Visions of the past

While the beast was very similar to the last one Luke had killed, with similar grey skin, black nails, and a completely hairless body. This beast had much longer limbs, each long and thin, giving the beast a almost sloth like appearance. Its claws, while being the same length also possessed more of a curve to them, giving them a hook-like appearance.

As Luke studied the creature through his omnipotence, he silently hoped that the blood leaking from his cut hadn't alert the beast to his presence.

Yet has he took a few moments to study the creature, it only continued to hand from the ceiling unmoving. Like the last beast it had no heartbeat, with the only sign of life being the slight static-like movement coming from inside its head.

Deciding it would be best to leave the beast alone, unless he had not other choice. Luke decided it would be best for him to continue down the hallway, in search of another door. Stepping as silently as he could, he padded down the stone floor away from the strange beast.

After another minute of walking, Luke came upon a partially open wooden door. The door was an ugly thing, black with rot, hinges a collection of red rust. Approaching the door, he reached out to open it all the way before he thought better of it. Taking a second to turn his body, he slowly scoot through the door to avoid moving it at all. Doing so to avoid the old hinges from having the chance to screech and awaken the hanging beast.

Getting through the door was a bit tougher than he had originally thought it would be, being as how he still wasn't completely used to omnipotence. Nevertheless, he managed to get into a new room, and straighten himself without making any sound.

The new room he found himself in was far larger than the hallway had been, so large that the space exceeded the limits of his omnipotence skill. While he could make out the ceiling just fine, as well as the wall behind himself, the area to his front was a mystery.

Stepping forward, Luke made his way through the room trying to find out everything he could about his surroundings.

The room appeared to be some kind of waiting room, or maybe even a guard station. There were tables of black rotted wood, old broken chairs that had lost the durability to support their own weight, and even what Luke though to be a series of old paintings that had fallen to pieces on the ground. None of the paintings could be made out, as the parchment that they had originally held had long ago rotted to nothing. Yet the frames were still recognizable, in fact they looked very similar to old wooden frames from his old world. One of the frames even had gold laced around the rim, the stark metal was in deep contrast with the blackened wood it was mixed with.

Luke was immediately curious, not just because it was the only metal he had seen that was not rusted, but also because gold was expensive. In fact, Luke wasn't even sure he had ever seen real gold, let alone owned it.

Moving over to the gold frame, which now lay in crumbles on the stone ground. Luke bent over to feel the metal and was surprised to find it was warm to the touch. As he felt the metal with his fingertips, surprised by the pleasant warmth that ran into his skin, the heat seemed to pulse. Flinching, Luke pulled his fingertips back from the metal just as he felt another pulse move through his skin.

Then his omnipotence seemed to shift, the knowledge it fed him no longer coming from his surroundings.

The vision, if it could be called that, appeared to be of the very same room Luke found himself in. Only it was starkly different, where old, ruined tables had been before now stood brown tables of far better condition. Where the old paintings had sat on the ground, newer ones now on the walls. Each depicted an image of summer, some showing bright green forests, or a golden field of wheat, one even showed an old well made of a strange blue stone.

The only painting that was missing was the old golden one Luke had been standing in front of. Now like all the paintings that had been laid out on the ground, it too was gone, though it seemed that unlike the other paintings it had not been replaced with a new version of itself.

Standing from where he was kneeling, Luke took a step back as he studied the room. When suddenly a door off to the side opened, and a man stepped through.

The man was one the heavier side, with a bit of a gut and a wide round jaw. He had a hard face, with a nose that had been broken once before, and a smattering of stubbly clinging to his cheeks. Thin brown hair hung down his forehead, framing two light brown eyes and a slightly pink complexion that clung to his pale face.

Seeing the man was more than a little surprising, and for a second Luke readied himself to be attacked. Until he noticed that the man's heart was beating, and the static in his head was moving at a much more rapid pace than the monster's had been, kind of like Luke's own brain.

Most surprisingly about the man, after his sudden appearance, was his attire. He was clad in a round leather jerkin, that looked medieval in its make. A belt was strapped around his waist, tying the old piece of clothing around his middle and accentuating his stomach, making him look larger than he was.

When the man entered the room, he continued past where Luke was standing near one of the walls and moved to the far end of the room to where one of the tables sat. On the table were several stacks of papers, along with a couple of books.

For an instant Luke was too shocked to even speak to the man, unsure of what was going on. Once that shock wore off though, he felt a flood of relief enter his body in waves. Even if he had no clue what was going on, he was immensely pleased to find that he was no longer alone.

"Uh-hello", Luke said aloud, unsure of what to say.

Again, the man ignored him completely, acting as if he hadn't heard what Luke had said.

"Sir, could you help me out. I don't know where I am", he said again, speaking in a more cautious tone.

The man made no reply, instead he only continued to stand over the table of paper, rifling through the parchments one at a time.

'What's going on?', Luke questioned internally, warning signs flaring inside his body.

After a moment's hesitation he began to move towards the man, crossing the room in easy steps. Even when Luke came to be standing directly next to the man, he continued to ignore him. Almost as if he couldn't see Luke at all.

Suspicion creeping into him, Luke raised a hand to put it on the man's shoulder. As soon as the hand made contact with the man it passed right through him as if he wasn't there. So surprised, Luke couldn't help but take a step back in alarm.

Mind reeling, Luke studied the room again, noting its eerie similarity to the room he had been in before.

'Did I- Did I go back in time?'

***

After another moment to come to terms with what he was seeing, he decided that he hadn't gone back in time, not truly. Luke decided this after he had put a hand on the table that the man was studying, only for his hand to pass through that too. It seemed that he couldn't interact with anything he was seeing, including the paintings on the walls.

Frowning deeply, Luke racked his head for an explanation that made sense for his situation.

'Maybe it's a vision of the past, before whatever happened to make this place what it is today', the thought came to him after several other ideas failed to make sense.

While Luke couldn't confirm his idea, he began to get more and more certain that he was right. It seemed that somehow, he was viewing the past, and the reasoning likely had to do with his omniscience skill.

'Omniscience is knowing everything right? Maybe that includes the past?', he thought, trying to make it make sense to himself.

'So, what do I do? Am I trapped here?", he wondered with a sudden pang of worry.

Although his current setting was far nicer than his last had been, he wasn't keen on the idea of living in the past where he couldn't interact with anything.

As Luke was deep in thought, a knock at the third wooden door in the room released him from his dark musings. With a grunt the man turned his head and walked over to answer it.

Not sure of what else to do Luke followed the man, feeling curious despite his worries. The man opened the wooden door by pulling on a strange, looped handle, revealing a small child on the other side.

The child, a girl, was around ten or eleven years old and was clad in an expensive looking red dress with green flowers covering it. Those were the only normal parts of her appearance, as she was likely the most bizarre child Luke had ever seen. Her skin was deathly pale, the color more reminiscent to milk or porcelain rather than any normal complexion. On her face she wore a red blind fold, covering bother her eyes from just above the eyebrows. Even more bizarre than that was her hair, which was an even more powerful red than her dress or blindfold. The contrast between her red hair and pale skin should have been strange, and yet it somehow managed to look natural.

"Princess", the heavy-set man said, his tone saying he had expected the little girl.

"Renlin", the girl said, her voice cheery.

Without another word the girl stepped past the man and entered the room with a smile. The older man, Renlin, gave a sigh as the girl did so as if he were used to this happening.

'Princess? This girl is royalty?", Luke wondered as he studied the situation, his head tilted down in thought.

 As the girl stepped into the room she paused for a second, her smile turning into a frown.

"Something wrong princess?", Renlin asked.

Luke noted there was a strange accent to his words, not an overpowering one that he couldn't understand, but there was without a doubt a tinge to his words. What that accent was Luke didn't recognize, though he supposed that made sense considering he wasn't from this world. In fact, he found himself surprised they were speaking English at all, let alone that he could understand their words.

'I thought I wasn't on earth anymore, so why are they speaking in a language from my world? Am I really on another planet?'

"No, I thought I saw something, but I must've been mistaken", the girl said, speaking in a manner far more proper than any ten- or eleven-year-old should be capable of.

The heavy-set man frowned at that, seeming to take a darker meaning in the girl's words.

'She saw something. But isn't she blind, does she maybe have omnipotence like me?', Luke wondered, then another question came to him.

'Does that mean she can see me?'

The girl continued on, her smile returning as if it had never left in the first place.

"I have a gift for you!", she said happily.

"Oh, a gift?", Renlin said, not sounding the least bit surprised by her words.

"Yep, can you guess what is?", she asked, sounding her age for the first time since she started speaking.

"I can't, what is it?", Renlin asked, though Luke guessed he knew exactly what it was.

The girl grinned and waved her hand over the closest table and in an instant a painting appeared on its surface.

Luke was so surprised by the sudden appearance of the painting he almost stumbled standing still. While he had already come to the conclusion that magic existed in this world, he was still shocked to see it. More than that the sudden appearance of the painting had been instant, with one second the table being empty and the next the painting laid atop it.

More than that, he quickly recognized the painting as the one he had touched when he ended up in this strange vision.

Studying the painting from where he stood in the room, Luke could see the gold lacing around the brown wooden border. The painting itself depicted a moonlit night over a still pond, with a small village of wooden houses and stone chimneys in the distance. It was a beautiful image, though being unable to gaze at it with his normal eyes Luke felt as though he couldn't really appreciate the entire beauty. While he could understand the paint, and make out every single brush mark, he couldn't really see it. Rather he just had the knowledge of its appearance, the influx of information preventing him from feeling anything at the painting's sight.

'Well, I was never that into art anyways', Luke sighed.

"It's beautiful", Renlin said, sounding earnest in his praise. "Is this real gold?", he asked a moment later, raising a hand to feel the side of the painting.

"Yep! One of father's servants brought it to me, and I decided to give it to you", the little girl said, sounding pleased with herself.

"Your grace, this is far too expensive a gift for me", Renlin immediately replied.

The little girl took a step closer to him, though her face seemed turned towards the ground rather than towards him. She raised hand and patted him on the back, face still a mask of happiness, like a child presenting something they did to their parent.

"It's fine, father doesn't care. Besides I already have a lot like it, I wanted you to have this one", she said, her veiled gaze still on the floor.

'She really does seem to be blind', Luke thought curiously, noting the way her head didn't move with her body, nor did she move to look at Renlin when he spoke like a normal person might.

Likely that meant she too had omniscience, or maybe a skill like it. In fact, Luke was willing to bet that under her blind fold he would find two crimson snake-like eyes, just like his own. Granted he had no way of knowing whether or not his hunch was correct, as he couldn't make out what was behind the blindfold.

'Wait, what?', the realization hitting him like a truck.

Luke could make out everything in the room with perfect clarity, from the individual grooves in the stone bricks to the very paste that held the paintings together. In fact, he could even see inside the two people in the room, making out their hearts and brains with no effort. And yet, try as he might he could not see behind the girl's blindfold, he couldn't even make out what lay behind the fabric.

Until that moment he hadn't noticed, as while he knew the aspects of things in the range of his omnipotence, he usually had to focus on them to truly comprehend them. Yet now that he did notice, the fact sparked a deep curiosity.

"I- ", Renlin said, looking as if he were about to argue with the girl before he let out a sigh. "Thank you, my lady your kindness warms me deeply", he finally said, bowing towards the girl.

Watching the interaction Luke turned his head to take in the room around him, most of which was covered in paintings. Had the little girl gifted all of these to the man, Renlin?

From what Luke knew of medieval royalty from his own world, they weren't exactly the most generous of people. In fact, the opposite was more often true, as there were countless stories of ancient kings starting wars over land, riches, pride, and other matters of greed.

Yet here was this little girl gifting a man, who Luke guessed to be a jailor an assortment of painting, one of which was clearly expansive. Was royalty different in this world? Or did the little girl merely enjoy giving gifts?

"It should, I spent all morning painting. You should have seen my maid when I finished, she practically threw me in a tub", the little girl said, humor lacing her words.

"Well, you have my gratitude. I still don't know why you've taken such a liking to me princess, but I am honored, nonetheless. If there is ever a way, I can repay your kindness you need only tell me and it will be done.", Renlin said straightening.

Luke stepped back over to the table he had first seen Renlin standing over, hoping to catch a glimpse at this world's written language. As he did, he continued to watch the interaction behind him, omnipotence not requiring him to be looking at something to "see" it.

Suddenly as Luke moved the princess frowned deeply, speaking to Renlin with a distracted tone.

"Of that I'm sure", she said, her head lowering and turning to the side.

'The language appears to be English, although slightly different. There are more curves to the letters, kind of like cursive but more archaic', Luke mused.

Luke felt the little girl walking towards him from behind but paid her no mind as he focused on the documents.

"Excuse me", the princess said once she was standing directly behind him.

Suddenly freezing, Luke turned to the girl slowly. Not fully believing that she was talking to him.

Yet as he turned to face her, she turned her head in a half-cocked motion.

"Your eyes", she said in breathless surprise. "Who are you?"