The tears enveloped me, and I no longer held any power to stop them, nor held any desire, too. All this time, fighting, searching, and clinging to hope, I at last beheld the Dark Magician, and he slipped from my grasp, like water from poorly cupped hands. I had spent so many days and nights, and it had all been in vain. I could do nothing but weep, and there upon the cold floor of the Cathedral, weep I did.

Would he continue to haunt me? Disturb my dreams and plague my mind? But it was not the fear of being hounded that I cried, but rather the crushing blow of failure, and the sense that something important had been missed and sent back to the dark, never to be recovered again. I felt a great sink in my belly, and a caving of my chest; the Dark Magician had…