So, picture this; you're a mage. Not just any hedge witch or conjurer of cheap tricks, no: you're a master magus, esteemed graduate of a school so prestigious, so elite, that most of its students are killed in the testing. After all, a wizard susceptible to temptation - a wizard who is not the best - might fall to evil, to self serving goals. Become a plague on the world. Better a pile of corpses than a half-trained, inferior spellslinger who can't handle real power...

But not you. You're the best. You're so good, in fact, that not only did you graduate top of your class - not only did you complete an entire postgraduate course while everyone else was still sweating (or bleeding) over their finals - but the class you graduated with had started three years before the class in which you entered the Academy. You were so advanced, they stuck you in with the big kids... and you dominated.

Didn't make many friends, of course, but then it's not like you had time for them anyway. On the road to the top, other people are either stepping stones or obstacles. No room for ambivalence. No second guessing.

So here you are; the moral high ground. Living proof that the Light can be every bit as harsh and ruthless as the Dark. And sure, it's lonely up here at the precipice of virtue, but hey - love that view, right?

Only - it's mighty precarious being up this high, isn't it? And your feet don't seem to be planted quite as firmly as they were when you started. It's a long way down, and gee, it would only really take one good shove to get you moving...

You put yourself on the tightrope. You'd worked yourself nearly to death, spent your entire life in libraries and laboratories, sacrificed just about everything to be the best - and it paid off, in the way you least wanted. They were going to offer you a teaching position. The kind of honour it's impossible to refuse. You would spend the rest of your life teaching students to go out and see things you'd never see, face dangers you'd never face. Because they'd be considered expendable, and you were too valuable to waste in the field.

Faced with the prospect of centuries in a gilded cage, every day spent over books and beakers and crafting wands for someone else to use - you broke. You ran. You stepped out on the high wire, no net and you can't see what it's attached to. But that's okay: you're mage.

You're a master magus.

You wind up in Rhydin, in the West End, where all the fugitives and refugees go. You start making a life. You find a friend... and maybe something more. You think you're getting your feet under you.

Here comes the push...

Flash forward. Seven years gone in the blink of an eye. You wake up in the dusty ruins of your workshop, with all the debris of your life around you. Your shop is gone. Your friend is gone. A giant rat tries to eat you. It's a hell of a push. You stagger. You stumble. You teeter perilously close to the edge. But you don't fall - not yet. Instead, you start regaining your balance. You make new friends - and suddenly, a new family.

It saves your life when you meet the devil and find out she's part of your new, extended kinship - she doesn't immediately squish you. But it's the next push when she plants a... a thing, a virus in your head. It's your own fault; you didn't ask for it, but you left the door open. At night when you dream, you're a million different people in a million different lives, and when you awake you sometimes can't recall if you're the butterfly or the man. When you're awake, she offers you advice and suggestions, usually horrible. Sometimes, she comes and perches on your shoulder and drinks the tea from your cup.

But that's okay. You're still a good person, and you can resist voices in your head. You're a mage, after all. You still have the moral high ground...

Push.