I glanced around, making sure there were no witnesses.
And after confirming there were none, I reached my stubby little fingers upwards, latched onto the crib rails, pulled myself upwards, and front-flipped out.
In reality I tried to push the crib over, failed, and then tried to pull myself over.
Truly amazing, the least I would expect from somebody as incredible as I.
...
I came back to reality, overwhelmed by the stark realization that instead of the marvellous gymnastic prodigy I believed I was, I had fallen flat on my face with a loud thud.
Which didn't really matter because, in Elena's desperate attempt to both silence and control me, she had fitted silencing wards on all the walls and doors to prevent my tactical wailing (also known as loud screaming and shouting).
So my pathetic attempt at escape went unheard.
Operation: Fugio in session.
I waddled towards the door, almost falling six times in the four steps I took.
I reached towards the door, expecting a physical recoil.
The wards on the door reacted instantly.
A dull pressure slammed into my chest, invisible hands trying to press me backward as soon as my fingers brushed the wood. My feet slid on the floor and I very nearly performed an unscheduled retreat back toward the crib.
Absolutely not.
I dug in with my heels and forced what little mana I had left outward, threading it through my fingertips.
The ward resisted.
Of course it did.
Fine.
I narrowed my focus, ignoring the way my arms trembled, and peered into the structure of the spell. The enchantment wasn't decorative—it was built from layered channels, intersecting lines of force woven into a compact lattice.
Crude.
Effective.
Annoying.
I followed one channel.
Hit resistance.
Pulled back before it bit me.
Tried another.
That one stung.
My vision swam for half a second, and I nearly lost balance again.
Somewhere behind me, floorboards creaked.
Someone shifted in the hallway.
No pressure.
I traced deeper, pushing mana along the ward's internal pathways, feeling for the anchor point—the core glyph that everything else spiraled out from.
There.
Buried slightly off-center, disguised beneath reinforcement loops.
Clever.
I redirected everything I had left toward it.
The ward surged in response, flaring bright as it tried to clamp down on me fully this time. The pressure doubled, crawling up my arms and into my shoulders, making my teeth rattle.
I screamed internally.
Outwardly, I drooled a little.
With a final, extremely undignified shove of mana, I punched straight through the core line.
The ward didn't shatter immediately.
It hesitated.
Then the lattice unraveled all at once.
Energy snapped outward in a brief, violent pulse that rattled the door in its frame and sent me stumbling backward onto my rear.
I blinked like somebody seeing the world for the first time.
The pressure vanished.
The door was… normal.
Unlocked.
I stared at it for half a second longer than necessary.
I sensed something there.
But I also didn't care enough, Elena could sort that out later.
Too easy.
I slowly opened the door, and although it creaked loudly, Elias was probably doing something somewhere, and Elena would be too busy to listen in on a child that had stayed thoroughly put for three months.
"Those wards you installed were brilliant, although it's been over three months, I'm worried he's getting restless again. Could you renew them?" Elena was talking to somebody, most definitely referring to me.
You're quick on the uptake, Elena, I'll give you that, but not quick enough.
In a moment of quick thinking, I dropped to all fours, acknowledging that at this time, crawling was much, much faster than walking.
I launched forward, not like how a 15 month old infant would, but closer to a streamlined bullet.
I felt wind fly past my face.
Is it a good idea to be moving this fast in a closed environment?
Probably not.
Did I care?
Definitely not.
I flew past the door to the room that Elena was speaking in.
She seemed to have realized that I had escaped, and was now currently on the run, and so followed me, out of the room she was seemingly having a full-blown conversation in.
Although she chased me with what can only be described as fury, I continued speed-crawling.
I wouldn't be punished if I didn't get caught would I?
As I blurred through the house, a familiar figure came closer and closer into view.
Elias?
In the kitchen?
And even more shocking... actually using the oven?
Maybe he wasn't lying that time?
He saw me crawling towards him, and a wide grin spread on his face.
He turned and crouched down slightly, reaching his hands out to pick me up.
After a brief moment crouched, he seemed to realize that instead of a cute bumbling baby crawling towards his father to be picked up, I was closer to a bullet train.
He pulled his hands back and dived out of the way like a dolphin, directly into the wall, producing a loud donk sound as he did.
I could vaguely hear Elena scream "Not there!" as he was jumping.
I was too busy fleeing the facility.
Well done there.
As I was internally celebrating Elias's misery, I forgot to look forward. Which isn't the wisest thing to do when you're a small ball of speed and energy.
By the time I had looked back forward, it was too late. I was moments away from a collision with the wall, and was forced to scrap plan A.
I had tried to conserve mana, but in this situation, I just couldn't.
I used mana to solidify my body, forcibly breaking straight through the wall, plaster and wood tore instead of yielding cleanly.
Crash. Bang
Elena would kill me for that later, but that was a problem for the me of later.
I had escaped the house.
Fully.
I turned around, tired and baby-panting, to see Elena doubled over in laughter, pointing at Elias who had apparently dived into the wall and caused multiple eggs to fall onto his head.
Brilliant.
Truly spectacular.
***
Three months had passed since my second escape attempt, and 6 months since the original wards had been installed.
My parents had called in some of the greatest mages in the country, so the chances of me breaking it in this body were exactly zero percent.
But that's alright, I have a different plan.
Words.
The brilliant capability of babies. Speaking.
I was sat (tied) down in my crib, and Elena was reading me a story.
Although my feelings towards her were mostly positive, I still had a few grudges to get out.
"Why are you looking at me like that?" She paused her reading, inspecting my face and concerned at the death stares I was sending her way.
"Lena... toopid."
It was the closest my baby mouth could get, and hopefully she would understand.
Her expression didn't change much. There was no shock. No anger. Just a subtle stillness, like something inside her had clicked into place.
That 'subtle' stillness was sending off blaring warnings in my head saying:
"Run."
Then she blinked once, and only then did the thought occur to me:
She's going to kill me, isn't she.
She didn't react to the sound I'd made. Instead, she finished the line she was reading.
Turned the page.
The quiet shhk of thin paper sliding felt deafening, amplified by my own fear. My heart hammered far too hard for a body this small, every beat stretching the moment longer than it had any right to.
She closed the book.
Not sharply. Not angrily.
Just... closed.
She placed it down beside her, aligning it neatly, almost perfectly, with the edge of the table. Apparently almost perfect wasn't good enough for her. So she straightened it. Adjusted the corner just once more, by the smallest of margins, as if precision mattered more than anything else in the room.
And I wish it did.
Then she stood.
Slowly.
Unhurried.
Hope felt like a far away word, like little more than a fantasy.
As though I weren't exhausted, mana-drained, restrained by wards and rope, with a body that could barely crawl. As though escape had never even been a possibility worth considering.
I couldn't move. My limbs felt heavy and distant, my breath shallow. Even if I could run, I wouldn't have made it far.
Where had I felt this kind of pressure before?
That quiet certainty that resistance wasn't just futile—it had already been factored in.
Oh.
In that single moment, one thought overrode all thinking.
I'm going to die.
She stepped closer.
One single step.
Not into my space. She didn't need to. The room already belonged to her. The wards hummed faintly now, a sensation I only noticed because my attention had nowhere else to go.
The Demon King.
Only then had I felt this level of pressure.
She looked down at me.
Not with anger.
With a smile.
The same smile she would use when talking to me, when same one she used when correcting posture.
A smile that would normally charm the most frozen of hearts, but instead chilled mine indescribably.
And when she finally spoke, her voice was calm.
Far too calm.
That was when I realized the worst part wasn't what she was about to do.
It was that she clearly wasn't in a hurry.
"Who... are you?"
She held my gaze for another heartbeat—measuring, weighing—then nodded to herself.
"Let's talk later, shall we?"
Her smile never faltered.
She picked up the book. The text that had once been colourful looked lifeless now.
The door closed silently.
I was alone.
***
Days passed. Elena watched me slightly differently.
Eyes in my direction that weren't there before.
Elias was a little different.
Still clumsy.
But... aware?
Considering?
Monitoring?
It was uncomfortable. I tried to maintain the facade of a baby, doing the same things I usually would.
They still reacted. Of course, they had to.
But they were more reserved, not risking caring too much.
Elena had spoken to me a few times, kindly at first, but then her face would slowly drop the longer she was speaking to me, as if she was trying hard to believe I was normal, and that everything could go back to how it was.
But she couldn't. She couldn't convince herself I was. I didn't cry in the right places, I didn't show the immaturity a baby would. I wasn't real enough.
She would stop talking mid sentence, stand up, faster each time.
And leave.
She would step outside, sometimes she would come back, and other times I would hear her footsteps down the stairs, half-way to stomping.
Sometimes she would flicker mana, nothing that a baby would be able to sense, but something any adept mage could.
She was testing me.
And I failed. Not just once or twice. But multiple times before I realised.
The look on her face every time I did was what hurt the most.
After a few more days had past, I heard her muttering to herself in her room.
Then she took one deep breath, and walked out of her room.
Donning a wide, charismatic grin.
She stopped watching me then.
A few wayward glances every so often—brief, involuntary, and never acknowledged.
Elias stopped speaking.
I tried to interact with him, only to be met with silence.
I know I'm an exceptionally annoying baby, but damn dude, that much?
Worrying about that isn't going to make anything better.
Still.
At least for now, inside is much scarier than outside could ever be.