Leon had always been a cut above the rest when it came to his intelligence, going through school, things he found simple turned out to be difficult for his classmates. He went through his academic life getting top results in his subjects, in his desire to learn more he started looking towards the stars. That's how he ended up here, staring down at the earth from an orbital space station; he was currently putting on his EMU (Extravehicular mobility unit) or commonly referred to as a spacesuit. There had been some debris that had collided with a panel and it needed repairing and it was Leon's job to fix it.
After all of his checks where complete, Leon went through the process of exiting the space station. Leon loved this part, and it was this that confirmed he had made the correct decision to become an astronaut, the feeling of being free with the earth in full view of him. After a few moments lost in its beauty, Leon turned and pulled himself along to the damaged area. It took him a couple of minutes to reach the damaged section on the other side of the station and when he did he discovered a rather strange sight. It was a shard of metal he didn't recognise embedded into the wall of the station. As surprised as he was to see it he wondered why such a thing hadn't pierced right through the panel entirely and into the interior, but he was grateful it hadn't as it would have caused the death of not only him but his crew as well.
Once he got closer to the shard, he noticed it started glowing slightly and small arcs of electricity periodically fired out of it. He stopped right away and tried to radio back into his crew to explain the situation when he noticed he couldn't contact them. Instinct told him to back further away and try again to contact the crew but as he went to turn away he felt something, it was a calling from somewhere inside himself, begging him to get closer to the shard. No matter how he tried to rationalise that he should leave, for now, it kept pulling him in closer until his fingers made contact. A bright flash of white light enveloped him and the next thing he knew he was being pulled away from the station by the shard that had suddenly dislodged and flew in reverse to where it had come from. He knew he should let go before he reached the end of his tether but everything inside of himself told him not to.
His tether snapped and he carried on speeding up as he went further and further away from the space station. He could feel an energy building up inside the shard as he kept getting faster but he still didn't want to let go, he soon noticed where the shard was heading. He was heading right towards an ever-growing asteroid that was firing off large arcs of electricity. He knew the shard was re-joining the main asteroid somehow but he still refused to let go, at this point he knew it was useless even if he did let go anyway. He closed his eyes and thought of his parents back on earth and apologised to them that he wouldn't be coming home from this trip. Before he knew it he had collided with the asteroid, but instead of pain, he felt it was once more that energy he could feel and he suddenly thought that dying wasn't that bad of an experience after all.
Leon thought that everything was over for him when he collided with the asteroid, but he didn't feel any pain. Instead, he was comfortable, surrounded by white light which eventually faded and left him in complete darkness, he tried moving but noticed his limbs didn't work for him at all. He began to wonder if that's what death was, just floating in darkness eternally. Still, he was warm so it wasn't as bad as he thought it could have been. If he paid close enough attention, he could make out a voice that sounded like a woman. It sounded muffled and in a language, he didn't understand but under his rationalisation, he had an eternity to try and figure it out.
He spent 6 months in this state and found his body starting to get stronger. He could move now but he felt constricted by something. No matter what he did he couldn't break out of whatever was holding him, he felt like he was getting pushed along by something but had no idea what to do. An hour later he could see a light that was growing larger as he was slowly pushed towards it.
After what seemed like an eternity he felt fresh air on his face again and large hands lift him up. He looked around and was startled to find he was being held by a giant of a woman with wrinkles all over her hands and face; she was wrapping him up in cloth. As he kept looking around he saw another giant. This one was a man with dark hair. He felt he was moving and looked in that direction to see another giant woman looking at him, she looked exhausted. It was at this moment he realised, they weren't giants, he was a baby again! He had just been born, and this woman was his new mother. He looked back over at the man who must be his father when he began to speak
"Lily, are you OK?" but the words didn't make sense to Leon at all
"I'm OK Kane, just tired but it's a small price to pay now he is here" She said with a tired-looking smile on her face. Leon kept looking between the two in confusion when the old woman started speaking.
"Have you thought of a name for him yet Lily?"
"I hadn't up till now, but now I see him the name Leon comes to mind, is that OK with you dear?"
"Definitely" was the response from his father. "I couldn't think of a better name for him myself".
During all of this, the old woman hadn't taken her eyes off of Leon and was surprised to see he kept looking between his parents with what appeared to be a confused look on his face. Shortly after he started falling asleep, so she assumed she must have been seeing things. After making sure Lily was doing well she eventually left the family alone. Kane left the room shortly after and returned with a young boy no more than 7 and said to him "Kyle, say hello to your brother Leon, you will be helping to look after him when he gets bigger".
Leon woke up in the middle of the night and tried to think of what had happened, he must have died right? So why was he alive again? Why was he a baby as well? He began thinking of some of the religious beliefs he knew of and wondered if he had reincarnated as Buddhism believed? But why did he remember his past life on earth? From his understanding that's not possible even if he had reincarnated, nobody in his past life had claimed it was possible or that they knew all the memories of their past life. After further thinking he started to remember that strange energy that wrapped around him just before he hit the asteroid, could that have caused this?
He didn't know what it was, but he knew he had a head start in this life; he just needed to figure out where he was and what language they were speaking as he hadn't heard it spoke before. He could speak English, German, mandarin and Italian, so he definitely knew it wasn't any of those. Leon decided the first things he needed to do was learn to walk and learn this new language, everything else could wait till he had a grasp of both. His intelligence was his strongest point or so he thought so the language he could pick up if he tried hard enough, but he knew walking wasn't going to be easy as it took time and effort to build his strength up. While his body was growing, he had to adjust to this new world and find out as much information as he could. With this in mind, he slowly fell back asleep.
His new life was passing slowly in the early months, from the endless tiredness he felt, and the constant hunger, it left him very little time to focus on learning what was going on around him. His grasp on the language was coming along slowly as by 5 months he could now pick up a few words and the occasional sentence. His body was growing stronger day by day, though. During the moments he was alone he kept trying to stand and move about, but by this point being able to crawl was all he could achieve.
Time kept flowing as he was trying to get to a point he where could learn more freely about this world. He was coming up to 8 months old now, and thanks to his hard work, he was able to stand up and walk short distances before falling over. When his mother first saw him she was so happy she picked him up and was showing him off to the rest of the village saying how smart her little boy was to be walking so young. Kyle was so excited to think it wouldn't be long till he could play and run around with his brother he was hanging off his mother's arm while watching Leon walk around.
Leon hadn't seen much of his father. From what he could understand he was a merchant and gone for long periods of time while his wife watched the store in the village. Leon realised that his new world was vastly different from where he had come from. There were no cars or electronic devices at all; it was like he had gone a few hundred years into the past. Horses and carts seemed the staple form of transport. The one big difference that shocked him to the core was something that was only written in fantasy books back on earth, magic!
The first time he had seen his father light the hearth at home was a real eye-opener for Leon. No matches or flint, Kane just lifted his hand. After a short series of words, that didn't sound like the common language spoken, fire shot out from his hand and ignited the kindling in the fireplace. Leon was so fascinated by what he had seen he was staring endlessly at his father and the fire wondering if there was a chance that he could do the same when he grew up. He eventually witnessed his mother performing magic as well which shocked him even further, could everyone do magic in this world? His mother's magic was different; it was an ethereal green that created wind.
She used it for such commonplace things, like drying the clothes she had washed or even cutting logs for the fire. She could use it as a gentle breeze or compress it into a sharp blade that could cut into the wood like it was nothing. Leon knew that from then on he had to work harder so he could harness this sort of power himself as soon as possible. It was witnessing these sorts of acts that spurred him on and gave him a goal in this life; he finally had something to strive for!
Over the next 10 months, Leon grew up at a rate that startled the villagers. It was a small village and a child that was so mature and not only physically advanced but also talking fluently like a small adult was something they had never heard of before. Leon had reached a point that he couldn't continue on his own so when he felt he was ready, one morning he spoke to his mother.
"Mother, I want to learn to read. Dad has so many books, and I haven't got a lot to do so I was hoping I could get a tutor to help me learn".
He knew his brother had a tutor teaching him to read, but he was too impatient to wait that long. Needless to say, this shocked his mother. Normal children didn't start learning to read until they turned 5, and even then it was reluctantly. His brother Kyle was still studying under his tutor to learn and he was turning 9 soon, although he was doing well enough compared to normal children. The disparity between her two sons was growing wider before she knew it.
Leon had to wait another couple of weeks before his father returned so his mother could talk to him. He was ecstatic at the thought a genius could come from his family, intelligent children had a greater aptitude for magic according to the more prominent spellcasters in the world. Kane was only a disciple of the third rank while Lily was only at the 6th rank of the apprentice levels, so the thought he might have a wizard in the family brought happiness that he could hardly contain.
It was a simple system for magic although with that simplicity came untold hardship, for every level of spellcasters there were 7 small stages that needed to be crossed. From when their first mana core formed they would become an apprentice, which went up to rank 7. After apprentice came disciple for another 7 ranks until they hit the wizard stage. The most powerful spellcaster Kane had seen was a rank 6 wizard and the pressure it had brought him from the abundance of mana left a deep impression on him. Above that was the warlock stage which Kane had only heard of but never witnessed. Any rank above he didn't know of as Warlock in itself was regarded as a myth in these parts of the world. So the idea that his son could possibly stand amongst the wizard circle made him proud.
Kane arranged for the best tutor he could find for Leon, and although it strained his family's income a little he didn't mind the extra expense when he thought of the future. One morning while Leon was playing with his brother, he heard his father calling for him.
"Leon! Come out front there is somebody here to meet you!" Leon was a bit confused at first as his father wouldn't normally bring him out to meet people; it was his mother always trying to show him off to others. Leon came out of the back of the house towards the front which made up the only shop in the village.
Stood next to his father was a man in dusty travel robes and a pair of small spectacles on his face. He had ahead of blonde curly hair with bushy eyebrows that nearly met in the middle.
"Leon, this is Master Logan. If he agrees to it then he will be your new tutor" Kane said with a hint of optimism.
"Greetings sir, it is my honour to meet you." He finished with a small but refined bow.
The new gentleman was as shocked as everyone else who had met him when he saw such a small child perform such an elegant bow and speak so well. He turned to Kane
"How old is Leon?" Master Logan spoke clearly with a trace of curiosity.
"He will have just turned 19 months old last week, he requested to learn to read last month and we didn't want to waste his intelligence by sticking to the general ages that children start
"Are you still willing to to teach him Master Logan?"
"Willing?" he let out a short bark of laughter. "Of course I'm willing! If he can learn as quickly as he has up to this point I wouldn't be surprised if he ends up as my best student to date!"
Master Logan had been a tutor for the more wealthy merchants and nobility for nearly 20 years. He never had an aptitude for magic so he poured his everything into study and soon became known as a renowned scholar within the surrounding villages, towns and closest city. He had a talent for teaching so most nobility and merchants sought him out to teach their children.
Unfortunately, he would only teach those who were willing and bright enough. To find a child, not even two years old, wanting to learn and even more so being so mature and speaking better than most of the 5-year-olds he normally taught. He felt like he had finally found a student who he could take pleasure in teaching.
The spoken language was not too hard to get to grips with Leon thought, but the written side was vastly more complicated. It involved a series of over 100 runes that were in different orders in order to make a different sound. Two runes separated by a space or not could have two entirely different meanings.
Leon was getting the basics down finally, but it had been a long 5 months of work. He was now 2 years old and although to everyone in this world he was a genius child, he still felt that he was progressing too slowly. He now knew plenty of other knowledge though. The country he lived in, which was called Rion, was one of 3 large countries forming an alliance together. These 3 countries had banded together to form the Kurandel academy for magic, named after the founder who was rumoured to be at the peak of the warlock level. Whether it was true or not was up for debate between scholars though.
He learned of a few more branches of magic other than the fire and wind he knew from his parents. The 4 elements were the grounding of magic and each had specific uses and different traits. While they may be different there was a common trait they could all be used for. That was formations and inscription. Formations had many uses and were to be used over a wide area, whereas inscriptions where used on items for various reasons depending on the element and item in question. After learning all of this though Leon was hit with great disappointment, he wouldn't be able to learn any of this until he turned 10 years old and was assessed for compatibility with an element.
If he was compatible, he would be sent off to the academy to train and learn all he could, if not his dream would never come true. For the time being, he resigned himself to continue his hard work in learning what he could. An old phrase from earth had stuck with him and he was determined to stick by it, knowledge is power!