Once upon a time, there was an archmage who loved stories.  While magic was his passion, he loved to hear oral retellings of events long past, and was known among his peers to disguise himself and sneak down to the local taverns whenever a wandering minstrel passed through.  Eventually, he created a new and clever spell, one that would aid people everywhere in their ability to tell stories.

Just to be clear here, we're not talking about me.

Now, the spell created by this archmage (who died before I was born, by the way) was named 'The Immaculate Recounting', presumably because the archmage liked the way it sounded.  It was extremely high-caliber mental magic, enabling perfect recall and a 'stream of consciousness' mind-state that let the user tell a story without tripping over their own tongue.  As the story goes, he distributed the spell to the Collegium of Bards and waited for the accolades to come flooding in.

Unfortunately for him, things didn't work out the way he'd hoped.  See, mental magic is fiddly stuff at the best of times; even when it works perfectly, the end results can be radically different from the actual goal, and this spell was a perfect example.  As it turned out, the spell made it harder to tell a good story, not easier.  The 'stream of consciousness' worked perfectly until the bard had a stray thought, at which point he'd invariably go off on a tangent that was only vaguely related to the actual story.  Not the best trait in a minstrel.  The 'perfect recall' trick worked too, but brought its own problems.  Not only did the storytellers get the past and the present mixed up, but when the bards noticed that they couldn't really... Flesh out the story a bit while the spell was in effect, they were displeased.  In fact, it was discovered that some of the oldest tales had been changed so much by the passage of time as to be almost completely different stories.  The Collegium was rather unhappy about that.

In the end, the Collegium rejected the spell and made some cutting remarks about the archmage's artistic sense.  Supposedly he was quite disappointed by the whole affair, but ended up dying before he could give it a second try.  Which is a shame, because his spell eventually had its day.

Turns out that the 'Immaculate Recounting' spell was a historian's dream come true.  Tales without embellishments?  Outstanding!  Interesting little anecdotes? Fantastic!  I don't know who first thought of using it that way, but by the time I first became an apprentice wizard, it had become the standard tool for interviewers everywhere.  For whatever reason, they couldn't get it to work right for interrogations.  That's the official story, anyway.

As you may have guessed, I'm using that spell right now.  See, I figured it was the right time to get my story down, before the end and all.  It may not be as, well, story-like as the minstrels would have it, but the hell with them.  This is the truth; let them do with it what they will.

The thing is, you could argue that my story started on the day I was born, or perhaps on the day I was apprenticed to a magus, or some other point in my life. But it was there in that room under the tower that I was first alone, with no teacher or counsellor to turn to.  I made my own choice, of my own will, and everything that followed has been a consequence of that choice.

I would love to say that this is the story of my victory, of my triumph against all odds.  I really wish it was that simple.  But after everything, I don't think I have the right to determine that.  I shall leave that determination up to those who read my tale; in the meantime, let's just call it the story of How I Didn't Die.

But I suppose that you'd be very confused about what happened to me without an explanation of what came before.  After all, it's not likely that you'll know my world's history, right?  So let's go back a bit and look at how things came to be the way they did.

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One year ago, my master returned from the war.

Everyone was celebrating.  The war was over!  The Dark Lord was defeated!  The menfolk were finally coming home from the war!  (They had implemented conscription, near the end.  They just needed warm bodies, really.)

I watched from a window overlooking the town square of the city of Polk as the convoy of ex-soldiers broke apart and scattered to the families waiting to greet them.  Everywhere I looked, there was a family celebrating the safe return of a husband, son or father.  But as more and more time went on, and more happily reunited families drifted away to their homes, the other side of the coin became more apparent.

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The grieving widows.  The bereft mothers.  The little children, too young to understand, asking where their daddy was.  Perhaps worse were the children old enough to understand, realising that they knew where daddy was.  Or at least, where daddy wasn't.

The war had been terrible.  It just made me angry, knowing the full details of how stupid and pointless it had all been.

"Well?" growled Mr Beeswax, from behind me.

"No, Beeswax," I responded grimly.  "No marks.  Not here, not today."

There was a breath of silence, before a throwing knife embedded itself into the window frame next to my head.  I didn't flinch; I'd been expecting something like it.  Slowly, I turned around.

Mr Beeswax was the man that my master had left me with when he left to fight in the war.  "You're not ready for the battlefield," he'd said.  "At least, not the kind of field I'll be fighting on.  There are other things you need to know, subtleties you need to learn, and I can't watch over you and fight at the same time."  He was right, of course, not that I was happy about it.  But I'd been under his tutelage long enough to absorb some of his paranoid mindset, and I knew that I'd only be a liability in the war.  Besides, I was curious about what he meant by 'subtleties'.

In hindsight, I should have known better.

Mr Beeswax was a professional thief.  If there was such a thing as a Thieves' Guild, he'd have been one of its masters.  Incidentally, I can neither confirm or deny the existence of a Thieves' Guild; when I asked Mr Beeswax about it, he just growled and thumped me.  And in answer to the other questions I know you're going to ask: no, his real name wasn't Beeswax.  No, he never told me his real name.  And yes, he really, really insisted on being called Mister Beeswax.

Hence the thrown knife.

He was glaring at me, that day in Polk.  I just stared back.  We both understood each other well enough to know that I'd left out the word 'Mister' on purpose as a way of expressing how serious about my statement I was, and that he'd aimed at the window frame as a way of acknowledging it.

"That's not what I was asking about," he said, eventually.  "I meant Rylgen.  Where is he?"

"I don't know.  I haven't seen or heard anything that might be from him," I replied.  "There's no way he'll appear here in person, though."

Mr Beeswax grunted.  While his face was plain and unmemorable, he had a huge repertoire of grunts, each with its own meaning.  I'd started counting and numbering them at some point, and by then, I had listed more than 30 different grunt-messages.  That one had been Grunt 17, indicating Acknowledgement, Annoyance and Boredom.

I responded with Grunt 4, indicating I-Don't-Care.

He let out Grunt 6, indicating Amusement, and sat up in his chair.  Grabbing a wineskin half-full of whisky lying on the table next to him, he poured a measure into a tin cup and raised it in the air.  He always got quality liquor, but that day, I felt no interest in having a taste.

"A toast to the mighty and powerful," he snarled.  "May they drink themselves to death."  He knocked back the shot, and leaned back again.

Yeah, Mr Beeswax knew the details of the war too.  It took me a minute, but I realised that he was responding to my earlier words, in his own way.  Not that he was an ethical thief, but he wouldn't steal from the bereaved either.  I let out Grunt 21, indicating Apology (a rarely-heard one).  I got back Grunt 8, indicating Forget-About-It.

We both waited in our own ways, me watching and him drinking.  Finally, after another hour, a message arrived, in typically paranoid fashion.

A bird flew down onto the windowsill and sang a little song.  Normally, this would be pretty normal, except I recognised the notes as one of Master Rylgen's identification codes.  I hummed back the counter-melody.

"Palpitate," said the bird in a clear voice.  I heard a clattering noise and a muffled curse behind me, and couldn't help but smirk a little.  For all that he associated with wizards on occasion, Mr Beeswax wasn't really comfortable with magic.  "Sherbet," I gave the passphrase.

The bird shifted colours in a sequence.  I frowned.  This one was a bit harder to remember, and required me to use a minor light spell to complete the sequence.  Fortunately, I'd kept up practice of my basic spells in the free time Mr Beeswax had allotted me.  I concentrated a little, created a small light orb, and flashed it blue-yellow-brown-green.  Didn't even bother to convert it through my Glyph.  The bird twitched, and suddenly I could hear a toneless female voice in my ear.

"Go to Trensilor Wood along the Capstal Trail.  Once you reach the burnt tree, move according to Modus 4.  Take appropriate precautions."

The bird darted off the windowsill.  I had no doubt that in a minute, it would self-destruct.  I also had no doubt that Mr Beeswax hadn't heard a single peep out of the bird.  I turned to face him.

"He's not coming.  I've been given instructions on where to move next."

Mr Beeswax let out Grunt 13, indicating Resignation, and reached for the wineskin again.

"Well, get going then."

I nodded, and left.

I'd spent years under his careful tutelage, learning his techniques, his methods.  I'd learned how to pick a lock or pick a pocket with equal facility.  I'd learned how to stalk a man in a dark alley, and how to knock him out without doing permanent damage or silence him forever with a single stab.  I'd learned how to plan a robbery, and how to plan an assassination.  I'd learned how to manipulate people with my words: to lie, deceive and seduce.  I'd learned things most people wouldn't dream of doing.

I had a tremendous respect for Mr Beeswax, for his skills and professionalism.  As strange as it might sound, I would've trusted him with my life, a strange sentiment for a paranoiac like myself.  I guess that my master felt the same way about him; after all, Master Rylgen had entrusted Mr Beeswax with me.

But gods, was I pleased to see the last of that bastard.