Since this might be the last day I have on Erde, let me describe the ego I made in a bit more detail. To be more specific, it's called a servitor. It's like a proto-ego. Not quite fully sentient, but just enough to be useful. I gave it specific instructions to help guide Celestine to better herself. Since this world has no system like in some of the novels written on fantasy world reincarnation that I read in my life that tell you about your skills and stats, I created this ego as a judge on Celestine to motivate her to better herself. So if she learns a skill of any kind, it becomes a skill judged by the ego. Since she was helping Sylvianna clean house and was learning like the sponge that she is, she became slightly more proficient in housework, which the ego judged to be a skill. Maybe I should have limited it to combat skills...

I really just created this as a test. I wanted to see if I could make egos in her mind and it turns out I can. If I tried harder, I could probably make a fully sentient one, too. Not that I'll have that chance now. Celestine is in her mother's arms and rushing to the church clutching her terrified daughter's head crying on her shoulder. I can't hear much aside from her light sobbing. I'm sorry if I traumatised you, young Celestine. You're kinda stuck with the servitor now. Maybe I deserve to be exorcised...

The center of religion in the village is a tall gothic-looking tower. Huge buttresses jutted out around the octagonal building to assist in holding it up. It probably had enough room for 10 stories inside. Though keeping with gothic design, it was really just a very tall roof. A balcony circled around just above a circle of pews. Imagine a normal church where the altar is up front and all the church benches lines up neatly to the entrance. The layout of this building was somewhat similar, except the altar up front was circular and the pews radiated around it in a circle. There were 8 pillars around the outside holding up the balcony above that held more seats.

You're probably wondering how I could see all this with Celestine's face currently buried in her mother's arm. Well, we've been to the church service before many times. We've toured this building with the folks in black and blue robes with other children. Celestine's understanding of religion is still poor, but she loved looking at the pretty murals of stars and galaxies painted on the walls. Girl's got her priorities straight in my opinion. But that doesn't help me.

The religion is polytheistic. They worship seven major gods and allow for the worship of hundreds more, named and unknown. According to the head of the church, there are as many gods in the heavens as there are stars in the sky. Starting to think this is my celestial magic world. But with no practical schooling in magic, there's no way to know for certain.

"Please help! My daughter is hearing voices in her head!" Sylvianna, oh Sylvianna. So worried about your daughter. She was begging the acolytes currently tending the church during down time. This is a medieval world after all. Religion and medicine are kinda one in the same right now. I'm actually surprised Sylvianna didn't rush Celestine here after the blindness scare. Guess this is more important.

"Sylvianna, keep your voice down." A male voice spoke sharply. I didn't actually know how large the village was yet to know if it was small enough for everyone to know your name. Or maybe this acolyte just knew Sylvianna. This church was definitely magnificent enough to be the center of a small city. So who can say how large Celestine's hometown is. She hasn't been to the outskirts yet.

"S-sorry." Her voice was a whisper now.

"Come, follow me downstairs. We'll give her a check over now."

The jostling feeling of being carried down a long flight of stairs against Celestine's mother calmed her enough to make her stop crying. She still rested her head against her mother's shoulder, but her gaze was on the numerous light-emitting crystals that dotted the stone passageway. A very thin wire could be seen connecting the crystals. Thin like a spider's web. Only visible by a tiny glare that it gave off as light passed over it. The church was full of these crystals, but this is the first time I saw that wire. This is the first time since we've been this close to the crystals from what she remembers. I wanted to know what those wires did. How these crystals worked. I didn't want to be exorcised even more now.

We entered a square room with marble walls and brightly blue-colored tiled floors. The ceiling was pitch black, which heavily contrasted with the rest of the room's contents. I could see no light source anywhere in the room, but it was illuminated nonetheless. This was the room Celestine was born in. The church's hospital ward. Flimsy walls stood to separate the various rooms. They were temporary barriers so that they could be moved and rearranged depending on the need. Probably during wartime they could be all pushed against the wall to be able to line the room with several hundred cots. Right now there were only five large rooms on each side of a hallway. At the end of the hallway was a heavy wooden door that probably separated into offices and storage. The stairs we came down on continued downward, but this was our destination.

The acolytes motioned Sylvianna into the first room on the right and she carefully laid Celestine on a standard flat operating table. There was a small amount of padding that separated her from the hard surface of the table, but it did little to make it comfortable.

"Okay, little Celestine. Tell us about the voice you heard." The acolyte that spoke was the same one that hushed Sylvianna upstairs earlier. He was probably a head figure for the healers. Or he was just the only one working at the time. The man was covered in the black blue robes. This is the first time she got close enough to properly get a look at them. The cloth itself was completely black with tiny spots of white all over it. A dark blue cloud pattern stretched from his left shoulder to his right waist. Celestine would have no knowledge of what this pattern was. But me being a sci-fi nut when I was alive knew exactly what it was. A bright blue representation of a spiral galaxy, very heavily detailed to the point it shamed the murals upstairs. And at his chest would be the bright white ball of the galactic core, but his robe stopped before there and just a black tunic covered his chest under the robe.

The man's charcoal-black eyes looked Celestine up and down as if to strip her completely and bore right into her very soul. That's probably exactly what he was doing, looking at her soul right now. Or it could have been what he was doing. I have no idea. All I've been doing is playing about in her head. I have no clue how my soul and hers cohabit this body.

"Uhm, i-it was the voice of a woman. While momma and I were tidying the house, it spoke to me with words I've never heard before." Celestine's voice was like crystal. One slip and she'd shatter into pieces. The voice she spoke of was the voice I assigned to the ego. But what did she mean words she'd never heard befo... fuck. I forgot to force the ego to speak in her native tongue. The fucking thing spoke to her in English. God. DAMN IT.

"Do you remember exactly what it said or how it sounded?" The man said, his eyes narrowing, inspecting her head.

"It said, " Photographic memory. She recited the message perfectly. In fluent English. She even kept the monotone voice of the ego. Regretting giving her photographic memory about now. She will have no idea what it means, but she could repeat it exactly how it was said. The eyes of everyone in the room shot open wide from hearing the tongue of a language that should not exist in this world, let alone spoken by a girl who'd just had her 5th birthday. Well, they wouldn't know it was from another world, hopefully. I hope this world isn't one where English is like some ancient language or something. I hate stories like that. So lazy...

"That's fascinating." The man placed his hand onto Celestine's head and forced some kind of magic into her mind. Me having no understanding of magic yet had no way to defend against it. Luckily all it did was put her to sleep. Her consciousness left her and her eyes closed. I escaped her short term memory and listened to the conversation of those in the room with her subconscious.

"Bring me the inspection results of her birth. I want to compare them with what I am sensing in her now."

"Yes sir."

There was no way to tell what's exactly going on in the room with sound alone. But there was one set of footprints walking away. I could also hear breathing very close to her ears, so whoever was inspecting her had their head within inches of Celestine's face.

"Is she all right?" Sylvianna, ever the worrying Sylvianna. Sorry for possessing your daughter. Please forgive me.

"Here you are, sir." That was fast. They must not have many records if it was found that fast. The fluttering of papers exchanging hand and some light jingling of crystals echoed slightly.

"Ahh, this makes no sense. Her mental activity was perfectly normal right out of the womb. Now it's off the charts. Her mind is interpreting information even now. Actually..." He was silent for a moment, then spoke again. "She's listening to us speak even as she's unconscious. That's a scary ability. Remarkable. Remarkable." Is this man some kind of living EEG or something? "Tell me, Sylvianna, have there been any incidents since her birth that might explain this? What is her diet like, what does she do at home, has she had any contact with anyone aside immediate family and friends?" He spoke several questions at once. That last one was oddly specific. What was he expecting, some random encounter to boost her brain into overdrive?

"Ah, well, when she was three..." crap, "there was a bit of a scare." Understatement. I made her blind and deaf for a least a minute. "She was in her bed asleep and woke up screaming that she went blind and couldn't hear anything. She regained her ability to see and hear, so I didn't think it was anything but a nightmare. Her diet has been the same as mine, though she eats more. Two meals of vegetables, bread, and the occasional meat stew and fruit for snacks. Nothing different."

"And in her free time, what does she do?"

"She sits in the play room and reads. I've started to buy slightly less food, and eating less myself, and saved up to buy her various books. She loves to read. She can even recite passages from books she hasn't read in weeks perfectly." *Sniff* Momma, sacrificing your own health for the sake of your daughter's curiosity... caused by the parasite soul in her head. I hate myself even more now.

"That contrasts with the results of her inspection at birth. She shouldn't be capable of that. She has become incredibly gifted in just her short life. There's also the addition of the voice in her head she mentioned. I've never heard a language like that. It was incredibly monotone. There was no emotion at all and it spoke to her at great length." Because of their language being part spoken word, emotion, and facial gestures, they can say more than the few words they speak. I am extending what they say for translation's sake, but that 8 word string of English Celestine recited would have sounded like a paragraph to them. Of course, being unable to see them makes this translation difficult, too. I am kinda fluffing it here and there.

"Isn't it good that she's gifted? Well, there's the voice, but maybe she can learn to talk to it? She might be being assisted by a god!" Sylvianna, you are my savior! I love you, mamma! If worse comes to worse, I can possess Celestine completely and pretend to be a god. Why did atheist me never think of that?

Actually, I should think on this a bit more. Celestine being assisted by a god, even if it's a false god hitchhiking on her body for the hell of it, will definitely change her life. But, then again, is that a bad thing? No offence to Sylvianna, but if Celestine were to be born and live her life normally, she would be no better off than her mother, another completely normal existence. I bear no ill-will toward Sylvianna. I love her like my own mother right now. But I want little Celestine to see the world, not live her life entirely inside this village. And by me wanting Celestine to see the world, I mean I want to see the world. I am a selfish false god.

Ahh, this is going to hurt, Celestine. What I'm about to do might take you away from your mother. Please don't curse the false god in your head.

I took full control of Celestine's body through her subconscious. I opened her eyes and looked directly into the black eyes of the head acolyte. He jumped back. "Impossible! She should still be asleep! That spell should last an hour!"

"" I shouted in English. Psh, I always wanted to say that. Not that they would understand it. I sit Celestine up like a robot and looked at the eyes of everyone in the room. I wonder what they see right now. Just a child who overcame a sleep spell? I cleared her throat with a rough cough, then spoke in their language for the first time. "I... The Mother is correct. I have taken a liking to this young child. I have given her my blessing so that one day her future will lead to great things." Am I a good actor? Is this something a god in this world would say? There are so many gods it's hard to know. Even if they are real. (I have an inkling that they are not.)

"Oh great deity, please humble us believers!" Every single person in the room fell to their knees to prostrate themselves to the false god in the child's body. I shouldn't milk this.

"Please rise. I am but a minor and young god. I do not deserve such ." I spoke the last word in English for lack of an alternative. Celestine's vocabulary is still limited. They won't understand the word, but maybe they will understand the context. This also proves I am the source of the unknown language.

"Please, grace us with your name!" An elder woman behind everyone was the first and only one to rise, eyeing the child. Unlike the others, her robes were black and yellow.

"I am..." I completely forgot my name. I don't even remember if I was a man or a woman on Earth. How the hell did I forget these important details! Too much time in the static. I will blame that. Now I need to name myself. Something neutral. Something new. Something kinda spacy.

"I am... Novos." I can live with this name.