Author's Note: Sorry it took so long to get the chapter up. I've been busy lately and had a sever case of writer's block, but it's finally done. Hope you guys like it!

Jeff checked the listing in his manual again. Whatever was going on needed to be attended to fairly quickly. He ran down the steep, slippery steps into his basement to retrieve his sword. He took it out of it's sheath and admired the blade for a minute. He had won it at a renascence fair a few years prior and had put a spell on it for emergency errantry in case he ran into anything nasty. He put it in his belt and it disappeared from the normal eye. A simple cloaking spell was necessary when taking it in public, non-wizards could be awfully touchy. He checked the manual again. Beatrice and the new Abdal Nathnael were on errantry as well. It also seemed that Jeff would have to go fetch them, they were not on urgent errantry... yet. He closed his eyes and concentrated on finding his young partner. "Got it." With a rush of air and a pop he was gone.

Nathanael and Beatrice sat on top of a large bank building downtown. Beatrice wasn't completely certain it was the tallest building in town but it was tall. A spell sheltered the couple from the wind. With a second pop Jeff arrived to find the two talking quietly to one another in each other's arms.

"Bee-"

She looked up.

"-We have work to do."

The two teenagers stood up, Nathanael looked confused. Beatrice checked her manual. "We're on errantry."

"Now?" The boy asked, an expression on his face somewhere between distressed and clueless.

Jeff and Beatrice nodded simultaneously. With a quick flick of her hand, Beatrice retrieved her wand from her claudication, she gripped it so hard her knuckles turned white. "What are we up against Jeff?" She asked.

He shook his head. "I don't know yet. I have to coordinates of where we're going in my manual though." He read them once more. This made him slightly more distressed. "Whatever it is, it's local." He shook his head again. "Local as in a few miles from here."

"Near one of the world gates?" Beatrice began adjusting her teleportation spell to accommodate the other two and added the coordinates from Jeff's manual.

He nodded. "The one in Auntie's Bookstore."

Nathanael stood and watched the other two. He had only been a wizard for a few days, he didn't know enough to help. He was afraid. The unknown had always scared him. He did the only thing he knew how to do to be useful, he fed some of his power into the spell so the others had to do less of the work. The three ended up on the third story of a large bookshop a few miles from the bank building. Behind them sounded a soft, steady pulse like that of a river. This was one of the local world gates that never seemed to need maintenance, non-wizards were deaf to the sound it made. Jeff looked over the banister onto the floors below. Good. There weren't many people here. If there was trouble they could handle it with minimal to no witnesses. His eyes scanned the first floor where the trouble was supposed to be. Everything seemed to be normal... except the shadow moving around in the teen novel section. The shadow didn't have a body attached to it. "That's it." Jeff said.

Beatrice stood next to Jeff, Nathanael slightly behind her. She looked at her partner, youthful twinkle gone from her eyes. "What is it?"

Jeff motioned for the two to follow him as he began to descend the stairs to the first floor. "I think it might have been an overshadowing."

"But," Beatrice replied, "That couldn't be could it? Over shadowing is just the Lone Power working through and controlling people. They still look the same."

Jeff shook his head, his pace quickening. "That's usually the case. Shadow creatures like that appear when a being has given in to the Lone Power's will completely. That, my young friends, is the beginnings of a peryton." The other two shivered. Perytons were not nice creatures. They quickened there paces to a jog but tried not to look to conspicuous to the woman looking through books in the gardening section on the second floor. "Have a shield spell ready Bee."

She nodded as they slowed their paces to a walk and crept into the area where the Shadow Creature had been seen.

The thing was right where they had seen it last. It was pacing back and forth, back and forth, not noticing the three sets of eyes peering at it from around the corner. It looked as if someone had died water black and molded it into the shape of a six foot tall human being. Whoever had made it had not taken the time to create details on it like a face. It had no nose and appeared to have no mouth. The only part of it that was any reflection of its former self was its pair of ice blue eyes but even those had lost all the humanity in them. They were eerily empty. The creature continued pacing in its crazed path as if waiting for something.

Beatrice sneezed.

The creature wheeled around and snarled as it finally saw the three Wizards and launched itself at the one who had made noise. She was the smallest and the youngest, she would be easy prey. Her soul would be easy to break. He was stopped suddenly as two of the three threw a bright circle at him. He tried to break through it but could not. It burned to get near the edges of it. It let out a shriek that only the Wizards heard but it sent a shiver through the spines of everyone in the store.

"That binding won't hold it for too long." Jeff said. "As it continues to undergo its transformation it will get stronger."

Out of instinct Nathanael threw a few more Speech symbols into the spell, strengthening Beatrice and Jeff's binding. "Can we banish it?" He asked.

Jeff and Beatrice exchanged glances. Jeff shook his head. "Technically we could but that wouldn't be the best idea. We don't want to dump it into another world where it will wreak havoc by accident and there is still some remnant of a human soul in there. It won't be there for much longer but it's still there."

"Wizardly intervention then? Maybe we could talk to it and explain it's still human, that it doesn't have to live like it does, tell it there is more to life than pain and destruction." Beatrice asked.

Jeff shook his head again. "We don't have time for that, and that's assuming it'd listen to reason anyway. We'd have to do something that would make him peaceful in what he has left of a human soul."

"Force-quit." Nathanael said.

"What?" The other two asked simultaneously.

"Like with a computer program. If it freezes up you have to do a force quit and then usually reboot it. Is there some way we could force it to be at peace and maybe have it start living over? I don't mean make it be born again, just maybe make it start living from the time before it became overshadowed, maybe we could put a spell on it afterward to give it a more positive outlook on things. Isn't hate what creates perytons anyway?"

"You can't force someone to be positive." Beatrice said.

Jeff thought for a minute. "That's actually a fairly decent idea. We can probably force it to be at peace (It's going to be like wrestling with a pig though; the pig gets dirty but it won't care) but it has to decide to live again on its own."

"Should we try it then?" Wand at the ready, Beatrice began to draw her signature in the Speech in the air, the figures sparkled a little under the fluorescent lighting.

Jeff did the same.

Nathanael closed his eyes and thought, searching his mind for some sense of what he was, and how to describe it in the Speech. In the depths of his mind, he found it. As if he had done it every day, the boy traced the slender figures of his name in the air. When he opened his eyes he saw his name had linked with the others'. Instinct took over completely now. The three each began drawing their parts of the spell, speaking in harmony every now and then. A ring of characters drifted to the binding spell and replaced it. White light shone up from the letters that sat on the floor around the Shadow Creature. The Wizards stepped into the ring. Blinded by the light around it, the Shadow creature made no move to attack them. It hissed, White Light burns I cannot see. Give me darkness!

Jeff drew his sword, it sat loosely in his hand. He wasn't going to use it for fighting but it would help in the spell.

"We just wish to speak with you." Nathanael said. He looked at the others' faces, reading their expressions to make sure he hadn't done anything bad. Neither of them seemed to disapprove.

"Do not wish to speak," It said, "Wish to fight, wish to kill. Let me free of this Wizard's trick!" Snarling, it threw itself against the walls of the spell, but did not break free. It screeched in anger and lunged at the first Wizard it could get its hands on; Jeff.

Jeff hit it with the flat of his sword. "Stop!" He said before turning to the other two, "Get started now!"

Beatrice nodded and closed her eyes, weaving a web of restraint just so the Shadow Creature didn't hurt itself or them. For the most part still blinded by the light, the thing didn't see Beatrice when she threw the net-like spell over him. Nathanael searched his brain for something to do, finally decided to start by emitting a calming aura over the area. Not only would this help calm the beast in their midst, but it would help the three Wizards work by making them more relaxed as well. The newfound calm washed over them like a great wave. The Shadow Creature fought it at first but because of the restraint of the net around it and the fact that it was growing tired, it eventually succumbed to the spell.

"Why are you so angry?" Beatrice wove her question into the binding web and the three wizards saw the source of the Shadow Creature's misery, the very thing that had made him become what it was.

He (The thing) had been a happy man. He had a good job, a wife and a newborn baby whom he loved, he had everything he needed. But a few months prior his wife and young child had been killed in a car accident. He made himself reclusive, thinking no one would understand, lost his job, almost got evicted from his apartment, and let himself wallow in his misery. He didn't think to go to his family because a year before this event there had been a falling out in his family and, although he missed them he was too proud to apologize for his own stupidity he didn't go to them. He stayed alone. His friends left, he didn't care. He didn't care about anyone anymore. Then, one day he was just walking down the street and he met Him. He promised He could make all the pain go away, he could make it better, he wouldn't have to feel anymore if he didn't want to. All he had to do was do a few favors for Him.

A voice in the back of the Wizards' heads said, 'He was such a weak and broken soul. He is what the world will become. He is what you will become one day.' A shiver went down each of their spines but not one of them would ever mention that voice to another living soul.

"He promises empty things." Jeff said. "The pain won't go away, you'll just go numb. You will lose what you are. Do you want to be a drone?"

What had once been a man, struggled in the binding around it for a moment and snarled lazily as a tired dog might at a fly that plagues it but does nothing about it. It sighed the words, Don't care.

"It's okay to move on." Beatrice said.

"Useless words." The beast said.

The young girl shifted her feet nervously. "If you lose yourself in this you won't feel anything anymore."

"What I want." He sighed.

"No!" She said. "You won't feel anything at all! You won't feel sadness (I know that's what you want) but you won't feel happiness either."

Nathanael decided to take a shot at this himself. "I doubt you'll even feel physical things. No warmth from the sun, or ground beneath your feet, no..." He searched his mind for another argument, "No-"

Jeff interrupted. "No taste of food, you won't recognize beauty, you'll be nothing but an empty shell doing whatever someone asks. You'll be nothing but a slave, you'll have no purpose, no heart, no soul, nothing!"

Although the shadow had no facial expressions to speak of, it wasn't hard to tell it was thinking with what it had left of it's mind and free will.

"What did you love most as a human?"

He turned his head in Jeff's direction. "Don't remember." He thought for another moment. "People. Loved people. Loved my wife and child. No Wizard can bring them back."

"Most people have lost a loved one or two in their lifetime." Beatrice said.

It was Nathanael's turn again. "Most of them are able to move on. There are other joys in life. No one can replace what you lost, but there is still so much out there in the world."

"Letting someone else control you only shows weakness," Jeff said, "If you let the one that promised you an end to pain destroy what you are you are only throwing away what you've been given and showing you weren't worth any effort to begin with."

"I am not week!" He snarled.

The three Wizards silently put a bit of force into their last statement, creating a spell much like the wave of calm. "Try to live."

A man in slacks and a button up shirt trotted up the front steps of an old house with a well groomed garden. He knocked on the door, put his hands in his pockets nervously, and waited. An old woman opened the door. Once she saw the man who was standing on her front step she took a step backward in shock. "David..."

"I'm sorry." He said.