Inauspicious Starts

Born in a tiny mountain village I was the eldest son of the village herbalist my father had left soon after I was born leaving only a hint of who he might be and precious little else. Growing up with just my mother was tough she struggled to feed us both and she took risks to make sure we would survive each winter that bordered on insane yet she managed for 12 years on her own and during my twelfth year I did my best to help her. When you grow up hungry you realize that there exists a where you're not hungry nor lacking and you romanticize it and I certainly didn't want to keep living like I was. I ended up spending as much time as I could trying to find a way out of what it seemed like fate had in store for me and eventually I found a few little tidbits of stories and inexplicable tales of magic and I soon spent every waking moment plotting and studying.

It was through my studies and plotting that I stumbled upon my first spell though I had thought it was a joke in poor taste and ended up with a headache and a finger sized hole in my mothers table and then I realized I would have to explain just exactly how I put a hole in my mother's prized table. After casting my first spell I knew that I couldn't stay in the village as they would hunt me as a witch for fear that I would cast a curse on someone and I also knew that my one spell was simply not enough considering that I cast it once and received a splitting headache for my efforts so I set out to learn more effective defensive skills or at least how to hit someone enough to survive the outside world. My seventeenth birthday came and went in a blur of same old same old boring days and endless practice of my few skills having progressed to the point I could cast my force bolt spell three times from up to about twenty feet away and be reasonably accurate enough to hit a 1 foot diameter target before I couldn't cast my spell again and I'd taught myself how to use a stave though my skills consisted of fighting a tree and a single instance where I used my stave to club a wolf that was lunging at me.

I had spent 18 years in my little home town village and to show for it I'd managed to earn just enough guilder to buy a proper pack and a stave made from a stout sapling not to mention the single spell I'd managed to find on accident. It was shortly after my eighteenth birthday that I had my first breakthrough I had found another spell though I could only guess that it was one because of the similar language and wording to that of my force bolt spell though this was supposed to be something along the lines of an illusion spell though with no one to try it on and no idea it would work I placed it in my vault of silly ideas mostly a old journal that had all of five pages that I'd scrounged up the coin to buy and I'd written down both my force bolt spell and my illusion spell so I wouldn't forget them but sadly my collection of spells was rather lacking. It was a great year it was, my birthday just finished days before I'd learned a new spell and I'd also managed to attract the attention of one of the girls my age though my studies and the fact that I had to hide the fact I could cast magic limited my interest in a relationship it was nice to notice that my limited social skills were not terrible though my looks might also have something to do with it though I had never seen my own face so there was that.

As my eighteenth year passed I had a great start to it only for the last few months to become interesting in their own right, men had started disappearing from the village and there wasn't overly many to begin with. It was late one night that I heard a noise not far away and spotted a man sneaking unsuccessfully I might add past my house and while normally I'd be asleep I had been up late this evening trying to figure out a possible spell that was supposed to start a fire mind you it was rather garbled in the story I'd read and so when I heard the noise I panicked slightly. I watched as the man was crossing the yard behind my mothers house and I noticed that his steps seemed wooden as if he were sleepwalking or a zombie though I'd much rather it just be sleepwalking. After watching the mans late night antics and knowing that people were disappearing I decided to follow him to where ever he was going and that was to be a fateful choice indeed. His trail lead deep into the forest away from anything that might be normal and as I followed the tracks started multiplying first it was one then two then more with all of them being human it was an odd thing to see as if a number of people simply found each other in the woods and that spoke of either a cult or spellcraft.

I could have probably just walked away from my adventure right then and there the minute that things had started to get weird but I just couldn't walk away some inner self I didn't know I had wouldn't let me and onward I followed the trail until I came to the edge of a clearing with a mansion in the center nothing says spooky more than a random house in the forest nope not at all. I circled the house and found little to see though I could occasionally hear voices inside they were hard to make out and as much as I tried I just couldn't tell what was being said so I moved closer inch by inch until I was right under a window and then I snuck a peek which I quickly regretted as there were several very naked very old "people" dancing around a man strapped to a chair with a pot of some kind boiling away in the fireplace I say that because the thing was huge. They say witches are ugly used up old hags well I can't say that I disagree based on the glimpse I'd just had though I also spotted a much younger woman off to the side still probably a witch but she at least was clothed and looked close to my age. As the weird ritual continued I noticed that the girl would take notes every so often and the elderly women would shout out to her to pay attention every so often it was much as I'd expect a apprentice might learn how to do a ritual though this one seemed to not be pleasant based on how the man who was currently strapped down was crying.

I knew that I was going to step in it big time but I had to act so I cast my force bolt spell at the cauldron and rang it like a bell and coincidentally put a small crack in it then I cast it again this time at the rope holding the man down I still couldn't tell who It was but I figured that I had to free him and then it started each of the older women started screaming so loudly that I'd swear the mansion should have collapsed in on itself yet it stood and then the man jumped well hot up with a start from the chair and then started yelling and managed to strike one of the women sadly for him the next thing to happen was his head exploded violently and then I ran because if they could do that I'd have no chance. I ran away and made it about a mile before I stopped like I'd hit a brick wall and it felt like I had too and some time later they decided to have my body march itself back to their house which I would not recommend ever it was like watching a play and my body was the actor and it was not pleasant in the least.

My return was greeted with three sets of eyes staring at me angrily and then I heard "you thought you would just ruin our ritual and then run away oh are you going to regret this young man" followed by a evil cackle and being marched to the same chair I'd freed the other guy from. I waited as they began to cast their spell and then I cast my own it had been a test to see if I could at one point but now my life depended on a skill that I'd managed to teach myself, the ability to cast my spells without moving nor speaking and it sure came as a surprise to them. I doubt that they had ever had a man who could cast magic as their captive before and certainly not one who could cast in the silence of his mind so it certainly was a shock for them to be my target and while I knew I could maybe cast one or two spells of my force arrow it wouldn't be enough heck even fully rested I doubted that I could escape by that route so I took another and cast my illusion spell and made it a doozy I summoned their own worst fears and let them have it and I have to admit that watching four women turn white as a sheet and flee was impressive almost as much as the fact that I was able to quickly flee once again out the window and all the way home before they even thought to check if I was still there.