A Contagion of Magic: Fantasy

[penthius]

The contagion was in among them and widely spread before they even realized what they were dealing with. At first, they thought it was only a series of tragic mishaps by alchemists and court wizards. It spread mostly at first in the poor district, where the inferior wizards held court, and where they often worked together because no one wizard was powerful enough on his own to accomplish anything in a meaningful way. The court wizards assumed that the poor wizards were destroying themselves for no reasonable cause, just because they were fools and idiots tampering with forces too big for them to understand. It took a while for the court wizards to understand that they, too, were dying and infected. The infection progressed in odd ways, and though court wizards stayed--

Inspiration: "contagion"
Story Potential: Medium-high.
Notes: An interesting setting for a short story or secondary storyline in a novel. A contagion of magic, spread through collaboration--preceding the Dark Ages, perhaps?