3
Wizard
I was gazing at the fire, quietly mulling over my thoughts, alone as always. The fire flickered and danced, it seemed it was my last companion. "Of course it wasn't" some would say, but that's how I felt, utterly alone. I liked it that way.
I'd like to think it all started when I was eleven, I'd also like to think that I was happy. I was to an extent, everyone knew that I did not have a happy childhood, but at eleven I gained friends, people I could look up to, those who adored me. I had adventures and it seemed like I had everything I ever wanted and then some, but I grew up too fast. Since I could understand words and walk which was at an early age, I unlike many children, didn't see the world as black and white, yet I did not see it as a spectrum of grays either, just black mostly, or white as it seemed to time then. I thought, I honestly thought that I was lucky I was alive and had a house to live in, and that I deserved to work like a slave, and punished for what I did wrong, a child I was.
I was still that as I went to the magic school, still that until I saw my first death when I was 14. then it all crashed around me and the illusions shattered like so much fine glass. I was treated worse then usual at my "home", and I had so much time on my hands to think, so I thought, and I came to the conclusion it wasn't my fault. It was a long time before that happened though, but after that, since I could not come out of my dungeon, and I mean that literally, I went to magic, I tried my hardest, and it all paid of. I could do wandless magic and no one knew, so I started reading books I had conjured, and my knowledge grew.
I read everything, from philosophy and religion, to potions and charms. And I tried everything while starving and beaten, and I had failed to recognize then that I had lost hope in being rescued and that the treacherous, but true thoughts of not being loved but used traveled in my mind. And my heart did break, and I would like to say that I did not become dark, but I did. So I learned, but I never forgot that there were people out there who depended on me and I had to win for humanity.
I knew then at the age of 15 that I was just a tool to them, someone they depended on, and hid behind, and were going to use as a sacrifice to save themselves. And I knew that whether I won or lose they would forget me when this was all over, yet I did not care. And all the anger and the bitterness I felt towards the world and I turned it toward my enemy, their enemy. And I learned there and then, in that dark basement that there was no difference between white and black, and it was up to you solely how you turned out. I did not know what day it was and I read and learned and thought and contemplated and made plans for the good of the people.
When I was at school that year I was quiet and withdrawn. I did not fly for fun anymore but for strategy, everything I did, I did to prepare for my final battle. Even my friends left me be after a while, I was happy to be alone, as much as I knew they were not my dearest friends to begin with, for they did not understand me.
I did defeat the enemy when the time came, I killed him alone, as I had always been. The world celebrated for months, they praised me, and gave me gifts and talked to me. And the illusion wrapped its hands around me and closed my eyes once again and I think I was happy. But then as I had known they forgot me. My friends went on with their happy lives and families and I could not find anyone, for I knew no one loved me for me, but for the image I had established.
Less and less people came to see me and so I moved to the cottage in the woods where no one would seek me, and I stayed there. The nature welcomed me and I welcomed it into my heart. I was left with only my memory, my thoughts, my books and my nature, and I think for the first time in my short life I was happy.
And I sit here wondering, with an empty wine glass in my hand, and one though seems to float in my mind as it has from time to time; could I have changed something, could I somehow have changes the man I had become today? Yet, once again, the dying fire does not give me an answer…