Flyte Tenner stared out into a rain-soaked land plagued with shadow. The ominously dark landscape made him overly aware of his surrounding, and he wasn't sure how long he could sit still. It was cold and bleak in the jail cell tower, and he was tired of wondering what the strange spirit meant when it muttered something about not using his magic. Why wouldn't he use his magic?

  Flyte was a young farmer boy who was slightly skilled in magic, as far as he could tell. The king, who had reigned somewhere between two and three decades, had created a law that banned magic's use the same year Flyte had been born. That same law ended up being the reason that Flyte was stuck in this cell three days ago.

  Three Days Ago

  Flyte wasn't really sure about his father's stories of his heritage. Flyte's mother was gone before he could remember anything about her, and his father, Lebrandt Tenner, wasn't the source of his longer, sharper ears, so it had to be her. To be frank, there weren't a lot of traits that Flyte shared with his dad, but that didn't matter much to him. He wanted to know just a little more about his mom before he really stuck with being a farmer, like his father, and the only thing that he could think of was to find out a little bit of what he could do with his magic.

  Just because Flyte didn't know everything about his parentage didn't mean that he couldn't try to find out about it. All it really meant was that he would have to break quite a few laws to find out.

  And that's how Flyte found himself practicing a fire spell in his family barn.

  "Brimish, no that's not it. Flasgor, no, no that's not it either." Flyte muttered. He had forgotten the word for magic fire. It was an almost impossible task for someone like him to cast spells reliably when he could hardly even remember to sleep half the time.

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  "The word is 'Forslo', Flyte."

  "Oh, I know, the word is Forslo." The use of magic drained Flyte's energy as quickly as the fire spread. That was the cost of his poor casting of the spell. Truth be told, Flyte hadn't meant to cast the spell when he said it. He just forgot that it would start whether he wanted it to or not once he said the word.

  And so, the fire leaped onto his Lebrandt's stores of hay for the slow, dirt-old horse they had. The flames then leapt onto the now-burning shed wall until the dilapidated building collapsed. This caught the attention of a group of soldiers, the king's thugs, they walked up to Flyte and silently grabbed him and put him in their prison cart. They were likely excited to be paid as there wasn't a lot of money to go around in this backwater town. Even though it was a first-time offense, Flyte was already headed for the nearest prison.

  Flyte never could understand why he couldn't use magic. It made no sense to him to be forbidden from utilizing the gifts that he was born with. If not for the king's law, or perhaps a better judgement, he wouldn't be in this mess.

  Only one group had the right to use magic under king Ralthus's law, and that was the dark circle.

  "The Dark Circle have it all," Flyte mumbled to himself. He looked toward Ander Palenus, his only cellmate.

  Ander Palenus was very much unlike Flyte, he was an old used-to-be soldier who was always on top of things. One of those things; however, happened to be an assassination plot. He had tried, and ultimately failed, to kill King Ralthus, resulting in his eventual imprisonment. Regardless, he was still pretty good company, albeit much too quiet.

  After pondering for what seemed to him like forever, Flyte decided to use magic. He chose to use the fire spell that had done so much for him. "Forslo" he shouted, but it was him that felt a burning sensation. In his overwhelming boredom, he failed to notice a series of softly drawn runes on the wall. They had turned the force of his own magic against him, rapidly expelling all of the energy in his body without leading to any external effects. Guards walked over to the room to collect him, new light brought by torches marking their steps.

  The last thing Flyte saw before he passed out was Ander grabbing his secret stone swords and fighting off the guards.