The concussive explosion reverberated through the air as the bullets expelled from the barrel of Celesse and Oracle.  The intense, supernatural glow filled the darkened forest with an eerie glow.  Silver streams connected with four trees and the trees themselves were divided in halves as they fell, letting out a loud crack as branches snapped upon hitting the ground.  More shots followed these four, the sounds of a typical revolver.  They ricocheted off the trees with disappointing madness.  

Ann followed me as we chased the heretic through the darkness of the Yellowstone National Park.  At least, what’s now the Yellowstone National park.  My eyes were focused, and were giving off that eerie blazing gray energy as I looked into the darkness as if it were perfectly light out.  The stench of fear and hatred hung in the air, mixed with exhaustion.  Ann kept up with me best she could, but she was only human.  

We were chasing down a sorcerer by the name of Gerring Mavi’Nen.  A two hundred year old sorcerer who had struck a deal with humans, and then used the humans as blood sacrifices in order to summon forth the power of the dead.  His goal was to combine the worlds and rule over them all.

The Inquisition and Del Guard had different plans for that.

Now we chased him through the darkness, and as I stopped to pick up the trail, reloading my trusted revolvers Celesse and Oracle, I felt Ann come up next to me, and could hear her heart hammering in her chest.  Her black attire, a black winter coat to fight off the coldest of the winter, her black pants and boots were soaked in enemy blood, and quite possibly could have been her own blood.  I looked at her, panting hard.  I may not have been normal, but I was still subject to being tired and winded.  Catching my breath, I looked at Ann.  She tried to conceal the pain in her skull.  I watched as she winced visibly, and then put a hand to her head as if that would soothe the pain.

“If you can’t continue on, stay here.  I can handle the rest from here,” I said catching my breath.  The mighty Lucas Deialaan was being chivalrous.  In response to this, Ann growled and punched me in the arm with force that still astounded me.  

It hurt damnit!

“The day I can’t keep up with you Lucas Deialaan, is the day that Del Guard admits its inferiority to the Inquisition!”  She reported, but I could tell she was in agony.  I also pretended not to notice the blood dripping from her nose.  This was not good.  I had to find Gerring, and I had to kill him and then get Ann to Inquisition doctors.  I could not risk losing her.  My eyes fell upon her form, taking in her beauty.  I couldn’t let anything…

An intense force took me in the chest and hard.  I felt my coat burn off my body and I felt my flesh burn.  I cried out in agony and cursed, wild oaths of old.  The wound had been cauterized but the scent of burning meat hit my nostrils.  I laid on the ground, trying to stop the blurriness, trying to regain some wit.  I heard the sound of Ann’s six shooter go off, and the sound of a primal scream of rage.  Ann had made her mark.  

I forced myself to my feet, grunting as I did so.  Gerring was coming right towards us, and he had a hole in his shoulder that was bleeding.  Gerring was seven feet tall and was as thin as a model.  If you turned him sideways, he looked like a zipper.  His eyes were an intense red, and his robe was swaying in the winter storm.  His breath came out ragged in the cold air, and as I went to get up, he brushed past Ann, and thrust his hand out, speaking a word of power, and a black fist made entirely of energy took me in the jaw and sent me through the air and into a tree.  I felt something in my side snap, and the sound must have been audible because Gerring was grinning madly like he’d won.  He was not concerned with the human that was behind him, leveling her shot calmly.  

“So tell me Inquisitor Deialaan.  How does it feel knowing it was for nothing?”  He asked, his tone smug.  Then, a loud explosion silenced his smugness as I watched him drop to one knee.  He may have been two hundred years old, but a good old fashion gunshot was going to be the death of him if Ann had her way.  

“So tell me Sorcerer Gerring, how does it feel to have your ass handed to you by a fucking human?”  She shouted and charged at him, and went to kick him in square in the face.  Gerring growled, blood turning the white snow to a dark crimson, and then lashed out, grabbing her foot, and taking it out from under her.  Ann fell to the snow, and Gerring dropped his fist onto her skull hard.  I roared my rage and got up, ignoring all the pain, and charged, tackling Gerring through the air and away from Ann.  He was completely surprised.

I punched him in the stomach, and then in the mouth, and for good measure side kicked him in the jaw.  It sent the Sorcerer hard against a tree and I went to put my gun to his face and blow him away.  However, energy swarmed around me and in my anger I didn’t see it.  The energy surged from the ground and wrapped around me, freezing my muscles, and increasing my agonies.  I fell forward, right at his feet like he’d intended.  He grinned.  “The game ends here Inquisitor.”  He spoke words of power in a language that I didn’t understand, and I felt the massive amount of power surging forward.  I felt the massive amount of gravity around me become heavier.  He was going to crush me to death.  

My leg was the first thing to snap.  It felt like I’d had a horse fall on it.  The next thing was my hip, which, most assuredly felt shattered, but, I also somehow knew it wasn’t.  I focused my own will and called upon magic of my own, lent to me by the Inquisition, and tried my hardest to focus.  Everything was becoming hazy, and I couldn’t hold it up for much longer.

Another snap.  My wrist was broken in my left arm.  I felt the arm snap as well as gravity pushed itself down on me.  Everything was getting dark, and I knew that my death was coming.

Bang.

Bang.

Bang.
Bang.

Bang.  

Bang.

Six shots roared in the silent winter night as Ann stood, forcing herself to stand, her six shooter smoking.  The gravity stopped pushing on me, and I watched blood fall at first in droplets, and then in a stream like it was raining.  The sorcerer’s final attempt at cursing my name with a blood oath failed as blood soaked his robe, and fell into the snow, and he dropped to his knees, his eyes staring open for good.  I grunted, looking him into his dead eyes.  

I forced myself up, weak, knowing that my shoulder was broken.  It hurt, but I had been in enough battles and gunfights to know when to dispel pain and when not too.  I looked at Ann, and approached her.

Something was wrong.

She was deathly pale, and her pupils were dilated.  She was trembling now, and I doubted that it was from the cold.  Sweat was on her forehead, and then my own gray blazing eyes widened.  Blood trickled from her nose, and then, Ann toppled to the floor and began to shake uncontrollably.  Foam and spittle frothed from her mouth as I fell immediately to my knees and put my hand to inside my coat pocket and withdrew the symbol of authority that I was granted as an Inquisitor.  I concentrated summoning the word of power.  


II

I was pacing as my left shoulder was kept in the brace to ensure it would heal properly.  Even without the brace, I knew it would heal properly.  My heart was pumping viciously as I waited in the hallway of the hospital that was connected to Inquisition headquarters.  My guns were still at my side, and I was prepared to shoot anyone.  The waiting room was empty.

Save one extremely worried Inquisitor.

As I walked, I removed an unfiltered camel cigarette from the pocket of my pants.  I put a finger to my cigarette and concentrated.  A tiny blue flame emerged from the tip of my index finger and I inhaled deeply.  It was a habit I hadn’t started until the turn of the early eighteen century, after I found that my job required me to become a workaholic with little to no life.  It was also something I only did under extreme pressure or stress.

Now was one of those times.

As I took a drag, a man in a long black robe approached me suddenly.  The man had a long flowing raven black hair, and blue eyes that seemed gentle and cold all rolled into one.  His gnarled hands were calloused and covered in blood.  I looked at him, my eyes blazing.
“Easy Lucas.  We stopped the hemorrhaging before it could get any worse.  But the cancer’s bad.  It’s all in her brain, and the tumors can’t be exercised.  We just can’t take the risk.  She’s a normal human.  It’s a surprise she put up the fight this long.”  He said, watching my reaction.  I studied him, and then flicked my cigarette and pushed him up against a wall, one handed, and terror suddenly formed in his eyes.  I snarled, my eyes blazing.

“All the fucking world’s technology at our disposal, and you’re fucking telling me, that with the type of connections that we have, you can’t exercise the fucking cancer!?  IS THAT WHAT YOU ARE TELLING ME!?”  I was irate, and I was staring him deep in the eyes.  I threw him to the floor and drew Oracle out from her holster, and thumbed back the hammer, and summoned forth the raw power that was instilled within her frame.  I leveled it on the doctor.  “I could convict you of heresy doc, and no one would bat an eye,” I warned him.

“Lucas, you didn’t let me finish!”  Raw power surged from his eyes and took my bad shoulder.  I cried out and fell to my knees.  He got up, and looked at me.  “As I was saying before you interrupted, you got lucky.  She’s in a magical stasis field.  Frozen.  She’s alive, and the cancer won’t advance any further.  We’re treating her with basic medicine Lucas.  Until technology is developed, we can’t do much else but keep her alive in the stasis field.  I promise Lucas, for all that you’ve done for us, and me especially, we’ll find a way to exercise the cancer.  You have my word,” with that, he helped me up, and led me to where they were keeping Ann.

They kept her in a room by herself with several Inquisitors surrounding her and placing seals upon a glass coffin.  To keep her alive and comfortable.  I stepped forward, keeping my eyes locked upon her, and put a hand to the glass casing.

“If it takes me the next two hundred years Ann, so help me Gods above, I promise you this:  I’ll find a way to cure you.  Or I’ll join you and we’ll go to the grave together.”  


As I turned to leave, an Inquisitor approached me.  A novice no less.  I was in no mood, and told him to piss off.

“Sir, it’s Del Guard!  They’re threatening war, and the Grand High Elder Inquisitor himself is demanding that we go to war, and that you see him personally!”  He told me frantically.  I stopped in my tracks, and turned, my eyes blazing, and the poor kid must have been terrified from the look on my face.  I grinned.  I looked every bit the monster that they told me I was when I was a kid.

“Well then, take me to him.”