Working Title: Bargain Basement Archmage

So I've been working on this one for a little while, and I have several snippets and about thirty pages of background in my current working notebook. Here's a snippet of the introductory chapter that I've worked over and hopefully rooted out the typos from.

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The stone brick cellar is damp, cold, and musty with years of untended grout that somehow always manages to restore itself to its utterly soiled condition between the time I scrub it each morning and the next. It's a hazard of a high mana environment; the growing things that are bathed in it either find a way to use the stuff to gain an advantage over others of their kind, or are outcompeted by the ones that do. This often results in a variety of bizarre side effects, such as the mildew patches I'm currently scrubbing who've somehow adopted a trick that lets them turn various colors in response to whats around them, similar to an appearance trick.

It's a dreadful thing to understand that moss and mildew patches have as much talent at magic as I do.

I was six summers of age when I first came to Oathsworn Tower, a lost child newly parentless and bewildered by the graybeard man who looked me over sternly and ordered me to mind my manners.

That was eight years ago, as I reckon it, although in time as the commons measure it more akin to thirty- but that's a matter not quite to discuss just yet. First, we must address my performance as an apprentice at Oathsworn Tower which can be summed up in a single sentence: I'm well nigh useless.

But I suppose now I really should introduce myself: I'm Kelbin, Thuruksson, son of one of the premier archmages of his time. Not that I apparently possess an overwhelming amount of talent. No, that particular blessing has skipped a generation, and as I am an only child, my dismal ability is all that remains to carry forth my father's name and legacy. To this end, after my father's untimely and early death, I was apprenticed under a co student and nearly as famous archmage as Thuruk Skyfire, Bennet Oathsworn. Archmage Bennet took my father's grimoire into custody, safeguarding it from curious eyes that would all but certainly be tempted into dabbling with that they aren't ready for. Such incidents are cautionary tales of the fates of careless or reckless students- and the countrysides they ruined in their folly. It's the same practice that Bennet has made with every student I've seen who was a legacy, that as they gained skill and knowledge and caution, they would eventually earn back their spellbook, if they arrived with one, or if not, would be allowed to assemble one from their notes into a formal tome of magical focus that would be passed on to their own heirs someday. Assuming they didn't overstep themselves and end up a cautionary tale as well, of course.

That isn't to say I'm utterly incapable of magic, of course. My first successful trick I learned when I was eight, after my first encounter with The Jar, but more on that later. I had snuck into the kitchens and swiped a handful of sweets that were intended to be served to Archmage Bennet's dinner guests that evening, and I had been suitably punished for it-- thus, The Jar. After my punishment had been finished, one would think I'd learned my lesson regarding sneaking about, but I instead had Motivation. Thus resolved, I spent nigh unto a week in the Tower's library, reading the basic treatises therein, and though my young mind did not fully grasp much of what was included in the text, I did learn enough that I managed my first and most secret trick: obfuscation. In retrospect, perhaps if I'd simply shown the Archmage that I was, in fact, capable of learning, he might have gone softer on me, but his inability to pound the knowledge through my thick skull meant that by the time I had gotten the hang of simple telekinesis tricks I was already labeled a dunce.

In many ways I've often wondered why Archmage Bennet hasn't just thrown me out in my ear; he's done it to others who've proven themselves irredeemable failures. Those who've proven themselves to be worse than me. Does this make me the worst of the best, just good enough to not be ejected? Or perhaps I'm the best of the worst, and it's only my good fortune or sentimentality on the part of the Archmage that I haven't been discarded to till dirt and plant grain for a few decades.

This is my life. Or rather, this WAS my life until today.

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After a long enough period of time on the bottom of the brick pile, a man learns what sounds to dread. Chief among those is the sound of my name called out in a half shout. A half shout in a reedy voice that has no business being as forceful as it is, coming from the aged source it does.

"Kelbin! You're bound for the jar, I swear on mana itself!"

The voice is fifty percent impatient, fifty percent exasperated, plus an additional, magic fueled fifty percent that is pure spite. The Jar refers to Archmage Bennet's desk jar, where I could expect to spend the next however long inside as a toad, with nothing but insects to eat until he felt I'd learned my lesson.

Last time I was in long enough one of the new apprentices graduated, and for about six moons after I was finally restored I couldn't stop craving mealworms.

Do I face him and the jar, or do I try to run? Hells, I don't even know what he's angry at me for this time. How do I apologize when I don't have a clue what I did wrong? Run it is. And I'm taking my father's grimoire with me. To the demons with Archmage Bennet- he spends more time finding petty torments, punishments, and scut work but precious little teaching me anyway.