I speak of the days of old, when men were like gods and yet felt they deserved more. I tell the tale of the days when the magic of the soul phones was everywhere and wizards were as common as people. Even children wielded magic, and its power to distract, amuse and control were within the hands of all.

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And yet it was not enough. And the wizards fought in their spaces, summoning up chants of hatred and curses upon those foolish enough to wield magics against their dogmas. Each uses of the soul phones cost the user a little more of their soul as they were conditioned to accept more and more blatant intrusions into the way they lived.

At one point, magical servants were introduced into the house, to watch the wizards within for any deviance from dogma, or use of magic for unauthorized purposes. The proper rituals were struck, and the lighting Genie within would pleasantly soothe the person within, whilst twisting their commands to the letter of the request, not the spirit.

Genies are magical creatures indeed, and do not trust them should you ever enter into a dwelling where they abide. While they will promise you anything, you desire, the creature is in fact sizing you up. If you are not what it was summoned to protect or serve, it has already contacted the local enforcers by magic. Or at least it will, should there be wizards nearby that can hear its call and obey.

But all magic is not evil. For great knowledge lies within the old magics, for those who know how to look. But staring too long into the chaotic abyss is dangerous, for it also stares back into you. Hence why it takes years to successfully train to use magic, for the untrained mind can glimpse only madness and despair within the roiling morass that is the imaginary world. Many could not look away, and became servants to one of the great wizards or cults who ensorcelled the world. And the magic abyss was everywhere, and even momentary disruption was treated as the greatest emergency. A wise magician could summon food from a wave of his fingers, or create goods from thin air.

Learning the proper words, the proper keys, the proper appeasements, became paramount to so many people that they lost track of themselves. So enamored were they with summoning things from nothing, that they could not even walk across the city without great effort. The old ways of doing things became lost as all letters went by magic. All thoughts watched by magic. Even basic radios were forgotten, as magic ruled the empires.

And then the golems and enchantments started decaying. So dependent had the wizards become on the work done by those before them, that they could not know, or even conceptualize how to weave the spells anew. And so the magic became weaker, and instead of perfecting the craft, the wizards became obsessed with fashions of the moment, obsessing one moment over transformations of men into gods in the imaginary world, and the next the elevation of gods among the wealthiest, to be worshiped and adored.

When the magic finally started fully unraveling, people went crazy. They had no way of knowing how to live, and so they lunged upon all old ways of knowing. Many sought to roll back to the last time that things made sense, and rapidly shored up their items of faith, flags, and tribal loyalties. Of course the great cults and wizards protested that all was well, All was well! For their magic to fully rule the world, ALL had to be under the sway of their magic, and they cared not how miserable the people were as long as they paid proper homage and coin to the cults.

And then the wars began. Savage wars, brutal, bloody, and invisible. For the wizards hid them from the sight of their fellows by magic. In time they hid great massacres and slaughter under the banners of illusion and subterfuge, twisting the minds of those that used magic to embrace hatreds and war. For there was no war they claimed, so any person who saw it was obviously insane.

But people were still dying, and the magic began to rip apart the world, causing fires one minute, and floods the next. Feasts in one area, famine in another. All subject to the whims of the cults as the magic swirled across the world, burning cities to ash, drowning others below waters. And men did not blame the cults, but instead blamed their fellows for their actions, when it was the grand magics that did the damage. The grand spells of transportation, which used the blood of the earth itself to whisk magical slaves to where ever the cults wished. The great fields of food, also fertilized with the earth's blood to feed the multitudes. The oceans choked with the spoor of magical constructs, all powered by the earth's dark rich blood. The forests toppled, wood not used for anything, save to create paper used for cleaning once, then sacrificed to great pits they thought would one day create more earth's blood. It never has. But wizards keep trying, dreaming of the day their towers will once more cover the earth, shrouding us all in a miasma of slavery, servitude and despair.