Death magic

While I was feeling irrational pique, guns started barking, and they aimed at me first. Bullets rang sharply as they hit my armor, rebounding from it and barely leaving a mark. It was like getting hit with small hailstones: uncomfortable but not really dangerous - unless one of them managed a head shot.
Ebenezar turned toward the walls from which the soldiers were firing. Hits thumped into his robes, but seemed to do little but stir the fabric and then fall at his feet. The old man said, mostly to himself, "You took the wrong contract, boys."
Then he swept the Blackstaff from left to right, murmured a word, and ripped the life from a hundred men.
They just . . . died.
There was absolutely nothing to mark their deaths. No sign of pain. No struggle. No convulsion of muscles. No reaction at all. One moment they were firing wildly down at us - and the next, they simply -
Dropped.
Dead.
The old man turned to the other wall, and I saw two or three of the brighter soldiers throw their guns down and run. I don't know if they made it, but the old man swept the Blackstaff through the air again, and the gunmen on that side of the field dropped dead where they stood.
My godmother watched it happen, and bounced and clapped her hands some more, as delighted as a child at the circus.
I stared for a second, shocked. Ebenezar had just shattered the First Law of Magic: Thou shalt not kill. He had used magic to directly end the life of another human being - nearly two hundred times. I mean, yes, I had known what his office allowed him to do. . . . But there was a big difference between appreciating a fact and seeing that terrible truth in motion.
The Blackstaff itself pulsed and shimmered with shadowy power, and I got the sudden sense that the thing was alive, that it knew its purpose and wanted nothing more than to be used, as often and as spectacularly as possible.
I also saw veins of venomous black begin to ooze their way over the old man's hand, reaching up slowly, spreading to his wrist. He grimaced and held his left forearm with his right hand for a moment, then looked over his shoulder and said, "All right!"


Changes Chapter 46, Page 492-492