“Never forget where your power comes from, otherwise it might come out from underneath you like a rug” – a rustic philosopher

The sun rises once again, as it has a thousand times before, yet the usual quiet morning of Irkshire is interrupted. Smoke slowly rises from the famous Irkian academy, the colors of the sunrise dyeing the portent of hard times to come in shades of orange and red. The clamor from the citizens upon seeing their symbol destroyed woke the city faster than roosters wake the farmers. With both the visible signs of destruction and the inflow of students that would usually never visit, it does not take long for the governor to send his men to check on the situation.

What they find is horrifying, a mix of death and destruction.

From the corpses of creatures found, and the few stragglers that killed hundreds in their rampage in the city proper, the town came to know of the disaster more personally. Add witness testimony of the former students and surviving teachers alike, and the courts eventually declare this to be the fault of one Bernhart and his failure to contain his creations. He would have been stripped of his legal mage status, but as he is presumed dead, the court pushes the issue no further. In the next print of the history books of both the Albent Kingdom and the Western Duchy, this is noted as the largest bio-magic catastrophe to ever grace the continent and would be used as a warning against such magic.

Nobody ever found the body of the director at the time of the incident, one Sir Reynold, but from where the testimony of witnesses the surmised that he had gone to the source of the incident and probably died there. A few days after the incident, Leticia, the third princess of the western duchy, was reported missing; a few days after that, and her previous location was pinpointed to the academy. Reynold and Leticia were only a few among many as only half the students that had initially went to the academy returned.

Nobody wanted to check for survivors or otherwise. Not even criminals would willingly sort through the wreckage, even at the offer of reduced sentence time; this is because out of every ten that they send to clear it three come back. The fools that did were unlikely to return. They report that the creatures still live, but as they no longer bother the city, Irkshire decides to leave them be. The area directly around the academy becomes a dead-zone, one walled off from the city proper after the governor decided it would be cheaper to construct one than to clear the rest out.

Irkshire goes from a revolutionary city of magic to a slum, and bio-magic once again is asserted as dangerous, and all practice of it is outlawed.

Some academies hold out and still teach the subject, but the particular system that the Irkian academy used does not meet much resistance as it fades into history.

With this event, there is a start of a new era on the continent. Bio-magic was known as rogue magic in the past, and it had been treated as such, but for the common populace, it was removed from their lives. Bio-magic was not something that most people had to deal with, nor truly knew of. With this incident, though, there was a boom of rogue mages looking for the power that might cause such a catastrophe, and at the same time, there was an increase in scrutiny towards bio-magic. Where at one time, the victims of rogue mages faced more sympathy than prejudice, now they were faced with fear.

The events at the Irkian academy showed how dangerous the results of bio-magic could be, and now the world focused its attention on such products.

And Among them is a single boy walking away from the wreckage of a home he had known for only a short time and one that he had unwittingly caused the destruction of.

And so, Alex’s journey continues.