I hadn’t been expecting the darkness. It shouldn’t have been like that at eight in August. But then it got light really quick, and it shouldn’t have been like that at eight in August either.

The light was coming from a swirling, billowing mass of luminescent cloud high in the nave above me. There were half-formed shapes in there. I started to realise that the things with too many arms hadn’t just been my imagination.

There was movement beneath the cloud too. Across the bare, chalk-circled floor of the church, a man in a blood-red coat had raised his hand to his struggling minions. A green, glowing cord of pure energy rose to meet them. He cast a glance back over his shoulder at me, and as he pocketed his Nokia he smirked, the dark shadows of the corners leaping to curl in his sallow cheeks.

Smartarse twat.

Deep down, I’d like to think, I knew I didn’t need a plan all along. I was a Boro lad through and through. My body knew what to do.

I charged forward and landed him a good one in his stomach as he turned to face me.

“Oof!” he went, and sank to the floor, smudging the mystic scribblings. The cloud disappeared at once. Normal light for eight in August came back.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

The clatter of wood on stone thumped through the murk as he collapsed. I peered past what looked like a big black shard of obsidian at the back of the nave. Two doors had been thrown almost off their hinges on either side. Two priests or whatever posh names they had for themselves rushed through, raising crackling staffs towards me as they came. I headbutted one, took his weapon as he fell, and cracked the other one in his kneecap. He went down too, rolling onto his back to stare longingly at the ceiling. But nothing came to help him.

I wasted no time waiting for the spooks to get me. I charged through one door and found a little storeroom with a big chest of odds and sods stuffed in all messily, as if ready to be taken away in a bit of a hurry. I rummaged through with shaking hands. No key.

I crossed the darkening nave to the other side. The three cultists were motionless. There was another chest in the other room, and just as many keys as in the first. I charged back out, my footsteps echoing maddeningly in the gloom. Still, no-one else came at me.

Behind the jagged altar, I found a staircase beneath an old rotting trapdoor. A crackling light loomed up from beneath. I went down, baying for blood.

Only shelves of dusty old spellbooks down there. Not even any porn, which I was a bit miffed about seeing as I was in a clubhouse for dirty old men. Also: a furnace, for warming aged bones or burning remains I didn’t want to think. Also: no key.

So, they’d had time to transfer the seal then. That would explain all the candles and cogs and bronze devices packed away for hiding. And that left me with a rock hard puzzle, right? Where was the seal?

Did it bloody matter? I just shoved everything down the hatch. Then I shoved it all in that great big furnace.

Man of action, remember?

After it was all in, I sat and waited. I tried to flick through a couple of books but it was all in foreign. I didn’t know if I was waiting for some other dickhead to come out mumbling charms at me or for some genie to appear in a puff of smoke, shake my hand for freeing Tim and whisk me away to a lovely cosy little tavern in another dimension to imbibe the nectar of the gods.

Whatever I expected to happen, it didn’t.

My back was killing me, so I did a bit more waiting, then I heaved myself up the stairs and poked my head out into the echoing quiet of the church.

“Is that it then?”