One Fateful Night

Four years. It's been four long years since that strange boy was brought into our village, into my home, and made into my younger brother.

Antonio. Antonio Icefield was the name he was given. When he was just a toddler, he was found by our forces surrounded by corpses in a frozen wasteland.

We've been living under the same roof for four years now, and tonight we're throwing a surprise party for him.

Today he will turn seven, and in Tiamat culture, that is when a person enters their 'apprentice' age, in which they begin working in whatever field they were studying during their 'discovery' age, which begins at age three.

I can't wait for today to be over.

Not because I hate Antonio, no, far from it.

I care about him. He's three years my junior, and a person I see as something akin to an adopted younger brother.

But I already know what is going to happen.

Tonight is going to be the same as every other celebration Antonio has ever participated in.

He'll smile, he'll laugh, he'll show a bit of the progress in his magic study, and then he'll go home.

All whilst keeping the same, hollow look in his eyes and behind his smile.

I understand what the problem is.

Uncle Gust and Blaze say it's something called 'trauma'. A condition that usually can't be cured without something changing within the person afflicted. No amount of healing magic no matter what tier can solve it.

But that doesn't mean it isn't creepy.

He replies and speaks like a normal person, but there's almost nothing beyond that.

I don't hate Antonio, far from it, but in the four years he's lived in my family's house, he's still no warmer than a stranger.

Either way, I need to continue to help set up the house for his birthday.

He's out with the hunters right now, learning how to live and hunt in the wilderness in case he ever wants to leave the village.

Uncle Blaze assures us that today is his birthday and he truly is a human, but he's unlike any human I've ever heard of or seen.

Sure, I've only ever seen two humans, the other being a merchant who came to the village about five years ago and left swiftly after, but that doesn't convince me.

Humans are fragile, yet adaptable. They're worse at almost everything at the start, yet are able to grow faster than most. That's how humans are supposed to be.

Antonio is different. Antonio can't be a human, since he does stuff humans can't.

He can use magic silently, which aside from extremely proficient mages, can only naturally be done by demonoid's with an innate connection to magic or a person with an insane natural affinity with that type of magic.

But Antonio uses all types of magic without incantations all the time, which theoretically should be impossible for a human.

So he can't be a human.

Human children also shouldn't be like him.

Children aren't supposed to be able to remember much, even if it's the death of his family, what his brain should have focused on was being saved.

No matter how many or how high of tier healing and diagnostic spells are cast on him, even going as far as to have Blaze cast a Dux tier diagnostic spell only to show his blood was majorly just human, the rest is not relevant enough to affect him.

But the spell has to be wrong. Or Blaze has to have been lying.

The hollow, empty face and eyes he has cannot belong to a child.

I just hope tonight passes quickly.

--- Point of View: Antonio Icefield ---

Today is the day.

It has to be.

It's my seventh birthday, my fourth with the people of Taft village.

Today, I'll 'regain' my memories and explain who I am.

These people are my family, they took me in, clothed me, gave me a bed and a room to sleep in.

The Rangers are teaching me how to hunt and survive, they've already accepted my ability to cast silently and supplied me with the limited magical knowledge and materials they have.

Hell, they've even given me a last name since I 'lost' mine.

I've been taught so much by these people, the least I could do is stop lying to some degree.

Magic has been the thing they've taught me about the most, most likely since it's something I have no basis for.

Magic has a few dedicated tiers. The tiers go from Plebeio tier to Dominus Tier, to Dux Tier, followed by Legate, Imperator, and finally Deus tier. I feel like I've seen some of these words before, but I can't place my finger on it.

The tiers of Plebeio to Dominus are pretty simple. Magic at this level is more of a club to hit things with. Elemental magic just conjures and fires these elements, and healing, diagnostic, and every other type of magic just does one single effect.

From the Dux tier, the magic begins to become more complex. A good example is Ice Age, a Dux tier water spell that has the effect of freezing everything in a radius and then shattering those frozen targets.

I did learn that Dux tier spells can be targeted and focused, and I took that pretty hard, but I'd like to think I've moved on.

Finally, is the 'tier' system of all warriors. After a person reaches a certain tier of skill, they can identify themselves as such.

For example, if a person can use a spell of Legate tier and still fight, they are known as a Legate Ranked Magician.

The same is said for warriors. Something very interesting I learned is that fighting styles and physicality are also attributed to the same ranking system.

A person who has learned to use a sword or an ax or a bow for a certain amount of time, yet has picked up no skills with it, is known as a Plebeio swordsman, or Plebeio archer. The more skilled a person is with their weapon, or the amount of raw power they can put behind it, the higher tier a warrior becomes.

For reference, about one in ten mages can reach the Dux tier, and around one in ten thousand can ever reach the Legate tier.

That gives me some amount of confidence that I can cast a Dux tier spell at age three, but I know that the world is a huge place and anyone who discovered magic at a young age like me is probably either just as strong or stronger.

That is the final golden nugget of information I learned. It appears that no one understands that if a person practices magic from a young age, that their mana capacity will expand rapidly.

I would never expose this fact, I mean it's called an advantage for a reason, but it made me realize that I may have a small head start on some people.

Using mana from that age also strengthens something called a mana network, which allows a person to use larger and larger spells. It's the mana nodes I noticed before.

For example, Gust can't cast a spell above Dominus tier. His mana capacity and mana network simply cannot handle it.

Aside from the magical and worldly knowledge, they also 'taught' me a lot of information on how to live. So no matter what, I feel like I have to repay them somehow.

So, coming forth and saying I've regained my memories can be the first step.

All I have to do is reveal it tonight.