Ry had never had an easy life. His parents were common farmers with a below-average talent in earth magic, having never gotten past advanced tier one magic. Unfortunately, his mom died during a bandit raid on his previous town only a few hours after his birth. Her death was as sudden as it was horrifying. His father grieved for weeks over his mothers grave before falling into a deep depression and moving to the remote northern town of Frostford.
As the years passed, his father drank more and more, and disappeared into the woods for days and weeks at a time. When Ry turned 10 and still didn't display any magic, his father started blaming him for all of his supposed bad luck in life. It started with him yelling and shouting at Ry all of the time for having no magic, then a slap on the cheek or back, then a hit, then a beating. It got so bad his father secluded Ry from going into town so people wouldn't see the bruises. Every day when his father came back from working at the mines, he would find some excuse to take his anger out on his son before going back into the woods.
Then one day he went to the woods and never came back. At first, Ry thought that he was on another of his trips. But when a month passed and he still didn't come back, Ry had to go to town and report it or else he would starve.
When he finally made it to the town's sheriff station, a two-story stone building with cells on the top floor, they immediately took him in and asked him many questions about his father. Even though he was young, he could still tell something was wrong when the two deputies and many of the town's men combed through the woods with their magic ready.
On June 3, year 524, the authorities found his father's dead body in a hidden cave with a knife in his heart. What really terrified the deputies however, were the few dozen dead bodies tied up around the cave in various conditions. Some were nothing but bones, while one looked like she had died a week prior. There was so much blood and organs everywhere that it scarred some of the men for years.
It turned out that Landon Tempest had been killing low-level travelers in the region, usually weak women and teenagers, then cut and 'played' with their dead bodies for days on end. He was ultimately killed by someone stronger than him and stabbed in the heart before being dragged to his cave to send a message. His crimes were painted in his blood in front of him, signed by a squire in the fabled Knights Templar.
When the deputies returned to Ry and told him the news, they expected to see almost any emotion other than relief. But that's all Ry felt. Not a shred of sadness or pity for the abusive, murderous, and twisted husk of a man that his father ended up being. He felt no anger towards the man who had killed him, only the urge to thank him.
The sheriff's office let him live in his old fathers house and gave him a monthly amount of money, about 1 silver a month, more than enough to feed one person. However, he learned that his father also frequented a local cansino, and had racked up quite a debt. According to the owners, and their group of thugs, this debt was now passed onto Ry.
He had no other option than to work in the coal mine and hope that he somehow had an elemental affinity when all of the local 16 year olds would be tested at the beginning of the new year.
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6 Years Later…
Dawn's light shone through the crack in the curtains, falling onty Ry Tempest's face. He sat up groggily, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. He looked around his bare wooden room, stretching. He had been living in this house most of his life, a two story wooden house with stone walls, but between food expenses and his fathers debt, he didn't have much money for furniture or decorations.
He was already halfway through the motions of putting on his coal mining uniform and work pants before jumping up in shock.
'Oh wait!! Today is the affinity testing day! I can't believe I forgot!'
He hurriedly dressed into his nicest outfit, a pair of black leather pants and his nicest wool shirt, and hurried out of the room, glancing at the one mirror in the house to fix his hair. Ry was about 6'1, quite tall for his age, with thick curly black hair and a muscular build from mining 6 days a week. He had emerald eyes and angular features and a strong jaw, the only facial feature he received from his dad.
Ry was considered extremely handsome, especially for a small town like Frostford. 'Not that it matters with no ability and no money.' He ruefully thought. Ry was bullied and harassed every day for being a so-called cripple, especially as a young child. Now everyone in town either ignores him or just looks at him with disgust and disdain.
Ry sighed before heading out. His house was in the middle of the woods, about 5 miles out of town. The snow was settled in a beautiful blanket on the ground and on the still green pine trees. The only sounds were his footsteps landing on the powdered snow and the early morning birds chirping. He would usually just walk to town, enjoying the scenery, but today he had to jog or he would miss the affinity.
On the morning of January first, the dawn of a new year, all of the 16 year olds in the kingdom were tested by a mage from the mage corp to see their elemental affinity. This would be the only time a year that most rural towns would see an actual mage, not just some tier two hedge-witch.
The mage would then test the kids, by looking at the affinity of the mana in their bodies, and record it for the kingdom.
Of course this test was just a formality 99 percent of the time as most kids could condense their core do beginner T1 magic when they were 7 or 8 years old, but it gave the kingdom a chance to look for people with rarer magic and for the kids families to celebrate as the test was seen as a sort of coming of age ceremony.
Ry was jolted out of thoughts by the soft torchlight and excited shout of children in front of him. Frost Ford was a standard northern town, sturdily built houses with wooden beams and floors with stone walls to protect from the cold. The town had a population of about two thousand, with a living district as well as an inn and several blacksmithing forges to smelt and use the coal that wasn't sold. It also had a small retail district and a stage that local performances and the affinity test took place
As he walked down the gravel roads, most of the towns folk completely ignored him as usual, some spitting on his shoes while muttering cripples, while others bumped him hard enough to send him stumbling.
'Good to see that everything is the same even on my coming of age day. When I get my affinity I will become the most powerful in this world and no one will be able to bother me again!'
He had been saying that sentence in his head, or out loud, for years. It had become his only hope, his only thing to cling on to during his darkest moments. Even if he had gotten used to the treatment, it still stung his heart a little bit. He had never had friends, and with no dad or mom, he had no one to share his feelings with and no one to talk to. It was a lonely existence.
'But today is the day that everything will change! I can feel it!'
Ry did his best to keep a spring in his step and to stand tall as he made his way to the seats reserved for the kids about to get tested. There were only 11 kids that were going to be tested this year, most of them just looked at him and snickered before looking back at the stage.
"Hey cripple! Where is your mom and dad? Did they not want to see the mage laugh at you for having no magic? Oh wait, they're dead!"
A round of laughing by the other kids ensured. The speaker was a chubby red-head with a fat nose and an arrogant expression. Ry clenched his fists in anger but showed no outward expression. He had learned over the years that getting angry is just what they wanted, but this time his patience was spread thin.
"You know what, Daneel? You remind me of a cumstain. You're fat, you're ugly, and you're something that everyone tries to pretend they don't see."
There was a stunned silence before Daneel turned red and jumped out of his seat, a tiny fireball forming in his sand.
"WHAT DID YOU SAY TO ME! YOU BETTER APOLOGIZE BEFORE I BLOW YOU UP WITH THIS FIREBALL!"
"If you think that is a full size fireball then I feel bad for your future wife"
Danneel turned an ugly shade of purple before launching his fireball point blank at Ry's face. As the fire was barely an inch away from his head, it seemed to just pop out of existence. "You aren't fighting on your test day are you boys?" A silvery voice laughed. Everyone looked in surprise at the stage.
The mage had arrived.