Brand awoke suddenly, there were clicking sounds coming from his left. Still lying down, he looked around; he was surrounded by a forest of very, very, very large trees. They were so large that width of the root was probably somewhere around 2 times his height. There seemed to be a lot of wild life around judging by the noise, but it was all hidden behind the massive trunks and leaves. He was admiring the trees and beauty of the rising sun casting a wild print of red-orange light and shadow for a while, before he even began to wonder how he had gotten here. Brand wouldn't really mind if was stuck in the rainforest, it was such a beautiful place he could stay and stare for days. He walked around for about half an hour before he found any sign of civilization, a small hut rested on one of the biggest roots he'd seen in the whole forest. He made his way towards it listening to all the sounds of the wild on the way. He was about to knock on the door when all his surroundings disappeared in the blink of an eye. The house was gone, the trees were gone, and the sounds of animals scurrying bush to bush were gone. Brand was standing in complete blackness, and complete silence.

Brand awoke suddenly, there were clicking sounds coming from his left. Still lying down, he looked around; he was in a room, it had a cabinet, a closet, and a fan that was spinning slowly. The room was lit although there were no windows or lights so he wasn't sure where the light was coming from. He got up out of the bed to check where the clicking noises were coming from; they seemed to be coming from the wall, so he lowered himself and put his ear to the wall. Instead of his head stopping on the wall it went through as if the wall wasn't even there. In surprise he stumbled forward, and to make everything worse not only was the no wall there was no floor in this room. In fact, it wasn't a room, it was empty space. Maybe the house had decided it didn't like him in the end and sent him into space. The similar stars from the floor changer appeared and time went by slowly as he fell. After the, now seconds, of the fall he landed hard on the floor of a tiled room, his head hurt and he could smell eggs.

"Good morning," Said a cheery high pitched voice he couldn't recognize. "I see the house gave you a hand getting here this morning, it must like you." Brand looked up into the large round eyes a short long eared creature. He yelled in surprise which seemed to have scared the creature more the creature scared Brand.

"I'm sorry," said Brand. "My name is Brand, what's your name?"

"oooh, you are too polite little master," the creature said.

"Master?"

"I serve anyone in this house, master," It said squeakily.

"Call me Brand," Brand said while looking around. He was standing in the biggest kitchen he had ever seen; in fact it was more like a bunch of little kitchens put together. Every station had its own stack of boxes of eggs, many cut loaves of bread, really long toasters with many holes, and cupboards he guessed were full of jams and jellies.

"Yes master Brand, sir," it squeaked. Brand had to stop himself from laughing.

"No, just Brand," he said. "What is this place? Ax says it's a living house that isn't part of the world or something… what kind of spell is it?"

"This house is called the Link Mansion; it holds imprints of all magic ever used in the world. The Link Mansion is part of its own magical space; the original spell was made by a wizard named Phoenix Lavali, in around 2000BC." It squeaked on.

"What did you say your name was?"

"My apologies master! I mean Brand, I'm so sorry, sorry, sorry!" It squealed, its large eyes watering. "Doodle will have to punish himself for not answering all master's question!" It screamed, which was starting to make Brand's head hurt more than it did after the fall from the ceiling. "I will have to punish myself more! Your name is Brand, I will not call you master any longer, I promise!"

"Calm down…errr… Doodle was it? Everyone makes mistakes; you don't have to punish yourself."

"Yes, Brand," Doodle said and ran off with its head pointed at the ground.

Brand made his way through the kitchen looking for Axelle. He found her about 3 kitchens down, her black hair in pigtails. "Hey," Brand said as he got near her. "How are the eggs going?"

"Good morning! They're doing fine," she replied smiling at him. He looked past her to her frying pan, inside was something he couldn't recognize as eggs, it was more like lots of black rocks. She was humming while she moved them around on the pan.

"Ermm... Ax, I think you burned them," he wasn't really yet sure they were actually eggs. She looked down at the frying pan with her dark blue eyes and said,

"Yea... maybe they are a bit over cooked." She pulled out the trash can below the counter she was working on; it was already full of little black rocks.

"Here," Brand said. "I'll do it." He switched places with her and took some eggs from one of the boxes that were piled on top of each other, some empty. "Do you like them scrambled, or sunny side up?" She seemed very confused by this question so she just said,

"I like them black," she smiled. "That's how they are when my dad makes them."

"Well, you're about to try something new," Brand said. He broke the egg over the edge of the pan, and let the egg's contents spill onto the already very hot pan. The egg was already cooked by the time it hit the metal, he was surprised the pan hadn't melted. "What are your parents like?" he asked as he turned off the flame and put her egg in a plate.

"Thanks, it looks undercooked though… it's not even black," she said. Brand decided not to tell her that it was better this way, so he remained silent and popped toast into the many-holed toaster. "My parents are nice, they're very different though," she said. "My mom is not around people much, she stays alone. My dad, he likes to—

She was interrupted by a voice right behind Brand making him jump what felt like 5 centimeters of the ground. "Surprise people," It finished.

"That's my dad," Axelle said. Brand turned around, the man, now in front of him, was tall and skinny, he had black hair, red eyes, and very pale skin. "He's not a vampire just so you know, he's just weird." Ax continued; it relieved Brand to know that. "He looks exactly like grandpa did at his age." Brand turned around to see if he could see the resemblance, but her dad was no longer there. Brand was waiting for her dad to pop up out of nowhere and scare him, but it didn't come, instead the toaster went off making him jump another 5 or so centimeters.

Once Brand had finished making his breakfast he and Axelle made their way to a door that was labeled 'Dining'. Inside, just as Brand had expected, was the biggest dining room he had ever seen, many, many long tables in rows with benches for seats. "Why does your family need so much room?" Brand asked; he'd been burning to ask this since he saw how many floors there were inside the Link Mansion.

"This House was built by some magician for the war; it housed the warriors, priests, and sorcerers and all their families during the wars of Endorael." She said as she sat down on a bench near Zeb. "I think, is that right, gramps?"

He turned around and opened his mouth slowly as if thinking of what to say, and said, "Not at all, not at all." He turned back to his bowl of oatmeal, although, to Brand it looked more like seaweed.

"Oh," she said. "I thought it was.…" Brand examined the strange oat meal in the silence that followed, until Axelle interrupted it.

"Brandy, do you want to play a board game or something?" She said, "I know muggles like that."

"I'm not a muggle, just a squib or something." He said; he was tired of people talking to him as if he had different needs and ideas. He wanted to say more but instead he stared at the strange oatmeal longer.

"That's what I said," she waved her hands in dismissal. "You still like board games right?"

"Yea" he said but he was distracted, Zeb was about to take a spoonful of his seaweed-ish oatmeal, Brand was sure something strange would happen once he ate it. To Brand's disappointment, before Zeb took the mouthful Axelle grabbed his arm and pulled him away.

"Come on!"

Brand and Axelle made their way through three doors, to the floor changer, and to the 1790th floor. Axelle had been right; he was getting used to time slowing down inside the floor changer. The fourth room down the corridor on the left was green, like his had been. "Why are all the doors red, blue, or green?" He asked looking around the corridor.

"Because, we've marked all the doors in colors that tell us what kind of room it is," Axelle answered, she seemed to be enjoying knowing more about something than Brand. "The red are rooms we can't open, the blue are rooms we've opened but are too dangerous to go in, and the green ones are rooms that are safe."

Axelle opened the green door and opened it, inside it, was a complete mess; there were things over the floor. "With such a big mansion, don't you have somewhere else to store your things?" Brand asked as he took a careful step over a large pile of magazines.

"No, there are only 16 of the rooms that are safe in the whole mansion, that includes the kitchen, the dining hall, and the four bathrooms." She said, kicking a pair of pants from her path towards a little white cabinet. "So that leaves 10 rooms, one for Zeb, one for my mom and dad, two for the hundred house elves, and one for me." She kneeled down by the cabinet and opened a drawer, from it she pulled out a rectangular box. "That leaves 5 guest rooms; they won't let me have one of those or a little area of the dining hall either." She blew dust off the wooden box, revealing a beautiful design of a bird with green feathers.

"Oh, I see… what's a house elf?" Brand asked.

"It's little creatures who do work for us." She answered, and opened the box in half and revealed a square board with eight shiny gems.

"Oh, like Doodle. What is that?" Brand stared at the board it was very beautiful piece of work. The gems were set in two rows of four, they encryptions on the top and bottom of each, and an indent at the bottom.

"This board is called the Magus Vireos Board," she smiled at it. "It counts up magical capacity; they used it long ago before wands were invented. Did you know that before they invented wands people just used magical objects to channel their magic?"

"No, I didn't," He sat down on a stack of large books. "I thought you said we were going to play a board game?"

"Well, it's a board…" she looked confused. "What the problem with it?"

"Nothing, what do I do?" He had no idea how this board would work.

"Put your index finger here," she said. "The gems will light up depending on how strong your magic is. The first row counts up your overall magic and the second tells you how strong a channeler you need." She put her pointer finger to the indent on the bottom and the second gems of both rows lit up, the top light purple and the bottom dark purple. "Since both the second ones lit up, it's saying that I have an average magic and that I need an average magic channeler, like inside a wand." She looked at him and said, "Most people don't get past the two second ones." She lifted her finger and the stones' light flickered and died. He placed his finger on the board at first nothing happened, and Brand was starting to think maybe he didn't have any magic at all. Axelle seemed to have thought the same thing for she opened her mouth, but before she could say a word the two last lights came on.

"What?" Brand said taken aback

"I don't know, that means you have very, very strong magic… but you've never used a spell." She seemed to have gone into deep thinking because she hadn't closed her mouth after her last word; it came out sounding like 'speehhh…'

"It's probably malfunctioning," Suddenly Brand became very tired, and his vision blurred. He fell asleep almost instantly after hitting the edge of something hard and metal.