This one’s funny but dark. Content warning for mentions of torture and attempted suicide.

I was thirteen when the wizard took me. Opened a portal right under my feet. I fell through the fabric of the universe, screaming my throat raw, and landed in an ice-cold lake. Thank God my parents had paid for swimming lessons when I was five. Once I dragged myself ashore, coughing, shivering, and scared out of my mind, the wizard was there.

You know what he looks like. Wild gray beard, pointy hat, billowing robe of patchwork colors—the whole shebang. He told me I was in another world, and that I’d been chosen to save it. I believed him, of course. The massive snowy mountains in the distance were about as far from rural Arkansas as I could imagine, and that was even without the glowing fairies darting around the lake.

And I desperately wanted to believe him. Chosen to save the world? Me? Any dweeby, lonely little boy would eat that shit up with a spoon, and I was no exception. I did everything the wizard asked, worked harder than I ever had in my life. And really, it wasn’t much of a chore when I was learning magic—real magic! I remember the first time I made a seed sprout and grow into a giant tree before my eyes, the first time I conjured flames in my bare hands. It was freaking incredible. Even now, I can still feel the wonder in my bitter, black heart.

But the wizard wasn’t teaching me for the sake of spreading the joy of magic. No, I was expected to put those skills to use to defeat the Deathly King—an evil son of a bitch no thirteen-year-old kid had any business fighting. I made trees grow through the walls of enemy fortresses, flung fireballs at trolls, and fought my way through dark caves of shrieking, many-armed creatures. I was a goddamn child soldier, and I had the stab wounds, head injuries, and emotional trauma to prove it.