3MA

3MA | Chapter 18

18
CONNECT

Two weeks later, after a seemingly endless string of painful days and nights training with Myrna under the Hearthstone and splitting lips with Amaris in the Hall of Heirs, I splay out on my back on the cold cobblestone floor of Merlin's chambers, bolting through his journal and stuffing the Language of the Divine into my head like an orphan at an all-you-can-eat buffet, my body and mind pushed far beyond the breaking point.

Beckon

Ignite

Coalesce

Divide

Agitate

Confuse

At first, the strange language proved a maddeningly difficult skill to acquire. After years of solving problems exclusively with my knuckles, the words scrawled in Merlin's journal simply refused to respond to force of any kind.

On the contrary, the language seems strongest and most effective when my mind is at peace. Myrna's Be the Punching Bag visualization technique, seems to be working reasonably well for me. So far I've managed to duplicate a pebble, turn a burning candle into an icicle, and mend one of Kilgharrah's man-sized shattered rib bones.

Mag and Inka have fallen into a mysterious routine of venturing off to far-flung corners of the castle, expertly avoiding running into me, clearly on some top-secret project that Amaris likely assigned to them. I'm too exhausted to investigate or care. All I know is that, for the time being, Mag is safe and well-fed.

I flip the page and trace a Dragonskyn-gloved finger over another line of commands.

Grow

Sharpen

Connect

Amaris

Amaris

Amaris

Amaris

Damn it. I snap the book closed with an annoyed huff and hop to my sore feet. I shake my head clear. But I know it's no use. I've spent the past couple of weeks trying to push her out of my mind and focus on the training. But Amaris has an annoying way of invading my brain, whether I want her there or not.

I think I'm officially fried for the day. Maybe for life.

What I need is to hangout with Fisher. Talk. Joke. Fart. Be a regular guy again. At least just for a few minutes.

I rummage through my jeans pockets and tug out my cellphone. It's not one of those fancy glass ones with a touchscreen. It's more in the gray-amorphous-hunk-of-plastic variety. It's no wonder why I completely forgot about it; thing's been useless since it was permanently disconnected after I failed to pay my bill the last few months. The battery 's been dead ever since.

I grip the cellphone tight in my palm. If I can obliterate the century-old wrinkles in Myrna's hand, I can get this outdated piece of junk to work, too.

I close my eyes. Merlin's handwritten commands rise from the darkness of my eyelids; neon dreams scribbled in the night.

When I feel I have the right word, I pluck it from the void and carefully place it on the edge of my tongue. Even before I allow it to fly free and become a spoken thing, I can feel it's more than just a word; it's possibility waiting to be made physical.

Connect.

The dead, black screen crackles with static and then winks to life. A picture of Mag, Mom and I is plastered across the homescreen. Above our heads are the phone's stats: Battery 100%. Five full bars of reception.