My name is Sheridyn. I kill mages. The whys and hows go back several centuries, a long time before I came along, but the general gist that there are some forces that are not meant to be controlled by man. Some men try anyway; and the Law says that they must die.

I guess it was the fault of the elves. After the second war of the races, where the elves, humans and centaurs beat back the giants and all but eliminated the Ogre race, there was a new accord between us and our pointy-eared neighbors to the north. Though we were bitter enemies in the first war, we had worked together and successfully defeated our common enemies. I guess the elves figured they were rewarding us when they gave us magic. Or maybe they knew all along, sneaky bastards.

Either way, the long coveted secrets of the most powerful elven magic were at last revealed to us. Humans had had no magic before then. Those who tried to summon and control the power usually ended up embarrassed or dead. Usually both. There was a secret to using the magic, and the elves had it. They took a few humans in and taught them the Craft. In turn, those few spread the teaching throughout the kingdoms. They took apprentices. Established schools. Universities. Then the Mages Guild.

It was the beginning of a new era for mankind. Until then, the Priesthood held the monopoly on miracles, but they were too expensive, too demanding, and too slow to produce results. The Craft was a quick fix. The end of sickness and disease. No more Famine. Unprecedented peace between the kingdoms. The work became easier, for everyone. People were safe to travel to almost anywhere, day OR night. Imagine that. Every day held wonders beyond imagination. The Age Of Magic, is what they called it. It lasted over a hundred years. Then things started to change. The mages Fell.

They couldn't control it; that was the problem all along. They thought they were using the magic when it was really just using them. They were channeling forces that were chaotic by nature, and it eventually caught up with them. They all changed. Every last one. Every mage, every wizard, witch, warlock, druid, sorcerer and necromancer. It was an epidemic. The magic chewed them up and spit out things that were horrid beyond comprehension. Dark things. Things that fed on fear and human flesh. Things that not only HAD power, but WERE power. Power incarnate, and evil beyond words.

Oh, the Mages Guild tried to hush it up at first. Hell, who wouldn't. You can't just come out and admit that the local mid-witch suddenly trasmorgrified into a five-headed dog with a yearning for newborn flesh. Or that the town wizard grew wings and developed a taste for the feces of young virgins. And that this was happening all over the place, in every town, in every kingdom. And, no, you don't have the slightest idea why it's happening or how to stop it. Oh, and the reason I don't shake your hand is because I've got a cluster of green eyeballs growing out of the palm of mine. Yeah. That would have went over real well. Would have started a panic. So the Mages Guild hushed it up as best they could. Panic broke out anyway.

Too many people died or went missing, and I don't mean the mages, either. There were too many people who saw what was happening with their own eyes. Word got out and the kingdoms did the only thing they could do. They passed the Law. Magic was outlawed. Anyone who practiced the Craft was to be tracked down and put do death. No exceptions. The Priesthood was behind it one hundred percent, of course. They'd been forced from power by the mages and were still more than a little pissed off about it. And even the sympathizers, the 'oh they're not ALL bad' pansy-arse pacifists, even THEY had to get on the bandwagon after Nenphis.

Yeah. Nenphis was what got it all kicked off. That was the guild headquarters, where Grand-Mages, scholars, researchers and all the rest lived. When the Fall started, they gathered all of their scholars and even invited some of the grand-elves down from the northland to figure out what the Hell was going on and how to stop it. They locked themselves in and said they wouldn't come out until they had a solution. They swung the reinforced doors closed and slid the bolts in place. Locked in. From the inside.

Soon after than, animals in nearby villages started disappearing. Dogs. Sheep. Horses and Livestock. Then children started vanishing. A little boy here... a girl over there. Nothing was ever found. At least nothing recognizable. Then the women. Some of their bodies were found. Raped and dismembered. And the other war around, too. Then men... healthy grown men... simply never came home at night. Finally there was Ellis. Ellis was the village closest to the Guild Hall. It had a population of maybe 400. One morning that number had dropped by...oh...400 or so. Gone. Everybody.

By the time the soldiers finally broke the door down at the Guild Hall it was too late. The mages were gone. They'd taken to the ground... dug catacombs back into the hills beyond Nenphis. They took most of the bodies with them and set traps behind them as they went. The traps were bad. Half the soldiers never came out of that hall. Most of those that did killed themselves later because they couldn't stand the nightmares.

That's when it started. Genocide. Mass extermination. All mages, Fallen or not, had to die. Anyone who had even touched a spellbook was cut off at the neck. Of course it wasn't that easy. Like I said, the mages still had the power. They WERE power. Warriors and soldiers died by the hundreds. Hunters were needed. Slayers. Specially trained men who'd track these things to their lairs wherever they may be, and exterminate them with no remorse, no mercy, and no serious hope of survival. Magekillers. Enforcers of the Law.

People lined up at the Warrior's Guild in droves. 'Help rid the land of the magic plague!' 'Go home a hero!' Yeah. The first time the Guildmasters brought out a Fallen mage, drugged, de-clawed, and bound in chains, three fourths of the recruits shit their pants and ran for home. They wanted no part of it. Then there were some that were born for it. Like me.

Yeah, my father would have been proud. HE knew what to do with a mage. He proved that the night he caught my mother in the barn carving runes into the horses with a machete. He was no Magekiller, but he knew the Law. He knew what had to be done. He just lacked a little on the execution. Father always said he married mother because of her eyes. Well, he managed slice one of those bright blue eyes out of her head before she disemboweled him and got away. He lived for two weeks after than. She wouldn't let him die. She'd poisoned him, and she stayed close by, using her infernal magic to keep him alive while his internal organs putrefied in his body. Father screamed until he coughed up his vocal cords. Then he just moaned and whispered... praying to gods he swore never existed. One of father's friends agreed to put him out of his misery and stabbed him right through the heart. No blood. Father just oozed like a giant pustule. He still didn't die. Mother wanted revenge for that eye. The men sent out hunting parties, and found nothing. Then they sent for the Magekillers. Father died as soon as they set foot into town. We knew she was gone. They tracked her to the mountains, but they never got her. Sometimes they got away. But not often. I knew then what I was destined to be.

I signed up two years before I came of age, and soon became the Warrior Guild's best pupil. When they brought out that hideous thing in the cage I took up my sword and sliced it into as many pieces as I could before they restrained me. They were upset at the loss of their only living specimen, but, after I explained that, according to the Law, the thing should have never been kept alive, they understood. The Law made no provisions for sparing a mage. Even for training Magekillers. After that, they knew where I stood. I was fourteen years old.

So on it went. The training. The classes. The killing. We were like a guild to ourselves. A SuperGuild. We learned tracking from the Ranger Guild. Killing from the Warriors. Stealth. Healing. Alchemy and Metallurgy for the special blend of metals, mostly silver, that we use to make our weapons. Silver hurts most mages, and it can even kill if used correctly. And of course, we learned the magic. Oh yes... We had to learn the magic, too. Not to USE it, but to understand it, recognize it, and destroy it all it forms. I still remember every bit of it. And the most insignificant pieces of it have saved my life a dozen times.

Magic is the manipulation of energy. All mages do is use their bodies as a lever which allows their will to control a much more powerful force. There are lots of forces to control. Most mages used the elements: Earth, Air, Fire and Water. Earth was the most common. It provided the most versatility with a decent level of power. When the earth-mages Fell, they Fell into the earth. Became pseudo-golems or Wyrrms. Slimes. Treebeasts of one sort or another. Nasty, but not too bad to track and kill. Not usually.

The fire-mages became reptilian powerhouses. Fire salamanders and drakes. Fire-breathing dragons were just legends until the Fall. Not anymore.

The air-mages just disappeared. They were still there, but you just couldn't see them. They faded from sight and became as ephemeral as the wind from which they drew their power. But their claws could penetrate the thickest armor, even silver. I've seen one rip out a man's heart with one swipe, right through quarter-inch silver chainmail. He never saw it coming., and neither did anyone else. I was the only one to make it out of that one alive, and that thing is still out there somewhere.

Then there were the water-druids. The Blues. I don't even like to think about those things. The old sailors used to say that the sea held mysteries that men were just not meant to know. I guess they were right. Those few mages who tried to take power from the sea certainly paid the price. Something down there reached out for them, marked them. Most of them were insane long before the Fall. Their eyes were all deep blue, no matter what color they started out as. Deep, rich, hypnotic blue, just like my mother's eyes. Maybe it was the water-druids that brought the Fall on the whole lot of them, I don't know. But I do know that, when the Fall came, into the sea they went. Then they came back. I curse the day the first one ever stepped out of the swamp. Thick blue skin. Gills like a fish. Poisonous claws and eyes. No, I don't mean you can pop their eyes out and make blow-darts out of them. I mean if a man looks into their eyes, he dies screaming three days later. I've seen it. Damned things stick to the swamps and stay underwater most of the time. But when they come to shore nobody is safe, not even other mages. They take anything that moves and drag it down the depths. The Blues haven't come to shore in a long time; there might not be any left. I guess we're about due to find out.

Of course some mages just weren't satisfied with nature. Some had to go elsewhere. Not long after the Mages Guild was established, necromancy was first introduced to the world. Some group of idiots learned how to draw power from the spirits of the dead, and from the creatures that fed upon them. Not even the elves had managed to pull that one off. Not that they wanted to. The elves thought it was an abomination and so did nearly everyone else. Necromancy was a dark art, and most of those that practiced it usually succumbed to the lure of sorcery. Thanks to the necromancers, we now have vampires, werewolves, liches, corpse-eating ghouls, and much worse. At least we used to. Most of them are gone now, but it's still not safe to dally near cemeteries at night. Or even in the day for that matter.

Sorcerers were the worst of the lot. They summoned demons from the Pit and either tried to enslave them or bargain with them for power. They all wanted the same thing. Immortality. Nigh-omnipotence. Love. Most of them got it, too; I never met a sorcerer that didn't think he was a god. They were cursed from the beginning. You can't take power from Hell, even it a demon offers it to you for free. You can never keep it; you can only use it for a little while. Then They come after you. Your soul is the least of your worries. They want things you never knew you had. Terrible things. After all that, I guess the Sorcerers figured the Fall couldn't touch them. Either they assumed they were immortal and untouchable, or they had already paid the price and nothing worse could happen. In both cases, they were wrong.

Finally there were the Psions. They were the only discipline that did not Fall. They said it was because they drew power from within themselves, as opposed to from nature or from the dead. Everyone else figured it was just a matter of time. Besides, The Law was the Law, and Psions were still mages. Still, they were helpful. Some offered their power to help subdue and slay the Fallen. Fools. We took their help, and when we were finished we slit their throats and threw them onto the pyre with the other monsters. It was amazing how many Psions fell for that. After all, aren't they supposed to read minds?

Of course, none of that matters now. Most of them are gone. Psions, Druids, Necromancers, all gone. The Mages Guild is gone and Nenphis was burned to the ground a century ago. As for the Fallen, The Magekillers hunted them down. Over the past hundred years, we tracked them through every swamp, every forest, every cave and every cemetery and we stacked their ugly, winged, clawed, tentacled bodies up like cordwood. We built boats and nets and we snatched the water-druids from their nests in the sea. We dug up the newly dead and used their fresh corpses as bait for the ghouls. We even had a special division of Magekillers just for the vampires. I tracked with them for a time, when I was young. I thought I knew it all, but I didn't know shit. Like wooden stakes... those are for legends. We used silver spikes laced with salt. Then decapitation. Then fire. There were so many of them that sometimes the pyre seemed like it reached to the heavens.

And they kept coming. We killed more Fallen than there were members of the entire Mage's Guild. It didn't take long to figure it out. People were still using the magic. The fools couldn't resist. I heard every excuse: Oh, why can't I just learn one spell? Can't I just levitate my wares to the market? Just one fire spell to heat the water for the wash? Just a little something to help the crops grow? The work is so hard now without the magic... Yeah. Right. Then you wake up one night and find yourself paralyzed. Your wife is now a giant scorpion and she's just saving you for later on, after she's finished with the kids. No joke. I've seen it.

People weren't obeying the Law, and it was time for the Magekillers to start dealing in preventative medicine. We snatched up entire families, as well as their friends and neighbors. Special Inquisitors from the Priesthood acquired the information that we needed: Where did you learn the Craft? Who taught you? Was it the Fallen? Who else was taught? Trials were quick, if there were any at all, and the end result was inevitable. The Rack. The Box. The Pyre. Sometimes all three in the case of the Fallen.

People eventually got the idea. Magic was poison. Practice the Craft and you will probably never live long enough to worry about the Fall. The mages became fewer and fewer, although those that remained were the worst and the most dangerous. They knew they were the last, and they were determined to survive at all cost. They became harder to track. Tougher to kill. Sometimes the mages tracked the Magekillers and caught them by surprise. A Magekiller caught unawares was lucky if he was killed in the first few days. Sometimes it took months.

The mages were doomed, however, no matter how hard they fought. We were just too damned good. So good that we put ourselves out of business. Mage sightings dwindled to once every few weeks. Then every few months. In some places, mages became bogeymen, scary stories that parents told their children to make them behave. The Warrior's Guild eventually disbanded the Magekiller caste. I was one of the last. With no new recruits, the Magekillers slowly died out. We fell from grace. We became an embarrassing legend from the past, not to be spoken of in polite company. That is, until some liche kidnaps your daughter and leaves your wife's entrails strewn around the house like Solstice Day decorations. The call goes out, quietly, discretely. One of us will come, take care of your problem, and be asked to vacate the town without so much as an invitation to dinner. Thanks.

That's my life. I am a Magekiller. I don't know how many are left, and I don't really care. There's too much work. I'm stretched out from the swamps to the northlands. I've even hunted in the elven forests; killed a vampire there last year. Right now, I've got my swords strung across my back and my daggers neatly arranged in my belt. I've got a mountain to climb. Aroot is a small town near the ass-end of the Southern Range. They've been having problems. A plague is killing the horses and sheep; when they die there's nothing inside them but pus. A townsman said he saw a winged creature swoop down and bite a horse that later became sick, then the creature shrieked and flew back up into the mountains. He got a good look at the thing, and it could only have been a mage. He said the thing had only one eye. It was blue.

Copyright 1998 by Marc Washington (aka Dark Icon)