Magnus and the Big Boot's Power

The young boy scuffed his feet in the dirt, kicking up the mud of the road. His long, brown hair was matted and he hadn't bathed in days. He had left home, finally fed up with being ignored by his parents, and now roamed the many towns of Lumere, peddling his skills to those who needed his help. Most people didn't really need his help, though they were happy to pay him for his services regardless.

Magnus sighed a heavy sigh that would have had him rolling on the ground in laughter when he was younger. Now he felt less like a child and more like an adult. He felt older than the age of ten he lived through everyday. His eyes were heavy with exhaustion and tears gathered at the corners as he reminisced about his childhood. When there were still games of hide and seek and swords made from sticks or mud to play with. When he could still see his mother's smiling face as she told him stories about her strange home planet, which she always insisted he visit someday. He never would go back to that place now; after all, it wasn't home anymore.

The sun beat down on Magnus' head hot and unforgiving. His heart shattered as he remembered the day she left for good; the day she broke their promise to each other to live together forever until death do them part. They had been so close once, but after her departure all that remained between them was a letter sent with a stranger who said they were an old friend of her parents. The letter had said nothing of how she was doing or where she would be going next; it had only mentioned that she loved him more than anything else in the universe and that she wanted him to be happy where ever life took him.

The last time Magnus saw his father was when one of his tricks went wrong and he blew up a barn on accident. It seemed like such a small thing now; at the time though it felt like everything was ending quickly and he couldn't stop it if he tried. His father had yelled at him angrily during supper, telling him how disappointed in him he was because of how unruly these "tricks" were getting lately. Magnus felt himself tense up as his father spoke; anger flared inside of him as his father continued to make remarks about what a disappointment Magnus was turning out to be. That night Magnus packed everything into a bag and snuck out without saying goodbye to anyone; not even his mother who was away on another errand for her employer.

As Magnus walked down the cobblestone road leading to town, he thought back again to what happened earlier that day while performing tricks in front of some villagers near a lake outside of town:

"Go ahead young man!" A woman shouted from behind at Magnus who stood on top of a small tower made from stacked rocks near the edge of the water's edge. He looked down at her with glittering green eyes-- eyes that always seemed too large for his face-- before turning back towards the lake below him which stretched out over fifty feet with no bottom visible from where stood atop it's rocky shores. After checking once again that everyone was watching carefully before being ready for another trick, Magnus took three steps back from the edge before running forwards towards it's center where waves lapped up against his boots lightly as he ran full tilt into thin air without hesitation or fear filling his body with excitement at what awaited him; this is why he lived for this kind of stuff! As soon as he hit the water face first everything went black around him--the last thing he heard being a cheer erupting from people behind him before darkness consumed everything around him. For just a second everything went completely still around him and then suddenly all movement returned again sending splashes everywhere as water flew up into the air around him while other waves crashed back down onto land harmlessly now that they had spent their energy traveling far outwards away from their origin point deep beneath where Magnus lay underwater staring blankly into nothingness with unblinking eyes looking for something familiar amid all this chaos surrounding him... but after several minutes passed without finding anything familiar in any direction around himself, Magnus relaxed slightly-- figuring that whatever trickery brought him here would reappear soon enough-- thus releasing the tension building up in his body-- before starting off swimming forward slowly through the water towards what might be an exit point above if this place turned out to be some kind of strange watery cave system instead...