October 30th
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The sorcerer calmly made his way across the barren landscape, broken only by the distant dunes and dotted with a scarce few Joshua trees and barrel cacti. During the past seven weeks or so he had completely dedicated himself to the extermination of the cultists that had come from the Old World to capture or kill him, a dangerous sect with radical views barely tolerated by their brethren of the Phantom Brotherhood. His efforts had been slow and fruitless at first - the fanatical evokers from the Arm of Flame were of little help when dead, and while they lived they used every last breath to curse him, leaving little information to be gleamed from their words. But as he traced back their footsteps and stalked the other zealots he came across, the pieces began coming together, and at last he found himself in the Mojave Desert, on a barren stretch that seemed to hold nothing of interest and no life at all.
Of course, this was true only at first glance. Beyond the small plants and scarce trees that could be seen here and there around the arid landscape, there were signs of life. Many creatures flew, burrowed or skittered across the earth and sky, making their home in that hostile environment. More important, however, was that which only someone trained in the arcane could sense. The telltale signs of a magically active area, felt more than seen. A tingling in the skin, a throb in the back of the head, the sensation that the air one walked through was heavy. To the unlearned it would produce the sensation that the place forbid human meddling, impelling them to leave, but the sorcerer knew that it was a sure sign that there was more than met the eye.
Unlike before, when he had been attacked by surprise, Adrian was well equipped now. The cape from his battle against the Young Bloods was once more on his person, and in his right hand he held his black-stained blade. The only weapon in his arsenal that the Arm of Flame feared. With his free hand, he retrieved a different artifact from the unseen folds of his cape, an ornate dagger with a ruby eye set in the hilt. It was a treasure that had been used to deal a devastating attack to the Brotherhood in the past, and one he had stolen from them as he escaped precisely in hopes that it might aid him as it had aided the ill-fated Order of Horakhty over twenty years ago. With his arm covered in arcane symbols, he held the blade with the eye pointed at the air in front of him. He uttered a brief incantation in a long lost tongue, and as if stirred from a long slumber, the ruby eye opened.
A thin ray of light shot forward, and in an instant, it was as if shards of reality were peeled away from the landscape, reveling an underlying existence that was previously veiled. A hole in the desert, and chiseled black stone stairs leading to a forgotten shrine below.
Though he was the first human not under the influence of the shrine's ancient god to set eyes upon it in centuries, he did not waste a single second in admiring it. Two hooded evokers stood nearby, guards perplexed at the sudden collapse of their concealment and defenses, and the sorcerer immediately lashed out at one of them. The man quickly backed away from the intruder, but not before a small cut was made across his arm, and that was all that was needed. After a moment the wound turned black, as did the blood coming out of it, and after another, the color began to spread across the man's skin, causing him to scream out in pain and fall writhing to the ground. In a matter of seconds, the man had become nothing more than a withered husk.
The other man guarding the shrine immediately moved away from Adrian. With a flick of his wrist, a torrent of red flames surged forth from his hand and threatened to swallow his foe. The rogue wizard only narrowly managed to jump out of the way, the protective runes on his cape shielding him from being seared by the torrent's heat. The symbols on his arms began to shift in anticipation of the next attack.
"Begone! You are not one of Grizmahir's chosen!" The guardian demanded as he prepared a spell. But there was genuine fright in his voice.
"You say that now, but your friends were awfully intent on finding me." The young man retorted nonchalantly. "Here I am now. Aren't you happy to see me?"
The guardian seemed to consider his words for a moment. "So you are the fugitive prodigy. It's no wonder then that you found a weapon that can do... this." He spoke, casting a glance at the husk of his fallen comrade. "But your journey under the sign of the dark ends here!"
In sync with his words, the ground around Adrian began glowing brightly and, realizing what was about to happen, he swiftly uttered an incantation and jumped forward, his momentum carrying him through a portal that opened and closed in the nick of time. The moment after he had disappeared from there, another torrent devastated the sands where he had been, rising into the sky. Adrian, however, appeared several feet behind the guardian and grabbed a wand from his belt. With precise gestures, he motioned first at the ground and then at his foe. In response, some of the sand was transmuted into stakes of glass rising from the ground and impaling the man. He did not die despite the clearly fatal wounds, however.
"Tell me before I kill you, did the Brotherhood send you after me? Or is it that your patron doesn't want someone running around messing with the Dead God and the dwellers of the crossroads?" Adrian spoke as he walked closer and closer, preparing to deal the fatal blow with his sword.
"How dare you question the motives of a member of the brotherhood?!" The guardian choked out despite his position, and the sorcerer smirked. It was so easy to get a rise out of the Phantom Brotherhood. They all fancied themselves so pure in their intentions, so incorruptible and impartial. It was poetic in a sense, that the keepers of the world's greatest repertoire of occult knowledge were so blind to their own fallibility.
Unfortunately for him, while he had predicted how easy it would be to provoke him, he didn't expect what followed. A large explosion blinded him, throwing him back - it was a miracle that he didn't accidentally cut himself with the cursed blade. The guardian rose from the smoke and dust left in the wake of the arcane burst, seemingly kept aloft by two great wings of fire. Pointing both of his hands at Adrian, the man let loose another torrent of blood red flame, the largest yet. The sorcerer barely had time to react, but luckily he had managed to hold on to his wand and used it to throw up a large shield made of glass in front of him. It bought him only a few precious seconds, but that was all he needed. Again he was gone before the flames struck.
A portal opened just behind the guardian, and out leaped Adrian with sword in hand, stabbing his foe in the back, with much of the blade coming out the other side. Immediately, all of his arcane power seemed to falter and he fell to the ground alongside Adrian, who had the good sense to push him away so that there would be no risk of accidental injury. Hitting the ground hard, he nonetheless remained unharmed thanks to his cape and quickly stood up, dusting himself off and walking over to the now rapidly decaying guardian to retrieve his cursed weapon.
"In truth, I must commend you. You have gotten closer than most." The young sorcerer spoke calmly as he placed his hands on the sword's hilt and one foot on the man's back before pulling the weapon out of his body. "But unfortunately for your little cult, I don't hold back against people that want me dead."
Adrian left behind the two lifeless carcasses and walked closer to the black stairs that led deeper into the earth, into the shrine proper. He was sure that in minutes, perhaps seconds, more worshipers of Grizmahir would come crawling out of the earth to strike him down.
Good thing I came prepared.
Digging into the unseen folds of his cape once more, he retrieved two fistfuls of intricately carved summoning stones, nearing two dozen in total, and nonchalantly tossed them into the hole where Grizmahir's shrine stood. They would tumble down stairs, across hallways and into the inner sanctum, and from them would emerge hellhounds, golems, great winged stone beasts and more. None of them had the power to kill someone blessed by the Burning God, of course, but they would keep the Arm of Flame busy enough to let him approach them unimpeded and deliver the finishing blow.
With eerie calmness, the sorcerer began descending the stairs, even as the sounds of battle began engulfing that forgotten shrine.
