardella snickered. “It would appear life hasn’t been entirely pleasant for you either. I would have assumed it would be my mother who did you in. She can be nasty like that.”

“We met her,” I admitted. “We snuck into her castle when we were looking for the cure to that poison you used on me.”

“She let you go?” Mardella asked incredulously.

“No,” I replied. “She followed us back to Celestea. She didn’t do anything though. She just left.”

Mardella cackled from the darkness in her room. “That sounds like her. She never makes a move until she’s ready. She told me it was a bad idea to try to marry you off to Alariel. How is she by the way? Is she still with that harlot?”

“Do you mean Kiki?” I asked. “I don’t know. The last time I heard from her, she was taking Kiki and one of the ancients to meet your mother.”

“I’d love to meet them,” Mardella said softly, almost lovingly. “I still can’t believe they were still alive up there. The stories my mother told me said that they were all killed by the Celesteans.”

“Maybe someday you will meet them,” I said. There was a part of me that wanted to help her, that wanted to forgive and forget. Still, there was no denying the fact that she was dangerous.

“I’ll come see you again,” I found myself telling her. “Maybe next time I’ll be able to fix up your cell.”

I cast a glance into the other four cells on the way out. The other prisoners were strangely quiet.

“Ayee!” I yelped as I fell over when I discovered Ulli sitting in front of me so close I could feel her breath on my face.

She jumped, startled by my sudden movement. I shook my head to clear it as she scampered for the door. “Marcelle! Come quick. He’s back.”

I’d just managed to get back to my feet when she reappeared with Marcelle in tow. After taking a few minutes to appraise me, she sighed. “I’m glad you woke up. The Creator would have been quite cross with us if you’d died.”

“Yeah,” Ulli agreed. “We didn’t tell us you can freeze yourself.”

“Thanks,” I said, realizing I needed a better hiding spot than the bathroom when I used the ring. “I’d rather my dad not find out that I can do that.”

“What were you doing anyway?” Ulli asked.

Thinking fast, I lied. “I was meditating. It might have looked like I was frozen but I was just sitting very still.”

“So still your heart stopped?” Marcelle asked, raising an eyebrow.

“It stopped?” I blanched at the news, starting to wonder if going into the ring was bad for my health.

“I may not be awakened but I know at least that much,” she assured me.

“Let’s eat now,” Ulli cried, tugging my arm.

“She wanted to wait for you,” Marcelle explained as I let myself be pulled out the door.

I didn’t see Merlin again until the day we planned to visit Ulli’s hometown. He showed up right when I was about to finish my daily exercise regimen.

“It looks like you’re getting the hang of that,” he began. “I think you’re about ready for the next phase in your training.”

I stopped mid-push-up and climbed to my feet. “What is that exactly?”

“You’ve worked hard these past few weeks,” Merlin explained, squeezing my bicep for emphasis. “This type of exercise builds your strength, dexterity, and agility. In other words, it makes you stronger, more flexible, and it gives you a solid foundation. The next step is to work magic into your training. Now, I know you’re very skilled at mana manipulation, so I won’t bother giving you exercises for that but you’ve been going about your day-to-day life without using magic at all.”

“But you took away my magic,” I began, wondering if Merlin was going senile. “How am I supposed to use skills and traits if you’ve blocked them.”

He shook his head, holding a hand out and manifesting a fireball. “No, I blocked your system access privileges. Let me see. How do I explain this to a youngster who’s addicted to the system? Let’s say I took away your computer when you have to write an essay for school. What do you do?”

I knew where he was going with his analogy but I didn’t feel like playing along. “Oh, I know! This is an easy one. I’d type it up on my cell phone and submit it by email.”

That earned me a groan from my old man. Part of me wondered if this was what it was like to have a dad. “Wrong! You’d write it out on paper like a normal kid. That’s what you have to do with magic. Stop relying on the system for spells and skills. Anything you could do with the system, you can also do without it. I’m just taking off the training wheels.”

“Are you saying, I can edit reality and make things out of pebbles in real life?” I asked, daring to believe I was actually that powerful.

Merlin sighed and shook his head. “No. That is the one thing you cannot do. You can learn to make things out of nothing but your manipulation skills are a sort of cheat on reality. Everything you manipulate has a cost. If you want to make food or something edible, the ingredients have to come from somewhere. The system obtains them and provides them for you when you create something. The same goes for deletion. When you delete things, the system is just moving it around somewhere you won’t notice it.”

“Wait,” I started, thinking about all of the things I’d deleted since I got the skill. “Are you saying every time I deleted poop, I was just moving it somewhere else?”

Merlin actually laughed. “Hah, yes, that was a fun one. Who other than my son would decide to use such powerful magic for something so crude? The good news is those times you summoned a toilet, the system was able to replace it where it took it from once you deleted it.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” I said, wiping the sweat from my brow. “Though Kalli is probably going to be mad when I tell her I didn’t actually delete her…”

The thought of Kalli sent a surge of sadness through me, causing me to trail off. Merlin noticed and quickly said, “The next part of your training is to learn to use magic in every aspect of your life. You think your core is made up of only light elemental mana but that’s just the way it manifests. The truth is, your mana is unaspected and perfectly suited to host all of the elements. That is why you’ve been able to filter different elements through your core in the past. While it’s amusing that you kept assigning yourself affinities through manipulation, I will teach you to do that on the fly by changing your element at a core level. With practice, you’ll even learn to combine elements for surprising results.”

“How do I train that?” I asked, eager to learn despite myself.

Merlin sat on a rock and directed me to sit across from him. “For starters, you’re going to practice changing the element of your core to as many different forms as possible. I don’t care what element you choose, just make sure the element completely takes hold and then move on to the next one.”

“What about emotions?” I asked, wondering how much Merlin knew about the ancients and their techniques.

“Don’t get bored,” was the cryptic answer I got. I couldn’t tell if Merlin had no clue what I was talking about or if he was messing with me.

Simple elements like fire and wind were easy. I’d done them before while back at The Academy. Had it been so long since I practiced basic things? Kalli and I had jumped from one adventure to the next so much that I’d forsaken most of the things I learned in school.

Merlin watched quietly while I let my core catch fire. It reminded me of Kalli’s core as it burned like a supernova in my chest. He gave me a nod of approval and I moved on to wind. Soon enough I had a whirling tornado raging where the star had been previously. From there I switched to void. The dark element intrigued me because it was basically the absence of an element. Even though I couldn’t see anything, I felt it swirling around in my chest, both feeding and drawing from my mana channels as it circulated through my system.

“Try it,” Merlin said, stepping a few feet back. “Destroy this rock.”

I looked down at the rock, imagining it was a monster or an enemy. Rage flooded me when I saw Rasputin’s face and Kalli clinging to his back, ready to explode. I stretched out my hands, not sure what was about to happen. Invisible mana came out, causing the air around me to burst outward in every direction. The void mana created a vacuum as it traveled through the gap to the rock. The moment it touched the surface, the rock collapsed in on itself. It grew smaller and smaller into a glowing red ball that sunk into the ground.

“Excellent,” Merlin said while clapping and backing further away. “I suggest you move back, quickly.”

I barely had time to jump out of the way as the ball exploded violently. Merlin held up a hand and a shimmering barrier appeared around the explosion, forcing the blast upward where it harmlessly dissipated in the sky above us.

“That was a good sample of void magic,” he began. “You truly are my son. However, I need to warn you. Always be mindful of your surroundings when you try a new spell for the first time. As you’ve seen here, the aftereffects can be unpredictable.”

“You should teach me how to make a shield,” I said, in awe after witnessing Merlin’s magic.

He laughed. “In due time. Focus on the basics. Oh, and don’t forget your exercises. While you have grown stronger, you’re still weak for an awakened.”

Then he left. I glanced over at Ulli and Marcelle who were both standing at attention as Merlin vanished in a puff of smoke. Now that he was gone, we could finally leave the tower.