Kayne woke and realised his mother was carrying him in a sling against her chest. He could see his father walking alongside them on their left. It looked like they were heading towards a village in the distance, following a worn path that was a mix of trodden Earth and some flat white rock with hardy green grass on either side.
It took him a short while for his eyes to adjust. He tried to rub them clean of sleep, not wanting to miss anything, but even that was a chore due to his poor dexterity. As they approached the village, he saw a dark wooden palisade wall surrounding it.
The wall curved away into the distance from a large open gate at the centre. It looked like the same wood used to build their farmhouse, and he suspected it was the same type of wood but with some protective outdoor treatment applied.
The gate had a raised platform above it where a guard stood looking out over the valley. It had raised wooden stumps with ropes woven between them to provide a safety railing. Above the platform was a wedge-shaped roof he guessed was used to protect any lookouts from the elements. It would be easier to spot enemies when the rain wasn't constantly in your eyes.
The fact that the village even had a wall was quite telling. There must be some threat nearby to have a guard on watch constantly.
The sentry was wearing a mix of chain mail and thick leather. He had a sword scabbard and horn attached to his waist, and Kayne thought he could make out a bow leaning against a nearby stand up there. The guard nodded to his parents as they entered the village.
As he entered the village, he glanced around at a nearby building. It looked more sturdy than his farmhouse. The bottom half was the same near-white rocks as the road, and the upper half was the same dark brown treated wood as the wall and gate.
Locally sourced materials?
The buildings here were all one story tall, with steep, pointed roofs that allowed the rain to run off efficiently. Kayne noticed that while the houses were all made the same way, their shape differed slightly here and there as if made to their occupants' taste rather than a pre-made plan.
He also noticed that many seemed to have a stone chimney sticking out of the roof, built up from the same type of rocks as the bottom section. The windows also lacked glass, and the ones he could see were more like wooden shutters that could be opened and closed on simple hinges.
As they continued to walk, passing various people who smiled and greeted his parents, there were a few here and there who stopped to chat and make a fuss of him. One included a young woman his mother seemed friendly with, who had a young girl hugging her leg.
The girl stared up at him with big brown eyes and goofy teeth. He ignored them and turned his attention to the noises around him as he looked up into the air and closed his eyes.
He could hear the low hum of people talking or moving about their daily business, with kids playing in the background and the repetitive metal thudding on metal.
A blacksmith working?
There was also another slight whooshing noise elsewhere that sounded like falling water in the distance.
Ouch, what the f—!
He cried out as he looked down at his dangling feet, to the source of the pain.
Did she just bite me?
Kayne felt a sudden surging anger bubble up from nowhere, demanding he inflict equal pain on the young girl in retribution for the unprovoked attack. The thought was so strong that it shocked him out of it as feeling such malice for such a trivial thing was not generally like him.
Steadying his breathing, he forced such thoughts and feelings away, returning to himself moments later. The awkward-looking girl stood under him, holding onto his right foot and staring up at him with a curious gaze. The adults were still talking and not paying much attention, so he tried to pull his leg free, only to have it yanked down hard.
Without any other options, he fell back on the tried-and-tested method of crying, alerting the girl's mother, who shooed her away. With the conversation interrupted his parents' small talk wrapped up fast as they said their goodbyes and headed further into the village.
They rounded a large house in the middle, surrounded by a small garden blocked off by a small wooden fence. The quality of the house seemed a notch above the others he had seen until now.
As they rounded it, a roar hit his ears as a giant waterfall appeared, dropping down a sheer white cliff face into a large plunge pool at the bottom.
Wait, haven't I seen this before?
He pushed his mind to work and realised it was the same village he had seen during his fall from space. He hadn't gotten a great look back then, as the fast falling combined with the panic had overridden the curious part of his brain.
His eyesight was still relatively underdeveloped, so he was only seeing it now he was closer. The cliff and waterfall made him realise that the dark shapes in the distance were not due to his newborn eyesight but were the mountains surrounding the village.
So if this is the same village, my house must be the same one I fell into. Of course, I'm so stupid for not realising.
In the cave system afterwards, he thought it was some test before he was allowed to reincarnate, but wasn't that where he had merged with the original owner of this body?
If the test was for him, why was the baby's consciousness there too? This fact must mean he wasn't on Earth in the past but in another world populated by humans in the present. Could he return to Earth one day?
He still felt like he was missing something. He had thought it might have been a visualisation of entering the body as a kind of ghost but dismissed it as, to him, the presence of the rats and the wolf didn't quite fit that theory.
He had tried to look inward but found nothing that matched them in his new body. Not that he could see anything when he did; it was more of a general feeling of himself when he turned his attention inward.
The trio looped left around the rocky shoreline of the small lake before entering a larger house nestled away in the corner of the village, close by the cliffside. A kind-looking older lady opened the door and led them inside what looked like a primitive-looking doctor's clinic. There, they met up with the scarred man he had met when he first arrived.
The small room was full of basic-looking wooden furniture. Even though none were painted or decorated, there wasn't one that looked shoddy. The room had a single bed in the centre, and various tables, desks, and shelves lined the walls in multiple places. One of the tables had a large open bag of medical-looking tools, reminding Kayne of a surgery layout back on Earth.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Similar solutions to similar problems.
Kayne realised that even though he may no longer be on Earth, it appeared that, in some ways, they had come to similar solutions for the issues they faced back home. He also wondered about the differences he might find here and looked forward to discovering what they were.
He was a little disappointed, as he was hoping to see more magic. But instead, all he got was a thorough naked prodding by the healer called Anton. The older man even went so far as to examine his plumbing as if he hadn't already proved its functionality multiple times.
There was more talking between the adults as he tried his best to listen in and understand what they were saying. From what he could pick up, it seemed that all might not be well, as he noticed a few concerned glances from his parents once or twice.
He tried his best to do a self-audit, looking for any issues, but he seemed healthy as far as he could feel and see. He thought perhaps they were just being overly worried new parents.
His thoughts got snatched away when Anton produced a glass bauble roughly the size of a bowling ball and held it slightly above him. Within the glass ball, countless small lights of differing colours and shades slowly floated around.
It was like someone had trapped many fireflies inside of it, and it was very alluring to look at. He instinctively reached out his little hands towards the orb as the healer moved it closer, allowing him to touch it.
He watched as inside the object, all the lights floating around aimlessly, suddenly gathered together into a large clump at the opposite side where his fingers touched as if repelled.
Two lights glowing purple and blue separated and rushed towards his outstretched fingers, pressing against the inside of the glass like they wanted to enter his fingertips. A familiar feeling started to pass through him, and it took him a moment to pinpoint where he had felt this.
It was the same he had in the strange tunnel-like vortex through space when passing through those mysterious clouds. The only other anomaly was an azure light that seemed to vanish and reappear elsewhere, blinking constantly.
It was either closer to his hand, further away, or somewhere between. This flickering light gave him a transcendent, ethereal impression, but it wasn't something he could remember encountering before.
"Spatium et tempus," Anton muttered to himself, his stoic face cracking into a mix of emotions as his parents looked over in stunned silence.
Kayne was still doing his best to pick up the dead language, and while he didn't understand everything, he could at least understand the words the healer had said.
Space and time, huh? So that's what these are?
* * *
Valeria looked over at the results of the essence testing orb with a mix of astonishment and confusion. She had never seen anyone attract or repel essences as quickly as her son had done, and for a moment, she couldn't help but wonder if the testing apparatus was faulty.
She knew how the device worked. A crafter gathered many types of essences and placed them inside the glass ball with a particular kind of alchemical oil. It was a painstaking effort as the number of essences was countless, but getting a tiny amount of each was doable in most places.
The essences inside were naturally attracted to a nearby person when touched or repelled away from them. The ones a person was most proficient in were the ones that were the most drawn over, and the ones that moved away were the ones that a person had no skill in.
A typical result would generally have the large clump of essences gathered in the centre, a neutral result as most people had average proficiency with all essence types in general. Depending on the person, Some were closer or further away from the middle.
When tested, her talent produced a mix of results, with the water and wind essence just past the midway point to the perimeter of the orb toward her fingers. This result showed her slightly above-average talent in those essences. The rest of the essences either stayed firm in the centre, uninterested or got repulsed in the opposite direction.
This result was saying her son's talent was beyond abysmal, apart from in space and time essence. He was considered a prodigy not seen in generations in those two essences. The only problem there was their rarity, and she couldn't think of one family or sect nearby who trained in either. They were beyond rare.
Having an essence move away from you was a sign of an extreme lack of ability with that essence, but that was not always a bad thing. Valeria had heard of a boy in her town who had a peerless talent for fire in her youth, but his result for water was downright abysmal.
This lack of water talent didn't prevent several institutions from trying their hardest to pull him to their side. It was not always true that a high talent in one area meant a low ability in the opposite, but it wasn't uncommon.
Her husband was the only person she knew with a talent that came close to her son's ability if the result was accurate. When Marcus tested with the orb, his dual light and darkness attraction pulled those essences three-quarters of the way to himself, an exceptional talent. It wasn't all that unexpected with him due to his family background.
Anton knew enough to withdraw his essence away so as not to interfere with the results, so either the results stood true, or the device was indeed in error. However, the look on their friend's face made her realise the former was probably correct.
She knew the only reason her husband didn't get recruited as a youth by the major institutions was that they could not train someone as unique as him, and his family refused to support him. Ultimately, he made do with joining the military and trying to combine light and darkness into a self-created cultivation method, using separate manuals in those two essences as a baseline with some success.
Her husband might look like a slouch to an outsider, but he was brilliant when it came to cultivation. His family had made a mistake when they shunned him, and she knew it was only a matter of time until he proved her right.
To have a peerless talent in space and time, she couldn't help but feel proud and worried for her new son. Wouldn't he be a more extreme case of her husband? Looking over at Marcus, she could see he had a hint of sorrow in his eyes that faded into determination when he locked eyes with her.
The other odd thing was the lightning essence reaction. It was flashing all over the orb. Sometimes, it would blink next to the edge close to the space and time pair, and others would hit the opposite side of the globe and everywhere in between. There was a strange feeling about it that didn't quite make sense.
"Anton, is it possible it's broken? I have never heard of such a thing as what is happening with that lightning essence." She asked, looking over at her friend.
"I don't think so. I do have a spare one we can use that Ajax has left with me. Let me go and find it." He replied, walking over to a cabinet in the corner of the room and fishing out an identical-looking glass orb. The test was repeated with the same results, baffling the three.
"I don't think they are both faulty, but I have no idea what this means. This kind of testing is not my area of expertise, and we only picked some of these up when we bought supplies to start the village back then to test our young."
"I guess it could just be a way of saying an undetermined result, but unless we can find someone who can craft these, I doubt we will ever know for sure." He stated, and they all knew their little village lacked such a crafter.
"When I first checked him, there was a strange energy inside that I could do nothing about before he seemed to take a turn for the better. Even though he appeared to heal miraculously, his essence channels are still very damaged." Anton mentioned as if talking things through to himself as he ran his fingers gently across his scarred face.
"What if the result is just because of the damage?" The healer speculated as he continued to rub his cheek in thought.
Valeria winced as she remembered that morning and her heartbreak when it looked like Thanos had died. She wasn't sure what had happened to change that, but she was grateful that it had happened and that she now had a baby to call her own.
The thought that he might be injured and there was nothing any of them could do about it grated at her, but Anton would heal a comrade even at his own expense, so she trusted his diagnosis and friendship.
"I can talk to Ajax so that when we go on a supply run into Kallipolis, the guys can see if they can find any cultivation manuals for him. We buy what we need to train the other children, so yours will not be any different, I assure you, but as you both know, training manuals for such rare combinations are scarce. We might find a separate one for each. Perhaps Marcus can help the boy combine them much as he has done for himself." Anton suggested as he tried to be helpful and offer the couple a solution.
Ajax would give the okay to the proposal, she knew, and the rest of the village would even face financial hardship to get her son what he needed without any doubt. The main obstacle would be the exorbitant price of such items and the fact that they were so remote that they might not even be offered in the nearby city of Kallipolis and sold elsewhere instead.
The other issue was that she would feel wrong putting the village in such a position, even though she knew it might be the only solution. It's also not like Ajax would give them a choice anyway. The general always looked after his own.
She shared another look with her husband before she moved over to pick up her son and put him back in the sling before they headed home.
"Thank you, Anton. We'll consider your words. In the meantime, we'll watch him and see how he progresses." Marcus said as he walked with them to the door.
"Of course," Anton replied. "I'll also keep an eye out for any manuals or information. I'll let you know if I find anything."
The three said their goodbyes with Valeria and Marcus headed home with their son, neither saying a word as they walked. She couldn't help but think about his future.
She knew he was exceptionally talented and was determined to do whatever she could to help him reach his full potential. Looking at her husband, she could tell he was also of the same mind as she spotted that determined look he got when someone said he couldn't do something.
She smiled as she held her son tighter. They would figure it out.