Alistair Myne

I’ve been told I’m a bit scrawny, and I do spend a lot of time indoors so much so that my friends like to joke I look like a ghost. Still, I’ve managed to put on a little muscle over time, and I stand at a fairly average height.

So, my natural magical ability was the power to communicate with marine life. It wasn’t something I particularly wanted, but I came from a small town where your innate gift was expected to define your future. My family was thrilled they immediately started talking about me becoming a fisherman or studying marine biology. They were so excited that they even got me a pet fish, which I named Buddy. He was a small goldfish, but somehow lived an unusually long time. Looking back, I’m pretty sure he was a magical creature and my mom just didn’t realize it. I didn’t look too deeply into it either Buddy was snarky, but I thought he was my best friend. He kept me company during a lot of long days. Eventually I realized the little guy was actually just belittling me and somehow the superiority complex. We into a huge fight and he somehow convinced one of my schoolmates to take him and I asked her how he did it.

Eventually, I convinced my family to let me attend Valor Academy, claiming I wanted to expand my knowledge in preparation for a marine focused career. In truth, I used that opportunity to dive into the broader study of magic. I wanted to find out what else I could do not just talk to fish.

That said, my ability still came in handy more often than I expected. It helped during investigations with the detective club, especially in technical Cases near waterways or piecing together odd clues that others might overlook. I can’t get into all the details here, but let’s just say: it proved more useful than anyone imagined.

I attended the prestigious School of Valor, where I enrolled in the specialized magic curriculum and studied all elemental branches. My instructors were consistently impressed by how quickly I absorbed knowledge even venturing into advanced concepts like anti-magic and multi function spellwork. It was here that I also joined two distinct clubs that would go on to shape my future.

The Great Detective Club

This club was especially important to me. Without it, I wouldn't be the person I am today. I was naturally timid and hesitant, but the club gave me courage and the confidence to try new things and to talk about them. So let me give you a quick rundown, because many parts of my early life involved these people. In fact, they even inspired much of the content in this autobiography. Some of them remained part of my life long after school ended, and a late-night party with them actually helped spark my idea for the printing press.

• Spike, my battle buddy and partner during our part-time work as underground fighters. We actually did pretty well! We could never settle on a name for our duo, so we kept changing it Slicing and Knife, Blood and Thorns, and at least 38 more before we finally quit. But no matter the name, Spike always had a heart of gold and some very unique natural abilities.
• Razillia, a small Bearfolk with one of the cleverest minds I’ve ever seen. She was an inventor and chaos incarnate. Coming from a family of traveling traders, her parents thought she needed more grounding lucky for me. She helped bring many of my technical ideas to life using junk piles and scrap to create some of the most bizarre (and effective) gadgets you could imagine.
• Eclipse, my roommate and friend. A rocker at heart, always dressed in dark clothes with neon trim, and always moving to his own beat despite secretly being a noble knight. He was incredibly kind. If something went wrong, he was the one who helped figure it out. He taught me how to speak up, but also how to listen. Thanks to him, I learned how to stand firm and give others room to speak without feeling overshadowed.
• Scout, the only Changeling I’ve knowingly met. Incredibly logical, to the point where he almost seemed emotionless yet he took the biggest risks of all of us. He had a girlfriend by the first month and somehow made it last longer than anyone expected. He taught me to see things from a logical perspective, and to balance emotion with intellect. That helped me tremendously in our club’s investigations.
• Annabelle, a later addition. A Wood Elf with the fascinating power to control plants. We spent hours discussing flora and its connection to magic, which really deepened my understanding of nature based spellwork. She loved coffee and had a poet’s soul quiet like me, but when she spoke, everyone listened. Her ideas always made you stop and think.

These friends helped shape how I see the world and taught me that there’s always more than one way to approach a problem.

The Rune & Magic Writing Club

The second club I joined was the Rune & Magic Writing Club. At first, I got involved because of my love for magic and because my mom loved reading. I thought rune scribing might help me understand how magic scripts worked.

Even before I officially joined, I was already helping the club out with a few mysteries. (I won’t reveal details here, but let’s just say we got involved in some strange stuff.) We built a tight knit bond over that year, and eventually, I did become a full member later, the club president.

Rune crafting and Magic scip seemed slow at first, but over time I found I had a knack for it. Combined with everything I learned from the detective club, I realized I didn’t want to stay in mystery solving forever. I had a bigger dream and that dream led me to script making and, eventually, the printing press.  

Final Thoughts

Thanks to the School of Valor and these two clubs, I gained extensive knowledge of magic, rune writing, people, and the art of recording truth. Some of the prints I created from those early days have lasted over a hundred years. And I owe it all to the friends and experiences that helped me grow.

So, my first job out of high school that wasn’t underground fighting or helping the detective club was working at the Magi Institute of Fusion.

As the name implies, the institute focused on experimenting with and studying the fusion of magical elements, something I already had a knack for. I was brought on specifically to research how to combine two spells into a single scroll, and how to infuse elemental properties into scrollwork. Since I was already decent at both spellcraft and elemental theory, it seemed like a perfect fit.

I ended up working there for the next thirty years and honestly, it was an excellent time. I loved the work, and we made moderate but meaningful breakthroughs. We figured out how to place two spells into one scroll though there were limits. The scroll could only hold low level spells, and the caster had to be able to clearly visualize both spells. We also had to carefully structure the incantation, with built in “break points” to transition between the two spells smoothly. Not all combinations worked, of course, but we had solid success with simpler pairs.

Now, fusing elements into a single scroll was a much trickier matter. We could produce multi-effect spells or hybrid outcomes, like a scroll that blasted cold and wind separately. But a true simultaneous elemental fusion like fire and water together proved nearly impossible. The scrolls simply couldn’t handle the raw magical pressure; they’d rupture or misfire every time.

Then one day, after a long week of testing failures, my old friend Eclipse showed up. He dropped a bombshell his wife Kaguya had arranged a position for me with the royal court mage. Apparently, they were looking for someone with deep scroll expertise.

Eclipse, as always, knew exactly what to say. He told me this new position would give me access to restricted tomes and advanced spell theories I’d been itching to study. No matter how old that man gets, he still knows how to get people fired up.

I couldn’t say no.

And so, I took the job. I’ve spent most of my life since working under the court mage and technically, for the royal family. It’s offered me incredible opportunities to study, create, and refine my craft. I’ve worked with a wide variety of spells and scroll formats, and it’s taken me to some truly strange places.

Now, I’ll be honest. The job sounded like it would be restrictive court politics and all but it turned out to be surprisingly flexible. Mostly because Sir Koy, the court mage, didn’t want to do half the work himself. He was brilliant, but very by the book. That’s why he said he needed someone from the “outside” to handle the... let’s say less conventional assignments.

And I was more than happy to oblige.

Alright before I dive into the three biggest successes of my life, I want to talk about the real reason I’m even writing this autobiography.

The Myne Printing Press

The Myne Printing Press was born out of frustration during a brutal uprising. The kingdom was in chaos, and as usual, all court mages including myself were asked to produce scrolls in bulk. The problem? Every single scroll had to be written by hand. It was slow. Too slow. People were dying, and I was terrified Spike and Eclipse wouldn’t make it back in time because of the enemy, but because we simply couldn’t get our spells out fast enough.

We survived, but barely.

During the post-war celebration, the old Detective Club reunited. Razillia had apparently made a fortune selling her chaotic gadgets to the military, and to be fair, those traps did help a lot. But I was still brooding. All I could think about was how inefficient our scroll system was. I shared my frustration, and Razillia joked, “Why not make a press that can do it like a printing press for spells?”

I laughed. “Impossible. Magical scrolls need enchantments and circuits. You can’t mass-produce that.”

That’s when Scout said something that should’ve been obvious to me:

“Scrolls aren’t enchanted items. They don’t have magic circuits. They're just magical symbols written in special ink. Temporary. Disposable.”

And just like that, the idea clicked.

I bounced concepts off both Scout and Razillia, who helped me track down the exotic materials I needed. It took me five years of trial and error. I’m not going to get into the sheer number of headaches, lab fires, miscasts, and near explosions I endured just know that my wife and kids were genuinely starting to worry for me.

But I did it.

The final product was a metal-press cylinder, able to inscribe magical ink with pre-set spell symbology. It used a stabilized mana stone core and a basic internal mana circuit not to power a spell, but to charge the ink itself. By embedding spell-forms into the ink as it's applied, I created a system that could mass-produce scrolls of simple spells. Right now, we’ve successfully printed up to 2th level spells, and I’m hoping to reach 3th or higher before I hit my golden years.

It you want read more about the Myne Printing Press go to Chapter 4

My Family

My second great success was finding love and starting a family.

I met my incredible wife, Kim, while I was still working at the Magi Institute of Fusion. I was in a library, doing some light research on ancient Elven magic, when she walked over, glanced at my notes, and casually asked, “Mind explaining this?” One question turned into several hours of conversation about history, magic theory, and obscure arcane lore.

From there, we started meeting regularly. One thing led to another, and before long, we were dating. Eventually, we married and started a beautiful family. We now have two amazing children Francis and my little princess, Sue. They’re the light of my life, my greatest joys outside the arcane world.

Championship Victory

And lastly, I have to talk about our underground fighting championship because yes, I was an underground fighter in my youth.

It was our senior year at Valor Academy. Spike and I, going by our ring names Prisma and Prickle, had made it to the World Underground Championship Finals. We were up against Mother Nightwave a duo of fierce women who wielded terrifying power over night and wind.

They opened the match by plunging the arena into complete darkness and stealing the air itself, making it nearly impossible to hear or breathe. But we had prepared for that.

Spike hurled me high into the air as I cast Fireball right on top of us him and the lady. He took the hit like a champ, and the resulting explosion disrupted their wind, allowing sound to return. We heard them screaming. I quickly inverted one of their shadow spells using my custom light-weaving technique, turning the darkness into a heat source that weakened their cover.

They retaliated with Wind Blades, slicing through the arena as Spike danced through the attacks. For the first time, he’d mastered the art of dodging and advancing, closing the gap between us and them. One of them tried to bind me with shadow chains but because I had already inverted her spell structure, the shadows had trouble anchoring.

While I stayed airborne using a Flight Spell, Spike tore the spikes from his shoulder harness and launched them pinning both opponents and dragging them to the center of the ring.

That’s when I unleashed my trump card: Prismatic Elemental Shot, a fusion of all four primal elements.

It exploded with radiant energy, and just like that we were crowned Champions.

To this day, Spike and I still meet up occasionally to defend our title. We might be older now, but the fire's still there.

I suppose I might as well own up to this now.

This was, without a doubt, one of my most embarrassing moments and of course, it had to be my kids who found it. Well… more accurately, a couple of my friends showed it to them.

Back when my kids were young adults, I gave them a little game to play for fun. I told them to track down all of mine and Uncle Spike’s old team names from our underground fighting days. They were doing great with it, and I’m pretty sure Uncle Scout and Aunt Annabelle were giving them a few hints along the way.

But the real problem started when Aunt Razillia and Uncle Eclipse decided to reveal a certain… special fan club we used to have.

Turns out, we had a surprisingly large following back in the day. And yes, some of them were incredibly talented artists who made beautiful and occasionally very unrealistic illustrations of us. My dear, devious friends thought it would be hilarious to show my children the BL fan art of me and Spike.

So, if you ever come across that stuff… yes, it exists.
No, I don’t want to talk about it.
Spike, on the other hand? He’ll talk your ear off.