The shop had some barmy paintings on the walls, along with magical decorations and peculiar tools. Esbamoal, slowly preening his greyish beard, was attending at his own businness when, all in a sudden, a man of about thirty threw open the front door and stepped forwards. Taller than him, garbed in brown, his reddy hair let down, on the wide garment the well known pattern of the Black Order of the Town Mages. Without doubt, he was Bharclow The Enchanter, the fearful academician all the magical shopkeepers knew about.
He looked down at Esbamoal with hatred in his blue weasel eyes"You!You stole my Shadow Servant!"

The podgy retailer couldn’t even ask the question of why. Esbamoal already was aware of the reason because Bharclow was there…

"Now you must pay! Prepare to suffer…" and, that said, the Enchanter’s fingers emitted a yellowish ray highly energized that went across the entire premise.

Esbamoal had only the time to put up a defensive mist which surrounded the entire place, slowed down the blow and made him just get out of its way.

He could have tried to explain to the attacker that it was not his fault or that he had only welcomed the Enchanter’s servant to his shop as he clearly had shown himself willing to become his own new retainer. But that would be of no use. He had only to defend himself, moreover he was to act soon, before it was too late… And now it was his turn!

Esbamoal waved his right hand and the previous mist ceased spreading around and soon started concentrating, wrinkling and decreasing in size, just to keep in the middle the Enchanter’s slender figure who" as he was well experienced" had already figured out what that curious expedient was getting at…

The shopkeeper was well known in town, too, and had to turn out soon to be himself a respected adversary for his opponent, the same Bharclow would have proven to him.

They were both practitioners of the Forbidden Knowledge of Darkness and all of them had done terrible things during their life. Esbamoal was told to be a pilferer of body parts cut from the dead which he used to gather for his own personal agenda( people had it "maybe " for creating an UnDead…) and then got sold all the leftovers the shopkeeper needed no more for his own purposes, while, on the other hand, Bharclow was more infamous among the citizens as he had tried several very cruel experiments on some old slaves bought for less than a gold from a few Desert Traders of ill repute just to purify the blood of some noblemen in bad conditions, for an expensive fee of course, or to extract from their corpses some potions suitable for terrible necromantic deeds…

In a way, that promised to become undoubtedly a difficult match, with an unpredictable result…
"I never stole your Shadow Servant, Bharclow!" the white aired shopkeeper told the attacker, his stiff eyes against Bharclow’s ones.

"That’s false, and you know it! So you got two of them, ready to act at your command, for your interest, as diligent followers of your orders, no matter the days I spent in creating mine which is surely more powerful than yours! But you have to pay for this…- and immediately, by a single show of his hands, the Enchanter caused a series of detonations which began destroying some of the magical decorations here and there.

By chance, no costumer was entering the shop in that moment, so Esbamoal didn’t need to create a front door magical obstruction given the fact that the energy explosions, whose lights were spouting from the glass windows, shoud have prevailed upon all the passers by to keep them away from that dangerous place by then. But the damage made to his store’s merchandise was huge…

So he got set for hitting back at the his ferocious adversary…

In a hidden corner of the shop, shades in the shadow of a woebegone statue, two obscure figures were waiting for the outcome of that fighting…

"And now they are going to battle…" the one on the left ( formerly Bharclow’s Shadow Servant) told the creature on the right.

"So what…?" the other ( all along Esbamoal’s Shadow Servant) soon replied" They are already propriety of the Lord of Darkness, our Master, body and soul, it happened when they devoted themselves to the Forbidden Knowledge and, doing so, they accepted to wear themselves out worshipping the Darkness…"

"This way, anyone wins in the end, he will be our new owner… he will think we will be loyal servants to him, but on the other hand it will be him serving our Lord of Darkness by means of us, using our bodies as his instruments and retainers for his everyday work…"

"Exactly! And the longer he uses us and the more he comes next to our Lord and to his own perdition, so let them fight and see who is going to win today… let the strongest one overbear…"
"Yeah,so the test goes…from unmindful time…"

"we are only shades, created by magic from what remains after a human being’s death just to act as slaves of our creators…" the one on the right added. "But, by nature, as malicious creatures, we tend to be the Shadow Servants of the more powerful master only, in this case the most overpowering between our two owners. Then the best among the other mages after them, and so on…"

"…until we will be property of the most powerful magic user ever in the Realm, as our Lord ordered us and every Shadow Servant created by men all over the world before…"

"That’s the plan, sure thing…Magical Selection…"

"To better serve the Lord of Darkness…"

"To better serve the Lord of Darkness, indeed…"