I am a wizard at a royal court. I have recently found a young serving girl - no more than ten or eleven - with an incredible natural aptitude for magic, particurly the manipution of water. Unfortunately I already have an apprentice - a kindhearted but incompetent young d whom I’ve given up on his ability to master even the simplest spell - and protocol forbids me from taking on more than one at a time. As a loophole I am coaching her in secret and encouraging her to practice by pying pranks on nobles and advisors whom I think are bad for the king. Strictly speaking, as an unregistered and untrained mage I should be reporting her to the authorities to either be locked up until a teacher can be found or thrown into the arena with the monsters, but I can’t stand to see such potential go to waste.
The girl gets caught dumping conjured icy water on the head of a privy councilor. She tries to say that she just hauled the water up using a bucket, but there is no bucket to be found. I deny any involvement and allow her to take the fall for the actions I prodded her into taking. She is hauled off to the arena and I begin scrambling behind the scenes to make accommodations to have her transferred into my care as quickly as possible.
The most important step is to remove my current apprentice from the picture.
As hard as I am on him for being a hopeless case when it comes to learning magic, I do have a soft spot for the boy and try to let him down easy. I find him after sundown on a ruined stone bridge at the edge of the castle grounds that was never repaired after it was destroyed in a siege long ago. He is feeding the stray orange cat that makes its home there. He doesn’t know that I know the story of how that cat once stopped him from taking his own life by giving him a reason not to jump from this very bridge. I sit down with him and the cat and ask him why, exactly, he wants to become a wizard.
He says that it’s because of Tabby, the cat. Bonding with a familiar is one of the first moderately advanced spells most wizards learn and becoming a familiar restores an animal to perfect health and extends its life. Tabby was injured some time back by a falling bit of masonry and has had a bad limp ever since. On top of that, she is now pregnant with kittens. My apprentice sounds both worried and excited when he shares that st part.
I ask him what if the cat dies before he can master the familiar bonding spell. After all, it is taking him quite some time to make any progress and Tabby is already fairly old for a cat.
He tells me that he’d like to try his hand at music-based magic and has dreams of wandering the nd helping and inspiring those in need. He wouldn’t py the bawdy tavern songs so in vogue these days but balds of the true and the good. Even so, they would be songs of and for the common people and the bonds we all share. When he speaks of this, I have a vision of him dressed not in his pin brown tunic but in the finest minstrel’s motley and pying a bck violin that glows with the green of forest and field.
I am still working up the heart to break it to him that I need to repce him as my apprentice when we are interrupted by the sound of crashes and screams. We run back towards the castle proper to find the monsters escaped from the arena and running amok. A small dragon-like creature charges at us but then gets snapped up and swallowed by a giant worm. The worm then shrinks and retracts into the arm of the little girl who would be my second apprentice.
She has made a pact with an old and forgotten god for the power she thinks will make her safe. She is heartbreakingly proud of herself as she expins while floating in the air with eldritch serpents and tentacles erupting from her chest to smash buildings and snatch up people and monsters alike. She wants me to be proud of her too and invites me to join her when she rips a hole in the sky to let in the smallest portion of a great and terrifying being that defies mortal description.
Other wizards of the realm arrive on the scene to do what they can to avert these apocalyptic events. Burdened with the knowledge that this is all at least partially my fault, I prepare to make the necessary self-sacrifice to put things right, preserving the child’s life as well if I can.
But first, I break off what small piece of my own power I can spare and bestow it upon my apprentice. It isn’t much, and it won’t st long, but it should at least be enough for him to bond to a familiar. Perhaps that will be enough for him to take the next steps on his own without me.
