"I will live on!" were the final words I spoke before my vision disappeared and there was nothing, not even the color black. Then suddenly, I woke up and found my surroundings were strange, to say the least. Numbers 1-180 were colorful and laid out in a pattern across the walls, obviously being some sort of unfamiliar magic I was not accustomed to. There was an area in a room around maybe thirty feet away with shapes that were also colorful. Gods' black hands! I could see again clearly as if I were in my youth again! I must not have kept my dialogue to myself because a giant of a woman came up to me.
"Jimmy? Is everything okay? Do you need to use the little boy's room?" Who the hell does this beast think I am? I am no Jimmy; I am the great Edward, capable of bringing the dead back to life. I am the one who makes the holiest of priests turn from their god and get on their knees to kiss the floor I stand on. I am he who commands the shadows, the dead, and everything else that is dark. No one calls me by another's name and gets away with it. I reached for my magic. Oh, there would be a great—
"What in the seven hells! It's gone!!!!" I said in a squeaky voice, not recognizing it to be my own.
"Jimmy!" the startled giant said. "Language!"
"Where did my power go, wench! Tell me and your death will be quick and painless!"
The giant did not seem to be in fear of my unusually squeaky voice and instead the look of surprise, shock, anger, confusion, and many more shades of emotions went on her face and she was silent for a long moment. She stared at me for an uncomfortable amount of time and picked me up as if I was an infant and carried me off to who knows where. I kicked and thrashed and then I went limp when I realized my hands—they no longer were darkened by age, they were tiny and no longer bore the many scars from years of battle—and I realized that I was a child once more. I was set down in an area with a fence of some sort that was not made of crude metal but instead was vibrant in color and seemed to be made with a material I had no knowledge of. This was not good, I thought. I needed to get my books and see if I could figure my situation out.
"Jimmy? Where did you learn that naughty language?"
I quickly reacted, knowing that she was oblivious to the fact that I was the great wizard that brought down empires. I had to blend in with the sheep—be a wolf in sheep's clothing, if you will.
"Ms., I'm sorry I said such harsh atrocities to you. I give my deepest apologies." I bowed my head, sickened to think I was groveling to this inferior—
"Jimmy, you're pronouncing your English so well! When did you learn all those big words?" she said in an excitable voice mixed with praise. "I'm so proud of you, big man."
Proud? No one has ever been proud of me. A warm, partially sickening, partially unknown feeling went through my body, making me feel something I'd never felt before.
"May I borrow one of your books from your library, Ms.? It doesn't have to be about sorcery; it can be about the land or maybe—"
She handed me a thin book, still too big for my tiny hands, and it had drawings of animals from the forests that looked too friendly to be real and had the common man's tongue written on it.
"All the Forest's Creatures with You and I"
I read out loud, confused by the riddle. Apparently, I spoke out loud again because this excited what I am beginning to suspect was an adult woman and brought more praise out from her mouth, making me want to vomit mixed with that weird sensation again. Why was I a child again?
At the end of the day, I learned a lot about my new environment. The adult woman that lectured me on what was known as bad words was called Ms. Hoffman. I also learned that apparently I have parents once more, which surprised me considering my father had been dead for almost fifty years and no amount of necromancy could bring back a guy that had his soul ripped apart by a never-ending void. A loud, fast clanging noise which was dubbed the school bell immediately made all the other children react by forming a line at the door. So, they did have magic after all, and it seemed to be one of the darker forms meant for manipulating the weaker minds in doing things for another's gain. I pondered what the reasoning could be to make children line up and then it clicked: they must be preparing for war by training their susceptible minds at an early age.
Someone tapped me on the shoulder, interrupting my thought process. I whirled around to find it was the teacher looking down, smiling at me. It was weird; she didn't smile in a condescending way—it seemed almost genuine.
"Jimmy? Are you going to line up with the rest of your classmates for recess?"
I didn't want her to know that the spell she had put on the rest wasn't working on me. The last thing I needed was to battle another's mental power while my magic was basically non-existent.
"Ummm, yes, I will join my classmates in your recess."
I stood in line, nervous, knowing I did not know how their drills worked. I didn't even have enough magic left to do a simple veil to keep me hidden. My heart pounded and I followed in the back of the line, watching as another adult led us to my possible demise.
Okay, so I was expecting some sword mastery drills or hand-to-hand combat or maybe even some team exercises in taking down enemy camps with non-magical combat techniques. Instead, I was led outside where all the children burst into laughter and screaming and ran as fast as they could to objects that I did not have the foggiest clue on what they were.
"Jimmy? Aren't you going to play with your friends?"
I looked around and saw several enormous castle-like structures in the distance, all looking similar in color.
"Mavra, Jackeal, or one of my many other foes must rule now."
"Oooo, are those your arch nemeses, Jimmy?"
The teacher asked, kneeling down with a grin and a twinkle in her eye. She must be one of my enemies' top recruiters or maybe even one of their top soldiers, although I could not sense any magic pulsing from her body. It was possible she had trained herself in the perfection of hiding her powers; if that was the case, I was up against a truly worthy adversary.
After adjusting to the scenery outdoors and going back inside to cut out shapes and glue them to outlines and labeling them, my body felt strange. It took me a few moments to place what this feeling was and I realized it was tiredness from the apparent long day my body had endured. I hadn't had to go to sleep in twenty, maybe thirty years. There's a certain point in a wizard's life that we no longer need to sleep. It feels annoying to have to go to sleep again; in a way, sleep was its own sort of spell that nature put on the weak. I closed my eyes and laid my head on my desk, passing out, letting my body recover. I was awoken by one of my classmates saying something along the lines of it not being nap time yet and I shook the child's hand away from my shoulder and sleepily told him or her to leave me be. This apparently didn't work and encouraged the little brat to double down on its annoying tactics, calling me childish names and getting my blood boiling.
"Would you kindly fuck off, you little shit?"
Silence went through the room; all eyes were on me or in my general direction.
"He said a potty word," a little boy uttered to his classmates.
I was about to say something quick-witted when my hand was grabbed by a much bigger hand and I was firmly yanked out of my seat and led by Ms. Hoffman to the colorful gate again and put in it. When she spoke, she had a seriousness to her voice that was probably supposed to frighten me.
"I'm calling your father this instant, young man, and we will be talking about your use of bad words."
My heart dropped down to the pit of my stomach. My father, when I was young, was not someone to take lightly when he was angered. The last time I angered my father, I received a beating and whipping that I would never forget. I didn't want to be put back in the dungeon. Tears welled up in my eyes and I began to sob, knowing I was going to get punished severely.
After Ms. Hoffman called my father in the most bizarre way with no circle, blood, or candles, my father showed up and walked into the room. He was not my father. My father was thin and frail, short with little hair and was pale white like a living corpse that had been recently resurrected. This man was the total opposite. He was chubby, with a thick black beard, and he towered over Ms. Hoffman like a mountain would to even the tallest of trees. His presence had no darkness and even standing here now, knowing very well that this man could end me if he wished, I knew he wouldn't by the energy he was giving off.
"Son, come over here please." Please? When was the last time I heard the word please in a sentence that was not someone begging for their lives?
I walked over to the giant man, feeling relief that I would not be dying today, and I looked up at the man's face. I was met with a disappointed look like someone looking at a dumb dog that had shit on their favorite rug. His enormous hand engulfed mine and I could feel the roughness of his hand like they belonged to a carpenter or a blacksmith and not the hands of a wizard. He said something to Ms. Hoffman about how he was going to take me home early and the rest of the conversation was lost to me while I let the questions in my mind swirl around endlessly.
The man took me away from the place that Ms. Hoffman was stationed at and my jaw dropped when I saw the thing he was taking me to. The closest thing I could think of that even partially resembled the thing in front of me was a carriage, except this had no horse and it was shiny like a silver coin in the light and it was just so magnificent.
"What is this?" I asked, pointing to the horseless carriage. The man claiming to be my father looked down at me with a confused expression.
"What, this?" He touched the carriage with his index finger. "It's our car." He said, looking at me as if he just found out I had fucked the neighbor's goat. "I thought I already taught you what this was?"
"Uh, yeah, I'm sorry. I must have just forgotten what it was called."
He stared at me some more.
"Son, are you feeling alright?"
"Yes, Father, I feel just fine."
Hearing a bizarre sound, I looked up at the sky and saw a bird-like structure flying higher than the highest mountains, streaming something white like smoke behind it. One thing was clear now, now more than ever: I was no longer in my home world. I was either put under a spell and my mind was now drifting in this bizarre world of wonders or the other scenario that I had died in my previous life and one of the many gods had reincarnated me into this world. One thing was for sure: dream world or reincarnated life, it did not matter. The only goal I had was getting back to my world and killing my enemies once and for all.
I've fought high priests that had the wrath of their god behind them. I've fought rogue warlocks that made the very air crackle and pop with electricity from their sheer willpower and I once even tamed the great four-headed hydra that devoured entire villages near the ocean in a night. All of that in mind and I still had my heart leap into my throat when I went from waiting for the horses to arrive to moving faster than I have ever gone in my life. Fucking teleportation for the first time is less frightening than being in this beast. It took all my willpower not to scream. No, you know what? Scratch that. I don't think I could have screamed even if I wanted to, but hey, I learned something fancy and new. I found out that seatbelts are required because it is the law. Gods must have sent me to one of the seven hells because I hated this with all my black heart.
We finally got to our destination and I got out of the car with a nervous tick that made my eye look like I was trying to wink at whatever was in front of me. My trauma from the ride soon melted from my mind when I looked at the enormous castle that stood in front of my very feet. Gods, I thought to myself, my family must be as important and rich as my last family. My new dad held my hand and walked to the entrance of the castle and I was disappointed by the small size of the door. Then I realized that maybe this world had no need for enormous doors like I was used to. We made our way up the creaky old stairs, and I saw dozens of wooden doors, each with a number on them. We got to a door that had the number 017.
My excitement went out the door and I felt less sure that this was a castle and had suspicions that we were instead in an inn. The door opened and the room turned out to be more cramped than I previously feared.
"Oh my god, I'm in a commoner's family," I whispered to myself, not caring if anyone heard me. I wallowed in self-pity before I was interrupted by a pleasant feminine voice calling out my new name from a not-so-distant part of the room. A woman no older than her early 30s came into view with the most beautiful shade of red hair that I had ever seen, with a black dress, rosy pink blush on her cheeks, and smelled like she just got done baking a custard of some kind. Maybe apple flavor?
"There's my little man!" she said in that pleasant tone again and swept me up like a doll off the floor and kissed me all over my face and proclaimed me to be so sweet that she could eat me up. I didn't know how to feel about that but sensing she had no ill will towards me, I chalked it up to be a metaphor that I was not accustomed to. She put me back down gently on the floor and embraced and gave my new father a powerful, seductive kiss that seemed to put the poor man into a trance.
Lucky bastard got a hotter wife than I could have ever dreamed of, but on the bright side, she seemed like the type of mother that I'd dreamed of when I was a young boy starving in the fields of Tarahost. If I had to live in a commoner family until I made my way back to my world, then this was not such a bad start to my temporary new life.