Chapter 3 – Childhood Friends (Patreon)

Tom let the most recent memories of his young body bleed into him. It was a chaotic jumble, and the assault made him feel nauseous, but he persisted. The discrepancies between his older self and the behaviours that the four-year-old Ta was supposed to be exhibiting were too great. There were so many examples of that: speech patterns, the frequency with which he touched others, even the little Ta’s tendency to give into hunger. These were all activities that needed to be reprogrammed. Then there was the specific knowledge he had to keep track of, such as memories of whom he liked and whom he hated. All the details rushed through his consciousness: where he slept, where he hid, spots he’d better avoid. He sampled the memories quickly - not to absorb them, but instead attempted to catalogue them.

He had to be aware of what his main mind didn’t know so that he could query his memories at critical times to avoid blunders. Even this lightning-quick search had found numerous high-risk moments - like the fact that there were foods that little Ta never ate. When he went to the buffet tables at mealtimes, he would need to relive those memories to ensure he didn’t select something that would give his status away. There were dozens of other examples -  people little Ta would never talk to, or his habit of sticking hard to the left with his hand always touching the frame and, if possible, the hinges when passing through the doors.

Carefully, Tom catalogued all the identified idiosyncrasies for future use when a situation next demanded it.

Even if he got everything right, he knew he would fail to mimic all the tells. If anyone took enough time to observe him in detail, his subterfuge would be revealed. While there were some things that he could fix, like his speech patterns, there were others that he had no chance of changing. He had warrior instincts, and that was not something that he could put aside. Little Ta would need to develop in that direction. There would be a change. It was unavoidable, and Tom would just have to strive to hide the impact as much as possible.

Tom forced himself to focus on the present.

The three of them were playing invisiblies. It was a game where they would hide in the fortress and secretly observe the others. Bir was there, the blond girl with her striking artificial emerald green eye - along with Pa, the largest of their extended cohort.

It was the three of them. Inseparable, as always. An introvert, extrovert, and Tom who filled in the middle of the spectrum, at least around others. Internally, inside their group, things were almost the other way around.

All three of them were breathing heavily from the impromptu battle, and Pa was staring at him curiously. For a moment, he let his conscious control of everything slip. It was time to let the instincts of Little Ta come out to play.

“Pa didn’t have to elbow so hard.” Little Ta complained while rubbing his chest. To Tom, it was slightly sore, but not anywhere near enough for him to have commented on. But for a weak four-year-old… yeah, to his younger self it had been a big hit.

“I couldn’t breathe.” Pa glared at Bir. “She sat on me.”

Bir was in a good mood:

“I won fight. Pa is being a baby and Ta’s weak” She stuck out her tongue at both of them and then she pulled up the corner flap, as though the conversation was not important. The flap had a very distinctive crease caused by the regular use that allowed it to fold over easily and thus give them a good view of the room beyond it.

They were a few meters above floor level.

Surprise ran through him. The slight give he had felt under him, and the general groaning of spears became a lot more ominous.

The fort was more extensive than he had imagined. They were high. It was as though they were looking out from the third floor of a building. They could see the top of everyone’s heads. Their location, like Tom had surmised, was constructed like a standard school gymnasium, and thus consisted of a single massive room. There were rows of tables heaped with food on one side. Nearby, a machine was spewing out glowing bubbles. A small group was actively playing with them while everyone else watched the bubbles cautiously. They even changed positions to avoid any that drifted near them. A purple one, a significant distance from the rest floated into the path of an eight-year-old. He had just collected his lunch and was focused on not spilling his precariously stacked plate. He didn’t see the bubble coming at him on a collision course.

“Uh-oh,” Bir said, watching the same thing he was.

It struck the kid mid-thigh and then puffed out of existence.

Nothing happened for a moment, but Tom saw the boy’s eyes widen. His mouth formed an oh of surprise. He yelped, clutched at the impact site with both hands and his food went flying. Perfect sausages, potato chips and a meat pie rained down onto the wooden floor.

Tom winced at the waste.

No one else in the room reacted. Some glanced over to check on the sudden commotion, but mostly it was greeted by indifference. It was like it was a common occurrence and not worth raising even an eyebrow. A small golem trundled over to clean up. The poor child had collapsed to the floor and was clutching the impact point like it had shattered the femur. He was now brawling his eyes out as he lay there, rocking his upper body from side to side. Tom wanted to rush over and try to comfort him, but his memories told him this was nothing unusual. The bubbles were usually a fun game that occasionally resulted in brief but painful consequences.

A bystander getting hit was rarer, but with the party food supplied and the resulting inattention, it was not that much of a surprise.

“Purple hurts the worst.” Bir said wisely beside him. “When it got me my hurt for a day.” Then she poked her mouth. “Feeled it in my teeth.”

“Really your teeth?” Tom asked.

She nodded seriously:

“Purple’s really bad. You feel pain all through. Arm,” she touched his elbow and then traced her finger up the arm and circled his chest area. “And teeth really bad.” She tapped his lips to demonstrate.

“Yes it’s potent,” Tom agreed. His own memories shared the three times he himself had been struck by one of those bubbles. Yeah, he could kind of see her point. They caused a small amount of pain, pain that lingered for an hour. Nothing like a real broken bone or heavy hit, but little Ta had certainly collapsed dramatically as a result. His younger self, Tom thought, had poor pain tolerance.

The boy below had stopped screaming, but was still whimpering on the floor. Maybe his younger self hadn’t been that bad, he thought, as he revised his estimates of children in general. 

Tom’s eyes went over to the machine that had started the problem. As he watched, a child of around ten launched herself at a yellow bubble. It popped on her chest and then she started floating. She whooped in excitement.

Tom’s memories told him that the maneuver was not without risk, as occasionally the colours of the balls would change. But successfully hitting a yellow bubble was super fun and made the danger worthwhile. Overall, the artefact created a very enjoyable game, and his more logical brain could see other benefits. It was teaching situational awareness and body control, while floating would help train the kids to adjust to changing physical conditions. It was actually a very impressive toy.

The three of them watched in silence.

Tom focused on his need for context and forced his dual experiences to cooperate with each other. He needed hard information to make sense of everything that was happening. The brain of a four-year-old was difficult to parse at the best of times, but with the way the integration had scrambled the memories it was nearly impossible. Useful bits and pieces filtered through, but nothing substantial did. It was possible that little Ta, despite living here, had never truly considered the possibility or attempted to observe how things work. There were two compulsory hours of solitary isolation required per day. There were dozens of special rooms to choose from, and entering them was monitored. These were all different, but Little Ta had focused on the ones with the best toys and pretty much ignored anything else.

Then there was an actual trial they had to enter for four hours once per week. Little Ta had mixed feelings about it. Being away from his friends felt lonely, but being able to play in a grassy meadow with guaranteed bright sunshine and a small lake to waddle in was also enjoyable.

Tom hoped those memories were evidence of protected training opportunities, but he couldn’t tell. His younger self unfortunately was not at all observant. 

The memories combined with the other little pieces he had overheard did bring things together. They were in an orphanage, but not quite. In some ways this place was closer to a boarding school than anything else. Every child born to adventurers or crafters, whether the parents wanted to look after them or not, had to stay here.

It was a rule to safeguard those who were being reincarnated. But it also meant the place was well funded, and it had been designed to protect and prepare all its students for the very harsh world outside this small, protected space.

Not all children here were unwanted, and his wandering eyes spotted a couple of not parents visiting their own kids. One woman had five, with ages ranging from six to twelve crowded around her. Tom’s senses were not advanced, but he could feel the threat she represented from where he stood. She didn’t look the maternal type, but she was treating all of them like one would train one’s own, and Tom could see similarities between their facial features. Little Ta had hated the thought of the not-parents.

He, Bir and Pa were orphans in a practical and probably literal sense. There were no adults that visited them. A lot of their play revolved around them being the offspring of great adventurers who were out saving humanity. For the three of them, that was the only reason their own not parents didn’t visit.

Little Ta had naturally believed that fact absolutely, and he suspected Bir and Pa were the same. The fantasy was not realistic. Maybe they had been abandoned, but it was more likely their parents were dead.

“Chocloate time,” Bir declared as her hand dived in and targeted a particularly chocolate-dense area of their sweets bowl. She grabbed a handful and then settled back down to watch, one hand clutching her prize and the other regularly popping her loot into her mouth.

Pa had Cam out. There was a look of concentration on his face. He was pointing the staff of his figurine at snotty Ma and her not parents. “Pow, pow.”

Tom studied the adults in front of the snotty Ma. The dad had a Pacific islander appearance to him. Brown skin, huge shoulders, a thick body and was dressed in finely crafted gray chain link that somehow neither generated sound as he moved nor reflected light. The mum was slighter, almost petite when standing next to her partner. She reminded him a lot of Everlyn. She was clearly a scout, with her dark hair and leather armor that was dyed like military camo - and curiously, a foot-long blade sheathed at her side. He guessed the pair’s larger weapons would be in a spatial storage somewhere, but why the knife was not also there was a mystery to him. He personally had kept his spear exclusively in his spatial storage, since it was the most convenient way to retrieve it when needed.

There was nothing better than manifesting a spear in your hand when the charging boar was only a meter from you, thus giving it no chance to react before it impaled itself. 

The pair of them were powerful, but right now all their attention was on snotty Ma. Their love for her was obvious. They were Ma’s parents, but they were not allowed to be that here, so those two were deemed to be not-parents… They officially visited to help all the children, but no one was fooled. They, like all the others who used the loophole, only had eyes for their own.

All the kids were technically orphans. Strictly speaking, they were all supposed to be treated equally, but corruption spread everywhere humans settled and some children like snotty Ma were more equal than others. They had adults that showered them with attention and gifts. It was not lost on any of them that Snotty had better clothes than everyone else. She even had a magic ring that she could use to knock someone away. It was probably gifted to help her if she was threatened, but it was as equally applicable as a bullying tool. That was something she used regularly when there were no adults around to spot her actions and with it, they couldn’t touch her.

“Pow, Pow.” Pa repeated. “Cam crack them. Turn them to dust.”

Bir giggled. “No not Cam. I’m full. I’ll crack them.” There was a pause. “Who do I target? A not or a snotty?”

“Nots dangerous,” Pa observed, then he looked meaningfully up at the roof above them. He couldn’t actually see it because the hides were in the way, but the intention was clear. “And there are no birds to help.”

“I love it when there’s birds.” She agreed.

“Yes, that’s why it was your first word. We get it.” Pa told her.

She giggled and Tom, letting his instincts guide him, immediately joined in. He wasn’t sure he was following the conversation completely. He guessed he just had to fake things.

“Now how do I do this?” Bir mused to herself. Her eyes were darting from spot to spot.

A fancy bottle manifested out of nothing in the not mother’s hand. Tom’s memories told him that this, while not a regular occurrence, was something not parents did. The lucky child almost always got physically stronger afterward.

“That,” Pa said wisely. “Target that.”

“Good one. I’ll make it broken,” Bir promised with a giggle. Her eyes shut and her brow creased in furrows of concentration.

Fate boiled out of the young girl’s body.

Tom almost jumped in shock.

Bir could use fate? Of course she could, he reminded himself. Any human could. But for a four-year-old to apply it so deliberately… It was incredible to him.

And she wasn’t funneling a small amount, either. It was a flood of energy, and far more than he would have expected any child to have. He watched in awe as it swirled toward snotty Ma. It coalesced around the bottle that was still in the mum’s hand and then shot off in multiple directions, bits going into the mum, some of it into the dad and the rest into snotty. Tom could imagine it priming probability to make an unlikely event like the bottle spilling into a certainty. 

The mother was holding the flask, waving it around and explaining something to her daughter. Tom winced in sympathy. The large amount of fate that Bir had released had been barely contested by the trio of them.

He tensed. Something spectacularly unlikely was about to happen.

With the speech complete the Mum handed the bottle over.

Snotty snatched at it greedily.

The abrupt motion must have surprised the mum, for there was a slight fumble as the flask changed hands. Her daughter rushed to open it. Then, to their surprise, but not Tom’s, disaster struck. Ma’s pricy ring, the one that created the force field that she used to bully them, caught on the edge of the bottle. Her second hand, instead of smoothly plucking the cork out, knocked the entire thing out of her grip.

Minus the cork. 

The precious flask slipped from her hands.

Panic flared over her face. Snotty Ma tried to snatch it from the air, but she was only a four-year-old, and her inept attempts only made the situation worse. Not Dad, despite his heavy armour, went around the mum and was reaching out to catch it before it had even dropped five centimetres. The speed of that movement had left him a blur in Tom’s vision. Unfortunately, the mum had the same idea. With them both moving at superhuman speed, they collided. His thick, gauntleted hand struck the bottle, and it shattered.

Liquid went everywhere, with most of it going over Ma’s pristine, white, expensive dress.

Next to him Bir was shaking, almost unable to control her laughter. Pa had the sense of mind to attempt to close the flap so the adults would not be able to see them. That was not what Tom wanted and his fingers slid under the leather to jam it open and leave the smallest of cracks so he could still watch.

“That was a body elixir!” the Not Dad cursed. “I’m going to have words with the alchemist. How do you put something that expensive in such a cheap bottle? It broke after barely being touched.”

Snotty Ma burst into tears.

“Oh, sweety, don’t cry. Annabelle, listen to me. It wasn’t your fault.” The mom said, gathering her into a hug, ignoring the messy liquid that covered her. Using the name Annabelle was very taboo. That was very much against the rules, but the parents didn’t care.

Bir was wiggling violently with both hands covering her mouth to stop her laughter from attracting attention. Pa caught his eyes and the two of them pulled her away from the hide wall, so the vibrations of her thrashing didn’t become visible from the other side.

“That was me. I caused it to break. Did you see snotty’s face!”

“And the not dad’s face,” Pa agreed wisely. “So angry.” Causally, the slightly larger boy grabbed some sweets and popped them in his mouth. They crunched loudly as he chewed.

Tom wasn’t interested in the sweet candy. He kind of wanted to go and get one of those sausages instead. Then he noticed the two of them were looking at him.

It was the same strange look as earlier. 

A sinking feeling struck him, and he instantly stepped sideways into the pseudo-system room. His body, now separate from him, started reacting in the appropriate fashion, and the concerned looks vanished.

With both hands together, he smacked his own cheeks in frustration.

Another misstep.

Being here, in the system room, was a waste of time. He could be practicing being younger, but he had absolutely no idea about how to react to what he had just witnessed. The absurdity of it – he just couldn’t envisage how a four-year-old was even supposed to respond. Probably the way Bir did. But the adult him didn’t know how to mimic that sort of behaviour. 

“Why is this so hard?” he screamed, confident that no one would hear or answer him.

It was ridiculous.

That prank.

A four-year-old using fate for a practical joke. She most likely wasn’t even reincarnated - his memories told him she had done this a couple of times before. But her control, the volume of her fate pool – both of those had been impressive. She had to possess at least forty points; possibly more. How could she have so much?

Another entry was dutifully added to his to-do list. Out of the corner of his eyes, on the wall, he noticed it updating in real time. Tom strove to put it out of his mind.

On the screen, the three of them had retreated deeper into the hide fort in an effort to avoid the notice of the not parents.

Tom wondered what to do. Then he focused.

He had to accomplish better acting. He had to learn to mimic behaving like a little kid. Mentally grumbling to himself, he left his system room. The trio were playing heroes versus monsters. He gambled that he could ponder the future while participating on autopilot, and stopped paying active attention to the game. 

His overall aim couldn’t be clearer. It was to get stronger and make a difference, and that promise when he accepted reincarnation meant he could. That was locked in. A wellspring of hope and motivation, and the broad steps required to do so were also evident. The only issue was his frightening lack of knowledge. Unfortunately, he had died before any children had been born, so he really didn’t know the rules he was going to be subjected to for the next eleven years. After that, once the experience shop unlocked, it would be a different story, but until that point, he was blind.

The blind spots of the situation bothered him.

What was going on with the assassins targeting him and the other reincarnated ones?

His brain itched in response to that thought, as though there was a memory that he was supposed to have that could answer it. He focused, but the feeling faded. More reason, he thought with a dismissive laugh, to work out why were there holes in his memories.

Then his mind turned to the state of humanity. How was it going? How big was the city? And did it matter?

There was no specific knowledge that could directly help. However, he was pretty sure this was the only orphanage around here, which gave an indication of the town’s population. If this was the only one, it meant that the town was only generating thirty babies every year. That was not a lot when you thought about it. A hundred people could create that many if they were breeding constantly. But was that a choice that individuals who made it to the competition would make? He doubted it. There was, Tom realised after a moment of consideration, no easy way to estimate the number of adults from the children. 

While a population estimate could have been useful, it didn’t matter. In the conversation he had eavesdropped on, Pete had thought they could catch the dragon’s ranking points, and that was what was important. Only a million humans had entered the competition, and probably a third had died within the first six months. Whether the remainder was ten thousand or half a million, as far as he could guess, didn’t matter much.

All that Tom cared about was getting to a high enough place to save the billions who were still coming.

In hindsight, given the threat of the assassins, he figured the most important question for him currently was this: how much freedom to train his body and abilities did he have? He remembered those solitary places that they got sent to. Little Ta didn’t know, but he was hopeful that would be an option. With the assassins hunting him, alone-time in a warded room was going to be vital.

Then there was the issue of the physical impact of his training. Once he got serious about it, he would develop calluses and start to move differently as muscles built up. Mentally, he could feel the to-do list upgrading. He would need to watch the older kids. Provided a segment of them took physical development seriously, Tom would be able to do the same. He guessed he would just have to make sure he was not the best of his cohort and in doing so, avoid painting a target on his back.

There were so many questions jumping around in his head that it almost hurt, and he only had a vague idea of how to deal with them. It was trite to say time will help, but that was what he was telling himself now. Most of them would be answered with time.

Frustrated, he grabbed one of the boiled lollies and popped it into his mouth while examining his two companions. They definitely wouldn’t be able to help answer any of the random questions pounding in his brain. Before either of them noticed his distracted state, he moved the ugly monster dolls he was using:

“Pow, pow.”

He flung one of them in the air to signify a direct strike of Cam’s devastating magic and let the others flee. Those piled up behind Bir, using her as cover.

The adult in him frowned at the game. It was not realistic. There was no way these monsters would hide. If this were real, they would have been driven insane by the presence of a sapient. They would have abandoned all sense of self preservation and charged Cam’s position.

He pushed the irritated thought aside and focused on the sweet flavour flooding his mouth. It felt so good. Appreciatively, he savoured the taste of the sugary treat. The experience almost made him cry. It had been over forty years since he last had one, back on earth, when things were still normal. The taste brought back too many bittersweet memories, memories of what they had and what they had lost. Then, he did not have to worry about monsters and competitions; on the other hand, neither did he have magic.

And magic, he reminded himself, made up for a lot of the world’s injustices.

Providing they could place high enough in the competition, his treacherous mind reminded him to ruin the moment. If they couldn’t get at least third, not even magic would be able to compensate for the sufferings of the billions of humans.

Next to him Pa was waving Cam around:

“Pow, pow, splash.”

Tom turned the monsters over to show that they were dead.

Bir giggled:

“Splash like I made the potion. And mean Snotty cried. She cried lots.” She added happily.

The adult Tom wanted to tell her off for taking pleasure in another’s suffering, but the child within him agreed wholeheartedly. Tom hated what that implied, but he knew what he had to say:

“We got her good.”

Table of Contents

Chapter 4

Chapter 2 ------- Chapter 2 (AUDIO)