My preparation had me examining some very large mountains with my mind.

  I would suit up in my armor and fly away, feeling the inside of mountains, looking for behemoths that I could take Matter from. I was doing this in between classes for about a week, when Michael had to ruin all my fun.

  "You do realize that you can just look up the coordinates of all the Behemoths on your flesh-watch, right?" he said over a mouthful of cereal during breakfast one morning. I stared at him and had to fight myself to not slap myself in the face.

  "They really have that then?" I asked him. I sighed as he nodded his head. I pulled up the flesh-watch and searched: behemoth locations.

  Immediately, a map popped up with seven glowing dots on it. This had me surprised.

  "There's only seven of them?" I asked Michael. He nodded his head, pointing at his mouth. Once he finished chewing, he started to talk again.

  "Yeah," Michael said. "They can live for thousands of years, and usually only reproduce every hundred years. Of course, when they do reproduce, their children are only the size of a small house, so they get taken out fairly easily."

  Dang. The species had a rough life. No wonder there were only seven creatures in existence.

  "So how am I going to get enough matter with only seven, three of which I've already cleaned out?" I said, hoping Michael would have a solution.

  "Why don't you just find some other big species?" Harper said, taking out one of her earpieces to listen in on the conversation.

  Michael nodded his head.

  "You could probably try adult floadons and coalos," Michael said. "I can also do research on other big animals, but those are two that I know are huge."

  I asked my flesh-watch where those creatures were right now. I gave a little sigh of relief as I saw hundreds of dots erupt on the little model of Titan. I would have plenty of creatures to visit to keep myself busy, that was for sure.

  "You guys want to go exploring with me?" I asked my friends. Harper shrugged her shoulders.

  "As long as you don't invite Emelda along," Harper tried to joke, but there was a cold edge to her voice.

  I sighed. Our second class had not gone any better than the first, except this time she had been openly flirting with me. Harper had been glaring at her ever since.

  "I won't," I reassured Harper. "You guys want to come or not?"

  Stolen story; please report.

  The two of them nodded their heads, so we went to go rent out a little airship, and we were flying through the skies in no time.

  It was a blast.

  At one point I put down the windows, and letting the air rush by my face was absolutely glorious. Of course, Michael had to shut the window because it was "too dangerous."

  Maybe ten minutes went by before I found my first floadon. It was giant and peaceful, reminding me of the clips of whales from ancient times. Nothing like the monster I had fought a couple of weeks ago.

  This one was unbelievably easy to take most of its matter from, and just like that we were out.

  "How do you feel?" Harper asked me as we were flying away from the floadon. I explained to her how the power wasn't quite unbearable, but it was at the point I WAS feeling awfully strong.

  Then of course I nabbed some matter from a behemoth, and that totally changed. After I took Matter from that, I was having trouble moving because all the actions that I took were like I was insanely strong or something.

  WYATT, I heard the voice say in my head as I was trying to hold my power back. YOU MUST LEARN TO STORE YOUR POWER AWAY UNTIL YOU ARE READY TO USE IT. STORE IT WITH THE TOOLS THAT HAVE BEEN GIVEN TO YOU.

  I stumbled for a second and then I FELT like I knew exactly what to do.

  With all the concentration I had to offer, I took a little piece of the gold stuff from my undergarments and pushed all the Matter from myself into the piece.

  As fast as I could, I grabbed the little piece of gold that had formed into a tiny bottle, and collapsed to the ground.

  When I came back around, I found I was on the bottom of the airship, sprawled out with my limbs twisted at odd angles.

  "Are you okay?" Harper said while she was bending over me. "You just kinda collapsed."

  "Yeah," Michael said. "You started to glow so bright that I couldn't see you, and then you were on the ground unconscious."

  I stared at the ceiling thinking about how much power I must have had. I was basically a god in that moment.

  Then I remembered the little capsule of gold stuff that I had pushed all the power into. I brought up my hand and opened it to reveal a tiny little jar, pulsing with energy. Even Harper and Michael seemed to sense the power in my hands.

  The best part was that I was sure I could take the energy out and use it at any time. Finally, I had found a way to take my power and store it for later use.

  Maybe now I would be able to take Emelda down. This time I wasn't going to need help removing the darkling, I thought to myself as I heaved myself off of the floor.

  After quickly explaining to my friends what the little capsule was, we were quickly on our way, speeding towards the next floadon. We went on like that for a couple of hours until I had three little capsules to use, each one swelling with power.

  "Let's do one more," I said to Michael. He nodded his head, and we pulled up to our fifth behemoth. As I looked down at the mountain and felt it, I realized that something was wrong. Very much wrong.

  When I saw it, it seemed grim and dark, and parts of it were black as night, but feeling it was even more concerning. There was a lot of light in the thing as was normal, but there was also a crushing darkness unlike anything I had felt before.

  I quickly grabbed the matter and told my friends to get out of there as the mountain started to tremble.

  Instinctively, I threw up a shield around our airship, using a little capsule and the power I had just gotten from the behemoth as a storm of dark matter thronged around us, hitting into my brilliant white shield.

  Michael put the pedal to the metal, but even then we barely got away. By the time we were out of there, my shield was basically gone. I took what matter that was left and stumbled over to Michael.

  "What WAS THAT?" I said, looking into his fearful eyes. Michael looked trapped and scared like a wild animal. For once he didn't say anything as we flew back to the academy.