Ramses was the bastard child to one of the countless nobleman that made up the highest echelons of his country. His mother was poor, making most of her money in the tavern, and Ramses had little in the way of options. His mother, deciding that he should at least have an education, gave him over to training in the royal forces. She knew he would very likely die in one of the senseless wars that the bombastic empire constantly engaged in, but it was a better life for him in the interim.

He had average grades in training and education, excelling in exactly one area, that of sorcery. He quickly distinguished himself as a very powerful mage, and his curriculum took on a different bent as he was prepared for the life of a pyromancer in the army. His mother died shortly after his graduation, and with nothing to really anchor him, the wandering stretch across the vast marches became his only home.

As he grew older, the wars seemed to grow fiercer, unlike the battles meant to defend one lord's honor or another, and his role as artillery began to wear on him as, time and again, he saw friends fall upon the front line while he channeled the raw power into mortar strikes. The constant influx of recruits and young men press ganged into the battle did little to alleviate his unease and weariness.

In the silent darkness amid the many tents of his comrades, Ramses dreamt of things beyond his own monotonous role in the great gears of the war machine. With years still left on his contract, he had little to resort to except to dream. However, the constant conflict wore him down further still. Ramses began to loathe the use of his magic, despising the explosive power he could wield so casually. It brought death, but it was all he knew.

His CO, sensing something was wrong, tried to alleviate some of the emptiness he had noticed creeping into his subordinate. He began to teach Ramses how to paint, something to do in his off time, and something he became quite skilled in. It finally gave Ramses some dream of what to do once his commission was finally finished, but the intense fighting only became a darker and darker stain.

Upon the battlefield against yet another nameless enemy, the artillery division came under attack. The enemies deployed phoenixes against the magi, meant to strafe the armies and, if injured, sacrifice themselves as a funeral pyre to break their lines. It was a tactic that Ramses was unaware of until he scored a hit upon one of the great firebirds. The last thing he remembers of his homeworld is the great conflagaration of the enormous bird slamming into his squad.

Ramses was surprised to awaken, much less awaken feeling as cold as he did. He realised how badly he was hurt, but he was utterly confounded by his surroundings. He had never seen any place similar, in all his travels, to the place he now rested. It was then that his seeming savior, a large aven with deep crimson wings, came in. He explained that Ramses had been found near the monastery he now rested in and they had taken him in. It was extremely odd to find a human this far into Garuda territory, but they couldn't let him freeze to death in the snows outside. He was allowed to rest here and as he healed, he began to learn their ways, the 88 paths of flame. It soothed him, and made his physical therapy much easier.

However, despite their many arts, they had no canvas or paint for him to use. It was deep in meditation one day that he had the inspiration to use his magic, a task he had long chosen to ignore for its associations to his past, to try to create. An ephemereal sculpture of fire took shape, brief and vibrant and over. Touching the rich red mana of the rocks below him also opened his awareness, finally, to what had happened to him. The entire span of realities rolled before him, bringing awe and inspiration he could never hope to capture, whether in paint or flames.

Ramses left the monastery then, saying his good byes and deciding to truly create something with his magic, to turn something meant for destruction into a brief flash of beauty. He has sworn an oath of pacifism, choosing a life as a wandering artist, going from world to world, capturing the brief flash of beauty in the vastness of the worlds. He has especially taken to providing entertainment to small children and families, using his pyromancy to simulate a fascinating invention he had run across in one of his many travels. They were called fireworks, and he does his best to delight using his magic as a burning effigy of those dancing lights.




There were several sources of inspiration for this one, one of which is actually the international artist Cai Guo-Qiang.