... Wracked by weakness, my muscles knotting, I knew had been bewitched and had to lift the pagan curse before pushing my investigation further. I opened my sacred book, the copy of the Rule of Law you yourself blessed, oh revered teacher, and spoke out the Runes of Malkion's Prayers, His most holy and first Gospel. This most excellent spells cleared my mind and allowed me to shake off the cantrip that had been cast at me : a most peculiar form of confusion reeking of pagantry. If someone, in this humble thorp, had the audacity - and the power - to befuddle a wizard of the Inquisition, however minor and young, serious steps had to be taken.
Rokar and Maldron taught us that Faith in the Word of God is all we need to set to our tasks, and I decided to show these backwood half-pagans what the Power of Rokar is. I walked to the Chapel, lit up the prepared Candle you had the foresight to arm me with and intoned the spell of Punishing Malkion's Ennemy, using the very power reaped from the sorry congregation I had lectured earlier that day. Sainted Theoblanc teaches us that Power can be taken from many sources if it fulfills a Pure goal ; the purest energy, that which stems from sincere prayers to Makan, is not always available. I began feeling the sleeping peasants stir and move - and also the still-wakeful ones, out there near the accursed forest. Now they felt the sting of Our Holy Inquisition's spells. But I had not realized how far they had fallen from Solace.
The Chapel was a sorry affair, and its Wards were puny. The thing I had involontarly summoned burst in it without effort. It had a spectral sinuous body, so long I could not discern its end. It writhed and moved fast, its spectral scales glistening, its spectral fangs dropping with ichor, its spectral serpentine glaze befuddling me again. I could feel its power worming its way into my mind, trying to dissolve the Reason and Logic that are the key to our wizardry.
I recognized it as one of sehsna likita's minions, a guardian of the old pagan goddess which had ruled our land through her snaked-legged hybrids many centuries before. You had taught me, oh reverred Master, of the foul and putrid ways of this cult, the oldest form of pagan worship in our lands, how it time and again resurfaced, like a snake that comes out of the earth again at spring each year. But despite your wise teachings, the Power of my puny Reason failed me that night.
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