The next thing I knew, there were loud voices. Who the hell was in my house? Why was I able to hear this? With frustration, I opened my eyes and found myself squinting. For some reason, I felt like crying. When was the last time I felt like that?

  Weird, I was so sure yesterday was my last day alive.

  My vision started to clear and in front of me were two people. A young man and a young woman. The woman had long blonde hair and blue eyes. The man had dark brown hair, with green eyes. He looked to be in great shape as I could see the muscles in his arms.

  I had no idea who they were, yet for some reason I felt… love toward them? That didn’t make sense, how could I feel love toward people I don’t know? That was when I realized they were both standing over me.

  The other odd thing was the language they were speaking. It wasn’t English or any foreign language I’d ever heard. Not that I’d been big on foreign languages when I was alive, so maybe it was a known language. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand you,” was what I tried to say. Instead, all that came out was babbling. I couldn’t move my body very well. With an effort, I moved my hand. It was so tiny. Upon a closer inspection, it looked like a baby’s hand.

  And that’s when I realized I had died yesterday. I had been reincarnated, yet for some odd reason my memories were still intact. I could remember everything about my previous life. How strange. Well, now I knew what happened when you died, though I was pretty sure most people didn’t keep their memories.

  The young man, who had to be in his early twenties, made a funny face, while the woman smiled and hugged me tightly. It was interesting being put in such a position. In fact, I was not happy about this at all. There was nothing I could do as they put me in a tight bundle, restricting my already-precious movement to nothing but my eyes.

  I’ll be honest. This sucks. I wish I didn’t have my memories and was a normal baby. Not being able to move or do anything on my own was going to suck. I was going to be at my parents’ mercy for a long time. Ugh, I guess there’s not much I can do but wait and see how this all plays out.

  A couple of months passed, and they were brutal. Being so helpless made me feel claustrophobic. During this time, I was able to learn my name. My parents called me Thorian. I’m not sure what my last name is, not like that mattered right now. I’ll learn that later.

  Let me tell you, not having control of when to eat, drink or control my bodily functions sucked. It didn’t matter how much I tried not to soil myself. The only nice thing about the whole situation was how much I slept. I was tired, a lot. That was the saving grace. The more I slept, the better.

  Having my memories of my previous life didn’t make things any easier. It was going to be an advantage when I was older, especially since I knew what to expect as I grew up. Still, my baby body had no control whatsoever. Having to wait for my mom or dad to come and clean me up was a pain in the ass. There’s nothing I’d rather do than clean myself up, but alas, that was a dream for when I was older. If only there were a way to speed up time.

  While I’ve been a baby, during my moments of wakefulness, I strained hard to try and understand what my parents were saying. Not like I had anything else to do, but it would be nice to understand what was being said. Of course, as a baby I found myself nodding off randomly, no matter how hard I tried to fight it. One time I was close to understanding one of the words, then I passed out.

  One thing I did notice while being carried around was that I wasn’t in the modern era. The technology I was used to like a TV, computer, or smartphone didn’t exist. I’m pretty sure I’m back in the medieval era and likely not on earth. It wouldn’t make sense to be reincarnated into the past. The other thing I had seen was my father taking a sword and leaving the house, sometimes for days at a time. It will be interesting to learn what he does when I’m older.

  One thing I had experienced when sleeping was dreaming about my previous life. It wasn’t too often and when I awoke, I never woke up sad about not being there. I still loved my family on Earth. It was hard to explain how it felt, maybe something like a love for something long gone, despite only having been a couple of months ago for me.

  A part of me had thought my memories might disappear as I grew up when God or whoever was in control of reincarnation realized I had my memories. It was something I couldn’t help thinking about. There was no doubt in my mind that coming into this world with my memories intact was a mistake. Perhaps it was too late to fix it? It was a puzzle I liked to think about. Wouldn’t it be odd if a god could create someone, but not fix a mistake? That seemed unlikely to me.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  How does something like that get screwed up? Shouldn’t my baby brain not be able to understand these thoughts anyway?

  Not that I knew much about what a baby was supposed to feel or understand. You aren’t supposed to remember being born. These were some of the things I thought about. With nothing else going on in my life, there was a lot of thinking going on. Man, I can’t wait to move again.

  Six months passed. I was finally free! Instead of being stuck and helpless, I could now crawl! I’d been able to crawl for a little over a month now and I still got joy out of it. There was no better feeling than being able to move and explore.

  I’m sure part of my newfound excitement was due to my body, but man, I couldn’t help celebrating the ability to move. All those months being stuck, unable to do anything, had been miserable.

  One of the first things I did was explore my home. This house was much easier to navigate. It was a single level, with three rooms and a bathroom.

  There were areas I couldn’t get to due to being too small. I tried spying on my parents to see if they had anything interesting and was always left disappointed. There had to be something interesting to do. Crawling around was fun and all, however, there was little to do. Without technology, it wasn’t like I could watch a TV show or sneak onto a computer.

  My first six months hadn’t been for naught. I did learn this world’s language, for the most part. Some words I didn’t understand. Thanks to my parents reading to me every day and listening to their conversations, I’d been able to piece together the language. Now I wasn’t in the dark. Not like my parents talked about anything interesting. One thing I discovered was that my father went out to fight something. I wasn’t sure as the word they used was one I hadn’t yet been able to figure out. Whatever he had to fight, he did every month or so. Perhaps it was a training thing, and I had misunderstood ‘fight’ for ‘training’. Whatever he did was clearly not dangerous because my mother never looked worried when he was gone.

  I also learned my parents’ names. My father’s name is Damon and my mother’s is Zena. Our last name was Ashford. It seemed my parents were deeply in love and hadn’t been married long before conceiving me. Made sense to me, in this time period one didn’t know when they would die from something stupid. At least, that’s how it was back on Earth. I won’t lie, it was kind of scary to think about that. Getting a cut could be deadly if it got infected. It was something to worry about later.

  From what I gathered, my family only has five books. I’d crawled around this house and found the books quickly enough. There was no bookshelf in this house, nor did I find anything else used for reading. Damon hung his sword in his room, and I stumbled across their money in a closet. I’m guessing we weren’t rich, yet not poor either. It was hard to say as I only found gold pieces. Who knew how much that was worth. It was something I would figure out later.

  One thing I planned on doing once I got older was to ask Damon to teach me the sword. I mean, what else was there to do? At least learning to use a sword should be fun. Though if I had any say in it, I would not be fighting in any wars. That was something I never wanted to do again. This was my chance to live a life of peace.

  While I wanted that, I couldn’t help wondering about the feasibility of it. In medieval times in my world, it wasn’t uncommon for a war to break out or raiders to hit a village. I didn’t know if we lived in a small village or a town. I hadn’t been taken out of the house, except the front yard. From what I had seen, it didn’t look like we lived in a large town.

  I heard movement coming from somewhere behind me and crawled as fast as I could. I’m guessing it was Zena, she was the one who normally came after me when I disappeared. If she thought I was a terror now, wait until I can walk!

  “Thorian, there you are!” Zena exclaimed, coming around the corner.

  Damn, she found me already.

  I went to crawl away. I couldn’t move. It felt like my body was frozen in place. What the hell? I strained with all the strength my little body could muster and couldn’t move a single muscle. Hands slid under my armpits, and I found myself lifted into the air. Drats, back to being a prisoner once again.

  This time, I didn’t bother struggling. There was no point, I was captured.

  “Honey, did you really use magic to stop Thorian?” Damon said with a laugh.

  Wait a minute. Did he say… magic?

  “Yes,” Zena said, hefting me over her shoulder. “He’s been very slippery as of late and it’s time for his nap.”

  I tuned out the rest of their conversation. Zena used magic on me. That was why I couldn’t move. That confirmed my theory of not being on earth, yet I never expected this. This world was like a movie from my old world, except this was real. Magic existed and that made me far more excited than I could ever describe. What else was there that I didn’t know? How strong was magic? The thought made me shiver with excitement.

  “Oh dear, you overdid it didn’t you?” Zena said, snapping me out of my thoughts. “There, there, you’ll be asleep soon.”

  Ah, she must have thought my shivering was due to exhaustion or something. Whatever, I couldn’t respond to her either way.

  Memories of my son showing me a game called Dungeons and Dragons flashed into my mind. I had been stubborn in thinking it was a child’s game for nerds. It took a bit, but eventually my son wore me down and I couldn’t help admitting it was fun. Pretending to be a badass with powers was everyone’s fantasy. That led to me getting into video games. Now I was in a world where magic was real. Who needed technology if there was magic to learn?

  “All right dear, sleep well,” Zena said as she put me gently in my cradle. She kissed my forehead and left the room.

  All I could think about were the possibilities. Magic was real! How early could I train? How did magic work? There were so many questions I had and no way to get answers. Damn, this was going to make time crawl as I wouldn’t be able to do anything until I grew up a bit. I kept thinking about magic until I fell asleep. Then, I dreamed about becoming a powerful mage. It was a good dream.