3 Year Later

In a burrow that was shrouded in grass a little mouse ran out and squeaked. Its little snout sniffed the air like it was afraid of something, looking for dangers and food at the same time and then the snout caught onto something. It went back onto all fours and began to follow wherever the nose led, like a fish caught by a fisherman and being pulled by an invisible string. It was being pulled slowly and slowly, its snout danced with this invisible line, a tango at the precipice of life and death. It was a fight amongst wills, a silent fight that no one in the forest knew about.

This food smelled too good, but his snout forced him to approach it. “Just for a mere bit of curiosity” his hunger told him, “It could be a trap” his brain convinced him otherwise, but hunger ate at one’s sanity when there’s nothing else to eat and it succumbed to the force. Slowly and surely, it came closer, and closer, closing his eyes and following his nose his paws felt the transition from grass to rocks. He ignored it all and kept going further in, the smell was right in front of him, and then pain struck. A horrid pain struck, like a sharp fishing line was strung across his neck. He opened his eyes, looked up and saw a little girl twirling her finger in the air and the mouse’s breathing got shorter and shorter. In her other hand was a little bit of cheese, that delicious cheese that smelled like a rose, coveted to smell but dangerous to touch, and she too looked like a rose. Beautiful but dangerous if you get too close.

I guess this is my goodbye. I died as I lived, honouring the delicacy of good food. I closed my eyes, prepared to give out my final breath before.

Humpfff. I breathed in a deep breath, a very very deep breath. I started squeaking once again and saw that the little cheese was in front of me, I bit it, ravenous for food and ran away, away from the thorned rose, away from the estate of danger.

~

“Eos! Look! Eos! I can use my magic to catch the mouse”

An emphreal picture of an ashen ruler stood above me. He wore a regal gaze like that of a grandfather to a child, a proud gaze covered his face.

“Congrats, Azalea on learning to manipulate string”

A wide smile beamed over my young face. My name’s Azalea now, my Mom gave me that new name.

Azalea Evgrist Slyviesta. That’s my full name now! It’s been over a year and I still can’t believe that I’m in this new world. I’ve been having a blast here. Although there isn’t a type of magic that I would’ve wanted, there was actually something a bit better.

We didn’t cast spells like peasants, no that takes way too much time and resources. Imagine casting a spell in the middle of a battlefield, it’s like you’re waiting to get shot. Nah, nah we had something better. Remember that second heart I found out a while ago?

That’s basically what you would call a dragon heart in light novels. It pumps mana so that the dragon can do all big and bad things but the race I was born into was different from your usual dragons but this wasn’t the heart of a dragon.

“Eos! Can you help explain to me what does my second heart do”

Eos looked at me with a peaceful gaze. He stopped reading his book and looked at me. He usually was reading a book at this time when nothing special was going on.

“I thought I told you already. Your second heart is a conversion mechanism. It takes what your body consumes and converts it to basic energy. We’ve decided to call it Energy type: Null. Null type energy can be used to alter and coerce your surroundings according to your will, but from my observations type Null energy can be altered to a specific kind of energy as you grow up. The more you work on ripping apart the molecular structure through isometric sequencing the more efficient your heart is to convert the necessary energy. If that’s too long simply imagine it like an engine that consumes everything you put in and pours out gas instead. But it’s inefficient right now, and that gas is barely usable so I recommend you to train it if you want to go back to your world.”

I touched my beating heart.

Dum dum. Dum dum. Dum dum. Its rhythmic beating calms me down.

“I don’t think I want to stay on Earth though Uncle Eos”

Eos paused from his book, and put it down. A kind of perplexed expression written across his face.

“Why’s that?” he pondered hoping to understand.

“Well, Earth is quite boring. I’ve always found more joy when I get lost in mystical fantasies and worlds like this one than living properly. It’s just I would rather be here with you than live a boring life waiting for the weekends after weekends until I eventually die full of regrets. You feel me Eos?”

Eos went into his thinking mode. That’s when he’s silent, and he looks exactly like a statue. You don’t disturb him in these modes or else he gets angry that you killed his train of thought. His mouth parted slowly,

“It sounds like you prefer a life of adventure than a mediocre and boring life”

I smiled ear to ear. Grandpa Eos always understands! But don’t tell him I call him Grandpa in my head. “I’m so glad you get it!”

He smiled a jovial smile, reminiscing like a grandpa. He clearly has the aura of a grandpa but he still declares himself as young as an Uncle. “Of course I understand the joy of adventure, it’s a joy unparalleled to boring desk work”

I smiled, playing and twirling the string with my second heart. “You betcha!”. I played with the string so that it forms one of Eos’ spaceships he used to talk about. He claims that he used to own a moving planet that used the sun to power his ship at the frontiers of space. I looked at the sun in the sky, and doubts began to fester in my head.

Yeah sure, I told myself. I’ll believe it when I see it myself.

“What about your own planet Uncle Eos?”

He let out a mellow guffaw and then said, “Which planet” with this arrogant smirk on his face. I really wished he wasn’t so ephemeral so I can punch that smirk off his face.

“The one you miss the most” I told him.

His face changed to one of nostalgia for a moment, but then he went back to his relaxed exuberance. “Ronin” A single word uttered from his lips, “That was the planet I wanted to retire on, for the next generation to carry on my legacy, but I couldn’t retire. Life felt so dull retiring. Years passed by like a blur and I felt like I was already dead, doing nothing; that’s when I decided to go out on my own terms, for my final voyage to be either a success or a failure. I hoped to die as I lived, pushing the boundaries of what’s known.”

I looked at him, confused. Something didn’t add up, “What about your family?”

He didn’t have that look of sadness that I expected. “Our minds need novelty to continue to do something. Some do not have the privilege I do, to traverse worlds challenging the word, ‘impossible’” He looked like he was remembering his fallen comrades. It was a complicated emotion, ‘glad to have been here with you, sad that you’re gone’ seemed to encompass his feelings.

“So...they’re not here anymore?”

He changed his emotions once again to a coy smile, “Being immortal is watching everyone around you die. At least that’s what it feels like, so don’t feel sorry for me’

I grimace, Eos went back into his depressive modes again where he drinks wine and starts spouting weird lines. There’s a simple spell to break this depressive mode! It’s to completely change the topic!! Behold! My mastery of changing topics!

“Eos!” I cried out, “I think Mom’s coming back!”

Eos looked at the sun to determine the time. Not sure why though, there were 2 suns rarely giving us the luxury of the comfort of ‘night’. This place was constantly bright. It was only bright, and not very bright. The darkness of night never existed in this place, the moons are funny placeholders in the sky and never a source of light.

Actually, they’re quite depressing to look at now that I considered it. Every once in a while you can see a blue trail of smoke that launches from the atmosphere to the moons, and then another trail coming back down. These are spaceships that are transferring goods from the moon back to this planet.

How the heck is this planet so technologically advanced?! I thought I could be like a certain isekai protagonist that introduced technology and then become an emperor god king, but this civilization is so ahead they’ve already commercialized space travel. How am I supposed to use Earth knowledge if Earth was behind? Unless there are certain ways to integrate both systems of magic together. Maybe I can create a nuclear fusion cannon if I can split atoms using Type Null Energy, but I’m not a radiation researcher, I have no idea what are the limitations of this world.

Apparently this isn’t a world that Eos is from either, the laws of physics are different here, and to my knowledge it isn’t a part of my world either because this magic-esque thing doesn’t seem to categorize into any of the elements that I know. I still wonder where we are, but all I can know is that we’re home!