Stend’s array

A magic array that envelopes an area where new born children are raised. Its development improved the speed of magical advancement tremendously.

First developed by the elven arrayist Stendinar Falkor in the second millennium. He used it to teach his new born children how to understand speech in less than a month, even before their vocal cords fully developed.

The array itself uses array techniques along with the knowledge of advanced body and memory magic to impart the knowledge of the parent or whoever controls the array into the minds of those inside it. It works best with newborn children because their mental capabilities aren’t fully developed yet and their mental defenses are almost nonexistent. Which allows for smooth information transference.

Through the passage of time, malicious versions of the array have cropped up. Allowing people to turn children into killing machines and slaves. To this day, regulating the array’s use has been difficult.

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“Why is this happening?” A thought rang in his head. He thought it was over when the world went blank. But this… this wasn’t possible.

The darkness only lasted for the briefest of moments. After that, his eyes shot open and his senses started to come back to him, bit by bit. However, his body wasn’t the same. It was full of yellow feathers, instead of a mouth there was a beak, instead of arms there were wings and his legs were pitifully skinny.

He was on a small nest on a tree branch with a bunch of other birds but his mind had yet to process his current predicament. All he could think about was how he was where he was and what happened for him to be here. Confusion filled his mind, disabling him from checking his surroundings carefully.

“I should definitely be dead right now” he thought.

Not much time passed before he felt very tired and went straight to sleep. When he woke up again he saw a giant bird come towards him, opening his beak forcefully and spilling food into his throat. He tried to struggle but it was all in vain, for he realized that the bird wasn’t that big, it was just that he was very small and weak. Therefore, his resistance went unnoticed by the big bird.

Unknowingly, the hunger he didn’t realize he was feeling started to dissipate, replaced by a feeling of satisfaction. After the bird finished feeding him, his body relaxed. He lied down on the nest, allowing himself to sleep soundly. The bird fed the other chicks in the same fashion. This process continued for many days.

Finally, one day after feeding as usual, he didn’t go to sleep right away and instead was able to move around a bit, albeit a little awkwardly. After all, his body wasn’t the same and it belonged to a small weak chick.

He had accepted his state after a few days and decided to not ponder over it for the time being. He wasn’t going to mull over what he couldn’t control. Instead, he grew very curious about his new body. He wondered why he was able to control it so easily when he was just a human a short time ago. Birds and humans were fundamentally different, just because he knew how to move as a human added nothing to his ability to move as a bird.

It was like the difference between writing English and Chinese, both of those writing systems had nothing to do with each other aside from the fact that they were both used for communicating our thoughts. However, their rules and fundamental structure were different. Someone who could write English would still have to learn how to write Chinese from scratch and vise-versa. It was the same for moving, just because he knew how to move as a human he shouldn’t have been able to move as a bird at all.

Yet, surprisingly, he could move quiet naturally for a bird of his age. His muscles weren’t yet firm, which was the reason for his awkward movement. Aside from that, he felt completely normal, as if he was always a small young bird.

Even his vision which was different from a human’s didn’t affect his movement at all. Surprisingly, he could see in color like a normal human. Although, it still took him a few days to get used to his new view of the world.

Now that he was able to move about, the lightness of his body made him have a strange feeling of happiness. It was as if he could float in the air without doing anything at all.

“I never thought that after all these years, my dream would come true in this way” he thought merrily to himself. After all, his biggest dream in his previous life was to fly.

While he was busying himself with examining his new body, the mother bird was feeding the other chicks and leaving them to sleep. She would move to each one individually, push her beak down their throats to feed them and then moves on to the next one. When she was done and all the other chicks were sleeping, she put her body in the middle of them to give them warmth while they slept soundly.

Only now did she notice the one small chick that was still moving about. She looked at him strangely for a brief moment, before the faintest feeling of a smile could be felt from her expression. When he looked at her, he knew what she was feeling almost instinctively. It was one of the most honest and purest of feelings he had ever seen.

Without realizing it, his legs led him to her side. He didn’t know if this was his body’s instinct or his own desire that brought him to her side. He lied there with his other siblings and slept a most peaceful sleep.

When he woke up, his mother wasn’t back yet. Taking a look at his siblings, he realized there were four of them in total.

“They’re sleeping so soundly” he thought to himself.

Since he had nothing to do, he started getting a feel for his wings by moving them about. This boring activity didn’t last, before his mother came along to feed them. However, after he was done, he was still full of unspent energy. He decided to try and communicate with his mother, to try and see if he was truly a bird in body and mind.

Looking at her, he started chirping while having the thought of saying “mother” in mind. To which a reply came from his mother in the form of another chirp.

“Hello, little one!” Suddenly, the sound of a thought rang in his mind. But, that thought somehow wasn’t his own. It even sounded like a woman’s voice.

“Is this my bird mind interpreting her chirps? But this feels… different, somehow. It shouldn’t be like this” His judgment told him that this wasn’t natural but he couldn’t exactly figure out the reason.

“Moreover, how can she understand what I’m saying in the first place?” Confusion clouded his mind.

“You are a quick learner, child” He heard another thought ring in his mind. Looking over at his mother, he realized that the thought was from her. Appreciation was apparent on her face.

He was stunned hearing her “speak” such sophisticated and complex words but he didn’t know how to react for a while. He didn’t know whether this was “normal” or not. After all, he was also a bird now, so he expected to at least be able to understand the mother bird’s behavior and ways of communication eventually. But for her to speak so casually, was not expected.

“How come she isn’t surprised that I know what the word mother means?” He asked himself inquisitively.

“You should be tired, child” The mother told him warmly “Come and sleep”.

“Um… I’m not tired yet” He spoke to her using the same method as before, by using his intentions to voice his thoughts while chirping.

The mother was surprised to know that he wasn’t tired but that was only for a moment.

“Strong in body and mind” she exclaimed “you are gifted, young one”.

His understanding of the situation was waning more and more. How could this bird know such vocabulary, why did it seem like she took his understanding of her words for granted, even though he was still only a few weeks old, and how could an animal speak using something similar to telepathy?

“This is getting very weird” He thought.

“T-Thank you” he told her.

“Let me show you a little game I used to play when I was young. The way you play it, is by focusing on your body and moving the mana in your body around to specific points…” She started describing her little game to him.

As the man listened on, he wanted to ask her what she meant by ‘mana’ but by the time this thought surfaced in his mind he actually started to recall a description of the word in his mind. Mana was the energy that all life had and controlled, either on an instinctual level or a conscious level. Like moving an arm or a leg, one could also move mana. It had a base in the body of every living organism. Like an organ but not quite like a physical organ.

Mana also existed in the atmosphere like air but the one in the air had different properties unlike the ones in living organisms.

Each form of mana had its own uses and properties. The one his mother was talking about was the one in his own body.

Astonishment filled his mind instantly. “How do I know all this?” he thought. He couldn’t comprehend what was happening to him at this moment. He was certain that he had no memory of learning such things, so how come it came so naturally to his mind?

“Wherever I point, try to channel your mana like a stream to that point on your body. Are you ready?” Without realizing it, his mother had finished her explanation and was prompting him to start the game.

“Hmm!?” waking up from his stupor, he realized his mother was already pointing at his beak.

“Go on, then. Start!” she said enthusiastically.

Stopping his train of thought, he started to follow her instructions and felt for his mana. The feeling of the mana came naturally to him. Therefore, he knew when he found it. He started to direct it with his will to his beak like his mother said. For a while, the mana wouldn’t move exactly where he wanted. But in a short time, he got the hang of it.

Very slowly, he moved the mana to his beak. By the time he was half way there, his mother pointed at a different point on his body.

“Keep up, child!” His mother could see his progress in front of her and decided to challenge him more. A sense of pride and happiness grew inside of her the more she saw him overcome his small struggles to meet her demands.

After a few minutes, he finally grew tired “I can’t keep up anymore” he told her

She chuckled a little and told him “You did very well for your first time, child” She pointed to a spot near his resting siblings “Come and sleep. Tomorrow, I might take you with me flying a little” she added.

Tiredness overwhelmed his small body, making him unable to think about today’s events fully, as he made his way over to her side in small steps. He slept soundly along with his siblings in their mother’s embrace, covered by the shade of the tree leaves above them. Nothing could indicate that this was an unordinary bird nest from this view.