The World Ablaze
**PROLOGUE**
The streets were ablaze.
The fires had started a week ago. Dancing across the city rooftops and lighting up the darkened sky in flickers of colour, before smudging it with a spiral of thick smoke. The smoke, unlike the fire, had remained stationary, hovering over the city like a cloud of smog that was thick enough to block out the sun.
The dance had slowly become more frantic, spilling down into the buildings and invading the streets. In less than two weeks the dancing flames had become a roaring animal, engulfing the city, turning beautiful white buildings into smoky black shells, and lush preened shrubbery to dust like ash.
The city was no longer a city; it had been reduced to a town. A cluster of properties untouched by the roaring animal that had travelled through the streets. It wouldn't be long until the town would become a village. This didn't seem to deter the ever growing mob that was hunting through the flames though. The roaring animal was their creation; they were fighting a war and war breeds fire.
Each and every fire was the child of a lynching, a violent nasty child. Undesirable yes, but necessary. Collateral damage. And collateral damage was always better than human damage. Fire meant war. And to the mob, war meant victory.
The implementation of tools to aid their hunt had slowed them somewhat. The chainsaws, rakes, kitchen knives (one particularly large man staked claim to a lawnmower) had provided them with the protection they felt necessary, just at the expense of speed. The dogs that howled for release from their chains weren't so much pulling their struggling owners forward, but rather secluding them from the mob. This was understandable of course, few would seek to be at the teeth end of a growling, snapping dog that had completely forgotten it's routes of an adorable family pet and had become something entirely different.
A weapon.
The 'target' (or victim, depending on your perspective) had made use of this development. He was tired, not to mention scared, and took a few seconds to catch his breath, sinking low into the safety of shadows while giving his injury some inspection. The cries of the hunting dogs and the shouts of those most excitable in the mob had slowly begun to subside. Perhaps the excitement of the hunt had faded with the onset of the night sky.
Of course, this could be a tactic...the lynchings had become more and more violent as they began to evolve, not dissimilar to the dogs. Gone were the days of a simple hunt with a handful of men, ending in a quiet indulgence of torture and death. No, they were now a full blown planned event, involving weapons, plans, hunting dogs and at least 30 men.
Tonight's mob was yet another evolution, more frantic, more violent, and more bloodthirsty. Just like the dogs. There were at least 50 of them...and not just men. There were children, mothers and even a few grandparents. Of course not all were there to kill, some were there to watch, some were there purely out of curiosity, but even with all the differing reasons for attending this particular lynching there was one thing all the participants had in common. They were all there for one specific reason no matter its form.
To see, with their own eyes…a Wizard.