Chapter 21- Magic 101

"Pssst. Marigold."

Marigold groaned in dismay when she felt her little brother shaking her awake, and she tried to find refuge in her pillows and her wings. "Alastor, it's two o' clock in the morning!"

The four-year-old godling didn't seem to get the message as he continued to shake her by the shoulder gently. "Come on, don't be a party-pooper!" he plopped face up on top of her. "The city's awake, and we must play!"

"Well, you can play by yourself." The ten year old goddess pushed her brother off her with her wing, while trying to go back to sleep.

Alastor rolled off bed and fell on his rear, but he did not give up. He climbed back unto his sister's bed and started shaking her once more. "Marigold!" he opened her eye, only for her to close it once again and wrap her wings around herself once again. He grinned playfully. "Do you want to practice magic?"

Marigold smiled as she glanced back at her little brother.

Soon the young gods were running down the halls, giggling as Marigold shushed at her brother to keep him from awakening their parents, who were most likely asleep. They ran into the ballroom, where they had seen many balls and parties held by their mother, and closed the doors shut to keep any noise from leaving the room and alert any of the servants to their presence. Once they were in the middle of the ballroom, Marigold grinned at Alastor. "Ready?"

He nodded enthusiastically.

Since she had turned ten years old, Xibalba and La Muerte had started teaching their daughter how to use magic and her developing powers as customary among the gods, since it turned out Marigold had been passed down both dark and light powers respectively from them. Her dark power consisted on a bit of umbrakinesis, the ability to see into someone's soul and pyrokinesis, while her light power was more harmless, like making flowers grow, turning into rose petals to teleport to nearby places and calm down people. However, she was still young and learning, so they told her it was better that she didn't use her powers without an adult's supervision yet until she had a better control on them or she could hurt herself.

In Alastor's case, he mainly got dark magic from his father, his most prominent ability being shooting out tar from his hands or summoning green fire among other things. But since he was only four his magic was weak and still in development, and it only manifested briefly when he was on an emotional turmoil (such as a tantrum) or when it 'wanted to'.

Both the two siblings liked to practice magic by themselves, when Marigold could show her little brother what she had been learning. He often tried to imitate her, even though the most basic spells she used were too much for him due to his young age. Like his father, Alastor was stubborn and more often than not he tried to cast the same spells as his more experienced sister no matter how many times she told him not to do it.

Concentrating her energy, Marigold twirled one of her hands over the floor until a small flower sprouted from the tiles and blossomed into a white rose. "That's how you grow a flower."

"Cool! I want to try!" Alastor chirped excitedly.

"It's easy, all you have to do is concentrate your energy on a particular spot and think on what kind of plant you want."

Alastor closed his eyes shut and started concentrating his magical energy on the ground in front of him, in his mind he imagined a sunflower sprouting, but when something did grow it was a tiny sprout that wasn't taller than a few inches. When Alastor opened his eyes to see his creation, he was disappointed that it was such a tiny thing. "That thing is not even a flower!"

"Well, it is your first time, it's normal."

"Can you teach me how to teleport?"

"I'm don't think that's a good idea. Mamá said it's too complicated and dangerous for godlings like us, she has not taught me that yet. She says if we don't do it right we could trap ourselves between realms."

"Aww, man!" Alastor whined. "I don't mean teleporting between realms, I mean from one place to another, like from my room to the bathroom."

"Oh, that. Well, that's much easier." Marigold told him, turning into a swirl of rose petals and flying around the room before returning to her true form and landing next to her younger brother. "It's almost the same, you have to concentrate energy and hold it for as long as you want."

"That's all?"

"But since it's your first time you should first try to stay a few seconds in the form you take before you try to move around."

"Nah, I can do it." Once more, Alastor concentrated his energy, but a while passed and nothing happened. A minute later he grew irritated. "Why is it not working?"

"Maybe because you're too young, perhaps we should try something else-"

"No! I want to do it!" For a second time, the godling concentrated his magical energy with all his might. This time, though, he managed to change into a non-corporeal form-only that instead of rose petals, he turned into a cloud of gray smoke-for a few seconds before changing back and falling down on his rear with a thud. But there was a look of excitement in his skeletal features. "Yay!"

"That was great!" Marigold clapped her hands enthusiastically. "You should be able to change for more time with a bit of practice."

"Teach me how to use fire!"

Marigold's grin disappeared. "Oh, no, Alastor. That's too dangerous, you could get burned and mamá and papá would get angry at me!"

"Come on, Marigold! Just show me how to do it! I won't try it! I just want to see!"

"You promise?"

"I promise."

She still was reluctant, but nevertheless Marigold decided to comply just this once. "Okay, stand back." When her brother took a few steps back, Marigold concentrated her energy on her palm and tried to control it as best as she could. For a moment, only a puff of smoke emanated from her hands, but after a while a small pink fireball ignited on between her palms, warm and harmlessly flickering as gently as fire could. Alastor's eyes lit up in awe.

"Cool! Can you make it bigger?"

"I could try, but-"

"Make it bigger!"

"Al, it's risky!"

"Please, Mari!" the dark godling made the puppy face at his sister. "Pleaaase?"

Marigold sighed. "Okay, but only a bit." She concentrated more magical energy on her palms, and the fireball grew a few inches bigger and it emanated more heat than before. When she noticed the amazed look on her brother's face, she grinned. "Would you like to see a trick?"

Alastor nodded his head enthusiastically. He watched as Marigold threw the fireball upwards and it exploded into a small firework display, before the sparks disappeared completely. He clapped his hands happily. "That was awesome!"

"I haven't showed it to papá yet, I want to improve it, so you mustn't tell."

"Come on, I would never do that! He'd probably ask how you learned to do it."

"We should get back to bed, it's late and if someone catches us we'll be in trouble. Let's go."

The siblings snuck out of the ballroom and silently ran across the hall back to their rooms. Alastor waited until Marigold had closed the doors to her chambers to skip across the hall to his own. Surely it wouldn't hurt to practice a bit on his own. He spent the next half-hour trying to make a flower sprout until he managed to create a decent-sized flower bud, and turning into a cloud of smoke, but what he wanted to try was the fireball thing, even though he promised Marigold he wouldn't try it.

Oh, well, what Marigold didn't know wouldn't hurt her, would it?

Alastor concentrated energy on his palms and tried to summon a fireball like his sister, but all he could conjure up were puffs of smoke. After a few minutes, he grew frustrated. "Come on! Why is it so hard to conjure a stupid fireball?!" He tried once again, but nothing came out, other than smoke. However, a few tries and puffs of smoke later, he managed to summon a small fireball between his cupped hands. Alastor chirped in excitement when he saw the cackling fire.

"Yes! I did it! I can't wait to show Mari!" but as he was about to go to her room, he looked down at the flame and noticed it was too small, at least compared to that of his sister's. Maybe… if he could make it bigger…

Alastor tried to concentrate more magic into the fireball to make it bigger. A few seconds later, the flame started to grow, but then it became bigger than his hand.

"Nonono!" panicking, he tried to fizzle it out, but the fire kept growing.

His scream echoed in the castle as the fireball exploded.

If there was something that both Marigold and Alastor had in common, it was getting into trouble with their parents. They were in their bedchambers, sitting on the couch while looking down guiltily as their parents glanced down with a gaze of disapproval and disappointment. Alastor's hands were bandaged; luckily he was not hurt, he only got first degree burns on his hands, but other than that he was fine.

After minutes of silence, it was Xibalba who spoke first. "What happened, children?"

Alastor was afraid to answer the question, but the longer he took to answer the more impatient his father would be. "I tried to make a fireball…"

Xibalba narrowed his eyes at his son. "Where did you learn to make fireballs? I reall your mother and I told you that spell was too advanced for your age." He knew where he had learned it, but he wanted Marigold to admit it.

"I showed him how to, papá…" Marigold replied, crossing her arms guiltily. "He wanted to learn some spells."

"Marigold." La Muerte said gently. Unlike her husband, she was not too hard on her children, although she had some severity in her gaze. "You knew your brother was too young to learn that spell. As the eldest you should have thought on the consequences it might bring."

"Don't be hard on Marigold, mami." Alastor sobbed. "It was my fault. She didn't want to teach me, but I used the puppy face on her. She made me promise I wouldn't try to do it, but I broke my promise."

"It doesn't matter, Alastor. The both of you have an equal share of the blame here, Marigold shouldn't have taught you the fireball, and you shouldn't have tried to cast it without an adult." Xibalba stated hardly, though his gaze was on both his children.

Both Marigold and Alastor looked like they were going to cry, though they did their best to contain it. La Muerte noticed this, and sat down between the two to pull them into an embrace.

"Niños, You have to understand that what you did was risky. Al, you were lucky that you only burnt your hands, but what would have happened if it had been something much more serious? Your sister told you not to try to cast that spell by yourself, but you didn't listen. We don't want you to get hurt, baby."

Alastor snuggled against his mother's embrace, sobbing.

Then the goddess turned her attention to her daughter. "Marigold, it's okay if you want to show Alastor what you've learned, but you must not forget he is only four and he doesn't have the same magical ability as you yet. Even if he gives you the puppy look, you must learn to say 'no' from time to time, okay?"

Marigold nodded solemnly. "Sí, mamá."

Xibalba felt a bit jealous that La Muerte could handle this with much more ease than he could, but then again, she was always a natural with kids. Still, this reckless act couldn't go unpunished, as much as he disliked to ground his children. "For the time being, you two are grounded with no dessert privileges, and no magic for two weeks. Understood?"

Both Marigold and Alastor nodded without another word. They didn't want to keep arguing with their father, they didn't want to dig themselves deeper graves.

"Good. You may go." As his children returned to their rooms to go back to sleep, Xibalba sighed sadly.

"What's wrong, Balby?" La Muerte asked, placing a hand on his shoulder.

"I don't like to be so hard at them, I don't want them to see me as the evil ogre of the story."

"Oh, come on. You're not an ogre, you just did what you thought was right. I don't like to ground them either, but we can't overlook these kind of things all the time. Our children need discipline every now and then."

"I know…" Xibalba sighed once again, but he bushed deeply when he felt La Muerte's lips come into contact with his cheek.

"Let's go back to bed, Balby." She smiled at him, her fingers running up his shoulder, only to yelp in surprise when her husband picked her up bridal style out of sudden.

"And do what?" he purred seductively, earning giggles from her as she curled his moustache with her finger.

"Ay, Balby."