Using my sneaky, sneaky, slippery snake skills, I snuck my way out of not just Zubu’s coiling arms of trickery and cruel abusive sibling love, but her den as well.

Ever since I had that… episode. She had become really clingy. Last night at dinner. I got really full and couldn’t eat anymore, so she forced me to finish my plate by putting me on her lap and manually making me chew my food.

It was not fun. I got really messy and had to take another bath. Even Zubu got dirty. It was the most I've ever cried and then she wouldn't stop laughing at me.

My relationship with Zubu confused me. I’ve never loved and hated someone so much. This was an abusive relationship for sure and I was afraid to end it. She might do something horrible if I try to separate from her.

I could already see her reaction. She’ll refuse to end our friendship and start bullying me into submission. Then when I’m crying and feel bad. She’ll swoop in with kindness and gas light me into thinking I was the problem.

Pushing me to the limit had highlighted the manipulation of another friend of mine. Shadow was like that too. Except, she was less mean and grumpy.

Also, way more Subtle and manipulative about it. Which was somehow way more scarier. I knew she had been acting strange and Cosmo somewhat explained her behavior, but there was more to it.

Being bonded to her through imprinting would only cause her to treat me like her family. It said nothing about her manipulation. The scarier part was when I connected the dots. She acted like she was my mother all the time and I remembered her only having partial custody of her kids.

While that wasn’t strange on its own. In combination with the way she treats me. It becomes clear that she might have done something horrible. Maybe not as bad as assault, but still not something children should be apart of.

While I wanted to confront her about it. She would have to wait until I got back and squashed the shit out of Squirmy. One problem at a time.

Zubu by comparison wasn’t too bad since she was only messing with me out of boredom and because I had the best reactions.

While Shadow was like a watered down mentally abusive version of my mom, Zubu was almost like a combination of Cain, and Julia. To her it was fun with no long term plans. If I was bigger I’d stand up to her, but as I was. I couldn’t see myself coming out on top. Siblings were so annoying. She would probably sit on me for funzies.

Her strange sisterly abuse didn’t end after I finished my plate. After that, she wouldn’t let me stay up with Mr. Brutus and Lorie. I wanted to talk with them some more, but she made me brush my teeth and put me to bed early. She said something about being ready for tomorrow.

Too bad for her as soon as she left, I managed to leave the room and made it to the library. My goal last night was to craft a few spells. During my fight with Zubu I came to realize relying on nothing but fireballs was dumb. Especially since heat aspects wouldn’t always be so available.

I needed something I could cast in a pinch. Something reliable, so I decided to recreate manabolt. It was a null type spell that required a null rune.

It only required raw essence and some momentum aspects to cast. The best part was that I could easily cast it with little time. However the spell wasn’t the same. It acted the same, but it wasn’t exactly the same.

I also figured out I could use the platform spell in other ways, but I still wasn’t exactly sure on how I could abuse it. All and all I was happy with the results of 3 hours of research.

During that time Mr. Brutus and Lorie got super drunk while Zubu ran around the entire monastery looking for me. During my hand Qi sight training I realized she was looking for me, and was terrified she might find me.

The way she was running around up top, made me think she was really angry with me. I was so afraid of her wrath that I crawled under the table to hide.

The whole time I kept thinking I should just go back up and apologize, but was afraid of the consequences. The more I waited, the more desperate she became. I started to whimper at the thought of being found.

Eventually Zubu found me crying under the table. I was sure she would hurt me, but she didn't. Instead she acted super worried and scooped me into a hug.

Lucky for me the combination of my prolonged disappearance and my sheer terror of her. Resulted in Zubu seeing me like a mental patient. While it wasn’t exactly something I was happy with. I preferred it to being mercilessly spanked by a woman half my age.

This whole situation was ridiculous and I’d long since given up making sense of it. It was easier to accept the comfort of childhood rather than try to fight for maturity all the time. Of course, if I had the energy I probably would have tried to explain myself, but cuddles were nice too.

Why do all the women in my life try to mother me? They always saw me like some broken puppy they could nurse back to health. I guess I was kind of like a broken puppy.

At least Alice acted more like a wife, but there were a few times where she would put her foot down and force me to take care of myself.

You know, normal things like not eating a bunch of junk food, or going to bed at a reasonable hour. Or forcing me to go out with her because she wanted me to stop hiding in the apartment.

Anyway. I needed to focus on the current abilities and skills I had. Today was the last day. The day Mr. Brutus and I would fight. The day I’d get sent back to the new world and have to face Squirmy.

It felt like forever ago that I came to this world, but in reality it had only been a minute or two. Even less time had passed in the old world.

I made it out into the courtyard. Like usual, I started with my kata. My body knew the movements so well now. It was like breathing for me.

As I performed, power began to flow through me. It surged through my meridians until finally swirling around my nexus point. By then the essence had been purified into Qi. Bits of quintessence were also created adding themselves to the hole in my chest.

I know it’s supposed to be my soul, but it was stretched across time and space. My core was more like a portal connecting me to that claymation hell, and the new world where the other me slowly bled out.

My body in Serenity was just like a broken hourglass full of black tar and left out in the hot desert. The tar slowly leaking out as if in slow motion. Slowly ticking down to my death.

There was no point in feeding my nexus point, so I took the extra Qi, braiding the strands together. Then cycled them into a star pattern. My aura grew instantaneously, quickly reaching the minimum 50 layers for a level 1 aura. As soon as it did, I went back to perform my kata once more. This time however instead of sucking it up and purifying it. I added the aspects to my aura.

The glow around my body did not change color. Instead the glow intensified becoming more solid. Both hard and soft. Sharp and blunt. It could become any shape. Strike with deadly force, or be as gentle as a cloud.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

This was an extension of my natural aura. Also known as my null aura. There wasn’t enough of each individual aspect to create elemental spells, but in a hand to hand fight it was perfect.

I got into a fighting stance and released punch after punch as I began to shadow box. The energy around my fists pulsed extending forward about a foot. While not as powerful as being hit with my actual fist. It gave me more reach.

This covered another disadvantage I had been facing. With shorter limbs my ability to fight someone head on was limited, but now I could easily reach them.

I activated my Qi sight. Then tried to move around the area. It made me dizzy, but with time I was slowly becoming more accustomed to the increase in sensory.

In time I was sure I could keep it on indefinitely. My hope was that it could prevent me from being ambushed. I could also see how amazing it would be, if my perception was so great I could react instantaneously to attacks.

I did hand Qi sight training for a while. Until I started to see the influx of heat and light aspects. Without turning off my Qi sight. I began to gather those aspects replacing the null aura with my paradoxical aura.

Heat aspects covered my body. I breathed in the sunlight and exhaled sparkling aspects into my aura. It wasn’t dangerous as long as I pushed them back out. I was the groove in reality through which power could flow.

Soon enough my aura was full. That’s when I hopped up onto the roof almost falling over as my eyes and feet felt so out of sync.

Lucky for me that didn’t happen and I was able to start the next part of my training. I began to create fireballs. The goal was to see how many I could control at once.

They were regular sized. No meteors. No baby fireballs like the embarrassing puff of smoke I showed Cosmo. These were perfect red spheres. The size of basketballs. As I conjured one nova after another, I let them rotate around me.

They were like stars orbiting a black hole. Eventually I reached my control limit. Which seemed to be 26. It was a lot, but required an insane amount of concentration to pull off. I had no idea how I managed to make so many during my anxiety attacks.

If I were to sneeze right now they would all explode in my face. I held them in rotation a little longer. This was to exercise my control. It was a little like doing math in your head. In that it made my brain hurt. Once I was nearly out of building blocks to sustain the multitude of fireballs. I began to drain the aspects out of the spells.

They quickly vanished gathering into a ball of molten air. I took a breath trying to relax. The power scattered reforming themselves into a huge magic circle. The magic construct pulsed at my feet, as I began to cast.

As the circle expanded, a large ball of glowing red flames formed a few feet above me. I raised my right hand towards it for better control.

Inside, the flames spun and raged violently. It was beautiful. Like a big firefly. I focused on the flames. This was a spell I had been working on. However this was the first time I tried to actually cast it.

Not a meteor, but something more focused. Less combustion. More heat. Slowly the red flames turned orange as the heat intensified. It felt like my hand would burn up.

I added a few cold and water aspects to my aura to prevent myself from burning to a crisp. Then I raised the spell higher up into the air to keep the roof from catching fire.

Slowly I began to alter the flames using nothing more than intention. Their heat went up as their color changed to Yellow. I wasn’t expecting to make it this far. The flames felt so hot against my cold aura, and just as the flames began to go blue, I ran out of building blocks. Causing the spell to fizzle out.

The sudden loss of the spell caused me to lose concentration. My Qi sight and aura vanished as well, leaving me with a maddening headache.

“The amount of heat aspects you would need to make a spell like that would require you to cast it in a desert. However a more skilled mage could easily generate the heat aspects.” Said Lorie, now standing on the roof with me.

She was more of a sneaky snake than I was. “Sorry. I haven’t gone crazy. I was just… hang on what was that?!” I said.

“You have much to learn and if you hadn’t decided to spend the day yesterday playing with little Yukio, I could have taught you the difference between a powerful mage and an average one.” She said.

“Okay, and what would that be?” I asked feeling a bit insulted.

“You keep trying to gather all the surrounding heat aspects like a child that doesn’t understand what heat is. Activate your Qi sight and watch me.” She said before holding her hand out and creating a flame.

I cycled Qi to my already tired eyes and watched the flow of power. Both inside her body and out. There was a handful of mana lenses in her tummy all stacked atop one another like a microscope.

Heat and wind aspects poured through the mana lens coming out the other side like thin lasers. They acted like a 3d printer forming the small flame at her hand. The amount of control and precision was enough to make me jealous. I wish I had a mana lens.

The flow of heat aspects stopped, yet the flame in her hand stayed strong. I was confused until I saw what was going on. The air aspects were being fed into the fire. In turn this kept it going. She was converting fuel into fire and fire into heat aspects!

Realizing what was going on I nearly punched myself in the head for being such a dumbass! “I’m such an idiot!” I yelled.

“Yes you are. For such a smart child you over looked this little detail.” She said as the heat aspects coming out of the flame were quickly gathered up and forced back through her mana lens.

That was when a ball of fire came to life right next to the lore keeper. How could I have over looked something so simple!? I thought back to Mr. Brutus’s camp sight when I first tried to cast a fire ball.

Mr. Brutus told me to gather up all the aspects in the area and I guess I kind of saw heat aspects as fire because of how our camp fire went out. I felt so bad that my eyes became wet with tears. Lorie was also being kind of harsh.

“Lorie…” I whined.

“Calm down child. Believe it or not you are not the first to make this mistake. Everyone always gets caught up in the whole magical side of things that they forget logic.” She said.

“Okay… can I get a hug now?” I cried.

She shrugged her shoulders and hugged me. It made me feel better, especially since Lorie almost seemed like she was mad at me.

“I was going to wait for you to realize the obvious, but this is your last day and things have changed. So I decided to simply show you, so that we could move on to your final lesson.” She said.

“Final lesson?” I got excited.

“Yes. I didn’t plan to teach you this, but you’ve already touched upon it yesterday while playing with little Yukio. I’d rather you not be confused later on when you explore your power on your own.” She said.

Did I use magic in a crazy way again? I don’t think I did anything crazy. Maybe it was that failed attempt at a landmine. That wasn’t that ground breaking. It was just a terrible attempt at spell craft. Was the lesson about spell craft itself?

“What would that be?” I asked.

“If you really want to know, follow me.” She said, before creating a blue magic circle and opening a portal in front of me. The runes looked different from what I’d seen. It made sense she never showed me the runes, since that would give me a way to go home.

Loire said nothing more as she passed through the glowing blue portal.

“Lorie wait!” I whined.

She was gone. I whimpered in fear as the scary hole in reality hummed like a hangry ghost. I didn't want to go through another portal. The void I saw was maddening.

“What is it?” Asked Lorie poking her head back out.

I ran to her in fear. “ Lorie, please don't just walk away like that!” I cried.

She stepped out. “What's the matter? It’s only a portal.”

I squirmed under her gaze in embarrassment. “The void is scary.” I mumbled.

This got a chuckle out of the young looking grandma. “Is that so? Well how about I hold your hand then?” She said as she took hold of my right hand.

“You won't let go right!” I panicked.

“Of course not. I'm not Yukio. You can close your eyes if you'd like.” She said.

I eyed the portal still feeling uneasy. Lorie tried to pull me towards it, but I resisted. Looking back up at her, I cried, “I don't wanna go. It’s too scary!”

She stopped and sighed. Then looked to me and put her arms under my shoulders. “Not even if I do this?” Lorie lifted me up like a toddler.

Surprisingly, I actually felt comfortable. “Okay… I can go like this.” I said a little embarrassed.

“You’re such a good girl.” Said Lorie.

I felt happy at the praise then immediately wondered why. I knew Aku liked it, but why was I flattered by it? Strange, maybe I’ve spent too much time in this body.

That was when an old memory shook itself lose. I saw my younger self crying in a dark cold room. My mother standing over me with a cable

“Bad! Bad! You’re a bad boy Isaac!”

The memory faded leaving me feeling useless and drained. I was bad. I was a very bad boy. I was so very bad. Stupid! Stupid! useless boy! I hurt them…

“Lorie I’m bad. I’m really bad.” I cried.

“I don't think so. You’re a lovely and sweet child.” Said Lorie.

Her words touched a deep part of me. It was like I’d been starving and Lorie had just handed me a bag full of mushroom and swiss burgers. I had no idea how badly I needed those words.

I shook my head realizing she was wrong. I was a bad person. I didn’t deserve praise of any kind. I fell back into my apathy and allowed the compliment to slide off. This wasn’t an aura. It was just who I’d always been.

Lorie began to walk forward. I hid my face in her shoulder as she carried me through the portal. I didn't want to see the void again. It was too big. Bigger than the world that never stopped spinning. That never gave me a chance to catch up.