Agatha_Deen

7. BIO

"Beasts know not the charm of magic"; so sang the bards. The elves shared their power with humans, and the kitsune passed theirs down to the monsters, but beastkin were of neither race...and so got nothing.

Only the most remote villages believed the songs outright, but as with many legends, there was truth to the tale. For whatever reason, beastkin just weren't very good at magic. Of those who tried, the lucky rarely managed more than floating feathers. As for the unlucky...the Guild told stories of once-docile demigirls being suddenly consumed by the Ley and transforming into vicious, feral monsters. Although few claimed to have seen such an incident with their own eyes, the stories were widely believed: magic academies generally refused to admit beastkin, and any one practicing publicly was met with hostility.

And yet when little Aggie first saw a travelling trickster prance puppets through the air and conjure cotton clouds for other children, she knew right away that no other future would do. An orphan like so many of her kind, she slept by his wagon until at last he took pity and put aside his prejudice to teach the wide-eyed wolfgirl a simple party trick. What most children could have learned in an hour took Aggie a year of near-obsessive practice to perfect, but she was not discouraged. On the contrary, the rush that first flickering finger-flame brought her inspired her to pursue a lifetime of learning.

From then on, Aggie practiced magic as much as she could, even as her passion forced her to the fringes of society. Her amateur magic was enough to fear, but not enough to feed her, and so Aggie bounced from one menial job to another, rarely good at any, only ever managing a month or two before inevitably being caught out as a wannabe magician and kicked back to the streets – or out of town.

Ironically, the very Guild that fanned the fires which made her life hell proved her most stable job. At first, the local branch merely hired her for labor, but the wide-eyed awe with which she stared up at the Researchers' tomes attracted attention. Ultimately, the Researchers "adopted" her, and in bits and pieces – like scraps to a dog beneath the table – they taught her what she missed on the streets. Seven years after casting her first spell, she was no better than a first-year mage...but passionate.