Even with Sam’s observations, Caden wasn’t able to pinpoint exactly what he had done. For all his increased awareness of his own habits on this round, he couldn’t place his finger on anything that felt remotely magical. Much of his ability to spot the perceptive ones was based on on-the-job training ...

The thrill of discovery stayed with Caden as he made his way back to the marketplace. It was a quiet bubble at the base of his heart that buoyed him up and even though he didn’t go about grinning like an idiot, he felt a strange inner happiness, a childish kind of joy that was tempered with some ...

Sam’s short explanation on magic was simple enough for Caden to grasp. He had no actual experience with it, so all of it was theoretical knowledge, but Caden thought he understood the basic principle of magic requiring energy - he supposed it wasn’t all that different from how running, jumping or ...

Caden stood rooted to the spot while the phantom emotions from Sam came through their link and reached him. While none of them affected him in the same way real emotions would, it was a profoundly unsettling feeling to experience familiar emotions that reached him not through the heart, but through ...

Caden made a noncommittal noise and stood. He regarded Sam in silence with his arms folded for a few moments, then started pacing around the tree, thinking hard.

Yes, the bird could talk and it was probably as intelligent as any ordinary person (perhaps more intelligent, if compared to some people ...

There was that annoying but admirable glibness again. Caden could pick up the insinuations behind it even if he couldn’t employ that subtlety of speech himself. Eloquence was never his strong suite.

If this rhetoric was coming from a human, Caden would have been long gone by now. Ever since Triss ...

‘It’s not magic,’ Caden said irritably. ‘If I did...’

He trailed off, indulging momentarily in the daydream of how so many things could have been changed if he had possessed even a fraction of the kind of power that the Changers had. He’d have been able to find his parents... to get off the streets ...

‘Oy!’

Caden waved the parrot away and put his finger in his mouth. He belatedly realised that it probably wasn’t the wisest thing to do if the parrot was poisonous or something - who knew with magical, talking ones? - and quickly removed the finger and spat. On closer inspection, it seemed like a ...

The hazy idea that had formed when Caden first heard the bird talking to him had been to find some collector who would be interested and just sell the parrot off, but now that the thrill of the steal was over, he realised that no bird in its right mind would prove to a buyer that it could talk. He ...

Being with a parrot was definitely different. If Caden was with another street rat, neither of them would have bothered about being overheard since people rarely paid any attention to children like him in the first place. He duly kept his silence until Caden took a smaller street that would ...

Magic.

Caden felt a cold thrill run down his spine. It made sense that the parrot was magical - who’d ever heard of a parrot that actually talked , instead of just cawing out token phrases? - but to hear it straight from the proverbial horse’s mouth was still something of a surprise. In all his ...

For the most part, things hadn’t changed since his last visit. The routine of the shopkeepers remained largely the same, allowing for a few minor variations. Life in Shim’s marketplace went on much like it always had, and Caden passed through the hustle and bustle feeling very much at ease. By now ...

Shim was probably the last place anyone would think of visiting in order to find a new future. Everyone knew that Marn effectively dwarfed the little settlement. Marn was the thriving city, the bustling heart of Thar Shaddin, and Shim was just a sleepy village nestling quietly in its shadow. If ...

Greetings!

I already built the Great Wall of Text in my character application, so I think a CliffNotes version for this intro will do. :P

Currently into my third year of university. I'm majoring in Literature and minoring in English, and once I graduate I'll be heading into a school to teach for ...

Profile
Name: Caden
Age: 14
Race: Human
Height: 4’9” / 1.44 m
Weight: 87 lbs / 39.4 kg

Physical Description

In terms of raw material, Caden’s physical features show great promise. Unlike most children his age he is unusually well-proportioned, with none of the awkward lankiness of pubescence ...