《The Secluded Magus》Chapter 1
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As time passes, changes occur. This is a fact of life.
There are some changes, while significant, are unnoticed. In a corner stall of a busy marketplace, a woman, a peasant woman, to be more specific, lies, giving birth to a child. Like the four other children she had given birth to over the years, this one was also immobile. Believing that her fourth child was also a miscarriage, she cuts the umbilical cord with the knife meant to cut meat and pushes the body to the garbage pile, after which she flees the scene.
The day passes as various people move to and from stalls around the marketplace, blissfully unaware that in a corner laid a living child. After some time had passed, the child grew hungry, and started to cry, which alerted the people around him that there was indeed something there. However, it was ignored by all. As time passed, the child, being too tired and hungry to continue crying, stopped and fell asleep, still hungry. At the end of the day, the stall owners, while throwing out their trash, noticed that there was a small bundle of flesh in the corner of their shop and inspected it, only to find that it was the forementioned infant. Not wanting to be held responsible for having a dead infant in their stall, they hurriedly felt the child, hoping to hear a heartbeat.
They sighed in relief as they realized that a weak heartbeat could be felt from the infant. The stall owners’ wife, having given birth to six children, knew the process with which to handle a newborn infant and swaddled it in some cloth found around the stall. After her husband had finished cleaning the stall, they took the child and started walking towards the center of the city.
After some time spent walking, they finally arrive in front of a big building, made of gray bricks, with a big, vaulted roof. In this nondescript building, the only sign of personality was the words written on top of the big wooden doors, but the couple, having seen said sign multitudes of times, ignored it. The husband, in a hurry knocked at the door in what could only be described as a rush. They waited for a few minutes after knocking, only to be greeted with no response.
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The husband knocked on the door again, this time with more power, and waited. After a minute or so of waiting, a small woman, with a petite body frame wearing all blue, opened the door.
“What is all this knocking for” she said.
The couple bowed their heads in reverence and the husband, taking the initiative replied “Sister, we are in urgent need of your help”
“We found this infant in our market stall, and he looks to be only a few days old.” He adds as he looks down towards the ground, unable to look at the woman. “please take him”.
The woman, who was a priestess at the Church, looks at the couple with a serious face, and in a flash, her eyes turn a golden color. The stall owner and his wife shiver and cower in fear of this woman.
After a few seconds, she says “Leave the child with me”. The couple, happy, but too afraid to smile, pass the child into the arms of the priestess and shuffle away from her. After taking a few steps away, they turn around and walk away hurriedly, happy that they had been relieved of their burden.
The priestess, taking the child, closes the enormous doors with minimal effort and starts to walk along the great hallway with the child in her arms. After reaching the end of the hallway, she takes the stairs up to the second floor where she enters the last room on the end of another big hallway. In the room, another woman, a bit older by looks, could be seen hunched over a table, looked towards the open door as the priestess walks in. “What have you brought” she asks as she sees a bundle in the younger woman’s arms.
“Some peasants have left an infant in our doors Mother” she says as she sets the infant down on the table.
“They claim that they have found the infant in their market stall, and I have seen that they believe it to be true.”
The Mother, leader of this branch of the Church, sighs and looks at the infant. “Another one already?” She says, with a sad expression on her face.
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“Get some milk and tell the others to feed him” She says to the other priestess. The other priestess, after hearing this order hurries to do as ordered. After bringing some milk, the child is woken and fed, after which he goes back to sleep.
In the office, the mother after some thinking, states to the priestess “His name will be Elephon, take care of him”.
Unbeknownst to all, the baby in question was not a baby at all. Rather, he was a baby in body only, but had an intelligence of someone else. His name had been john back when he was in earth. He was a student, with not much else to his name. He had no family, as he was an orphan who had circulated through the failed American foster care system, and he had successfully managed to claw his way to a manufacturing job while studying in college. He had had lofty goals. He was studying to be an engineer, learning computer and electrical engineering as well as biology. His lofty goals in life had derailed as a result of a derailed train cart during a hike. As he died, he had no one near him, and no one to worry for and about him. He died thinking that it was a fitting end for a man born with nothing to die with nothing.
However, the growing pain and discomfort felt all over his body told him that he was most certainly not dead. As he tried to open his eyes, he realized that he could not see much but for specks of light. After a few minutes of waiting, he realized that his body seemed to be much smaller than he was used to, and that he had no control over his extremities.
After some thinking, it was decided that he was either dead or in the hospital. The growing feeling of hunger in his stomach caused him to open his mouth, but the only thing that came out was the shrill cry of a child. This caused him great confusion, as he realized after multiple attempts to open his mouth that the noise was coming from him. This led to the sudden realization that he was now in the body of a baby.
After thinking it through, it started to make some sense. After all, only a baby would have no control over their arms and only a baby would be unable to speak. His body was also much smaller, and he realized it was because of his new body. As soon as he realized this, the crying stopped, and he began to ponder over the meaning behind the changes. His sudden enlightenment of being in a child’s body convinced him that he had reincarnated, like in the web novels he had read before.
It felt like he had waited for years, he cried his lungs out and yet no one came to comfort him. After a few more attempts at crying, he soon realized that no one would come, and the hunger, combined with the overstimulation and overthinking resulted in unconsciousness.
The next thing he felt, as he awoken with a start was the movement of hands under him, and he realized that he was being transferred from one pair of hand to another. After another undetermined amount of time, he finally had some hard stick like object placed in his mouth, and from it he was able to feel some kind of liquid flowing from it. Being hungry, his only response was to start suckling the object as he tried to drink as much of the liquid as possible. After drinking some liquid, but not being full, the object was removed from his mouth and as he opened his eyes, he realized that the object in his mouth was a wooden stick. In the distance, he saw a blurry object covered in blue, but he was not able to fully make out what it was. He deduced that it was probably a person wearing blue. He was struggling to stay awake after the feeding and fell asleep after a few minutes.
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