This is another new series, and I`m introducing a new character!

Hope you enjoy!

My whole life,

her,

everything I ever worked for,

destroyed in one fell swoop.

I look at myself in the mirror, and flinch at the reflection. I turn to the cloaked figure. "What the hell did you do to me?" I demand.

The person tilts its head, but doesn`t answer. It walks closer, and I can feel its hidden eyes raking over my face.

I grab their cloak and pull them towards me. "Undo it."

They finally speak. "I can`t do that, Tecwyn. You know that as well as I do. You knew what the price was when you started this 'magic' business. Now you get to pay it."

I release the person. "Change me back!" I command.

The person steps away from me, and they turn their back to me. "I won`t change you back, but I will do something else." The person steps out of my castle, and gestures for me to follow.

I do.

They stop outside, then turn around and look at my massive castle. When I join them, they snap their fingers, and I hear a strange sound. Then I realize what it is.

"No!" I go to run back to my castle, but they grab my hood and hold me in place.

A series of explosion signifies the end of my amazing castle that I loved so much.

I turn on the person. "What have you done?" I yell, and grab them again.

They don`t even flinch. "This is for your own good." They throw down a bed for me. "Sleep." They command.

I know better than to object, and lay down, quickly falling asleep.

The person visits my dream, and tells me that I have one year to find someone to break my curse.

LINEBREAK

When I wake up, I don`t recognize my surroundings. I`m in a snow biome, and I can`t see anything else. I`m in the middle of nowhere.

I also realize that I`m not wearing what I had been when I went to sleep. I`m actually not wearing anything but my undergarments. I blush, even though there isn`t anyone to see, and notice the clothes on my bed. I put them on.

It is a linen, long-sleeved, white shirt, dark, woolen pants, black fur-lined boots, and a dark cloak. I pull the hood of the cloak up, and pull it close around me. The person even left me a mask.

A dark, wooden mask, with carved gears on it. Adding insult to injury, aren`t they? Putting what I hate most on the mask I`m to wear? Filthy science-y stuff.

I put the mask on anyways. I`m no longer Tecwyn, the Master Mage. I`m Tecwyn, the Outcast.

Tecwyn Outcast. Sounds good to me. Or even Outcast Tecwyn.

I take the bed, then start trekking through the snow, towards who-knows-where.

ANOTHER LINEBREAK

While I walk, I have time to think about how I got into this shitty situation.

FLASHBACK

I think it all started a few months ago.

I was just adding the finishing touches on my castle when I was approached by a stranger.

The stranger`s name was Grey.

Grey shared my love of magic, and I took her in and under my wing. I would teach her everything she needed to know.

We became fast friends. She brought happiness and warmth into my life.

I taught her about magic, and she was grateful for that, but I was even more grateful to her, because she taught me about friendship, and I even grew to love her like she was my kin.

Grey had had a rough life, and she was too young to have to had suffered so much.

She was about twelve, I`d imagine. I was double that, and she was always so cautious around me because of that.

Because of her past, she didn`t trust adults. I could sense that, but I still adored her.

Grey and I learned together, and had fun doing so.

But everything has to come to an end. This end was just worse than I had ever expected it to be.

It was a few days ago. The person showed up.

I remembered this person. I had met them many months ago, when I was just getting started.

They had come to me with an interesting proposition. They would help me start off, but I would owe them.

I foolishly accepted without thinking it through.

So this person showed up, and they told me that it had finally come time to pay up.

I told them they could take whatever they wanted.

We now know how that turned out. they destroyed everything, and left me with nothing. They also used their dark magic to turn me into a monster. They did something to me, and now I look terrible.

I have tattoos all over me, and my hair is gone, it looks like my eyebrows are made of bolts, and my eyes are totally black.

But the worst thing they did was take Grey from me.

If they had just left Grey, nothing would have bothered me, I could always just rebuild. But Grey was in the castle, sleeping, when it exploded. There`s no way she could have survived.

So now I have to restart, and I`m all alone... again.

BACK TO THE PRESENT

I`ve always been a solitary person, but I`ve grown used to having someone around, so it`s unusual to me. I think I might be in denial, because it hasn`t really sunk in that Grey is dead. I just feel like she`s still alive, that if she is dead I should feel something, but I don`t.

I don`t even notice that I`m out of the snow biome until I feel the suppressing heat of the desert.

I go back to the snow biome, and set my bed at the very edge of it, where the snow is just turning to sand.

I look around, and I see a rainforest biome. I go to it, and I start punching trees like nobody`s business.