Chapter Two - Renascitur

*** Leo Cazador ***

The internal screaming wouldn’t stop no matter what I tried, it was driving me to madness. Who knew that being an infant was quite possibly the worst form of torture conceivable? I was born with ADHD and it seemed to have carried over to this world, staying still and being able to do nothing was a big no no. I tried with all my might to move around many times but failed finding my body too fragile and too weak to do anything more than lay there.

The first few weeks were tolerable but as a month went by I found myself cracking and a month and a half later I finally cried out of blinding rage for being able to do nothing. My mother did not know what to do to calm me down and was forced to comfort me until I exhausted myself. Two weeks later I cried out again. And again. And again.

Mother began singing to me a song that emitted a strange influence on my body, it made me feel strange, even good. I took hold of this feeling with my mind and found I could move the power around as if it were a physical thing but not as my mother did, she commanded it with her voice but I could not. I wanted this power, I wanted to use it to alleviate my madness, but it would not yield to me.

Six months old, that was my limit, I reached a point where I could find no more hope to continue going with such a fragile body, who would have known I’d miss something as simple as being able to sit up. I wanted to simply fade away. Even as I reached for the darkness my mother was there again for me singing the song that had given me false hope long enough to continue until now.

I had gotten nowhere with the strange force she commanded, I could do nothing more than flick at it with my mind, I could not will it, I could not use it.

There was something different about the song this time though, the force was there again, but it was thicker and its presence was greater. I took hold of it once more and did the only thing I could think of and “swallowed” it bringing it into myself. As soon as it entered me it started a sort of engine I never knew was present within myself, it began churning the force I brought into myself and like an explosion it produced its own force spreading far and wide like a dense cloud. I found myself singing the power filled song in my mind roaring it to the world, to all those that might hear, the force was mine!

I held nothing back now, I could now feel the force everywhere, I could control it, command it. Earth itself, the ground at our feet was saturated with it, the power was wild and untamed unlike that which mother used. I bled my own power into the earth and mingled with it bringing it into myself just as I poured myself out as I continued to sing. My own engine began producing wild mana, I was now no more different from nature itself.

After that day I slept contently.

The next day I found that my power was not gone, in fact I had so much of it that I could not use it until I could control how much of it I used which was a task I happily labored towards perfecting. Just moving was a physical and mental intensive task, if I moved carelessly I could bring down the room on myself or rip apart my own body.

I slowly grew stronger, it was a slow process for me, but in fact, I was growing strong and stronger at a pace that was not normal for an infant. My muscles healed faster than normal allowing me to obtain physical strength that was magnitudes greater than it should have been. My bones developed denser and more durable, I was growing carbon steel strong bones within my body.

Within the first week I was already strong enough to crawl and within a month I could finally start walking.

Learning became my new favorite thing to pass the time, from listening to people talk and figuring out what they were saying along with attempting to read whatever come into my sight. My mother would tell me the names of things and speak to me of her day and she would tell me stories or read to me from thin books made for children. These were my favorite, not because I was a child, but because they served the purpose of teaching me the alphabet and language that these people spoke. It was so strangely similar to that of norse in design and sounded a lot like latin though the words and their meanings were different.

Due to the fact that I was constantly being watched I could only explore during the night, this power that filled the world was useful in many ways including the generation of light via a small burning flame. A simple fireball, it was hard enough to produce at first, the first few attempts produced flash bangs which usually left me blinded for a minute and would alert everyone around me. I would be forced to pretend to be asleep each time.

I took the elements in the air and would combine then into a small inferno using a simple fueling method to keep the elemental airs flowing into the flame and keeping it lit at a certain level of strength.

During my exploration I discovered the library, it quickly became my favorite spot as I learned to read and speak the language. One of the biggest discoveries I made there was the discovering of the wall map carved out of stone and painted in wonderful colors. It detailed the Boraian lands and the buffer island my father was currently in charge of building up into a proper and well defended naval base.

There were a lot of secret meetings during the night, some important some mostly personal, during my explorations I would hear stories and rumors as well as get earfuls of information. Among the pieces of information I got my ears full of include learning of my father who would not be returning for years. His mission was of great importance and currently most of the fleet was occupied in fueling the work he as doing leaving the nation unstable and open to the chaos of uprisings from the lesser lords of the islands that surround the nation.

Judging by the measurement legend on the map Boraia is half the size of japan and while it is surrounded by many smaller islands it has no way to tap into them as their shipbuilding skills are rather inferior for a ship dependent nation. They use vessels very similar to Viking long ships which are not really made for constant long ocean voyages.

Boraia is a fortress island, it is rather curved in a C fashion with two wide lakes in the middle connected by natural canals. Inside the curve are its three major cities with several smaller towns and villages on the coastlines and valleys. The capitol of Boraia, Isyndril, is perched overlooking the second inner lake and situated over cliffs making it nigh impregnable by any naval force even if you set aside its high walls.

By the time I was one year old I already had the growth and development of a two year old, I had stopped suckling from my mother by then and started eating ravenously to keep up with the caloric demand. I needed more than the average infant. At this stage my body could handle harder movement and allowed me to explore the outside, beyond the castle walls.

There were a few points of interest that I discovered during my exploration of the city among them was the city library. Here the country’s mages gathered to learn and share information, it was a protected edifice that thanks to my direct way of influencing the forces of mana I could slip past all the barriers without creating so much as a notable ripple. The books there numbered well into the tens of thousands, from all parts of the world, and will all kinds of topics of information. This became my new haven replacing my love for the castle’s smaller library. While there were books of interest there I had read most of that which caught my eye, the city library had so much more.

From there sometimes I would venture to the docks and the shopping district where all the markets and shops were erected. Due to the fact that I could not be there during the day I discovered several of the night time markets, the black market of Boraia. This was just as interesting as the library, the trinkets and creatures that passed through the black market were always a treasure trove of world information.

As I turned one and a half years old a baby girl was sent over from another island nation, it was from a smaller tribe that was no match for Boraia. After it was crushed only the daughter of the island chief was allowed the mercy of life in exchange for complete surrender, it was by a promise between the chief and the commander of the conquering forces that it was made possible. The king decided to honor the promise and adopt the girl. This drew me to learn more about the islands discovering that many had tribes on them, some of which had pledged themselves to Boraia, the rest were usually left alone unless the island nation needed to expand its territory for the sake of prosperity.

After the girl showed up many of the islanders from that tribe had been turned into slaves and many ended up in the warehouse. It was interesting to see how the markets flowed during conflict, to see the process of enslavement occur so closely.

The arrival of this new girl started to draw my mother’s attention away from me, since I was not your average child it took minimal effort to care for me. The same could not be said for the new arrival, she cried, she filled her diapers constantly, well I guess I did the same just a little less, and did I mention she cried? It bothered me little that this child was taking all the attention, it actually helped me in all actuality.

I was now free to explore more freely, especially after I learned to use sleep magic. My caretakers were constantly rendered unconscious giving me a small handful of hours to explore during daylight every once in awhile.

During this time I also discovered the tinkerer’s workshop who dealt with making complex tools and other such things with movable parts for mages and engineering needs. I visited the workshop of an older master craftsman named Bjorn, a rather uncharacteristically bulky man with a long beard and chaotic matte of greying hair upon his head. He designed some of the more interesting things and through him I came to understand that the island nation did not yet have a firm grasp of the pulley nor gear system. He designed many things that hand some basic forms of either but it was quite clear that he was years away from truly discovering the full utility of either if indeed he ever achieved it in his lifetime.