If you’ve ever wondered ‘can babies work out’ the answer is a conclusive and emphatic YES! A discovery that was proven by every head lift and heel kick Liam performed in his first few months of existence.

By the end of his first month, he had regained some motor control of his limbs and neck, but his head was still too large, allowing him to do very odd reverse sit ups where he lifted his body instead of his brain, moving until his physical body was too exhausted. Then he began to cast. Sage Rhendal’s teachings came back to him easily, both from the era of impotent tutelage and from his later reconciliation as Lord Liam. Lessons he treasured and repeated daily.

Though he limited himself to the elements he could wield in non destructive ways, primarily wielding Life affinity magic to accelerate his infantile body’s growth, and –whenever possible– healing the woman he called ‘Mom’. She rarely spoke to him, almost exclusively telling him not to cry or she would leave him exposed on the glass sands of Kheresh. Nor did she offer him the dignity of a name. Even refusing to state her own, a conundrum that left him ungrounded and detached from the only human being he had ever been physically attached to.

Besides feeding him and demanding that he heal her wounds, they might have been strangers. Demands she often made when returning from nightly excursions. Dog bites, lacerations, and the occasional broken bone all mended under Liam’s growing affinity. Though the frequency and severity of wounds made him question what she did all night. His healing pulses never targeted her core, so it was unlikely that she was any form of whore, but the wounds on her hands and legs indicated physical combat. Baron Green had never visited Khereshetal, but knew the culture was vastly different, a forced change by the sequence of cataclysms that turned the richest city on the continent into a repressive wasteland where grain thieves were enslaved at best, and were tortured, dis-armed (literally cutting off the arms), and hung.

Okay Liam, chill, postpartum depression is a thing. Mom is just struggling a bit. We live alone, no one else is around, so she’s a single mom without friends or family. I’m a few months old, this is a little weird, but let's roll with it. Mom is clearly doing her best. She leaves every night to get food… Ah, we’re probably squatters. Whatever led her to this situation probably resulted in this host body’s first death. Okay, knowing this world, it was probably dreadfully inhumane, and she’s probably been abused, or at least murdered a few people. I can cut her some slack. Thought Liam, swallowing as he realized that he was most likely the product of past abuse.

No wonder she hates me.

—

Six months later he was crawling around, exploring the bounds of his shuttered abode under Mom’s watchful gaze. Their home was made of stone and adobe, with a main floor, a perpetually shuttered second floor, and a sort of cellar. Complete with skittish desert rodents and the occasional serpent. Though they only came out at night, a trait Mom seemed to share with them.

“Alright kid, it’s sundown. Stay in the house, don’t make noise, don’t make any lights. Got it?” Whispered Mom.

Liam crawled to her leg –knowing better than to try and get a hug from her– and rolled sideways onto his butt. There he raised one hand and waved ‘bye-bye’, whispering the words with the irregular volume of a toddler.

“Ya know, it’s super creepy that you can talk this early.” Said Mom, looking down at him with an eyebrow raised. “Whatever, it would be weirder if my kid was normal.” Said Mom, standing and exiting the home via the cellar door.

Why she chose that particular exit was obvious, there was a crawl space that someone had dug with a rock and a butterknife –probably mom–, allowing her access into the next door neighbor’s yard. There she could exit the tunnel and slink her way through the night, going wherever it was she went. And tonight Liam was going to try following her.

Metaphorically of course, a six month old could be carried off by an angry squirrel, and this world had things far meaner than squirrels, he’d already slain one dragon, and died to it. An experience he would rather not repeat.

No, this second life would not be wasted, nor rushed. Liam was going to use magic he’d never quite understood and effect the changes this world required. He wrapped himself in his stained blanket, the smaller and more ragged of the two blankets they had, but considering he still ‘spit up’, Liam couldn’t fault Mom for keeping the nicer article for herself. Though he kinda wished they had diapers, infant bladder control was more complicated than he ever would have guessed.

Maybe it’s better that Nyota can’t see me now… I need to get back to her, but not like this.

Besides, this was the desert. There was no need for extensive blankets since Kheresh never seemed to get cold. Not even during the nights. Whether that was from a nearby water reserve, or some sort of mystical aftershock from the magical cataclysm that created the glass desert, Liam couldn’t guess.

What he could guess, was how to open a peeping portal. Since he’d invented the concept in a previous life. He extended a hand, coating his body with the dark affinity of Rhendal’s umbraquins, in the same shadowshield that had enabled Pandora’s defeat. The shield was a precaution, since portals tended to come with side effects. Something his spell should prevent or mitigate entirely. With his armor in place, he began the experiment.

One toddler hand extended forward, channeling mana into the world. A flat accretion disk of a gathering portal formed, identical to Rhendal’s, except smaller. Liam pushed more energy into it, building it, strengthening the mana til it began to harden of its own accord, flattening into the iconic hard disk with raised edges of an inverted frisbee. Then Liam pictured the other end of the portal opening above their home, at least a hundred feet above where he now sat.

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Within the ink black depths of the portal’s aperture, stars winked into existence, unveiling the night sky as his portal found its endpoint, creating a hole in space for matter to transmit instantaneously. For the first time since his birth, Liam beheld the desert city. Where he was, seemed inconsequentially small amidst the sea of buildings. He marveled at the fortified houses, as well as the hard line in the desert sand that showed the edge of a second cataclysm. The cataclysm where an offshoot of the Duke’s household had created a floating island from the desert’s largest city, quite literally flying away from his problems with half the Dukedom’s wealth and people. Now all that remained was the glass desert, or Kheresh wastes. A calamitous depression spanning hundreds of miles that had been incinerated by the island’s magical feedback. Whether the island of sand survived, or crashed into the ocean and drowned everyone aboard was unknown. Though the residents of Khereshetal told the story as a warning of human hubris.

An ocean of sand wasn’t much to look at. Since it was mostly ivory sand with a soft downward gradient further than his eyes could see. Intellectually speaking, Liam knew the glass wasteland eventually blended into the ocean, forming the largest soft sand bay in the world, but light transmitted poorly through portals, almost as if he was peering through stained glass windows. So he turned his attention towards the city.

A figure emerged from the neighbor’s yard, slipping through town with stunning speed. Patrolling ducal guards, warriors of the Kharmite tribes, carried torches and spears, the orange light of fire reflecting off their polished armor. They never laid eyes on the figure. In fact, they never came close to catching her, twas as if Mom knew their routes and deviations better than the guardsmen themselves, and juked them all. Casually jogging through the city. She slipped into abandoned homes, in one case leaping over a ten foot wall before entering through their window, and exiting through another with a bag of marked grain. Blood dripping from her once silver blade.

Great, Mom is a grain thieving, murdering, cat-burglar… If she ever gets caught… Thought Liam, knowing that the penalty for stealing food wasn’t something so kind as having a hand cut off.

It was summary execution.

Oftentimes with an expedited trial and rampant accusations. In Mom’s case, they wouldn’t even need a second witness, given how she lived her life the local magistrate would sentence her when no man or patriarch stood up in her defense.

Which would also kill Liam. No matter how much healing magic he poured into himself, his digestive tract could only process milk, and he had no intention of altering that ahead of schedule. He was already pushing the limits of maturation, and forcing his internals to mature ahead of schedule spooked him. Besides, the mana costs of growing teeth or reinforcing his jaw were staggering, far beyond what he could do in a month.

The shadowshield broke, vanishing from across his body. A signal that he was running out of mana. He tossed a pebble through the portal and allowed it to close. Then held his breath, listening for the pebble landing on his roof.

One second passed.

Two seconds,

Three seconds,

…

Liam counted to a hundred and twenty before he gave up. Either he’d missed the pebble bouncing off the roof during the desert night, or the portal had obliterated it, a fate he did not wish to share.

Ah man! I always knew these were dangerous, but old man Rhendal made these look easy! How am I supposed to cross the continent and get home if I can’t portal there? Thought Liam, feeling the unpleasant emptiness that came from his dark affinity running dry.

His stomach hit the floor, someone would have to carry him to Greenwood. A distance he thought might be similar to walking from Saudi Arabia to Scotland. If the trip was uneventful –which it wouldn’t be–, and the roads were in good condition –which they probably weren’t– The trip would take a year, assuming he could find a horse and then ride it that far.

Please be safe Nyota, please.

Liam sighed, pondering solutions. Magic was his only real talent or trade, but he lacked the reputation to teach or tutor. Magical theory in this world was highly flawed, but he was well aware of it’s tenants, all he would need is a suitable student and he could probably awaken their affinities. Despite this world’s incomplete understanding.

For some unknown reason they likened the eight known affinities to the cardinal (North, East, South, West) and intercardinal (combined NorthEast, SouthEast, SouthWest, NorthWest) directions. Supposedly humans were limited to two cardinal elements, those of Water and Earth affinities, yet exceptions abounded. In Liam’s previous life he’d acquired the Wind, Fire, Life, Darkness, and Lightning affinities, as well as the ability to manipulate any elemental mana given enough time, or a tremendous level differential between himself and the opposing magi. Similar to how Pandora had disabled his healing in their last battle.

A shudder ran down his spine, with his newest body somehow comprehending the pain of being torn limb from limb by Pandora’s jaws. Causing him to involuntarily pull the blanket tighter around himself and rub his shoulders. He was alive, intact, and would not need to face that demonic god ever again.

At least that’s over. No more lightning-stealing hydra-dragons in my near future. Or hopefully any future of mine…

Liam pulled the holey-blanket tighter around his shoulders, suddenly feeling every degree of the darkness around him. Channeling magic took a toll on the physical body, usually causing nothing more than a yawn in a grown adult, but for a sixth month old, it was naptime. A half hour of sleep, and he. could try to. portal home.. back to Nyota… Thought Liam, nodding off into a deep slumber.