The front door got stuck behind a pile up. Mmanuell decides to rugby tackle it open and crashed into a mound of snow before Ttala had to fish him out with a claw of Water Magic like he was inside one of those fancy Narishaelan..."arcade machines", Mmanuell thinks they're called.

Either way, the wind must have been blowing eastward last night, since the snow was nowhere near this deep on the other side of the house. But, as usual, the cloudless Cryotian sky provides no respite from the mid-year sun that mocks Mmanuell with its radiance, whilst remaining bereft of any ACTUAL FUCKING HEAT. Today might be his Ascentday, but that doesn't mean he can skimp on wrapping up properly. He's wearing his favourite buckle adorned snow-white ski boots and extremely baggy, quadruple-layered white denim cargo pants with a blue streak going down the side of the left leg. He's also got two t-shirts and nondescript jumper on, also all white, that aren't visible from underneath the weighty, hulking puffer jacket MmanueIl got as a gift from uncle Draden. Meaning it's Tsunian. Meaning it boasts the same bland, monochrome, drab colour scheme that all Tsunian clothes have, except from the more-can-copious amounts of golden fur that lined the hood and insides of the coat. Ironically a little gaudy for Mmanuell's taste, but it's foreign and expensive so how can Mmanuell not wear it.

Ttala checks his compass and observes the weather above for a moment, before languidly clapping it shut and swishing back his wildly thick, back-length dreads, already frosted over with rime and snow, and nodding to himself. 'Winds blowing east. Might save me a few minutes'.

Mmanuell rolls his eyes, Look at this dude, man. Then he tells me off when I'M feeling myself, like I don't get it from somewhere.

Ttala's "Mantle", a Dreacon's pride and joy: an inflatable weaponised coat forged from the materials of slain dragons, drags behind him as he paces away from his wife and son. 'Okay you two, step back.', Ttala warns as he primes it for take-off. The, foot-thick, midnight purple trench coat is a breath of fresh gloomy air in contrast to the midday, cloudless, debilitatingly bright snowscape of the cul-de-sac street. He wiggles his arms out from beneath its sleeveless folds and warms them up to the frigid air, releasing a puff of Flow from his shoulder at the same time - he Transmutes it into a hand-sized Stream Fist and uses it to tie his hair back.

After he has his dreads out the way, Ttala lets out a considerably higher amount of Flow and directs it into his Mantle itself through a valve stem on its side. Turquoise wisps lick the air as excess Flow hisses from the creases of Ttala's dark cloak as it fills up like a smoky balloon. It doesn't take more than a couple of seconds for the Mantle to unfurl and reveal two thin, hand-shaped leather strips that were cross hatched together to give the illusion of a uniform mass. Although a "hand" may be a bit more accurate since the arms of these leather appendages were five meters long and its circular palms were the larger than Ttala himself, with twenty feet long fingers that caught the crisp winter air like a net- weighed down by wyvern fangs fastened to their tips. Both of the Mantle's claws are connected to a frost wyvern jawbone that serves as its collar, which Ttala rotates ninety degrees, likening itself to one of the flytraps Ttala keeps in his greenhouse.

Oh, Dad's serious today? Let's hope he doesn't break any windows this time.

It's custom made, Mmanuell's pretty sure. Most Cryotian Dreacons are fine with a Frost Wyvern Mantle, which are fairly common and do a tremendous job, but Ttala's favourite is a commission he had made from a Smog-Eating Balloon Drake he killed on a holiday to Noxtyres a few decades ago according to Teegan. Absolutely horrible, creepy things, they are. Hollow insides literally filled with fumes, possessed of vacant soul-piercing stares and the bristled teeth of a whale...or at least that what the corpse Ttala made the Mantle from looked like.

Either way, Ttala's ready to leave. But before he does so, he turns around and opens his bearish arms for a quick group hug. Mmanuell could probably fit four of himself within the sheer breadth of his arm-span...big guy. Mmanuell and Teegan eagerly embrace the man of the house and look upwards to meet his gaze as they say their farewells.

'How long do you think you're gonna take again, dad?', posits Mmanuell.

'Let's see...I'll get to Tsunia by about 2pm, and it won't take more than four hours to get back if me and Ddrazenala take turns carrying each other. And that's also if he doesn't stop me for food or to say hi to his family. We're also going to have to stop by K'gency headquarters to let them know he's going to be gone for an entire week. Ugh...', Ttala pinches his eyes with a mini Stream-Fist and groans. 'Probably the whole day. Home by 4pm if we're lucky.'

Mmanuell tucks his jaw into his face and coughs, 'Damn.'

'I doubt it will take that long this time honey. Ddrazenala's gonna come rushing here once you tell him it's Mmanuell's Ascentday', Teegan kisses Mmanuell on the forehead and then boops her husband on the nose. 'I just don't want you flying over Thunderhazard Lake on purpose and being surprised when you get electrocuted! Again! Mr "I'm going to take a shortcut through a wasteland because it's 40 minutes quicker than making sure I don't die"!'

Ttala averts his gaze and mumbles to himself, 'Yuh n'haffi say all dat...'

'!!' Teegan kisses her teeth, 'I beg your pardon?!'

'Huh?' Ttala shakes his head in faux ignorance pretending to not have heard Teegan, who most definitely heard what he said and playfully tuts in response.

'Oh, ha-ha (!)...as long as you stay safe. Go on now, you'll get home by tomorrow if we keep stalling.'

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

'Alright,' Ttala chuckles and lets himself out of his family's embrace, 'Step back for real this time.'

Teegan ushers Mmanuell behind a wall of Ice Magic she just Transmuted as Ttala raises himself a good 30 meters into the air with a Stream Fist- Far larger in volume and hued midnight purple as opposed to the thinner, brighter abyssal waters he is wont to create. Upon this dark palm does Ttala focus. A hefty current of Flow seeps through his heavily Gated skin, feeding an even larger amount of it into his Mantle's hands as the even greater excess forms a swirling shroud around him. Ttala peers, glances even, over the side of his platform down to his wife and kid. They wave back :)

'Should we cover our ears!?', Mmanuell yells up at his dad.

'Yeah!, You ready?'

'Go for it honey!', Teegan yells also, covering Mmanuell's ears as he does the same to her. Ttala gives them both a thumbs up and returns his attention to the task at hand. Seconds pass in silence save from the gentle ripping of wind rolling over Mmanuell's ears through his mother's fingers...

'HMM!'

A powerful exertion forces the entire cloud of azure energy into his Mantle, instantly puffing it up with a powerful, dull boom that reveals its true form...they're wings. Massive, muscular wings that boasted a wingspan that reached from one end of the cul-de-sac to the other. The arm portion tapers out as the Mantle's material becomes more and more elastic until it reaches the palms, which possessed the contours of a human hand, large enough to shield Mmanuell from the winter sun as they present themselves behind Ttala, that sported fingers of a much more inhuman nature- what were once thin strips of leather had evolved into menacing sprawling claws that retained their ability to seize the breeze from the air despite, or perhaps by virtue of, their hundred-fold increase in volume.

Yet another deluge of Flow escapes Ttala's Gates and fills the airspace below the Stream-Fist he's stood upon, providing it enough extra mass to facilitate the shift in forms he's about to put it through. The dark purple hand dramatically increases in size as it subsumes the freshly Transmuted Water Magic Ttala guides into it, now large enough to fully block out the sky in tandem with his Mantle. But this increase in size does not last long as a collage of palms emerge from the Stream-Fist. Wrapping in, over, and through themselves as they submerge Ttala beneath waves of fingers like a black rose sent upstream through time's river. The original platform of Water Magic shrinks and shrinks, until the entire thing is morphed into a dark egg of abyssal hands. Ttala paws the air with his Mantle, which was uncontainable in its immensity and scale, bidding his final farewell to his family before guiding his vessel a little further up into the air...

Then, within a moment of a moment, the entire thing disappears!!!

Following within that moment was the resulting shockwave, (relatively) delayed in its arrival. It roared through the air as it echoed off of the houses in the cul de sac and resonated through Mmanuell's bones; an incredible compound sensation that he could never get tired of experiencing. He is, however, very used to such displays of immense speed and leaped from Teegan's protective screen to the roof of his house at an equal pace, instinctively turning his gaze south-east in hopes of catching a final glimpse of his dad before he's gone for good (a couple of hours at most). But by the time Mmanuell jumped, up the gargantuan magic vessel his dad created was already too small to see beyond the tears in the clouds it created in its wake, shrinking ever further into the horizon...which Mmanuell didn't get much of a proper gander at on account of the shockwave also hurling a tsunami of snow across the entire cul-de-sac with force tremendous enough to topple Mmanuell off of his feet.

Teegan was quick to place an array of Print-Ice mirrors around the street, protecting the windows and weekend outfits alike from the sonic boom and the explosion of snow. This would have extended to Mmanuell, but he outsped both his mother and the twin waves of m̶i̶l̶d̶ ̶a̶n̶n̶o̶y̶a̶n̶c̶e̶ destruction she intended to shield him from. She watches as her son is knocked off the roof and lands in a newly formed pile of snow, and laughs as he grumbles about the fact that he is yet again being fished out like a plushie.

'You okay, son?', Teegan sets him on his feet and dusts the clumps of snow out of his hair.

'...Yeah', Mmanuell swats his mum's hand away from him and un-snows the rest of himself, himself.

Teegan smiles and playfully elbows Mmanuell's shoulder, 'Dad thinks he's getting old, dunnit? He'll get to Tsunia in two hours at that rate'...but to no response.

'M-, Mmanuell? What're you thinking about?' Teegan pokes his cheek, trying to get his attention.

'I'm going to be able to do stuff like that too, right?', Mmanuell asks with a little less certainty than what comes out of his mouth 99% of the time.

He didn't say that as a matter of fact. Is this...self-doubt I'm seeing from my boy?? Not having that, absolutely not!, Teegan stares at her son in silence for a few seconds, before kissing her teeth and lightly chopping him on the head.

'...What kind of stupid question is that, Mmanuell? Who are you?'

'Mmanuell Ezenha.'

'And who is that?'

'The Greatest.'

'And so it shall be. You barely even have to think about it, son. You're going to end up a better Mage than either of us ever were, are or could be, okay?'

Mmanuell smiles, he's flattered. 'I know, I know. I do like being reminded sometimes.'

'...That's fine honey, as long as don't forget that~.' Teegan kisses Mmanuell on the forehead (he wipes it off immediately) before gathering all the Print-Ice she created a moment ago and shaking the snow off. Through her will, the slates of Ice Magic form a much more basically constructed vessel than her husband- merely a bunch of slates overlapping into a small platform. She hops on top of it and raises it to the same altitude Ttala did his. 'We'll get started on some training when I'm back from Kingston! I'll see you soon, okay?!', Teegan waves as she begins flying away at a much more leisurely pace.

'OKAY! BYEEEE!', Mmanuell shouts at the top of his lungs as his mum begins shrinking from his view, trying to maintain the shout until she's fully gone. That would have been less taxing if Teegan was flying at full speed: Mmanuell remembers from the last time they raced that his parents are just as fast as each other. He ends up falling back into the snow after running out of breath. Such impressive Magic, yet they use it like it's nothing, Mmanuell thinks to himself as he stares directly at the sun through squinted eyes. Although, to be perfectly fair and reasonable and logical...it's only common sense that Mmanuell's own parents are as powerful as he's going to end up being. It's basically a birthright. Amazing parents for the most amazing person to grace the face of Arcerra, Mmanuell doesn't know any other way to put it. He's going to be able to solo all of your faves, and the sky is blue. Like, what else is new?

Buttttt you have to learn to run before you can fly.

Let's go show off.