When I opened my eyes, a woman was staring at me, with another older-looking woman busy poking my left cheek with a finger.
Hello?
I blinked.
Then I looked again.
Why can't I speak?
For some reason, all I could manage to muster was a slurpy hiccup when I tried to speak, which was then followed by the two women beaming down at me like I had performed an unexpected circus trick.
It wasn't right. Making women laugh was not this simple.
But I couldn't linger on that thought any second longer because a sudden heaviness settled right around my shoulders. It was as though I was caught in a gravity bubble. Everything about me demanded an ungodly amount of effort to move about.
What about my fingers? Where were those little buggers, anyway?
Ah!
There they were, but why did they look… so little and chubby? The skin gleamed as though it was baby-soft, looking too smooth to belong to my rough, unclipped fingers.
Then my world turned sideways. My head bobbed weakly as I struggled to keep it raised.
That was when the first lady, the one who looked younger, swooped a gentle hand underneath my scalp and supported my head. Thank you very much, stranger!
But wait a second… Why did I look like a damned baby?
…..
It took weeks for me to adjust to my new circumstances.
I was a baby.
Great.
I couldn't stop shitting myself.
Not so great.
Clenching my butthole didn't work. When I tried to sync my cries with the times that I needed to either piss or eat, the stranger who was my new mother didn't take the hints. So often I was left with the stench of my little poo-poo in a crib that looked anything but modern.
It was a wooden thing, mostly, and I spent most of my time there when the strange woman was out. I didn't have a father. That was a beige flag, for now. Having a father wasn't necessarily a good thing, depending on the father you'd have.
And if my senses and deep knowledge of shitty MMO games were right, I was in a rather medieval society.
So, not having a father either meant my mother worked in interesting jobs for a living, or we were so well off that she hadn't felt a need to find a man to support herself.
Good for her!
And she sure seemed like a capable woman. She had muscles, not in a manly way, but it was clear by how defined they were and how healthy she looked that we weren't so bad off to skip meals.
For myself, I mostly choked on breast milk, which was truly an experience. I didn't mind the taste, but I tried very hard not to cringe each time I had to plaster my face to her breasts. It felt wrong. It probably looked wrong.
And there was nothing I could do to stop that.
I was reincarnated. Reborn. Cast off into a different world and turned into a baby. It was probably because of that plane. The way it crushed into me looked suspicious, after all. Wasn't it supposed to be a truck? What did it mean to be crushed by a plane in reincarnation terms? Would I become an extra genius since the thing that killed me was bigger than a truck?
No. I didn't think so.
The stranger woman – should I call her mother already? – didn't do magic. There were no glowing lights. No cascading ethereal glimmers of spell work. Nothing, so far, seemed particularly magical to me, which was a bummer.
Another thing that grated on my nerves was that I couldn't understand the woman. She spoke to me as if she was aware of those parental videos that told expecting women one of the ways to establish strong bonds with their children was to speak with them.
It was a good thing that she tried, as it suggested she was being careful about this. Not so much, though, since she left me on my own pretty much all the time.
Having so much free time allowed me to study things around me. The stone walls rose high around my room, and there was a chimney in our hall, but our house wasn't big.
I wasn't born rich.
Again.
Well, at least I was not dead.
I didn't know how to feel about that. I never feared the day I would die. On the contrary, death was often an excuse I found comfort in whenever things got hard. Back in my twenties, I was gambling a lot, and I had built quite a debt to basically everyone I knew around me, and even then, I continued, thinking at worst I'd kill myself and be free.
Never did I once consider there would be a life after death, however. That was news to me. This whole thing felt so alien that it wasn't until weeks passed that I was sure this was real.
And hey, one crucial thing about being a baby again was that I couldn't keep… myself awake at all.
So, I slept a lot.
….
Months went by, and finally I learned my name.
The person who was my mother but was actually a total stranger called me "Leo." I wasn't sure if it held the same meaning as it did back on Earth, but I liked the way she uttered it.
There was a strength to it unlike my past miserable self.
And the way she stared at me was so pure that sometimes I felt strangled under it. I knew that look. It was expectation. Of what, I wasn't really sure, but I was hoping it was limited to things expected from all babies like walking and speaking.
Did babies speak when they were a couple of months old?
Probably not.
But there was no harm in trying.
So, I did that.
I spoke.
It wasn't particularly hard, but since I tried to imitate the words she used, they all came out in slurpy, slippery ways that didn't make much sense.
It did, however, send my stranger-mother into a jolly mood, which she forced me to be a part of by taking me by the arms as we twirled about in our modest hall in a two-person waltz to music that wasn't there.
Then she set me down and beamed at me, speaking in her sing-song voice yet again.
Okay.
There was a problem.
I couldn't understand her. I needed more time to adjust to this odd language.
....
At six months old, I was madness reincarnated into a gluttonous baby fueled with a strong ADHD kick that refused to give his mind a break. I couldn't get enough of crawling about the house, nor was there anything that could stop me from exploring.
That was what babies did, right?
Finding the backyard was a true game-changer. There was something innately refreshing about letting the sun bask you in its golden light even if I had never been much of an outdoors person. Here, though, there was nothing to distract me but the walls of our house and a bunch of wooden toys my new mother carved with her hand.
She was a good woman. Always took me into her arms with a big smile, which made me wonder if my real mother had been like her when I was a baby. Had she been truly happy to have me? Was it her decision at all?
I couldn't imagine her smiling at her newly born baby.
My real mother didn't have a personality. She was more like a dutiful maid who took her job way too seriously. When I was a kid, she fed me, clothed me, and took me to school. She watched the same TV show whenever she was free of her duties, and that was it. She didn't have hobbies.
In a way, she was what you'd call a true NPC.
I felt bad for her, but more so for myself. At least my twin sisters had each other. Me? I was a prisoner taken by a woman who I seriously doubted could feel anything, and a man who always worked and was never home.
This strange woman, though, took care of me in a way that felt alien.
"Having fun basking under the sun, my little Leo? I will join you in a bit," she called out as I sat on the wooden porch, peering into the distance where wooden houses sprawled across what I presumed was a village. To the right, a vast forest stretched from beyond a gurgling river.
Truly a pastoral sight, almost nostalgic in a way that reminded me of the start of many MMOs I'd played in recent years.
I turned with a smile on my lips and gave my new mother a look. She didn't know how relieved I was to regain some of my bodily functions. That I could move at my own will again was nothing short of miraculous.
And so, I cherished the winds rubbing warmly against my face, slithering down through my little tunic and puffing the fabric in bubbles of air.
Then my new mother, true to her words, joined me in our backyard.
With a giant greatsword in her hand, clad in a set of leather armor.
Making sure she was a good distance away from me, she brought her hands out in front, inhaled a deep breath, and began swinging her sword rhythmically.
Yeah.
I'd been shocked when I first saw it for myself, but in time you got used to it. Those defined muscles of my mother had a history behind them, presumably because she looked like one fine warrior who could heft a sword nearly her size.
Each swing of hers sent a gush of wind to our wooden fences, making them groan. There was a sound to them as well, not quite soft, but more like what I thought a whip would whoosh if used by a cowboy.
Soon, sweat dotted her face, her green eyes narrowed in focus. Her blond hair was tied into a perfect bun that refused to spill even though it was clear she was using some real force.
Having a swordswoman as a mother was cool. It hadn't changed anything for me yet, since I was a baby, but I thought I could expect something in the future.
After all, when you're in Rome, you ought to do what those Romans did, eh?
I wouldn't mind being a warrior if magic wasn't a thing here.
…..
Doing things with my underdeveloped body was at best excruciating. I knew what I was supposed to do, where my hands should go, or how to take that next step, but the second I tried any one of those my body either swayed as if I had a thirty-pound pack tied to my back, or my head bobbed this way or that which sent me sprawling across the ground.
Not quite ready to walk.
Got it.
I clawed my way through the hallway, salivating like an overworked dog, underlip pursed stubbornly. It wasn't exactly all lights and glory, being a baby really wasn't, and it surprisingly pushed me to take certain initiatives, which I never did in my old life.
But if I wanted to make something out of this second chance, I couldn't just stand still. My overworked brain wouldn't let me, anyway. I had to find out anything that could hold my interest for more than a second. Those wooden toys and the stone walls didn't do it for me, but we had books.
Damn books!
I couldn't believe I was crawling for my dear life just to glimpse into a book. My old, useless self would've been horrified to see me like that, and for the wrong reasons.
Such was fate, I thought, as I finally arrived at our singular bookshelf that sat across the chimney. There was a couch beside it facing directly the wood fire, a cozy place where my mother would take me into her lap and read me a bunch of stories, which helped me with the new language.
I faced the humongous bookshelf looming over me like a giant, peering up at it with questions in my mind. Crawling all the way here had cost me nearly everything. So, how was I supposed to reach for those books if I couldn't even stand on my feet?
Damn it. I didn't think this through. This baby-brain was messing with me, I was sure.
What could I do?
I began thinking. Worked my milk-powered thoughts until I came up with the only sensible option. My mother was in the kitchen, humming a song by herself. I could use that.
Thus, I banged a fist on the bookshelf, wincing as the impact shook the baby fat around my cheeks. Then I banged another fist and cried loud enough to make myself heard. When a face peeked out from the kitchen, I turned to my mother and pointed with teary eyes at the books on the bookshelf.
"Oh? You want to hear a night-night story this early? Fine, I'll read you one!" my new mother said. Clutched in her palm was a knife, which she considered after speaking to me. "But let's do a short one. We'll have a guest tonight, so I must make sure he has something to eat!"
I froze.
It was hopeless.
I didn't need those stories!
But hey, a guest? And a male one, at that? Could this be my long absent father? No, surely not. My mother would've said so if that was the case. That left out only two options. Either it was a love interest, someone creepy enough to hang around a woman who only recently gave birth, or it was related to business.
I frowned, my baby cheeks squirming in thought.
Business?
That sounded interesting.
Well, I guessed there was nothing I could do but wait.
.....
The stories Mother read to me were mostly similar in nature. There was a hero, or a group, and they were out searching for a lost princess or something. They battled mythical beings and returned triumphant from their expeditions.
I didn't know whether these were real, or they stemmed from a mind with a rich imagination. That the characters in these stories used magic didn't mean there was magic in this world.
The same was true back on Earth. What if fantasy novels were a thing here, too? I wouldn't dare to bring myself to hope because I didn't want to be disappointed.
Anyway, we had company for dinner tonight. After a long nap, I woke up in the gentle arms of my mother who had changed into a black robe that fitted her frame. She looked… different. I didn't know how to put it, but I could swear there was something dark about her on this night.
She carried me to the hall and sat me primly at the head of the table, which was full of various dishes. My chest swelled with expectation, but Mother seemed too occupied to pay attention to my growling stomach. Instead, she kept stealing glances at the door, likely nervous about this so-called guest.
Who could it be?
I was curious enough, but I kept my silence. Thanks to our daily story readings and the fact that Mother kept speaking to me, I'd already begun to wrap my head around the language. Thus, even if I had no idea whether they would expect a child to eavesdrop on their conversation or not, I wouldn't be kept in the dark for too long.
The man came not long after. Mother tensed the moment she heard the knock on the door, then glanced down at me with worry in her eyes. It took her a heavy moment to pick herself up and open the door, letting the man inside in silence.
It was an old guy, back stooped and face dotted with pockmarks, carrying a big leather bag. Clasped in his other hand was a long cane, its point tapping loudly on the ground as he lurched his way to the table. Not once did he utter a single word until he was seated, after which he pulled the leather bag and let it thump on the table.
Metal shingled from inside of it, adding to my curiosity. Mother, instead, squirmed nervously and lingered at his side, the meals on the table long forgotten.
"Father, I'm deeply grateful that you took the time to come all the way down here," my mother said, then flinched when the man gave her an unapproving look. She swiftly pulled the hood of her robe over her head, stuffing her blond curls into it so that not a single strand of her hair was left in the open.
Some sort of religion with a dress code, I gathered.
"You should've taken the child to a temple." The man turned toward me, his voice rasping and his breath stinking in a way that reminded me of every toothless old man I had ever seen. "It is highly unusual to invite an Akara's priest to measure a child's aptitude."
"Which is why you will be paid accordingly," my mother said, flashing a purse from her robe, shaking it in her hand. The coins sang a rich sound from inside of it, which seemed to satiate the priest's unease and brought his lips a momentary smile before he hid it with a tight frown.
Holy shit, had I found myself in a cliché? Was this guy one of those classic corrupt priests?
Things were taking an interesting turn, but I couldn't show it on my face. Whether this was one of those situations or not, the fact that I was a damned baby limited my options.
I sucked in a deep breath, then waited as the priest reached into his bag, and pulled out a wide bowl, and a bottle of water, and… that was it.
I was marginally disappointed, and relieved at the same time. He wouldn't cut me or anything like that to measure my talent. Just a bowl and a bottle of water. It seemed simple enough.
The thing was, they didn't look any different from the ones we had in our house. But if this world had any magic in it… chances were, the priest's tools could be magical in nature!
"You should be well aware that geniuses are scarcely born in remote villages like these," the priest said as he poured the bottle of water into the bowl. Mother kept quiet. There was something wrong with her.
It was as though the strong warrior who could haul a giant sword was gone, replaced by a weak, trembling woman who couldn't keep her head straight.
What the hell was going on here?
And what was that about the geniuses?
Father, please explain!
He didn't. The corrupt priest who was probably ripping off my naïve mother reached toward me when he was done with the bowl, then took one of my little hands in his palm. Then, unceremoniously, he forced my chubby fingers into the bowl, then opened his stinking mouth once again.
"By the grace of the Eternal Mother, keeper of the First Flame, I summon forth the truth hidden within this vessel of flesh. Let the waters bear witness, let the light reveal what slumbers, and let destiny awaken in the child named before us."
A divine incantation!
I shivered, my little heart thundering in my chest. The Father looked so focused with his eyes closed and his hand clasped tightly around my fingers that I knew something magical was about to happen.
Except, it didn't. We stayed in the same pose for a while, my mother's nervous expression deepening, a prickling sensation crawling all over my arms.
In the end, it was with a sigh that the father pulled my fingers from the bowl and let me off. He turned to my mother and stretched his hand out.
The bastard had the guts to ask for a payment? What did he do to earn it?
"The child is a Null." His voice grated on my nerves. I felt humiliated by that last word. What do you mean by Null? Like zero? Zip? None? I had nothing? "It is rare for children to be born without a hint of mana, but I'm afraid your son has no talent. He can still work on his internal energy, of course."
I expected Mother to say something. She couldn't let this hoax get his way. She had that greatsword and she was strong. A swat from her could probably kill this old bastard!
Instead, she stared at the half-filled bowl of water mutedly, her fingers clutching the hem of her robe. She looked afraid. Why? Was that too big of a deal? Don't tell me she was going to cast me off now that it was out that I was a useless piece of shit in this life too—
Lights exploded from the bowl. The air recoiled. Thousands of them appeared in the little body of water, streaking across the air and into my arms, making me feel odd as though I had lost half my weight.
For a second, I thought I was floating in the air, my body taken away from gravity. I watched my fingers trail in the air as though in slow motion, and through the gaps between them, I witnessed something breathtaking.
There was an external membrane of light clinging to the people in the room. Mother's was a vibrant yellow, thick and layered. Father's was a deep blue, wavering at the edges like a cloak fashioned from the sky.
Then, before I could understand what those membranes of light represented, they vanished, and I was back again and could feel my cheeks. They were flushed.
What was that?!
My little heart couldn't keep up with the storm raging in my mind, pumping wildly in my chest. That was magic, alright!
"The Wisp of Eternity!" Father said after a beat, pointing a shaky finger into my face, trembling like a scared kitten. "This child… he can perceive souls! Such a sign appears only at the birth of a Runemaster. I must summon the Head Priest at once. A planar genius has been born into our humble world--"
He couldn't finish his sentence. There was something sticking from his chest.
I blinked.
And yet it remained there, the tip of a bloodied dagger.
The father choked mid-speech, then blood poured out from his lips. His already worn body slumped lifeless across the table, sending the plates and the bowl scattering to the ground.
Behind him, my mother stood all alone, staring down at the corpse with a complicated face. Blood trickled from her fingers, staining her robe, and yet she didn't seem to mind it. Before I could say anything, she leaned down and took the corpse by the legs, dragging it into our backyard.
Mom, what the damn hell?
.....