I returned home for a time.

  The rest of the morning I spent pretending to be a toddler, which included being bored, sticky-fingered, and obedient enough that no one questioned where I went.

  What I really did was sneak and …steal.

  I call it borrowing - technically true, and it sounds better. I intended to bring everything back unharmed. It’s a detail I told myself as I slipped into the neighbors’ home again and scoured their studies and bookshelves.

  What I found, I brought to a little tree stump outside the manor.

  The ground was soft, and the sun felt warm against my scalp where hair would someday be, and for a few calm minutes I was only a child with stolen books and a plan.

  The first was a practical runecraft book that had diagrams: circles within circles, lines that connected into sigils. It suggested that spells weren’t just one-off commands but nodes in a lattice.

  The other book, “Pamphlet of Chant Theory,” argued - quite smugly and in a high-and-mighty tone - that the order and accent of syllables shaped the flow of power.

  The last one, “On Polysyllabic Weaving,” was the most useful: it talked about linking tokens, tokens being the spells that act as joints between larger spells.

  There were no unlocking spells for a strange trunk, but there were principles.

  The most important ones being resonance, dampening, and staging.

  Spells that share a harmonic root and reduce blowback when casting. That bled together and broke greater actions into smaller, more sequential activations and let each one ride the tail of the previous one.

  It all sounded academic until I remembered how Mach feels in my legs.

  The rush, the burn, the sucking fatigue that follows like a vacuum.

  A single spell. Two or three of the same word stacked together multiplied the effect until I felt like a popped balloon.

  I had already been chaining the same - literally, multiple utterances of the same root - because I was unimaginative at two years old.

  Magni-Geb or Set-Zis means "strength-strength" or "lightning-lightning."

  Multiplier hits and giant expense.

  The books made me see why that was stupid.

  “Magni-Thor” would be a better strength spell - a two-word spell that harmonizes with itself.

  ‘Thor,’ as it read in another book, was just another strength spell from the same generally understood family of magic. It would fit better with Magni than any other one I knew, especially Geb.

  Maybe if I really need some power, I could combine all three, but that’s the nuclear option.

  In short:

  One: Lattices of power.

  Two: Syllable order and stress shape flow.

  Three: Link spells, reduce blowback, sequential efficiencies

  Don’t brute-force: harmonize.

  It was theoretical.

  I wiped my nose on my sleeve. Magic scholar by mind, sticky toddler by body.

  I also learned a more mundane - and far more useful - skill: how to look innocent. A smile for a servant, a clumsy stumble through a doorway. Some babble when someone was close, and a little tantrum when I was frustrated.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  A few days after, I put the books back where I took them. It was just a bit of crime. Just a tiny one.

  I waited until the last candle in the nursery guttered and died, then slipped out instantly.

  Wasting time wasn’t in the plan.

  The trunk was before me.

  Remember the books, Caleb.

  I cleared my throat and said, “Magni,” low and steady. Then: “Thor.”

  A hammer strike hit my bones.

  It did not make me suddenly enormous; it made me a better lever, not a mountain. That was the point.

  No chisel. No crowbar. No tools. They would have bent like paper in my hands compared to what I intended to do.

  I planted my feet, wrapped my small fingers around the iron band, and pulled.

  At first nothing happened. The metal buckled under my nails with a creak and groan.

  I tried again and again, changing my angle, my grip and technique, and the direction I pulled the lock. Sweat stung my eyes.

  This definitely wasn’t a normal lock. And those guys I killed weren’t normal bandits.

  Or that’s what I assumed. Maybe locks in this world were just that hard to open?

  I worked in breath lengths. “Magni… Thor.” Pause. “Magni… Thor.”

  Again and again. I was a stubborn soul.

  An hour passed. There was the bark of a fox, the rustle of leaves, and the hooting of an owl.

  Muscles and ridiculous stubbornness finally won.

  The band at the lock cracked with a final sound like a bone breaking and gave way.

  I sat down and breathed hard.

  Yay. I guess.

  Phew. Hard work. Now to see what was inside.

  I shoved the lid high with both hands.

  Inside, the thing that caught my eye first was color - a slick, dark pool that shifted like sunlight in a puddle. Greens and blues curled into copper and purple; the surface refracted the moon into colors.

  It lay in a shallow depression lined with something like waxed cloth, and when I reached forward, the pool trembled as if awake.

  My finger hovered. Curiosity has always been my least practical quality.

  I dipped a fingertip slowly into the liquid.

  It was almost like water. It felt cool and smooth, but not wet the way water is wet. When I lifted my finger slowly, all the liquid dripped away, and my skin was not darkened or sticky.

  Nothing soaked in. Nothing stained.

  I frowned and stabbed my finger in it again.

  Slow. My finger cut a smooth path through it.

  The pool accepted the intrusion without complaint. Quick. I snapped my hand back, then plunged it again, this time with the speed of a child trying to wrench a toy free. The liquid replied like a fist closing around me: sudden resistance, a pressure that pushed on my palm.

  I really hope this wasn’t some kind of mimic, luring me in with safety just to eat me.

  But if it wanted to fight, I’d square up. I’m not some buster without power. I can bend metal with my bare hands. I can kill a dozen people with just two words.

  Man, I really need to calm down.

  I was exhausted. Even just opening the truck took a toll.

  For the next test, I pressed a leaf into the pool and dragged it back. A perfect bead clung to the leaf’s surface, like an eye. It rolled there without soaking the leaf.

  But when I dropped a rock, it didn’t sink, not at first. It landed like the liquid was hard and then slowly sank.

  Not to sound like a nerd, but was this non-Newtonian fluid?

  The comparison was clumsy and childish, but it fit.

  When I moved slowly, it was liquid. When I moved fast, it acted with resistance.

  I couldn’t think of anything else to do with it right now. I wasn’t going to drink it, that’s for sure, and I don’t want to blast it with magic, not yet at least.

  Well, maybe just a finger.

  I dipped my finger in the liquid and quickly scooped just a drop into my mouth and let it slide across my tongue for the merest second.

  It tasted like nothing, maybe a bit coppery, but this clearly wasn’t copper. Like, molten copper because it wasn’t hot. Duh.

  I pulled my finger out of my mouth and made a face.

  No immediate death. No screaming. That was promising.

  But also, I was now the kind of idiot who tastes mysterious trunk fluid.

  Great. Add that to the list.

  I stared at it. It stared right back.

  I leaned closer, squinting. There was nothing I could see from my point of view, and that bothered me.

  There had to be something. No one goes through the trouble of transporting the heaviest trunk known to man for… magic goo.

  Unless the goo was the treasure. Or a weapon. Or something else. I wasn’t sure whether to be happy or disappointed.

  In the old world, if you suddenly gained a large amount of something that was worth a lot, there’d be many questions.

  If you had a trunk full of gold, all kinds of people would start looking your way.

  And not just the people you know. The government would love to ask you a few questions about your newfound wealth.

  My new family wasn’t so bad off even though I didn’t know what my father did. Where do nobles get their money from anyway? Except for inheriting it.

  Were we landowners or something? That’s the one thing that came to my mind. Most nobles were, so we had to be too.

  Anyway, even with all I’ve learned from this world, this dark fluid was a complete unknown.

  I hope it wasn’t poisonous or radioactive or something. Still, I reached deeper.

  I mean, I had a healing spell. Hopefully I could heal myself in the worst-case scenario.

  My hand searched, and then - my fingertips brushed something.

  Something soft. Squishy-soft. Not cloth-soft.

  A sack? A sponge? No. Nope.

  I pulled my hand out on instinct and mentally prepared myself.

  I reached again, deeper this time. My tiny fingers closed around something pliant, something with give, something with-

  Texture.

  I yanked my hand back fast like something bit me, and then I tumbled backward, clutching…

  …a piece of flesh.