If you're reading this, then it means I'm either very dead, or someone decided to publish my diary as a cautionary tale. I couldn't tell you which would be more likely considering the company I keep, but regardless, someone will read this and hopefully use the information within to make better choices with their power than we did.

Growing up, my mother always told me I could be anything I wanted to when I was older. So against my better judgement, I grew up to become a Mage. Of course, it wasn't at the top of the list of things I wanted to be - a doctor, an author, an engineer - but at the end of the day, when you discover that you're one of the few people in the world who can use magic, chances are, you'd jump at the opportunity of learning how to use it, too.

I was prepared to keep being a boring fourteen-year-old girl who attended a boring high school, grow up to get a boring job, and eventually have a boring family of my own. But of course, things change when you finally grow out of puberty, and you learn to manage your acne, and all those uncomfortable physical changes are, for the most part, finished publicly embarrassing you. Unfortunately, no one really prepares you for the other changes. The ones that come out to smack you in the face when you least expect it.

They're the kind of changes that make you question your life choices, or in my case, my entire reality. But, as the old saying goes, an existential crisis a day keeps the therapists at bay.

Seriously though, the problem with being a Mage is that some people really, really don't like magic. Some even go so far as to hunt down Mages and destroy their ability to use magic. They're called Templars, which is a much nicer word than what Mom would have let me call them. If you don't know about them already and you can use magic, even just a little bit of it, steer clear of the people wearing the black and white shield pendants. There are worse fates than death, and they'll be more than happy to show you some examples.