Charles’ Blog

The cloud rolled calmly over the dark sky, the full moon piercing the eyes of those below. Ever since the last equinox, that large, white circle hadn’t been so bright. The elder swiftly checked the almanac by casting his long finger over the ambient colours, stopping on the appropriate date. With a stroke of his long, black beard, Winston chanted a short spell that summoned two paladins before him. Both were almost identical, except for a blue and red ribbon that each wore around their left shoulder, respectively; they swivelled and bowed at the knees before the sage.
“I apologise for calling you so abruptly, but there isn’t much time. The lunar patterns don’t match the records anymore…” Winston said, hastily.
The paladin wearing the red ribbon was coarse in speech, “That must mean those damned creatures are among us once again!”
“Inevitably,” replied Winston.
“So you wish for us to track them down…” sighed the paladin wearing the blue ribbon.
Winston picked up on her lame reaction to such a dire situation.
“Marie, this is no simple matter. We are not just experiencing one alteration in the lunar track… I have been tracking this down for three months now and I’m certain that I’ve seen the moon appear four times full.” Winston explained. The warrior with the blue ribbon looked down, afraid that she may have offended the sage. Winston noted this and swiftly put his hand on her shoulder guard.
“It’s OK Marie,” he comforted, “you will have to track them down, but this is very much a dramatic change from our situation before. Please understand – and this goes for you too, Soul – that we may be facing more than a few simple Shadows in the time to come. Masses, warriors, masses! On top of that, I have a strong feeling that we have the Darkness working against us,”
Soul swallowed nervously as he looked down slowly at Winston’s explanation. The Darkness are among us, too? he thought. He looked towards Marie making the same gesture and could feel her sharing his thoughts. The Shadows were one thing, but the Darkness were another. They both knew that they could easily slay the likes of a simple Shadow with a simple slash of their swords. The Darkness were harder to vanquish, requiring that their swords be coated with white gold imbued with white magic. Winston was a very observant old man, noticing every gesture they made before him revealed all of their thoughts.
“What you both need to do right now is relax,” Winston said cheerfully, “I will cast a spell over your swords to refurbish them from all of the battles they have suffered from already. As for the Darkness, I have prepared for you both a spell that transmutes stone into white gold. It only works once, for about a day, so keep it for emergencies,”
He showed the paladins how to use the spell, demonstrating that they need to wrap his prepared scroll around their sword and chant a spell that they had to memorise.
Marie was concerned with her temporary protection from the Darkness, “You made it out as if there are myriad Darkness and Shadows – we’ll have to properly prepare our blades sometime,”
“That’s right, Marie, but we mustn’t be hasty. We need to figure out why they have come back and how,” Winston explained.
Soul was quick to reply, “Yeah, we knocked them into a Reverse-Dimension the last time I checked. There isn’t much escape from infinity!”
“And they are probably back to retrieve their Tear Pendant, thus regaining their strength to return to their havoc wreaking scheme to take over the Main Dimension in order to gain the ability to travel to, and take over, other dimensions.” Marie lectured blandly.
Winston was pleased with their enthusiasm, oblivious to Marie’s sarcasm, “Sure, they could be back to do all of that. Then we have the fact that they cumulated so many minions and, as Soul said, they escaped from the infinite confinements of the Reverse-Dimension,” Winston looked up at the dreary walls of his cave-like environment and mumbled something inaudible to Soul and Marie. Blue symbols appeared on the wall and floated into the air. They began to ripple and rotate, and eventually spiral into a fireworks display of smaller circles that spread out around them. Between Winston and the Paladins, one circle remained larger than the rest. The sage closed in on the circle and pointed out a region which turned red, fighting with the blue light in the air.
“Before anything, you need to brighten up this segment of the Main Dimension – you can’t afford anything following you into the other dimensions…” Soul chuckled at his use of the word “brighten” but quickly became serious when Winston scowled at him. “We’re going to need to take haste, here,” Winston walked through the circle, causing it to become slightly distorted, and waved his hands over the Paladin’s swords to fix their cracks.
“Prepare yourselves,” Winston warned while taking a few steps backwards. Soul and Marie kneeled simultaneously, bowed their heads and closed their eyes. The wizard waved his hands up to make all of the circles floating in the air disappear, and then clapped his hands with great force, interlacing his fingers. The echo of the clap travelled through the dim room and danced around Soul and Marie’s heads. Winston’s hands released slowly as if they were clasping invisible fists and released a white light that engulfed the two warriors

“Good luck,” whispered Winston with effort, bringing his hands together again with difficulty.