The Really Fun Ball of Light

Delpin

I officially became three years old today. I think. Yesterday I overheard my parents talking about inviting the Nim family, a farming family whom my family was close with, for a celebration for my third birthday. They had a kid around my age and they were discussing a joint celebration. I guess budgeting had to be done if you weren't super well off.

Birthdays for younger kids appear to be a huge deal in this world, the operating logic being if your baby survives past the age of two it's a goddamn miracle. Looking at the general hygiene of the place, I can say with great confidence that toddlers either develop a great immune system, or die. Unfortunately, I was in the process of developing a great immune system.

I realized this when I woke up and immediately wished I hadn't.

"Mom, I don't feel so good," I mumbled deliriously when my mother took me out of my wooden crib one morning. I was feeling excessively exhausted and my body hurt. The previous day I felt completely fine and now I felt like trash, the stark contrast making me feel even worse.

"Oh no," my mom whispered, almost to herself, as she touched my forehead against hers. Her forehead was nice and cool, almost cold even, which probably meant mine was burning up.

"Ok honey, go back to sleep," she cooed, placing me back into the crib, trying to hide her worry. She stepped outside of my room, taking Brudin with her, while I desperately tried to go back to sleep but my body wouldn't let me. I was in a strange state of painful limbo where I felt exhausted but I couldn't fall asleep because of the pain. It felt like something was crawling inside my skin constantly, making me feel painfully tingly all over my body.

"Mom, is Delpin okay?" I heard Brudin ask behind the closed door. No, I wasn't, but thanks for asking.

"I think he got Wyrm's Fever just like you did last year," she responded and then followed with a stern warning, "don't go in your room today, alright?"

"Urghhghgh" I groaned out in frustration as I resigned myself to the fact that I was going to have to lie here for hours until my exhaustion won over my pain. Magical priest man please come save me from my sickness.

I tossed and turned in a state of delirium for what felt like an hour before my body finally succumbed to exhaustion.

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I opened my eyes and immediately realized I was dreaming. It's strange because back on Earth I wasn't a lucid dreamer but for some reason I could instantly identify that I wasn't really "awake." Part of it was because I opened my eyes and everything was still black, except for a barely visible speck of light in the far off distance. I walked closer to it and realized what this scene was reminiscent of. It was the classic death scene in most movies back on Earth but ironically, despite dying twice, this was my first time seeing it.

"Did I die again?" I wondered aloud, or tried to, but no sound exited my mouth. I could feel my mouth moving but sound wouldn't come out of it.

Only one way to find out. I walked closer to the light and it got closer way faster than it should have at the rate I was walking. Then it hit me. The light was approaching me.

I turned around and started to sprint. It was one thing if the light was still and I walked up and inspected it. It was another thing if it was bolting at me and moving by itself. Unfortunately, it was way too fast.

People back on Earth are always going on about how great lucid dreaming was, since the idea was if you were aware that you were in a dream, you could control the dream. Bullshit. I was being rundown by this ball of light and nothing I did or thought would make it stop.

Unfortunately, this ball of light was much faster than I was and even though in the beginning of the dream, it had been way off into the distance, in a mere thirty seconds or so it was so close I could see the light from the corner of my vision, despite my back being turned towards it. I gave up running and turned to face it, only to realize it was much larger than I had originally thought.

You know how I said it was so close I could see the light? That was because of its sheer volume, rather than its distance towards me. If I had to estimate, it had about a ten or twelve foot diameter and now that I had stopped and turned to face it, there was no way to outrun it. I closed my eyes and braced for impact as it charged straight into me and enveloped me.

I wish I could say the light was warm and gently embraced me but the reality was it hurt. It hurt a lot. Rather than warm, the light felt hot, and now that it had completely wrapped my body, I felt like I was on fire. I knew it was a dream but the pain felt so real I forgot that this was not reality.

I screamed and screamed but no sound would come out as I fell to the ground and started writhing. The light started getting smaller, as if I was absorbing it and after an eternity of torture, I was once again alone in the dark but now I was curled in a fetal position, crying softly.

"Delpin… Delpin… Delpin wake up! Please wake up…" A voice resounded in the dark room.

I opened my eyes to the real world this time, expecting the pain to disappear but unfortunately, I was also burning in the real world from a fever. Only this time, the pain was a little bit softer, maybe because of the fact that I was literally burned alive in the sick dream that I had.

In my room was my mother and a priest who appeared young, around twenty-three years old, and there were tears streaming from my mother's eyes while the priest looked down on me concernedly.

"Mom," I started drearily, my speech slurring because of my exhaustion, "I'm ok."

I tried to manage a smile which turned into a grimace of pain as the burning sensation coursing through my body started to intensify. This only made her bawl harder.

"It's all my fault… it's all my fault…" she cried.

How was my catching a sickness even remotely close to her fault? I guess she just felt guilt as a mother but still, I really wish she didn't feel that way. I didn't want to be a burden to her.

Anyways, Mr. Magicman was in my room but I still had a fever. What the hell was he doing? I thought to myself in frustration as another wave of pain wracked my body. I know it wasn't fair to the priest but my thoughts were clouded from the fever.

"Please heal me… this fever hurts so much," I begged the priest, making eye contact to make sure he knew I was addressing him, and then dropping the eye contact instantly since I was getting an anxiety attack. Man, I guess some problems inevitably carry over from my past life. For some reason, my family didn't feel foreign to me, so I had no problems babbling towards my mother or observing my brother attempt to communicate with me, but this priest guy felt different.

He snapped to attention really quick, as if he had been thinking about something deeply, and looked at me in wonder. I guess those words sounded really strange coming from a barely three year old child, but I didn't care. I needed this sickness gone.

He shook his head and took a staff off of his back with a small jewel embedded in the head of the staff. He made a stance with one hand holding the staff perpendicular to the ground in front of him and the other hand in an open palm positioned above the hand holding the staff, as if pushing the staff.

With a quivering voice, he chanted some nonsense that I didn't understand, but I saw a blue air current start to ball towards his palm and travel up to the tip of the staff. That must be magic, once again confirming my belief that it existed in this world. While usually this would have made me absolutely ecstatic, current circumstances only allowed me to feel a brief feeling of excitement over the existence of magic and triumph of having hard evidence for my previous hypothesis. That brief feeling disappeared when these feelings caused an intense wave of tingling pain all over my body which refocused my thoughts to this dumb sickness.

He then pointed the staff at me, with the gem glowing now from having been infused with the blue air current the priest had conjured earlier and pushed the hand that wasn't holding the staff towards me very gently.

A stream of the blue current gently pulsed towards my body and I thought my pain would go away. Instead, the burning sensation returned to the intensity from the dreams and the blue current started swirling around my body. Then I realized the current was coming from my body as the volume started to increase. I screamed as loud as my three year old lungs would let me and the priest dropped his staff in alarm.

"What did you do?!" my mother yelled at the priest angrily, tears streaming out of her eyes. Were her eyes glowing? She got up violently in his face as the priest stammered nervously, looking at me with pure bewilderment.

My father Grant rushed in and saw what was happening and peeled my mother off of the poor priest. He then looked at what was happening to me and then stared at the priest.

"What did you do?" He asked in a deadly calm voice, which was even scarier than how my mother had responded.

"I-I-I'm not sure…" he trailed off.

"... I did it right. That's how you cure Wyrm's Fever," he continued, confidence returning to his voice, "Wyrm's Fever is caused by mana being blocked inside a child's bodies whose mana channels have not completely opened up yet. Since mana channels contradictorily open from the surface of your skin into your body, by directing slight amounts of mana over a child with Wyrm's Fever, the mana I channel externally is supposed to naturally feed into those partially formed mana channels. This in turn directs the excess internal mana to naturally gravitate towards escaping through the channels that are now formed more completely by the external mana. I've only read about it in books since children with Wyrm's Fever are rarely found in this town, but this is definitely not supposed to happen… it's a relatively painless process" he finished in a concerned mutter.

As he finished his explanation, my body combusted.

The blue current, which I hypothesize is mana, finished burning through my body and I could feel something being expelled from inside me. It was like I was burping through my entire body, but the burning pain started to die down at a rapid rate and now I felt good again, in fact I felt better than good. I felt energized. I guess the priestman did his job and so I felt obligated to save him from my mother.

"Thank you Mr. Priestman," I said to him standing up in my wooden crib. I probably shouldn't call him Mr. Priestman since it sounds kind of disrespectful, but I didn't know his name. My anxiety towards talking to him was instantly overcome by the immense amount of gratitude I had towards this man. Did good people exist after all?

"No problem," he sighed in relief, as my mother got out of his face and walked towards me in a trance.

"Are you feeling ok? Does it still hurt? Do you feel sick?" my mother rambled, picking me up and touching her forehead to mine.

"No, I'm fine mom," I said, closing my eyes and letting her fuss all over me. It felt nice to be cared for like this, how long had it been? Honestly, the real question was had this ever happened to me before…

"Oh you're ok…" she sighed in relief and hugged me toward her body, placing my head on her shoulders.

"I'm very sorry," my mother apologized sheepishly, turning back towards the priest.

"Don't worry about it," the priest responded in a good natured manner, "If something like that happened to my child, I would freak out too."

"That doesn't excuse how I responded," she sighed.

She put me back down in the crib and went out and picked up a bag full of goods that I think we were planning to sell.

"Please take this," she said, gently pushing the bag into his hands.

"No, I couldn't," the priest said in a firm objection, "I cannot take payment as a priest for doing my rightful duty with these blessings from god. It isn't right."

"It's not payment then. It's a gift to a friend who helped us twice," she said playfully, slowly returning to her normal self.

"Haha, I can take it then I guess. Thanks a lot," the priest chuckled.

"I wonder why the Wyrm's fever was so much worse for Delpin than it was for Brudin?" my mother asked no one, but the question was clearly directed towards the priest.

"This is something I'm not familiar with, so I can't tell you for sure. Sorry about that," the priest responded apologetically.

"Well, I'm sure you have a lot of things to do now that Delpin is ok, it's almost his third birthday right? I'll be taking my leave."

"Make sure to drop by for the party then!" my mother called towards the priest as he waved back to us on his way out of the house. I never caught his name but he was my savior. What a wonderful guy, this religion didn't seem too bad after all. I prayed they never got to see their goddess since she was a pos, but I was genuinely thankful towards him. It was strange that I had never caught his name.

Also he had unlocked a dream I had been holding for a while now.

I held out my hand in front of me and remembered that tingling sensation I had felt during the fever and attempted to recreate it now that I knew it was mana. A very faint blue was reflected in my eyes as a small mana current started swirling in my palm. Perfect.

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Galavan walked down the path back towards the town center with a feeling of exhilaration. Throughout the past few years he had been building his reputation as the healer in town as a kind priest working for the gods, but in reality, he knew no such beings existed. Because if they did, they would smite him for misusing their names.

He had just cured a child of Wyrm's Fever, the second one from that family, which was unusual since Wyrm's Fever only occurred in children with mana. Besides nobles, almost no one carried mana, since commoners that possessed mana were usually "adopted" by a noble family. Since mana was genetic, besides the rare mutation every once in a while, mana was soon only found in noble bloodlines. While Wyrm's Fever was rare, a healer's price was also much too exorbitant for commoners to be able to afford, meaning commoners who were born with mana sometimes just passed away, which was why Galavan was so famous in town since he basically did his job for free. It was a clever disguise, since he usually ended up taking payment in some form anyways, enough to sustain the comfortable lifestyle that he led.

"How much mana did that child have to produce that reaction…" Galavan wondered as he continued walking towards the town center. In reality, he was directly aware of what caused that reaction that the child had created, despite him feigning ignorance to the question that the mother, Liss, had asked earlier. The amount of mana expelled from his body at a mere age of three was much greater than any commoner should be capable of having. Magic was genetic, meaning there had to be magic in your bloodline in order to possess mana. Actually that statement was a little misleading. Everyone was capable of carrying mana, but nobles who had perfected their bloodline for centuries usually carried more. And even if you did have mana, a child at the age of three should have been carrying much much less mana. Things weren't adding up. But on top of admiring the child's mana potential, he also wondered how the child had endured the pain of carrying that much mana in his body. He estimated that the child already carried more mana than Galavan himself had, yet having that bottled up inside with no escape should have caused an intense pain so unbearable, talking, much less empathizing with his mother, should have been impossible. That was not normal behavior.

There were three conclusions that Galavan came to after his visit to that particular house.

One: Galavan had enough experience with children to identify that Delpin was not a normal child. His speech was much too coherent to belong to a three year old and his empathy towards his mother while he was sick was impossible for a three year old to understand. He was developing too fast for someone his age. Two, and on a similar strain: That child was valuable. He was probably worth triple his weight in gold. On top of his abnormal vocabulary and empathy, which proved his accelerated brain development, having mana of that capacity, while rare even among nobles, was very rare in commoners. In fact, he was probably the only child that Galavan would ever encounter to have that much mana, even among nobles. Which led him to his next conclusion. Lastly: One of that child's parents was a noble. On top of having two children who had Wyrm's Fever, a fairly rare sickness among commoners, no commoner, even through pure chance, could carry that much mana without having magic in their direct bloodline. Looking at both the mother and the father's builds: the way they walked, the way they talked, and their appearances, he was almost sure it was the mother. He had noticed it the last time he cured their older child, but the mother seemed almost out of place in the town, as her beauty was almost blinding compared to most other people in the village and no amount of farming dirt could cover it up. It reeked of a privileged upbringing and the way she carried herself and talked, while casual, occasionally leaked an air of elegance about it that came from years of education. He had no idea what she was doing in a town like this at the outskirts of the country, but he didn't really care.

A disgustingly malicious smile briefly crossed his face as he walked through the main gate into the town center.

"Maybe it's time to hop towns soon," he thought to himself. Time to ditch this pathetic guise as a religious hick. All his hard work was about to pay off. He had hit the jackpot.