My parents named me Aiken. Since the name of my father was Tyree, my full name was Aiken ap Tyree. As a silly little child I was, my name sounded stupid to me and I was sometimes creating fictional names for myself, pretending that I had some mysterious origins, while I was actually just a commoner born in poor village called Oakville. This bad habit of mine once caused me a lot of trouble, but rather than mentioning that incident, I should properly start from the beginning of my story.

And this story of mine began when I was mere three years of age. My fiery red hair just started to properly show their color and while my three years old peers from village were just starting to talk properly, I was already slowly learning how to read, since my uncle had given me an abecadarium book. That book did cost him quite a lot money and when he had seen that I have taken such early interest in it, he was really happy. While my parents, who could not read at all, did at least value the fact that I was just sitting with a book and did not bother them.

Age of three is usually the age where children start to be interested in magic. After all, they would see their parents use simple low tier household magic, like starting fire with spell [Spark] or getting light item from short distance with [Pull]. Yet, their families would not teach them magic at such age, because having three years old child that can set house ablaze would be extremely stupid.

Exception would be families which had tradition in becoming magical practitioners, where they would have some servant attend to young master or mistress, preventing any threat of said three year old kid making mess with magic. Therefore, not only basic magic, families of practitioners would give their children techniques of soul and spirit training to increase their soul power and spiritual capacity.

To those of you, who read these memoirs of mine and don't have even basic understanding of magic, I will properly explain these two basic terms. Soul power is ability of one's soul to amplify power of spell. Person who has high amount of soul power finds that when he is casting spell, theirs is slightly stronger than the same spell of a person with lower soul power. If the difference in soul power of two caster is big enough, one could with his spell evenly match one, two or even multiple tiers higher spell of weaker magic casters.

Spirit capacity was ability to possess mana. Spirit capacity not only allows one to cast more spells, but most importantly allows person to use higher tier spells, which are extremely mana consuming. There are special power levels of spells called tiers, and based on its tier, a spell costs fixed amount of mana. It is said to be impossible to create a spell outside of these tiers.

In order to become powerful magic practitioner, one needs both high soul power and spirit capacity, because not excelling in either one would cause person to be drastically weaker, and even big advantage in other quality would usually not be enough to compensate. Therefore rich families of magic practitioners would certainly make sure that their children would train both abilities from as early age as possible. Family I was born to was not one of the rich families. My parents were not poor, as they owned quite a big piece of land, but neither of them had magic education and spells they used were therefore only ordinary low tier ones, spells that parents would teach their children once they grew up, spells that were only good for increasing speed of your housework. Being able to start a fire with tier two spell [Spark], pick close light object with tier four spell [Pull] or make things temporally lose fraction of their weight with tier four spell [Weightless] as well as few other, those were only magic spells that my parents knew. Without practicing magic from an early age, both of them had slightly less than hundred units of mana. If you were to open an elementary book of magic theory, you would have learned that one unit of mana was defined as an amount of mana necessary to cast a tier one spell. Tier two spells would cost three times as much, tier three six times, tier four ten times, and then it would repeat in cycle - tier five spell costs thirty mana, tier six sixty mana, etc. For every tier, spells would be twice as powerful than the spells of previous tiers, and for every three tiers, its mana cost would raise ten times.

Person was only capable to cast spells of tier that would use a bit more than tenth of his spirit capacity, which meant that even though my parents had enough mana to cast a tier six spell, they were only capable of using tier four spells and that was their limit.

All spells below tier six were too weak to be seriously used in combat, and even though some combat spells in those tiers existed, their only use was for combat practice of children, used by families of magic practitioners and in magic schools. And most of villagers were not able to cast even tier five spells, which should tell you how fragile existence a village located close to the forest and mountains is. As any child, I expressed my interest in magic to my parents, but neither my father nor my mother wanted to teach me about magic. After all, they spent most of time working on our land together with few youths from other village families and they had no time to waste on my childish selfishness. They had to make sure fields would yield enough for us to survive winter and still be able to pay youths who were working with them. Their rejection however did not make me give up and after few days of following him, begging him and being childish annoyance, I instead managed to convince my uncle Jannon to teach me magic. Our village of almost three hundred adults had only eleven magic practitioners who protected our village from wild monsters that sometimes left the mountain forests and threatened to destroy our village. My uncle was one of these practitioners. He was tier seven practitioner, magic user capable of using tier seven magic. From the viewpoint of magician community, that was lowest tier of true magic practitioner and magic practitioner families would consider that tier of ability thrash. But from the point of view of the villagers, it was powerful rank, since only three village practitioners were tier seven, and other eight were mere tier six mages, that would be called practitioners only by our village. Every year, the elders of the village would gather six years old children and use the measurement crystals that were passed down in our village since who knows how many centuries ago. If there was a child of suitable age that would show high natural talent, they would send him or her to the magic school in the great city of Alsante for six years. After child came back from magic school, they would usually be versed in magic enough to become tier six magician in next few years on their own and join ranks of village magic practitioners. Village would pay for child's education, because they knew how dangerous were the monsters living in nearby mountains. Bandits were also a danger, however, during my youth, it had been many years since any bandit group raided our village. Having only eleven practitioners often seemed like not enough, but the village could not afford more. For that reason, some villagers also practiced magic in their free time, learning ways to practice from village practitioners who had attended magic school. Few elders became tier five magicians this way, but as I stated before, tier five combat magic was more of distraction and not really powerful. When I managed to convince my uncle, who was only twenty seven years old at that time, yet was the strongest magic practitioner of our village, to teach me magic, he was soon surprised with the speed I learned. I absorbed the spells he taught me like a sponge, learning them in much shorter time than normal. While in the beginning, I was only capable of learning tier one and two spells, in less than a year, I managed to learn few tier four and many tier three spells. As a four years old child, that was quite an achievement, which made my uncle feel proud of me. To be honest, sometimes I felt like I had three parents, with uncle being one of them, since he spent more time with me than either of my parents. Uncle himself was unable to have children and his wife decided to leave him because of that after eight years of their marriage. I sometimes think he saw me as a child he could never have. Even though I still was not of suitable age, my uncle convinced village elders to allow me to participate in measurement of magic talent. As he was highly respected by the elders, since despite his youth, he was closest of all village practitioners to reach tier eight, no one really protested. Second tier seven practitioner of our village, Keiran ap Oisin, who was already of older age, also asked elders to allow his grandson of five years to participate. As seven children were being examined with help of two crystals, purple and azure, the elders were all showing disappointed expressions, as all the children of six years age were only having between twenty and thirty mana and fifty soul power at most, not even close enough to be called talent. Even the two of them who already practiced some housework magic were better only by ten mana and twenty soul power at best.

After that, elders decided to measure Keiran's grandson, who was also named Keiran in honor of his grandfather. As elders eyes glowed with surprise, boys grandpa proudly laughed.

"Ninety eight mana units.“ said one of elders with disbelief in voice. "And one hundred ninety three soul power. What an outstanding talent. This boy is not even six years old.“ "Of course. My little Keiran is really talented. I think if we send him to magic school next year, he could easily become the first tier eight practitioner of our village. Well, maybe second, since young Jannon is pretty close to tier eight, as far as I know.“ he said, while looking at my uncle. At that moment his grandson was proudly looking down on all other children including me.

Was this some cheap book story, rivalry between me and boy called Keiran would be caused by hatred between old man Keiran and my uncle Jannon, but reality rarely is such. You often meet people your family hates while you find them sympathetic, or people you hate and your family finds sympathetic. Uncle Jannon was on friendly terms with Keiran who was behind his back trying to convince his youngest daughter to marry Jannon, even though it was known he could not have children. Finally it was my turn to be examined. As four years old I was even younger than the little boy named Keiran. I placed my hand on first crystal. I felt bit of my mana escape out of my hand into crystal. If elders of village had shocked expression before, now their shock was doubled. "One hundred and sixty seven mana?!“ one of them shouted out in surprise. All faces turned to me, who was as surprised as them. "Jannon, your nephew is quite talented as well.“ said old man Keiran, who was maybe even more shocked than anyone else. "To have so much mana at this age, he is almost at the level of practitioner families children of six years old. I have not expected there would be another child as talented as my grandson at this meeting.“ At these words, young boy Keiran stared daggers at me. He wanted to make his grandfather proud and show everyone his talent, but now, attention of everyone was not on him but rather on me. With high expectations, elder put second, azure crystal, into my hand. I once again felt mana escaping out of my palm, and then looked at face of elders, since I had no clue how did they read information from crystals. On the face of elders appeared small disappointment. Confused, I turned to uncle. "What is going on, uncle?“ I asked. However, my uncle did not answer me and looked at crystal in disbelief. Instead, old man Keiran with pity in his eyes, placed hand on my shoulder. "Little boy, it appears you have soul power of zero.“ "What does that mean?“ I asked. "It means the magic school will probably not want to accept you. Well, since you have so much mana at your age, I think we should send you to magic school anyways and try to convince them to take you in as well.“ said old man. "It's such a pity though. If he had enough soul power to back him up, forget about tier eight, he could easily become tier nine practitioner and maybe some noble or rich merchant would even pay tuition for him.“ said one of elders. "Well, we have at least found one truly outstanding talent. Little Keiran will be certainly sent to school next year. And about Aiken... we will have to discuss it. Jannon, bring your nephew next year as well, it wouldn't hurt to see how much has he improved.“ said other elder. "Don't worry, Jannon, I am sure your nephew will grow out of it. He is still only four years old, he still has enough time to grow. I am quite sure elders will let him go to school as well. If they would be stupid enough to waste his talent, I will have a word with them, alright?“ Keiran cheered Jannon and then he turned to me. "Little boy, don't you worry either. This man might be old, but he has your back. Without much soul power, it will be certainly harder, but as long as you can become tier eight practitioner in future, I am sure that you should be as capable as normal tier seven practitioners, and with your spirit capacity, tier eight should be a reachable goal.“ he said, trying to cheer me up as well. His grandson still stared daggers at me at this point. He believed I have stolen attention he deserved as he have seen that even after my soul power test failed for me, his grandfather gave me more attention than to him. I however didn't notice how much hatred did that boy feel for me.

After I returned with uncle, he started to teach me like his life depended on it. He even did his best to pass me a soul sharpening technique he learned in school and used until now. Most magic practitioners usually had between two and seven thousands of soul power. However, the village practitioners were worse since they left the school early and depended only on inferior soul sharpening techniques from elementary magic school. Old man Keiran had soul power of seventeen hundreds and third tier seven practitioner of my village, Oisin ap Raegan, who was the cousin of Keiran, had nineteen hundreds.

My uncle was exception. He slightly modified this techinque, which made it stronger, but compared to elite techniques, it was still weak. Thanks to that, his soul power reached twenty two hundreds. That meant that his spells would be more than three times stronger than same tier spells of mine, who had no soul power at that time.

Since that day, my uncle did everything he could. He even gave me some rare herbs he got from villagers during forest raid in winter. As a year passed again with me training and studying as much as possible, I was once again to join older children in test, while at that time, Keyran duo of grandson and grandpa were already travelling to magic school. After all children were tested with only few results being bit above others, it was my turn and I had confidence this time. I took purple crystal into my hand. I knew I already learned tier five magic some time ago, so my mana should be at least around two hundred and fifty. "Three hundred and ninety seven.“ exclaimed elders with surprise.

Over last year, my mana more than doubled. My surprise was so great that I didn't know what to say.

"Now, other crystal.“ he said as he put crystal in my hands. Once again, there was visible disappointment in eyes of elders. There was also hateful sight thrown in my direction, but I didn't notice that.

"Your soul power is still zero.“ the elder said. "We will need to talk about this with other elders. Your potential is great, but if your soul power was to stay zero forever, it would not be good investment to pay for your tuition. I am sorry boy, but I hope you understand.“

As we once again left with uncle, who was trying to cheer me up, I had no clue what was happening. My fate already started to prepare this thorny path for me. Path full of barriers, challenges, and enemies who wanted me humiliated or even dead.

What I also had no clue about was fact that this year, the grandson of Oisin ap Raegan, third tier seven practitioner in our village, was participating in measurement. Oisin ap Raegan was angry that his grandson was not only not as talented as grandson of Keiran, he was not even talented enough to be accepted to school. He could not digest this defeat and he was sure he would not be able to digest if nephew of this youngster Jannon who was more talented than him also became magic school student.

He decided that he would not allow me to enter the magic school and in order to convince them, he started arguing with elders. His arguments were quite persuasive.

"His uncle is already teaching him. He can keep teaching him. I am sure he will be able to bring him to tier seven with his teaching without any need for school. There is no point in sending someone who has no soul power at all.“ was one of his most persuasive arguments, that got all elders thinking.

However not all elders agreed. "That might be true, but with his mana growth, he might have insane potential of spiritual capacity. What do we know, he might be even able to learn tier eleven magic and then, his low soul power would not matter much. He would be on par with a normal tier nine practitioner.“ said elder Rowan who was also my grandfather. Same as my father and mother, his magic abilities were only housework spells of tier four and bellow, but he still had quite importance, since our family owned big area of land.

He knew how to ignite spark of greed in other elders. If I could actually reach equivalent of tier nine power, I would provide village with as much safety as all tier six and tier seven practitioners we currently had combined. He thought he already managed to convince everyone, when old man Oisin pulled out last desperate move.

"If he had low soul power, that would be true as with his spirit capacity, he would truly become powerful, should he reach even few hundreds of soul power in future. But what if he can't ever increase his soul power? With no soulpower, his spirit capacity could stop increasing at any time and then, it will be complete waste of money for our village. Should he prove that he can reach some growth in soul power, of course sending him would be wise.“ said Oisin with desperation. "Yes, that would be wise.“ agreed all elders.

While my grandfather Rowan was not sure, after few moments he also agreed. He believed that increasing soul power should be possible for me, same as everyone else who was present. With help of uncle Jannon, I should manage to gain at least some soul power over next year.

"So next year, we will have inspection of little Aiken week before others, to check his progress. Shall he still have no soul power, we will not pay for his school and make Jannon teach him instead.“ stated leading elder and no protests were heard. Later on grandpa visited uncle Jannon and told him about decision of elders. Uncle Jannon nodded, but what grandpa failed to notice was that uncle had bit of despair in his eyes. Over last year he did anything he could to improve my soul power, but with no results. As if there was no room to improve my soulpower at all. He continued training me in meditation and teaching me new spells, some of which he gained from old man Keiran, who was also coming to teach me once in a while. Old man Keiran was angry, because of what his cousin, Oisin, did. He knew Oisin did this because he was angry that his grandson did not pass the test, and he therefore decided he would do anything to help me, but he did not have as much impact on elders as Oisin did. While Oisin was weaker than my uncle, he was more powerful than old man Keiran and more importantly, of eight tier six magicians of our village, four were his sons and nephews and one was his daughter, who was also former wife of my uncle. With five other village practitioners originating from his bloodline, Oisin had strong position of power and elders had to respect his opinions. As my test day approached, I felt more and more nervous. I already knew twenty spells, but of them, fifteen were housework spells, three were general use spells, one was a weak tier five shield spell that was suited only for magic practice, while my last tier five spell was [Little Fireball] that was able to cause some pain, but certainly was not a deadly spell. More than that, I had no clue if my training worked. What will happen if I will still have zero soul power? Neither uncle, nor old man Oisin, nor my grandfather told me, what would await me should I fail again, but from my uncle's dark expression, I could tell there would be some problems. And then, the day of my last examination finally came. This time, I was the only one to be tested. As usually, I took the mana crystal first.

"Five hundred and eleven.“ I said nervously. I was already able to tell what was on the crystal since i properly learned reading numbers this year. My mana once again raised and now, there were probably only few practitioner family children of my age, who had more mana than me.

Everyone was impatient for the second test. Should I have at least twenty soul power, they will certainly send me with best wishes to school, and they might be even willing to pay for seven years instead of six, same as they did for little Keiran. I touched the crystal again. To my horror, on azure crystal appeared number zero. "No, no, no.“ I wanted to scream but I was instead silently staring daggers at crystal, as if trying to threaten it. I focused as much as possible and tried to force my mana into crystal. For a few seconds, number changed to one, but after that, it returned back to zero. "I'm sorry, boy.“ said elder as he took crystals away from me. "From now on, you will have to study together with your uncle. We will not send you to the magical school.“ he continued. At that moment, all my fear disappeared. That was it? I was scared I would be punished or that maybe even my uncle would be punished if I were to fail this test. I could feel nothing but relief. On the other hand, my uncle and old man Keiran had dark expressions. They tried to argue for short while, but it was pointless and after short while, they gave up and we all left for old man's house. "Damn that Oisin, son of a...“ started Keiran, but he stopped swearing as he realised my presence. I looked at my uncle, who still maintained dark expression. "Uncle, I don't understand. I thought you would be happy to keep teaching me. Am I being bother?“ I asked, teary eyed. My six years old self could not understand why were those two unhappy about me not leaving for some school. As he noticed my sad expression, my uncle forced himself to smile at me. "Nothing of that sort, Aiken. But if you could go to school, you would become much stronger. So strong that no one would be able to harm you. In the magic school, there is special area magic that helps all students with growth of both soulpower and spirit capacity. There is also a library filled with powerful spells.“ At the mention of library, I had dreamy expression for a second. Both uncle and old man Keiran noticed it, even though I tried to hide it fast, as I realised they were still sad about what happened. We entered old man Keiran's house. His wife was away in village, so he started to make dandelion tea for all of us. "Damn, I won't let this be. I will find way to get money and pay for Aiken's fees myself.“ said uncle Jannon. Keiran placed tea cups in front of us and left us for a moment. After returning, he placed eleven gold coins in front of uncle Jannon. "It is not enough, but it should cover almost two years of studying. Sadly, for new students, school only accepts full payment for whole six years, and they want money paid in advance, but it should help you start.“ said Keiran. These were more than half of his savings. He was originally planning to buy some magic item for his grandson after he returned from school, but he decided to use them for what he has seen as more noble purpose. "We... cannot accept this.“ opposed uncle Jannon. "You not only can, you also have to. It is not for you Jannon, it is for your nephew. I believe he has as much potential as my grandson does, and just because of my damned cousin Oisin's jealousy, cursed be his mother, I will not see that talent wasted. Even if it was only for few years, he needs to go there. I understand that you are willing to sacrifice a lot for you nephew, so let me make it easier for you just a bit, right?“ old man stopped his complains. So, after few days of preparation, my parents added few more gold and few silver coins with an old bronze necklace to my school funds, my uncle added some silver and gold coins and also two of his magic items, and then we three departed. Old man Keiran decided to join us, and to visit his grandson as well.

I had no idea how much had everyone sacrificed. In our village, money were rarely used, only when trading with outsiders, so I had no clue how much it was all worth. However, I could feel that it was lot. My parents even sold some of their land for two gold coins to old bastard Oisin's family.

Our journey to city was supposed to last a week, so we had to take some food with us, which we transported in a magic ring of old man Keiran. We were going alone, and even though elders were not happy since two tier seven magic practitioners were leaving at same time, they did not have nerves to protest loudly. During this week of traveling, uncle Jannon and old man Keiran each taught me one of their tier six spells, my first tier six spells. Uncle Jannon taught me general use spell [Air Step], that was able to create stepping ground in air for second. It was possible to be use in succession to climb over high walls, creating magical stairs. Old man Keiran taught me combat spell [Fireball], which was stronger version of my almost harmless [Little Fireball]. With my lack of soul power, it was able to cause some painful burns, however it was obviously much weaker than when old man used it. His fireball was bigger and could probably kill most animals, and if used multiple times, even a human would die. With fact that he could use this spell about fifteen times, he was certainly a force to be reckoned with. As we approached the gates of the city, I stared blankly at its huge walls, not being able to comprehend what kind of magical place have I arrived to. My destiny was in front of me. And I slowly followed two men, young and old, who led me towards it.