The Nature of Wizards

So, remember how I said humans aren't very good at being monster?

There is an exception. If you consider wizards human, at least. My makers used to tell me stories of wizards, of how our kind was hunted through the ages by them. Stories that go all the way back to the homeland, and times before history. I grew up with horror stories about wizards in the same way that human children grow up with tales of bogeymen and strigori.

But, stories don't prepare you for reality. I first saw a wizard when I was in my twelfth year. I never got a good look. I was too scared to raise my head even an inch above the corpses of my parent's still-warm flesh. Through mangled limbs and risen dirt, I saw a man who seemed so small, so weak... so human. He couldn't have been more than 5'8". He wore a cloak of grey and wielded a sword of gleaming metal that stunk of magick. But, the whole landscape stunk of magick. The earth itself had risen up to swallow my people whole, and with a word the wizard loosed cutting winds and freezing cold upon us.

I remain to this day lucky that the wizard was too arrogant to check to make sure his handiwork was done. As far as he was concerned, I was just another corpse in the pile.

I learnt that day what my makers tasted like. Their dying blood sustained me for almost a week, but dead blood isn't exactly the most nourishing, and I was left to hunt for myself. Alone.

My makers may not have made the greatest family, and I wish my body retained the scars to prove it, but they taught me much of how to survive in this world. They made me strong.

And a single wizard laid them low.

It's worth understanding that my coven had numbered at least a hundred, as best as I can count. The wizard didn't kill us all at once, but my unit had fourteen when he attacked, and by then we'd already heard rumors that he'd killed dozens of us, and our leader.

I looked, but I never found evidence of another surviving member of my coven.

It's just me.

There's nothing I can type here that will adequately express how strangely mixed my feelings are about that. My makers were brutish, horrible and monstrous in a thousand different ways, but for all their savagery they were wise in a thousand others. If they weren't dead, they'd still be out there feeding on people. Not as many people as most seem to think, but more than my human nature is comfortable with.

If they were still alive I also wouldn't have met my other parents, and learnt what it really meant to be human.

Still... my maker loved me in its own strange way, and I suppose I loved it back.

And, whether the deaths of my kind was an act of good or evil, I saw the work being done. The wizard is a beast of pure destruction, who warps the world around him to death and mutilation. Worse, unlike the beasts that formed me, the wizard claims to be human, to be born of kindness and good intention, while slathering himself in power and blood.

No, the wizard is not human. The proof is plain enough, humans can't become wizards unless they're born to it. Just like every other monster.

Any illusions that they are otherwise should evaporate in the lunacy that is Mark Burns.

After our fateful meeting with Dave, I went out to check a few sources. Hank took a ride on his bike. Mark went back to Hank's townhouse to gather some supplies.

Next time I saw Mark it was in the smoking remains of the half destroyed house, the whole thing reeking of cannabis. Mark explained how he had met a dragon in Hank's home, and that the dragon done the damage.

This turned out to be a lie, of course.

The dragon wasn't a dragon, first of all. He had dragon blood, and a great deal of power, but he was born of mortal woman. Yes, mortal women can fuck dragons, and yes that might explain the popularity of certain specialized of sex toys.

Second of all, Mark had set the fire. I don't call him Burns for nothing.

Yeah, he saw a dragon and decided to fling fire at it. Probably thought it was a human, but he really should have checked on that. You see a stranger in your house, you assume he has something to say and a point to make. It's a power play, just like eating food. Smoking Hank's pot was a part of that, too. Same as Dave grabbing my food.

Difference is, when I decided I'd had enough of Dave, I knew exactly what he was. Mark reached that decision with a complete stranger. Once again, I have more restraint than a wizard, if that is prima facie evidence of pure monstrosity, I don't know what is.

I wanted to kill Mark and give his body to the dragon's daddy. Hank just wanted to hospitalize him for the house, and I think his own daddy's rage got into him for that (jumping ahead, I know).

In the end, human kindness won out, and we dragged his ass down to the dragon-boy's daddy. Once there, the wizard decided the best way to approach a primordial being of ancient magic with insults, foul language and complete disrespect.

Wizard's may claim to be all about incredible power through knowledge, but apparently they're as thick as cement when it comes to basic survival.

In summation:
Wizards are monsters, plain and simple. They have incredible and versatile power, and the self-control of starving pit bulls. Don't trust them, don't deal with them, and if at all possible, don't let them become your responsibility.