Life is relatively simple when you live in a small village. Clear skies, sunny days, rainy days...it's a mostly peaceful life. People work honest jobs, trying to live in harmony with each other. Everyone knowing everyone is nothing out of the ordinary when you meet the same people for days on end for your commissions. Imagine the excitement when traveling merchants come to visit the town's hall. The entire village simply gets way more active.

More than everyone, kids are overjoyed. Traveling wanderers meant cool stories. Stories about bravery and heroes, stories about love...stories about triumph and loss. Since the dawn of time, great heroes and nefarious villains of old have accomplished feats of legend. Legends that to the little Apprentice Mage An Fearghal were one hundred percent real. Each day and each night, the little twelve years old brat dreamed of leaving the confined spaces of his home town.

He dreamt of roaming the world. He wanted to see, to experience everything it had to offer. Many were blind to the gifts of the earth and the sky or the wonders of water. But not him. Not An. Every single plant had a story, every critter scuttling on the damp forest floor had qualities. Every creature had something connecting it to everything else that made the Fiore Region what it was.

"...And so, the mighty knight brandished his mighty spear!" the traveling merchant declared in a booming voice, grabbing a broom and holding it out towards an invisible enemy. The small crowd of kids went all "ooh" and "Aaah". In the back, An stared at the adult, grinning ear to ear. The best part of the tale was about to unfold.

"I vanquish thee, foul beast! My power compels you! Yeah!" The merchant waved his "spear" at the kids, who all recoiled as if feeling the force behind such a bold strike. "With a single blow, the knight struck at the dragon's heart." The man narrated. "The beast fell. It was done. The dragon had been defeated. For too long it had rampaged. For too long, he had taken the lives of many..."

An couldn't just stop smiling. That was going to be him later on. A powerful adventurer, wandering from city to city as songs of his glory burned within every bar Fiore offered. With a great village mage as a teacher, there was little to stop the Fearghal's youngest on his rise to success. The story of a burned man, An D. Fearghal, and his grand adventure started that day.

"I'm heading out, Mother!" An shouted as he opened the door to the Fearghal residence, it was a fairly large house, consisting of two stories and twelve rooms, eight of them being pretty big and the other four being bedrooms. An was a sixteen year old boy; very friendly and loved to talk to people even if he didn't really know them. He wore a white shirt with black marks on it and a pair of blue jeans as he stepped out the door and walked along the gravel path towards the city. He was a kind person and wouldn't harm anyone and would stand up for those who needed help. Unlike some of his friends he wasn't magical at all, being unable to focus any kind of energy into magic, but he didn't mind. He much preferred using his hands when it came to working.

What An didn't know was that after he had closed the door and left for the city, he had left his family for the last time.

He joined his friends at a local pub, they talked and laughed for hours. The three of them had emptied almost two bottles of booze alone and all of them were quite drunk when the pub closed and they had to leave. Although he wasn't as drunk as his two friends, probably because he was sturdier built than them and hadn't been drinking as much as they had. Nevertheless, the young teen began his long walk home in the darkness of the night On the walk home he began to sober up slowly, his wobbling all over the road slowly stopped and he began to walk in more of a straight line and when he finally had left the city he was walking like normal.

The Fearghal residence was sitting about an hour outside of the main village which gave him some time to sober up further. He enjoyed being outside in the night, the air was cool and also slightly moist. There was no one out at this hour and he could walk around talking to himself without anyone would think he had gone crazy. Often he would think back at the past hours and laugh at the jokes inside his head which made him seem a bit crazy for those whom he passed during the night. Although An's head was far lost in the clouds, probably because of the alcohol.

He continued his slightly drunken walk towards the residence. Unfortunately, when he began to near his home he began to smell the strong, yet subtle scent of smoke in the air. He stopped and looked around, there was no source of light in the pitch black night and thus the source of the smell remained unclear for An. There was a light wind outside that blew against him as he walked home, carrying the smell towards him, how convenient he thought and pressed on, perhaps he could find the source on his way home.

As he got closer to his home the strong smell of smoke slowly became more apparent although he could still not find the source of it. He was pretty sure that it didn't come from his home, as his father didn't have to light a fire to warm the house during summer. An kept walking and the gravel road he followed soon got angled upwards as he closed in on a hill. In the distance he could see the sky turning orange slowly whilst the rest was pitch black. "Hmm, sunrise already?" he thought and began to climb the small hill that blocked the view of his home.

The smile that had covered his face along with the happy thoughts in his mind was instantly removed when he stood at the top of the hill. His home. In flames. An began to slowly move towards it, picking up speed until he began to run, but because of the scotch he had been drinking earlier he couldn't run as fast as he wished to. When he arrived at the front yard of the house he could hear his sisters, his mother and his father screaming in pain as the flames burned them alive.

"MOOOM! DAAAA-" He shouted but he was silenced by a hit to the head. He felt the ground beneath him disappear and reappear as he landed on the side of his head. Looking around John could see three men standing and looking down upon him, one wielding a bat, probably the one whom had hit him. One of the others held a red can and the last one something that looked like matches. He tried to get up but the sudden feeling of something wet against his face stopped him, he felt a strong smell getting poured over him. John moved his arms up to try and stop the fluid, and it stopped.

Stumbling slightly he slowly began to come up from the ground but found the pouring sensation got replaced by something hot and then pain again. He was knocked down once more as the fire began to spread across his fuel covered torso. His limbs grew limp and he was knocked out.

Hours Later

An groaned in pain, his burned skin feeling like it was still on fire as he came back to consciousness. The pain was the strongest feeling he had ever felt, each breath he took made it feel like he was burning again. It took him twenty painful minutes before he got up from the ground. He looked at the ashes that remained of his precious home. Nothing remained except for some supporting beams that had once held up the large wooden house. 

A new day had dawned, raining slightly, the water against An's skin felt somewhat good, but it still burned like hell he thought. Looking around he saw the tool shack was still standing and hadn't been set ablaze. Moving towards that made him wince in pain, every movement he made made him hate those who had burned him. Directionless, the teen trudged through the mountain of pain and sorrow, eventually making his way to the village's mage, his teacher, just as news of his kin's unfortunate ending reached the city. There, he stayed under the tutelage of his master, choosing to leave home on his twentieth birthday; it was his final life's desire. He could've died with his family, but An felt it was a gift of life to pursue the adventure worth a thousand lives, all-the-while respecting and spreading the teachings of Cloud Magic.

Years go by. At this point, An was a very experienced mage, though over the years, he became a thief, his cheerful personality devolved into a more cunning, sly mage. Now, the young adult is looking for a bigger purpose of life, something more grand to offer him before he can reunite with his parents.