The King's Gamma (#Wattys2024)

Sixty

So, I found a fun little tool, and I'm mostly playing around with it. I've known about speech to text forever and have been wanting to try it, but nothing ever quite worked out. Turns out my microsoft license key enables it unlimited in Word for me. YAY. So, here we go!

Little inserts as I was using the transcriber:

"What exactly is dictating oh awesome right oh enter enter page down go down fuck work damnit fine I'll press enter myself you stupid"

"so why I'm a I no"

"Ascent bardol no millicent bardell there we go you should have gotten it right the first time"

"This is so awesome"

"Look ma no hands"

"Ooooooh that's the button for autopunctuation good, good, good, awesome sauce.

My fiance seems very entertained, to be honest.

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I woke up. How this felt strange...

How my body felt small and unfamiliar. I couldn't quite understand it, and yet I was used to being this small.

Getting out of my bed, I went through the small cupboard that contained my clothing. Getting dressed, I was ready for the day. Still trying to figure out why this felt strange to me, I walked out of my small room into the hallway and down the corridor towards the living room where my parents sat. My parents, Sicily and Levi, were both known as hunters. Hunters of what exactly, you may ask?

Wraiths, Dragons, fairies, salamanders, you name it, they hunted it. They were well known within the hunter community, but none knew about Millicent, me. I was their greatest secret, with children becoming scarcer and scarcer in a world that was dominated by creatures and ancient structures that were no longer used. Ancient technologies that gave birth to creatures of mass destruction.

"Hello darling," Sicily greeted. "Are you ready for your first day?"

"First day, Mother?"

"You know," Levi said. "Doesn't seem like you're ready. Where are your new clothes? The ones for school?"

It dawned on me. The reason I was kept secret. I was a girl in a world dominated by boys. A world where women were as scarce as anything else that lived hundreds of years ago. I was also known as a Magus. A mage if you will. And today was my first day at an all-mage Academy. For boys. Classic, isn't it?

A mage was as rare as a girl was. You can imagine how proud my parents were. A girl and a mage? Double score on their part.

Though, because I was a girl I was never fully tested. My powers were never revealed as much as I was never revealed. And because of this, they never tested the powers that they saw me wielding.

I sighed, "I forgot."

"Understandable." My mother commented. "Be sure to bring down your books as well. Your magus badge too."

"Yes, mother."

I went back upstairs and got dressed in the school uniform. It was not strange for men to have long hair so luckily, I got to keep my hair long. The fact that I was very androgynous thanks to my parents only helped in the matter. Grabbing the badge books and everything else I knew I would need; I went down the corridor again. Breakfast, simple as it was with an egg a slice of have made from a lesser black horn demon. It sounds disgusting I know, but they were demons that were honestly it just kept as livestock, they resembled what was once described to be goats. Some articles mentioned them looking more like Boars with horns.