The rainy season is blanketing the entire village in a soft mist currently. The tropical storms that battered the islands were intense and being outside the village’s wards could be dangerous during the rainy season. But while you were inside the village it was nothing more than a perpetual light rain. The wards regulate the rain all year long, but the rainy season just overloaded them. It was a shame the wards didn’t have a humidity filter, maybe that was a sacrifice that had to be made to make sure the village didn’t flood. The rainy season also marked the time around my birthday.

I will be turning 6 years old in this world soon. I wonder when my friends’ birthdays are, I should ask them. Padraic is a whole 2 years older than me and Cerila is nearly 3. I found it somewhat odd that this world didn’t celebrate yearly birthdays. It makes even less sense here than it did in my last life. Perhaps that was just an old way of thinking on my part. Although death from childbirth and diseases was considerably lower in this world due to magic, it was safe to say the dangers were still very much real here.

Not everyone lived in a comfortable village protected by magical wards and had their jungles regularly swept by hunters and soldiers. Being eaten alive by a raging monster in the middle of the night was still a high possibility for many in this world. Roaming bandits, giant sea monsters, hell apparently even dragons existed in this world. Life wasn’t guaranteed and it was very cheap here.

Mom is currently telling me one of her many stories of this world. The way my mother tells her stories made it difficult to discern fact from fiction. Either way, I enjoyed her stories, facts or fairy tales.

"Well over 2 millennia ago, there once was a group of adventures known as The Six. They were a group of many different races and backgrounds that were brought together for unknown reasons. So the story goes anyway. There was Alps the Human assassin, Grogrem the Dragonkin warrior, Glynmaris the High Elf healer, Doctor Djinn the Dwarven wizard, and Tyldiur the first Human War God. Together they formed one of the first diamond-level adventure groups in history," My mother recounted the story. But I couldn't help but notice a lack of a 6th name...

"What about the 6th member?" I asked. She just smiled at me and continued,

"Nobody knows about the 6th member. Many believe it was to pay homage to a fallen comrade, some believe the 6th member was always there and their name was simply just lost to time, others think perhaps they were all religious and the 6th member referred to their god. After all, they formed the group on the other continent in the Holy Nation of Arotal."

"I see..." I trailed off. The other continent huh? Nobody really talks about that place. It's only briefly mentioned in some of Grandpa's textbooks but never in great detail. Also a Dragonkin? They must be some race related to the ancient dragons. My mother continued on while playing with my hair,

"The Six challenged the first Vampire Progenitor and Emperor of Nul, Talgan the bloody. Emperor Talgan was said to be an evil and a greedy vampire who wanted to rule the entire continent of Amoth. He hid in the shadows for years, planning and scheming against the other nations. Emperor Talgan had even instigated the 500-year war between the Republic of Elshara and The Holy Nation of Arotal. The Six uncovered hundreds of years worth of schemes and exposed Talgan to the world. So The Six with the backing of the nation of Arotal attempted to defeat Talgan in the Magical Forest of Elshara. They were completely and utterly defeated by Talgan. Recounts of the battle are grim as people described Talgan wiping out entire armies without even blinking. After all, he was the first vampire and was said to be as old as the first dragons, his power was unimaginable."

So even vampires exist? And they are as powerful as dragons or at least the first one was. This world is truly something else. I wonder if they burn in the sunlight or maybe they hate garlic? My knowledge of old Earth fiction is limited. I remember Hephaestus saying something about vampires sparkling.

"After the fight, The Six retreated and implored the ancient dragons to help them take down Talgan. The dragons ended up in a civil war with The Six at the center. Eventually, the faction that wanted to help the world won and the remaining dragons formed The Council of The Dragon Emperors. Together with the new council, The Six took the fight to Emperor Talgan's front door. With the power of the ancient dragons, The Six destroyed Talgan's empire and besieged the capital. After a long and drawn-out siege, they finally breached the magical barrier and took down Talgan for good. The vampires fractured and formed their own small clans. Today the vampires mostly stick to the northern part of the continent of Amoth, fighting amongst each other," my mother finished her story.

This seemed less like a story for a 6-year-old's bedtime and more like a history lesson. I also didn't really know what the deeper meaning behind the story was, maybe friendship can overcome anything or something? Or maybe a warning that dragons and vampires are dangerous? Either way, I guess it worked as I'm slowly falling asleep to my mother's calm voice.

Some might find it unbecoming of a former Death Commando in the body of a 6-year-old being lulled to sleep by their mother. But those people obviously didn’t have a loving family.

However, thinking about family made me wonder about my parents. My father seemed like a regular person but I knew that couldn’t be the case. He had far too many skills and was well-read and traveled. There were also no other Dark Elves in the entire village as far as I knew. My parents also never talk about their families. Dad offhandedly mentioned that I had an aunt somewhere, but the conversation moved on as quickly as it came.

But it was my mother that remained a real mystery to me. The way she spoke and carried herself seemed so different from everyone, including my father. It was easily said that mother was extremely beautiful, even by Elven standards. If I didn’t know better I’d think she was a runaway princess from a foreign nation. This was probably just the bias of a loving son. However, I decided that maybe I should just ask her, I’d like to know more about my parents if I could,

“Mom? Where are you from?” I asked.

My mom stopped her humming and gave me a warm smile, “From far away, Kal,” was all she said.

“I know that much Mom,” I groaned. She pinched my ears in retribution and gave them a hard tug.

“Ouch! Mom, that really hurts,” I screeched.

Having my ears tugged or pulled is actually very painful. I liked these ears of mine very much, they were useful in many ways but had the drawback of being extremely sensitive. It seemed the older I got the stronger and more sensitive my ears grew.

“When did you get so cheeky again, huh? You are supposed to be going to sleep not talking back,” she said playfully.

“I know… I just wanted to know more about you is all,” I said defeated.

She stopped pulling my ears and massaged them gently instead. She didn’t say anything for a while and we just sat in silence with my head in her lap. She let out a small sigh and spoke softly, “I’m from the northeast High Elf Empire of Tel'an'duth. It’s a beautiful country of snow and silver that sits on the edge of the sea. Tall spiraling towers of silver touch the clouds, the weather is always cool yet so forgiving,” My mother’s voice was one of fond recollection.

“Do you miss it? Your home?” I asked curiously.

“No. Not at all. I made a choice a long time ago. And that choice made me the happiest I’ve ever been, and gave me the two most important things in my entire life,” she said while giving me a hug.

It seems she made an important decision. And that decision was one of the many that led me to be here today. I guess we’ve both had to make difficult choices. Hopefully, mine will bear as many fruits as my mother’s.

—

The end of the rainy season is finally here. It’s a shame really, I enjoy the rain. It kills the humidity and heat and the rain is so refreshing. Man, I hate the humidity.

Today Grandpa Jacobs has decided to have magic lessons at my house this morning. Normally we all just learn in his office later in the day, but today was different. Magic training has gone very well for everyone. Much to Grandpa’s complaints he has been training both Cerila and Padraic. Padraic was far behind Cerila and me. He still needed a lot of work on his mana control but he was improving daily.

Cerila would often tease me and refuse to tell me how her training was going, saying "I’ll see soon enough". She even went out of her way to train with Grandpa on her own. And of course, Grandpa stayed tight-lipped about her training as well.

Currently, I was nearly a full-fledged Intermediate mage in both schools of earth and fire. My spells were both stronger and more consistent, and I have even gone as far as changing the core of my spells. The core of a spell was just that, the core of the spell.

For example when I first tried to create a gust of wind I was actually attempting to form the core of a spell. Of course, I failed because I lacked both the mana and the affinity for the wind spell which lead to the formation of an incomplete and efficient spell core. And since I failed the formation but still cast the spell anyway, the core took far more mana than my tiny little body had and nearly killed me in the process.

Even though everyone has mana, not everyone could be a mage and form these spell cores. After all, why waste precious mana on a weak failure of a spell when you can use that mana to enhance your body for longer periods of time. It wasn't uncommon for people to have large amounts of mana and perfect mana control but lack the ability to form spell cores. Thankfully, as long as I stuck to my preferred schools of magic I could always form the core of a spell now without failure.

But now I am experimenting with changing my new fully formed spell cores. Changing the core of a spell was difficult and depending on what you changed, the spell would cost even more of my precious mana. For example, If I wanted to make my fireballs bigger, hotter, or even smaller doing such alterations from the core cost additional mana to successfully cast the spell. But it was all roughly the same, even if I decreased the size of a fireball. I could use a magical item to lessen the mana cost but I didn't have access to any.

Before my fireballs were nothing more than tiny globs of light that would struggle to set even the grass on fire, this was because I couldn't properly form the core of the spell. Now I could launch fireballs the size of someone's head with enough heat and power to burn straight through a tree. I was quite proud of myself. I guess Grandpa’s predictions that I would only become exponentially stronger as I aged was true. On top of my recent core-changing experiments, my control over mana has also increased. Even though I’m only 6, I can reinforce and strengthen myself to levels far beyond what my body can normally do. What was I capable of when my body matured fully I wondered?

I was outside warming up with my dad when Grandpa, Cerila, and Padraic rolled up. I ran over and greeted them all,

I signed to everyone.

I had made it a point to sign as much as possible now. Cerila was improving leaps and bounds in sign language and I estimated she would be completely fluent with a little more time and effort. Also much to my surprise everyone else has attempted to learn sign language as well. Grandpa, Padraic, and even my parents made it a point to learn so they could communicate with Cerila.

It truly made me happy to see everyone care so much about her. Now the communication gap between Cerila and everyone else was getting narrower with every passing day. Soon enough she could probably leave the cumbersome tablet at home. I watched as Cerila skipped towards me with a smile. She seems much happier these days compared to when I first met her. Even though she smiled when we first met, it didn't seem genuine sometimes. But now... things seemed different. Or maybe I was just really bad at reading emotions, that was probably it.

She signed. Grandpa and Padraic gave a uniformed grunt of greeting.

“It’s too EARLY for this,” groaned Padraic.

“Ah good morning, Kal. I see you have already begun to warm up,” My grandpa said.

My grandpa signed to her.

I asked curiously.

I wondered what the old healer had in mind for today. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a light purple stone that had a leather strap attached to it and tossed it to me. It was incredibly lightweight, and the stone was half as long as my forearm.

“What’s this Grandpa?” I asked.

“It’s a sparring stone. It emits a small mana shield around the mage wearing it and can absorb the impact of spells. You are going to spar today with it,” He said with a grin.

“Wait, who am I sparring with? And what happens if the shield breaks?”

“Don’t worry about the shield, at your level you are going to need around 2 direct hits to break it. This stone is designed for low-level mages to practice fighting with magic. Any mage worth their salt can easily smash these things in a single blow so they aren't very useful outside of training. So don’t worry.”

It seems the stone would stop any potential accidents. But he said at my level, so who was I sparring if not him? Grandpa let me marinate in my own thoughts for a few moments before his serious facade melted away into a sly grin,

“Cerila will be your partner today. Try not to embarrass yourself, okay?”

Cerila? I really didn’t want to fight my friend if I could help it, even if it was just a sparring match. But when I looked over at Cerila as she bounced around warming up with a smile, I could tell she was excited about this. I sighed internally. Fine, it was just a sparring match amongst friends, nothing serious.

I strapped the sparring stone to my bicep and watched as a purple haze settled over my body. The haze condensed into a thin purple barrier around me that faded away. Very cool.

Cerila sat opposite of me and did the same. I watched as she took a deep breath and the smile faded into a serious stare. Relax Cerila, this is supposed to be for fun, right?

My grandpa signed.

Limiting me to a single school of magic also seemed unfair, but I guess nobody wanted the jungle to burndown. And “Go on the light” what did that mean? Looks like Grandpa needs some extra sign language lessons after this.

Or so I thought... I was suddenly blinded by a bright yellow light. The blinding light faded from my sore eyes just in time for me to see a crystal-like spike the size of an adult man’s leg barrel towards me. I only had the briefest moment to roll out of the way barely dodging the thing. Of course, Grandpa was laughing hysterically,

“Watch out for that ice magic! Hahaha!” he shouted.

“10 silver on Kaladin old man,” Padraic said confidently.

“Deal. He doesn’t stand a chance!” Grandpa laughed.

“Dinner for the next week on Cerila,” My dad chimed in.

“No fair!” My mom said while shaking my dad.

What the hell? What’s with all these side bets? And Mom, Dad, where is your faith in your son?! At least Padraic has my back.

Cerila didn’t give me any time to internally complain about my traitorous family as she sent a volley of smaller ice shards at me. Her ice magic had a tint of blue in the crystalline structure that glimmered in the morning sun.

Sadly I didn’t have time to admire her magic more as I bent down and conjured a wall of stone in front of me. The ice shards slammed into my wall and shattered into a fine crystal powder that spread out from the wall. I noticed that the powder actually melted into water as well. I placed my hands on my new stone wall and fired my own stone spikes at Cerila.

I heard a loud hum and a squeak of surprise from Cerila as one of my stone projectiles must have connected with her shield. But it was the sound of the squeak that bothered me. I looked straight up as Cerila bounded over my stone wall with an ice spike forming in her hand. She’s crazy. Cerila just took a hit so she could make a trade. And she closed the distance so quickly.

She was too close for me to react as I watched the ice spike slam into my barrier as it dissolved the spell into a purple mist, the same loud hum reverberated once more. The spell itself might have been destroyed but the force did not, I tumbled a good 5 yards away from the force and rolled back onto my feet. Cerila gave me her fang-filled grin from underneath her hood as she watched me get back my bearings. Well, I guess I should be a little more serious?

This time I would go on the offensive. I stomped the ground and launched multiple boulders into the air and sent them towards Cerila while rushing towards her. She responded with her own wall of ice that blocked my attack, but instead of hiding, she immediately dissolved the wall of ice and melted it into a pool of water, then a gust of icy wind blasted me and stopped my frontal assault.

The makeshift snowstorm blocked my vision and lashed my face but the spell couldn’t replicate the sound. I wonder if that's because she doesn't know what a snowstorm sounds like? I listened as Cerila ran through the puddle of water and dashed towards my right side and sent a volley of ice shards at my flank. Without missing a beat I sent my own earth spears to intercept her attack. I listened as earth and ice magic mashed together in a blender of stone and ice. However, I didn't let up and sent another barrage of stone towards her.

Cerila's footsteps stopped as my vision cleared from the icy gale. Not only that I couldn't even sense her anymore, Beastmen are scary good at that. I quickly scanned the battlefield expecting to see Cerila but she was nowhere to be seen. It wasn't until I looked up that I saw her. She launched herself high in the air with wind magic and was coming down towards me with another spear made of ice. I quickly took a step back and realized my mistake. Clever girl.

Cerila's icy wind didn’t just blind me. It froze the wet ground from behind me and I backpedaled straight into it. I felt myself lose balance on the slick ice as I began to freefall onto my back. Damn, she really got me this time. She’s so fast and her magic is amazing, to think she can already use 3 schools of magic. Not only that, she completely hid her presence from me.

I crashed into the cold ground and closed my eyes. However, I was waiting for a defeat that never came. I opened my eyes and looked up and instead of seeing an ice spear, I watched as Cerila’s limp body was crashing toward the ground.

I instantly bolted to my feet and lunged with all the strength my mana-enhanced body could muster. I managed to catch her before she hit the ground. She was unconscious but breathing. I looked at her face but she didn’t seem to be suffering from mana sickness as her skin was still the same color. This was my first time holding Cerila like this, she seemed so small?

“Move, boy,” Grandpa barked at me as he moved towards us with surprising speed for an old man. I watched as the old healer enveloped Cerila in a cocoon of golden light.

“What’s wrong with her?” I asked, unable to hide the worry in my voice.

“Don’t worry about it. It has nothing to do with you. Go inside and take Padraic with you,” He commanded.

His tone left no room for complaints. I knew there was nothing I could do in this situation so I obeyed his orders.

I grabbed Padraic and we moved to go inside as he began to question me, “What happened to her? One second she was about to beat you then the next she was falling?”

“I don’t know. She just… passed out for some reason,” I said.

I closed my eyes for only a few seconds. She seemed fine just moments ago, full of energy and apparently ready to kick my ass. Was it my fault? Did I hurt her without realizing it? I… don’t understand.

“Hey, relax man. She is going to be fine. Dr. Jacobs and your parents are with her,” Padraic said calmly.

I just nodded at his kind words. I don’t understand myself right now. I’ve watched countless teammates of mine get far worse injuries and it’s never bothered me this much. Am I afraid? No, maybe I’m worried?

I know she is going to be okay yet I can’t help but feel the pit of my stomach drop, it felt like I was free-falling. She was fighting with a smile one second then the next she wasn’t. And why did she feel so light? Like she didn’t weigh very much at all. How could someone so small output so much energy and strength day in and day out? Mana…

Cerila's mana control was much better than mine. Could it be that this entire time she has been ill but has been counteracting it with her mana? But why wouldn’t Grandpa say something if she was sickly? That can’t be it. Surely she would tell me if she was sick, and Grandpa wouldn’t put her in a situation she couldn’t handle physically, he even believed she was going to beat me.

So what happened? I couldn’t make heads or tails of all this. The only medical training I had was to triage Human soldiers who had been shot and lost limbs, not diagnose fox girls that could throw magic at me. Is this what it’s like to stress out about something? I feel awful.

'‘Kal! Take a breath man! Trust in your Grandpa a bit, okay?” Padraic said while grabbing hold of me.

I released the breath I didn’t know I was holding and sucked some fresh air back into my lungs. Ah man, I really don’t like this feeling.

“You’re right. Sorry,” I said weakly. Padraic gave me a hearty slap at the back and a smile.

“I’ll just have to have faith in my Grandpa.”