Role

Chapter 3

Phindarn was a disappointment.

He knew that. It would be hard not to know it.

His mother made a point of telling him every day, after all. Every other
day at worst; sometimes she pretended he didn't exist.

He didn't let it get him down though. Always look on the bright side of
life and all that!

It hadn't always been this way. He remembered in the very early years, as
much as a child can at least. She'd spent much time with him. casting
spells, making notes. Telling him to focus, though focus on what he never
really understood.

But whatever she'd been hoping for clearly had never materialised.

Then, to cap it all off?

Phindarn was an absolutely hopeless mage.

How can you be a drow and so bad at magic? That was the common refrain from
his contemporaries. It wasn't even asked with spite usually, just a sense
of bewilderment, as if he had somehow violated some fundamental rule of the
world.

How could he explain it to them? He didn't even know himself. It all made
sense. Magical formuli and incantations, intonation and diction. Simple.

But when he tried to actually cast magic? He was lucky to produce a mist or
puff of smoke, let alone fire, water, or the other primary elements. He had
a little better luck with the darker magics; but it quickly became clear
that the delicate work of animation would never be his. "Like bringing a
hammer to shape glass," as his mother had bluntly put it. A cruel irony:
the one magic he had some aptitude for was the one requiring subtlety and
finesce, when he inately was predisposed to neither.

Luckily though, there were alternatives.