"Teacher," called the old priest, staring down into the black room hidden beneath his altar. "Our enemies have found us. They approach the city now." A massive wooden cross loomed over the altar that had been pivoted to one side to reveal stairs made of stone and earth. The heavy priest had shoulder length white hair and a thick white beard that hung to his chest. Dark light from the few torches that lined the walls bathed the spartan wooden church in deep shadow that danced on the walls. There were no windows.

A dark figure bowed into the stairwell, silhouetted by a flickering glow from the room beneath. Moving up the stairwell like an incarnate shadow, the specter rose toward the frantic priest. It was too tall to be human and too thin to be alive.

"I am aware," its voice boomed from the stairwell. "My father tells me all things. Our time here grows short." The echo rumbled like distant thunder.

"I worry, Master..."

"Worry not John, for no one can come to me unless my father who sent me draws him to me." Emerging from the shadows, the creature stepped into the light. Yellowed and bloody its robe hung from its sinewy, bat-like body. With leathery black skin and a nose that was flattened to its face, its fingers were far, far too long. Jagged unkept nails protruded from the toes of its skeletal feet. It..he had long white strands hanging from his head and face where hair and beard had once been. Touching a grotesque finger to John's chin the creature tilted his servant's head up. John looked into the eyes of the creature that towered over him, his teacher and master, whose eyes blazed as fire.

"Last time he caught you, Rabbi, you suffered so much."

"It was to be so that you may believe," he replied lovingly. "I am the living one! I was dead, but now I am alive forever." His powerful voice reverberated off of the walls of the old church. "I have authority over death and the world of the dead. We have much to do before our time here is at an end so that others may also believe." He lifted a dagger from the altar with his grotesque fingers and pulled the blade across his wrist. He watched as the thick blood swelled from the cut and held the wound to John's lips.

"Drink of my blood and write what you see for others to read and believe."