To my cute little reincarnation,
I'm sure you're pretty confused right about now, right? Hell, I'd be too, and as much as it pains me not to be there to comfort you, there is nothing to be done. Fate is a bitch, and I have unfortunately not managed to kill her. Believe me, I tried.
This letter, along with the Grimoire you're no doubt clutching, is the only thing I was able to smuggle across time and space, and into your hands.
Normally, reincarnations get fragments of memory, echoes of who they once were. You won't. He decided I was too dangerous to be allowed that luxury. Too much knowledge, too much power, too many… questionable habits, apparently. So that option was denied to me.
But I don't like being told what to do. It's my knowledge, and I will do with it whatever I please. I traced the path of your rebirth long before my final breath. I sealed everything where only you could find it. And the key is in the Grimoire you now hold.
I won't tell you what to do or how to live your life, but I will give you a small piece of advice:
You are not me. You do not have to walk the path I walked. You are your own person, in all ways that matter. Sure, we might look the same, and in time we might even wield the same power, but that is where our similarities end. I was a king, and while I loved it dearly, it chained me in ways I resented later. You, my dear reincarnation, are a blank slate. You can be whatever you want.
So take that Grimoire, learn from it. Use what serves you, toss aside what doesn't, and carve your own path.
Yours,
King Solomon.
P.S: Some devils owe me huge favors, so if you're ever at your wits' end, find Runeas Gremory and start cashing them in. She knows who else was there with us back then.
P.P.S: Good luck, Sol!
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Like every morning, I looked at the letter pinned to my door, and a small smile spread on my face. Even after two months of trying to study magic, it felt like a dream, but the letter always managed to ground me.
Now, don't get me wrong, I still felt like I've won the lottery, but that reality was something my brain knew what to do with.
But magic… that was something else. It was so wonderful and so mindblowing that the first time I cast a spell, I actually cried in happiness. The feeling was simply too overwhelming.
It was a simple spell I chose to be my first. I made the flowers around my house bloom. And bloom they did, in fact, all the flowers in two hundred feet around me did. And I'm sure the bees loved it too, with how happily they buzzed around.
I still had some of them arranged in a vase on my kitchen counter. Held by a stasis spell as fresh as the day I plucked them. I loved them even if they were simple dandelions and clovers. I would keep them forever as a reminder of where it all began.
Even my house was a simple construction. I was no architect, but I managed to make a stable-ish square from the timber I gathered in the forest around me. The roof, though, now that was another story. There, I had to get a bit creative and use large branches. The poor thing was crooked and slanted to one side, held together by magic and prayer alone. From the outside, my house looked like a witch's hut, and I loved it.
Honestly, I loved everything about my new life. Here, in this forest, surrounded by flowers and trees, I was free. I was not called a waste of space. I was not pushed around and picked on.
I thought I was numb to it, and maybe to an extent I really was, but after not hearing a peep for two months straight and feeling the lightness and the spring in my step, I knew differently. This is how it should have been from the start.
"Ahh~ What a great day…" I murmured once I stepped outside. The sun was shining nicely, and the weather was pretty mild despite it being close to summer. I really wanted to go to the town that was nearby. Mainly because whatever I managed to forage around here was mostly gone. Because when I checked my pantry, which was just a hole in the ground covered by cold charms, all I had left were a few mushrooms and maybe three handfuls of blueberries. I was running dangerously low on food, and I'm not exactly a hunter, so getting meat was off the table. Plus, I honestly don't have the heart to kill an innocent animal.
Though even shopping for food was going to be a problem, seeing as I had no money whatsoever, and I highly doubt that FamilyMart recognizes enchanted acorns as currency.
Not many options left for me, well, there were a few… Three weeks ago, I found an old wooden sign hammered into a tree by nails. I could take them, transmute the metal into gold, and sell it. Or, I could use something I learned from the Grimoire. I could summon a devil to make a deal.
I don't know which option was more frightening, because the only people who would even entertain buying unmarked gold would be shady at best or downright Yakuza at worst. But devils… I knew almost nothing about them. The only thing the Grimoire mentioned was never to try summoning Lucifer, and that was it. I only knew there were more because the letter mentioned a devil named Runeas Gremory and alluded to others.
It should be safe. Hopefully. Because if I understood the circle I wanted to use correctly, it would not summon them here by force. It was more akin to opening a door for guests and saying come inside, please.
There were other spells with similar but more sinister effects inside the Grimoire. One would forcefully summon a specific devil if I used their name, and the other would do the same, but on top of that, it would bind them in place. So definitely not something I wanted to use, especially if I wanted to avoid antagonizing this Runeas person.
Because yeah, who else was I going to summon? The circle needed a name to function, and this was the only one I knew, besides Lucifer, and that was apparently a no-go.
"Well, time to get drawing." I decided to bite the bullet, summoning it was. They owed Solomon a favor, so it should be okay. Hopefully.
And by the time I was done with the circle, an hour had gone by. Unfortunately, because I had no paper or anything else to draw on or draw with, I had to use dirt as my paper and a small stick as my pencil.
But a stick was still a stick despite its small size, so I had to make the circle big to fit in all the little details.
All in all, the whole thing was about fifteen by fifteen feet in diameter. Most of it was hidden by the grass, and I only knew it functioned because it started faintly glowing once I connected the last line.
"Phew~ that was tedious.." I stretched my back a little. This was one of the few times my height of five feet and three inches came in handy… I didn't have to bend down so much.
"Here goes nothing." A tiny spark of pure mana surged from my feet and activated the circle. I watched as it slowly activated section after section of the spell, and when it all finally lit up, I held my breath in both trepidation and a small amount of excitement. This was a big step for me.
I stood there in silence, and nothing had happened for a while. If I understood it correctly, it should have stopped glowing if my summon was rejected, but seeing as the circle was still humming and glowing with energy, it wasn't that. Maybe it was too weak?
I pushed a bit more mana into it, still nothing too dramatic, but a definite step up from the first time. The circle lit up in response, and the air above it started shimmering like a mirage. But still, no response even after a couple of minutes.
"Third time's the charm?" I said wryly and pushed even more magic into it. That seemed to do the trick because I felt something falling into place and actually connecting with the spell. Finally. I was starting to get a little worried there for a second. Like maybe I made some kind of mistake while drawing the circle, you know?
The first thing I saw was the flare of red light filling up the entire circle. Then an irritated voice spoke.
"I don't know how you learned of this spell, but—" The light faded second later, and I saw the owner of that voice. Was it a girl? Maybe a young adult? Kinda hard to tell. She looked about as young as I did, and she was incredibly pretty, bordering on ethereal beauty that made one avert one's eyes.
The second thing I noticed was the hair. It was the reddest red I've ever seen, and it was tied into twin tails.
And the third thing I noticed was her eyes. They were light purple, maybe lavender, and currently bulging out of her head as she looked at me with a look of shock.
"S–Solomon?" Ah… Yeah.
"Not quite? But um— Hi?"
~*~*~*~*~
Something woke me up. At first, I thought it was one of the Gremory servants guarding my chambers, but no, there was nobody there when I opened my eyes. No, the thing, the impossible thing that greeted me was a summoning circle, one I recognized and one that nobody should have used in thousands of years.
That thing was Solomon's creation. I saw it being used. I used it way back when. For a heartbeat, I wondered if I was still dreaming. Then the circle lit up a second time, and a faint wisp of mana leaked through.
I recognized it.
All I could do was stare at it, unmoving and barely breathing. That was his mana. The real deal. That was Solomon calling me, as he did back in the day. But of course, that was impossible because the man was long gone, swallowed by time and reduced to a parody of himself in the minds of people.
So what the hell was this? Did the madman actually find a way to live in the end? Impossible… He would not have stayed silent for ages. That was not him, no, he liked statements. He would have surfaced after the Great War all smug.
Then the circle lit up a third time. I had to act, and I had to do it now, before the caster changed their mind and cancelled the spell. If, and that was a big if, there was Solomon on the other side, I don't think I could forgive myself for not accepting the summons.
I jumped through, the circle enveloped me in familiar magic, but there were tiny differences, so not entirely familiar. Underneath that feeling was something new, something… almost skittish, like a startled animal.
And whatever I was imagining was going to be on the other side, it definitely wasn't this.
"S–Solomon?" I blurted out when I saw his face through the light. That was definitely him. No doubt.
"Not quite? But um— Hi?" He said with a small wince and a shy wave. Oh. OH?! I quickly pulled myself together. Then it hit me.
"How?!" I asked once I stepped out and was close to him. The poor boy shrank a bit.
"H-How what?" He squeaked. Oops, my tone might have been a bit too harsh.
"Where– No. *sigh* Solomon. How are you here?"
"Umm— I appeared here? Two months ago." What. The. Hell.
"Right. Obviously. You just happened to appear here?" Sarcasm found its way into my words.
"… yeah? I'm not Solomon. I mean, yes, I am, but also not. But also, he said, I don't have to be? Does that make sense?" He panicked, and his hands started flailing around cutely.
"No. What do you mean he said." I narrowed my eyes at him, and he swallowed deeply.
"He left me a letter?"
"*sigh* Of course… Show me?" Of course, the man couldn't even reincarnate like every other hero of humanity. No, he just had to be special. But then again, that was just like him, wasn't it?
"O–Okay." And I watched as little Solomon scampered inside the house, which was more like a hut held together by hopes and an abundance of magic, and brought back a letter written on parchment older than most devils alive today.
"Here." He gave it to me, and I slowly read it over. Now this, this was unmistakable, this was written by Solomon.
Once I finished, I looked at the boy in front of me as he fidgeted nervously.
"So you have none of his memories? None?" It may have been a bit redundant, but I just had to ask. Maybe to assure myself that Solomon was not trying to prank me from whatever afterlife he was in.
"None, Miss Gremory. I—I just have this letter." He snapped to attention, and I definitely did coo when he called me Miss Gremory. No. Not at all.
"*sigh* Right. Right…. Sol, why did you summon me?" I felt like I had to get it out of the way before I moved on to more important things. Like the fact that the memoryless reincarnation of Solomon was living in the forests of Japan, completely unguarded. Or the fact that his "house" was a glorified pile of wood.
"Um— I am out of food. I–I wanted to make a deal for that." he said, blushing, and idly fidgeting with his hair.
"..." I think something in me actually broke. Now, don't get me wrong, humans did make deals like that, sure, but I won't let Sol do it.
"Hmm. Sol. How attached are you to this place?" I asked.
"I—I just like it here because it's quiet and there are no people." He admitted quietly.
"Mhm~ And you've been here alone for two months, yes?"
"Yes?" He started backing away from me. Heh. Looks like he got an idea of what I mean.
"How about you come with me, hmm? That way, you don't have to hide away in a forest. You'd be behind sturdy wards, and even sturdier magical barriers. Plus, you'd get your own room, all the food you could ever eat, and my protection. It's not a bad deal, you know?" He heard me out, but his eyes sharpened. Oh, there were indeed some claws hidden deep behind the soft and squishy exterior.
"W–What's the catch?" He asked firmly, or well, as firmly as he could. It was still mostly just cute, but still. His eyes, though, his eyes were darting all around the place, looking, searching for a way out should it be necessary. I don't think he knew he could just dismiss me… oh well.
"No catch, no hidden agenda. Solomon was my friend. He helped me… I just want to return the favor." I said with earnestness.
"Won't it cause trouble for you?" I think I got him. Nice.
"No at all, and even if it does. So what? I am long retired. Let my cute little descendants sort it out. They are competent people." He stared at me for a minute, chewing on his lower lip in thought.
"I will take my flowers with me. That's non-negotiable." I had to strain myself not to giggle. Of all the things…
"Of course, Sol. You can bring your flowers."