I stared down at the scorched and burned form of the Red Court vampire, as it thrashed around in pain and agony on the ground of some dirty alley in one of the more run down Wards of the Citadel. My face had set itself into a fierce scowl that I tried to convince myself was because of the acrid scent of brimstone and sulfur and blood that permeated the air around us. Blood trickled down my face as I rested a hand on the claw mark that had cut through the once-white-now-red shirt that I wore. The pain that coursed through my body at the touch only made my scowl deepen, and I decided, to Hell with it, and stomped my way towards the half disintegrated form of the vampire on the ground.

I reached into one of my front pockets, making sure to avoid moving my hurt arm too much. I took out a small glass vial from the pocket, brought the corked top to my mouth, and bit the stopper off. I stood over the crumpled form of the vampire, holding the vial precariously in my hand, threatening the monster with the liquid content inside.

"You know what this is, don't you?" I asked the vampire. And despite the pain that was running through my body, despite the blood caked on my face, and despite the desire the just collapse onto the ground and sleep until the next ice age, my voice sounded perfectly, dangerously calm.

The vampire looked up at me with its leathery bat face, it's pitch black eyes staring into mine. It's face was set in utter agony, faint embers still licking at its lower extremities, and nodded at me.

"From what I hear," I went on, "Red Court vampires and holy water don't exactly go well together. It would be an awful shame if you were to do something regretful, and die with this stuff tearing a hole through your face."

The vampire scowled at me, showing the tips of its red tinted fangs from inside its leathery lips. It hissed at me in anger, and when it spoke, it's voice came out to me as somewhere between a hissing screech and a throaty growl. "You are to kill me anyhow, wizard," it practically spat the word at me, as though it were some sort of old curse word. "Not if you wish to live yourself."

I bobbed my head in allowance. The thing wasn't wrong. If I let it go, not only would there be a vampire left to hunt me down later, but it could also convince it's buddies to help it try and kill me. And the last thing I wanted was more monsters that had a personal vendetta against me.

"Very true," I told the thing. "But your cooperation in the next few minutes could be the difference between a dagger to your brain," I held up said dagger, its ornate, wavy blade shining with firelight as the golden runes on the blade glowed with Hellfire, "and acidic holy water slowly burning its way through your skull." I shrugged. "Really the choice here is yours. I could go either way. All you need to do is answer a few pertinent questions, and this can be over quickly."

The scowl never left that hideous bat face of it's. It hissed again at me, and weakly swiped a clawed hand up at me, aimed for my stomach.

I took a small step back, dodging the weak blow, and didn't say a word as I stepped up next to the vampire, looked down at it's burned, backwards hinged, three toed foot, got a reverse grip on my dagger, and stabbed it straight in it's thigh. I poured more power down the length of the blade, and the soft glow that had emitted from the runes on the dagger suddenly flared with intense heat and fire, setting the inside meat and muscle (what was left there, anyway) ablaze with fire literally back by the powers of Hell.

The vampire started to scream, it's pitch so high that I winced at the tone of it and felt something hot and wet trickle down the side of my face from my ear.

Tightening the grip on my dagger, I snarled at the vampire, certain it could hear me over the sounds of it's own screeching. "Why did you attack me?" I snarled.

It kept it's screams up, but I could see a gleam of defiance somewhere in it's pitch black eyes.

My scowl deepened as anger shot through me, somehow dulling the pains that racked my body, and allowing my focus to be set purely on the fucking thing that had dared to attack me in some dirty, backwater ass alley.

I poured even more energy into the dagger, and started to slice the blade up it's thigh, leaving a trail of embers and ash in the daggers wake. "Why?!" I snarled again.

More screams met my ears.

I snarled, moving to stand up, leaving the dagger inside the monster's leg. More anger ran through me, much more than I would have expected, and a thought from the back of my head made it's way into the forefront of my mind. "Fine," I growled to myself. "Could use the practice anyway."

Then I stepped up to the vampire's head, dumped the vial of holy water onto the it's only working arm, and grabbed the thing's face with my right hand in a vice grip. I ran my magic down through my arm and into the vamp's head, muttering, "Mitt sinn, inn i din," as I did.

And suddenly, there I was, inside the mind of a monster. I could feel it's presence inside it's mind trying to fight against me, but every push it made at me was met with shocks that racked it's body from the acid that burned at it's arm and the fire that burned at it's leg. Each jolt of pain that I could feel as phantom pains through the vampire that coursed through it's body broke it's concentration enough to the point where it wasn't even a real fight to dig through the thing's memories to find what I was looking for.

When I found it, yet another surge of rage coursed through me. I drew my awareness back into myself, pulling myself out of the monster's mind, and snarled down at the thing. It flailed weakly around, clearly much more scared of me than I was of it. It tried to flip onto it's distended stomach to try and crawl away from me, but I pushed it roughly back onto it's back with a foot, yanked my dagger out of it's leg, and slammed the tip of the blade down through the thing's forehead. The vampire fell limp in death instantly.

Killing the thing did nothing to satiate the anger, the rage, the hatred that I felt for the thing and all it's kind. The things they did, not just the feeding and the subjection of many a mortals free will, but the death they deal, to children, like that. To throw the world, and subsequently worlds, into chaos by dismantling the only thing that was strong enough to keep them in check, to keep them in line. It made me want to find them, find more of them, and burn them, burn them all, show them just what it is they fight so hard against, search so fervently for, and why they should fear it.

I closed my eyes, and took a deep breath through my nose, trying my best not to grimace at the smell of burnt leather and sulfur around me.

Calm. That's what I need. Calm. The fury of a wizard can be a great and terrible thing, but only if it is tempered with discipline and control, and it must be pointed in the right direction. The proper steps must be taken before my anger and terror can be let loose against them.

Go over it, I told myself. Review what you know. Think. Take action. Unmake them, their work. Don't just burn everything that angers you.

Review what I know. Right.

The Red Court of vampires, along with their cousins the Whites and the Blacks, were leading a campaign against humanity as a whole, to ensure that no mortal, no prey, has the means, motive, opportunity, and knowledge to ever fight back against them. To ensure that Mankind cannot rise against them, as they had in the past.

To do this, they hunt. But they're methodical, those vampires. More than a century and a half ago, there had been a war between the Red Court (aided by the others) and their biggest mortal enemies, the White Council. It had raged for years, and many lives were lost, most of which weren't even combatants to begin with. There had been many a fight, and when the dust finally settled, there had been little in the ways of adversity for the vampires.

The White Council had been torn asunder, most of their eldest and most powerful members dead, with a great deal of the younger members having their will taken from them and pressed into service as vampire thralls.

And in the absence of the White Council, the vampires as a whole saw an opportunity, one that they simply couldn't pass up.

They finally, after so many years of treading carefully, lest they be assailed by some well meaning fool, had the opportunity to cripple the greatest threat to them mortals ever had on their side.

The vampires had the means to hunt down and kill any and all children that showed enough magical talent to grow into a wizard.

For that was what the White Council had been. It was organized wizardry, a governing body for anyone who had the power to pose a threat to the likes of the vampires and any other various supernatural body. They were people like me. Wizards.

I had had a suspicion, ever since I had awoken the talent for magic within me, that I was one of the few practicing wizards left, if only because there hadn't been any others trying to contact me once I showed enough power to be a threat to those around me.

As time had gone on, and no White Council Wardens (the police force that had enforced the Laws of Magic) had come to me with thinly veiled threats, my suspicion had only grown. I had figured something had happened, but never something of this scale.

To methodically hunt and kill children, anywhere from the ages of ten to fifteen, who showed even the potential to be powerful enough to grow into a future threat was cold, even for vampires. I could only imagine how many families were left crushed and broken from the lose of one or more of their children.

The thoughts angered me. They angered me a whole Hell of a lot.

And they sent a pang of agonizing loneliness through my chest.

The life of a wizard can be a terribly lonely one, at times. The power that I have to wield at my fingertips is great, but very alienating. It's so weird and awesome that anyone who doesn't know what it is when they see it is often sent into a panic at the sight of me calling up a gale of wind or a torrent of fire. It makes them panic, makes them afraid. And the sight of seeing your fellow man afraid of you is the kind of thing that can make you bitter, if only a little. Hell, thanks to my magic, I can never look into the eyes of a fellow mortal, for fear of seeing their very soul laid bare before me, and they seeing mine.

There could have been others just like me. Those that know, that feel, that live, what I've gone through. But they're killed before they could grow into such a thing. All for the sake of a bunch of monsters whose only reason for killing them is to ensure that their hold at humanities throat isn't contested.

Sirens sounding through the air drew my attention out of my thoughts. I look to the mouth of the alley way to see people walking past, trying to pretend that they don't see a blood covered man next to a body of a monster that they know shouldn't be real.

I needed to leave, to get back to my office and clean up, get my arm dressed with bandages, maybe even some stitches. Even in this neighborhood, with as much crime that happens here, C-Sec isn't going to just ignore something like this. And someone is bound to have already made the call to them.

I reached down and yanked the dagger out of the vampire's head. Drawing forth my will, I hissed out a word to a veil to hide myself, and started to make my way back home.

As I did, thoughts started to race through my head, all of them related as to what just happened.

So, vampires are hunting those that have the slightest magical talent in them. No doubt they know about me and my skill, otherwise they wouldn't have sent that flunky after me.

Someone had to do something about their overwhelming control over the fate of humanity. But who was there? The Alliance? Not likely, given that they'd first have to accept the fact that monsters are real and they have a monopoly on human life. The Council? Even less likely, as they find humanity as a whole rather annoying.

So, who was there to stop a hundred and fifty year old conspiracy of death and subjugation?

Well, there's me.

I almost audibly snorted at the idea, feeling like I should ridicule myself for such an idealistic and unachievable idea. But the more I thought about it, the more the idea crystallized in my head.

It wouldn't be easy. It would take time, and I would have to make many an ally with some powerful people, people that I perhaps wouldn't deal with in any other circumstance. That's not even to mention the number of enemies that I would be making in doing this. the vampire Courts are hardly the only ones to benefit from the absence for organized wizardry.

But I could do it. It would take time, years perhaps. I would have to be careful, have to tread lightly. But it isn't impossible. I would be making history if I could pull this off.

It was then I swore to myself, by the very power that flowed through my body and mind, that I would, in my lifetime, bring modern wizardry back.

It wouldn't be easy. Nothing in life is.

Hell, I've said it before, I'll say it again. The only easy thing in life is dying.


A/N: Ideas are complicated things.

They come and go as they please, often carrying the one who spawns them to all sorts of places where their creativity can shine and grow. But sometimes they take you somewhere, drop you unceremoniously, and leave you stranded with no idea as to where to go next.

That happened to me. And the worst part is that I knew it would happen at some point.

What I'm trying to say is that I lost my mojo for a while there, but now I'm hoping it's back in action, ready to take me to places that I can't even imagine would come from my own mind.

There is no excuse for long absences, especially when the real reason is as pathetic as the one that I have. But here we are, back in action. Hopefully, I can get back to writing for my main story, which I'm going to shamelessly self-plug right now (Arcane Effect: Life is Hard).

Let's hope.

And as always,

Thanks For Reading!

~ThatBlueScreenGuy