Sunlight streamed through the stained glass, casting multi-coloured hues across the room, illuminating the baby's face. However, If one were to look upon this face, they would not find the joyful countenance of a carefree child, nor the rumpled features of an agitated infant, but a face wrought with desperation, as if weighted down by years of contemplation. A face that could only belong to a middle-aged man, likely going through a midlife crisis.
The most unique midlife crisis to ever exist.
"Release me from my prison!"
Try as he might, none of his words could get across, translated instead into the wails of an infant.
He was bound tightly in a swaddling cloth-like sheet, surrounded by pillows designed to thwart any of his attempts at escape.
"Okay, I'm sorry for trying to break out before. I won't do it again. Just someone unswaddle me. My little body can't take much more of this."
Saying the child had tried to escape would be giving him too much credit. All he really did was gum Father Fionnlagh hard enough to make the old man drop him, then roll toward the door, bumping into nearly everything along the way, only to be scooped up again before he got anywhere close to the exit.
That was the reason for his current imprisonment.
"Well if I can't get out, I might as well see if I can access any more memories," the child thought to himself as he continued to fight against his swaddling.
"Come on. Think! There has to be something here that activates another one of my memories."
But there was not.
That was the harsh lesson Finnian had learned over the last four weeks. He had exhausted every method he could think of; not a single thought that came to his mind was able to prime a single memory.
It seemed that the upside-down world of his past would be lost to him forever.
But maybe that didn't matter.
Perhaps he had seen all that he needed to see, his true goal, his rightful aim, his revelation made on the doorstep of death. He had it now, and he had an entire lifetime to manifest it.
Maybe the past existed only to remind him of his goal.
"If I can't find out anything more about my past, then all I can do is learn more about the present.
"Which would be a lot easier if I were emancipated!
"Old man, release me from my shackles, and my life is yours!"
Just as those words resounded in Finnian's mind, the door to his room creaked open, revealing a man with short silver-gray hair and an inquisitive gaze peering through the crack.
"If I discipline the child, the gods might punish me," the old man said to himself, thinking of the best way to quiet the child's wails.
The idea of the baby's divinity had been rattling around Fionnlagh's mind for some time now.
When he first saw the child surrounded by wreckage, he simply believed that a Kaijito was present and had dropped off her child. The reason for this would be obvious; after all, when a woman transforms from a Kaijito to a kaiju, she has little control over her senses and will attack anything blindly.
Including her own child.
Such was the fate of those afflicted by the curse.
However, Fionnlagh, after piecing his theory together, quickly realized that it wouldn't work.
The reason was simple: no woman afflicted by the curse can ever have a child. So the baby could not possibly belong to the Kaijito.
So then, what?
Was the baby carried by another beast, perhaps a remnant Ruhk beast? Or maybe the Kaijito woman did bring him, but she stole the baby from another? Or was it possible that the divine blessing of a god had manifested itself in some human-like form?
All these questions bounced around in the old man's head, quickly formulating theories, only for him to dismiss them seconds later. The mystery of the baby, it seemed, could not be solved by him; after all, he was always better with a sword than with his mind.
One piece of evidence, however, stood out as perfect proof of the child's divinity in the old mans mind.
A week before the current date, Father Fionnlagh brought Finnian out to play in the sandpit. There were no other children of his age around, so Finnian had the whole sandpit to himself. However, instead of playing in the sand, Finnian merely sat there, pondering it as if he were trying to see each individual grain.
Father Fionnlagh, now sporting a confused grin, tried to encourage the young boy to play in the sand, moving along small wooden toys in the hope that the baby might imitate his actions.
But the child did no such thing.
Instead, he merely placed his finger in the sand and began to move it up and down, left and right, raising and lowering it periodically within the sand below him.
Fionnlagh initially believed that the baby was simply playing, making infantile abstract drawings in the sand, as any child his age would do. But he was wrong. Dead wrong. The realization of his incorrect assessment shocked the old man to his core.
He could write.
The child, no more than six months old, was able to write.
This, by itself, would have been an unbelievable discovery. A genius child who knows how to write at such a young age would likely be the talk of Zizarag, if not the entirety of Tarth.
And yet...
What the child presented was somehow even more amazing than the ability to write.
It seemed as if the child was privy to an entirely new language. The only being in the world with knowledge of another language was none other than a whiny infant.
Though Father Fionnlagh, of course, did not know the language, he recognized that what the baby was writing in the sand was not mere scribbles or doodles. The main giveaway was the fact that the words were largely made up of the same symbols used in common language.
But what did it mean?
Most caretakers likely would have chalked it up to the baby seeing some letters somewhere and then putting them together in a strange order. But Fionnlagh knew that something bigger was going on, that there was a hidden meaning behind these words.
Confusion settled on the old man's face, lingering for some time, starkly contrasted by the child's uncanny look of determination. As the man's expression shifted from confusion to despair, he simply bowed before the child, uttering words of dejected reverence.
"I am sorry, divine child, but I cannot understand your words."
Inadvertently, however, he had answered the child's question perfectly, albeit disappointingly.
"Why the hell is that old man just standing there, peeking through the crack in the door like I'm gonna smite him down?
"Wait. I can't smite people.
"Can I?"
The child's attempt to smite the old man, which ultimately resulted in him simply looking intensely at him and nodding up and down, was, unsurprisingly, ineffective.
"Hmm, okay, well that doesn't seem to work. I guess I should cross that one off the mental list as well."
As Finnian had nothing at all to do, confined both by his own fragile infant body and intricate swaddling, he now spent his time not looking for new memories but figuring out what magical attributes he might have.
He was transported to another world, after all, and he saw first-hand that people had at least what seemed to be magical powers.
How else was it that his mother was able to jump 100 feet in the air?
However, despite how hard Finnian might try, there was nothing; no magic, no abilities, nothing.
"Ah, I see. So I must just get them later in life or something like that. Well, I have to wait then, I guess that's what I gotta do...
"Why is that old man still staring at me?
"Huh? I wonder if he is weirded out because of what I wrote in the sand. I mean, it was a pretty simple question; maybe 'Can you understand this?' translates to... like... 'will you be my servant' or something in this language... that would explain why he bowed."
Somewhat refining his speech, Finnian turned his senseless wails into a more concise form.
Baby babble.
Though he was not able to articulate any real words understandable in either language, he was able to do something almost as effective.
Concise repetition.
"Buh ere!"
"Buh ere!"
"Buh ere!"
Finnian spaced out all of these requests, adding a head nod for increased effectiveness.
Father Fionnlagh's face was now marked by the same confusion that had possessed it previously. Though he could not understand what the infant was saying, the fact that the child continued to repeat the same infantile noise down to the syllable meant that there was some meaning behind the babble.
More than just this, he knew that it was a command; the head nod and strangely stern look made that evident.
But a command to do what?
The old man had no idea.
"Man, this is impossible. It sounds like I just made out with the backside of a bee. If my arms were free, I could move my fingers and gesture for him to come here instead of saying this in this godforsaken baby babble. But then again, if my hands were free, I wouldn't have to be talking to this guy in the first place."
Father Fionnlagh, slowly understanding more of the situation, came to the baby's side and lowered his head. Though the gesture was intended to be a bow, it could have easily been mistaken for an extremely close infantile inspection, as the man's now-bowed head loomed over the cot that Finnian was in, with their heads only centimeters away from one another.
"Woah there, old timer!
Let's give the baby a bit more personal space now, shall we?"
Finnian flicked his head up with all the might his neck could muster, indicating for the old man to take a few steps back, and to the boy's surprise, the old man did just that.
"Woo, now we are making some progress. Freedom will soon be mine at last!"
As that thought echoed in the child's mind, the half-opened door creaked open further, allowing a small child with chestnut hair and cold emerald eyes to enter the room.
"Old timer, why are you bowing to a baby?" Kerian asked.
"Oh, Kerian, my boy, you do not understand. This baby is not merely a human like you or me; he was sent by the god above to... well, I'm not too sure why, but he was sent nonetheless," the old man responded, his head remaining bent in reverence.
"And you know he's magical how?"
"Not magical. Divine."
"Okay, whatever. How do you know?"
"Well, he sent me a message."
"A message?"
"Yes, a message in the sand."
"In the sand?"
"Yes, in the sand! It was a message that could only be sent by someone with divine attributes. After all, what baby at that age is able to read, much less write?"
The young boy scowled at the baby, who returned an equally nasty expression, juxtaposed harshly by his unimposing figure.
"Okay, so the baby sent you a message. And what exactly did the message say?"
"You see, that's the best part: I have no idea what it said."
The old man turned his head slightly, grinning ear to ear as if trying to convince both the boy and himself that the words flowing from his mouth were the truth, not a stream of convoluted lies.
"Uh-huh? And these 'words in the sand,' they didn't tell you to harm yourself or anyone else now, did they? Or to do something you might regret?"
The boy's eyebrows raised as his narrow eyes widened.
"No! What? Why are you even asking me that? I already told you that I couldn't understand what the words were saying! How could they tell me anything if I can't understand them?"
Father Fionnlagh's smile quickly faded to a face of annoyance.
"Okay, okay, I'm just making sure. And how exactly do you know that this child is divine and not just some... I don't know, demon or something?"
"..."
The old man instantly turned his head in shock, meeting the eyes of the infant.
"Please forgive the insolence of this small child; he knows not what he speaks of!"
As the old man began to plead, he was now fully on the floor, prostrating himself before the child.
"This is absurd." Kerian interjected with a languished expression "If we're going to see if this baby's really divine or whatever, then we're going to need more evidence than just the fact that he wrote some words down in some sand.'"
"Kerian!" the old man exclaimed, lifting himself from the ground. "You would test the divinity of the divine? Why do you think we call them divinities? For fun? Silly child."
"Okay, I'll tell you what, old man. Either we prove that this little guy is divine," the young boy reached behind his back, and something glistened against the multi-coloured light, "or I take him out!"
In a flash, a sharp obsidian blade was now pressed gently against the infant's vulnerable neck.
"WHAT THE FUCK?!" Finnian mentally exclaimed.
"Why the hell does this kid have a knife? What, did I die and get transported to London or something? Good god.
"Okay, I gotta stay calm.
"Technically, he is not trying to kill me, just threatening to kill me.
"Which isn't much better...
"So I guess that death look he shot my way was his killing intent. Well, if you think I'm going out before I reach my goal of magical girl thighs, then you got another thing coming!"
Following logically from Finnian's belief that this world is magical came the existence of magical girls. After all, he had already seen evidence of extraordinary abilities, like his mother's incredible leap, which suggested that magical beings could indeed exist. The existence of a whole new type of thigh for Finnian to investigate gave him the necessary resolve to break out of this life-threatening situation. Using none other than his signature move.
Gum.
Finnian brought his toothless mouth down on the young boy's hand, gnawing on his supple skin.
And once again, he was victorious.
The young boy's hand recoiled as it came in contact with the baby's mouth, causing him to drop the knife. As the knife fell and landed in the cot, Finnian knew exactly what he had to do.
Using all the power that he had, Finnian cocked back his swaddled legs and shot them forward with all his might, making contact with the knife and shooting it forward outside the cot, right in front of Father Fionnlagh's feet.
"And the crowd goes wild! 'WOOOO YEAAA!'
"That's why you don't mess with the soon-to-be magical baby, chump."
A face that could only belong to a man who clutched victory from the jaws of defeat, now pointed itself directly at the old man with a blade beside his feet.
"Alright, my good and faithful servant, dispose of the child."
The man then raised the blade to his fingertip and pressed it down with considerable force.
Yet the blade drew no blood.
"Oh, a toy? Yeah, I definitely knew that, haha... I say we still get rid of the kiddo though, just to be on the safe side."
However, the old man's gaze quickly switched from the toy sword before him to the now severely distressed face of Kerian.
The young boy was holding his right hand tightly, the same hand that Finnian had bitten. As the old man rushed over to look at the wound, he froze in his tracks as he saw the state of the young boy's hand.
There was no broken flesh, nor bleeding, but what could now be seen was not the hand of a young boy, but the gnarled fingers of an ancient senior.