Light – Sleeping At Last
You’re a strange child and everyone knows it. Your parents are disquieted by your gift for healing and creating light with a touch, but the magic seems harmless, and they eventually grow easy around it. They teach you everything they can, and otherwise remain watchful of their only child. This small family is your whole world, and they’re very protective.
Dream – Imagine Dragons
One morning you’re racing down to breakfast, the next Mother is shaking you awake from what seems a frightful dream. No matter… until it happens again. And again. And again. You answer their questions as best you can, watch their alarm turn to fear, and grow fearful yourself without knowing why. A wizard is consulted, and he expresses interest in taking a budding sorceress as his apprentice. Your parents deny him at first but reach a compromise: you will study with him when you turn ten, so they might have a few more years with their little girl.
Best Day Of My Life – American Authors
You’ve apprenticed to the wizard for two years, but your meager talents haven’t developed any further. Thankfully you’ve proven a bright child, and your parents’ work ethic has rubbed off on you. A proposition is made: send you away from Lux to attend the Academy d’Magi in King’s Watch. Your parents, torn between wanting you close and not letting this opportunity slip away, agree to send you. Work hard, study hard, and come home!
Almost There – Anika Nona Rose
Because every D&D character deserves a Disney song.
Your first year in the Academy reinforces your love of magic: there is no place you’d rather be, and the stories of history’s greatest wizard ignites a craving to prove yourself. Nothing will halt your ambition to join the ranks of the Order of Uxium.
Trouble – Coldplay
Trouble is brewing in the west, and news arrives of Lux’s bid for independence from the crown. A Luxian yourself, despite your age you’re branded a traitor in the eyes of your peers. New friendships dissolve; suspicion is cast, your loyalty doubted. The other young apprentices gleefully inform you of how traitors are dealt with. Panic grips you: your future is in jeopardy, and with more prodding you’re convinced of what you must do.
Cut ties with them, Sallah, and your place is secure. Denounce your home, your family, and everything will be fine.
You pen the last letter you will ever send home, though you don’t know it yet. A scathing condemnation of your parents, of the new Luxian Empire. You burn those bridges with a torch given by your peers, spilling words onto the page at their urging.
It Only Gets Much Worse – Nate Ruess
Nothing changes. The other apprentices continue to criticize you for being Luxian behind the backs of your instructors, and shame stays your hand from following that last letter with an apology. A response never comes. Shame turns to worry, to fear, to anger and, finally, to sorrow. Why haven’t they written? It would be one thing to know they were angry: this silence is somehow much, much worse.
Roar – Katy Perry
I consider this Sallah’s “training montage”: years of falling asleep studying late into the night, of ignoring everything that wasn’t bringing her closer to what she thought she wanted.
Isolated in every sense of the word, you replace loneliness with determination. Lock everything – your peers, your parents, your fears – away and deal with it another day: you’ve got a goal and nothing will distract you from your studies.
Remember the Name (feat. Styles of Beyond) – Fort Minor
You lean into your faith, asking Bahamut for the wisdom to never be tricked so cruelly again, and find your niche between his Divine teachings and the Arcane. Theurgy only adds to your strangeness, but you know there are few wizards who can do what you can, and standing out is how you intend to win your seat among the greats.
VOICES [Feat. Lindsey Stirling] – Switchfoot
Years lie at your back, and though you’ve armored yourself against ridicule, you aren’t deaf to it.
Lovely (with Khalid) – Billie Eilish
Your social skills have atrophied. Everyone you know is an acquaintance, not a friend, and you hold them at arm’s length. To allow them behind your defenses is to risk being hurt again… but that doesn’t stop you from wanting a human connection.
I Go To Sleep – Sia
There’s a dull ache in your chest when you think of what life could have been had you been less foolish. This year you wrote the apology you always wanted to – it’s gathered dust for months on your desk, an ornate S pressed into the silver wax. But the war between the Luxian Empire and Yagrodal rages on, and you stay your hand.
One Summer’s Day – Joe Hisaishi, London Symphony Orchestra
You’re sent on your first assignment outside the Academy: investigate the Feldimire Bog, for there are growing rumors of strange magic at work. Two fellow apprentices accompany you. During a battle with a large snake a fog starts to roll in, obscuring your view of the others. Voices ring out from the gray that surrounds you, seemingly discussing you and your companions. You hear one cry out in alarm, followed by the other. Alone, you cast Sanctuary on yourself and prepare to run. Before you can something large and winged carries you aloft, the fog obscuring it too much to identify what has you in its grasp. Then you’re twisting through a red sky, falling, crashing. Two people stand over you under the hole which your body punched through their ceiling, their concern all you can distinguish through the pain.
Blackness.
Two days later you awaken in a tavern in the Feywild, a guest of the Archfey Gancanagh. He introduces you to a group of adventurers who are also recent arrivals to this realm. While getting to know one another you learn you’ve lost months… no, years… since leaving the Material Plane. Strange to think the others must have been dead for years, since you saw them only days ago. More sobering are your reflections on how little losing so much time has changed in your life.
My Silver Lining – First Aid Kit
There’s no changing the past, no regaining the years you’ve lost. In just this past week you’ve been mauled, made mutual cause with an enemy, had your life threatened at the end of a sword, been frustrated by a cryptic vampire and made a fool of yourself with your own arrogance. In spite of all that… this band who call themselves Corvae Prime has been a welcome change from the monotony of the Academy. You hadn’t even realized life there was monotonous. A few more days with them couldn’t hurt, at least until you return to the relative quiet of your studies.