The Last Wizard of Earth

Preface - Who am I This is my story. Who am I? I am the Last Wizard of Earth. Sounds special doesn’t it? It really isn’t. Actually I am an Elementalist. I bend and shape the powers of air, water, fire, and earth to my will. Where I come from, that is a common thing and I was not the best pupil in my class. In fact, I always struggled with concepts that other, more gifted and experienced casters grasped right off. It was fate that propelled me to this lofty and over-inflated position. Of course I am getting ahead of myself here. I was once known simply as Zack. My family, my adopted family, was poor and we had no family name since we had no land or title to the king. I was always hungry and dirty and my mother, bless her heart, never let it get her down. She would do backbreaking work to help Dad support us. Just thinking about it takes me back to the meadow and the old house, or rather the lean-to that we lived in. Dad had once been in the royal guard, but someone had done something to cause him disgrace and he could not get that kind of work anymore. He had scars that he wouldn’t talk about. He kept mostly to himself and went about the drudgery of his life. He never knew how much it hurt me to see him like that. He refused to train us with a sword as well. He feared that we might follow in his footsteps and become as miserable as he was. So, we tried to ignore the sword on the wall and we went about our chores. The landowner we rented from had fruit orchards. All of the indigenous fruits were represented and he even had some that didn’t normally grow around here. We would work for him to lower our rent when it was time to harvest. In exchange we got to take home some small portion of the wondrous fruit and some of the partially spoiled stuff that he couldn’t sell anyway. We were grateful for it and never complained. My brother Joshua was older than me. He stood four inches taller and he took every opportunity to point it out to me. He was a bully, plain and simple. At least I thought so then. Now, looking back, I think he was worried about me and it made him lash out. All in all, we were happy. There were no major wars and we were too small to be noticed by anyone important. It kept Dad away from ridicule and we learned to live with the isolation. It looked like my future was pretty grim. I must admit that I never anticipated what happened later. Now a lot of what I am going to tell you was told me by my friend Casey. He is a specialist like me, but his knowledge is not of magic, it is of propulsion and maintenance. I did not know what those words meant when we met, but he is a good man with a huge heart and a quick mind. So don’t get upset if I don’t remember it all correctly. After all, I was not there. Okay, here goes.