Grey

From past we know very little of that time. And the limited knowledge shall be preserved to the generations that will follow. To never forget the war we survived. To always remember those brave man who fought till the end for many years.

It is said that during these dark times heroes fought against the dark queen, the ruler of all monsters and unhuman beings, that they stopped her and closed our realm to stay at peace from dark forces and demons looming on the other side of the gate.

However, the prophecy says that the dark queen shall return and with her the gates of realms of death shall sprung open and infect our lands with doom and terror.

Thoben, Legends and Stories of Realm

I wished this day would never to come. To say I wasn’t happy with my life and destiny until now would be a lie; the peace and freedom flowing inside my veins was something I never had chance to enjoy.

My eyes fluttered open all I could see was the face of a man in a dim light. Brown curly hair, kind, loving hazel eyes and dimples in his cheeks. He was smiling with tears that threatened to escape his eyes. “Welcome to the world, Grey,” his voice soft and comforting. He moved slightly and handed me down to a beautiful woman with black short hair and silver eyes with green streaks. Her eyes were longer and I recognized her as a demi human, probably elven kind. She was smiling too even though her face was filled with exhaustion. “I’m so happy to finally meet you my baby girl. This is your papa, Tristan and I’m your mum, Silvia,” she announced. It almost looked like they were expecting a newborn to understand what they said, which was impossible.

Normal child wouldn’t understand anything she just said. But I did, it made me sad that they got the short straw when conceiving a child. I closed my eyes again, too tired to hold them open for any longer. There was no need to think about what happened. It was obvious and it didn’t make me happy at all.

No thinking for now, that was my decision right before I fell asleep.

The life of a person who already lived through one or two lives went different when your body wasn’t capable of doing normal things just the ones of a small infant. The constant blabbering of adults, the sweet talk and extensive movements and sounds was quite getting on my nerves. Even though it wasn’t meant that way, it just sounded like they were mocking me.

It had its downsides but also bright moments. For instance, you can sleep whenever you want and on top of that you gain at least basic knowledge of the changes that occurred through your departure to the afterlife so you don’t look like a fool or insane idiot when you ask something completely obvious to others.

Like everything this too has it’s ups and downs. The first few years passed by in a blink of an eye thanks to my constant sleep. I knew that I won’t get enough of it later in my life so why not to enjoy this bliss?

In the few centuries I was away the language changed a lot so figuring out the new words was quite a task, and the first one I had to finish.

When I turned seven my father started to teach me basic swordsmanship. I can’t count how many bruises, cuts and broken bones did I get. Too many to my liking but in the end, I was able to somehow manage basics of it. Mother started to teach me how to read, and all the necessary stuff she deemed fit of knowing – basically everything she knew herself.

At the age of ten my magic has finally showed and mother couldn’t be happier. And since I was still their only child all the attention went straight towards me. It was very strange to experience all their love and kindness towards me. I forgot very long time ago how it felt and that it was quite nice.

Every day was almost the same, wake up, train with sword, breakfast, do some house work and cook lunch, train magic, diner and then bedtime stories. That part of a day was my favorite even though I was so exhausted sometimes that I had to try really hard to listen. At first, they used to tell me fairytales but later started to tell me about history, about ancient times and every legend they knew. Even in my past life I loved history but this time I was part of it and very soon I find out that not the good part for some reason.

My previous life took part in the time they called the dark century, which was quite a good name that explained a lot. But for some reason I was now the villain and lots of my comrades too. For my birthdays I asked for history books more than anything else and the more I knew the more confusion I felt. Almost everything about my time was not true. They got the names right; the battles were right too but for some reason we were blamed for the war that started long before I was even born.

From what I knew there still remained buildings of our time, some of the temples, towers and castles remained untouched and crumbled into ruins. The religion that was superior once, now struggled to survive next to three others.

Everything was so confusing and the only thing I could do remained in far away future when my parents were confident enough to let me travel on my own to discover what needed to be discovered in order to understand.

In the mean time I focused on my swordsmanship and studies. Mother taught me magic and I let her. I tried to act like it was hard, learning those spells she passed down to me but in fact I already knew them. There were new ones that didn’t take me long to learn, but for some reason people started using chants, it slowed everything down quite a bit. Maybe something happened that made people unable to use magic without chanting, but I still could cast spells without boring, fancy monologues that were simply useless in combat.

Imagine trying to focus and say something like “In the name of earth, I command thee bend the laws of nature and obey my will…” while someone charges at you with sword. To cast magic nowadays you would need an army to protect casters while they do their little chanting in back rows. The more complicated spell the more talking you had to do. It was useless. I felt like everyone forgot about the true power of magic and nature around them. It made me sad whenever it crossed my mind.

And it complicated everything lot.