Once I was human. It was so long ago that I cannot remember what my name was then. Sometimes, when I think I might be getting close to remembering, it slips away. I am not meant to remember that part of my life. It is lost, forever. I do remember the day that I ceased to be human. It was a dark day. The cold of the winter months was pervasive, and it stole the breath out of me. When I woke up that morning, next to her, I knew that that was where I wanted to be for the rest of my life. It was. A few mere minutes later they came into my room. Before I could so much as untangle myself from her arms, they tore her away from me and pinned me to the bed. They stabbed the love of my life as I heard her screams. They stole her last breath, and shrieked into the night, leaving me with a sword stuck through my gut and tears running down my face. I watched, as she died. Before death could take me to her on the other side of life, another being walked into my house. Bathed in light and robes of the brightest white, she said to me in a voice that was at once recognizable and yet mysterious as well. She spoke to me, and as she did all of my pain disappeared.

“You have a choice before you, friend of the Light.” She spoke to me, gently removing the sword from my gut and then causing it to vanish into nothing. “I need a replacement. I have been as I am for over a million years, and could be for a million more, but for you. You are the one that is meant to replace me, I know this.”

“Who are you?” I asked, watching as she seemed to float about the room.

“I am like you,” she answered, “I merely wanted to be left alone to my happiness. But they came for me just as they came for you. They stole from me my family. I was twenty at the time.” She lost herself in her memories, lightly trailing her hands over the edges of the furniture. “It was a morning so very different than this when they came for me,” her face whitened as her voice turned ghostly. “They killed my entire family. My husband, my daughter, even my baby son. They took everything from me, and they tried to kill me.”

A single drop of light fell from her face. It took me a moment to realize that it was a tear. “They took everything from me. I watched as the life left their eyes, and there was nothing I could do. Then she came to me, much as I come to you. She told me a story that soon you too will hear. At first I did not believe it, but after the first two hundred years of traveling with her, I believed. It was then that she passed her mantle on to me.” Her voice had regained some of her strength. Inside of that body lied a tortured soul indeed.

Was this to be my fate? Was I meant to take up this mantle of sorrow? “The battle that I fight has been raging ever since the world began. It is not a battle of Light and Dark, but of Life and Death. Those that came after you have a name, but that name will only be revealed with time. It is not to be passed from guardian to guardian. You will have to find it with time. Those who came here feed off of death. They take the souls of those they kill, and with them become stronger. Their food is the fear that these killings make, their sustenance the screams of the dying and the tears of those left behind. They live because we die. They call it the natural balance. I call it an atrocity. We are the balance to them. There can only be two of us at any given time. Our battle is to find them and stop them using whatever means necessary. People have given us the names of Wizards, Sorcerers, Mages, Witches, Warlocks, and a smattering of less flattering names. I, and you, should you choose to join me, have no names except that which is given us by others. In order to become like me, you must give up this life. You will never remember anything except the day that for the rest of the universe you died. You will not remember your name. A human some time in the future will discover the set of rules we live by and will name them the Wizard’s Rules. Our order is not called by any of the names that I have mentioned. It is not for me to know the name of our order. To know that name is to have complete control over the power that I wield.”

She took a breath and looked at me again, and I found myself staring at her startling blue eyes, “What do you say? Will you join me?”

“There is much that you have left out,” I began carefully, “Where did this order begin. Its purpose is to stop those things, but who decided we were needed? How many have come before you? How many will come after you? Oh, and the most important question of all, why me? What did I do? Is it just because my love was killed? Or is there something else that you base your decisions on? These things I must know, or else I won’t do it. I need to know everything that you know before I can make a decision.”

For the next seven days she told me everything that she knew, all of what she suspected, and some things that were mere speculation. Then she told me what would later be called the Wizard’s Rules, and I realized why it was that I was chosen. I already lived by them, without ever knowing what they were. They were a form of common sense mixed with deep thinking that suited me perfectly. I accepted her offer. She then began to teach me about the powers that we possessed that we could call on to aid others, or in defense of ourselves. It was not to be used without thinking, because it had the power to kill us if we used it for something other than right, truth. She told me of the seven elements, of the male and female halves of the power, and how one was never to pass their power onto one of the opposite sex. It was told in the histories she had committed to memory that the results could be disastrous. It was said that once long ago it was done, but it almost cost the world their lives. The power drove those people mad, causing them to kill others.  It was blamed on a plague that wiped out entire races. It was a nightmare. She told me about the Flame and the Light, the Air and the Night, the Water and the Earth, and Lightning the mirthless. Of all these things, she told me. That, and so much more. Secrets that were not to be revealed, things that non-orders were not allowed to even glimpse. These things I carry with me even now. From that day on I had no name save what others called me. I have been called Brother, Father, Son, Light, Darkness, Fire, Death, Daywalker, Nightkiller, Dawnbringer, and many more. Others have named me such, but the one that I carry as my own was given to me after I saved a little girl. Her parents were so grateful that they broke down in tears and called me an Angel. The word struck a chord in me, but it was what they said next that created the name I now carry, “Thank you so much for Lighting up our Darkness. I wish that there were more people to Light up the Darkness of others.”

From that day on I have carried the name Light up th Darkness. I now know more than the lady ever did. It was on another cold winter night that she was taken from me as well. I had come to love her as a sister in all things, and it was as such that I was used against her. Before the last life faded from her, she did what she was told never to do. She passed her power onto me, creating within me a mix of male and female power that those monsters had never seen before. I killed those that had done it, for they had not seen fit to leave the area. More exist, and I travel around looking to help those in need, no matter who or where they may be.  Millenia have passed since that day, and still I travel, waiting for the one that will replace me.  Unless I am the last, the one meant to finish this once and for all.  I search now for the evil within, for it is that that gave birth to those things.  They are Shadows of Men that passed into the realm of death without dying, practitioners of an evil ritual that kills all who partake.  It is my job to stop them.

 I am the Light in the Shadows, that which others wish to see when their despair becomes overwhelming. I am Light up the Darkness, most likely the last of the Guardians of Life, and I have come.

The Wizard's Rules:

1. People are stupid. they will believe a lie because they want it to be true, or because they are afraid it might be

2. The greatest harm often results from the best intentions

3. Passion Rules Reason

4. There is magic in sincere forgiveness, the magic to heal. not just in forgiveness you grant, but more so in forgiveness you recieve

5. Pay attention to what people do, not just what they say, for their actions will betray a lie

6. Let reason be your only sovereign

7. Life is the future, not the past

8. Deserve victory

9. A contradiction cannot exist in reality. Not in part, nor in whole

10. Turning away from the truth is treason to one's self