By age four, Erik would spend his time constantly in the mansion library, a multiple-room-sized gallery full of hundreds of books. He would read both thin to extremely thick books with pages full of hundreds of words each, regardless of genre.
Anyone would think he was adorable and innocent, or that he was a child mesmerized by the fantasy of the book's contents.
However, the way in which he read was more than innocent reading. He read as though he were glossing over, but with a focused look in his, one more akin to a look one would have when studying.
He would read for hours, moving from book to book, but by the time someone came in, often his personal nanny, Nomay, they would find him alone with only a single book laid out in front of him, and the rest gone. Disappeared as if they were never there to begin with.
She would suspect nothing out the ordinary.
The back of the estate had a garden that grew brightly colored flowers, barracks where the guards stayed and trained, and a stable where multiple horses were taken care of by an old stablehand.
It was a bright summer, perfect for playing as a normal child would, but instead, he wandered around as if he were looking for something if anything.
Eventually, he noticed a small opening between the paddock and the mansion, a small opening full of overgrown greenery that no one would be able to get to, no one except a child with a small body like him.
Inside the dense patch of grass and hedges, he found an old iron cellar door that he tried to pull open but was unable to. The look in his eye and the frown on his lips made a mix of disdain and disgust.
The fact was, he was a toddler whose body was so small and underdeveloped, that lifting up the door was an impossibility, and yet, the door began to open without him so much as putting a hand on the rusted metal.
It slowly creaked open, years of rust and dried grime that had seeped into the crevices being broken as it did.
When the door's latch finally came undone the door opened by itself, revealing an old, dark, and abandoned basement.
Inside, he found an old set of knight's armor, a rusted lamp, and empty boxes.
He made his way to the center of the room, his foot tapping against the lamp on the floor.
He knelt down to pick up the lamp, an old-timey lamp made of copper. As he eyed it, a thought came to mind and he threw it onto the ground as hard as he could.
Outside, he made his way through the grassy plains and to a tree near the cobblestone wall. He then started digging in the dirt.
His nanny, Nomay, saw him from the pasture and began to approach him with a tray full of snacks and a glass of milk. When she approached, Erik quickly hid what he was doing.
"There you are, young master. I have brought you your cookies and milk as you wanted. What are you doing? Looking for worms?"
She smiled warmly as if he were just an ordinary child and he didn't have an emotionless look on his face nor a cold look in his eyes that an ordinary child wouldn't have.
Still, he found her presence to be annoying and had long learned that as his caretaker, there were some things she couldn't do, such as leave him without proper supervision for too long even despite his status being higher than hers. So he was forced to work around it.
"Nomay. I want oranges."
"Oranges...?"
She maintained her bright smile, though while tilting her head in place of a dreary sigh.
"I understand young master."
Erik knew that oranges were something that would occupy her time, as they did not have oranges, and that would mean she would have to end up speaking to the carriage coach in order to ride into the city to obtain oranges. They lived on private land outside the city walls, noble land, and it was an hour's ride back and forth. Though that was not the real reason he had requested oranges. The real reason was that he knew the carriage coach was a grumpy old man who would argue against going just for simple oranges, and that Nomay would argue back for the sake of her young master, which would ultimately buy him a dozen or so minutes.
In the meantime, Erik would collect what he needed, looking up at the tree above to see a bird in its nest.
At night, he gathered what he needed in the secret basement he'd found earlier that day along with two still-alive birds.
He smeared mud on the walls and wrote into them with a thin stick, symbols that if anyone had glossed over them, such as a family member or a maid of his, would be unable to recognize.
The language used dominantly among the human population was called common, used widely by the majority of the continent, aside from some cultures of people who learned both common and their own tongue, or even fewer who solely used their own unique language.
He acted in full knowledge of what he was doing, something that went beyond natural instinct or the simple understanding of a child, even as he pinned the birds on the walls by their wings with a nail.