[Note to Readers: Purgatory is the sequel to Banishment. The action picks up roughly where Banishment left off. If you have not read Banishment yet, please do so, as the events in this first chapter will give away part of the plot of Banishment.]

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    Purgatory: a world between worlds for the souls that are neither damned to an eternity in the underworld nor blessed with life in paradise.  A place for those who have been cast out of their homeland, yet have not yet decided through their actions which world they will strive to live in next.  Purgatory is also a place of second chances, a world where those who are rejected can change and purify themselves so that they might find blessing in the end.  This is the story of one who was banished to purgatory by the denizens of the underworld, and in purgatory was given a choice as to whether to strive to return to the underworld or to find peace in a new life in the lands of light.

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Chapter 1: Descent

    The young man was violently torn in two, his soul separated from his body.  His body simply lay where it fell, as though it were now a lifeless corpse since the soul of its owner had fled.  The young man looked up and saw a brilliant light shining down upon him, bathing him in a bright otherworldly glow that seemed to bring him peace.  He reached up, trying to somehow touch the source of this light, but found himself incapable of doing so.  The ground opened up beneath him, and he fell into the underworld screaming.  As he fell, he heard cackling voices calling out "Deklos" in greeting, calling him to his destruction.  The voices quickly changed their message from welcoming him to taunting him, telling him how worthless he truly was.  The last thing that Deklos heard before he blacked out completely was his own screams echoing throughout this infernal tunnel to the underworld.

* * *
    When he opened his eyes once more, Deklos found himself in a most unusual position.  He was somehow hovering in the air like some kind of infernal angel, looking down upon the landscape.  He looked around, and saw a circular open-air arena built from a sort of white stone.  The stands of the arena were packed full of all kinds of people.  In the center of the arena was a dirt covered floor that served as a combat zone.  Here, two men could be seen: one wearing a blue robe, the other wearing black.  The two seemed to be staring each other down at first, but then Deklos realized that in actuality they were both casting spells.

    Ice leaped forward from the hands of the black-robed man and solidified around the man dressed in blue.  The ice held for a long time but it eventually dissipated, revealing the man in the blue robe still standing strong.  Then, flames engulfed the man.  A fiery tornado of death swirled around him and threatened to destroy him.  When the flames died down, the man in blue still stood, holding his hands high above his head.  Dark energies gathered around the man, they cracked and swirled around him as he prepared the next spell.

    The darkness leaped away from the man in blue, and engulfed the man in the black robe.  The sphere of darkness pressed down, and screams could be heard emitting from the center of the mass.  It began to slowly grow as the man in blue fed it energy.  Finally, the spell collapsed upon the man in black, crushing him like an insect before the spell finally disappeared.  A broken body lay on the ground, and the man in blue threw up his hand in victory.  The man looked up, finally allowing Deklos a clear view of the man's face.  To his shock and amazement, Deklos found that he was looking down upon himself.

    Deklos looked down upon the familiar scene helplessly.  He saw himself stride forth in victory toward his fallen opponent, basking all the while in the adoration of the gathered crowd.  He saw the magus slowly stand up and begin casting a spell.  Finally, Deklos saw himself fall from glory as the magus' spell slammed into him, and Deklos wept as his hopes and dreams once again shattered in the aftermath of defeat.

    Tears fell from Deklos' face and he did not take notice as the world began to blur around him once more.

* * *
    After an indeterminate amount of time, Deklos found himself hovering again, this time above a large room that looked very familiar.  The walls were stone, with small artifacts placed along them in regular intervals.  In the center of the room stood a man in a blue robe who seemed to be preparing some kind of spell.  Fire and Water element gathered before the man in the blue robe, and at once Deklos recognized the situation.  He was watching himself cast the experimental fusion spell.

    With helpless fascination, Deklos watched himself mold the fire element and water element separately, causing tendrils of energy to writhe as he focused the power into a spell.  The energies began to stabilize, but still the spellcaster focused on the element that he was wielding.  Once the separate elemental energies had begun to stabilize, the Deklos who was casting the spell began to partially merge the element together, forging it into a barely bound spell.  This task took far too long, however, and a look of pain flashed over the spellcaster's face.  He released the spell, though much too early.

    The spell flew through the air, blue and red energies intermingling with each other and repelling each other.  The further out the element flew, the closer together they came, despite the fact that the elements were continually repelling each other.  The cause of this merging was none other than Deklos the spellcaster, the one striving to keep the spell from going haywire.  The energies neared their target, the merging finished just before the spell slammed into the shielding of the target dummy.  The shielding flashed once, and the spell seemed to be stopped for a time.

    The time that the spell was stopped for was much too short, though, and all too soon the fire and water element began to repel each other with sufficient force to break the bonds that Deklos had imposed.  For the Deklos who was merely a watcher of these proceedings, time began to slow to a crawl.  The fire and water element pushed each other away, creating a partial sphere of pure energy to form around the practice dummy.  This sphere was a swirl of red and blue, and in it the fire and water seemed to dance, always pushing each other away but at the same time pushing together.  The magic at first expanded outward slowly, but quickly picked up speed.  It expanded ever faster until the entire room was engulfed in the fusion magic.  Then, the chaotic spell dissipated away, leaving behind a destroyed room and a shattered man.

    Deklos simply watched in horror and shock, allowing the world to fade away as it would, permitting the scene to evaporate so that he did not have to look on his failures once more.

* * *
    Darkness engulfed his vision.  The faint tricking of water in the distance was the only thing audible.  The wizard looked around frantically, searching for any hint of light that might take away the terror of absolute darkness.  Nothing came, and the horror of the situation filled the wizard with fear.  He trembled in the dark, not knowing why he was here or how he had come to this ghastly place.  The wizard known as Deklos knew fear, and the fear of the absolute darkness filled his soul.

    A beacon of light flashed in the darkness, banishing some of Deklos' fear.  The light was faint and far away at first, but grew ever larger.  When the light had engulfed his vision, the helpless wizard saw the source of the light.  A wizard was casting the light from his hand as he walked along this darkened path.  Deklos looked around, and found the wizard's light banishing the darkness to reveal an immense tunnel.  The rock walls seemed to be naturally formed, as though water had worn away this passage.  As he looked closer, though, he saw evidence that other things had worn away the walls to form this tunnel.  In places, the walls were jagged, as though someone had taken a chisel to them.  In other places, the rock was perfectly smooth and flat.  Whatever this place was, it was certainly not formed naturally.

    As the wizard who created the light walked along, Deklos followed.  He was not willing to be left in the darkness again, so he followed the other man.  After a time, Deklos opened his mouth and tried to talk to this man, but nothing proceeded from his mouth.  Amazed that he had been struck mute, Deklos stopped walking for a moment.  As the light began to move away from him, though, the mute wizard hurried along to catch up with the one who had brought the light. 

    The other man, who for some reason still did not sense Deklos' presence, continued on down the tunnel.  Seemingly bored by the monotony of the situation, the man withdrew an old book from his backpack, and began to look it over as he walked along.  Deklos ran up to see what this book was, but before he could glance at the words, the other man snapped the book shut and placed it in his backpack once more.  Frustrated at not being able to read the book, the mute wizard known as Deklos continued onward.

    The light seemed to grow fainter once more, trailing off into the darkness.  Deklos tried to run toward the light, but found that his legs no longer obeyed him.  The light slowly faded away into the distance, and the darkness once more assaulted the wizard.  He looked for the walls of the tunnel, but found nothing.  He listened for the trickling song of the water, but heard nothing.  He reached down to feel the mostly smooth rocks that formed the tunnel, but found nothing.  Nothing became all that he knew, and nothing he became.

* * *
   Looking up, Deklos once more could see.  He was again hovering in the air, levitating by the will of some unseen force.  Below him, he saw six soldiers surrounding the mouth of a cave.  Behind this mass of soldiers stood a single figure wearing a black robe.  Off to the side, Deklos saw two teams of mages casting spells.  Some seemed to be using spells to look ahead, searching for some unknown person.  The others stood with element gathered and ready to mold into any sort of spell they desired.  Deklos moved so that he could see the tunnel mouth. 

    A faint light could be seen from inside, but as quickly as it appeared, it vanished.  The person in the black robe shouted a command to all those who were present, and the soldiers moved their hands to their weapons.  The mages were quietly babbling to themselves, as though trying to decide on what spell to cast next.  All at once the mages cast their spells, and a man suddenly appeared in front of the guards.  The man in the black robe yelled something else, and the guards surrounded the man with their weapons at ready.

    The man in the black robe looked down on the captured man with contempt and began to talk to him, taunting him.  The mages were ready with more spells, now.  They had prepared offensive spells to beat down the man that they had just captured in case he decided to escape.  For the longest time, all was still and tense, everyone focused on the conversation between the man in black who commanded them and the man they had just incarcerated. 

    The captured man hung his head in defeat, and the guards surrounding him began to roughly lead him away.  The man in the black robe stayed behind for a moment to give further orders to the mages, and then quickly returned to the guards.  To the city they walked, the man in black in front, and the captive in the center of a procession of guards.  Despair hung silently in the air, and the image faded from Deklos' sight.

* * *
    What passed before Deklos' sight next was a blur, a blur of events that should not have happened, but did.  These events mirrored to a large extent some of his earliest memories, sad memories of the loss of family.  He relived these events once more, through his own eyes.  Sights, sounds, feelings, and smells once more assaulted his senses in rapid procession, replaying events from his memories in exact detail.

    He stood in the middle of the street, and a large crowd gathered on the fringes.  They hurled insults at him, shouting at him for being a traitor to their society.  Guards surrounded him and roughly pushed him along.  Every once in a while, someone from the crowd would throw something at him or run up and spit on him.  The guards did nothing to stop these actions, and this only drove the crowd to further abuse Deklos.  He was a prisoner in his own city, a captive and a criminal even though he had done nothing wrong.

    The crowd was left behind as he entered a rather large building, all the while accompanied by the guards.  He was pushed and prodded along until they came to a closed chamber.  The guards led him to the center of the room and shackled him there.  Two mages cast a field around him, preventing him from using magic to escape.  At the front of the room stood a person in an ornate black robe -- the archmagus.  This person began to accuse him of his supposed crimes:  traitor to the humans, plotting with the vampires to use an unstable spell to destroy the great human cities.  The archmagus' voice raised, and she began to yell at him, denouncing him in the worst way possible.

    It finished and Deklos was led away.  They took him to what seemed to be a giant magic lab, and chained him to a circle at the center of the room.  From the shadows by the walls, a host of mages appeared.  They began to weave a massive spell around him, a spell to seal away his ability to use magic.  Energy slammed into him from all sides as the spell was cast, causing his body to be wracked with pain.  The energy assaulted him several times before the ritual was finished, each time causing immense pain.  When the magical energies subsided, the guards came once more into the room, and took him away to a cell.

    His memories skipped over the time in his cell, and Deklos found himself once more surrounded by the guards.  They led him out of the city, this time without a crowd jeering at him from the sidelines.  They walked, and took him to a ruin of some sort.  Here, he was bound, and a spell was once more cast on him.  Magic once again filled the air, and once more the energies assaulted him.  This time, though, the pain was different.  At first, Deklos felt nothing, but when the spell has been completed, his body began to feel like something was tearing it apart.  He was shredded into pieces, and then his vision failed.

    When vision returned to Deklos, he found himself in an immense garden, with no one in sight.  He had been banished to the surface world, never again to return to his subterranean homeland.  He would never again see the beautiful caverns that he had grown up in, and never again would he teach at the university.  The ability to cast magic had been stolen from him by order of the archmagus, so very likely he would never again feel the thrill of gathering the powerful energies of the elements and molding them according to his every whim.  All was lost, and so he broke down crying in this garden.

* * *
    Deklos awoke with a start.  He jerked to an upright position, all the while a headache pounded away in his head.  He looked out into the darkness around him, and realized that he had just woken from a dream.  It was only a dream, and this thought comforted him.  A soft glow appeared overhead, and Deklos watched closely.  The soft light filtered in through the ceiling above him, illuminating the room of the cavern he was sitting in.  Soon enough, he could see where he was.

    The place that Deklos sat was not a cavern like any that he had seen.  He could see no walls anywhere, and the ground was covered with vegetation.  He looked around, and saw vegetation all about.  Immense trees surrounded him like the guards in his dream had.  Looking up, Deklos saw the ceiling, a very blue ceiling that he had never seen the likes of.  The light was coming from a large yellow ball high above him, too far above him.  Looking around, Deklos realized that he was sitting in the garden from his dream.  It wasn't just a dream, and this wasn't a cavern.  He was sitting in a garden of some sort on the surface, and he was indeed banished from his homeland forever.

    A scream broke the serene silence of the forest on this fine day, and the birds in the immediate vicinity took flight to escape whatever wounded beast had uttered this horrible cry.