ward her to stop her from casting. A crazed rage was blooming in everyone’s mind.

Snow raised up her hand, a last roar of powerful sound from her voice boomed outward. “Purification!”

A holy light scattered outward in a fluid stream that sparkled with blinding light.

The screech of pain was heard as the priest and priestess were frantically trying to run away, but they were caged and only could get to a corner. Many tripped and fell, unable to move any further as they crowded into the corner. The light hit them hard, causing them to fall over—some on top of another.

A horrible number of people were spazzing on the ground, foaming in their mouths. They coughed up blood, followed by a dark pool of ooze that splashed onto the ground, creating a puddle of black goo.

Snow continued to let out a steady stream of energy, washing away the darkness that ravaged everyone’s body. If anyone stepped in and saw the carnage caused in the cell, they would have ran away with disgust. Black biles were scattered in large pools as if feces were smeared on the ground and their body. Even their hair was disheveled to the point where one would have thought they all lived in the cave until now.

Eventually, the screams died down, allowing Snow to lower her hand. She was ready to throw magic out again if it did not completely eliminate the darkness in them.

Waiting patiently, her hand in front of her.

“What happened?” A young man with a broken glass spoke out. He pushed himself up from the ground and looked around. His hair was badly disheveled, making Snow wonder how he could see in between his hair. He was quite lanky, barely any muscles as he was covered in. One could tell that he didn’t work out by how thin he was.

Confused, he glanced at Snow. “Saintess?” He said out in an outburst, startled to see her here of all places. To him, Snow was glowing with pure white, giving her a fresh glow of light that would dazzle anyone.

Snow didn’t reply back. She kept silent.

“Saintess, where are we?”

“In a cage.”

“Cage?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I would like to ask that question too, but my theory is that you guys got kidnapped. I don’t know why. Whatever is in this dungeon seems to like collecting people with light magic.” Snow contemplated, scratching her chin. Do you not know how you got here?”

“No.” The young man sighed, scratching his head.

“Nothing at all?”

The young man shook his head. “The only thing I can remember is being at a sermon and the whole church violently shaking. After that, I was hit with something and blacked out. Somehow I ended up here.” He glanced down, checking if anything was wrong.

A few times, he twirled around and then stopped. Looking over toward Snow, he opened and closed his mouth.

“You were possessed.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“Possessed?!”

“Yes, and all that-” Snow motioned her hand up and down his body, “is probably from your vomit from spewing out whatever you ingested.”

“I don’t remember this.”

“Once again, you were possessed.” Snow sighed.

“Where exactly are we?”

“A dungeon.”

“What?!” Jay squeaked, covering his mouth.

“A dungeon opens inside the church.”

“How is that possible?” Jay mouthed. Baffled by what he had just learned. “A dungeon opening up in a church shouldn’t ever happen.”

“How are you so sure?” Snow never heard of this before. She knew that the dungeons all congregated on a high level of magical energy. And a service area had quite a large amount of magical energy as it is.

“The Gods! We are protected by the God of Light.”

Snow tilted her head. She had heard about this before, but she wasn’t so sure. Was this actually true? She hasn't read anywhere in the books about exceptions to a rule.

“In our doctrine, all dungeons can not come on holy ground,” Jay said pridefully. “Which, I believe this isn’t the case back at the church.”

“Right….tell that to the other three people I have come in here with.” Snow frowned, crossing her hand in front of her. Whatever happened, happened. Something must have happened to change the rules that they all knew of.

Jay was silent, thinking over what she had implied. His mind was racing rapidly. Snow could tell that something was bothering him immensely at the way he stood frozen so still.

Eventually, Jay spoke slowly. “There is a possibility…” He then shook his head. “No, it's impossible.”

“That is?”

Jay turned his focus at her. A large frown creased his eyebrow and lips. In seconds his expression turned grim. “Someone allowed it to happen.”

“Could you explain it a bit more?”

“Think of it like this, someone with a powerful affinity with darkness came in and summoned the gates.”

Suddenly, Snow thought of Levian. She had remembered hearing from him about how he was able to summon up small scale dungeons in the past. He had caused that brought ugly problems, but the better question was, could he had done it to this one?

Levian seemed to know almost everything about how the world was ticking, and she had thought it was strange at first to be able to foretell the future.

At first, she thought Levian was joking, but things happened exactly like what he had described as time went by.

Now, ignoring his warning wasn’t something that she would want to push aside.

“It must have been an insider’s job. That’s the only way.”

“It’s possible.”

“I’m eighty percent sure of it.”

“Well, we won’t know until we get out of this dungeon.”

“For sure, Saints.” The man nodded his head vigorously.

“Anyways, you are?” Snow asked, this whole time, she didn’t catch his name.

“Oh!” The young man stood up straight, pushing up his broken glasses. But it wouldn’t stay up for long as it slid back down her face. “Where is my manner? My name is Jay. I work in the city of Gordan, which is south of Atlantis if you didn’t know.”

“I heard of that place. Very quiet and small area.”

“Yes!” Jay said excitedly. “It’s not as big of a city like here, but it’s still quite big. I came to Atlantis for the monthly meeting, but then all this happened.” his shoulder slumped, realizing everything that was happening to him was crashing down on him.

Jay glanced up, then he looked around. “I feel odd to be here like this. It seems the rest of the people that were at the gathering were in the same boat.” He sighed.

“Yes. We should get everybody up and get out of here. We don’t know what else is lurking in this darkness.”

“I understand.” Jay nodded, the power-walked toward the nearest person and helped them up one-by-one.

On the other hand, Snow walked out of the cage to make sure nothing else was crawling around in the darkness and tried to gobble them up. Fighting against one demon was challenging as it was, but luckily she was an existence that was completely opposite of a demon. Her powers gave her a huge edge that she needed to fight them.

Luckily for her, the power of light was continually getting stronger. The defeat of that one demon uplifted her magical power. She wondered if this was the same case when she continued fighting against other demons.

Time slowly ticked by, Jay was finished rounding everyone up. They were still disheveled and confused at their surroundings, but everyone understood what was going on.

From their count, most of the group was priests or priestesses, and the other half were security guards employed by them.

“Which way, Saintess,” Jay asked. He was nervously shifting, but his gaze on her was filled with expectations.

Snow started walking toward the direction that she was heading to-- back to the center.

The others quickly fell in line, matching her steps.

Nobody wanted to be left behind, especially in the darkness. Many of them created their own stream of lights. It quickly became a large number of lights that followed behind hers like a river.

Everything became much easier to see, and Snow noticed a stark difference in the area. The deeper they went, the more rocks on the wall were developed and had a particular style. Almost as if it was purposely carved with architecture design.

Slowly, but surely, the walls and the ground were littered with small mushrooms and plants that illuminated its own light.

Whispers of words could be heard behind her. She keyed in on, and the others were useless babble, but what caught her attention the most was the constant chatter of the word Pope.