The Wizard's Guild

You are Jacub, the fifth and youngest son of the Bautem family, the owners and operators of a small farm near Edon, itself a very minor village which is part of the also minor kingdom of Eorine. You just turned 18 years old and are staying to work on the family farm. you have no claim to the, meager, inheritance but no real alternative prospects either. You had always been the black sheep of the family. Weaker than the other boys, you struggled to keep up with the demands of farm labor. The rest of the family thought you were just lazy and you didn't get along with any of your older brothers. Still you were family and they weren't going to throw you out on the street.

One day you were still hauling your portion of grain to the granary more than an hour after your brothers had each finished their own loads and gone in for the night. Tired and getting sloppy you trip on a fallen tree branch. The sack you were carrying split open and the whole bag let loose onto the soft soil. Exhausted, disheartened and more than a little bit bitter about your station in life you took advantage of your distance from the household to channel your discontent into a truly impressive series of curses and vulgarity. You hadn't let loose like this in years and the catharsis was enough to momentarily forget your troubles, it was even enough for you to not notice that the burlap sack still clenched in your hand was quickly burning to ash.

After you finished your little tantrum and looked to the ground to get started on collecting what grain you could it occurred to you that it was far too bright out for the late hour. What a strange curiosity...

What the fuck your hand is on fire! Burning! Ah! Danger!

But somehow it doesn't hurt? After doing the obvious things like waving it around, rubbing it in the mud, and shouting you stare at the flame in confusion for more than a moment. Making very little progress on your own you head back to the farmhouse and see if the rest of the family has any ideas.

After they go through the same paces, waving you around, throwing water on you and shouting animatedly, they come to the same conclusion that staring at your flaming hand in confusion was the natural next step. It's now well past the time when you would all be asleep and you can't argue against the consensus that you were going to need to sleep outside of the notably flammable family home. They'll take you to the wizard's guild representative in the morning and see if they have a cure for what ails you.

**This story was originally a branch of "The AI Knows" That I reworked into its own full story

**Check out the Gambio review here and my counter review here