She opened her eyes and saw two people looking down at her.
“We’ll name him Elliorette. Elly for short!” Mom said.
“Isn’t ‘Elly’ a little girly?” Dad frowned.
“Oh, it’s fine,” Mom assured. “If anything, it’s unisex.”
Dad seemed unconvinced.
They were a typical pair. Nothing out of the ordinary for appearances.
Wait, I’m a boy?! But doesn’t that mean I have boy parts?!
As he lay on his back on the bed, he looked down between her legs. He was appalled. At least it would be quicker to pee. This’ll take some time to get used to…
“Anyway, I’ll put some clothes on him before he gets sick.” Mom went and took out some clothes from the drawer, came back, and dressed him.
He sensed something in the air. Something strange, yet familiar. Something magical…
“Oh, almost forgot!” Mom opened one hand and in a flash of light, a teddy bear popped into it. “You might need this to keep you company while I’m away.” With a smile, she put it beside him.
MAGIC?! It was magic?!
I might as well get used to that too.
~~~
When Elly reached about 3, and he could physically handle a fair bit of things on his own, he explored the library. It turned out that his parents were barons with a decent amount of wealth and a modest library. He was particularly interested in magic, especially since he could probably find a spell to switch his gender. So, he went through all the books he could find, from the fundamentals to the advanced and the highly advanced and down to the arcane…
Magic was split into different elements, and most people had an affinity for 1, but Elly didn’t feel inclined to any specific one. So, he tried them all.
He went into the courtyard and pointed at a tree. He imagined the mana going up into his fingertip and out. But instead of a fireball, the whole tree burst into a roaring blue flame. It only took a few moments for the fire to fully consume it.
“Ah… not what I had in mind, but good enough.” Elly glanced around, wondering if anyone saw that. Thankfully, no. I should put this out before someone panics. He reached his hand out as if grasping something invisible, then once he shut his hand into a fist and squeezed, the fire vanished. “There! Problem so—” No, the tree was dead.
Dead.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Elly shrieked. “HOW DO I FIX THIS?” Mom was going to kill him when she found out. A dead tree was conspicuous. Not only was it dead, but it was charred. He looked around. What to do, what to do, what to do?! “I CAN’T JUST MAGICALLY GROW THIS THING BACK.” Not to mention the grass around it had all burned to nothing too.
Wait, was there even a spell plant-growing? Shouldn’t there be a spell for everything? But there was no way he’d be able to find the spell among thousands of books from the library in time, if a plant book was even there.
What about illusion magic?! Nope, he hadn’t learned that yet. He needed to go learn that.
Maybe if I just turn it invisible and tell her a dragon ate it. Though, realistically, the tree stump would still be there if a dragon were to eat it. Surely dragons were real, right? Magic was real, so why not? Hang on. Who would believe that a 3-year-old caused such a big mess? He should be in the clear. He just had to relax and pretend that he didn’t know anything about this. Yep. He didn’t see anything.
He went back inside to the library to explore the other elements and stayed until nightfall.
~~~
His parents were puzzled alright. Bewildered actually.
“Maybe a dragon did it?” Elly said.
They didn’t know what else to think.
And if stuff like dragons really did exist, Elly needed to know how to defend himself. Defense came first. Gender-bending magic came second. Can’t turn back into a girl if I’m dead.
~~~
Apart from the 4 main elements, fire, water, wind, and earth, there were sub elements, like lightning. There was a vastly different category called “archaic magic”, which basically no one used nowadays because it was difficult to master, and people had made better spells to suit their needs. But with Elly’s unusually high mana capacity and his intellect, it wasn’t that difficult. The major differences were incantations, mana quantities needed for the spells, and cast times. These differences were mainly why archaic magic had become obsolete. Modern Magic was generally easier, quicker, and overall, more convenient. But a big downside was that it was weaker. The style was different too: modern magic didn’t use magic circles.
And with archaic magic, sometimes, the magic circles had to be hand-drawn with many lines, which could take hours, depending on the complexity of the spell. But Elly figured out how to skip the whole drawing process. The shortcuts required a fairly high level of finesse, which he could mostly manage already. Having a sharp and clear imagination helped with good memory of the fundamentals helped. Though, the spell had to be known completely—inside and out.
Over time, he made his own notes in a blank notebook he found somewhere in the library and revised them occasionally as he learned more advanced spells. Eventually, his hand grew tired and sore from constantly writing, so he searched and found a spell to let the quill alone do all the writing for him. All he had to do was dictate, and the pen wrote down what he said, word for word. And he could afford errors: he made an eraser to erase the ink from the page like pencil markings. He had switched from using a quill. Fountain pens were simply better with their own ink cartridges.
The world’s language came quite naturally to him, so he had no issues there.
At one point, he found it crucial to learn levitation and flight. He needed those spells to easily reach the books on the higher shelves. Sure, there were ladders, but Elly didn’t want to risk falling, especially with his frail body at this age. The books he needed for those spells were fortunately on the lower shelves.
His fear of his frailness led him to finding out how to make physical enhancements. Either crafting or casting the spells were alright. Both had their uses in different cases. Crafting had to do with making enchantments then applying them to objects. Clothes would work too.
Elly went to illusion magic just in case he made more accidents that he would need to cover up.
He committed most of his free time to it all.