Sarvas

After suckling his fill from his mother's breast, Ahsch drifted off to sleep, the soft conversation of his new family providing a comfort that he hadn't realized he'd been missing for years.

That comfort was immediately disturbed when he found himself in a lucid dream. Once again in soul-orb form, he drifted through a shadowscape of muted colors, abstract shapes taking form and warping all around him. At the edge of his sight, numerous twisting motes of light, displaying every color of the rainbow and in a wide variety of sizes, followed as he drifted. Some capered and danced and played with each other, others seemed to lumber along, while other soared or scuttled or leapt or slinked or darted.

Something in Ahsch recognized the motes of light as entities, sentient and... incomplete. Familiars, he realized. Office Lady had said that Dominant's Tithe should have come with one, and she hadn't said anything about Mana Generation methods taking time to start working - though his obviously had limitations - so the Boon was likely tied to Dominant's Tithe, and activated immediately.

Hadn't she said something about choosing? he wondered, even as he recalled, with perfect clarity, the System Description of the Boon:

Office Lady's additional explanation wasn't as crystal-clear in his mind, but he remembered a few key points. Familiars had innate magics that differed based on their animal form, were as intelligent as humans, and were fanatically devoted to the mage that summoned them.

Ahsch thought about it for a moment, wondering how to sort through the dozens, hundreds, maybe even thousands of familiars that surrounded him. Something that's physically stronger than me - or rather, that will be stronger than adult me - would be a good choice, given Dominant's Tithe, Ahsch thought.

Suddenly, dozens of the familiars broke away from the group, disappearing into the surrounding shadowscape. Ahsch blinked. Is it... really that simple? he wondered.

Let's see... I don't think I want anything big. Maybe... nothing larger than a big cat or dog? Again, a great multitude of the familiars left, and Ahsch got the impression that all were of great size.

Grinning to himself, he continued. No insects, nothing smaller than a rabbit, no fish or amphibians; on and on he narrowed and cultivated his list. The last criteria he thought of he debated for several moments. No males.

Even with numerous restrictions, he still had dozens of familiars to choose from. He quickly figured out that some criteria simply didn't work; 'who wants to be my familiar' and 'familiars skilled with Sympathetic Bonds' saw no changes to his options.

Ahsch considered for a moment. He worried for a moment that he might wake up before he could decide, but a sensation of calm emanated from the assembled familiars. Perhaps time passes differently within this lucid dream, he thought.

Out of ideas, he invited the familiars to introduce themselves. One by one, they approached, the motes of light gently brushing his soul-orb and imparting an impression, both of their form and of their personality. A proud and fierce wolf. A daredevil, adventurous eagle. A curious, introverted rabbit.

Universally, however, all were eager to have a mage to serve, promising their obedience and loyalty.

After almost two-dozen came and went, and even without seeing those to come after, Ahsch found her.

She was an animal not of Earth, requiring magic to live. Fox-like, yet as large as a German Sheppard, she was covered in silvery fur with black-tipped ears and paws and tail. Across her body were dozens of needles, none thicker than a child's pinky-finger, and ranging in length from a few inches long to around a foot. Normally, they were soft and pliable, but she demonstrated in the moment of introduction that they could become hard and sharp with a small surge of mana, a deadly coat of armor or as tiny knives.

She was curious and kind-hearted, but also fiercely protective, capable of being as vicious as she needed to. There was also a sense of youth to her, which Ahsch didn't know what to make of.

Knowing that she was his familiar, Ahsch made his choice known.

Mahat

There was a tremor through the shadowscape, and the remaining familiars departed while Mahat gently nuzzled against Ahsch's soul.

And then he was yawning awake, eyes opening to see...

He blinked. Laying alongside his mother, nose mere inches away, was Mahat, as he had seen her in his mind's eye when she introunced herself. Her tail became a blur behind her when she saw that he was awake, her golden eyes sparkling with joy.

Looking around, Ahsch saw that his family was quite excited about the development, but didn't seem too worried. Across his mother's chest, Ariin was staring at the great spined fox with wide, amazed eyes.

Well, I suppose, if familiars are part and parcel to magic, this can't be the weirdest thing ever, Ahsch thought. Given they seem practically used to her being here, I'd guess she showed up while I was asleep, and I didn't wake up right away...

Reincarnation was strange, Ahsch found. And it wasn't the name - after only a few months being called 'Ahsch,' he had gotten used to his new name. The strangeness came mostly from the melding of an adult consciousness in an infant's body, but it also made sense when he thought about it. On the one hand, he had his memories of being Mitchel, a man in his mid 20s from Earth. His consciousness and self-identity came from that. But at the same time, his body - and therefore, his brain - was that of Ahsch, a hrafthi from Euphoria, growing up in a small village in a fantastical world.

So while he might know that crying wasn't the optimal way to express his hunger, or coldness, or otherwise give voice to his infantile displeasures, that thought process broke down quickly in the brain of an infant, and so he screamed and cried.

Though to be fair, learning a language took years, even as a baby, so it wasn't like he had many options for getting attention. He did try to raise a fuss before things became a problem, something that seemed to bewilder his parents, though they were also grateful for it.

As he grew, Ahsch learned that he had indeed been reborn in the hamlet of Sarvas, and his father, Noeh, was a human with five wives - Dahil, Ahsch and Ariin's mother; Kebir, a feline leothra; Betyn, a bovine holustaur; Vinra, a canine luponan; and Maviern, a hare-like lepuru - and many children on the way. Ahsch and Ariin were the eldest, Noeh's firstborn, and aside from Kebir, his other wives were all expecting when Dahil gave birth.

As could only be expected, Ahsch's first years - aside from gaining Mahat as his familiar - were unremarkable, aside from the births of his six younger sisters over his first four months: Mahlith, Betyn's daughter; Vinra's litter of Casir, Olya, and Diex; and Maviern's Sti'el and Parava.

Betyn and Maviern were sporting baby bumps just barely over a year later.

The six adults co-parented their entire brood, the mothers nursing whoever needed nursing without any fuss over which daughter belonged to which mother, though they seemed particularly keen to make sure that Ahsch drank from every breast in the home.

When the next set of four daughters came - Betyn's Mabya; and Maviern's litter of three this time: Cella, Wolla, and Xulla - the women seemed content with their brood.

All except Kebir, but the wistful, sad look she sometimes got in her eyes when she helped with the other women's babies suggested an answer to why she had none of her own. It wasn't as if she and Noeh didn't try - even from across the house, Ahsch could hear her incredibly feline screams and yowls.

As the years passed, Ahsch eagerly learned all he could about Euphoria and Sarvas, to the amusement of his parents and the annoyance of his sisters, who were all much more interested in playing. Still, the adults indulged their eldest child's curiosity.

As the CEO had said, Sarvas was a small village on the frontier of the Kingdom of Starlight, which prided itself on peaceful coexistence between the local monsters and humans. The fact that the kingdom's military and numerous adventurers had expelled the sentient monsters who refused to play nice was often glossed over, but since all six of the adults of the family had been low-ranking adventurers who had, at one point or another, taken quests to keep more aggressive monsters from moving inside the borders of the kingdom, they had firsthand knowledge of the practice. Three other nations and vast tracts of wilderness bordered the Kingdom of Starlight: Nemvataten, a desert theocracy to the west; Te'jaron, a confederacy of smaller kingdoms to the south; and Basali, a magocracy to the north. Due to the geography of the Kingdom of Starlight, access to the north was restricted through a small number of narrow passages, while travel south either necessitated passing through a massive bog, or traveling for weeks around the treacherous terrain. Nemvataten was largely isolationist, so travel between the desert nation and the Kingdom of Starlight was restricted by the thocracy. To the east was wildlands, home to numerous monsters, many of which lived in clans and tribes. Some isolated human settlements also existed to the east, but little was known about them.

As for his immediate surroundings, Ahsch learned that Sarvas was a small settlement that maintained itself by providing guides for adventurers seeking the lair of beasts - non-sentient, non-humanoid monstrous creatures - or valuable foraged items like rare flora. There were maybe a dozen families living in Sarvas, most of which maintained their own personal food gardens, farm animals, and hunted in the surrounding woods. The village was built in the elbow of a small river, flowing down from a mountain into a deep, forested valley, which stretched south-easterly and north-westerly, which was situated in the east-south-eastern region of the Kingdom of Light. Aside from the small adventurers' guild, the only notable features of Sarvas was a small, dilapidated and unused temple; and the trading post which doubled as a carriage station for the adventurers and their loot.

All in all, it was a quite place, and despite the weirdness surrounding Ahsch's arrival, he soon fell into the rhythms of the village, helping his parents in the garden or with the chickens, minding his siblings once he was older, and playing with his sisters and the neighbor children.