The Djorik family sat down at their dinner table, ready to dig into the beef, bread, and potatoes that sat steaming in the center of the table. Just as the father, Darek, moved to serve the beef, a knock came from the door. He set the carving knife and serving fork down and got to his feet. "I'll go see who that is," he said before gracefully moving from the dining room table to the front door in the next room.

While they were waiting, the mother, Tara, had to swat away her six year old son, Jamus's fork away from the plate full of potatoes. She then explained, not for the first time, that it was impolite to serve oneself while not everyone was at the table. Suddenly, a loud snapping sound came from the other room.

Tara leaned over to her son. "Jamus, you need to get out. I'll do my best to follow you." She whispered into his ear. When he nodded and stood up, Tara picked up the carving knife from the table and held it in front of her defensively.

Jamus was already halfway down a set of stairs that was hidden under the floorboards beneath the sink. "Run, Jamus!" His mother said softly yet urgently. "Run and don't look back!"

Jamus closed the cupboard doors beneath the sink but stayed only halfway down the flight of steep stone steps. He looked though the crack between the doors to see what was going on.

Two men walked into the dining room only a second later. They both looked nearly identical. They stood somewhat tall at around six feet and had heads shaved completely bald. Stretching down from each ear to the corner of their mouths were thick, dark sideburns. A thin red beard hung from each of their chins, starting at the lip. Their eyes were both jet black. They wore the blood red clothes of the Enforcers. When Jamus saw them, he went the rest of the way down the stairs, making sure to put the floorboards back in their place.

"Your family has been found guilty of the worst of crimes, Tara Djorik." Stated the man on the left rather emotionlessly. You must know that the sentence for being a halfman is death, Tara. It makes me wonder why you scum even bother trying to live in the great cities. Why don't you just stay out in the wild where you animals belong?"

Tara said nothing. She met the man who spoke with a cold stare. The man raised his hand, open-palmed towards her, as if telling her to stop where she was. With a flick of her wrist, Tara sent the carving knife hurtling at the man, only to find it stuck in her own hand as if he had thrown it at her. The second man thrust both palms out, and Tara was sent flying into the wall on the opposite room facing the enforcers. She was soon joined by her husband, who's head was turned to an angle it should not have been. Yet some how, she could tell he was still alive.

The two men each removed a long knife from their belt. They started the routine work of the Enforcers. First they removed the eyelids of their victims, then the fingers. They continued removing body parts until the two halfmen looked more like two slabs of meat hanging in a butcher's shop than any sort of person.

The two Enforcers wiped their hands on their uniform. The blood blended in perfectly with the fabric. It was a rumor, and only a rumor, that Enforcers uniforms started out white, and that once they were done with the people they killed, they wiped the blood on their clothes. It is a completely unproven and untrue belief, but it makes people fear the Enforcers more, and fear is their greatest weapon.

The Enforcers looked each other in the eye and simultaneously said, "Find the boy."

----

Jamus bolted down the stairs and then down the strait narrow tunnel he knew would be at the bottom. He still hadn't quite overcome his fear of the dark, but his fear of the Enforcers was even stronger than that of the shadow all around him. When he finally came up out the back door of a building in the middle of a back alley, he bolted to the main road.

As he ran down the road, Jamus counted the blocks that he passed. His parents had told him since he could understand them that if ever they got into trouble with the Enforcers that he was to go through the tunnel under their house to come out in that alley. Then take a right onto the main road and go thirteen blocks before taking another right. There would be a hidden door at the end of the alley.

Jamus walked to the end of the alley thirteen blocks from where he originally surfaced. He looked up and saw a missing brick in the wall far above his head. He jumped once, twice, three times and still didn't come closer than two inches from the missing brick that could give him a hiding place. After giving up, Jamus curled up in the corner of the alley, with only the survival instincts of his people to keep him from sobbing and making noise.

----

Verdol Valdon watched his apprentice, Tobias Syrin walk into the central square of what would be the market in the morning. He had told Tobias that he would no longer teach him if he did this, yet his apprentice insisted that it was the right thing. Tobias dragged an unidentifiable form behind him as he made his way to the center of the cental square, where the enforcers hung the corpses of dead halfmen by their feet for the crowd to view. It was supposed to be a symbol of what happened if the laws were not followed, to try and chase the halfmen away. But it was really there to instill fear in the people, halfman or wizard, for that was what the Enforcers thrived on.

Tobias tied the end of a rope to the feet of the body he dragged behind him before scaling one of two tall wooden poles. Balanced on the two poles was a wooden beam about the length of the two poles together. It was on this beam that the mutilated halfman corpses were hung. Tobias walked across the beam with cat-like grace to come to a midpoint on the beam. It was there that he hoisted the body so that it would be a couple feet over the heads of the crowd.

Tobias slid down the rope and jumped down into a roll on the ground. He made his way over to Verdol. "It had to be done," he hissed at his former mentor. Their faces were less than an inch apart. "If we're going to get any respect in this city, we have to show them that we won't just sit there and let them kill us!"

"You are a disgrace!" Verdol spat before turning his back on his former apprentice and making his way back to the house that he lived at as Verdol the rare jewel and precious metals salesman. He knew that when the light shined on the central square, before the halfman bodies were hung from the beam at noon, the people would see the body of an enforcer that had been mutilated almost worse than anything seen on a halfman body. The people would recognize the body as that of an enforcer, though, for Tobias had made sure to leave the body's head unmarked.

Just when he though he was out of earshot, he heard Tobias's voice calling out to him. "I'm not the only one that believes in this!" He yelled. "I'll have followers, Verdol! Lots of them! You'd be wise to join them!"

Verdol shook his head. "Fool boy," he muttered under his breath, "You'll only make things worse for us!"