Whis swung the foot hanging off the cart bench. He had in down, hands behind his head as a pillow. He turned to Helene.

  “Helene, how did you become a Bck Mage?” asked Whis. It had been on his mind for a while, where did these Jobs come from exactly?

  Helene had been polishing her staff, applying a dense, pale wax to the wooden surface. She looked up, setting the cloth and wax tin aside. “I was about thirteen when I decided to become a mage. But it wasn’t until I was fifteen that I could afford my first spellbook, the day I used it was the day I became a Bck Mage officially.”

  Whis tilted his head, “Two years? Must have been expensive. How many quests did that take?”

  Helene shook her head, “No quests, just two years of breaking my back for petty change. It was worth it though.”

  ***

  Helene Thorne closed the worn-out door behind her carefully. The whole thing was held together with mossy, frayed rope and a prayer.

  The Thorne family’s life fit into a single room. The kitchen was the living room and everyone slept on bedrolls tucked into crumbling barrels so they could sit on them without falling in.

  It was all the Thorne family could call theirs.

  Helene moved swiftly to the small rder near the cy and mud stove that was their source of heat and cooking fire. The rder y bare, not even crumbs remained. Helene would need to find coin for food if they were to eat tonight.

  Despite being twelve years old, her need to work wasn’t borne from neglect or abuse. Everyone in the Thorne household had to work.

  Helene’s father, Tobias Thorne, worked from the moment sunlight peeked over the horizon until its setting as a farm borer. Her mother, Emily Thorne, worked with a seamstress after losing her job at a bakery. There she did the tedious work of affixing buttons, picking bad seams out, and all the cleanup.

  Helene herself was too young for a steady job, no guild would take her on as an apprentice either. So she did odd jobs around town. She decided that a cssic job would do for today.

  Helene left home quickly, taking a long, deep basket with her. There was nothing for her in the small hovel, and she had money to make if they were going to eat tonight.

  Helene walked through the muddy streets and over the stone bridges that crossed the creeks and streams that divided the town into its partitions. Moving away from the homes and hovels of the poorer neighborhood, she continued north up the winding path.

  She stepped off the path and walked into the woods. The walk took ten minutes of weaving around birch and beech trees and climbing over thickets. She cleared the st strip of trees and entered her destination.

  The grove was wide and warmly lit by beams of sunlight that punched through the forest canopy. The forest floor was a dense carpet of fragrant flowers and vegetation and the air was bountiful with the fluttering wings of small flies and pollinators that kept the grove in bloom.

  Helene set to work, spending the next three hours picking herbs, flowers, and specialized roots that were almost always on order at the Wanderer’s Guild. When she was done, the sun was about to leave the view of the canopy, mere minutes remained before the forest was plunged into darkness.

  Helene made her way out slowly and cautiously. She was small, unarmed, and untrained. She stepped around dry patches of leaves, avoided branches, and kept moving while the birds sang. When they stopped, she stopped, looking around to see what scared the birds. She sat there for minutes just scanning.

  The birdsong refilled the air and Helene let out a breath she did not know she was holding. She caught her breath and moved swiftly, picking up the pace.

  Her walk took her back to the road, which she followed south back into town. Now that she had her haul, she would need to make her way into the city proper to sell the herbs.

  Helene knew better than to sell the herbs right in front of the guild hall. No party would risk their honor by buying herbs right in front of the quest givers. But by the gates near the market stalls? That could easily be written off as gathering supplies for a quest.

  Party after party refused her. It was simple money, not easy money. It wasn’t until a group coming into town worn out and dirty that she was able to sell her lot.

  “Wanderers! You look tired and worn through. What quest has you all looking like that?” she asked, trying her best to sound professional.

  The tallest member of the group, a man in full pte armor with a rge sword resting on his pauldron, looked to Helene. “Trolls, kid. It was a tough fight with nothing to show for it but wounds.”

  A sea elf with a broken bow held tight under her arm hissed, “Big guy wanted to py hero,” she spat on the ground. “Blew the whole attack and cost us the quest. Now there’s a group of trolls instead of people living in Amburg.”

  With the town gone, that likely meant their quest giver was gone too, and there would be no reward even if they did sy the trolls ter. The guardsman corps would have to step in and unch an assault.

  “Dead gods, that sounds horrible,” said Helene with faux concern. She peeled the cover of her basket open and offered the herbs, “Well I would hate for you to feel you’ve wasted your whole journey. If you want, you can buy these from me and turn them in for the full reward. I’m not a Wanderer yet, so I’m not allowed to turn in quests.”

  Another elf of the party looked at the herbs in the basket, chewing a lip, “I dunno . . .” she hung on her thoughts, turning to the party behind her. “How about it guys, we can at least get the money for repairs and supplies.”

  The armored man rolled his shoulders, “Is this not fraud, Penelope?”

  The sea elf spat at the man, “Oh stuff it, you cm. We’ll take the whole damn stock, girl,” the blue-skinned elf produced a bag of coin and drew out about three gold, “I’ll pay you this much and no more.”

  Helene gripped her basket tight. She could probably get twice that if she waited. The quest reward for her haul was easily one hundred gold alone. But she knew better than to push her luck, plus she needed to return home before her father or there would be punishment.

  She rolled the herbs and tied them off with twine, handing them to the elven archer, taking the three gold pieces and putting it in her now-empty basket.

  They didn’t stay to thank her for the herbs, instead marching quickly to the guild hall to turn three gold into one hundred. Helene sighed and began her walk back home, buying food along the way.

  Once more she entered her hovel. Mother was there already, massaging a balm into her worn and tired hands. She sat her basket beside the rder and pulled down the board they used as a dining table, setting it to prepare dinner.

  “Helene, dear, there you are,” she crooned, “I see you’ve had a good day today. Bread and cabbage, today?”

  Helene nodded, “Mr. Welkers wanted to rob me blind, thinks ‘cause I’m a kid I don’t know how much a cabbage costs.”

  She shredded the cabbage, and squished one loaf of bread into doughy balls, adding both to boiling water.

  That was dinner.

  Her father came home after the sun had passed the horizon, crickets and frogs filling the night air with their chorus. He was tired, shivering, and ready for a hot bowl of food. He never came home dirty, medicine was too expensive to risk the thinnest yer of soil and manure. He spoke little, and quickly retired to his bedroll after eating. Helene would be doing the cleanup afterwards.

  The next morning, Helene waited for her parents to be out of sight. She cleaned the whole house herself just to have the excuse to stay home. Once she was confident they were gone, she moved the rder away from the wall. Behind it, she dug into the dirt floor, revealing a recessed cy jar.

  She deposited two of the three gold coins she made st night into the cy jar, they clinked and cnked against the pool of gold coins already inside. For the st two years, she had been saving every time she could spare a coin. She hid this from her parents, and it guilted her whenever she knew she had the coin to spare for her family to afford a better meal or medicine.

  If she had extra that her parents knew about, she handed it over without argument. Being too sneaky about spare coins would result in resentment and a higher risk of discovery.

  On her fifteenth birthday, Helene waited for her parents to leave the house, just as she would any other day. Today however, she would take the whole cy pot out and head into town not to sell, but to make a purchase.

  She hurried between the stalls, the cy pot tucked in her basket under the cover. One half of the market was loaded with street food and stall vendors, the other half was established shops, these shops were where proper customers got their supplies. Wanderers would buy armor, weapons, potions, and more.

  The shop Helene was after y at the end of a cul-de-sac. It was like a big purple mushroom, the roof was pster shaped to look like a pointed witch’s hat. The whimsy was solely in the building’s roof, however, as everything below was formal business. Whitewashed walls, with clean gss dispys. On the clean oaken door was a brass pque, denoting the business as an officially licensed Magister’s Guild hall.

  The door chimed in a melody as Helene pushed the door open, stepping into the building. The interior was clean and orderly, the air smelled like incense, tea, and stacks upon stacks of aging inked papers.

  She approached the desk, earning a narrow-eyed gre from the clerk.

  Helene was used to that look, she didn’t come from money, she didn’t look the part. But today, Helene had money, she wasn’t there to waste anyone’s time.

  “My name is Helene Thorne. I would like to purchase my first spellbook.” Helene’s voice was firm and confident, just a hint of her excitement bleeding through.

  The clerk’s knitted brows twisted, one of the thick lines of bushy hair raising up to hide under his hood. “Are you now, young dy?” He turned and leaned over the counter, leveling with Helene, “And what form of mage are you?”

  Helene shook her head, “I brought the extra coin. I want to take the exam and get my spellbook according to affinity.”

  The clerk’s expression turned into a warm smile, “I see. You’re a wise form of mage. That will be three hundred gold. Two hundred for the spellbook, and one hundred for the affinity exam.”

  Helene emptied the coin onto the counter, three hundred twelve gold in total after weighing. She was given her change and the clerk rose to his impressive height. “Young mage, you are about to embark on the first step of your journey as a mage. Steel yourself, and come with me.”

  She followed the older man into the back room. There sat a shining crystal cluster growing from the split skull of some horned beast.

  “Please, hold firmly onto the horns of the skull, the mancite will do the rest, just do not let go,” said the clerk, who brought out a cart with a selection of books.

  Helene did as she was told, gripping hard onto the cold, hard horns of the skull. She closed her eyes. She didn’t want to see what she got. Even more so, she didn’t want to see that she could not cast at all.

  The fear was in vain, however, as the room was consumed in the bright red glow of fire aspected mana. It tickled the skin like sunlight on a cold day.

  “Fire affinity, a common occurrence. Fire is the essence of living, it is drive, passion, and animation. With this examination, Ms. Thorne, I grant you access to first-level spells.” He pulled a book from the shelf and brought it to Helene, “Here is the Pyro manual, volume one. It will instruct you on casting the spell Pyro, including a training regime to follow until you have mastered the spell. Follow it religiously, young mage.”

  The red light died as Helene removed her hands, taking the leatherbound book, sealed in a vibrant red cquer. The cover was embossed with gold leaf, and a seal for the Magister’s Guild, confirming its authenticity.

  She rubbed her fingers over the cover, face beaming with pride as the window appeared before her, a message that set her soul on fire.

  Congratutions!

  You have earned the Job [Bck Mage]

  You are Level 1.

  ***

  She smiled at her staff, running a hand over its freshly-waxed surface as she finished her story. “I’d probably have died in that shack if I couldn’t get that book. Pyro became my saving grace, y’know.”

  Gymgrei chuckled, putting together a freshly cleaned and oiled trigger assembly for his pistol. “That's why she was so keen to hand you that coin, d. Seeing you slumped in the street reminded you of her when she was a wee ss.”

  The input earned Gymgrei a tap on the head with the heavier end of Helene’s staff. Gymgrei grunted but chuckled wryly at Helene, unrepentant.

  Whis looked to Gymgrei, “How about you, Gymgrei? How’d you become a Gunslinger?”

  The dwarf chuckled deeply, finishing the assembly of his pistols. He leaned back, and began his story.