“Where are we going, Mel?” Ulli gave me pause when she used the nickname Kalli made up for me. I couldn’t be mad considering I’d asked her to call me that. “You passed the garden.”

“We’re not working out today,” I explained, doubling my pace.

Both girls hustled to keep up. Marcelle frowned as she jogged alongside me. “Then what are we going to do?”

“It’s a secret,” I announced triumphantly.

“Why do I have a bad feeling about this,” Marcelle groaned as they followed me.

I rounded the corner into the hangar as I called over my shoulder. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”

“You know that’s not an option,” Marcelle continued the lecture as I spotted Alfred preparing the limo shuttle. “If it were discovered that you wandered off without me, they would throw me out of the tower.”

I stopped and turned to face her. “I doubt that. The way I see it, you belong to me. Nobody but my dad can do anything to you without my permission. That means you’re safe.”

She stopped in her tracks, pondering my words for a second before turning to Ulli. “Go back to the room. As Melvin said, you don’t have to come.”

“I’m going!” Ulli said defiantly with her arms crossed. “I never said I didn’t want to go. You can go back if you want.”

Marcelle heaved an exasperated sigh. “Fine. It looks like we’re going along with whatever scheme you’re up to. The least you can do is tell us what that is.”

“We’re going out,” I replied, careful not to say anything else in case one of the girls was a spy for Merlin.

Alfred looked up as we approached. “Can I help you, Lord Melvin? I wasn’t aware you were scheduled to be here today. I have other plans but I can rearrange-“

I cut him off, motioning to a row of shuttles. “Can you teach me how to fly one of these?”

He gaped at me. “You want to fly a hover chariot?”

“Hover chariot?” I replied. “Why didn’t anyone tell me they had such an awesome name? I was thinking of them as floating limos this whole time.”

I worried he wasn’t going to help me when he didn’t move right away, but he laughed. “Floating limo, eh? Is that what they call them where you’re from?”

“They don’t have flying cars where I’m from,” I replied. “Well, they do but only in movies. My second world has airships but I’ve never been able to fly one of those either. You said I can pilot one with mana, right?”

“Well, yes, in theory,” he answered slowly. “You can probably turn the chariot on but controlling it required a bit more skill.”

“That’s where you come in,” I informed him. “I need you to show me how to work the controls.”

“This isn’t safe,” Marcelle said, pleading with me. “Please, just tell Alfred where you want to go, I’m sure he’ll-“

I cut her off with a wave of my hand. “The fewer people that know what I’m up to the better. Unless you want to explore on foot again. I have to warn you though, I won’t turn back this time.”

“Fine,” she groaned, her shoulders sagging in defeat. “Let’s get this over with.”

Alfred chose a smaller chariot than the limo he’d transported us in on our first trip. Marcelle and Ulli climbed in the back seat which was just big enough for the two of them while Alfred led me to the driver’s seat.

I felt a plate on the seat make contact with the small of my back the moment I sat down. There were also similar plates on the controls as well. Rather than a steering wheel of a car that I was used to, the shuttle had a pair of joystick controls. Each had multiple buttons on top and a trigger that made me wonder if the chariot had guns.

“Grip each control firmly in your hands and it will draw out your mana,” Alfred instructed from the passenger seat. “You will feel a slight tug at your back as well. That exists to keep the chariot from crashing in case you lose contact with the controls. I can only assume you have more mana than me but the chariot will descend when it senses you getting low.”

I gripped each control, careful not to push anything, and looked over to Alfred. “Okay, now what?”

He smiled. “Give it a moment.”

I felt a jolt run up my spine as it started to siphon mana through my back. The sensation was odd but not altogether unpleasant, kind of like a premonition that something bad was going to happen. I hoped that was just the mana talking.

One by one, the displays in front of me started to light up. I knew I’d done it right when I felt the chariot begin to vibrate. Slowly, we rose about a foot off the ground. The problem was there were no pedals like I’d seen my mother use in cars all my life. I looked over at Alfred and asked, “How do I make it go?”

He let out a good-natured chuckle and replied. “Perhaps we can leave that lesson for another day. How about I tell you what the various displays mean? The first one is argh-“

He groaned as the chariot lurched backward when I pulled back on the controls. So much for the tutorial. I shoved both joysticks forward and several people were forced to dive out of the way as our chariot barreled toward the portal window.

Crap! I think I just felt my wisdom score go down again.

It was a shame Kalli wasn’t there to admonish me, though I would have given anything to hear her voice. Alfred reached over and pushed a button on the console just before we reached the portal and it flickered, allowing us to pass through.

“You were going to tell me about that, right?” I asked, heaving a sigh of relief as we hit the open air. “Did my father ask you to keep me from going out?”

“It’s not that, My Lord,” Alfred said, holding onto his seatbelt for dear life. “My only instruction is to keep you safe.”

“Great!” I replied, perhaps a little too forcefully. “Then you can teach me how to safely fly this thing.”

After that, he was much more cooperative. He went over the various displays and what I needed to pay attention to. The buttons on the joystick didn’t turn out to be a weapon system, though the chariot was armed with some interesting features like a tractor beam.

“The shuttles are designed for industrial use as well as search and rescue in case of accidents,” he explained as I pushed the right stick forward to descend over a farmhouse. “There are a lot of functions you won’t use for day-to-day flight but they come in handy in the event of an emergency.”

“How fast does it go?” I asked, wondering if I should test it.

Alfred frowned. “These chariots are rated at one hundred miles per hour. While it is possible to go significantly faster-using mana travel, you would have to take out one of the sonic chariots for that. To do it in one of these, you would have to bypass the safety features and risk a malfunction.”

“Got it,” I replied. “This is the top speed. Now, is there any kind of GPS in this thing or perhaps a map in the glove box?”

“Glove box?” Alred asked, looking confused.

“Never mind,” I replied. “Tell me how to get to Camelot.”

Alfred punched a few buttons on one of the consoles he hadn’t told me about and a shimmering blue road appeared in the sky in front of me. Alfred laughed when I tried to look over the windshield to see if it was real. “That’s just a hologram projected on the windshield. Follow it and you will reach Camelot.”

“In how long?” I asked.

He punched a few more buttons and a timer appeared on the display.

3:24:13

It began ticking down and I knew we would be there in just over three hours. Alfred punched a few more buttons before saying, “I’ve set the auto-pilot function. You can release the controls for now but please do not leave your seat. You are effectively the battery for this chariot. While it does retain a charge, it will immediately begin to descend if you get up.”

“Got it,” I replied. “Now, let’s go over all of these displays while we fly.

Camelot was exactly like I imagined it would be. A large castle on a hill stood surrounded by a great city. The whole place bustled with activity, even though I wasn’t sure if they were locals or tourists. Did Origin even have tourists? Ulli made it sound like it did.

“You are permitted to land at the castle,” Alfred began, pointing at a large flat space in a courtyard of the castle.

I shook my head. “Where would a normal chariot have to land?”

He looked at me and sighed. “Why on Origin would you want to do that?”

Not wanting to answer that particular question, I lied. “I just want to meet people. As me, you know, not as The Creator’s son.”

“But everybody knows what you look like,” he replied. “There is no place on this planet where you wouldn’t be recognized.”

I closed my eyes and mentally crossed my fingers. How had we done it before? I pushed mana over myself, envisioning what I had done to Kalli and I when we snuck into Wrotor, home of the Trolls. I transformed my appearance into that of a man a few years older than me with short curly locks of crimson hair the same color as Kalli’s. The only thing that needed to change was my face. I altered it just enough so I wouldn’t be recognized. I changed my red eyes back to blue and I added Kalli’s freckles for good measure.

Alfred gasped. He had a front-row seat for the transformation. “You truly are powerful, My Lord.”

“It’s just an illusion,” I replied. “Now, where can I land this thing?”

Alfred pointed at a nearby hill. “You won’t be allowed to land anywhere near the city without authorization. It’s different for The Creator’s son but as a random nobody, you’ll have to land outside of town and walk in. There is also the issue of your identification. The guards aren’t going to allow you in without it. You can pull this plan off but you’re going to have to do a lot more preparation than this.”

“Can I count on you to keep my secret?” I asked, turning to the girls in the back. “All of you? None of this will work if it gets back to my father.”

I got a round of nods from everyone but Marcelle. She gave me a hard stare and asked, “I’ll only agree to it if you tell me what you’re up to.”

It was a pleasant surprise that she was standing up to me more than when I first met her. I tried my best to explain. “Since I’ve been here, I’ve only met people who worship me as my father’s son. I want to meet people and see what Origin is really like, and not through the filter of power. If I’m going to live here from now on, I need to do this.”

I didn’t bother to tell them that I was secretly looking for a way out. A way back to Kalli.