Rhys ◐’s thoughts are muddled and sluggish. It’s warm and suffocating, unpleasant even. But the sensations barely register at the periphery of his consciousness. Then a sharp coldness all over, and a touch of light reaches through his still closed eyes. A slap on his back, suddenly reminds his body that his lungs are filled with fluid and he instinctively begins to coughing it out, followed by a few wails. Something is placed in his mouth and he instinctively latches on and soon finds his belly filling with another, different liquid. Sound suddenly comes back to him as the fluid built up in his ears finally releases, and he’s vaguely cognizant that there is speaking around him, but he doesn’t recognize it beyond the phonemes common among all unknown languages. That reminds of him of something and a line of thought just barely begins to form. But his belly is filled and he soon drifts off to dreams of flying.
----------------------------------------
A cycle forms. Muddied wakefulness, blindness, consumption, expulsion, sleep. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of times. Rhys can’t count, he can barely think, each line of thought cut off as he goes to sleep again.
But it gets longer and longer each time, and his short term memory soon strengthens enough for him to build off those small prior victories. Until, finally, he can put together the line of thought that has been tickling the back of his mind since his rebirth.
Why do I feel so terrible? Dim and soft. Like I can barely move. And, sleepy… I—I was Rhys the eagle. Grew old, died, reborn.
[Reincarnator].
Didn’t we grab [Early System Access]? That should help. [Status].
…
[Status]
…
[Short Status]
…
Edea, are you having trouble with your Status? I’m wondering if [Early System Access] was faulty somehow. We should consider removing it.
…
Did I catch you during your baby nap?
…
Edea? Wait, why isn’t [Speak with Elves] triggering?... Pantheon-damned, now it’s spilling to every other Trait; no wonder I feel terrible. Oh, wow, I have almost no mana in me. What was I reborn as? INT and WIS deficiency might explain why thinking is so hard this rebirth. And why I have so little mana. Well, let’s take a look. [Skin Sight].
…
Uhh, [Skin Sight].
…
[Mage Hands]
…
[Navitas *M]? [Divine Channel]? [Mr. Clean *M]? [Belly Speech]?
Rhys continued to go through what he can recall, trying to trigger the passive Traits and the active Skills he knows he has. As he continues, the rising panic in him sets his heart racing, and he quickly exhausts himself. After just a few dozen, he falls back asleep into the abyss with but a single conclusion.
None of them worked.
----------------------------------------
Rhys ◐ spends the next handful of waking periods working his way through the hundred or so Traits and Skills he can recall from regular use. No other result occurs, though he is soon distracted by something else.
He can finally open his eyes and see. And he doesn’t recognize his mother.
Well, no. Actually, I can tell from her smell that she is Mom. But, what is she? I saw a lot of weird shit flying all over Ager and… she’s like a [Hedgehog], with a much larger head, and walks—or rather, waddles—like a [Penguin]. And opposable thumbs. Mammalian, clearly, but what are we?
Unsurprisingly, Rhys doesn’t understand the language she speaks to him in. And while Rhys may not be able to trigger [Polyglot I] right now, by damn he knew how to learn a language from scratch, what with the System refusing to allow anyone to buy a language Skill. Still, I should be able to get conversational in a few months, assuming enough exposure to the tongue.
Actually, it was much faster than that. Now that he could see, Rhys could begin to get a sense of time passing, and based on the frequency of his feedings, it couldn’t have been more than a week since his birth. That perhaps wouldn’t have meant much, but two weeks after opening his eyes, Rhys began to crawl. Whatever he was, the Race clearly matured rather quickly. And as he did in body, so he did in mind. With his brain developing, his sluggish thoughts cleared up considerably and he found it much easier to focus on the language, which his plastic memory just soaked up. Within a month of his eye-opening experience, Rhys could follow his parents’ conversations, as long as they kept it simple and slow, though speaking would have to wait a touch longer.
But with the language coming to him, he began his investigation, learning what he could of the who, what, where, when, why and how.
Among other things, he learned he was a female and her name was Otonia ◐. Her sweet mother was Orthia and her father Hipponeus. She appeared not to have any siblings, but given the varying reproductive habits of different sapients, she couldn’t rule that out quite yet. Still didn’t know what their Race was called. The house they lived in appeared small, but of a high quality construction, and Otonia ◐ wouldn’t have been surprised if it was [Mage]-built, or at the very least, a high-level [Builder]-adjacent Class. A few glimpses out the window showed similar houses clustered together, with others of her Race walking about, but little else could be gleaned. Finally, there was sign of magical activity within their home, but it was hard to see and she was baffled how it worked. Or so Otonia’s initial research had revealed.
“I have your nose! I have your nose!”
“Ma ma!”
“Aaii! She called me mama! Who’s your mama?”
“Ma ma!”
Though that didn’t mean she didn’t enjoy herself sometimes.
----------------------------------------
“B is for Barley, which is the yummy grain we like to eat. F is for Fruit, which are all the sweet things like snowberries, currants, and apples. S is for—”
Her mother was using a book of pictures to help her through vocabulary, and get through the rudiments of their alphabetic writing system. Still, it had been a month since she started speaking and the sum total of her total vocabulary was weird.
She’d been through this process almost a dozen times. Yeah, there was some variation, but there were usual some common landmarks that would have already been hit in this process in every language so far. But this? Otonia ◐ felt like she was way past that.
Maybe it was time for some hard questions.
“Mama?”
“Yes, Ota?”
“What about the—the Voice for—Voice of the World?” she fumbled through a literal translation, lacking the proper local term for the System.
“You mean the Virrem?” her mother replied, using a new word that Otonia immediately slotted as System.
“Uh-huh.”
“Who told you about that foul thing?” her mother asked sweetly with an undertone of threat usually invisible to children. “Is your father trying to give you nightmares?”
Foul? Nightmares?! Sorry father. “Yesh, papa.”
“Oh, sweetie,” her mother grasped her in a tight comforting hug. “You don’t have to worry about the System. It has no presence here, not even with bad children. The Guardians make sure it stays far, far away.”
Otonia’s thoughts halted in shock. Her mother’s nonsensical words repeating themselves over and over again in her mind.
She didn’t even notice when she started crying her eyes out in her maternal embrace.
----------------------------------------
Otonia woke a few hours later in her crib, a beautiful piece of wrought wood, with a fine filigree of design, both carved and painted all over it. It was, she supposed, reminiscent of a field of flowers. The ceiling overhead had an abstract mural too. But Otonia only had a thousand-meter stare for her attention.
Her eyes and tear ducts ached, her nose was clogged with snot, and she could feel the casual griminess on her face and chest of her mother having wiped her down, but not bathed her.
No System, she thought. She should have realized it much sooner. Never mind it refusing to respond to her. She should have noticed the non-impact on all the things that the System took care of.
Her mana small, when it should have been gargantuan.
Her mana sluggish, when it should have been whip easy.
The language taking more effort than it should have with [Polyglot] and [Learning].
Slipping as she crawler when [Firm Purchase] should have made that impossible on a mundane house floor.
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.
Sleeping all day when [Less Sleep] should have cut that to minutes.
Feeling hungry or thirsty when [World Eater *F] or [Succulent] kept both mostly away.
Heck, feeling cold when she had walked the Everwinter Flats with [Cold Resistance V] or a stubbed toe with [Pain Resistance V].
It was like… being Amelia again. Small and weak in an uncaring world. Protected by a loving family as your grew, until you could act as a bulwark yourself for the next generation. That was common life for you. She had, thousands of years ago, and through mysterious happenstance, escaped that fate, that cycle of life, in favor of a new one.
Reincarnation.
But now? What had happened? Was it [Early System Access]? Were they simply too powerful? Were they punished by the Pantheon? By the System? Was it some random fluke she had been reincarnated in possibly the only Race not a part of the System? Was she even on Ager anymore?
Yes, [Reincarnator] worked—she was alive after all and remembered her past lives—but what would happen with her next death if the System wasn’t around? Was this her last go around? What happened to your soul anyways after you died?
And what happened to Edea?!?
----------------------------------------
“Hipponeus. I’m worried,” Orthia said as she watched little Ota just sit on the ground with her toys in front of her, untouched, her gaze unfocused into the distance.
“Orty—”
“Don’t you ‘Orty’ me. I don’t know how, and I don’t know why, but this is somehow your fault, Hipponeus.”
“Orthia,” he grumbled. “I. Did not. Tell our child. About the System.”
“But she called it the Voice of the World.”
“Right, and most stories just call it the System. It’s been—what?—two, three millennia since it last called itself the Voice?”
“But not all.”
“I suppose, but I don’t know any stories like that. She must have heard it from elsewhere.”
“But who? She’s too young to play with any children yet. And that one time my sister came by Ota was asleep the whole time, never even got to say hi to her aunt.”
“Could it be related to the soul strength of her and her pair bond?”
“I don’t see how. But you’re right that it’s quite the coincidence.”
“Hmm,” Hipponeus grunted noncommittally, picking at his short claws in a nervous fit. Finally, after several long moments, “I may have spoken to Lyceneus about this.”
“You what?!”
“Hey,” he put his hands up defensively. “He approached me. Apparently Krateros went through something similar two weeks ago and has been in a bad mood ever since then.”
“He asked about the System??” she asked, truly perplexed.
“Not quite. Apparently, he asked what Race we were and was asking about Traits and Skills,” Hipponeus replied, spitting out the words.
“That’s so bizarre. Functionally, the System is a bogey to scare children. Many adults wouldn’t even know those intricacies of how it works.”
“Bizarre indeed. That’s what pushed him to reach out to me. Of course, at the time, Otonia was normal, so I told him it was probably nothing and to stop worrying like a new parent. But now…”
“But now you’re wondering if they really are related somehow,” she concluded and they fell into nervous silence. “Otonia’s a sharp-witted child. She’s starting to walk a bit on her own and she’s learning the language very quickly. Perhaps we should move up the debut to her pair bond.”
“That’s young,” Hipponeus frowned.
“But not unprecedented. And, given the strength of their souls, it seems appropriate.”
Hipponeus rubbed his cheeks in deep thought for a minute. “Fine,” he relented, “I’ll speak with the master of ceremonies and see about rescheduling it. A week?”
“Sooner, if you can. It hurts to see her like this.”
Hipponeus grunted. “I’ll see what I can do.”
----------------------------------------
Otonia ◐ had been in a funk. She knew she was in one—she’d been in one not that many lives ago—but she couldn’t bring herself to get out of it. She ate and she slept as needed, but otherwise she mostly just sat around, moping about things, trying to sort her feelings and thoughts out on the matter.
Finally, one day, her parents appeared freshly groomed, wearing a matching pair of colored scarfs. That was … interesting, in so much as it was the only time she had seen any clothing on… well, whatever her people called themselves.
Shit, should have figured that out by now, she thought as her mother picked her up, quickly grooming her.
Then, to her great surprise, her parents carried her out of the front door of the house for the very first time.
Getting a view of the outside of the house, she could indeed tell that it had, indeed, been magicked together, given the too smooth texture of the materials and their unjointed connections. That would have cost a fortune in any other society she knew of, but as far as she could tell, every house was like that and, on top of that, so was the stone street of all things.
Either I’ve been born into some sort of nobility that values small houses or they must have [Mages]—well, mages—by the hundreds. But, how do they do all this magic without the System? Casting that first [Fireball] when I was Amelia was a huge undertaking! And no one who succeeded in becoming a [Mage] tried to cast System-less magic afterwards.
Looking farther off, Otonia could see that she lived in a town, not too dissimilar from any other the world over. A population of a few thousand, a commercial center, governmental and cultural center. Curiously, she didn’t see a wall around the town, nor an area that looked noticeably wealthier. Looking beyond, she saw huge mountains on all sides of the broader valley that the town was but a small part of. Farms stretched around the town for a fair bit, but most of the valley remained wild. And still no wall, she thought, curiosity starting to pull her out of her depression.
Wherever they were, it felt high altitude. She seemed to be breathing fine, but the sky was a darker blue and spending a lifetime flying had made her particularly sensitive to shifts in its brightness, even in another body.
Well, assuming I’m still on Ager.
Her attention may have been caught on her surroundings, but her parents were being unusually quiet. Or, so she thought. Maybe they just liked silence when they walked? Still, it bothered her enough that “Where are we gone mama?” got out before she knew it.
“Going. Where are we going,” Orthia corrected, a smile sneaking onto her face at her daughter’s already improving mood. “And it’s a surprise, Ota.”
Ota pouted the pout of a child denied what they want, though it could even be called cute. “Surprises are only fun for the plan makers. Not fun for the person surprised.”
“Oh ho,” her father chortled. “She got you there. Perhaps she’ll be a great sage after all,” he said, ignorant of Otonia’s 18 lives of being frustrated at surprises.
“Oh hush,” Orthia replied, slapping her husband on the shoulder. “What would you have said?”
“That it’s a secret.”
“Bah,” Otonia replied, “a lie by omi— by omi— by not saying the whole truth.”
Hipponeus was dumbfounded, but Orthia was all grins. “Great sage indeed, husband. But, it doesn’t matter. We’re here.”
They had stopped in front of a large building, almost thrice as tall and wide as their house, and who knows how deep. It gave off a distinctively governmental vibe, imposing a sense of grandeur on its audience.
Otonia was not impressed. I mean, the ordinary construction was unusual, being mage-built, but this building looked like any other power-expressing great building by a kingdom or would-be empire. There really wasn’t anything past it being mage-built that screamed extravagance or a power symbol.
“Why are we here?” she trilled off as her family ascended the steps before the building.
“Hush. You’ll find soon enough,” her mother cajoled her as they entered the building and came into a large, multi-storied atrium. A pair of staircases ran around the inside edge of the balconies overlooking the open space, and Otonia could see doors and hallways a plenty set back away from the gap. Banners of colored cloth, perhaps a dozen colors, rolled off the balconies and hung off into the atrium. One matched the color of her parents’ scarves. A few dozen people were around, either standing around chatting or on their way to and fro. But, except for one other family, no one else wore the strange colored scarves.
Her family ignored the staircases, heading straight to the back of the atrium on the first floor, passing through an entranceway larger and more ornate than the others. The hallway was long, with even more entranceways and doors on each side. At the end of the hall though was another door, larger and more ornate than anything so far. A shorter… man?—she really needed to figure out how to differentiate the sexes for her new species—was standing outside holding a tall, curved staff.
“Ah good you’re here,” he addressed them. “The others are already inside.”
Then he tapped the door with the staff and they slid open under power. Clearly magic, Otonia thought as her family walked through, but why don’t I sense any mana? Even without the System, I should be at least that sensitive.
At the center of the room was a circle four or five meters across, embedded with a fine filigree of metal. Enchanted? Otonia thought, but again, no mana. The room was clearly divided in two, with complementary colors, imagery, and physical formations on each side. The staffman walked around to the far side of the circle, positioning himself on the dividing line between the two sides, as her family walked to the left side of the room, the right side already taken up by a family of four: mother and father, with color-matching scarves, but different from her parents; an older child standing impatiently; and another toddler like herself, held by her mother.
“Place the children in the circle,” the staffman asked kindly, and Otonia soon found herself, well, placed in the circle, as was the other toddler on the far side. The staffman slipped his staff into a nook in the ground, and the staff began to glow. Otonia tried to reach back to her mother, but found that a perfectly transparent barrier now encompassed the circle. Otonia was completely befuddled by, yet again, the complete lack of mana she could sense from what was clearly magic.
Pantheon-damned in a boat, she cursed to herself.
“We are here now,” the staffman intoned, “for the debut of the pair-bound children born on the 217th day of the year. By their introductions, may such complementary souls empower the Fell, and may such dissonant souls find rebirth in another life.”
Wait, what? What does that even mean? And you can’t just mention rebirth like that!
“Go on,” her mother whispered behind her. “Go introduce yourself,” she said, making motions towards the other child.
Otonia raised an eyebrow at that, a remarkably difficult feat for a toddler like herself. “Okay,” she said, then turned to get a good look at the other toddler.
Only to find her already staring at her. She should have been spooked, disturbed at already being the subject of such attention. But her irises, hazel at a distance, were actually an admixture of gold and brown, layered and entwined with each other. And her pupils—black like any other, but darker than any night sky she’d seen. Or even the abyssal blindness between lives. And though such a figment of overactive imagination should have invoked terror, they instead brought into her a warm, comfort, like a blanket on a cold winter’s day with a partner who—
Otonia began to toddle forward. As she did so, her counterpart saw her movement, and also began to walk forward. They stopped a few arm lengths apart. The other child had a face of bewildered joy, as if she didn’t know what it was that even made her so happy.
Otonia just had a stupid grin.
“Hello,” Otonia began in a normal, if happy, voice. “They call me Otonia,” she said, pronouncing each syllable of her name carefully. But then, an inkling crossed her mind, and she dropped into a whisper: “But there is another who called me Myr ◐.”
The other child’s eyes widened in understanding, the bewilderment fleeing her face and leaving behind only joy. “Hello,” she said, “they call me Krateros,” and then she, in turn whispered, “but there is another who called me Arial of Myr ◮.”
Giggling soon escaped both of their lips. Otonia crashed into Krateros in a full body hug, and the pair fell to the ground laughing maniacally, no more words being shared between them. If either of them had any sense of their surroundings, they would have seen on the faces of their parents fear—when Otonia jumped Krateros—then relief—as the pair were clearly getting along perfectly well—then concern as the adults lept into the circle to separate the two when they were getting along too well. Though even this last bit was followed by general laughter, sighs of relief, and jokes about it being too early for courtship, as Otonia still hadn’t figured out that Krateros was a boy.