The 10 minutes he had said I would spend in the frozen tub felt like an eternity. Finally, when I was allowed to climb out, I didn't have even a moment to rest until he pointed at the crystal again. “Empty your mind.” He said.
I held the crystal in my hands and closed my eyes. I imagined the manna flowing into the crystal and making it heavy, but the very act of imagining is what prevented it from actually happening.
Shards of ice erupted around me and spiked out in every direction sticking me like a porcupine sending tiny needles all over my body.
‘I don’t get it… How am I supposed to use magic… Without trying to use magic…’
My father ripped the stone from my hands again and the ice vanished to dust. He pointed back to the tub, and I hesitantly walked back in. ‘I’m still alive… So maybe I really can’t die from the cold. If that’s true then I just have to keep going until I win right? I need to keep going… Until I get stronger…’
That was what I thought anyway.
After my fifth attempt, I began to hesitate. Spending a total of nearly an hour in water colder than ice confirmed that I really was massively resistant to the cold. However, just because I didn’t die, didn’t mean it hurt any less. In fact, since the temperature was colder than I was used to, if anything it hurt more, and since I was more or less immune I never felt my body go fully numb, which meant the pain continued.
“Get in!” he yelled.
I was standing right on the border, but I didn't have the strength to physically put myself back into the freezing pool.
“I said get in!” He yelled again. It was rare for him to yell, it made me nervous… And anxious. Those emotions just piled on top of everything else I was already feeling, and my breath stopped in my lungs.
I turned around but slipped, falling backward, submerging my entire body, and sinking to the bottom.
I felt my head slowly sink with the rest of my body as my vision started to look cracked like I was seeing through a frozen visor.
‘It hurts, it hurts so much, even more if I move. My body refuses to die though, otherwise, it wouldn't hurt at all… If my body still hasn’t given up then I can’t either… It’s not like before. My body… It’s still moving when I tell it too…’ I found my footing and forced myself up from the bottom gasping for air.
10 more minutes passed by and I managed to claw myself out again. “Th-thought you were th-the nice one,” I said sarcastically, trying to laugh and make a joke to help stop my mind from tipping over the edge.
He didn’t laugh. For so many years I thought he was the only one that cared about me, that even if everything ended and Mara thought I had to die in the end, he would somehow stop her. That thought was always in the back of my mind whenever we talked about my death… It seemed ironic really.
‘Thinking about it now… I wonder if I got it all wrong…’
“Nice… I'm afraid there's no room for that with you anymore. I have been preparing you for this since the moment I got back. After we fought the bitterweed I poisoned you to test your will to live and weaken your body. Once you survived your body began to grow again, if only a little.”
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‘Well… At least he knows he’s a jerk…’
He continued. “I used recovery magic on you to the point your life force was being sucked from your body. That increased your overall life force when you recovered.
“I know…” My voice sounded like nails on a chalkboard as I approached the crystal, waiting for a moment before I grabbed it.
“The testing you underwent on your first day back at training gave me a clear understanding of what you could do on your own and stressed your mental fortitude to its limit to prepare you for the strain of your gates being opened. There is no nice… Only progress towards our goal.”
‘I guess that’s not the worst philosophy I've heard… Progress…’
I reached out, stopping my hand just before I grabbed the stone. “I’m not sure… I could ever… respect a man. That thinks you can't have both.
His eyes grew distant and sad, but after a moment I could tell just by his face that he was going to double down. He snarled. “If you end up being weak then you will have to die… I'll kill you myself.”
The words echoed through my mind, they were all I could think about as I held the crystal. A stream of ice and fire sprayed out like a sprinkler, creating a massive display of fireworks like rain. It was like my magic was crying for me since I was too cold too. My tears would have only frozen before they came out.
“Get in,” he said calmly. He was no longer yelling, but it didn't matter. All the fire in my spirit was gone. I had used it up just to stop myself from drowning the last time, and what little I had left after that was snuffed out by his words.
“i–I–I” I tried to speak, but my voice was so frozen that I couldn't make any full words as my nose filled with mucus and I failed to let out tears.
“Get in…” He said again, in an almost somber tone. “If you don't get in yourself I'll throw you in.”
I was shaking. I raised my foot to step into the water, but I couldn't do it. Every time I just put it back down right where it started.
“Finally…” He mumbled, shoving me in himself from behind.
10 more minutes passed by, I was sure of it, but he never gave the signal to come out. Another 10 minutes passed and still I waited. After half an hour I couldn't take it anymore and started trying to come out myself, only for him to shove me back in.
‘Did I fail too many times? Is he trying to kill me now?’
My joints froze, and then certain muscles stopped working. Eventually, my skin tightened so much that the hair on my arms and legs actually fell out. I moved slowly but surely to the edge, trying to force myself to climb out just one more time, but I was unable to. My body was starting to shut down.
My father pulled me from the tub and set me down on my feet, handing me the crystal.
Not a single thought ran through my mind as I held it. I couldn't even feel it in my hands. As if I somehow instinctively knew what to do, my magic flowed out of my body and into the crystal until it was too heavy to hold and it slipped from my hands. As it did, ice magic exploded out of it again, only this time in waves.
The spirals grew… and grew… and grew again until the entire tree was wrapped in them. I turned to my father just as he struck me across the face, somehow breaking the spell and sending me flying to the ground. The ice vanished and my body remained so cold that I couldn’t even feel where he had hit me, just the dull thud of the impact.
“T-that's two…” I said, letting him know I was counting, and deciding in that moment I was going to return those strikes someday. Even if somehow hitting me to cancel the spell did save my life, or help me in some way, we wouldn’t be even until I got two of my own.
He picked up the stone and paused.
“A–in–” I couldn't make out what he said, but could only assume it was again. I did as he instructed. Afraid I would die if I refused. Everything blurred to a haze and for the first time I could remember, my memory gaped. I know I was conscious, but I couldn’t say what happened next.
Somehow, with one final try, it worked. No eruption, no magic. The stone became even heavier than before and fell straight through the floor, down to the forest below.
After I poured every drop of manna I could into it I turned to my father to see him. He was standing still, arms crossed. “Good… Two more failed attempts and you’d be dead.”
I could see him clearly, but my vision refused to focus on anything. I was still in pain from the biting cold, but my brain was unable to process any thoughts. His words would stick with me, but At the moment I had no reaction, no emotion, nothing. My mind truly was empty.
My memory gapped again and before I realized it I was slowly waddling behind him, walking through the tunnel towards the house. I reached out to touch him, but he pulled away, keeping his distance.
Everything was so cold that the frigid air actually felt warm on my skin. As my thoughts began to return I only had the capacity for one. ‘I’m not dead yet… I’m not dead yet… Not dead…’