Adrift in a sea of white that smelled of aftershave and an afternoon smoke, I heard the faintest whisper rise and whistle through my ears.

"Create," it said. "You need to create."

Easier said than done, I thought watching as the sea of white parted and I found myself in front of a roaring fire, brown leather cushioning my rump.

I'm sure-- as you all are aware now-- that this was not my first time finding myself in the unknown. It was, however, the first time the unknown had presented itself so bizarrely.

I was in an office-- a mundane choice of setting that'd been twisted around, principles of physics manipulated and toyed with until they were altogether disregarded and thrown out the window. Gravity had no pull within these grey stone walls.

Stacks upon stacks of tragically worn books hung from the ceiling, as if they were right where they belonged, wide-open, pages splayed, waving me a hearty hello.

A desk hung in the middle of the books, holding all manner of parchment, scroll, inkwell and quill. In the center of the desk, near a lamp with a base shaped like a woman's chest, was a pair of black tinted aviator shades laid across a stack of Judas Priest CD's.

What strange hell is this?

The fireplace stood right side up, rising from the warped wooden floor as it should. The fire, however, did not get the message, and burned downward, flames hungrily lashing out at the ashen hearth. There were no logs to feed the fire. It burned because someone had wanted it to burn.

Makeshift bookshelves were carved out of the stone walls on either side of the fireplace. They held no books (as the whole of this person's collection were neatly stacked feet above my head) but instead, held bottles of various sizes and shapes.

Some were wine bottles, some were bottles that looked like jugs. A lot of bottles were emptied rum bottles. Each one were set sideways on labeled pedestals, free of any dust. Perhaps they were this person's cow-shaped creamers.

Inside each bottle was a ship. And each ship, whether old and wooden, viking or English in design, or relatively modern with metal hulls, rocked back and forth on a placid sea of dark blue.

A wind that resided only inside the bottles, blew flags of various countries back and forth, my favorite being a black flag housing a white skull and crossbones. I loved pirate flags and the tales that came with them. I always had.

As I perused the collection, a name on one of the plaques caught my eye. The ship inside was old and weathered, made of wood with large white sails and flew under a Spanish flag.

The Santa Maria.

Wait. Why did this sound so familiar?

"Oh gods above!" I yelled as realization seeped into my brain. "That damned Howell taught me something. And it stayed."

The horror. The sheer, overwhelming terror of having learned something in school from a man who resembled a Christmas ham, hit me full force and I slunk into the leathery embrace of the armchair. I felt as out of sorts as this room.

"Did my collection frighten you?"

I turned in the direction of the voice that had spoken. Before me, stood a man well into his thirties who dressed as though he'd been plucked from the 1920s. Blonde hair was parted and slicked back, a tailored black suit fitting snug against his lithe frame.

A thin light brown mustache graced his upper lip, large tan hands clasped the top of a cane placed in front of himself. He had eyes the color of amber honey and was more radiant than I'd ever thought possible for a human to be. He shone with enough vigor to shame a thousand suns.

As I gazed at him mouth agape, he smiled at me, a swell of heat emanating off him in waves. It hit me and caused my skin to perspire. The air of the room must have risen at least forty degrees from that one look.

His smile faded as he watched me wipe sweat from my brow, the air cooling. He blushed as he bowed, an apologetic hand placed on the breast of his coat.

"I'm terribly sorry. I forget myself around the ill-informed."

He stood back up, the color of his hair had gone from honeysuckle to ivory, his tan skin, paling, taking on a grayish hue.

"I've muted my color in hopes of not burning you. You are coming into the know but I can't be too careful. So much time spent dead and you forget how powerful you are alive."

I nodded. "Yeah well, thanks for not wanting to me into a pile of ash."

The man chuckled. "It is not your purpose to crumble to ash and litter my office floor, Miss Auttsley." He wrinkled his nose and summoned a chair. He sat in it with a plop. "Though if that were to happen, it's nothing a good coloring and thirty-seven Millgrug slugs couldn't remedy."

With a wave of his hand, he motioned me over. I got up and wound my way through his stacks of books. I took a seat opposite him and watched as he poured himself a glass of blackish liquid from a crystal decanter. He held a glass to me.

"Oh, wait. Are you of drinking age?"

I shook my head. "I'm seventeen."

He nodded and pushed the glass toward me. "And what is that in human years?"

"Seventeen," I repeated, pushing the glass of frothing liquid back toward him. He added it to his own glass and downed the stuff.

I watched as Mr. Hotter-than-Dante's Hells, quenched his thirst and then --bored by his third shot-- I glanced at the scenery beyond him through scratched windows. The world outside was an expansive tundra, lined with dead trees carrying their weight in heavy, wet snow. The sky was clouded over with grey, the same color of Gideon's storm.

"Hey!" I said scrambling to my feet. "I need to get back." Turning away from the man, I scoped out the room for a door. Of course there wasn't one. There never really is when you desire to escape.

"Miss Auttsley, please--"

Slamming my fists down on the man's desk, I screamed, "No! My dad, Cripsen. I have to get back and help them."

"Miss Auttsley," he said, pointing to the chair. "Do contain yourself." He waved his hand and I threw myself into the chair.

"What would you do?" he asked, getting up from his desk.

He looked at the dismal grey outside and with a flourish of his hand, coaxed spring to bloom. The ice and snow melted leaving behind a large pond of cereluean, fish the color of polished obsidian jumping out the of the water, arching in the air with curved lips and bright gold eyes.

The trees came alive, shaking off the last remnants of winter. Like a painter making decisive brushstrokes on canvas, each tree bloomed with splashes of vivid greens, yellows and purples. A sun I was sure hadn't been there, appeared in the sky, casting long shadows against the swaying crimson grasses of the rolling hills.

Although the quick change of scenery beyond the windows had caught my attention, the man's words had caught my mind.

What would I do?

Why that's absurd. I would help.

But how? I don't know how to control my magic. If Crispen and my father couldn't take down Gideon, what hope was there for me?

"Don't pout, Miss Auttsley. It is not a face you wear well."

The man glided across the room, his polished brown oxfords floating above the stone floor, until he was next to me, his hand on my shoulder. "I do believe I forgot my manners," he said as he stared down at me, "My name is Mr. Pale and I never meant you alarm. I only--"

Crossing my arms around my chest, I looked at his desk and the bottle of black goo he had been chugging a moment ago. Mr. Pale had the bottle three fourths empty though now it sat half-full, the black gunk sloshing back and forth against the glass, refilling itself.

"You only meant to remind me how useless I am," I said as I watched the liquid reach the top of the bottle. A few drops spilled and ran down the sides, burning holes in the wooden desk on contact. Powerful stuff.

"I'm not even as powerful as your liquor." I scoffed. Mr. Pale removed his hand and straightened the black tie around his neck.

"Is that so?" he said, eyeing in his armada of tiny bottle ships. "And what would you do if you had the power of my libations? Or power beyond what cheap Nedden's Deadhead can conjure?"

This was perhaps the easiest and most straightforward question a magical being had asked me thus far. I chuckled. "I'd fight, obviously."

Mr. Pale smiled and played with the silver snake cufflinks that graced the edges of his sleeves. Each one was made of a shiny silver that slithered slightly under the soft yellow glow of his bossomy lamplight, the heads of the snakes devouring their tails with a glimmer of disparity in their metallic eyes.

"You'd fight Gideon? Stop him?"

Whatever sense of ease I had diminished now that I figured out what Mr. Pale was getting at. To stop Gideon, to protect my dad and Crispen, Potter Oaks, I would have to fight.

No, not fight. Not stop.

I would have to kill Gideon. I would have to dull those beautiful clear eyes that haunted my childhood.

I slumped back into my chair at the realisation that I would never be able to kill Gideon.

"Why is everything so damned black and white? It's absurd that sorcerers talk of all this magic coloring their souls and yet the world is so stark."

The world needs your color, Nep. Color the world.

That's right. I have magic. And maybe my own magic could do something.

"Miss Auttsley," Mr. Pale said, tearing me from my thoughts. I looked up at him perplexed; he was frowning. "You're glowing," he said pointing to my arms that were tinted that familiar shade of purple.

I smiled. I may not have the strongest magic or the most well-trained, but this purple, this magic, was mine and mine alone. I would find some way to save everyone. Help Gideon. If that way didn't exist already, I would create one.

You were given the magic to create. Do so within these pages and within the world.

"Do you know something, Miss Auttsley?"

I looked up to find Mr. Pale back in his chair behind the desk, the sun setting over a forest ablaze with the rusted hues of autumn.

"What? Am I glowing more? Or perhaps I'm dripping onto your floor?"

"No," he said. "Nothing quite so rude."
Leaning in close, he continued, "There is power in the reverse."

"Wait. How did you--" Know my father's words, I'd wanted to finish but the smile Mr. Pale now wore-- while crooked and mischievous, had enough radiance to make an entire nation swoon, and would have seen me turned to ash if he hadn't dimmed his heat-- stopped my words from spilling out.

"What is Nep in reverse?" he asked, eyeing me curiously.

You've got to be kidding me. What does this have to do with--

"A pen?" I said as I looked at my hands. My arms had stopped glowing but laying in my palm was a single pen, smooth, black, ballpoint tip. "What in the world?"

Mr. Pale placed his elbows on the desk and leaned toward me, staring at the pen. "Odd choice of weapon," he remarked,"Though to be quite frank, your father's weapon was equally as odd- a flask. Most sorcerers opt for something more fantastic. A wand or broom. Some even get hats though the magic causes their tops to blow up and out into the sharpest of points."

"Why. Do. I. Have. A. Pen?"

"It is your magical weapon of sorts. Congratulations Miss Auttsley. You're ready to create."