Lorenzo
When Lorenzo was young, he never had much in the way of ambition.
His Pa and Ma were poor fisher folk, miserable and bitter at those with better fortune, stubborn and proud of their poverty. Lorenzo was taught not to strive for betterment, to hate but never act.
His parents had once been rich and powerful, with political ambition and many friends - and enemies. He later discovered they had been brought down by compulsive and reckless extravagance, but they always claimed to have been ruined by political enemies. In the end, they were saved from death at the hands of the money lenders' thugs only by the generosity of a former lover - of his Ma or Pa, he never found out. Lorenzo's two elder brothers were not so lucky. Held hostage against their debts, the payment came too late. They were never seen again.
This was all before Lorenzo was born. Lorenzo never met his brothers, was raised as an only child. His parents, broken, discovered religion, learned to live within their means, and in the process became bitter, turning on each other.
And despite their best economies, their fortunes declined further. When Lorenzo was young, he remembered travelling a lot, sailing from shore to shore. But by the time he was in his teens, they had settled in a poor fishing village where his Ma had originally come from, their boat in no condition for any the best calmest conditions.
Lorenzo was still happy, despite his parents' misery. Both Ma and Pa doted on him and kept their frequent arguments quiet when he was around. On occasion, he would find his Pa sporting a black eye, his Ma, a broken arm. He was always able to get them to reconcile.
Meanwhile, he was discovering strange changes within himself. At first, he assumed that his skills in calming his parents had made him an unnaturally good negotiator, that people naturally liked him. A passing mage put him straight one day outside the village tavern, smacking him to the ground and accusing him of attempting to "charm" him. After that, his friends in the village shunned him. When word got to his parents of the ability, they withdrew as well, and became suspicious of him. He learned to enjoy solitude, and in doing so, found other abilities manifesting - the ability to bring light, to lift small objects with the power of his mind.
Eventually, when his Pa wasn't looking, he put his skills to good use on the boat, even learning to use his new-found abilities without the gestures that made them easier, so that he could handle the ropes and sails as he was casting. The thrill of these new discoveries was tempered by his need to keep them secret - his parents had, in no uncertain terms, forbidden him from carrying out this "sorcery", even beating him - for the first time ever! - when he disobeyed them.
One day, when he and his father were fishing, he hooked a strange, rainbow- scaled fish, of a type he had never seen before. When he removed the hook from its mouth, it spoke up:
"Oh! Please let me loose! I shall reward you handsomely if you only let me loose!"
But his father turned from his side of the boat, a furious look in his eyes, and said "I thought I told you never to practice that evil art again!". And he snatched the fish from Lorenzo's grasp, dashed it against the side of the boat, and beat Lorenzo with his fishing rod. Lorenzo protested that he had done nothing; that the fish had spoken of its own accord, but this only brought harsher beatings.
At once, the sky turned dark, and the ocean swell rose. A storm was brewing, and though they raced their slow boat and made it back to shore, the damage it took from the battering sea was so severe that it sunk in the shallow water, and they had to drag it up onto the shore for repairs.
That night, bitter recriminations filled their small hut, which stopped only when Ma served dinner: the same fish that Lorenzo had caught. Lorenzo was forbidden dinner, but would not have eaten in any case. He knew better than to warn them against eating it, but could not have been more surprised at what happened when they did: after sucking the last bone clean, his Pa turned toward him to give him a further beating, but horribly, his face had begun to change. He now had sharp, pointed teeth, and his mouth was wider, and his eyes bigger and paler.
"Come here boy!" roared his Pa, and chased him outside into the storm as Lorenzo ran for his life. As he ran, he saw the changes exacting themselves. His Pa's running turning into a kind of waddle, his arms thickening and turning greyer.
Lorenzo found himself hiding in the upturned, wrecked boat. He peeked out, and saw against the lightning ridden clouds, the wet form of his transformed Pa, enormous eyes looking fishily in his direction. His Pa lunged at him, scales scraping against skin as he grabbed Lorenzo by the arms and brought his teeth towards Lorenzo's throat.
In desperation, trapped, Lorenzo shouted out words he didn't know were in him, managed to gesture to the rope hanging from behind his Pa's head - and it suddenly uncoiled, twisted itself around his Pa's head, then wrapped around and around and around, until his Pa was trapped. By this stage, the strange transformation was almost complete. The arms had devolved into fins; the head, scaly and shiny, gills protruding bloodily from the sides of Pa's neck.
He flopped about in his bindings. Lorenzo, in tears, dragged his Pa into the ocean and gave the word to undo the bindings, and his Pa swam out into the darkness, never to be seen again. He ran back to the hut, carried his gasping, transformed mother back to the sea, and farewelled her, too.
Years passed. Lorenzo continued living in the hut, continued his experimentation with sorcery. He repaired the boat and continued fishing, but always checked his catch carefully, talking to each fish that he caught to ensure that none spoke back.
His eccentricity became well-known. The villagers became accustomed to his strangeness, and even became bizarrely proud of him. Not all villages have a sorcerer. He became passingly acquainted with other sorcerers about the countryside, and on occasion, adventuring parties, passing through, would ask whether he might seek fame and fortune with them. In memory of his parents, he always said no.
But one day, just after his forty-first birthday, things all changed.
The village elder, with whom he had become good friends, came to him. "We need your help," he explained...