Aris has always seen the world differently. literally, from birth.

  Everyone can feel magic, even if it's only when it passes through them, some can even sense it outside their body, very few, with much dedication and training, develop true magic sight. Aris was born with it, with perfect clarity he could see the drifting strands of magic through the air, the swirling patterns of magic within everyone.

  As a child, Aris was a strange one, always looking off at nothing, not to mention his two strange eyes, they were the palest blue, nearly white, directly contrasting his dark brown skin and hair. He seemed eerily capable of reading people, they were unaware that Aris relied on reading their magic just as much as he relied on reading faces.

  The first time Aris witnessed a spell, when he was 5 years old, it was a street performer, a profession most would consider a waste for anyone capable of proper magic. While his siblings and parents watched the fire balls twist and turn, flying through the air with precision, forming patterns, Aris watched as the normally invisible pure magic controlled the magic flames, how the strands connected back the the performer, the pulses that we’re traveling up and down them, and how that seemed to tell where to fire balls where to go. It was the part the performer never intended that anyone should see, but Aris still found it beautiful.

  By the time he was six, his parents started to realize that their child was truly special, so they called over the close family friend who happened to be a mage.

  ”Uncle Bibo is scary!” Aris cried out. He was quite literally shaking with legitimate fear. His parents tried to calm him down but nothing seemed to work. Biboleth, recognizing the difference between someone looking at reality and some looking at magic in the small child’s eyes, let down the magic shield that he had trained himself to keep up at all times.

  “Is this better?” Biboleth smiled at him.

  Aris nodded, “sorry for annoying you…” Aris barely said.

  “I'm not annoyed, don’t worry” Biboleth said while both of Aris’s parents vigorously shook their heads behind Aris.

  “Yes you are! See! Now you're more annoyed, and now you’re curious!” Aris blurted out, reading the stoic man perfectly.

  “How…” Biboleth was dumbfounded. He manifested a small ball of pure magic and moved it around. And likewise Aris’s head bobbed up and down as he watched, he shaped it into the letter S, “what does it say”

  “S!, W!, V!, ‘Run’! ‘Water’!” Aris said, reading the letters and words as Biboleth shaped the magic.

  “Well. I think I know what is going on.” he took the parents to another room to explain. Leaving behind his coat on the rack, which served as a distraction for Aris. The complex shapes formed from magic formed many patterns, woven into the material itself. not like the loose magic bibo had just used, he could see that the magic was properly attached. He touched it, and watched as all sorts of pulses moved through parts of the coat.

  A short while later, the aging mage and Aris’s parents came out of the room. From the way their magic was moving, Aris could tell they were nervous.

  “Honey, you’re going with Uncle for a little bit” his mother cooed to him. “There will be other kids like you to play with…”

  “Well, not exactly” Bibo said, when he realized what he said was unhelpful he said “Well, er, I'm sure you'll get along with them just fine, and you’ll learn magic!”

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  Aris seemed to brighten up when he heard that. “Like you?”

  “Yep!”

  —

  The Lythwood Academy of Spellcasting and Enchanting was a rather mundane building when compared to its name, at least if you just look at its physical form. But for Aris upon walking in he saw a truly complex weave of pure magic, nodes and lines crisscrossing everywhere. Each node had a bit of swirling inside of it, like a person, maybe someone extremely focused on one task, kinda like how his father was sometimes.

  “You can see it, can’t you?” Bibo said suddenly.

  “Oh, the crisscrossy thing, right?” Bibo nodded, “yes.”

  “I helped make that.” Aris looked at him with wide eyes.

  “Really! What does it do?”

  “Well, it looks at every one who enters and tells my boss, which means…” the sound of clacking boots on stone filled the main lobby. Aris watched as a tall man with dark grey hair and pale skin walked in, but what caught his attention was the dark mass that seemed attached to his shoulder.

  “What. Is. This?” the man punctuated.

  “This would be my nephew, and my apprentice," Bibo said simply.

  “Why would you bring such obvious street trash into our estee-”

  “Whats that?” Aris pointed towards the space next to his right shoulder, the man looked backwards. “No, next to you”

  “There’s nothing- ” the man stopped as he realized that the child was talking about the magic construct that he had developed, and got him his Magnus certification. “How?”

  “Well. This ‘street trash’ was apparently born with the ability to see magic directly, of course I couldn't just leave such potential behind, you really shouldn't judge a book by its cover, Antimony.” Biboleth explained.

  “Fine then. I suppose that it would be irresponsible for me to let someone like him untrained, he can have a dorm in Wing E, there’s a few empty rooms.” Antimony conceded.

  —

  The next few days Aris mainly was getting used to that large, magical building. Biboleth, as a professor at the academy, had responsibilities, but always made sure that Aris was adjusting. The other students were mostly older than him by a few years, so they had little interest in him.

  At some point, Bibo sat Aris down.

  ”there’s something I want to see, hold out your hands” Aris did so, “see that magic in your body? I want to tell it to form a ball”

  ”Make a ball please.”

  Bibo laughed, “Not like that! You gotta tell it with your soul, you need to really believe it.” Aris focused on that magic again, and with a little effort, a bubble of pure magic rose from his hands, the insides swirling gently.

  ”Good! Now, this part might be really hard, so don’t worry if it doesn’t work. Feel through your soul, seek for a presence, when you do, pull on it, something should come out, put that inside that ball and tell it to absorb it”

  Aris tried what he said, but he couldn't feel anything, eventually he just looked down into himself and peered really hard, and there was a little ball, not magic, it seemed to make it though, and there was something else, it looked like a spark he pulled on it and out came a tiny ember of… something, quickly he put in the ball and asked it to eat it.

  Aris watched as the ball changed color, from white to a deep brown, and the swirling completely changed, it also shrank.

  Bibo’s swirling changed, he was ecstatic, “Congrats, you’ve got an alignment, feels like Earth with some Dark.”

  Aris looked at him simply.

  “Oh! You have no clue what any of that means, uh, well your alignment is what type of essence you make naturally, and you mix that essence to make different kinds of magic, you’ve probably seen it."

  Aris remembered the street performer’s fire balls. He nodded.

  Bibo had to go and monitor an exam and had to go. By the time he came back, Aris was asleep.