Mark_Ward
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Chapter 1: Rebirth
🕑 Added 2021-12-23 06:10:38 +0000 UTCSorry for the delay guys! I was looking through these chapters I wrote long ago, and before I knew it I got sucked in fixing every mistake. So here is the must better versions.
***
Floated in the vast expanse of nothingness was a tiny insignificant soul.
It was insensible as it wasn’t aware at all of what was going on. All it did was float in the icy cold void. Then out of nowhere, there was suddenly a pulling sensation that began to tug at the soul. The strange sensation grabbed hold of it tightly and pulled it downward.
It was falling uncontrollable down, down, down as if down through a rabbit hole. It was an uncanny and uncomfortable thing falling down through empty nothingness. The soul for whatever perception it held, never wanted to do this again, that was for sure.
Everything went by so fast it couldn’t make out even a single thing; it was bombarded with different shades of light. It was as if it was traveling through the infinite expanse of the universe. It felt as if that was the only thing that made sense.
Then the light show came to an end and a white light came closer and closer like they were reaching the end of the tunnel until it became all encompassed and devoured the soul up.
Then the tiny soul knew no more!
***
Magnus… Yes, that was his name. Slowly everything was coming back to him. He didn’t know how long he was unconscious for, and this place he found himself in… unusual would be an underestimate.
He felt as if he was in some liquid vat.
Time passed strangely here, wherever this place was. There would be moments that he would wake up, feeling as if he was a fish swimming through some dark primordial soup. Though those moments were fleeting and far in between since most of his time was spent sleeping.
Sleeping was all he did, and nothing else.
Sleep, sleep, sleep!
Then one day, this strange equilibrium was broken. He did not know how long he spent in this strange place sleeping away all his time - days, weeks, or even months.
The dark sticky primordial soup that seemed to encompass him for so long started to drain away. After that, he was pushed forward as the walls surrounding him were trying to kick him out. And there was no fuss on his side as he quickly obliged and went down headfirst.
He could have sworn his passage felt like he was going down a water slide and best of all there was light at the end.
Light!
How long has it been since he even saw a speck of light?
The tunnel became wider and wider until it encompassed his whole vision, leaving nothing out.
Finally, after what felt like centuries, he was out!
He was finally OUT of his strange prison!
His vision was blurry, and he couldn't make out a single thing from his surroundings, but he chugged it down to him simply not being used to the light after so long in the dark. His excitement and relief were so palpable that he couldn't help it when he released a cry of delirious joy.
Then he noticed something was wrong. He was grabbed by a pair of giant hands that washed him, and rubbed him clean. Then he was wrapped in clean, warm linen and passed onto someone else.
He didn’t even notice he was naked at first, and the realization sent shivers down his spin. Adding everything up, the first conclusion he came to was that he was in a lab; it was the only thing that made sense to his addled mind.
Shit!!!
Magnus swore. He was truly and utterly fucked if that was the case.
What did he ever do to deserve this?
Regretfully a couple things quickly came to the surface of his mind...
Was it someone from the internet that found him? Magnus guessed he did anger quite a few netizens as a keyboard warrior! Did they now come to exact revenge on him?
He guessed he was blowing things out of proportion, but fuck if you know the kinds of people that lurked the web. They could be some real sensitive sons of bitches at times. So what if he insulted them a couple times and their intelligence and their families…
To make things worse, he noticed that he found it very difficult to breathe. His breaths came in short shallow puffs that seemed to wheeze out of his lungs.
Magnus wanted to clutch at his chest, but his arms felt so small and weak.
The person he had been passed onto seemed to notice his predicament as a worried tone left their mouth. But Magnus wasn't focused on that as he tried to somehow catch his breath.
All he managed to do was make it worse as the pain in his chest increased.
He felt as if he was dying all over again, and in his haze of pain he didn’t catch hold of how weird that statement was.
Suddenly water surrounded him, enveloping him all over again. He was so shocked he tried to let out a curse but it only came out as a gargle. There was no way he was going back to that place.
As soon as it began it was over. Magnus heard the lady who held him in his clutches worriedly say in a frantic voice. "He isn't healing. It should have worked but nothing...."
Then suddenly he got picked up by some rough hands, and he looked up to see a giant's face. Magnus was so shocked for a long time he overlooked the fact that he began to cough, wet tiny cough like that of a baby.
He felt as if his life was slowly leaving him with each breath as uncontrollable fits of coughing tore through his body. He could see his life flashing through his eyes, and what weirded him out was the fact he saw his own death.
That was strange as he watched someone knifed him in the back, and he laid there bleeding out on the cold streets while sirens blared in the background.
However, he did not have time to give that any thought, as there was a flurry of actions going on.
All he could make out was; 'Spirit Oasis'
Magnus had no clue what that was, but he was carried along by the giant man out of the room and down some very opulent furbished hallways that seemed to be plucked right out of a Winterland fairytale.
Magnus was blown away by what he saw, but had no time to gaze at it with an open mouth as they continued on.
Finally after many twists and turns, they reached outside. He was reminding of some arctic frozen land he saw on documentaries with snow falling slowly from the sky and ice crunching underfoot.
Then as if to flip everything on its head they entered a quiet place with the only greenery all around. It felt like some kind of sacred place and what startled him the most was the glowing blue wisps floating about lazily giving this place an otherworldly glow and making it look magical in nature.
They continued until they came to a pond with a waterfall cascaded down and the water shimmered a bright blue he never seen before. It was so crystalline clear he could even make out the two giant fish in the water.
They were so massive in size that they could even give a truck a run for it money. They were each respectfully black and white with long flowing whiskers and beautiful fish scale patterns.
They reminded Magnus of Koi fish if they had been fed so much steroid to make them grow this big.
The giant who had been carrying him dropped to his knees in front of the pond and began to call out to the fish. Magnus also noticed the small crowd that came along with them got onto their knees respectfully and began to pray. Right beside the man that held him was a woman who held the giant's hand in a tight death grip.
"O, great Moon Spirit, and Ocean Spirit. Please I beg of you to save my son."
His son? Magnus though!
What the fuck?
However, another racking fit of coughing tore through his chest and the feeling of his life slipping away came back into focus.
"I beg you, great guardians of our tribe! Please, cure my son, he is racked with a mysterious ailment that even our water healing isn't working on him." the man who said he was his father continued.
Abruptly, the giant black koi fish broke away it's ever constant slow cycle around the pool with the other fish and swam to the edge of the pond where its giant head broke through the surface.
Magnus stared at the giant koi fish which in turn stared back at him with eyes that looked so intelligent and wise.
Then he was put into a further loop as the fish spoke… It actually spoke to them!
"Mmmm, I see the problems that are plaguing your boy," the black fish said.
"Problems?" the man quizzically.
"Yes there is both a mysterious taint on him, and his spirit doesn't seem to aligned correctly. It is as if he reincarnated. Mmh, but that should be something only the avatar could do."
Whispers went up all around, and the giant man asked in a low whisper. "Is my son truly the next Avatar?"
"No, I sense only the water element in him. Anyways, let's see what I could do to help your son."
Magnus, on the other hand, looked god smacked and wide eyed as his breathing difficulty and coughing fits were all but forgotten.
Then it struck him like a bell. He looked at the men and women dressed in blue, white, and purple garbs. They called this place the Spirit Oasis. These two giant koi fish were called the Moon and Ocean Spirits. He had an affinity for water? The Avatar!
This... this was the fucking Avatar world.
He remembered that show he watched as a child - Avatar: The Last Airbender!
However he had no time to follow through with his line of thoughts as the man who was his father, bowed his head on to the ground. "I thank you. O great and mighty Ocean Spirit. You shall have my eternal gratitude as chief of the Water Tribe!"
Water Tribe Chief? Looking at the brown haired man with the stern face and cold eyes, he looked just as he remembered from the show albeit very younger.
Suddenly one of the giant black koi fish whiskers reached out to him and rested on his forehead.
Immediately, he felt a tingling sensation which quickly turned into the most painful thing ever. It was like his head was being split open as a dozen needles were being pushed into his skull. But as soon as it began it was over.
"There," the giant black fish said. “His spirit has been put correctly into his body.”
“And here," it added as it tapped him with another whisker, this time on his chest. "I shall grant him some of my life force for him to fight back against this taint."
Flinching back, Magnus did not want to feel that agonizing pain again, but there was nothing he could do to stop it in his feeble state.
However, instead of pain this time, he felt a cool sensation of life rush into him and his breathing became much easier and his coughing fits subsided.
It was like he got a new lease on life with the air tasting much sweeter and fresh and everything felt all the more brighter.
After the giant Koi fish was done with everything it set out to do, it retracted its whiskers back. "Done," it said. "There shouldn’t be any adverse effect of receiving my life-force, except for maybe enhanced waterbending. Other than that everything should be alright."
"Thank you. O, great guardian!" the water chief bowed his head. Before he could even react, the woman next to him took him out of his hands, and hugged him in a tight death grip as she pressed her cheeks up against his.
"Oh. You are all right now my sweet baby boy," she said, shedding some tears. Magnus did not know what to make of those loving hands embraced him so tightly except for some strange emotions coming to the surface.
He did not know what came over him, but he slid into that welcoming embrace. It felt just right. And he felt like this was what he was missing his entire life. The thing he had been chasing after without even knowing it.
"We should give him a name besides baby boy, dear," the chief spoke up with a smile that looked so strange on his hard face.
"What about, Magnus?" the Ocean Spirit asked, as it gazed at him.
"Magnus,” the woman repeated. “Somehow that name fits perfectly," she said as he looked down at him with loving eyes.
"Magnus?" he thought to himself. How very strange that he would end up with the same name as in his last life.
He wanted to have a look around the place, and find out more about his situation, but sleepiness encroached upon him. He found it weird that he would be tired after spending all that time sleeping in the womb.
Still though, drowsiness called out to him like a siren out at sea, and he gave into it after the briefest struggle.
***
Time flew by, and day in and day out he got reaffirmed with the fact that he was actually a baby!
If the milk he got fed daily, or the shit he pooped out with little to no control at all wasn’t evidence enough he did not know what was.
The woman he later figured was his mother took special care of him; she fed him, cleaned, and took care of him. There were a bunch of other caretakers on hand, but she refused to let him out of her sight for the first couple days in this new world.
He guessed she was still shaken up by his near death at birth.
Still he hated how helpless he was, being in the power of others and counting on them to do the right thing and take care of him.
Though what eased his mind and prevented it from snap out of boredom was that this world's language was near enough to English so he could mostly understand what they were talking about.
People usually don't watch out for what they said in front of a newborn baby so information came freely.
Yes, he was the eldest son of Chief Arnook. The supreme leader of the water tribe. So that kind of made him a prince.
It felt weird being reborn as royalty, as an orphan kid who had no money to his name he had to fend for himself in a harsh cruel world. Now here he was at the highest peaking order in this new world.
He would have thought he gathered a lot of good karma in his last life if he didn’t already know what awaited him… The Fire Nation.
Genocidal, expansionist, power hungry, ruthless bastards.
Each and every single one of them was worse than the next.
And if someone gave him that bullshit Iroh was the only good one, he would smack them across the back of their head.
The man was all too happy to embrace his role as future leader of the Fire Nation before tragedy struck.
Magnus also found out that it was the year 77 AG into the war with the fire nation.
At the helm of the war effort was Fire Lord Azulon. So it looked like he had 23 years before the Avatar got woken up from his ice prison down in the South Pole.
Magnus wondered if he should wake up Aang early from his prison, but since the Southern Water Tribe was all the way on the opposite side of the globe he knew he had no hope in making it there in the foreseeable future.
Anyways the icing on the cake was that the Southern Water Tribe was embroiled in the late stages of what would later be called the Southern Water Tribe Raids making it too dangerous to go there.
Just the thought of what was happening there boiled his blood, and put everything into perspective when he was living through it. These fire maniacs really put the Nazis to shame with the genocide of one people and the cleansing of another.
Besides all that, he really had no idea where to look for the Avatar. All he knew was just somewhere in the south pole and that would be like finding a needle in a haystack.
The other piece of information that he was able to gather was that he had no sister… yet. Who knew if Yue would even be born with butterflies now flapping their wings with his unexpected birth.
He hoped she would be or else it would really feel like he caused her death.
What drew Magnus’s attention was the reverence that most of his maids and caretakers held for him. He could understand since he was touched by their great Ocean spirit, the closest thing to their god in this spiritual society.
Thus in a way he was sort of like the chosen one!
That got a creepy laugh from him which he quickly covered when the maids turned his way.
What he couldn't wait for was waterbending!
He already seen plenty of people doing it; from the royal guard, to his father, mother, and the few visitors he got. Plus as the Ocean Spirit put it, his waterbending would be a bit enhanced, and he wondered how that would play out.
That was the sole comfort he had during his days as a feeble, pathetic baby. It was the one thing he could look forward to, the prospect of being able to manipulate water at his will. Just like any regular person from boring old Earth, the hope of one day waking up with some amazing ability was something deeply ingrained in them.
Now to have that ability thrust upon him made him excited beyond measure. All these plebs can gaze upon him in wonder!
He won't deny he tried it out a couple of times, but his arms were so weak that the most he could do was waving it around for a couple minutes before he got tired. Still he didn't give up hope. He knew he had the POWER, and he just needed time to master it.
Once in a while, his father would come to visit him. Magnus couldn't blame the man for being so busy and gone for long periods of time. The man was after all the leader of the whole fricking Nation, and there was a very prolonged war going on as well which added to his burdens.
The chief’s hard face would split into a wide smile when he saw him. Magnus would humor the man with cute baby giggles when he would tickle him and play along.
His mother would love to sing to him whenever she was breastfeeding him, or tell him some legend or tale. Thanks to that he really got an understanding of this world, its history, and its people.
So all in all, life was good for him. Maybe he would have wanted to walk around and explore the palace but for now he was pampered, well-fed, and taken care of.
So what else could he ask for?
And although Magnus did not know it, his life would soon be taking an unexpected turn.
