On the Death of Magic

By Aleeah Cross

How long has it been since magic flowed freely through our world, making wonders and miracles beyond Human comprehension possible? Strange creatures roamed wherever they wished, beautiful and terrible. Some magicians provided aid to those who needed it, while others used their abilities to selfishly gain power… and still others used theirs for profit. Charms and other magical artifacts were plentiful. Mortal power was on par with the divine, with some mortals chosen by deities to do great works in their name. Legends say that the gods themselves even walked alongside mortals, capriciously bestowing gifts or curses whenever the whim struck them.

Many lives were enriched by the presence of magic, but many others were ruined by it.

Those times might be past, but we still have records of them to remind us of what we have lost – and what we have gained in its place.

In the Time of Ebryn Stormlight

The last great gasp of magic before the fall.

Truly, if there was an era defined by magic, it would be that of Ebryn Stormlight. Deeds great and terrible were happening with increasing frequency, and monsters threatened those who wandered alone. Some of those creatures, such as Vampires, were even created through horrifying magic rituals that corrupted the living (Cross, 2026). The dark wizard Daemorn is a prime example of what magicians could become, though luckily he was the only one to do so. Still, kidnapping, murder, changing the weather, and – to top it all off – summoning demons is nothing to sneeze at. We should all be incredibly thankful that only he achieved this, and that there was a hero chosen by the gods to prevent him from doing any more damage.

Then Ebryn Stormlight disappeared. This, more than anything, was the first sign that magic was in danger, though this is only obvious in hindsight. Chosen by the Three, wielding the power of the Elemental Deities through the Crystal Light Blade, Ebryn was all but a magical artifact in his own right, and his disappearance should have caused alarm. If Daemorn could not defeat him, then what could? But there is no trace of alarm in any of the writings and records from that time. (Granth, 1989). It is as though his disappearance wasn’t even worth mentioning. Had he fallen out of favor with the Rose Queen? It seems unlikely that even a queen such as her could just ignore a god chosen hero. Perhaps he did something that got him exiled from her court for more… private reasons? But then we would expect to see discussion in the private writings of the court, or even speculation among the common folk, yet there is none. He simply disappeared – like magic.

Still, it is in our favor that Queen Saran foresaw the wilting of magic, and took steps to ensure her people would be able to grow without it. She instituted multiple policies that promoted innovation in a more mechanical, mundane sense, helping the Empire to prepare for a world without magic, though that was still in the future. 

Beginning of the Decline

Perhaps two hundred or so years after the disappearance of Ebryn Stormlight, an alarming trend became increasingly clear: fewer and fewer mages were being born.

The slow decline had begun.

As the years passed, the situation got worse. With fewer magicians being born, there were fewer people to teach magic to, which began to result in a loss of knowledge. Magicians and mages and all the other kinds of casters shared but one trait – the refusal to write anything down to share their knowledge. As such, with fewer potential apprentices available to give their knowledge to, that knowledge began to die out with the stubborn mages as old age took them. This hastened the death of magic in the world.

If only we had ever actually understood magic, maybe we could have saved it.

With fewer magicians available to make them, the prevalence of magic items also began to decline. In response, the people of the Rose Empire allowed the seed Queen Saran had planted to take root in their hearts, and let innovation bloom in the place of magic. A great many new inventions were created during this time to replace the roles magic constructs had filled, some of which we still use today! Let it not be said the people of the Empire are not industrious or creative; while other peoples began to struggle, our people stepped up and began to flourish,

Meanwhile, many of the creatures that were magical in nature were being hunted to extinction (Egret, 1672). Some, such as the lorn and the kelpie, were aggressive predators whose presence people simply did not wish to tolerate any more; others, such as the snawfus and movorae, were simply in the way of progress. Still others such as dragons had already been legends by the time of Ebryn, poorly adapted to the Age of the Gods. Despite the lack of magicians to aid in dealing with these creatures, new techniques were developed that were quite efficient at getting rid of the pests that made it difficult for the people of the Empire to truly flourish. There was an effort made in the 1300s to try to save some of the more peaceful species, but this proved to be very difficult, almost as though the species did not want to be saved. The last few recorded members of these species lived on in zoos until the 1400s, and then they too were gone, a memory of how wild our world once was.

Soon, there was only one species that truly threatened our citizens.

The Warcross Wall

In the mid-1500s, a terrible plague struck the Gini, one of the races hit hardest by the dwindling presence of magic in our world. By this point, there were very few true magicians left, and none at all among the Gini. The Gini inhabited the mountains on the northern shores of Espon, making them something of a neighbor to the Empire. We bore them no ill will. As such, offers of aid were made to help them with the sickness that had infected them, but for reasons unknown they rebuffed all attempts to help. We were left to watch them die a slow, painful death.

Then we discovered the plague could infect Humans, too. But the vector by which it did so was the most concerning aspect.

Vampires.

Vampire had long, long been a thorn in our sides, inhabiting the sickly, infertile plains between us and the Gini. Not strictly speaking a country since the fall of the Romanian Empire thousands of years before, the presence of the Vampires made it difficult to govern, as many had claimed swaths of land as their hunting grounds. These were by far the most dangerous places on the continent of Espon, as most non-magical methods for dealing with Vampires were not well known at the time (with many methods being considered merely hearsay and rumor), and with magic failing many found themselves at risk. The plague was simply one step too far.

By this time, there were only seven magicians left in the Empire. These seven brave souls came together in 1564 to discuss the problem, and had King Ulric give the order for everyone to evacuate south into the Empire proper. Though many had already fled south, this was still a colossal effort. During these fourteen days it was discovered that the Gini had been all but wiped out by the plague. When it became clear no one else would be able to be saved, those seven mages gave their lives in one last act of magical defiance, raising the Warcross Wall between us and the Vampires and the plague.

Though it had come at great cost, the Empire was safe.

And so magic passed from this world.

Why Did Magic Fade?

This is a question that we may never know the answer to, as we never fully understood magic in the first place. Perhaps the hubris of man caused the gods to revoke their gift, if it even came from them in the first place. It is not as though we can ask; since the loss of magic there have been no sightings of any deities, though surely they retain millions of followers. Maybe magic was the means by which they could speak to us, and we are doomed to their silence in the wake of its loss. Maybe we did something to cause magic to disappear, and they refuse to speak to us out of anger.

Perhaps people were simply too greedy and too reliant on magic and used it up. Dalister (1894) theorizes that magic was either a finite resource or one that required time to regenerate. It is possible with the uncontrolled, wild use of magic seen in the early 1000s that if this is true, magicians accidentally used up the magic in the world. If so, maybe there is a possibility that given a few millennia, magic will recover – but if so, how will we know? The knowledge of how to use it has been lost. Maybe it will exist silently, just out of our reach, and we will never know.

It is no secret that magical creatures had long been fading from the world; perhaps they took magic with them (Kliney, 2011). While there are legends of hundreds of strange beasts from centuries before, even in the time of Ebryn the number of species had been much lower, even if those species had themselves been populous. Some species destroyed each other; others were hunted by those whose homes they threatened. Over time, the creatures gave way to the future, fading into the past they had come from.

Maybe Daemorn himself, the most powerful evil wizard known to man, cast a curse as he was struck down, dooming magic itself to a slow death. While not the most likely option, it would make sense, given the disappearance of Ebryn Stormlight soon after. It would also offer an explanation as to why his disappearance went completely unremarked on – magic was known to have strange, unpredictable effects. Maybe no one even noticed he was gone. Maybe he wasn’t gone, but the curse made him fade into unremarkable forgetability, simply no longer worthy of note, the first and last victim of the last act of Daemorn, his archnemesis.

Where We Are Now

We now live in a world without magic. We know it existed through stories and legends, artifacts that remain such as the Warcross Wall and the Crystal Light Blade, the knowledge that gods did once come to us, offering guidance and aid. But the reality of our current existence is thus: that time has passed. While there are many who prey on the wishes and hopes of the naive and pretend to still have magic, these are just tricks, sleight-of-hand and mirrors and wires and anything at all to mask what they are really doing. Impressive in its own right, after a sense, but not magic.

And that is, to be perfectly frank, acceptable. The loss of magic created a space for innovation that would not have happened had people continued to rely on it. So many things we take for granted in our everyday lives wouldn’t exist if magic were still an option! It also created a more equal society – instead of power falling into the hands of whoever won the lottery for magic powers, every individual now has the same opportunity to make something of themselves. The world is also far safer than it was before. No more strange creatures hunt our citizens and kill them in their beds (and while I devoted a large chunk of this article to Vampires, the undead also deserve a mention here. Nothing good could have ever come of necromancy). No more mages can cause fear in our citizens by demanding tribute in exchange for safety, or even by simply existing.

While sad, the loss of magic truly was for the better for us as a people, clearing the way for us to move forward into a brighter future.