I needed to figure out exactly where to start. But from what I did know, it should come naturally, like walking. At least that is what my mom and what I was reading from the book Alfonso gave me said. I cleared my mind and let my imagination run wild with the shape of bricks. Then I imagined each of those bricks laid side by side and stacked on top, with liquid mortar holding their bonds together. I visualized my attribute as a mechanism for this process. Before I knew it, the image of a kiln appeared in my mind.

I had half expected it to be before me when I opened my eyes. But to my dismay, the only thing in front of me was the cold stone walls of the cellar.

With the process cemented, I knew how to accomplish it. With a thought, I shaped the clay in front of me into a brick. At first, it seemed like it did not want to maintain its shape. The first few bricks sloughed back into piles of clay. With enough concentration and exertion, I squashed the first bricks into place with my powers. After that, all I had to do was repeat my actions. Before I knew it, I had a kiln, or at least what I thought would work as a kiln.

Completing the kiln was part of my training plan. Phase two was to get a fire going on the inside to attempt my creation of a vase. How was I supposed to reach and maintain the heat, though? I didn't have an affinity for fire. And what if I did? Would anything change? I wouldn't be in this position in the first place. Sitting there, I had a second realization.

"Thomas," I called out.

"What do you need?" Thomas replied from the other side of the door.

"I need that fire affinity of yours," I said. Thomas replied by groaning at me about how comfortable he was out there. He honestly did look comfortable sunken into a plush chair. The chair had been his request from the maids so that he would be cozier in his guard duties. With more coxing, Thomas left his chair and entered my cell.

"What do you need, Devin?" Thomas asked.

"I need you to start that kiln up for me."

"Are you going to make me regret this?"

"I am only trying to make a vase," I replied.

"Alright."

With a snap of his fingers, Thomas started what kindling I managed to scrounge on the fire. He continued monitoring the fire so that he could increase or decrease the heat. Thomas did not have precise control of the temperature, unlike my mother, whose ability focused on power. All Thomas could manage was changing the temperature significantly or maintaining a constant temperature.

After a few hours of playing cards with Thomas, I first attempted a water vase. I tried to create a vase with water affinity using the blue clay I had gathered. Thomas and I let the kiln and vase cool down enough to touch. As we waited, Thomas sent a maid to bring us a flower. She returned with a rose, handing it to Thomas outside my cell.

I poured water into the vase and placed the rose the maid had picked from the garden inside. With relief, the rose did not immediately die inside the vase. Instead, it seemed like it looked healthier. I don't know if that part was my imagination, but the rose was still alive in the vase.

"Even though I have a demonic affinity, it does not mean immediate death. At least now I know everything my powers create will not wither and die."

"It seems like it," Thomas replied. "I expected your experiment to explode on you, especially using all those different affinities together. Mixing your two would have been bad enough, but you added water from the clay and fire from me. Usually, when you do too much mixing, it doesn't work. Maybe something about your power makes it different."

"I mean, I always thought I was special," I jested. Though, to be honest, I didn't fully understand my abilities. I also needed to fully understand affinities and how they melded together. There was writing about it in the estate's library, but I had always focused on other topics.

"Hey, do we mind running it through a test?" Thomas asked. "We guards have a simple form of ability power checker. It's a part of our enlisting application."

"What does it involve?"

"It's relatively simple. All you have to do is place your hand over a box. The box then glows according to the strength of your abilities. Us guards call the box a moranco."

"I guess if you think this test will help me understand myself more," I said.

Truthfully, I was excited to see where I was regarding power level. I remember from my ceremony that the lack of light coming from me was rather large. But I was still interested in comparing that to normalized power distribution.

Thomas departed for a short time to retrieve the moranco. When he returned, he had a small wooden box with ornate carvings. The moranco, as he called it, seemed to have a ritual scribed out on its lid. The contents of which were beyond my comprehension.

"That's it?" I asked.

"Yeah," Thomas said as he placed the moranco on the desk within my cell. "Place your hand on it and enjoy the light show."

"That seems rather simple," I remarked.

But I did as instructed and lowered my hand over the moranco. As my hand made contact, streaks of black light shot out. At first, they seemed to be small and incorporeal. But with each passing second, they grew darker and more prominent. It climaxed. The power lashing back at me thrashed about the room, sending loose papers flying. The now brownish tendrils of darkness struck me. I felt blood drip down my face and onto the moranco.

Thomas slammed his hands over the moranco and yanked it away from me.

"What was that?" Thomas asked.

There seemed to be panic in how Thomas looked at the box. Could something have gone wrong, or was there something wrong with me?

"I thought you said you did this before?"

"I have, but typically, it's just a small light show. That was something more sinister. I have never seen the moranco cause physical harm to anyone."

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"That means I am special, right? I have been telling people for years that there was something great about me."

The look of distress did not leave Thomas' face. Something had gone wrong with the moranco.

"I don't know what to tell you. As I said, I have never seen anything like this. I have also never done this test with a demonic affinity user."

"So, how does any of this help me?" I questioned Thomas.

"I don't know. I am sorry. Measuring your power would distract you.

Thomas paused as he began tracing his hands over the moranco. Something about this ritual had thrown him off.

"You need to be careful when using your affinity. That power inside you could lash out at others, and I know you don't want to hurt people."

"What should I do then? I can't use my power. Otherwise, I will be the one that is dead," I said.

Try to get familiar with your affinity. So you rule your power and not the other way around," Thomas replied.

The next day, I started diving into another of Alfonso's books. This time, it was a book on demonic powers. However, there were three books in front of me on the topic. I picked the one with the most minor biases on the subject.

They talked about the association between demonic powers and death. The concept clicked in my head with what I knew of the holy affinity. Although people called religious affinity holy, there was nothing divine about the powers. Divinity in priests did not require them to have a holy affinity. The same conclusion was correct about the demonic affinity. In that, it did not make them evil. Their use of death and sacrifices made people fear them and make them evil.

Then I read this passage from the same book:

"The demonic affinity causes the wielder to do things they would not otherwise do. Demonic affinity users do evil acts to meet conditions. These acts separate demonic affinity users from the mass public. That and the fact that many seclude themselves from society. They do this because their powers are taboo, leading many demonic affinity users to become evil."

I closed the book for a second and took a big breath in. Then I went to the part of the book about undeath affinity. Different users used it in different ways. One of those ways was turning solid objects into dust. From the book, this was the first step many people with undeath affinity started. Since this dust was an essential part of many rituals, ritual components could help certain power sets activate their abilities. I was glad I could use my powers without entering the bear's den.

I stood up and walked over to a pile of clay Thomas had maintained for me. I grabbed a sizeable chunk and first shaped it into a brick. Then I closed my eyes and deeply meditated on the masonry process of creating the brick. I drifted toward the natural parts and showed lingering traces of their origins. Then I planned to bring it back to a more natural state. Once I had those connections made in my head, I imagined taking the brick apart. After that, I imagined reuniting the clay with where it had originated. I saw it all turn to dust upon completing the process.

I then opened my eyes, grabbed the brick with both hands, and pulled. Trying to focus on removing my affinity, and "Whhssshhh," the brick turned to dust in my hands. Then an idea came to me. I took a more significant chunk of clay and mixed the demonic dust. After thoroughly mixing, I turned my clay lump into bricks like before.

"It works I exclaimed!" I said out loud. I was now standing in front of a changed kiln that was now composed of gray-stained clay bricks.

"What, Devin," Thomas said from the other room. It seemed like he had woken from his mid-day nap. As Thomas opened the door, he gasped. I hadn't realized it before, but the room emanated the undeath affinity from the kiln. "What did you do?"

"Oh, nothing, only creating a hell forge. You know the normal for an undeath affinity user," I smiled at them wide-eyed.

Something inside me started eating away at me. The book had said the effect of that dust would be more potent if it originated from something alive. The force would be multiplicative, even more so if the origins had a soul.

I continued reading through the section on undeath for the rest of the day. When I finally got to sleep, I began having perverted visions. The visions were of different rituals of undeath. I had heard about these dreams before in a variety of books. A collective unconsciousness that many scholars believe contains shared techniques. The priests stated they were visions given to us by the gods. I was hoping the scholar's idea was right. The visions I received contained methods of human and animal sacrifice. The thought of some god trying to guide me in that direction was too much.

The dreams were horrific things that came to me as flashes throughout the night. One moment I would look down upon a chicken in a ritual circle drawn with blood. Then next, I would be the chicken, staring back at a hooded figure about to plunge a knife into me. Nightmares kept being a prominent feature of my dreams. Dreams of sacrificial altars stained with the blood of animals and people dotted every sleepless night. Once, I was even the sacrifice. As they continued, I realized all the ritual circles had the same base. The formation stayed constant regardless of the size. Some were small things drawn on the sacrifice. Others were the size of a ballroom fit for a king. With each passing dream, I understood the ritual better and tried to steer them.

I wanted to know what the rituals were for. What could cause people to kill their kin? I knew it had to do with the creation of dust with the undeath affinity, but to what end could it be used? I tried to focus on the soul of the sacrifice and integrate myself with it. That was the key to finding out what happened next. Some ritualists used the dust in mundane, necrotic poisons. Others used it to restore their vitality, yet others used it to create undead soldiers.

I was to end up as some kind of ever-living demon with a horde of undead behind me. I didn't even want to think about how putrid undead was and, most likely, I would smell. Wasn't there another way instead of human or even animal sacrifice? I pushed on searching for people, starting with the affinity and trying to see what they had tested on. Then I found it deep within. A few people tested it on plants first. The plant dust created from the ritual was different. They seemed to be less corrupt than those from animal or human sacrifices.

When I awoke from vivid dreams, my body seemed to move independently. I knew what I had to do and how to do it. A plant sacrifice would not be as powerful, but I wasn't ready to sacrifice animals. I looked towards the rose still growing in the room's corner.

Then I called out, "Thomas, you out there still?"

A moan came from the room over from where Thomas was sleeping. It came from the other side of this door. It seemed like even in his sleep. He had to guard me. No doubt to make sure I would not do something. "What do you need at this hour? I had a pleasant dream," Thomas replied.

"Well, you will not like it, but come here anyway. I am going to need the knife of yours."

"I imagine not if you need a blade," sighed Thomas, "But I am curious."

Thomas entered the room, and I asked, "Okay, I will need you to cut off my hair and give my finger a good prick."

"Blood and hair, is this some kind of voodoo magic?" Thomas asked, chuckling to himself. He did what I asked, cutting my hair from my head and then slicing one of my fingers.

I hurried, put the hair in a pile, and grabbed the rose from its vase. Then I drew that ritual circle that was repeated in my dreams. With the ritual circle completed, I touched the rose, hair, and "poof." The objects within the circle turned to dust.

I grabbed at the dust and smiled. Not only had I created this dust without sacrificing anything except a plant. It also has attributes of both water and fire affinities. This was even though it did not connect me to those two. No doubt it had to do with the rose being in a clay-fired vase. The vase contained the water affinity of the clay and Thomas's affinity for fire.

After creating this dust, I had the overwhelming urge to use it. The sense of power that washed over me was intoxicating. Without knowing it, my body gravitated to the blue clay pile. I began shaping it into a doll and combined it with the dust I had created. Pricking one of my fingers on Thomas's blade, I bled. I then pressed my finger into the forehead of the doll, marking it as my own. Thomas was standing in the corner with a look of fear.

With that, my first golem emerged. However, it did not do anything on its own. I could move it around the room with a flick and, with practice, a thought. It sank in that although this golem was a neat party trick, it needed a soul. That was if I wanted it to be completely autonomous, which I was curious to know if I was ready to do.