Adventure Game Studio

The city's ruins were frozen in time.

At the edge of town, a military camp had been set up. Soldiers walked through the streets and stood on the wall close to the southern gate. In this part of town, walls had fallen, houses had collapsed, weeds overgrown stones. Here and there, the soldiers had cleaned paths for themselves, here and there wooden scaffolds supported the fragile buildings.

But in the rest of town, the buildings stood just as proud, just as high as they always did. The castle still towered over the city with its three towers, the middle one twice as high as the others. The flowers in the famous gardens still stood in full blossom, the market was still filled with stalls and even people standing close to them, their haggling never completed. The city was in ruins now, but not through destruction, but through sheer emptiness. And even this emptiness could have been seen as life from a distance, for the people were still there, taking care of their daily business, the cats still slept in the afternoon sun, the dogs still fought over a bone. All frozen in time, all empty of life.

Close to the middle of the city, the dome of the temple had collapsed, though it still shone golden in the winter sun. Some of the colourful windows still reflected the light in scarlet and azure, gold and lime, though most panes had fallen over the years. At the height of its power, the glasswork could have competed with the beauty of the glass in the elven city of Nachatel, but now it was long gone.

The traveller had stopped on a mountain path overlooking the city the day before. From this far away, he could not make out the dead in the streets, could not see the roses in the once famous garden, their blossoms still open to their fullest, shining and smelling just as strong as in that fateful summer. He did not see the soldiers in their uniforms, keeping travellers and the curious away from the once proud city that was now nothing more than a reminder of the devastation of the Magicians' Wars.

It had fallen in the second war, when wizards called on demons to fight for them, when armies of monsters laid siege to the world. Now, only the wild magic of chaos and death, of frozen time and forgotten spells, surged through the city of Rabenburg. Catching and paralysing all who came too close to the savage power, the soldiers could do no more than protect unsuspecting travellers.

The amulet around the traveller's neck, made from colourful glass and gold, had slipped from under his shirt. He touched it gently, then tucked it back under. For a moment, he hesitated as his fingers brushed over the fragile glass. His magic protected it, and yet he could never bring himself to treat it like anything but the delicate glass it seemed to be. It was not the best craftsmanship, not the most subtle or refined, but for him it was the most beautiful piece of art. Broken off from a larger piece and then set in a frame of gold, it told of a story the traveller never wanted to tell again.

He knew he should not hesitate any longer. He had already lost days to his indecisiveness. On his way here, on his way to the fallen city of Rabenburg, he had to stop himself from turning around again and again, and he knew if he stopped for too long, he could not convince himself to walk further.

But he had no choice. He had accepted the contract, he told himself, even though this reason was as much a lie as any other for or against his travels here. He had never broken a contract, that much was true, and it was a good lie to keep him walking. Even knowing them well, he would not admit his true reasons, not even to himself.

When he reached Rabenburg, darkness was fast approaching. Two soldiers stood on either side of the once strong gate, warming their hands on a couple of braziers. As they noticed his approach, they stirred the coals and ignited a torch.

"Who goes there? What is your business in the fallen city?"

The Fallen City?, the traveller thought, as if there was not more than one. But he did not voice his thoughts. "Sech," he said simply, shortening his name to one these men would be able to pronounce, "Here to see Archmage Humpert of Lillingen." After a short moment where the two man did not react, he added, "I'm expected. Or I should be."

"You were expected five days ago," one of the soldiers said, "You are late. Come closer!"

Sech smiled when he followed the order, deep snow crunching under his feet. The effect he had on the soldiers was immediate. They both took at least two steps back. One grabbed his sword on his belt, the other extended his spear towards the stranger.

Sech was not human. There was no doubt about it, not even in the meagre light of the braziers and the torch. While his black hair could easily belong to any man, his black eyes could not. Nor could the band of black and red scales that grazed his temple from the edge of his eyes to his ears.

"Demon!" the soldier whispered, then called out to the rest of the garrison: "Demon!"

"I am expected," Sech repeated calmly, used to this reaction in years of practice. "I would assume you were informed of the nature of my being? Of my reason for being here? Of why I could do what your archmage could not?"

"Demon." the soldier repeated, for a moment devoid of any other words.

Sech took another step towards the soldiers, though the distance did not become shorter as they immediately stepped back again. With Sech's approach, his features changed. Smooth pink skin crawled over the scales, bright green dripped into the eyes. "Shadow," he corrected, as the little transformation turned his face into that of a young, almost boyish, human. "A demon's spawn, by many generations, but not a demon. And again, I am expected."

The soldier's call had alerted the rest of the garrison. Men and women rushed towards the open gate, weapons at the ready. They formed a circle around the strange man, but none attacked, waiting for their commander instead.

Sech petted the neck of his horse and waited. He could have hidden his true nature from the beginning, but he was tired of pretending to be something he was not, especially here, especially in Rabenburg.

An old man pushed through the wall of bodies, clad in a thick cloak that hid is thin, tall body and his thick grey hair. "What is the matter here?" he asked with a raspy, tired voice that was hardly heard over the clanking of armour and crunching of snow, "Who arrives this late? What does he want?"

"It's a demon-" one of the soldiers began, but the traveller interrupted him.

"Sech." he said loudly but just as simple as before. "And you must be Archmage Humpert, I presume?"

"Yes, yes. Why are you standing there? Why was he not brought to me?"

"He's a demon-"

"Shadow," Sech corrected again, "I am a Shadow. And even though your soldiers do not seem to understand either the difference or the reason a Shadow is needed here, I'm sure you do?"

There was the hint of hesitation in the archmage's movements, just the hint of fear or worry. Then he turned around and gestured for the traveller to follow him. "Yes, yes, I was told a demon would come here. Yes, yes, I am aware. Come, come along now, boy."

"Shadow," Sech corrected again under his breath, and his eyes narrowed dangerously when he was called boy but he followed the mage into the city and the soldiers did not try to hinder him.

"You are," croaked the archmage as he lead the shadow through the gate, "of course, informed what is expected of you? The city is infested with dark magic-"

"Wild magic," another slight correction under his breath that the archmage either didn't hear or chose to ignore.

"and therefore not inhabitable, currently. Yes, yes, it is a problem. Demonic magic, dark and erratic. It is good to see that at least some of those of demonic heritage know of their duty and guilt. It is your responsibility to clean this, boy." He pointed into the streets of Rabenburg, where no snow had settled and no wind swirled up dust, where only darkness stared back at the traveller in this winter night.

Sech tied the reins of his horse to a nearby pole and looked over the cobblestones as far as he could see, not speaking. The change was a sudden one. One moment, there was snow and dirt, and at the next step there was none at all, as if someone had just swept the streets. Here, the houses had suffered from neglect, there they were frozen in time. A window still stood open, the flower pot on the window sill still bore a blossoming violet, the freshly baked bread still lay there to cool, the woman, a servant maybe or a home-maker, still had her hands wrapped in a piece of cloth, there was even still a smile on her lips, the mouth half open, the head slightly turned back into the house, as if she was still calling to her children there.

At the border of magic and mundane, someone had not headed the warning of the unknown. There, a single hand lay on the ground, still in pristine condition, no blood dripping from it. Slightly buried under the snow outside were a few bones that had once belonged to the same arm. Someone had reached into the magic and now their hand was frozen like all else in the city, but the rest of their body, still outside, was not. Had someone cut off the arm? Or had they stayed until death, merciful death, freed them? Had they pulled away? Had the magic sliced through the flesh?

Sech knelt down at the border and brushed the snow from the bones, careful not to reach too far. Ulna and radius had been cut with a sharp blade, separating the two parts of the body that no longer belonged to the same procession of time. And nobody had dared to come close enough later to remove the few bones left on this side of the barrier.

"Are you listening?" the archmage interrupted his thoughts, annoyed at the shadow for first requesting that he personally meet him here and then arriving five days late, "You are to clean this magic. Do you understand me?"

"I heard you, yes," Sech said, throwing the little fragment of a bone into the wild magic. For the length of a hand or a bit more, the bone sailed into the magic, before it froze for a moment in the middle of the air, as if it wasn't sure if gravity still applied to it, then it dropped onto the street.

"Yes, yes, fascinating, is it not? How the magic behaves around here? Strange."

"Expected," Sech said coldly, "It behaves as one would expect, if one were aware of the nature of the spell."

"Hmph," Humpert scoffed. "I am well aware of the nature of the spell. And I am well aware of the role your kind played in this destruction. As I said, I am glad that at least some of your, ... your species take responsibility of the actions of the-"

,,You know little of your own history, don't you?" the traveller asked with a cold smile on his lips, anger creeping into his voice. He stood up and turned towards the archmage, his eyes just as black as they were when he had arrived at the gate. ,,You know little of your own hubris, your own stupidity, your own faults."

The archmage's long grey hair whipped around his head as he advanced on the shadow. "How dare you talk to me like that, demonspawn?" he hissed, "I've walked this earth for 80 years, I saw the end of the magicians' war, I saw what your kind did to my people, I saw the destruction you brought, the magic you wrought! I was alive when Kadamon was sucked into the sky and when Rabenburg fell!"

The traveller shook his head and pressed his lips onto each other. He touched the barrier of magic and colourful sparks started to dance on his hands. ,,When Rabenburg fell." he said, as the magic slowly encircled his whole body.

Purely on instinct, the archmage stepped back, then thought better of it. He did not want to show even the smallest trace of fear, even though the demon unnerved him. And even though he did not have the same magic as the shadow, he still recognized the spell for what it was after a second. As angry as the traveller had suddenly become, he did nothing more than call the wild magic of the fallen city into his own body.

"On the day Rabenburg fell, it didn't fall to an attack. It didn't fall to an invasion, it didn't fall to demons, not even to an enemy. There was no fight, there was not fear even. Just knowledge. Just knowledge, and the lack thereof. On the day Rabenburg fell, a single spell, a single caster, a single hero, killed thousands." He laughed. "How could you forget? How could you all forget in just 70 years?"

With a shrug, the archmage returned to his normal conciliatory, condescending tone, his own sudden flare of anger easily suppressed. "Yes, yes, well, it does not matter now, does it? You are here now and... You did sign a contract and..." He didn't care what the shadow believed happened here, as long as he cleaned up this magic. That was, after all, all they were good for: cleaning up the demonic legacy of the war, that still plagued the land.

"Sure," Sech said, stepping back from the wild magic and only taking a few strands of light with him. "I signed a contract. I signed a contract to clean your mess. Because I know how to do it, while you do not. Because I understand what you do not. Because I – Because I understand the nature of this spell and you do not, no matter what you want to believe. How could you, when you do not know how it came to be that Rabenburg was destroyed?"

"I know" Humpert said, condescension dripping from his voice, and put an old, sinewy hand on the traveller's shoulder, "I know it must be difficult to be of such a descent, to be the child of demons, but pretending that the city didn't fall to an -"

"Oh, please, spare me." Sech groaned and shook off the hand. "You really, truly have no idea what happened here, do you? You really do not understand this magic at all? But you believe you do. You believe it. You believe you understand magic. As did the man, the human man, the wizard, the mage, who destroyed one of the most beautiful cities of your realm. And for what? For what? And why? Why did he do it?"

Sech formed a circle with his hands, encompassing the highest tower of the palace, even though it was not visible in the darkness of the night. But he was still connected with the wild magic that had wrought so much havoc just 70 years ago and it seemed like the light of the summer sun filled the circle and the tower was presented in a picture frame.

"He was warned, you know." Sech said slowly, the picture in his frame flying closer to the tower, "He was warned, over and over and over again. Soon there would be an attack and soon the war would come to Rabenburg, he thought. But he had a method, he had an idea, he had a plan. He knew how to save his people, how to protect them, how to destroy the enemy's army once and for all.

And he was warned. He was warned that his plan would not work, that his plan would not save, that it would destroy, that it would..."

The archmage shook his head. "How would you know that?" he interrupted, though the little illusion the shadow presented to him seemed to pull him in. He had never seen such a strong illusion before, but he hadn't seen a shadow wield magic before either. "How could you know any of this?" Not that I believe you, he added in his mind.

Sech shrugged. ,,There was an ambassador in Rabenburg that day, an ambassador of the elves. Elven ambassadors write extensive journals." With another shrug, he added ,,I can read," as if this were something unusual. The mocking tone was obvious even to the most disconnected listener. And still, the archmage found himself fascinated by the tale the demon was about to tell.

The fall of Rabenburg had always been a mystery. Close to the end of the war, it was considered the last mass casualty. There was no doubt in Humpert's mind that demonic energy had sucked the life from the city, but he knew little else. His studies were in a different field, his studies considered the collection of magic, not the dark destruction the demons had brought about 70 years ago. And this was just one more reason why he didn't understand why the shadow Sech had asked the king to send his most trusted magical advisor here. What more could it be than a power play, showing the world and the king that he could demand such a thing. And now he, the archmage Humpert of Lillingen, had to chaperone a shadow in the middle of winter in the most unwelcoming city of the realm, instead of continuing his studies into the amassment of magic energy that could restore so much of what was lost in the war. And sleep in his own warm bed, of course.

"He had lived there for many years." Sech continued, not aware of the annoyed thoughts of the mage. "He had listened and observed, watched and heard, as is their tradition, as is their calling, as is their duty. He had listened, had listened to the ruler, to the magician who thought himself more powerful, wiser, more capable than any who came before. He didn't even bother to keep his plan secret. Why should he, when he knew that it would work, when he knew that nothing could go wrong?"

Heartbeat by heartbeat, the frame became larger and larger until it was as tall as a man. Sech put his hand on the archmage's back and gently lead him forward, towards the frozen city. What the mage had thought to be an illusion, a trick of light with no substance, easily revealed itself as a protective spell, for both him and the demon set foot into the dry streets of the city.

"The elven ambassador, he was not supposed to interfere. He was not supposed to do anything but listen and observe, and note down whatever he heard. And still he warned him. You seek power that is not yours to have. the ambassador said and the ruler, the magician shook his head. What do you think will happen? You will send out your magic and order it to call on all the power around it. And then it will come to you and fill you and...

And then I shall have enough power to stop the demons marching on this city! Don't you see? Don't you see that it will work? Don't you see that I have to do this? I have to?" Sech laughed again, "Oh, the hubris..."

After just a few steps, they reached the woman leaning over her windowsill. Sech stopped in his tracks and stared at her. A lock of blond hair had slipped out from under her cap, the strands just long enough to tickle her nose. Empty eyes stared forward, one hand was frozen on its way to her face.

Humpert looked behind him, where the magic closed them in like a bubble, the spell only forming a circle wide enough for the two men to walk in. He was not surprised that a shadow would know to control the dark magic in this place, enough to grant him safe passage through the city, but he also knew that he himself did not have such magic. His magic was of life and light, not of darkness and death. A shudder ran down his spine when he realized that he had just willingly and without thinking stepped into a magic he could not command.

"The ambassador looked at the man with pity, for he knew." Sech continued while watching the woman as if she would finish her movement in just a second. Behind her, a cat sat on a table, licking at a pile of butter it was surely not supposed to touch. "For he knew that it would not end as the ruler hoped. You will not be able to contain this power. Nobody would. Nobody could."

Sech gently touched the cheek of the woman. "What is black magic? What is dark magic?" he asked  as if he had guessed the earlier thoughts of the mage, while caressing the woman's face, slowly turning it towards the archmage.

"Death magic, obviously," Humpert scoffed. "Using magic, a force of life, to take life away."

"Obviously." Sech nodded and the woman, forced with his gentle yet calloused hands nodded with him. "And yet, and yet, is that not what you ask me to do? Is it not black magic to take this life?"

"There is no life left here." Humpert said simply, though he had no idea why the shadow would even mind otherwise.

The light, the light of magic, that had never stopped to dance on Sech's hand, encompassed the woman's head. "Ending a continuation of life, even a dying life, is death." The strands of light formed a cage around the woman's body, first her head, then her shoulders, her chest, her arms, her legs. "It is death magic, black magic, monstrous, demonic, in your eyes, is it not? Is that not as you define it? As you see it?"

"Obviously," the archmage said.

"And that is why I am here, is it not? Because you think yourself too good to destroy, yet cannot fathom the idea to keep this life, as fragile as it might be, alone?"

"There is no life here. What are you-"

The archmage did not get to finish his sentence, as the shadow filled the sphere he had created around the body of the woman with his magic. For a moment, time seemed to stand still, more so even than it always did in the frozen city of Rabenburg, but then there was the fraction of movement in the woman's head, the sudden onslaught of fear in her eyes. She looked at the demonic man touching her, shrank back from his black eyes and red scales, realised what stood in front of her. But whatever thought might have crossed her mind in this moment, it never reached her lips, never even fully registered in her eyes.

It had no beginning, just an end. And it was the end of all things living, the only end life can ever find. Her heart, that never had time to start beating again, stopped, the blood that never warmed again cooled, the muscles, that never managed to cramp in fear released all tension. And the decay that was never allowed to begin, ended. Sech had not added magic to the sphere around the woman. He had removed it, and so time, frozen before, rushed back to this tiny part of Rabenburg. Flesh decomposed, as if it had decomposed for 70 years, sinews lost their hold of bones and nerves, wind and weather that were stopped before, all happened at once, and finally, finally, after 70 years, after just a demon's thought, decayed bones dropped onto the windowsill.

"I just need enough control to send the magic at the army!, the ruler had said." Sech continued his story as if he had never stopped telling it.

Humpert stared at the woman who was clearly alive just a moment before and yet so clearly dead for many years. The thought was unwelcome and yet there: What if he really didn't understand the nature of the spell that had brought the ruin of Rabenburg? He had never even thought of the possibility that the people could still be alive, because there was no reason for a demon to do something like that, especially when it seemed so easy for the shadow to end this spell, to loosen the strands of magic holding the people here frozen and forgotten.

But he had no time to really order his thoughts before the shadow kept walking, completely ignoring the bones of the woman whose life he had just ended. Humpert had no choice but to follow him as the magic circle around the younger man drifted further into the depth of Rabenburg with him.

"Yes, I know. the ambassador said, interrupting an explanation he had heard more than once before. Walking away, he said, You have been warned. Your city will fall. Your name will not be remembered, not as a hero, not even as a monster, because no-one will be left to remember it."

For a moment, the traveller hesitated. What more was there to tell of this story? That it didn't end there, did this matter to the old court wizard next to him? That the part that was important to him was yet to come? Would it, could it change anything?

For a while, shadow and mage walked silently next to each other. The archmage had no idea why the traveller walked through the city further and further towards its centre, where an old palace stood facing a temple that had crumbled and fallen, unlike all the other buildings in the city. He walked as if he knew the streets, but maybe he just wanted to reach the palace, where he said this spell began, though that clearly could not be true.

Humpert did not want to believe it, not yet. Everyone knew that Rabenburg had fallen in the last days of the second magician's war. Only the exact events were a mystery, not the general tragedy. It had fallen to an army of demons, summoned by one faction in the war. All three factions used demons, of course, that was no secret, but it was necessary then. There were people who wanted to integrate demonspawns, descendents of demons that had survived after the first magicians' war, into society and they had to be stopped. Demons were far too dangerous, far too wild, far too ferocious, and their spawns weren't any better. Yes, yes, Humpert nodded to his own thoughts, some of them were useful, but you could not allow shadows to live in the same cities as people.

And yet he could not stop himself from listening to this demon.

"67 survived the third wave." he continued. "67. Not through luck, not through a weird quirk of fate, but because the ambassador had made friends, a craftsman and his son. They worked on the windows of the temple, replacing them with mosaics of intricate detail of colour and gold."

Those mosaics had fallen. They had fallen from their frames. And like the bones Sech had thrown into the magic less than an hour ago, they had stalled for a moment when they reached the field of magic, and then they had tumbled onto the ground. There they lay now, in splinters that no broom brushed away and no wind scattered over the square.

Archmage Humpert shuddered when his eyes fell on them. There was nothing immediately wrong with some broken glass on the ground, not compared to a city so full of wild magic, and yet their distribution felt so unnatural, so strange, so unexpected and yet normal, that it disturbed the wizard.

"He thought he had time." Sech said as he pushed against the door of the temple that had been left ajar for 70 years. "More time. To warn his friends, to whisk them away. But when he entered the temple and walked up to them, the first wave hit."

Humpert didn't know what he expected. The story of the shadow was so perfectly timed that he just imagined a breeze to rush past him, a storm to brew inside the old temple.

He did not expect what he saw next. The temple's roof had fallen in, that much was already clear from the outside, but the corpses surprised him. It were corpses, not frozen people. He could not count them. Some were buried under the roof, though it didn't seem like they had died to it. Still intact cloth showed signs of violence, cuts and blood, knifes and other weapons lay strewn among the dead. Towards one of the still surviving windows, the tools of a craftsman lay next to the body of a child, gently covered with an old cloak that was tucked under him. A piece of cloth was pulled over his eyes, as was tradition for the dead before their burial. A few steps further away, another body was charred, his clothes burned into the remnants of the flesh still discernable after all this time.

Closer to the entrance of the temple, nine people still stood as if in prayer, their mouths wide open and their hands behind their necks. These, the magic that had destroyed the city had still reached. Some others were frozen in movement, running away from the inside of the temple, some even half frozen and half decayed, panic still in their eyes. A young man had sprinted into the magic but his leg was left behind. He didn't look back, he didn't show pain on his face, just panic. He stood there, like a statue and his foot up to his knee was just missing. Where the magic had cut it off, a few drops of blood, a few strands of blood trailed behind him. But the cut was clean, almost as if it was supposed to be there. He had his hand around the one of a young woman, her hair loose. She was a few steps behind the man, and the spell had cut her in half. The back of her head was missing, revealing the grey mess of brain inside the skull. One shoulder had frozen, the other had been left in the temple. Part of her dress was empty now. As it had no life itself, it had fallen over her missing back inside the spell and hid the cut where flesh had frozen and flesh had decayed.

"I'm sorry," Sech whispered as he came closer to them. He had not stopped to loosen the magic grip on any other person in the streets after the first woman, but these he touched while he continued telling his story: "Nobody felt it but him. And maybe the craftsman's son, just 12 years old. He had magic, as little as it was, too little for the wizard in his tower to consider him as an apprentice, too little to even make a stick levitate, but it was there. It was there. That was why the ambassador had become friends with the master craftsman, Leanid, that was why he had come to the temple." One after another, the shadow took the spell from those that had tried to flee. Like for the woman at the edge of the city, there was a moment's recognition of the fate that awaited them, and then they were nothing but the smoothened bones they had been for 70 years. "Did he feel it, then? He looked up when the elf entered, he looked up when the first wave rushed over the city. The first wave was a wave of calling. Come to meit said, magic far and wide, come, come, come, it called, come! For the ambassador it was like... was like... like..."

Humpert had to fight against the contents of his stomach as he watched the shadow work. It was a grisly work, a grisly sight. There should have been pain in their eyes, there should have been torment and agony, but once he managed to take a closer look at the faces of these people, once he managed to see past the horror of split bodies, he only saw fear, only saw them fleeing from something inside the temple.

The spell the shadow used at the entrance of the city to free the woman had been quick and unexpected for the archmage, but now he tried to understand how he loosened the grip the magic had on these people. Sech did not fill these people, these living corpses with magic, did not do much at all, but remove the magic that held onto them. He did not remove a specific spell, did not counter this magic with his own, he simply allowed it to flow through him. It seemed so simple, yet Humpert did not understand how it was possible. Dark magic, demonic magic was never so pure that it could simply blow away on its own, that it could simply continue its existence at a different place. To counter death magic, one needed life or power, one needed violence.

Humpert shook his head. He did not understand this magic. He had to admit it. These words of the demonspawn suddenly rang all too true. He did not know what the nature of the magic here was.

As the last of the 14 who had tried to flee crumbled to dust, Sech's words left him. Again he wondered what more was there to say. Again he wondered why he even bothered to say anything at all. He never wanted to tell this story again. He never wanted to think of this temple again and of the people who had died here. But the archmage needed to see it. And maybe it would be enough.

One look at the old man told him right away that he had never been here before. If he didn't know how to protect himself against the spell still lingering over Rabenburg, or if he just never saw a need, Sech couldn't tell. But he also didn't care. Facts would not reach him. The archmage looked at the dead, at the destruction of the temple with a mixture of indifference and confusion, or so it seemed to the shadow. After a while, he leisurely kicked some of the rubble away, but did nothing else to engage with either his surroundings or Sech.

"It was unmistakable, powerful," he said, as he followed the central corridor to the front of the temple where the craftsman Leanid and his son had worked on the picture telling of the protection the gods offered against the demons and of the promised cleansing of the world. "a warning in its own right, a warning that it was too late, that he could not, would not be able to bring his friends away. He rushed to their side. What did he say then, before the second wave came? I don't know. I don't remember. I don't remember if he said anything."

"If you said anything, you mean." the archmage said suddenly, steel in his eyes. He stood next to him, looking at the same picture he was, but neither really saw it.

Sech stared back at the old man, calculating, tense. Then his shoulders dropped.

"You've figured it out, have you? And yet you still don't believe me that this was not the work of demons, do you? And yet you still think I can't possibly be telling the truth? That this was your own people's doing? That this was..." He sighed. "Why do I even bother? I warned him then and he didn't listen and I'm telling you know that this, all this could have been avoided if your people understood what they were doing. But your people, you, still don't understand magic."

"I understand that a demonspawn would never have been allowed into this city during the magicians' war. And therefore, I understand that you're telling a tall tale."

"Such contradiction. Figuring out that I talk about my own past, yet not believing that it could possibly be true. Of course shadows were not allowed in Rabenburg. But elves were. They were neutral in the war, after all."

"You are not an elf."

"Oh, this arrogance again. I am a demon's spawn, so obviously I can't be an elf? I have a demonic heritage in my blood, yes. And I am an elf, as the other half of my heritage is elven. But you can only think that a shadow must be half human, cannot even consider that my blood is elven." He shook his head. "Oh, what does it matter? Do you want to hear the rest of the story or not?"

Humpert sneered. "Very well, continue your lies."

Sech stayed silent for a while. He knelt down next to the corpse of the boy. One of his black locks hadn't decayed yet and he brushed it aside. Little was left of the face, but had Humpert known the boy, he would have seen his face mirrored in Sech's. He let his hands glide around the form of the body, around the bones and the clothes, he gently caressed the skull, he tightened the blindfold that had come loose over the years.

"The ambassador, he – I probably said nothing before the second wave came. This one a wave of emptiness. Of magic sucked from its rightful place. Cold, so cold. It was so cold. There's magic in everything, just the tiniest drop. In everything alive there is magic, because magic, no matter how dark, magic is life. Even in death, even in the end of life, there is magic, but not here, not then, not in Rabenburg on the day it fell.

This wave, everyone felt. They did not know what it was, did not understand the sudden fear, their sudden emptiness, but they felt it. They could have lived, then, if this was the end of it, for magic renews, for magic always survives, and life always survives, as strange as this might sound to you. Magic survives. Life survives."

Sech pulled the old cloak taut over the body and stood up again. He stared right into the face of the court magician. "Do not interfere. Safe yourself, but do not interfere." he said, almost as if the words were meant for the archmage, "The words rang in my ears in this split second between the second and third wave. I knew how to safe myself. Instinct, pure instinct had forced me to hold onto my own magic, had not allowed it to follow the call. A spell, so easy, so simple, just a spell of protection, of inversion, of contrast, just around myself, just myself. That was what I was supposed to do. That was what my training and my oath demanded of me. I should have limited my spell. But I didn't, I couldn't.

I could not stand by and watch, not then..."

Humpert scoffed again. "You want me to believe that a shadow, a demon, would want to protect-"

"If you want to think it was so, say it was my elven nature that drove this decision. Though it was elven law that forbid me from doing so. I was banned for my choice, you know, exiled from my home, but what does it matter? It was my choice; a choice, not a fault."

"Why are you telling me this? Any of this?"

"Because you need to hear it," the answer came faster than he intended it to and for a moment Sech had to stop himself from saying more.

Magic still danced around his body, illuminating the interior of the temple. But it slowly dimmed as he continued his story: "My spell reached around me, around me vicinity, around all I could encompass in it, in this fraction of a thought, in this moment of..." He shook his head. "In this moment, in this one moment.

67 people survived the third wave. 67, an elven ambassador one among them. As well as Leanid, as well as Ferod, his son, as well as the priest, whose name was Gunther, and 63 others who just so happened to be close enough to the only person who could..."

Humpert was not surprised to see tears well in the demon's eyes. He had no doubt that the man had learned to manipulate over many years of pretending he was something better than he truly was, in years of hiding his being, walking among humans as if he belonged there.

"So few. So few, 67 of thousands, just 67."

"And those at the southern gate of the city, who managed to escape the demon's attack."

Black fire burned in Sech's eyes at these words. "Who cares about them?" he spat before he could think better of it. "Half of them didn't even notice the spell. And they certainly didn't notice a demons' attack because there was none." He laughed. "But yes, a few hundred there, I guess. But I am not talking about them. They were lucky, that is all. The spell of the wizard didn't reach as far."

"There was no spell-"

"It's astonishing, isn't it, that the magic, the wild magic here, forms an almost perfect dome above the city, centred around the palace, but no, sure, of course, the destruction came from the north? So that the south was safe? It came from the north, that is to say, further into the realm? If anything, an army would have reached Rabenburg from the south or the south-east, and only slightly to the east because of the river. And therefore this part of the city, the southern part, should be the centre or close to the centre of the spell, if you were correct. You know as little of tactics as you know of history, as you know of magic."

Even if it was centred in the middle of the city, that could still mean a traitor, an infiltrator, Humpert told himself, though the thought was weak.

The scales on Sech's temple seemed to burn, black ambers encompassed his face, strands of magic whipped around his body. He approached the old mage, then immediately stepped back again, turning his head so that his long black hair fell over his eyes. "I could kill you. It would be so easy. But I have not come to kill." he said, though the archmage only heard a low growl. For him, the words didn't even register as language.

When Sech looked up again, there was a smile on his face and the scales had sunken back under his skin. "I am only half-elven, as I told you and as you can see," and indeed, for the first time Humpert noticed the pointed ears peaking through the shadow's hair. By now though, he was well aware of the shape-changing abilities of his companion and didn't pay it much attention. "And the magic I used that day did not come from my elven nature. For the spell that froze Rabenburg was nothing but life and time, and what better way to protect against magic seething with life than a shield of death, of the darkest magic of all, devouring life that was not supposed to be? Later, I was told my eyes flashed black in this moment and the scales were no longer hidden. I'm sure you're not surprised. And there I stood, a demon in the middle of a temple," He laughed. "in front of a picture that praised the gods' protection. Oh, the irony.

I remember little of these first moments of my spell. It wasn't like now, where the magic, while wild, lays mostly dormant, does not extend and does not call out, does not demand and does not fight. Then, it fought against my spell, then it ripped on my spell, hit against it, tore it apart.

But what did the people in this temple here see? What did the 66 human survivors see? A demon in their midst, wielding magic right there, right there in the middle of their holy temple, a demon in the centre of their resistance, a demon spewing his dark magic over their town. They saw what you want to believe happened here."

Sech had stepped back from the archmage and looked at the tools of the glazier. Some pieces of glass still lay on a worktable the craftsman had set up there. Dust had settled on them and Sech brushed it away. Some pieces were already merged together into a picture that should have been put into the larger image on the window. Without the dust, a face stared back at him. "Gunther was a good man." he said and turned the frame towards the archmage. A middle-aged man with a long beard and the robes of a priest looked at him from the glass. "I hardly knew him, but he was. Why he was carrying a knife in the middle of his sermon, I do not know. But he knew to use it. I was distracted, obviously, and so I did not see his attack."

He let go of the frame and it shattered on the ground. Little shards of glass were strewn over his shoes. Then, he pulled his cloak to the side and his shirt up, revealing a once deep and long cut at his hip.

Involuntarily, Humpert's hand reached for the old wound, but he stopped himself before touching it, though the shadow didn't seem to mind. He knew of his shape-changing, he told himself, he knew that he could look however he wanted. But why was this affecting him then? Why did he care, when he didn't believe a word he said?

"I could not help it. I protected myself. What chance does a priest with a knife have against a shadow? Against all my magic? Against fire and death?"

Sech's eyes drifted towards the charred corpse Humpert had noticed before. Now, knowing the story, he could just imagine the clothes to belong to a priest, could just imagine the face from the glass reflected in the burned remains. Sech seemed lost in thought, but soon he knelt down next to this corpse. He was as gentle with him as he was with the dead boy before. There was no lock to brush away and nobody had placed a cloak over his body, nobody had tied a blindfold around his eyes so that he may not see death's true form and loose his self. "I forgive you." Sech said and touched the air over his forehead with his lips.

He didn't stand back up, but folded his legs under and looked up at the old mage like a small, innocent child, the boyish features fully returned to his face. "My spell was weakened. It flickered. Shrank. 9 were not close enough to me then." He gestures to the back of the temple where nine people stood in prayer, their words long forgotten on their lips. "The priest's rash action cost ten lives. Just like that. And it would have been more. It should have been more. It should have been all of them." The words were not a threat, not filled with anger but with pain. "The wound should have killed me, would have killed me, if it weren't for..."

His head sank on his chest, his chin touching the amulet under his shirt. He didn't try to hide the tears that started to roll down his cheeks, didn't even notice them. "Black magic. It was black magic that saved the few that were left of Rabenburg. 57 then. Soon to be 56. I did not ask him to do it. I did not even think. All I could do was keep the spell alive as long as I was alive myself. And soon I would not be. The wound was deep and the blood quickly left me, dropped onto the floor, no, poured onto it. And I fought against the wild magic and I fought against the blood and I couldn't think and I couldn't stop him. And I don't know if I would have."

"What did you do?" Humpert asked, fascinated, horrified, compassionate, all at the same time. He was not sure if he started to feel for him or wanted to condemn him.

"Black magic, the darkest of all, taking a life, taking blood to sustain one's own power, to fill it, to strengthen it."

Disgust filled Humpert's throat with bile. He didn't know when his hands crept towards the knife at his belt or when he started to think of all the spells he knew to kill a shadow, but they rushed past his other thoughts, almost drowning out Sech's next words.

"I had told him. I had told him that there is magic in everything, that there is magic in blood. An idle conversation, nothing more. Weeks before. Just a thought, just an idea he had then. I did not see him do it. I did not realize it.

I had sunk to the ground, filling a spell with my power that protected the last inhabitants of Rabenburg, but knowing that it would not hold, that I could not hold it long enough for the third wave to weaken, for me to lead them away."

Idly, Sech stretched out his arms towards the archmage and a barrier of blue magic formed around him, as if he had guessed the thoughts of his companion before they were even fully formed. He grinned up at him, though the sadness didn't leave his voice.

"Ferod pressed his arm against my mouth. The wound in his arm. The wound he had cut there with the priest's knife. And I drank. I drank. And I filled the spell with his power. So little, yet there, so little, yet maybe enough. And I drank and I didn't stop. And Ferod did not stop me. And Leanid did not stop me. And I drank, until the spell was able to win, win against the magic pounding down on it from the outside. And I drank, until it became stable. And I drank. And I drank."

"Vampire!" Humpert hissed. Of all the demons, of all the monstrosities, those were the worst, the most evil, beyond all redemption, not that there ever was the possibility of redemption for any of them in his mind.

"Yes, vampire, they call me, call this act, this... abomination. And yet, and yet, 56 survived these first minutes, these first hours after the destruction of Rabenburg. 56, because Ferod did not. 56, but Ferod did not. And his father, his father didn't stop him, did not stop me. And through his sacrifice a stable spell was formed and it allowed the temple to fall in the years after, the only building to collapse in Rabenburg."

There was a long silence as the two man stared at each other. The shield Sech had created did not falter, did not flicker for a moment and Humpert did not attempt to attack it. Sech was waiting for the old mage to say something, anything, but he kept silent.

After a while, Sech pulled his amulet out from under his shirt. The work was crude, awkward, an apprentice's piece. A face stared back at him, a face that was not his own, though a boy once believed it to be.

Humpert did not react. He could not deny it any longer. The shadow was telling the truth. He had been here, he had been in Rabenburg on this fateful day and he had seen the fall of the city. He had walked into this temple and he had protected the people here. Though all of this, even though it seemed true, did not mean that a spell from a human had lead to this destruction. That, the archmage still could not believe. Though a thought gnawed at the back of his head, a thought he did not want to have.

Slowly, Sech stood up and walked back towards the entrance of the temple and through the barrier his old spell had created there, and into the wild magic of Rabenburg. He did not invite Humpert along, did not expand his protection to the human mage, but he also didn't go far.

Stopping next to those 9 that lost their time when the priest attacked and the radius of his spell shrank, he said: "I was weak and the magic outside the temple was wild, savage, ravaging through the streets. And it was not gentle and turned all to fire and ash. It did not disintegrate, it did not burn. It was not even so kind as to send pain and fear. Oh no. None of that. It was a frozen death, slow in its eternity, still active to this day, still proceeding, for this death stalled life. For this death is life." One after another, he touched the cheeks off the men and women still deep in prayer, "It did not take it, it did not steal it, it froze its progression, its decay. So much so..." Awareness returned to them, but time had progressed and this progression could not be stopped. "So much so, that they are still dying." And he finished their death with his touch, allowing them to crumple, to fall, to decay and to wear away. "Still, to this day, they die, not even over and over again, for that would mean an end, albeit a temporary one. No, it is not done. It is not over. It still is, the process of death is their very being, is all that they know to be real." But for the 9 it ended then.

Once all the people left in the temple were truly dead, Sech sat down on one of the last pews still standing. A rat had crawled over it when the third wave hit and Sech pulled it into his lap, gently petting the frozen fur. "But I did not know this yet. For a while, I knew nothing."

Humpert walked over to the barrier, suddenly very aware of the debris on the ground and the dead that surrounded him. And once he stopped where the temple so unexpectedly looked newer and safer, but was far from it, he also realized again that he could not do what the shadow was doing, that he could not simply walk into the wild magic, that he did not know of a spell that protected against it like the shadow did, ans that the shadow could simply leave him here if he so wished.

Sech watched him carefully as he tentatively brought his hands to the barrier. He had only arrived in Rabenburg a few days before, had never even really studied the magic of this place. It was of no interest to him. He had studied how one could amass the latent magic that was everywhere in the world, how one could pull it out and into oneself. A sudden shock ran through his hands and he jerked back. He had touched the magic, or had his thoughts brought an unwelcome idea into his mind? Calling magic to himself, that, the shadow said, had happened here. No, it could not be, he told himself. But the grinning face of the shadow, the knowledge that he could leave him here, that he might have a reason to, let a shudder run down the old man's back.

"Leonid later told me of the time I was unconscious, of the two weeks he mourned his dead son, the boy I had murdered, while protecting my body. While protecting me." Sech said, the words not matching Humpert's thoughts at all. And he hardly noticed how he crushed the rat to dust like all the other dead.

"14 tried to flee. You saw what happened to them. Frozen in time like all the others, or cut in half because they did not dare rush into the magic. But their hesitation only meant a more brutal death." Humpert had seen them and he shuddered at the memory of the split bodies, the ones the shadow had touched first when they entered the temple, the ones he had freed first.

"17 died fighting each other. Who was on which side I do not know. I know which side won, for I am still alive.

9 were taken by hunger and thirst. For two weeks they could not leave the temple. There's little food here and the ritual basin was outside my radius.

There were 16 left when I awoke. 16 of thousands. Just 16, including me." Sech stood up. "Come." he said and with a simple gesture the path cleared for the court magician and he was able to step into the wild magic again, safe, unharmed, not abandoned in this frightening sanctuary as he had feared to be.

"And I could not even safe them all. I was still weak. But there was no time. They were dying. Or had no other choice but to eat their fallen. But that is something a demon does, something I did..." He looked back at the temple, at the child he had drunken from, at the priest he had burned, before he closed the door of the temple.

"I led you through the city, understanding the magic I had to keep away from you. Just like I do now, leading you back towards safety." And he did. "But then, I knew little and I was weak and the path I carved for us was narrow. Too narrow. 4. It cost 4 their lives. 4 did not make it to the edge of the spell. Melala and Jamin, Hassem and Jonn." Four times he stopped on his way. For four people among hundreds he stopped and four he released from their eternal prison.

The sun started to creep over the horizon when they reached the edge of the spell. Humpert sighed with relief when his feet touched the ice again that formed a solid surface outside the spell and felt the snow drop on his head, the water, warmed by his body, drip onto the ground.

"Leanid came with me," the shadow said as he untied his horse from the pole. None of the soldiers had bothered or dared go near a shadow's steed. "Leanid and Harim and Wama and Rael and Sofe and Minten, they came with me to elven lands, to Nachatel, because they did not trust the world of the... - your world any-longer. And now an elven city is known for the best, most exquisite glazier's work, though the elves never used glass before." He pulled his amulet out from under his shirt and caressed the splinters of glass it was made from, then he removed the chain from his neck. "The day we arrived in Nachatel and I gave my journal to the council, was the last day I saw Leanid."

Sech's face changed again and for the first time Humpert felt like he saw his true self. The scales on his temple were real, as were the black eyes and the pointy ears, but other than that he would not have recognized him.

"5 went to the capital. To your capital. And I know that they told of what they saw, that they explained what had happened here. What they felt of the second wave, what they knew of the third. But the knowledge seems forgotten or was never believed."

Sech turned his back towards the mage and followed his own footsteps back towards the gate.

"Where are you going?" the archmage asked after a few seconds where he was lost in his own thoughts.

"Away." Sech said without turning back. "I do not want to be here."

"You have a contract!"

Sech sighed. "I do. - I do not care. And I'd prefer Rabenburg to stand as a warning, a memorial, but if wish to clean it, I've shown you enough. Figure it out."

"So what, you just came here to tell me this story? Do you feel better now? After this..., this confession? Clean? Or why else would you tell me that?"

At first, it didn't seem like the shadow wanted to answer. Instead, he said: "The third wave was not a conscious choice. It followed from the second and first, because he could not control the power he sought and sucked into himself. The third wave was not intended. But nobody can contain so much power, so much magic. No body. No human, no shadow, no elf, not even a demon. It was not intended, it was inevitable. Magic is life. Uncontrolled magic is eternal life. But eternal life means death. An easy rule to understand, one would think, and yet I don't believe you understand it, not yet even, maybe never. I could have stopped him, then. On the day I gave him my final warning, on the day Rabenburg fell, I could have stopped him. A knife through his chest, a cut throat, a spell to boil him alive... It would have been easy, so easy. It would have taken a life, it would have saved thousands."

"Then why didn't you?"

"Because it would have cost thousands more, maybe. Would the war have spread to the elven realm, to the protectorate of the Shadows? Would it have cost my people, my tribe, would I have sacrificed my tribe for a couple thousand humans? Would it have been worth it?"

"If you are telling the truth, maybe you should have killed him."

Sech laughed. "As I should kill you now? What would happen now? You call me a demon, but I was the one to warn him. You call me a demon, but I was the one to save as many as I could."

Sech caressed his amulet one last time, his thumb running over the face he had carried so long ago. Then he handed it to the mage and Humpert realized with a sudden drop of his heart what the next words of the shadow would be. And he knew them to be true.

"You call me a demon, yet you plan the same spell, the same experiment as he once did. The spell the wizard in his tower attempted that day – it was the same amassment of power you have been thinking about for the last few years. I warned him then. I warn you now. It will not end well. On the day Rabenburg fell, it did not fall to an attack. It fell to you."

Friday, 6 September 1946.

I was sitting at the glass window in my office inside the State Archives, overlooking what had once been one of the most magnificent views of the city, but now was a spectacle of desolation and destruction. The war was nominally over, but the trail of death, sadness and destruction it had left behind would drag on for years, covering the city and its inhabitants like a dark shroud.
On the other side of the river lay the destroyed neighbourhoods, those streets once teeming with life and now empty, unrecognisable, demolished by mines and blind bombs. Winter was upon us and it looked like it was going to be another surprisingly cold season, as if trying to freeze the hellish years of the war. The days were getting shorter during this windy and gloomy September, which the blueish sandstone of the Renaissance palace I was in made appear even greyer.
Under these conditions, even my work as a historian – the attempt to save from the oblivion of time centuries of archives, files and folders, the generational accumulation of times long gone – which had once been a distraction, seemed to have become tedious and worthless. What was the point of it all, I wondered, if war could wipe it all out in a day?
The door to my office opened, distracting me from these gloomy thoughts.
"Franco?", the smiling face of my colleague Filippo Marconi, an expert on provincial documentary papers, appeared at the door. "I tried knocking but you didn't answer. There is a person on the phone for you, says his name is Giovanni Arrighi."

Giovanni Arrighi, a long-time friend, was a man who had been broken by the war. In those sad years, he had lost everything: his son had died at the front, his house had been destroyed by bombing. Even his much-loved city had been half-destroyed and stripped of its works by the Germans, to fill their personal museums with our history (imagine the blow for Giovanni, an art historian!). "Not even Napoleon," I remember him saying, "could have done worse".
I answered the phone, hesitant, in fear of some bad news. A surprise awaited me. Contrary to what I imagined, Giovanni's voice was happy and enthusiastic, as I had not heard it in years.
"It's incredible, incredible!" he kept repeating, a stutter of confused explanations, incomprehensible because of the noise of the bar he was calling from. "You must come here to Agro as soon as possible. When will you be able to join me? You must see it!"
My friend's enthusiasm was so infectious that he managed to wrest from me a promise to meet him the next day, Saturday – forgetting to even ask him what was that he wanted to show me!
And I continued to think about it as I headed home via the Bailey Bridge, yet another war wound still visibly open.


Saturday, 7 September 1946.

I was driving along the route to Agro on a clear, crisp morning, in the countryside a few hours from the city. Agro was one of the many small medieval towns dotting the region, perched atop a hill like a miniature village, the tallest building a bell tower. Driving on dirt roads surrounded by woods, for a moment I had the illusion that there had been no conflict and I felt at peace.
When I arrived at Agro, the village was empty and sleepy. In the deserted main square, it didn't take me long to recognise the limping figure of my friend Giovanni approaching my car.
Compared to the last time I had seen him, he looked like an entirely different person. Gone was his melancholic gaze. Now his eyes shone with a lively light behind the thick lenses of his glasses. Suddenly, he seemed to have regained that light-heartedness of the time we first met at university. Of course, the grey hair and hunched back were proof that those days were long gone – for both of us, I must admit! But those eyes, in the last years always so dull and empty, almost devoid of life, had now regained that avid curiosity typical of the youth. They were the eyes of a young man.
"Leave the car here," said Giovanni smiling, his hand resting on the open door of the car. "It would only get in the way where we're going."

We marched along dirt paths surrounded by fragrant chestnut and oak trees, in that pleasant morning air. The fear I had the previous day had dissipated. During that walk I felt as if I had rediscovered a long-lost friend who had suddenly reappeared, returning from a long journey far away. It had been years since I had seen Giovanni so happy.
The conversation fell on the events of the last few months: his wife, his life in Agro, the village where he had moved after the war, in an attempt to exorcise all those bad memories; and about his work as a restorer (so much in demand in those days!) from which apparently he seemed to be taking a break.
To my numerous questions, Giovanni always had a light and sympathetic answer, stopping only to urge me to pick up the pace. My friend, in fact, despite his considerable limp, was walking so fast that I could almost hardly keep up with him!
"Why didn't we take a bike?", I said. "It would have taken us half the time. I'm not saying that I shouldn't do a bit of workout, since I spend all week sitting among dusty files!"
"A bike, with this leg?" laughed Giovanni, tapping his left thigh with one hand. "With this damned bullet lodged in it, it's a miracle I can still walk, Franco!"
"What a bad excuse," I joked. "You walk faster than me!"
"Your problem, my friend, is not your leg, but your bulking belly!"

At first, the paths in the forest were clearly visible, carved over the years by the footsteps of mushroom hunters, farmers, or simply lovers of nature. But the further we went into that forest, the more tangled the vegetation became and the more those paths started disappearing. The confidence with which my friend Giovanni moved through those woods had misled me, because only too late I noticed that there wasn't a path any more! We were surrounded only by trees and tall grass.
The light had trouble penetrating through the thick tree leaves, the air had turned cold and the little wind that managed to blow through those dense trees sent shivers down my sweaty back. Whatever Giovanni had to show me was certainly not around the corner.
We finally reached a small clearing in the middle of the thicket. On the grassy plane, as if it had emerged from the earth itself but at the same time completely at odds with the surroundings, stood a beautifully maintained medieval church.
"What the...," I stammered.
Giovanni burst into laughter. "What do you say, was it worth coming all this way?"

The church was a small building on a Latin cross plan, not much bigger than a chapel. The façade was decorated with polychrome geometric motifs in white and green marble, perfectly in tune with the nature around it. It looked as if the church had emerged from the earth, already perfectly formed, like Venus from the sea foam. With the small exception of some parts of the façade missing – impossible to tell if from the passing of time or if it was simply left unfinished, which showed the reddish stone underneath.
There was placed a coat of arms made of glazed terracotta, depicting a goat looking up with a St. George's cross as background. Probably, I thought, a heraldic symbol of some ancient noble family.
Four half-columns carved in serpentine marble of vivid green, surmounted by Corinthian capitals, were arranged symmetrically across the façade. A bell gable, half-destroyed and sadly devoid of bells, more utilitarian than beautiful, crowned the roof of the building. Except for some traces of masonry at the corners of the façade and the fractured roof, the church's state of preservation was remarkable. Even the small dome, perhaps the most fragile element of the structure, had remained intact.
Due to the absence of a door, the entrance appeared as a large rectangular black hole, like a gaping mouth. Underneath, a few remnants of red clay-brick blended into the tall grass.

"What do you think?" asked Giovanni, amused by my astonishment. "If I could hazard a guess, I would say the basic structure is from 1000-1100. A rare example of Florentine Romanesque, isn't it? Someone rich must've invested in it: look at the marble on the façade, it certainly wasn't cheap!"
"But..." I stammered. "Why would they build it here, in the middle of nowhere? And no one knows a thing about it! What the devil..."
"I'm afraid the devil really had a hand in it. I have no doubt that this place has been forgotten for centuries. Until, during the war, a bomb fell right there, on the roof. Don't ask me why, who would have any interest in bombing an area like this? Probably one of those absurd accidents of which war is sadly full." Giovanni let out a long sigh. "Be that as it may, the unexploded bomb broke through the roof, revealing the true extent of what initially seemed like a barn, or one of the many forgotten depositories in the middle of the countryside. Imagine that: an unexploded bomb a few kilometres from the village, wedged between the rafters of the roof... and nobody noticed for at least two years!"
I must have visibly shivered, because Giovanni quickly reassured me. "Don't worry, a bomb disposal team then removed the bomb and then everyone just forgot this nasty incident. Everyone but me. At the time, I had recently moved to the village and when I saw this building I quickly realised that it was no stable."
Giovanni pointed to a corner of the façade. "Consider that the church was not as it appears now. Do you see these traces of masonry? The entire building was covered by a thick layer of brick, which completely concealed its true nature. I, however, recognised the floor plan, the intersection of the nave and transept".
I stopped my friend from starting one of his winding architectural disquisition. "Wait a minute", I said. "The building was covered with bricks...?"
"That's right!" said Giovanni. "For unknown reasons, someone, centuries ago, walled up this church, which was then completely lost to memory. And they had done a good job too. How hard I had to work, for weeks and weeks, to free the church from its brick prison! The only thing left uncovered was the roof."
"Why didn't you get help from the institutions for art preservation?", I asked. "After all, this is a unique discovery, they would be more than happy to give you a hand."
Giovanni shook his head and, for a moment, a strange gleam shone in his eyes.
"They have enough to do in recovering everything that was stolen during the war, or damaged by bombs," Giovanni muttered dismissively. At that moment I realised what this all meant.
It was a shrine.
This project, this new discovery had provided new lifeblood to my friend's existence. He feared, perhaps unconsciously, that an outside intervention could take away this newfound happiness. Perhaps there was some selfishness in not wanting to share this discovery with the world. But I couldn't blame this poor man to whom the war had already taken everything.
"We will notify the institutions when we have resolved some of the... more controversial aspects of this church,' said Giovanni, while lighting a small petrol lantern. "But come inside, you haven't seen everything yet."

A suffocating smell of putrefaction permeated the gloomy interior of the church. As soon as I crossed its dark threshold, I started shivering. I felt a strange feeling of uneasiness inside, perhaps from the darkness, or perhaps from the bitter dampness that the walls seemed to emanate. The dim light that penetrated through a gash on the roof made the place feel even darker and colder.
"It's the woods," said Giovanni, almost reading my mind. "This church has been sealed from the outside for who knows how long, as evidenced by the excellent state of preservation of the frescoes. But, once it was opened again, the humidity seeped in like water when you take the plug out of the sink. See here. Deposits of moss, mould. I have a feeling that if this church had remained walled in, it would have been preserved for eternity. The action of the air, which gives us life, has the opposite effect here".
The small church was strangely empty, our whispers echoing in the darkness.
"The furniture is all gone," my friend explained. "There was nothing left inside, not even the stoups. Maybe it was all stolen, who knows. What they couldn't take away were the frescoes. Have a look at the ceiling."
The lantern illuminated a relatively small frescoed dome of remarkable beauty. On a background of vivid blue were painted the astrological symbols of various constellations, represented according to mythology: chariots, animals and people, arranged in a dance on the celestial vault.
"Some kind of star map...?" I said. "I think I have seen a similar image before."
"Right? But I'll be damned if I can remember where! I tried to do some research on the subject, but to no avail. My library at home is rather meagre these days, I'm afraid."
I opened a pad and made a sketch of the celestial vault. "I can try asking around," I said. "Maybe someone younger than you will know, someone whose memory is still working."
My friend, however, did not seem in the mood for jokes, and merely nodded seriously.
"What puzzles me the most, though," I heard him mutter, as he followed an invisible train of thoughts. "...is this. It took me weeks to clean it."
At first, I did not understand my friend's doubts. I looked at the wall in the shaky light of the lantern, on which am Annunciation scene was painted. Some of the details were unclear due to the considerable layer of dirt that still covered much of the wall, but the style made me think of an artist of the late 14th or early 15th century, influenced by the work of Masaccio.
The scene had a conventional layout. On a horizontal plane, on one side, it depicted Mary seated in an attitude of expectation, with a symbolic rose at her side. On the opposite side, the archangel Gabriel kneeled in reverent attitude. The only original detail of the scene was the background.
I expected to see the usual locus amoenus, a backdrop of luxuriant nature. Instead, the forest was depicted as bare, autumnal, with skeletal trees and the ground covered in dead leaves.

Moving the lantern closer to the fresco, I suddenly noticed another odd detail. Mary's gaze was... strange. Unnatural. She was not staring at the Archangel, as it appeared to me initially. Instead, her eyes wandered behind him, almost searching for something invisible to the viewer. And was it just me, or did her slightly open mouth almost have a... frightened expression?
"I don't understand what you find so strange about it," I commented, perhaps with a haste that betrayed the sense of discomfort that pervaded me. "It's a very ordinary Annunciation from the Late Medieval-Early Renaissance period. Perhaps even a little banal in its depiction. I imagine this was a Marian shrine and that..."
Then I saw it.

Following Mary's gaze, behind the shoulders of the archangel Gabriel, I saw something in a darker area of the fresco that left me breathless.
In a corner, almost indistinguishable from the dark background, a crouching figure with monstrous features had been painted. The creature had a large pointy snout that ended in a beak-like protuberance similar to those found in birds of prey. But this beak was surrounded by sharp predator teeth, and adorned a shaggy pointed beard that gave it a grotesque appearance.
The creature's body was beastly, halfway between a boar and a bear. It was covered in thick hair, ending in a hideous curled boar's tail. From the demon's curved back sprouted large, reddish bat wings with the consistency of film, to which the artist added – a detail that made me shudder – pulsating bluish veins. But the arms, those muscular arms covered in shaggy hair, were human arms.
But what terrified me most, and still appears to me during my terror-filled nights, were its eyes. Pale, round, glassy eyes, so alien yet so human at the same time. Those eyes looked towards Mary with a gaze filled with indescribable malice.
There was something almost alive about that creature. It was painted with such realism, an attention to detail that it made that depiction something more than something born from the figment of a twisted artist's imagination, like Bosch's sick dreams.
No. There was no doubt. The painter had painted that chilling portrait using a living, flesh-and-blood model, crouched in front of him in that horrible pose. It felt as if the artist had travelled into the depths of the underworld with the sole aim of portraying one of its monstrous inhabitants.
Inadvertently, I let out a scream.
"You saw it too, right?" Giovanni merely said.

I walked out of the church. Or should I say, I staggered out. Something in my nerves had given way and I felt I could not stay in there for another second.
I took a deep breath of the refreshing forest air. Here, surrounded by the tranquillity of the woods and the sounds of nature, outside of the oppressive mephitic dark air of that building, my fears suddenly seemed ridiculous and irrational.
I tried to justify my sudden escape to my friend, who had joined me outside.
"Don't worry, Franco. The same thing happened to me when I was cleaning that wall and ran into that nice little fellow. Weird, isn't it? Of course, it's not unusual to see demonic representations in medieval works, considering the great influence that the Divine Comedy had on the imagination of the time. But I had never seen something like that in such context".
My friend kept talking, so absorbed in his reasoning that he didn't notice the state of agitation that still pervaded me. "I still don't know for sure, but I think that demon was added in later centuries. The style is completely different from the rest of the fresco, like the strong use of chiaroscuro."

I didn't listen to Giovanni's ramblings. I was too shaken up. Although I was aware of the barbaric custom (so common in previous centuries!) of painting over medieval frescoes – probably considered old and outdated – with new artwork, this was different. Here, someone had added a demonic figure in the corner of a sacred work, but for what purpose? This was not just some prank, some sort of ante litteram graffiti. They had put too much work and care in drawing that figure to be just some sort of sick joke. Why, then? But no matter how much I racked my brain, I could not find an answer.
I lit a cigarette with my hand still trembling, I hate to admit, and after a few puffs I felt better. "After all, it's only a painting," I said to myself, laughing at my stupidity.

That evening, before saying goodbye to Giovanni, I promised him that I would investigate that coat of arms I saw on the façade of the church, of which I had made a sketch in my notebook next to the constellation.



Monday, 9 September 1946.

The following Monday I stayed until late at work, buried in piles of yellowed old paper, regretting the promise I made to my friend. Finding a coat of arms amid centuries of nobility was a far more difficult job than I had expected! Especially since the heraldry section of the archive was a real mess, spread over several rooms on different floors.
To make my job easier, I started by excluding all the families that dominated the important cities and concentrated on the nobility set in the countryside. After all, even at the height of its splendour Agro had always been little more than a minor village.

After hours spent leafing through old codices, I managed to find what I was looking for. The coat of arms that appeared on the façade belonged to the Lapi family, land owners in the area around Agro. Their name appeared in different indexes of the cadastre, alongside incomplete lists of the family's properties that span from the 13th to the 15th century.
By observing the fate of their fortunes, I was able to reconstruct the last years of their lives. The family, supporters of the Guelph side, after a series of political events seemed to have lost most of its prestige during the years of the wars between. From a certain point onwards, during the 15th century, their possessions had all changed hands to other families, perhaps sold in an attempt to lift themselves out of financial straits, perhaps expropriated by force.
Among these, there was a "pieve" (a parish church) in the "Ager" area, which seemed to have fallen under the control of some members of the local nobility linked to the nearby Papal State, the Nievoli family. About this family, however, I could find no information, no matter how hard I searched.

I was about to leave the archive in a bad mood because of my meagre findings, when my colleague Filippo Marconi (who had also stayed at work for longer than necessary) dropped by my office before leaving. His gaze fell on my research and he commented: "Don't tell me that you're working on the Nievoli of Agro!"
Having seen my dumbfounded reaction, Filippo sat down and started explaining.
"It was before the war. I had just arrived at the Archives and I felt lost. You know what the first months are like. Anyway, Out of bad luck, or perhaps as a joke played on a poor newbie, someone gave me the assignment to find and organise all the data on the Nievoli ... if only there had been data! It felt as if they had never existed – it was like researching a family of ghosts.".

Filippo continued. "It seems that the Nievoli lived in the Agro countryside at least until the 16th century – and they must have had a lot of money, property and land! But I'll be damned if I could find even the slightest trace of all these properties. If it weren't anachronistic, it would almost seem as if a sort of damnatio memoriae had fallen on this family – but that would be understandable in Ancient Rome, not under Cosimo I!"
"Why do you think this family was erased from history?" I asked.
"I found a few things about it, but not much. From consulting the documentation in Rome about the latae sententiae, I discovered that one of the members was excommunicated. Later, it seems that the entire family was exiled from many states in the country – certainly from the Grand Duchy and the Papal State."
"Really? What was the reason for the excommunication?"
"'Apostasy and heresy', says the standard formula. Which tells us very little." Filippo hesitated a little, before continuing. "I found more information on the subject, but it was from...  let's say unreliable sources. There was talk of ridiculous things: black magic, black masses, demon worship and all that rubbish."
At that moment, I felt the earth shaking at my feet and I must've turned really pale and cold, as if all the blood had suddenly disappeared from my body. Filippo hurried to reassure me. "As I told you, it's information that came in a partial state and incomplete, more hearsay than fact! A few fragments of letters, some overheard news, but nothing substantial. Almost gossip, we could say. You don't believe this nonsense!"
My behaviour must have seemed strange to my colleague, who suddenly stood up, pretended to look at his watch, mumbled something about how late it was, and made his way out in a hurry. Before leaving through the door, however, he turned around: "Ah, by the way. What's supposed to happen tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow?", I asked, as I felt a jolt of electricity through my body.
Filippo placed a finger on the notepad I had forgotten open on the table.
"This constellation here. The stars are placed to indicate tomorrow, right? The tenth of September."


Tuesday, 10 September 1946.

I did not sleep that night. I tossed and turned in the blankets, a bundle of sweat despite the cold September air, my mind inhabited by nightmares of winged demons. I kept telling myself that the whole thing was ridiculous, fantastic. A series of coincidences that no one in their right mind would take seriously. And yet...

In the morning I tried to call the pay phone at the bar in Agro, leaving a message for Giovanni in case he passed by. It was the only place, along with the town hall, that had a telephone in the village.
Then, I made my decision. I called in sick at work and drove to Agro. There, I managed to talk to Giovanni's wife, who explained me to me how her husband had already headed for the church.
"He comes home just to sleep these days," she told me. "That place has become more of an obsession than a hobby. But his has benefited so much from it, I never had the heart to dissuade him from going.... "
Filled with a growing restlessness I threw myself into the woods, heading for the church. Somehow, perhaps guided out of sheer desperation, I managed to reach the small clearing where the church was located. But what a sight awaited me when I arrived!

For a moment I struggled to recognise the place. How had Giovanni managed to do all that by himself?
The façade, previously dirty and seemingly unfinished, now gleamed in the sunlight, its marble as white as the clouds above. In fact, the whole church seemed to shine of a living light.
I called my friend: "Giovanni!"
No answer.

It took me some time to overcome the reluctance, but then I entered the church with a lit match in my hand. As in my previous visit, the walls seemed to give off an acrid, suffocating smell that felt even stronger today. The inside of the church was consumed by heavy darkness, which the flickering flame of the match could barely penetrate. I blindly searched through the darkness, but found no sign of my friend.
Then, the faint light of the match was captured by something on the floor, which shone for a moment... a metal object? I crouched and, after exploring the floor with my hands, managed to pick it up: they were Giovanni's glasses.
Now I knew for certain that something had happened to him. Giovanni, affected by a severe myopia, couldn't take a single step without his glasses.

The match went out, burning my fingers, and I suddenly found myself on my hands and knees in complete darkness. I panicked and when I tried to crawl towards the door, with its blinding light, I bumped into a small object that made a tinkling noise. A shiver ran down my spine as I, with trembling hands, lit another match and picked up the object.
It was a bullet.
Or rather, the deformed, bent remains of a bullet. With horror, I withdrew my fingers. I knew where that bullet had come from. But something about it still gives me nightmares.
The bullet was wet and sticky.

In complete panic, I stumbled in the dark, fell, got up. Somehow, I found Giovanni's lantern on the ground. Bent, as if it had been hurled against the wall with unspeakable force, but somehow still working. I lit it with the last match I had in my pocket.

Guided by some strange instinct, I pointed the lantern towards the ceiling. The fresco with the constellations painted on the dome, during my previous visit still dirty, now shone with vivid colours. But – I realised immediately – it had changed. The star map was... different.
I felt that my strength was deserting me.
With a desperate effort, I made my way through the numbing darkness of that chapel, heading for the light at the exit. I was almost outside when something stopped me.
A dim sound, almost hidden by the sound of the wind in the trees.
...a soft laugh?

I turned again towards the darkness of the chapel, in the illusory hope that that was Giovanni's voice. I knew it couldn't be. I knew it. But as in Pandora's myth, Hope is always the last to abandon us.
A thin ray of light, entering through a crack in the ceiling, broke through the darkness, lighting up the fresco of the Annunciation.
It was just a moment, but a moment that I will never forget as long as I live.
The light fell precisely on the demonic figure crouched in the corner of the fresco. That demon now, whose gaze had previously appeared so cruel, was now pervaded by a kind of perverse happiness and seemed almost... sated.

From that day, no one has heard from Giovanni. His wife led a search for him in the woods for weeks, mobilising both the police and villagers, but eventually she too had to give up hope.
I did not dare tell her what I had seen in that church. She would not have believed me anyway. In fact, I never told anyone about its position and it's my hope that no one finds it again.

As for me, I never returned to that church, nor do I ever want to see that constellation painted on the ceiling again. No one should know the date of their death.

Have you ever heard the expression "bad things happen to good people?"

Well it's not true.  I'm a right cunt, and those bad things still keep happening to me.

I was born deformed with a crooked spine, lost an eye in a childhood misadventure and an arm in a car accident at the age of eighteen.  Bankrupt at thirty, diabetic by thirty-five, and don't even ask about my dating experiences.  I'd invite you in, but my house burnt down last year.

Homeless, crippled, and half-starved — that's when I met her.

Angela.  She deserved the name.  At eighty-five she looked closer to fifty, and she was always busy taking in strays.  She scraped me off the street, fed me, and took me to the hospital when I kept vomiting blood.

Turns out it was cancer, but that's hardly her fault.

Anyway, she tries to pay the bill for me but I say enough is enough.  It's one thing to be a kind soul, but it's another to be a chump.  Those bush league horse doctors managed to give me a terrific infection while diagnosing my life away, and I'd have my toenails ripped out before they got a dime of dear Angela's money for such gross malpractice.

Well, Angela didn't think much of the stink I raised.  "They were only trying to help," she said, and I suppose there was some truth to that.  But as I said, I'm a right cunt, and things were said that couldn't be taken back.  So here I am, back on the street where I belong, waiting to see whether the infection can beat out the cancer to the finish line.

I'll spare you the details of my throes of agony.  When the blackness of the void seems bright compared to the blackness of your afflictions, pain becomes almost therapeutic.  It must be how a woman feels, when her body goes through the wrenching motions of labour, but with the promise of some preferred result to come.

I don't know how long I lay there, in a puddle of my own black bile, shrinking away from starvation as I swole up with the tumorous growth within.  Minutes felt like hours as my sands drained through the glass, each one a sharpened shard that sliced me as it passed.

And then I was struck by lightning.  Cause why the fuck not?

The next morning the strangest thing happened.  I woke up.

I didn't feel any better.  But then, I didn't feel any worse, either.  The bizarre tingling of long-severed nerves danced along my missing arm.  Like most amputees, I was used to the sensation of a phantom limb coming and going, but never like this.  The limb was still clearly missing, but it felt surreally present at the same time.

I slapped myself back to reality.  This is the kind of hallucination that must presage death, I assume.  With a sinking feeling in my gut, I realize the slap came from my missing hand.

It turns out I can grab stuff with this ghostly limb as well, and not just within arm's reach.  The furthest I've managed to stretch it is about a hundred feet, and the heaviest thing I managed to shakily lift with it was a refrigerator.  Still, not bad for late-in-life superpower development.  I mostly use it to climb medium-sized buildings when I'm out robbing drug addicts of their pizza slices.  I told you — I'm a right cunt!

There's some other changes that I can feel, at the periphery, but which I don't understand in the least.  I feel stronger when I brush up against other miserable souls, that much is clear.  I can summon swarms of flies with a single revolting thought — ask the other homeless guy in the church bathroom how I know.  And I can sense when someone's eyes are on me from an uncanny distance, like a laser beam is burning its way through my skin.  Sure, I'm no superman, but it's still better than that kid who touches stuff and it turns weird colours.

So I'm just beginning to enjoy my new life as the magical troll snatcher of the night when I feel his eyes on me.  He's somewhere up in the towers downtown, staring at me across half the city.  It's creepy how he likes to watch.

And then one day he doesn't just watch.  A black limousine pulls up at the end of the alley I'm haunting, and a slick-looking guy in a nice suit bounces out.  I can tell by his eyes, even behind those sunglasses in the middle of the night, that this guy is worse news than a doctor's frown.

"Sup?" I ask him, then kick myself for not thinking of something cooler to say at the meeting of my nemesis.

"Oscar Snickerbottom?" 

Did I mention bad things have been happening to me since the day I was born?

"Mr. Snickerbottom, I'm Darius Marx.  I work for a very prestigious law firm and would like to discuss a proposition with you.  I assure you, I'll make it worth your while."

I try to shrug but, you know, crooked spine.

"I ain't buying what you're selling, Marx."

His eyes narrow behind those black sunglasses.  I can tell because the feeling of lasers intensifies to the point of a mosquito bite.

"You are quite the specimen, Mr. Snickerbottom.  That parasitic infection of yours coursing through your body, taming the dark powers of your cancer, harnessing them to your will.  And yet you've barely begun to understand the powers you've been granted."

"Call me Ozzie," I tell him.

"I don't think you appreciate the full gravity of the situation, Mr. Snickerbottom."

Oh, he savoured using that name as often as possible, slimy douchebag lawyer that he was. 

"Cancer is a force of pure evil," he continued, "preying on the very light of life itself.  It is not to be trifled with, and yet you've managed to co-opt its powers by infecting it with a fungal parasite that is hardly less evil itself. The equilibrium of the struggle within you has left you the arbiter of the wicked powers coursing through your veins.  You have, quite by accident, become a master of evil.  Congratulations are in order, Mr. Snickerbottom."

"But there are rules to this game, I'm afraid.  There is a league of gentlemen who harnessed this power long before you.  Bloodsuckers to a man, they created a ring of darkness at the top of my hallowed profession.  You must join with them, and pay them their due.  If not, they will be forced to destroy you."

I reach out and flick those ridiculous glasses off his face from fifty paces.  His eyes glow yellow like those of a demon.

"I see we need to sweeten the pot," Marx sighs.  He snaps his fingers, and the doors to the limo behind him open up, revealing poor Angela tied and gagged.

"You let her go," I tell him.  "Or else."

Marx gives me the kind of nonchalant laugh he must have honed at ritzy cocktail parties.

"That's not how this works.  Evil abhors a hero, Mr. Snickerbottom.  Now come along quietly, before you make a scene."

I can feel the waves of wickedness wafting off this slimeball.  He's like a devil wrapped up in a villain's cloak and then bathed in Mountain Dew.  God he was evil!

But remember that quirk of my condition, allowing me to draw strength from the vilest around me?  Yeah, well this guy was like a fully charged battery to my electric chainsaw.  He came at me with fire and I turned it to lava.  He came at me with venom and I turned it to plague.  In about ten seconds I had him face down in a puddle of dog urine.

"Mr. Snickerbottom!" he spluttered.  "Please!  We just want to help you harness your gift!"

That's all I heard.  Of course, it's hard to keep talking with a swarm of flies trying to crawl down into your lungs.

Then I did something I'm not proud of, but as I say I'm a bit of a cunt and hey, you only live once.

"Angela, babe, what are you up to tonight?" I ask, settling into the luxury in the back of Marx's limo.

Baron: 2 points
Sinitrena: 1 point.

In parts, this is a really technical story - a lot of details (especially art history related) that are described in correct, scientific terms (which makes total sense, considering the in-story person telling the story). I appriciate this, as well as the fact that Friday, 6 September 1946 really was a friday, for example. But such technical correctness might lose you some readers if they are not familiar with all terms used and too lazy to look them up. The very detail oriented descriptions also lead to a bit of a pacing problem: about 3/4 of the story are set-up for very little resolution. And the resolution is a bit (how to put this?) expected. In short, this is a well-told story that gets a bit too technical in parts with a slightly underwhelming ending. I still enjoyed reading this story greatly.

That was random. All the bad things that happen to the protagonist before the main part of the story, the random woman helping him out (without any real connection to him), the random powers he gets that act in a fairly random way, a person just showing up to confront him about his powers, his reaction. It's all just things that happen, with a bit of a lack of coherence. It's a fun read, but so very chaotic in its nature (not structure, it is obviously told in an orderly fashion).

lorenzo: 2 points
Baron: 1 point

A very interesting premise.  I liked the detailed history, the tension between the races, and the eerie mystery of what happened to Rabenburg.  It's slightly confusing at the end - Sech might be accusing the archmage of being the same type of wizard as the one who destroyed the city, but I chose to believe it was in fact the archmage himself.  This is an ambitious twist, but presents some narrative problems.  Why is the archmage's shaky memory never addressed?  How is it that no one recognized such a powerful figure from the past?  Why did Sech wait seventy years for the lesson/big reveal?  Why did the soldiers wait around guarding the place that long - surely resources could have been better spent elsewhere?  I think if you dialled back the scope of the story it could be much more impactful.  The soldier scene at the beginning, the stories of the 67 survivors, the archmage's repetitive racism - all could be distilled into a purer form that would make this story stronger.

This was an eerie campfire story - the creepy atmosphere was amazing!  The feeling of gloom, and then of dread menace, was palpable.  I liked how the mysteries of the vanished Nievoli family, the constellation pattern on the ceiling, and the hidden demon all coalesce at once.  I appreciated the history and the archival details, although I agree with Sinitrena that the level of terminology would be off-putting to a casual reader.  The end was only slightly disappointing, if only because the conclusion is obvious from the point of Franco's last conversation with Filippo, although the changed constellations was a nice touch.

lorenzo: 2 votes
Sinitrena: 1 vote

I couldn't get much into the story. I found it hard to make a connection with the two characters, since they both act arrogantly (and the archmage is sometimes annoyingly dumb, doubting everything he's told even in front of overwhelming evidence -- and having had many decades to reflect as well).

The story starts well in medias res, making the initial mystery very appealing: who is the Shadow, what happened to the city, what has magic done to it? Unfortunately, the rest of the story felt overly long and not as effective.

The constant use of the anaphora also got tiring quickly. This kind of figure of speech (and repetition in general) should be used sparingly in my opinion, especially in prose. It loses its effect quickly and becomes tiresome.
It feels like every other sentence goes like this (some examples, to show what I mean, quoting different passages):

QuoteHad someone cut off the arm? Or had they stayed until death, merciful death, freed them? Had they pulled away? Had the magic sliced through the flesh?

Because I know how to do it, while you do not. Because I understand what you do not. Because I – Because I understand the nature of this spell and you do not, no matter what you want to believe

Don't you see? Don't you see that it will work? Don't you see that I have to do this?

However, I did find the descriptions of the effects of magic on the city to be quite striking and the best parts of the story for me. They're very effective and quite chilling too.
In general, there are a lot of good ideas in the story, but its execution didn't work for me.

This was a quirky and weird story, but very funny: I found the narrating voice really engaging. However, the last section came too suddenly, then the story ended abruptly. But other than that, I happily read it!

So, because the story kept me entertained the entire time and it was such a fun read, I voted for it.

For me, it ended up being a toss-up between Lorenzo and Baron. There was nothing wrong with Sini's story in terms of some beautiful descriptions and interesting characters, but there was and awful lot of standing around talking about the history and arguing about who knows what, and I think it could have been streamlined or turned into more action.

I found both Baron's and Lorenzo's stories a bit easier to read, not just because they were shorter. Admittedly, some of the words in Lorenzo's relating to the church and art history went in one eye and out the other, but I think I got the gist of most of them meant.

Baron's story was fun to read, but by the end it felt like the protagonist's arc was just beginning. In the end, I feel like I got slightly more out of A Shrine.

Lorenzo: 2pts
Baron: 1pt