Music from the Eclipse Day parade flowed over the castle walls and mixed with the violent winds of the surrounding sandstorm. It danced joyfully as the howling winds tore it to shreds.
The Sorcerer followed the destruction and blindly snaked her way towards Castle Adiart. She dropped her veil and revealed the familiar face of the Priest with a ghostly complexion.
The sound of her staff pounding on the gate boomed throughout the castle. The revelers could feel the ground shake with each thump and chalked it up to the great beasts walking along the parade route.
Visibly angry, the Sorcerer stopped knocking. She lifted her gnarled wooden staff into the air and a blue aurora grew up through her hands and into the sky. The desert grew quiet as she thrust her staff into the ground and threw open the door. The Sorcerer lifted her veil and walked casually down the empty corridor with clueless parade goers streaming passed her at the opposite end.
The Inquisitor read the tiny symbols to himself out of a thick, dragon-leather bound book. He looked up, but the dust clouds blew into his face and made it impossible to see where he was going.
He raised the sleek metallic staff in front of his face and whispered a few words. The head of the staff glowed red. He continued his trek forward as he waved the wand back and forth in front of his path.
The Inquisitor chased the music from side to side, but every time he felt sure of its origin, it fired up from the opposite side.
Carefully, he walked down another of the endless sand dunes before getting caught in his robes and stumbling down to the bottom. He frantically searched for his staff in the darkness. The sands battering the old man’s face briefly went quiet and a pale blue light emanated from the head of the staff. The Inquisitor snatched it out of the sand and followed behind.
With the parade moving clockwise along the perimeter of the castle, the Sorcerer went against the stream. She slowly lumbered through the traffic of men carrying large instruments and those wearing giant papier-mâché likenesses of the King and his inner circle.
As she pushed aside one rambunctious kid, the Sorcerer could hear one of the castle guards yelling in her direction. She flashed anger on her face and began to draw dark energy into her right hand.
“Miss, please make way,” he shouted over the noise of the crowd. “The King will be coming down the route at any moment flanked by a hundred Knights on horseback. I wouldn’t want a lovely lady to get trampled on my watch.”
The Sorcerer made her way to the inner edge of the parade and reached out to the guard, who pulled her out of the fracas. She knocked a bit of sand out of her cloak and into her right hand, leaned in close to the guard, and sprinkled a bit on his sword.
“Thank you, kind sir.”
As the dust storm settled, the sun regained its power and the shadow from the cross atop the Castle’s highest tower stretched across the scene. With the guard’s attention soon diverted, the Sorcerer slipped through the door behind him and into the castle’s inner confines.
The crowd washed over the Inquisitor as he scanned the area. He detected a few weak magic users in the throng of unwashed masses moving away from him. He turned to look at the incoming hoard when he felt a dark presence pushing forward.
The cold feeling started at the precipice of one of the waves and rushed towards the Inquisitor. He briefly locked eyes with a large, oafish man robotically waiving the Adiart flag above his head. Behind the man’s vacant expression, lived an ancient evil.
With the cold of despair ready to crash down on him, the Inquisitor pushed his way to the edge of the crowd and threw himself against the wall. The darkness continued down its path while he caught his breath.
The pale blue light emanating from his black staff was almost overlooked in the frenzy. Just a few meters further down the parade route, a hooded figure stood along the wall.
The light grew darker and the Inquisitor gathered his strength. The dark magic was reminiscent of the immense power he’d felt in the graveyard the previous night, but it was gaining awareness. He tugged lightly at the source of the magic with the staff and focused his mind on the task. He quietly whispered the spell aloud and wrestled with the darkness. He set his hooks into the demon’s aura and yanked at it, ruthlessly, separating it from its host. The Inquisitor raised his voice.
“Return to the realm of shadow. The god of darkness is banished from this plane. The time of Corax is at its end.”
The Inquisitor clenched both hands around the staff and they shook with effort and exhaustion. With one final burst of energy, he thrust the staff forward and drew the dark force kicking and screaming back towards him. The demonic energy relented. The exhausted old man clenched it in his fist and fell to one knee. When he opened his hand, a thin wisp of dust fell to the ground and blew away in the wind.
The hooded figure approached the Inquisitor with a smile.
“May I offer you some assistance?” asked the castle guard with his hand extended.
The Sorcerer scaled the spiral staircase leading to the castle’s highest tower. The unfamiliar steps bore her deeply worn footprints and drew her to the top, but memories of this place eluded her.
At the top of each landing, she hid out of sight and listened, but there was no sound. The castle was nearly empty, but there was one presence she could feel. It gripped at the corner of her mind and warmly guided her towards the chapel.
In her mind’s eye, the sorcerer could see the Psychic seated at the first pew, where the Priest often went to connect with the Lord on a commoners level.
“Come closer,” she could hear faintly in the back of her mind.
The brightness of the Psychic’s magic was disorienting.
“I will,” the Sorcerer let slip from her mind before she ducked into an empty room along the corridor.
“Hold tight.”
The weakened Inquisitor dragged himself up the spire, step by step. He leaned unsteadily against his staff before pushing himself around the cold stone walls. At each landing, he stopped for a moment to regain his strength.
When he reached the door to the chapel, he raised his staff but the door swung open on its own. The hooded female in the front row stood and turned towards him. He felt her warmth. It fueled his passion.
She stared at him for a few moments before giving him a curious look.
“You are not who I was expecting.”
“If you were expecting the Reaper, consider me his ally. This realm has no use for your magic. I will return you to the darkness.”
The Inquisitor raised his staff once again as the blue light flooded the house of worship. It bathed the Psychic in its awesome glow. He continued to mumble his spell and moved the staff in giant circles before him, drawing out the magic from within her.
The Psychic gasped.
“I’m sorry,” said the Sorcerer through the Psychic mind link.
The Inquisitor gripped his staff tightly and detached the magic from the Psychic’s soul. He drew it closer and closer as the life force drained from the Psychic’s body.
“You are no longer welcome inside the gates of this castle. The gates of hell are once again your boundary.”
Just as the Psychic fell, a purple light followed her. It whipped passed the Inquisitor and swirled around him like a cyclone. The purple waves danced around before shooting from one arc to another, just missing the front of his boots. He turned toward the stream as it jumped across to another arc at his heel. He raised the staff once again, but it was sucked from his hands by the increasing winds.
The streams continued to jump until the Inquisitor looked down to see the familiar pentagram. The circle of death grew brighter as the Inquisitor mumbled his final words. The heat burned his legs but did not consume the flesh.
The Inquisitor let out a final scream as he was sacrificed to hell. The scene cleared and the Psychic’s body sat alone on the floor.
The Sorcerer exited the empty room and retraced her steps back down the staircase.