Mmanuell awakens.

Where? In bed...

He groggily lifts his head up and looks towards his bedroom window. Pristine afternoon sunlight breaks in through closed blinds, but it's impossible to tell what time it is by how bright it is alone. Time..? Mmanuell slugs his head over to face his bedside table and gazes at his alarm clock. Teetering on the edge of consciousness made it harder to process such a simple piece of information but Mmanuell eventually registers that it was 8am, on Saturday. Damn, really wasted a whole Friday. I deserve it though.

Without putting much thought into it, Mmanuell gets up and goes about his morning routine: brush teeth, wash face, shower. Ssamuell was the one who mentioned it to him, but is a "Morning Routine" something that can be done whilst half-awake and waiting for your brain to catch up? Or is it something that is done whilst half-awake in order to fully wake up? The answer to that question seems obvious, but Mmanuell hasn't been able to settle on one and it's been bothering him every morning for the past month.

'You're gonna get old fast if you keep stressing about such a dumb thing, man.' Mmanuell spits in the sink as he finishes brushing his tongue, and scratches the back of his head. 'The answer is whatever YOU say it is because your opinion is the only one that-'

What.

As Mmanuell lifted his left arm, Mmanuell noticed something...different than usual through the mirror. On his shoulder...there was a faint, dark blotch that definitely wasn't there yesterday. That's...blacker than usual, Mmanuell muses as he wonders, cognitive ability muddled by drowsiness, where on earth could such a bizarre marking have come from. I couldn't have fallen THAT hard yesterday trying to jump over Miss' head surely, he reassures himself as he runs a thumb over the marked area. It doesn't hurt, and it doesn't look lumpy or swollen either, at least not when looking at it through the mirror. Mmanuell turns to directly face it, still stroking his skin. It looks normal, still possessed of pores and folds as if it had always looked like this. Mmanuell twists to get a better look and sees that the black stain covered most of his back, creeping over his shoulder blades and spreading down his biceps. It looks bruised, but more black than blue and only in select areas, as if there were a pattern to it-

Oh.

Well, that certainly woke Mmanuell up. His Gates have just grown in.

Oooooo-hoo-hoo-hooo! Let's go!- Wait. Let's ACTUALLY not get carried away. This needs testing.

It's 8am, so Teegan should still be in bed and Ttala should have only just fallen asleep. Although not caring about how much noise he makes is totally acceptable on weekends, Mmanuell feels the need to be sneaky regardless. This could be the start of something big, but if it's just a sleep-induced hallucination of a false alarm, Mmanuell is going to go straight back to sleep because he is very tired.

Mmanuell leaves his room and creeps downstairs using his patented stealth technique (memorising which parts of the steps don't creak and moving extremely slowly), and after an excruciating 4 minutes of silence, he lands in the front corridor. Mmanuell walks through the kitchen and into the conservatory that leads into the back garden. The entrance to the conservatory has a bead curtain in place of an actual door, so Mmanuell stood some chance at least as he pushed it aside and had his eyes flooded with sunlight.

Dry soil littered the heated floor and scratched between Mmanuell's bare toes as he walked into the room, spilt from the several dozen pots, beds, baskets and tunnels that housed plants that one might consider tropical or uncommon in the middle of a snowy wasteland like Cryotia. Namely, mangoes and pomegranates. Mmanuell's father's favourite. The entire room is made from Ultraglass: an alloy made from mixing Pallobalt and regular glass. You'd think it would be expensive on account of Pallobalt being nigh-unmeltable, but the stuff appears so often naturally that it's worth less than actual glass. It also magnifies sunlight A LOT and traps heat very well so Mmanuell had to just, stand in the middle of the room stupefied for a few minutes as his circadian rhythm caught up to his new, warm, bright environment.

Properly awake now, Mmanuell pinches his eyes and remembers why he came down here. He skulks through the various potted cacti his father couldn't find a good place to put and opens the door to the back garden. Frigid air bites Mmanuell's face as the cold billows its way through his loose pyjamas. He's not wearing shoes so there's no way in hell he's actually stepping foot outside, but thanks to his disregard for other people's property he doesn't have to. Just about his own height's distance from the garden back door lies the Pallobalt Crystal Chest he dumped out here yesterday. The thing he was only able to lug around yesterday because of his inability to use Magic.

Dad's gonna kill me if I leave this door open for too long, the plants will stunt. Gotta make this quick.

If the markings present on Mmanuell's back and shoulders are truly the beginnings of his Gates, that numb "dipping your hands in warm water after playing outside in the snow" feeling he gets when making contact with Pallobalt Crystal should be replaced with UNIMAGINABLE, EXCRUCIATING PAIN at the slightest touch thanks to even more Flow being uncontrollably drained from his body than ever before.

Mmanuell fears nothing and heeds no warnings, and decides that a mere touch of something so widely feared by Magic-wielding adults would never be enough to ascertain whether he, one who maybe, possibly, MIGHT have just gained the same ability, would have truly entered that same echelon...

It can't be THAT bad, everyone else is just a bitch about it. Can't be worse than scratching your hands when they're freezing cold.

So Mmanuell decides to do a front flip and somersault on top of the Pallobalt crate's lid, landing in a handstand...because he would have rather not touched the snow.

A priority regarding his safety that he immediately comes to regret.

BZZZZZZVVVVVMMMMMMM!!!!

"WHAT THE FU-"

An indescribable feeling of powerlessness courses through Mmanuell as his entire body tenses up. It's as if his innards have internally shifted and are trying to be pushed out of his hands, like sucking up that piece of clogged ice cream in a milkshake with a straw. Mmanuell would scream out in pain, but his lungs aren't working. Unable to keep his balance, Mmanuell crumples face-first into the foot-deep snow below him and his body is sapped of the last thing keeping him conscious. Not many people can resist the shock of Pallobalt sucking the Magic out of them in the first place, so it's time to shut down for a bit...at least until he warms up...

 

...

 

...

 

...

 

WHAT THE BUMBA WAS THAT?!

Mmanuell eyes jolt open and he gasps for air, he thankfully lost contact with the Pallobalt crate when he fell. How long has he been sitting in the snow? Mmanuell turns a hand around and checks his fingers: shaking, numb, but still flushed red. Okay, can't have been out for too long. Can he move..?

To an extent, thank Ethraksha. Any Cryotian will tell you how dangerous the cold can be around where Mmanuell's from: He remembers the time he tripped over a frozen racoon and it shattered into a thousand little racoony pieces at his feet. Ssamuell laughed at him and Kkele was complaining about how she could have turned it into a taxidermy...but for Mmanuell it has long since served as a reminder that stepping outside with no less than four layers of clothes on is practically begging to turn into an icicle, let alone face planting into the ground and passing out in your PJs.

Mmanuell barely manages to worm his way back into the conservatory and shuts the door with his feet, laying beneath a ray of ultraglass-magnified sunlight and scooping excess snow from his clothes. Most of the sweltering air in the conservatory had escaped, leaving it with the temperature equivalent of a lukewarm swimming pool. Yucky. Hopefully Ttala doesn't come in here before it warms back up, otherwise Mmanuell's in for an earful.

A multitude of miscellaneous thoughts race through Mmanuell's mind as he basks on the floor unconcerned with the soil he's rubbing his face in, as is the case in any given moment: "I wonder what time it is right now", "I wonder if Kkele or Sam saw me laying in the snow", "I still feel bad for that racoon I stepped on", "I'm hungry", yet the most prevalent thought in his head as Mmanuell thawed in the sun was solemn regret... that he didn't threaten more people with Crystals during his past endeavours, because if Mmanuell actually knew how bad touching Pallobalt felt as a Mage then, heh, whoi. There are more than a couple schemes that could have gone easier if he gave people the old two-two "I'll fucking kill you" persuasion tactic to get them motivated. It's an obsolete method now, though: once Mmanuell gets warmed up to this whole Magic business he'll be able to threaten people with strength of his own, and baby? Mmanuell is warmed up (hypothermia crisis: averted).

Alright. Let's get this started.

Mmanuell picks himself up and wipes the soil grains off his face, then waltzes into the kitchen and looks at the clock on the wall above the bead curtain he just shoved through. It's a "seven-segment digital clock" that Uncle Draden got from a trip to Narishaela and gave to Mmanuell's parents as a gift. It's a flat rectangle with no moving parts and ominous glowing red numbers that contrast the cool white light breaking in from behind the kitchen blinds. Yet it tells the time down to the second, and can still make a ticking sound as if it were a normal clock...Third Era alien witchcraft, Mmanuell tells you. But whatever, it's only 8:30. A testament to how comfy dried-up compost is in comparison to Cryotian snow.

Like he owns the place, Mmanuell punches on the kitchen lights. Marble grey is drowned out by haystack yellow as Mmanuell's eyes, again, adjust to the new lighting. No need to worry about waking his parents up anymore, it's probably best to shake them out of their sleep a little bit from now since Mmanuell's about to do something that'd get him belted for the first time in his life if the situation weren't this urgent.

'Ahem, MUM!!!!, DAAAAAAAAAD!!!!!', Mmanuell yells at the top of his lungs as if he'd been stabbed, piercing through the peaceful morning ambience of the Ezenha household in an uproar loud enough to wake up the neighbours on both sides of the house.

'HELP!!!'

'HEEEEELP!!!'

'HELP ME!!!'

'HEL-'

Mmanuell didn't even see them go down the stairs. In the two seconds Mmanuell spent screaming his house down, Ttala and Teegan were already to either side of their son with parental instincts on full alert, posted up with enough of Water and Ice Magic to fell an adult Frost Wyvern. A Stream Fist twice the size of Ttala's regular already had Mmanuell by the waist before he noticed the entire kitchen had been instantaneously flooded with his father's signature ability. Dyed a deep, intense ultramarine and speckled with abyssal flecks of silver lights, the incandescence of the kitchen lights quickly drowned out- nothing but the suffocating pressure of a Dreacon remained. The Stream Fist that grabbed Mmanuell but a moment ago morphed into a bubble and encased his body, flooding his vision in an intense violet glow. Mmanuell instinctively knew to hold his breath, but the pace at which events was so brisk that he could not have helped but choke on a gulp or two's worth of Water Magic. It tasted...kinda stale? Horrible, but at least that means it's been Transmuted to be perfectly fine to breathe. Mmanuell's mother, on the other hand, was more concerned with preventing this hypothetical assailant from escaping her judgement; the entire kitchen was sealed off with rectangular slates of pristine, diamond-white Ice Magic as well as what Mmanuell can only assume is every other door and window in the house. She looks WAY more pissed than Ttala does right now.

'Where?' Ttala whispers at Mmanuell, freeing his son's head from his Stream-Fist as his eyes intensively sweep the room for any evidence of Magical camouflage. Mmanuell's parents have always been extremely serious about getting into a mage-to-mage fight and always made a point about how it usually ends in death, so in a situation like this where their opponent has the jump on them and they have a son to protect, they both looked like they were ready to make their final stand.

So you can only imagine their reaction when Mmanuell sucks his teeth and mumbles, 'There's no one here. I...just wanted to get you both down here'. Boy, if looks could kill Mmanuell would be dead a thousand times over.

Teegan scrapes her head around and glares at Mmanuell with the most soul-rending stare imaginable, '...Boy don't ramp with me, telling me you're screaming the house down for stupidness. Fi rass.'

'...Um. Not stupidness, it's a surprise. I just didn't expect you two to react like that-'

'What do you mean "you did not expect"?!', Mmanuell's mother taps him on the back of his head, pinches him by the cheeks and pulls his face around to make his eyes meet hers, 'Do you know how terrifying it is to wake up to what you just did? Never, and I mean never do that again unless you're in actual danger, y'hear me?'

Mmanuell sighs and rolls his eyes, '...Okay. Dad, you can let me out of the hand now.' Ttala sighs and dissolves the Magical fortifications he and Teegan set up, filling the house with Flow which he funnelled through the letterbox.

'It's...', he pinches his eyes and sighs yet again with increased enmity, 'As long as you're not in danger. What is it you wanted to show us?'

Pushing any guilt he felt for scaring his parents to the back of his mind, Mmanuell waves away the Exhaust Flow from his father's Stream Fist and clasps his hands together, 'Well, basically. You know how yesterday you guys were teasing me about "Oh, the whole town's waiting for my Gates to grow in", and "Ha, ha! Mmanuell's always checking himself out in the mirror" as if they weren't going to grow in any day now?'

'Yes..?', Ttala and Teegan say in unison as they both seem to forget they were just about to cuss out their son as the logical conclusion to such a question arises in their heads, staring at Mmanuell in anticipation as he opens the kitchen blinds and lets the full daytime light in the room.

'You ready?'.

'Is this the part where you give us extremely good news?', Ttala replies with an expectant grin.

'Hold on, you haven't even let me finish!', Mmanuell holds his arms out and pats the air, motioning for his parents to calm down. 'Ahem!', Mmanuell turns around and single-handedly takes his shirt off in a swift dramatic motion, showing off his muscular, newly decorated back to his parents...much to their stupefaction. Stretching out to cover most of the skin his parents can see, a circular mass of darkened skin tinges Mmanuell's back a faint black shade- the hallmark of developing Gate glands. Not only that but there are also smaller circles on his shoulders too, as well as several faint lines of Gates leaking out from and connecting all three spots together. 'As you can clearly see, my Gates have just grown in! I'm a Mage now! Surprise!!', Mmanuell hops back around and flourishes his hands in a "tadaa!" type of way, happy to see that his parents are absolutely fucking gobsmacked.

'Ah-How-', Teegan's jaw dropped to the floor as she steps over to Mmanuell and runs her hands over his back, trying to verify whether she was still dreaming or not, 'In one night of sleep? THIS much? Is that even-', she mumbles to herself as her mind trails off in thought, rubbing her chin in amazement.

Mmanuell sighs and tries to gently ease his mum off of him, 'They're real mum, I checked myself before I woke you up-',

'OH MY GOD THEY'RE REAL!'

Oi! Don't ignore me!

Teegan squeals and throws Mmanuell into the air with a slate of Ice Magic before catching him in her arms and swinging him around like a (now very annoyed) kitten, 'Ttala baby, look! Look!', Teegan shakes Mmanuell in front of her husband, who's had the same keen, ardent grin on his face for the past two minutes.

'Yeah, I can see. Guess we jinxed it,' Ttala nods and scrunches up Mmanuell's hair, 'Wonderful stuff son. That's a lot of surface area for day 1, be proud, yeah?'

'No more worrying when Mmanuell goes out at night! He can do chores! What date is it, baby?', Teegan glances at Ttala before she finishes her sentence.'

'April 15th.'

'Look at that! On a Saturday! And it's nearly a perfect split between today and his birthday-'

The emergency brakes in Teegan's head were slammed down through a sudden realisation. She slowly puts Mmanuell back on the ground and rests her hands on the sides of his head, which was spinning from dizziness, and grimaces at Ttala with a wide-eyed stare. 'Honey.'

'..Yeah?' Ttala shrugs, 'What's wrong?'

'Mmanuell's Gates have just grown in.'

'Yeah. I can see.'

Teegan gets annoyed with her husband for not immediately coming to the same conclusion she has and glares at him with pursed lips, 'You know what that means now, right?'

Ttala shrugs again.

'Ascentday.'

Ttala's expression shifts from vapid to stressed faster than a tide on a full moon.

'Oh...Oh, for f-'

'-OH FUCK!' Mmanuell blurts out loud. How could he have overlooked something as obvious, in-your-face, "well yeah, no shit" as this? Mmanuell's face is now too painted by the same bleak expression possessed by Teegan and Ttala, the latter of which looks down at him with a reminder to stop swearing.

'Sorry, but...shit?!'

'What'd I just say?'