A clang resounded in the silence as my mother dropped her fork onto her plate.

“What? Reynolds! Arthur isn’t even four yet! No. Besides, you said if our son was an augmenter, you would be able to teach him.” Mother’s desperation was evident in her tone.

“But I never expected he would be this much of a prodigy in mana manipulation,” Father responded, much more calmly. “Who’s ever heard of an awakening at the age of three?”

“But that means he’ll have to leave home. He’s not even four, Reynolds! We can’t have our baby leave home at such an early age.”

“You don’t get it. When I observe him while he meditates, I can’t help but feel that this all comes naturally to him. Alice, honey, I’m holding my son back by trying to teach him something he can do in his sleep.”

Thus began my parents’ quarrel.

They went back and forth, basically repeating their initial points; Mother kept saying that I was too young, and Father argued that they couldn’t hold me back from reaching my full potential. In the meantime, I was playing a game of war with my food. The peas attacked for the Mother Empire, while the carrots of the Father Nation desperately defended their land.

Finally, as they each ran out of points to back their argument, my father turned to me. “Art, this concerns you, so you have a say as well. How would you feel about going to a big city and having a teacher?”

I applauded his effort at trying to make this fair, but I didn’t think he realized that he was asking a three-year-old to make a decision that would ultimately change his life.

Trying to put an end to their argument, I said, “Can I meet some mentors and ask them if I need to be tutored?”

A tense silence fell over the room as my parents mulled over my suggestion.

Had I stepped on a landmine? Were they mad because I hadn’t chosen a side? Having no confidence in my ability to keep a poker face, I looked down and waited for their response.

Thankfully, none of my fears were on their minds. My mother finally spoke, muttering quietly, “We’ll at least have his mana core and channels formally tested. We can figure out what to do from there.”

My father nodded in agreement, and we began making preparations to leave the very next day.

When I’d made my suggestion, I had assumed we’d be going to a nearby town or city—perhaps a day’s travel—to have me tested by a qualified mage. Never had I been so wrong.

The journey would be three weeks long. We would be travelling by horse-drawn carriage through the Grand Mountains to a city called Xyrus.

One of the books I had read popped into my mind. I recalled reading about a floating piece of land, built by an elite organization of conjurers for the sole purpose of housing the prestigious mage academy. A city had later been built around the academy, and both the city and the academy were named after the leader of the organization, Xyrus.

I wondered how it was possible to keep a piece of land, nearly a hundred miles long, afloat. Magnetism? Then the land beneath the city would be affected by it. Did the city have its own gravitational field? It was clear that there was much about this world I didn't understand; perhaps I could find answers in the books in our library, or in a library in Xyrus.

Faced with the prospect of such a long journey, I began to wish this world had sources of transportation like my previous world. In order to get to the city, we’d have to enter through one of the designated teleportation gates in the Grand Mountains. Otherwise, it would easily take months to travel across the continent to reach the gate below the actual city, which floated near the border of the kingdoms of Sapin and Darv.

One reason my father pushed for us to go on this journey now was because his ex-party members were also on their way to the city of Xyrus. Going now, with them, meant we would have three augmenters and two conjurers, along with my mother, who was a rare emitter, and my father, a B-class augmenter. While the mountain range didn’t have any mana beasts, there were still the potential dangers of bandits and wild animals.

While my mother and father took care of packing all the necessities, I packed my wooden sword and two books—The Encyclopedia of Dicathen and Foundations of Mana Manipulation—for the journey.

By mid-morning, we were ready to head out.