The Primus Magus

　　As the man in the navy blue suit was hurrying up the stairs, he looked to be extremely excited, grinning from ear to ear. He looked fairly muscular, and yet was toned just enough so that the suit he was wearing could hide his frame and make one assume he only had an average figure.

　　As he finished climbing the stairs that looked as though they were made from a brown colored wood, but when walked on, made a sound of stepping on stone, he dashed through the hallway to the intricately serpent patterned door.

　　He quickly opened the door to see her sitting on the bed, staring out through the window. She turned her head and smiled at him, clearly having heard his hurried footsteps. "What's with the rush, dear? How was your day?" She asked.

　　He quickly rushed to her side and hugged her. When he wouldn't stop hugging her even after quite a while, she started giggling. "Were you that worried?" she asked as she started softly brushing her hand through his hair. "You know that I have never failed at anything, when did you start doubting me so much, hmm?"

　　He finally stopped hugging her so tightly and loosened his grip. He stared at her emerald eyes while still keeping his arms loosely around her. "You have proven them all wrong."

　　She stared back at his ruby colored eyes. "No dear, not just me. He has also proven everyone wrong."

　　He beamed a smile at her. "He is our son after all." Gently placing one of his hands on her belly, he warmly whispered "Alesar".

-=-=-+-=-=-

　　An indeterminate amount of time passed before he next awakened.

　　The feeling of disorientation immediately after awakening had diminished by a large degree this time. He could only slightly register that feeling of confusion, as if it did not exist at all. He thought that this piece of good news could have something to do with either his body getting used to whatever the side effects were of what had caused his current predicament, or because he had been able to sort out his thoughts the last time he had woken up. Perhaps a bit of both.

　　While he still could not think of anything that he could do to get out of his current predicament, it at least seemed like he was not in any imminent danger. And for some reason or another, not only was worrying about things out of his control not productive or help his situation in any manner, any strong emotion or extensive thinking even seemed to cause him to become physically tired, as if thinking itself was exhausting.

　　He wondered about what he could do now. As much as he enjoyed the downtime after years of constant work, simply doing nothing would get very boring very fast. Not that he could stay awake for very long in the first place. The exhaustion always seemed to consume him after only a little while of staying awake.

　　Since thinking too deeply about anything was exacerbating the already fast onset of fatigue, he thought that maybe, at least just for now, he should try to not think about anything at all and take this time to give himself a temporary but much needed break from doing or thinking anything at all.

　　He decided to fall back into meditation.

　　As the layers of consciousness peeled back one by one, layer after layer, in an infinite loop of deeper relaxation, he felt himself drift unknowingly into sleep at some point.

　　Over an indefinite but long period of time, the only thing he did was go back and forth between sleep and meditation, with no other care or thought in the world.

　　After many such cycles, one day he woke up and found that he did not feel any disorientation or confusion at all. Over the many cycles, he had felt that not only had those feeling gradually lessened, he had also been able to stay awake for progressively longer periods at a time.

　　Today he even finally managed to open his eyes.

　　He could not see much however; only pitch-black darkness awaited him. The sort of darkness that made it so that one could not tell the difference between closing or opening their eyes from sight alone, and the physical sensation of the movement of the eyelids was the only indication of having opened or closed them.

　　 At least he now had concrete evidence that he was getting physically stronger and was regaining his strength.

　　He thought that now he had had enough of only meditating for the whole time he was awake. He was certain that he had done only that for a very long time now. Since the exhaustion was also setting in slower and slower now, he thought that maybe, he could finally do some thinking. However, just as he decided on that, he immediately faced a problem.

　　He did not know what to think about.

　　For all his life, the only thinking that he had to do was about his immediate or near-future survival. He did not have time to ponder about any mysteries of life or about anything other than the options and opportunities that were available to him and how to benefit the most from them.

　　When he was in school, he had found out that while he was not bad at any specific subject, he seemed to excel at languages and mathematics. Moreover, since programming was one of the fields of work that required the least amount of money to start working in, and since it had yet to be fully taken over by Artificial Intelligences, he had decided to put all of his focus on that.

　　Both in the late stages of his high school and throughout his time in university, all he did was complete odd jobs such as being a caretaker for the very elderly or very young as a means to earn ends meet, and learned everything he could about programming. After graduation from university, it had been constantly doing contracts for corporations, to both earn ends meet and keep the university debt at bay.

　　He never had to think about anything except work. That is the reason why now he faced a conundrum.

　　He did not know what to think about.

　　So, he decided to think about the only thing he could. About programming.

==Author's Note==

　　I'm very sorry everyone. There hasn't been chapters because there were way too many things going on in my life at the same time. I got a job, there was a labour strike at my Uni that stayed on for months and completely threw my schedule way off whack (exams and classes got cancelled and then rescheduled all over the place), and I also just had my birthday.

　　I know they are excuses, but I still wanted to inform my readers why it happened. I will try my very best to keep an even pace of 2 chapters a week (on Tuesdays and Fridays at 6 pm Toronto time), but sometimes life might just say "Here, have 3,141,592 lemons and 1337 bags of salt and sugar!" and I'll just have to put my head down and obediently get to making lemonades without getting salty about it. For now though, even through all the hecticness, I managed to make a stash of chapters that can serve as a buffer for if I find myself with less time again in the distant future. But for the near future, expect to have a very consistent release rate.

　　I promise that I WILL finish this story fully without doing any rush endings or anything of the sort! Even if I have to write it for 96 more years. So for those of you who will be along for the journey with me, I thank you very much for reading my story! And I hope everyone has an absolutely fantastic day!! :)