When most people start at the beginning, they usually do so with their birth.
Or, if they're feeling frisky, their death.
A more conventional approach, as a Master Mage of the Voidic Arts, would be for me to begin on the day I, as a five-year old child barely able to count all my fingers, first felt the Call of the Old Twit with an Uncivilised Name No One with a Civilised Tongue Can Speak.
Although I'm not going to start there, I will say it was a day I shall never forget.
My mother had just beaten the absolute devil out of me with a wooden rod, and my brother was laughing his nappy off at my screams. I had two broken fingers, a bleeding scalp, and more than one rib cracked badly enough that I found it hard to breathe and to this day I still feel them ache in winter.
Thankfully, justice is as blind as an eldritch and senile Old God, so the Old Twit was happy for me to offer them both as sacrifice in exchange for a few good spells and a slice of mysterious pie he'd found in another universe.
The pie was quite nice, if you must know.
Much nicer than my mother's cooking.
Which isn't a particularly high benchmark, but there you go.
Moving along, there are those who might also start at the point they were accepted into the Mage Guild and started their first year of college at the ripe young age of eighteen. Theirs would be a story of overcoming bullying through violence and occasional snark. Hijinks would ensue, and adventures would be had.
No one would do any studying, though. And there wouldn't be very many classes.
Which is hardly very realistic. Being accepted into the Mage Guild requires being present for multiple classes per day, as well as monthly exams and a constant routine of practical exercise and philosophical challenges which test one's concentration and grind one's patience to dust.
That's why I'm skipping that part, too.
That, and the fact that I never went to the Mage Guild. As the only known Void Mage in the world, it was a complete waste of time. They had nothing to teach me, and I didn't enjoy hijinks.
I could start with my first Quest undertaken for the Adventurer's Guild, but I fail to see what's so interesting about hearing me struggle to kill ten goblins with apprentice-level void spells.
Over and over.
And over again.
Until finally they let me do Quests with orcs.
Only to kill ten orcs over and over and over again until they let me kill ten trolls over and over and- well. You get the point.
Another moderate waste of time.
Also, I missed the questionable joys of partying up with a team of feisty friends who learn to overcome their distrust of Void Mages, gaze at me with wonder every time I cast a new spell, and start calling me brother while I accumulate a plucky band of assorted women to populate my harem while ticking off some vague list for diversity's sake. Cat ears? Check. One with purple hair? Check.
One who craves physical intimacy with other women while slurping up the sticky remnants of a night's fornication? Check.
But eww.
I mean, really. It would make kissing a girl very awkward if she's dripping one's own fluids from their chin, wouldn't it? Honestly, it's not for me.
Instead, I stomped out into the wilds on my own and summoned madness-inducing friends from the void who were delighted to rip, tear, and consume anything in my path without bothering to engage in conversation.
And when they weren't enough to deliver death to a particularly stubborn beast or two?
Then it's the easiest thing in the world to open a portal and shove whatever's being annoying you into the void where the Old Twit lays dreaming, his countless mouths always open for snacks of the shrieking kind.
You see? Combat isn't very exciting when there's no real challenge to be had.
Even my journey to defeat the Dark Lord of the North wasn't worth much more than a footnote right here. He was a necromancer who'd raised himself to Lichdom.
Perhaps you should have broken into HIS house and read HIS diary, instead of breaking into mine.
My irritation with you aside, he had an army of a billion undead and was ready to swarm down and kill us all. Or so the emperor said, down on his knees and begging me to please do something about it.
The biggest challenge was the cold. It was snowing. I hate the snow.
Trudging there and back knee deep in the stuff was profoundly difficult. I went through two pairs of boots and my favourite wolfskin cloak got absolutely ruined. I've never found another like it and the memory of its loss still gives me a temper.
The second biggest challenge was listening to the old villain's monologue. He felt the need to unload everything on me as I sauntered into his throne room. He really did get close to killing me.
With boredom.
I endured it only because it's rude to interrupt a host when they're introducing themselves.
In the end, I fed him to the Old Twit and that was that.
So, no point starting my story there.
I'll start my story instead on a Freasday not long after I turned twenty-five. The night was a little chilly, so I was wearing my wyrmskin coat. It wasn't as good as my wolfskin one, though. Oh, that makes me so mad just thinking about it.
The thing about wyrmskin coats is that they flap like you're wearing bat wings as you walk. Especially if you like to stalk through the city streets as I do.
I mean, I'm a man with a purpose. I don't wander about aimlessly. And even if I were wandering about aimlessly, that in itself would be the purpose of my wandering.
Most people wouldn't wear a wyrmskin coat for this reason. It's very distracting to walk with all that flap flappery behind you.
People would normally laugh at you. It's like wearing squeaky shoes. Or a creaky leather jacket.
No one laughs at me, though. Not even the children. In fact, the little pests usually avert their gaze, and I get a nice warm tickle in my heart knowing I have instilled at least a moderate amount of fear in their weak little monkey minds.
I might cackle now and then. I'm prone to a bit of cackling as I stalk.
It keeps the wretched beggars away from me.
Unfortunately, the thieves take it as something of a challenge and continually try to pick my pockets as I slide past their little hidey holes. They think themselves so cleverly stealthed in the shadows as their eager little fingers snatch at my belt, only to find my hand pressing firmly against their chest as I shove them directly into a rip in space and time which sends them tumbling into the void.
The Old Twit loves when I go for a walk in Waggenrook's seediest streets.
The local Thief Guild's leader doesn't, and I get regular visits from him requesting I please stop reducing their number as it puts too much pressure on the remaining thieves to fulfil their daily quotas of goods reallocated from one owner to another without fair, just, or even any compensation whatsoever.
I always remind them that I don't particularly care about their quotas.
If the little urchins don't want to feed an ancient and terrifyingly unknowable being who eats spiral galaxies for breakfast, then they should think about leaving my pockets unpicked.
His visits aren't too difficult to endure, though. Sometimes, I even look forward to them enough that I might actively seek out some of his thieving little mooks and feed them to the Old Twit just to encourage another one.
This is because he always makes a point of bringing a nice fresh cake, which is fair compensation for listening to him whine. It reminds me that even a mook might learn proper manners if reasonably educated.
On this particular night, I was a few blocks and two thieves away from my tower when I heard a scuffle and a growled demand which made my brow furrow deep enough you could plant corn in it.
Flapping into an alley, I winced at the uncouth stench rising from the putrid little creeks of filth wending their way out of garbage bins and into drains already thick with more than enough evil smells of their own.
I removed my wince and replaced it with a scowl at sight of four even more uncouth individuals surrounding three feminine-looking bundles wrapped in dark cloaks and hoods.
This, I thought, was very sensible attire for both alleyways and cold nights.
Disappointingly for humanity, the uncouth individuals had uncouth desires which had manifested into uncouth demands, and the girls were pressed back-to-back in an effort to protect themselves from the situation which was quickly moving from uncouth demand to uncouth action.
All in all, I felt no alley deserved to attract so much uncouthness.