Forging Fate

A Sword Aflame

   This is not the story of a hero, or a knight of justice, but of a boy born to promise denied.  A kingdom in ruin, his birth well ignored. The would-be prince of Servan was spared, if you could call it that, leaving a newly born among the slain of his family.  A slight turn of fate kept him from doom as a elderly man took him for his own.
   The boy was called Augus son of none, but before he turned seven he had surpassed all in his village at reading, math and even the fledgling science they knew. As Augus was not aware of his origin, he was full of energy and commonly was called the scourge of the town.  The name of the town was Sena and the townspeople grew to dislike the scruffy chocolate haired kid who always stopped them from ever having a moment of peace, whenever they seemed to be relaxing, a flash of brown and the blink of an eye and something had gone wrong.
  The boy was nine when the plague struck, killing half of their small town of about twelve and two hundred, wrenching his fate out of its stupor of surety. Augus lost his guardian, and was forced to watch as his body was desecrated by that terrible illness. He lost his innocence then, and the constant devious smile seemed to be lost forever in the folds of his ever-present scowl. The townspeople forgot who he used to be, but they never let go of that impulse of excluding him from the group and he was raised as an "other", an abstraction from the main. As he grew he still tried to acquire what knowledge he could from passing caravans, scarce though that were in such a rural town as his. His favorite came twice a year on its path to the sea, it was a motley group: tinker, merchant and bard, all from the largest city of the small kingdoms, Ergasona. His interest was mainly in the company they bore, as such an odd grouping attracted an odd gathering of hitchhikers, from whom he learned many queer facts and unending tales of adventure. It was on one such caravan where he first learned of magic, though it would not be in the hands of who you would expect.