Cinnamon Caravelle

There once was a man who saw the cruel things that the creatures of the earth did with magic, and took it upon himself to remove all traces of arcana from the world, that these crimes could never be repeated. He struggled long and hard, and met opposition at every turn, but ultimately he achieved his goal and wiped the memory of magic from the minds of all.

Unfortunatley, a small gathering of mages had escaped his ritual, and lived to spread their vile influence across the world once again, although this time in secret. The man wanted nothing more than to seek them out and destroy them, but he had grown old and frail and so he passed the duty on to his children, hoping that they would be able to scrub magic from the world at long last.

This duty was passed down from generation to generation, and over time it attracted a cult of likeminded people, all of whom had faced suffering via magic. They began to whisper among themselves that soon a Prophet was to be born, a direct descendant of the man who had struck the first blow in this ancient war. The child would lead them towards their final goal, and complete the work of his ancestor once and for all. The rumor became Prophecy, and on the day that the cult had designated it just so happened that one of their devouts gave birth. The child was immediately hailed as their savior, and his parents were given a quiet estate where they could raise him to fight against the forces of magic.

Most of Cinnamon's childhood could be described as idyllic. He spent hours wandering the estate, reading the books his parents gave him, working hard at his studies, and basking in the affection of his following. He had everything a child could want and more, and was, admittedly, a bit of a brat about it. However, as time went on, he began to feel a strange stirring. Although he couldn't describe the feeling, he knew how to act upon it, and soon enough he found that he had the ability to make things move without touching them. Overjoyed with his new abilities, he rushed to show his parents, whose response was... less than enthusiastic. They didn't understand how the prophecied child could himself use magic. They impressed upon him the importance of never showing anybody these powers, and did their best to keep their horrible secret.

Although his parents never outwardly changed their behavior towards him, Cinnamon sensed a change from that point forward. They were more delicate with him, more distant. They still hugged him close at night and told him that they loved him and spent time teaching him all that he needed to know of the world, but there was a cold air about them, an ice in their eyes when they looked at him. He tried his hardest to suppress the magic he carried, but the more he tried to hold it back the stronger it grew, until it felt like a physical weight in his chest.

There came a day, not long after his tenth birthday, when the weight was almost unbearable, and it felt as though every inch of him was aflame. He had been moody the whole day, and his father, frustrated, sent him to his room. Sick and angry, Cinnamon lashed out, and immediately all of the excess magic that he had been bottling up for so long exploded outward, knocking him back and destroying the house around him. It didn't take long for the cult to hear of the explosion, and they rushed to the remains of the estate where they found him laying among the rubble. They rushed him to the nearest hospital, where they questioned him on what exactly had happened. Remembering how important it had seemed that he keep his magic a secret, he lied. He told the others that there had been an attack, a gang of rogue mages who had set out with the intent to kill him. They had destroyed his childhood home and his poor, poor parents within it. It was only through their sacrifice that he had managed to survive the destruction. For a moment he worried that they wouldn't believe him, but the cult ate the entire thing up, praising his parents as martyrs and promising to find him somewhere safer to hide and recover. They sent him to live with the head of the cult, where they assumed there would be no further issues.

Cinnamon spent the next few weeks ruminating on what had happened. He had been raised to believe that magic was a vile, unnatural thing, used only by the weak and cruel. However, he found that when he had used it, it felt as though he had been made to weild this power. He felt stronger, somehow, and he wanted to feel that way again. He set to work immediately digging through the library of the cult leader, searching for books that hadn't been tampered with to suit the narrative the cult wanted to push. He read up on all the horrors that had been wrought with magic, but he also found descriptions of the good it had done when it was still common in the world. In his mind, however, it didn't matter what he did with it, so long as he was free to use it however he so pleased.

He continued his training in secret, until at last the cult leader could no longer ignore the strange noises and flashes of light coming from Cinnamon's room at all hours. He stormed in, thinking that the mages had staged another attack, but found only Cinnamon, leaning over his books, trying to recreate the descriptions he found therein. Cinnamon attempted to come up with an excuse, but found none. To his surprise, however, the cult leader wasn't angry with him. If anything, he seemed pleased with this development. By his reasoning, Cinnamon could use his magic to enter into the safe spaces the mages kept around the world, and destroy them from within. He immediately set about finding Cinnamon a tutor, that he could better hone his powers and work as a weapon against the magical scourge.

Word got around in the mage circles that there was a young man seeking a tutor, and soon enough and old dragon hauled himself out of hiding to investigate. He saw the power that Cinnamon held, and promised to teach him to manage it effectively. He took Cinnamon to his lair and there he began his several year long journey attempting to train the arrogant child. Cinnamon already knew he was powerful, and found the daily work learning basic spells boring. He wanted bigger, better things, and pushed his teacher to show him stronger magic. When the dragon refused, Cinnamon grew angry. He attempted to threaten the dragon, who only laughed at him. Fuming, Cinnamon waited until his teacher fell asleep, then, utlizing a spell he had been practicing in secret, he sliced the withering beast in two. It had been a spur of the moment decision, but it felt... right somehow. This was what he was meant to do. To destroy all those who would dare keep him from his sacred duty.

He left the dragon's lair and set out on his own for a little while, hopping from place to place, studying under different tutors, killing or otherwise incapacitating them when he had learned all he could. While he was learning magic, he also took a particular interest in music, and when he wasn't practicing spells he was working on his singing. He had a particularly fine voice for opera, and soon he was auditioning for roles in anything that popped up in the area. While he initially struggled to land parts, he quickly gained notoriety for the surprising power of his voice, which was in no way related to the magic he worked through his singing.

He was eighteen when he met Oscar, who headed a (terrible) garage metal band. They ran into each other at a party that Cinnamon had been dragged to, and hit it off almost immediately. Despite the vast differences in their musical tastes, they found that they enjoyed a lot of the same things in other departments, and agreed to try and collaborate on some kind of musical project combining the best of both of their genres. Over the next year, against all his best efforts, Cinnamon found himself falling head over hooves for Oscar, and often caught himself day dreaming of a possible future together. For the first time in a very long time, he put aside his goal of crushing other mages under his heel and instead focused on something wholesome.

After a long period of consideration, he finally decided to confess his feelings. He took Oscar out to the shitty mall parking lot they had always hung around in and told him everything he'd been feeling for the past few months. Oscar, however, didn't feel the same way. He explained that although he cared for Cinnamon, he'd never consider it to be romantic exactly. He thought of him more as a sibling, and didn't want to mess that up, but hoped that they could move past this without too much of an issue. Cinnamon was absolutely crushed, and in that brief moment of vulnerability that old weight returned to his body and once again exploded outward. In this case, however, it didn't result in an inferno. Instead, when the dust settled, he found Oscar had collapsed. Cinnamon rushed to him and attempted to wake him up, but found that when he did the Oscar he had known was gone, and in his place was an empty shell. Whatever spell Cinnamon had cast in the heat of his anger and heartbreak, it had overtaken his beloved and left nothing behind.

Cinnamon immediately set to work trying to find a way to reverse what he'd done, but he wasn't entirely sure of how he'd done it to begin with. The magic that occurred during his temper tantrums was far stronger than what he could do normally, and, loathe as he was to admit it, he would need someone else's help to reverse it. He began to search for another mage, one with more power than he had. Unfortunately, he had offed most of the ones he knew of, and had to search even darker corners of the mage world to find those who might help him. It was in this way that he discovered Pallua Bells, who, it was rumored, had tamed a demon to be his familiar and held sway over the capitol city of Chemyse. Cinnamon began to pull strings in his musical circles, and eventually landed himself a place at a party where he could speak to Pallua in private. His plan was to be as nonspecific as possible on the details of how he had accidentally cursed Oscar, but all of that fell away when he met the man in person.

Cinnamon knew he was arrogant, but all of his bravado paled in comparison to the sheer stuffy aloofness that was Pallua. He had never immediately hated someone as strongly as he did in that moment, and determined that he would never lower himself so much as to ask him for help with anything. Nevertheless, Pallua approached him, apparently sensing Cinnamon's disapproval, and struck up a casual conversation, wherein he suggested that he could help with whatever it was Cinnamon needed of him, but it would be expensive, and most likely humiliating. Cinnamon stormed away, vowing then and there that he would show up that obnoxious mage.

He once again threw himself into his studies, this time broadening out from simply reversing the curse. He didn't have the power to undo his mistake now, but he thought he had an idea of how he could get that power. His ancestory had used a spell to try and wipe magic from every creature on earth. With a bit of tweaking, Cinnamon thought that he could use that same spell, but instead of simply pulling it away from everyone and everything, he could channel it into himself. Not only would he gain all the power in the world, but he'd be taking all of Pallua's power as well. He began to dedicate himself to this goal, redirecting the entire cult to suit his needs. In the meantime, he did all that he could to make sure that Oscar was comfortable, or as comfortable as he could be given his current state.