Letter from Oblivion

My name is Reiland, and I am a magician. Magic is a word that may not be familiar to you, depending on the Universe, Time and Place you are currently reading this in. I do not even know if someone is ever gonna find and read this, but judging from that you, dear Reader, are doing so at this very moment, I guess it was found.

I also highly doubt that you, who is reading this, would normally be familiar with both my language and my alphabetic characters. I attached a magic translation device at the end for this reason. The fact that you read and comprehend this sentence is proof enough that it worked (which was only to be expected) and that you were able to figure out how to use it. Congratulations!

You may want to know why I went through the ordeal of and wrote a Book in this rather uncommon way. As of the moment I am writing this, I am stuck in a dark, vast space.

As to why I am stuck here, the short answer is that it was my fault for not being cautious enough. The long answer, however, is that with my immense Genius, my inability to understand Human emotions and the inability to reflect on my deeds I made a lot of powerful enemies.

It is unlikely that I will be able to escape this space in my lifetime. Do not worry though, Reader, I am not asking you to do anything to help me. There is nothing you could do anyway. The sole reason why I am writing this is because I do not want my story to be forgotten. Also, I do not really have anything else to do, and I am unbelievably bored. Because of that, I will write down the story of my life. Even though it may not be a very long one, a lot of interesting, sad and happy, cruel and good things happened along the way.

I may as well introduce myself properly this time. My name is Reiland Mutazio, even though the second name is not given by birth, but acquired with a lot of effort. When I still inhabited the World I was born in, I was a revolutionary, yet despised researcher in the magic arts, a magician.

A magician, is a person who uses magic energy to achieve changes in the world. Magic energy is an energy form innate to our planet, and for itself, it normally does not interact with matter. Due to its nature however, it is highly capable of changing into other energy forms, and can be inspired to do so by intelligent creatures at will. My research on this nature brought the world I lived in great understanding of it, and as a result the arts of magic manipulation evolved rapidly.

But, it is very possible that in your world, reader, magic does not exist. In the dark space, known as Oblivion, it does not. This makes using it exceedingly difficult. Still, I am able to do it with limitations, and this is one of the reasons why my research was considered so great yet so heretical.

The fact that I am so limited turns sending this letter through time, space and universe into an even trickier thing than it would normally be.

As of now, it is safe to say that I am a magician. However, I was not born one, because nobody is. The aptitude to learn magic is innate, however. There are people who have access to all magic energy there is in the world, and all of them are selfish idiots. I had to work hard for my success, even if my great intellect gave me quite the advantage, and I did it.

This is the story I am going to tell you.

7 years, Home. Dinner

“Rei, come back home soon!” I hear a voice calling me. I sigh, wipe my knife clean of blood and put it back into the sheath. A frog lies before me, gutted. A pastime of mine is cutting open animals I caught and try to understand how they work. This knife is allowing me to do so, and I am very fond of it. I got it last spring, it was a present from my father. He told me that he bought it, but I think he just found it on the street when the snow melted down. It is obvious that he does not have the money to buy a knife like that.

Still, I am grateful. I stash the frog and its innards in a small cloth pouch hanging from my waist, and return to our shed. My family is poor, and a dirty shed is all we can afford. Its roof is old, and got patched a lot of times. The door creaks, and my mother smiles at me. It was a smile unique to her, nobody else looks at me like this. The most people think I am weird, a psychopath or something. They do not understand why I do what I do, their scientific spirit is lacking. On a small stove, an even smaller pot made out of cheap metal is being filled with water, some mushrooms and herbs.

“Stew again, I see. Can you make use of that?” I open my pouch, and get the frog out.

“What did you do to that frog?” my mother asked, probably curious how it got into this condition.

“I cut the front open, to see how it works. There were some pulsing things, but that stopped rather soon. It also was a bit hard to see, as there was a lot of blood. My theory is that the pulsing of those innards have something to to with the frogs vital functions.” I state my results dryly, but my mothers smile seems to twist a bit.

“Ah, sorry I asked, Rei. You know, please spare me the details. Anyway, I actually will be able to put that frog into my stew. Thanks for catching it, Rei. You did well.” I do not really understand the fuzz that she makes about my experiments with animals. We are going to eat them anyway, and the meat quality does not suffer if you inspect the organs first, does it?

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I also make other kind of experiments. In the last months, I tried to figure out what exactly warmth is, and where it comes from. I was at least moderately successful, if I may say so. Before that, I made a lot of research regarding why things move as they do. Why do things fall down if you let them lose? How comes that stones can destroy things if you throw them at something, but not if you touch something with them? Every time I asked my parents about those things, the answers they gave me were all but satisfying.

“What are you going to put in this stew?”, I asked, half out of curiosity, half to get my mother to stop making that twisted look.

“Oh, some forest mushrooms, and some herbs to give it some taste. Water from the well, of course. In addition the meat you just brought in.“ We have stew quite often. We got the privilege of unlimited water access due to the well that is in the middle of our village. It is not poisoned, there are no feces in it, and you can even drink from it without treating it first. The villages only guard makes absolutely sure that it stays this way, too. If he caught someone pouring garbage into it, he would hack his hands off. As water is the most important ingredient for stew, we eat stew. It is as easy as that.

It was evening when my father returned. At daytime, he works wherever there is work to do. He does not have a safe workplace, but he helps where there is payment. It is only a rather small village we live in, so it is not that much work, but as he is the only person who tries to work like this, it is enough to make a living, but not quite a killing. I suspect that some people only hire him because they pity us.

I sit outside, on the ground, and a big stone lays in front of me. The frogs organs lie spread out on its surface and I try to get further information about them. I did not notice my father, even as he approaches me from behind and watches over my shoulder as I cut one of the organs open. A fly, half-digested, is stuck in there. “So this is where the food goes... I wonder if every animal has something like that?”, I mumble.

“Hello, Son.” I turn my head around, and look at my father.

“What are you doing there?” he asks, taking peeks on the innards scattered on the stone.

“You want to know? I just now figured out where the things animals eat go, after they are swallowed. Its this thing right here!” I poke the thing- a stomach- with my knife.

“Ah, yeah. I suppose you got this bloody mess from an animal you caught? What kind of animal was it?”

“A frog.”, I state the facts. It is forgivable to no recognize it in this state.

My father sticks his nose into the air. “Ah, it's frog stew that I can smell, then. Well, we haven't had stew in a long time, right?”

“Actually, we had stew yesterday. Are you getting old, father?” Of course he has other things to remember as well, but since we have stew basically every day, he should at least remember that much.

My father smirks. “Yes, that is probably it. Watch out, Reiland, your father is turning senile before you know it!.” I want to ask him what he means by that, but he already turned around and went into the shed.

“Rei! Dinner is ready!” I am pretty much finished dissecting everything anyway.

“Give me a minute!” I scrape the innards onto a leaf, and take them over to the piling garbage behind our shed. After that, I run to the door, and go inside. It's not a very spacious room, and the only one in the shed. It doubles down as a kitchen, eating room and bedroom. We all sit around a small table, with a wooden bowl of hot stew in front of everyone.

“Thank you for this food, oh gracious Lord.”, my parents say, while I mumble along. I do not quite get it - why thank someone for our Food, when he did not give it to us? My father worked for it, and my mother cooked it. I do not even have evidence that this great lord exists. I think he is a charlatan, who somehow got people to worship him. But the one time I said this to my parents, they got angry, so I kept to myself this time. The stew was one of the worst ones we had in a while. It was far from inedible, but even further from being a joy.

“Next time you maybe should hunt a different animal than a frog, right, Reiland?” my father said.

“Why? The stew is alright. Isn't, mom? Even though I knew he was right, it still was a frog that I caught. That was not something a could simply agree with. I do not usually make mistakes, and if I do one, it's usually the mistake of others to view it as an mistake.

“Well, the frog Rei caught certainly adds an unique charm to it, doesn't it darling?” As expected, mother jumps in to my aid.

My father grins, it is dawning upon him what game is played here. “Of course, Honey. Don't worry, Reiland, next time I wont question you culinary choice. Still, maybe you want to bring us joy with something different of a frog?”

“I think I can agree with that, father.” Like that, the situation is settled. “I will go to sleep now.”, I say, and follow. It was not a very comfortable bed, nothing more than a straw mattress with a thin blanket to warm oneself. It was far better than the dirt floor, however. As always in the evening, I reflect on my newfound knowledge to make sense out of it. I did so quite a while, until I suddenly heard my parents change topic from the usual banter.

“He is an unusual boy, our Rei.” My mother abruptly changed the topic, they spoke about stew recipes only seconds before.

“He sure is.”, my father replied. They must think I fell asleep long ago.

“He is unbelievable, I do not understand a word of what he says half the time. I don't think he is fit for the life in the Village. Our Boy could do so much more!”

“You're right. But what could we possibly do about it? There is no school in this village, even if there were, he would know everything before even visiting it. A village school couldn't teach Reiland a thing! Hiring a tutor is out of the question. I mean, look at us, we are living in a one room shed! We do not have that kind of money. He is so smart, it is almost scary at times. He would have to go to an academy. But we don't have the money for that either, not the means to get him there. Even if, he is only seven years old, far too young! You have never seen a seven-year old like him, have you?”

“Obviously not.”

“Me neither, wife, me neither.”

“I just wish he would make some friends. I mean sure, he does look happy doing what he does, but is he not a bit lonely?”

“You may be right. He is not the social type.”

Well, it is not that I never tried to approach other children. But when I did, they mostly ran away, and even if they didn't, they would share any of their research, and only look around dumb when I tell them of mine. But its their loss, after all. I can work alone just fine. I decide to sleep for today, I seem to have heard the most important part of their conversation.

Dream 1

That night, I dreamed of frogs. They where even larger than the ones we have here, almost as large as pigs. They seemed upset about something, but I could not figure out what is was. Suddenly, they turned really angry, and tried to jump at me. I ran away, deep into the forest, when I suddenly hit my head on a tree branch, and everything is black. I am in a dark room. I do not know where upside and down is, but I do not care. It feels cold, but in a rather refreshing way. I let my consciousness slip away.