Leon's earliest memories in this new world, once the initial shock of reincarnation had dulled to a persistent, low-grade existential hum, were a confusing kaleidoscope of towering adult figures, strange guttural sounds that eventually resolved into the Eldorian tongue, and the pervasive, earthy smells of a pre-industrial society.
His ducal nursery, though affluent by local standards with its carved wooden crib and tapestries depicting heroic Varent ancestors slaying improbable beasts, would have been condemned by any Earth-era child protective service.
Drafty, poorly lit by flickering tallow candles or oil lamps that produced more smoke than illumination, and always, always carrying that underlying scent of inadequate sanitation that his modern nose found so offensive.
His childhood was a peculiar blend of noble privilege and profound alienation. As Leon Varent, third son of Duke Alaric, he was afforded tutors, fine clothes (though often scratchy and impractical), and more food than most commoners in the Duchy saw in a week. Yet, from a very young age, he understood he was a disappointment.
His attempts to understand the world around him through the lens of science and engineering were met with blank stares or, worse, active disapproval. When he'd tried to explain the principles of leverage to a stonemason struggling with a heavy block, he'd been shooed away as a babbling child.
When he'd questioned his magic tutor about the conservation of energy in relation to a fireball spell, "Where does the energy come from, and where does the excess heat dissipate?" The elderly mage had sputtered about 'faith' and 'the will of the mana' before assigning him extra lines of tedious rune transcription.
His early experiments, driven by an unquenchable curiosity and the lingering instincts of an engineer, were often disastrous and misunderstood. An attempt to create a simple water filter using layers of sand and charcoal in the castle gardens resulted in a muddy mess and a stern lecture about wasting precious resources.
His fascination with the castle's creaking drawbridge mechanism, which he correctly identified as dangerously unbalanced, led to him being banned from the outer wall after he was found trying to adjust the counterweights with a stolen length of rope.
Each effort into practical application, each question that strayed from the accepted rule of magic and martial might, further cemented his reputation as 'Leon the Odd' or, more cruelly, 'Leon the Witless.'
Duke Alaric Varent, his father, was a man carved from granite and ambition. Tall, powerfully built, with a voice that could make stone tremble, he valued strength, magical prowess, and unwavering loyalty to the Varent name above all else. Leon possessed none of these in the forms his father recognized.
The Duke's disdain for his third son was a noticeable force in any room they shared, a cold, heavy pressure that made Leon feel small and insignificant. It wasn't overt cruelty, not usually.
It was worse: a dismissive indifference, the occasional sigh of profound disappointment, the way his gaze would slide over Leon as if he were a piece of poorly made furniture.
His elder brothers were everything Duke Alaric desired. Valerius, five years Leon's senior, was already a mage of some note. Arrogant and entitled, Valerius could conjure crackling bolts of lightning and walls of fire with an ease that spoke of true innate talent.
He lorded his abilities over everyone, especially Leon, often using his younger brother as an unwilling target for minor, humiliating hexes; from the sudden itching powder effect, to shoes that inexplicably tied themselves together, and to a brief but embarrassing bout of uncontrollable hiccups during a formal dinner. These incidents were usually met with chuckles from the Duke's men and a weary sigh from their mother.
Cassian, three years older than Leon, was Valerius's opposite in temperament but equal in ducal approval. Broad-shouldered and skilled with every weapon he touched, Cassian was the epitome of martial virtue.
He spent his days in the training yard, his movements with the sword a blur of deadly grace. While not as overtly cruel as Valerius, Cassian shared his father's dismissive attitude towards Leon, seeing him as weak and irrelevant, a non-entity in the grand scheme of Varent power.
It was only Duchess Elara who provided a buffer against the harsh expectations of their world. She was a woman of quiet grace, her beauty tinged with a perpetual sadness that Leon only began to understand as he grew older.
She came from a lesser-known noble line, one rumored to have ancient ties to the more mysterious, fey-touched regions of the kingdom. While others in the Varent household focused on Leon's lack of conventional Eldorian talents, Elara had nurtured his curious mind.
She would listen patiently to his strange theories, his observations about the inefficiencies of their watermills, or his detailed, if childish, drawings of fantastical machines. She never fully understood his talk of 'physics' or 'thermodynamics,' concepts utterly alien to her world, but she recognized the spark of intelligence, the unique way his mind worked.
"Not all strength is found in the swing of a sword or the heart of a spell, my Leon," she would tell him, her fingers gently stroking his hair. "The mind that can see what others miss, that can build what others cannot imagine; that is a power all its own. A quieter power, perhaps, but one that can change the world nonetheless."
She was the one who had discreetly provided him with blank parchment and charcoal when his tutors complained about him defacing expensive spellbooks with his 'meaningless scribbles.'
She had found him an old, retired scholar in a dusty corner of the castle library who, unlike the court tutors, was willing to discuss mathematics and basic geometry with him, even if he couldn't fathom Leon's attempts to apply these to real-world structures beyond simple fortifications.
Leon often wondered about his mother's own life, about the source of her quiet sorrow. He knew she was not entirely happy in the Varent court, that she often seemed like a delicate flower transplanted into a harsh, rocky landscape.
Her health had always been fragile, with a recurring cough and a weariness that seemed to deepen with each passing year. He'd see her sometimes, gazing out from the castle ramparts towards the distant, hazy outline of the Whisperwood, her ancestral lands, her expression unreadable.
His own 'oddities' extended to his personal habits, which further set him apart. While the rest of the nobility seemed content with the earlier mentioned chamber pots and infrequent, elaborate bathing rituals, Leon craved cleanliness with an almost physical ache.
He'd secretly heat water over his own small, carefully shielded brazier in his room, using a basin for sponge baths far more frequently than was considered normal or even entirely healthy by Eldorian standards.
He'd try to air out his rooms, much to the dismay of servants who believed drafts invited ill humors. His constant, quiet battle against the prevailing grime and lack of hygiene was just another mark of his strangeness.
He'd once tried to explain the concept of germs to his mother, after a particularly nasty bout of stomach flux had swept through the lower castle staff. He'd spoken of tiny, invisible creatures that spread illness, and the importance of handwashing and boiling drinking water.
She had listened with her usual gentle attention, but he saw the confusion in her eyes. "Invisible creatures, my dear? Like… sprites?" she'd asked, and he'd realized the conceptual gulf was simply too vast.
Despite her inability to grasp the scientific underpinnings of his ideas, Elara never mocked him. She encouraged his intellectual pursuits in her own quiet way, fostering the very traits his father and brothers despised. It was a precarious balance, her gentle influence a fragile shield against the Duke's overbearing expectations.
As Leon grew into adolescence, the pressure to conform, to manifest some 'useful' Varent trait, only intensified. Each failed attempt to ignite a magical spark, each clumsy session in the training yard where he'd inevitably trip over his own feet or nearly impale himself on a practice dummy, was another nail in the coffin of his ducal standing.
He retreated further into his books, into his thoughts, into the silent, intricate world of his engineering designs. He learned to be observant, to listen more than he spoke, to keep his more radical ideas to himself.
He became adept at feigning interest in tedious lessons on noble lineage or heraldry, while his mind was actually calculating the optimal angle for a siege engine's throwing arm or designing a more efficient pump for the castle well.
He was living a double life: outwardly the quiet, disappointing son, inwardly an engineer starved of his craft, a modern mind trapped in a medieval cage. The weight of expectations was a heavy cloak, and his mother's love, though a precious comfort, was not always enough to lighten its suffocating burden.
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