Dammit, Mom! “Welcome back to wakefulness son, just a couple of things!”

First off, it had been a thousand years since I went to sleep, so I was suddenly struck by the fact that the odds of my Mother or anyone of her acquaintances I had met over the past few years (actually a lot more than a few) still being around was… well, magic is a thing, so it's not impossible, but the odds are… low. I went ahead and put the thought of my being a child alone in a time I knew nothing about in a big ol’ compartmentalization box and put it on a shelf for when I was ready and able to deal with it. At the moment I was too busy panicking.

Panicking about what, exactly? That second thing - namely, Mom had locked me into this cavern-lab-place deep in the bowels of the earth behind some hefty wards, which had been feeding off this pool of concentrated mana for a THOUSAND YEARS HOW THE HECK WAS I SUPPOSED TO-

Deep breaths. Everything was fine. Well, not fine, but fixable. Maybe. I just needed to stay calm and assess the situation. There was no chance of just waiting for the wards to wear out, so I would have to unravel the wards to leave. Which was a problem because… I had no idea how to do that. Mom had written that this whole procedure - really, every procedure since birth - was supposed to unlock my access to my magic, but I didn’t know what to do with any magic I might have! Well, aside from being able to see magic I didn't understand, and all of these glowing lines on my body… they were even more pronounced than before, so those were two things I could sort-of do, but really they were two more things I needed to figure out.

Apparently there was food, but I would likely have to ration it and be careful, since I didn't know if once one of those stasis boxes was opened, the countdown would begin. I did not have infinite time to figure out my situation, unless I found another food source or somehow stopped needing to eat altogether, which… did not seem likely, but again, magic remained a thing, so who knew? It wouldn't prevent me from going mad from isolation, though, so getting out at some point was still critical.

There was so much more to unpack from Mom’s letter. Apparently Atlantis was a thing, and we were from there. But apparently Atlantis also kinda sucked, since we fled because I didn't have magic? So maybe they were magic supremacists or something. Hopefully some of the texts Mom had left would have more information about that as well, and not just whatever theory I'd need to unlock these wards.

The more I pondered things, the more I wondered how clearly Mom was thinking at the end - sure, I could read, but only at a rudimentary level. I was, or had been, three for crying out loud! The fact that I could speak in full sentences and count to 10 was already impressive! I could only desperately pray that there was something like a dictionary in what she left, because this was going to be… challenging. I was essentially a three year old in a preteen body. I mean, sure, I had an entire other lifetime’s memories to fall back on, but how much of that was going to be useful remained to be seen. I certainly didn't have any experience unraveling wards or analyzing magic or surviving in caves or ancient Atlantean civilization or whatever. I realized that she likely felt that she had no other options, but… this would be a lot for a regular kid to handle.

I sighed and packed all of that up into another incredibly healthy compartmentalization box and put it on the to-deal-with-later shelf. It seemed like all I could do for the moment was take stock of my situation, so that's what I began to do. I went through all of the chambers inside the - heck it's a lair, my magical Mom had herself a secret underground lair, okay! There was a library with a long table in the middle along with walls lined with shelves of slates, scrolls and crystals that were, based on context, probably also somehow books? There was also a kitchen and pantry with food in what I presumed were stasis boxes from the way they were glowing to my magic sight. On top of that, the kitchen was staffed with these wispy constructs that my mother seemed to prefer from what my memories were telling me. I had recollections of a similar spell from a tabletop game I had played in my first life, which was neat. They were convenient and I would certainly have to see how long they would last - hopefully they were powered like the wards were.

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I also found what looked like a training hall or gymnasium, with training equipment littered around the room. I initially mistook the few figures lining the walls for training dummies, but as they seemed to follow me with their heads as I walked around the room and also glowed to my magic-vision, I concluded that they were more like training golems than anything. No weapons, though, so that could be a problem. I wonder if Mom was a magic purist?

Finally, there were the expected bedroom and bathing facilities. I noticed that there were two bedrooms here, with one of them clearly having been designed with me in mind. It seemed that my mother had planned on us living here for a while after the procedure, probably to make sure I was trained up to whatever standard Atlantean society held. I wondered how she thought our lives would have gone after I awoke, what we would have done. I guess I would never know.

Still, I would certainly be taking care of the training aspect, at least.

Now that I had a better understanding of my residence, it was time to return to that vague connection I could feel since I woke up. Between the new details in my magic vision, the almost tingling sense of what I could only assume was my magic coming from my body, and this new sense that seemed to be going both out somewhere into the ether and also deep within somehow, there was a lot to focus on. That meant that I would be spending some time doing something I was familiar with though not necessarily a fan of in my first life. Something that I felt would soon become a rather constant presence in my new life.

Meditation. Lots and lots of meditation.

I walked back to the mana pool room and sat down next to it. The ephemeral sounds of the mana rushing and coursing through the air was rather fitting background noise for what I was attempting to do. I got to work.

Initially, I couldn't focus for more than a few minutes at a time, and eventually got up to open up the first of the stasis boxes and have a meal. The unseen servants quickly took over the actual preparation, and I left them to it, but I did thank them as I finished and returned to the pool for another session. Regardless of whether they were conscious enough to understand and appreciate it or not, I was going to be polite!

I didn't succeed at any kind of deeper connection after a few more hours of meditation, so I gave up and decided that I would try again the next day. Before I decided to have dinner, however, I decided to take another look at the library. It was possible, even likely, that there was more information in there that could help me with my current situation. Eventually I did find a few works on meditation, both on specific types - meditating on your magical energy, on your life energy, or the mind - but also meditation on your “core” and “the voice of the ancestors”. I tried to take the material on the last two with me, but as soon as I crossed the threshold, the scrolls disappeared from my hands. When I turned I found them sitting on the shelf once more.

Apparently my mother was a stickler for the rules, one of them being “don't take books out of the library”.

Well played, Mom.