BT II - Chapter 24 (Patreon)

“But I’m boooooored,” Esther’s voice echoed into the cave.  “Micah’s been in there for days poking that sleeping lady, and only Ravi and Leeka are allowed to go hunting.”

“Be quiet,” Eris hissed back. “If Drekt hears you complaining, he’ll just make us spar again.  Maybe if we can find Trevor he’ll have something for us to do.  He can usually find a way to keep himself amused no matter where we are.”

“I want to talk to Micah though!”  Esther whined, prompting Micah to close the Ageless Folio and stand up.  “He has the best stories, and plus, even if we have to spend all of our free time training, he knows a lot more about magic than Drekt.  We’ll probably learn more from him anyway.”

Micah sighed, surveying the cave.  He’d enchanted a couple of natural quartz crystals to glow, crude approximations of magelights, but still better than the smoke and soot produced by torches, even if he managed to find a way to source enough pitch to make them.

Of course, there was a reason beyond aesthetics that magic users preferred magelights.  The byproducts from a fire, even a small one, would interfere with the careful calculations that went into a higher level ritual.  Simpler matters like a short-range teleportation beacon or a basic enchantment could proceed without controlling for those sorts of variables, but with anything complicated a sterile environment was a must.

His gaze settled on the still unconscious body of the Bishop, and Micah’s mouth twisted into a grimace.  Unfortunately, things were nothing if not complicated.

Even after a week of experimentation and low level rituals to inspect the woman’s soul, Micah was struggling to comprehend the damage done to her by the third prince’s ritual.  It was almost like the daemon had ripped off pieces of other beings' souls, inscribed abilities into them with glowing green runes, and then sewn them into the Bishop.

Micah doubted that the prince actually cared about the damage done by its additions, but the picture was fairly stark.  Silver energy, the very essence of the woman’s soul, oozed out of the stitchwork that connected the pieces together.  Worse, some of the new additions were turning a dull gray, almost as if they were festering, threatening to poison the healthy parts of the soul as they died and rotted while bound to it.

He was getting closer though.  As far as Micah could tell, the intricate runes he’d carved into the ground in three concentric circles around the woman’s unconscious body should do the trick.  The first layer should preserve her soul, preventing further damage while the second and third carefully removed the stitched on additions and disposed of them, using the energy in the soulmatter to crudely seal the wounds caused by the initial surgery.

It had taken a week, but Micah was as close as he was going to get.  Looking at the writhing green inscriptions on the Bishop’s soul for more than a couple seconds at a time gave him a migraine.  There was something unnatural about them, the way their curving shapes mimicked the flowing mists of Elsewhere was uncanny.

Worse still, there was almost nothing in any of Micah’s carefully transcribed records on ritual magic that even began to resemble them.  He had almost all of the Pereston Royal Academy books on the subject, rewritten word for word in the Ancient Folio, along with any number of texts he had sought out in the intervening years.  It would be very fair to consider his collection on the subject one of the most complete in all of Karell.  Despite that, he couldn’t even find proto-runes or theoretical texts that hinted at the magical constructs engraved on the Bishop’s soul.

Without testing, there was no way to know for sure what exactly the complex and interwoven runic structures would do.  Micah was able to put together some educated guesses into what the mystery scripting meant, and his ritual circles were extrapolated from those inferences.  Still, given how precise ritual magic needed to be, inferences and extrapolation were dangerous prospects.  Micah had reinforced the circles so that a failure would most likely only lead to the ritual fizzling out, but he couldn’t help but remember what the gods had said.  The third prince itself managed to tear its way onto Karell during a failed ritual.

“Esther!” He called out, smiling at the sudden yelp from the mouth of the cave.

“Oh no,” Eris hissed.  “He heard you.  Now he’s going to get Drekt and make us train for hours.  This is all your fault.”

“Not it isn’t,” Esther said heatedly.  “Micah’s usually buried so deeply in his books that it doesn’t matter.  We’ve had loud conversations out here at least a half dozen times before this without any reaction.  He probably heard you chastising me.”

“Esther!”  Micah yelled again, impatience seeping into his voice.  “Quit dawdling and get Trevor.  We’ve been cooling our heels in the woods for long enough.  There isn’t much more to gain by me fretting and chewing on my finger nails.  It’s about time that we try something and hope for the best.”

“Do you mean that we’re finally going to leave?”  She shouted back excitedly.  “That we’re finally done hiding out here in the woods with nothing to do?”

“Get Trevor and we’ll find out,” Micah replied walking out of the cave.  He nodded at Eris as his niece shook her head at Esther’s antics, frizzy hair bobbing back.  “Actually performing the ritual will light our hideout up like a bonfire on a still night.  The rest of you are going to need to be ready if anyone arrives to free the bishop.”

He cocked his head, brow furrowing before Micah finished his thought.

“Or kill her honestly.  I wouldn’t be surprised if the third prince sent someone to finish her off before she could talk.  It seems a little more its style than a rescue wagon.”

“I’ll run and get dad,” Eris said, spinning around and running off while Esther practically jumped from foot to foot.

“Does that mean we’ll get to fight something?”  Esther asked excitedly.  “The last week was so boring, and before that the only fight we had was against that Bishop lady and she cheated by knocking us all out.”

“What makes you think that anyone new who shows up won’t just knock you out all over again?”  Micah replied, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.  “If she had that ability, there are probably at least a couple more forgotten that can do the same thing.  Fighting isn’t about being fair Esther, it’s about scoping out the extent of your opponent’s abilities.  Rather than worrying about making the fight fair, we should focus on evening the odds by getting some advantage of our own.  If we could find a way to kill our opponents without letting them see us or strike back, we would do it in a second.”

Esther kicked a rock, watching it clatter off of a rock wall before disappearing into the cave’s depths.  She crossed her arms before looking back at Micah, a hint of a sulking frown on her face.

“Killing people that couldn’t fight back wouldn’t be fun,” she mumbled.  “Even if I get the experience from it, I don’t feel like I’m learning how to fight better when I beat someone that can’t fight back.  There’s nothing to push me and I just end up toying with them.  I might get faster and stronger when I level up, but I don’t actually get better.”

Micah chuckled, clapping her on the back of her left shoulder as Trevor approached, Eris in tow.  Leaning in, he whispered to his sister.

“If you weren’t feeling challenged, you should have told me.  I picked up a new summon while I was wandering around the jungle.  Once we get a minute, I’ll let Eris and you try your hands at it.”

Almost immediately, Esther perked up and Micah had to bite back another laugh.  Mentally he made a note to never let Trevor bring the girl out gambling.  She’d lose all of her attunement in an hour if she tried any game that involved bluffing.

“Hey Micah,” Trevor called out, waving cheerfully.  Despite days of admonishment from both Drekt and Micah to keep his voice down, Micah was unsurprised to hear Trevor talking at full volume.  “Eris said you needed to talk to me about something?”

Micah strangled a complaint before replying.  Trevor being overly casual with their security wasn’t welcome, but it also wasn’t exactly new.  It wasn’t terribly serious, but at the same time, Micah knew that he would have to choose his battles.  If he got into it with his brother now, that would be the rest of his afternoon.

“I’m ready to begin the ritual Trevor, do you remember where I set up the defensive positions?”

“Of course,”  Trevor answered, gesturing with his spear at six wide piles of dirt and leaves arranged in a semicircle around the cave mouth.  “As long as we stay in those, that knockout mist won’t hurt us, right?”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Micah said uncomfortably.  “I’m pretty sure that it will protect you, but really, I can’t promise anything until I know more about how all of this works.  At a very minimum, it’ll slow the mist’s effect.”

“Good enough for me,” Trevor replied happily.  “As long as I can still cast spells at the bad guys, I can contribute.  I know Drekt has been meditating a lot.  He says it’ll strengthen his soul enough to withstand the attacks.  Who knows, maybe it will?  I just know that every time I try, I end up getting bored and distracted.  It’s really hard to become one with nature when there’s so much going on outside.”

“Then grab everyone and get them into position,” Micah responded, turning and walking toward the cave.  “I’ll start the ritual in ten minutes.  I don’t know if the third prince is going to throw its entire army at us or ignore us altogether, but you’ll need to be prepared for anything.  Remember, the circles I made will probably help you, but who knows what other abilities the daemon has crafted that can attack the soul.  I’d suggest focusing on mobility and not getting hit rather than counting on your HP to survive an attack.”

“Try not to get shot by daemon fire,” Trevor said.  Even without seeing his brother’s face, Micah could tell by the overexaggerated tone of his voice that Trevor was winking at his back.  “Got it Bro.  I’ll get everyone and tell them to avoid enemy attacks.”

Micah just shook his head as he walked through the dim lighting of the cave toward the Bishop’s body.  Just before the platform containing the ritual circles, Micah stopped, reaching into a crevice with both hands to pull out a  comatose badger.

The graying creature was a little bigger than Eris.  At some point it had evolved and begun to grow far beyond the bounds of an ordinary magical creature.  Ordinarily, Micah wouldn’t have used an intelligent beast like the badger, but desperate times called for desperate measures.  Theoretically the ritual shouldn’t harm the creature, after all he was going to power the circles with temporal transfer, but at the same time, it didn’t feel right to keep the poor animal unconscious and restrained while he figured things out.

For a handful of minutes he sat here, idly petting the animal while his friends got into position.  It had taken Leeka a couple of days to track it down.  The badger was nearing the end of its life and apparently it hadn’t taken the huntress much to capture it after she found it, but once again part of Micah couldn’t help but feel upset that they were forced to disturb the animal as it lived out its waning days.

He plopped the sleeping animal down on the outside of the ritual circles, muttering the words to temporal transfer before touching its forehead with one finger and the outside of the runes with another.  Micah winced as a spark of energy leapt from the immobile creature, passing through his body and into the circle.  One by one, the sigils sprang to life.  Blood red symbols erupted into flame, hissing and spitting as the energy coursing through them interacted with the air’s ambient moisture.

Then, the next layer of circles lit up.  Deep blue runes, carved in a flowing script that Micah had modified from the figure’s he had found inscribed on the Bishop’s soul.  As soon as they were finished, the final layer of the ritual circle flickered into being.  Intricate letters carved from green energy ignited simultaneously.

A low keening howl filled the chamber as Micah’s hair was blown and tousled by a gust of wind centered on the ritual circle.  He opened the Ancient Folio to his notes.  Micah began reciting the words to the casting, skin pricking as unseen eyes settled on him.  He didn’t know where the third prince was, but it was watching him, seething.

The air in the cavern grew stifling hot as temporal energy surged from the sleeping badger into the ritual circle.  A moment later, a pulse of icy air rushed outward from the comatose Bishop.  The first circle burned brighter, overshadowing the quartz magelights scattered about the cave in a fraction of a second.

Micah shielded his eyes against the glare, twisting his throat to repeat the eldritch phrases in the Folio.  The Bishop began to stir in the circle as the effects of the ritual on her soul eroded the magic he’d laid on her to keep her docile.

He tossed three rings of copper, interwoven with a sprig of holly and a rod of bronze, into the center of the ritual.  A net of green light caught it, holding it in the air above the increasingly restive woman.

With a slashing motion from Micah’s hand, one of the rings shattered, and the circle was suffused with emerald light.  The Bishop screamed, her body contorting into the fetal position even as the second layer of runes began to glow brighter, sending snakes of azure light into the sphere of green energy.

Micah flipped a page in the Ageless Folio.  His throat ached from the strange sounds demanded of him, but he continued anyway.  Outside the cave, Trevor was shouting something, but Micah didn’t have time to figure out what because the Bishop had burst into flames.

Sweat poured down his back as Micah focused on the woman with his Arcana skill.  Piece by piece, the ritual was separating her soul into its component parts, and her essence was pouring out of the open wounds caused by that amputation.  Tendrils of blue magic were reaching in, trying and mostly succeeding in their efforts to stem the flow.  Still, almost a tenth of the energy fleeing her soul managed to escape, bursting into sharp green flame the moment it escaped her core.

With a grunt, and a shouted alien word, Micah clenched his left hand into a fist.  The second hovering ring shattered and the snakes of blue magic merged with the green sphere, transforming the pulsing egg of magic into the color of the sea.

The final ritual circle screeched to life in a spray of red sparks.  The Bishop sobbed openly as the magic stretched her body taut.  Blood red claws lunged in from the circle, grasping the trailing edges of the green flame surrounding her and tearing at them.

In Micah’s Arcana vision, the red limbs separated out the stitched together pieces of soulstuff, and began to devour them.  He focused as best he could, aching throat moving on autopilot as he watched how the alien runes inscribed on the Bishop’s soul flared and fought back against the ritual.

Voices whispered at the edge of Micah’s hearing, promising and threatening him in turn in a language he couldn’t quite understand.  Even as they wheedled and cajoled, Micah pushed deeper, pouring his focus into the crimson arms as they deconstructed the Bishop.

Finally, the last chunk of modified soul was plucked from her core, the wounds seared shut by the final circle while the first and second soothed and preserved the gasping and twitching woman.  He snapped the Folio shut, a satisfied smile on his face as Micah reached down to terminate the connection between the ritual and the badger.

The creature was noticeably younger, barely bigger than a normal wild animal after having donated so much of its temporal energy to the ritual.  Micah pressed his index and pointer finger to its fur whispering the words to temporal transfer in order to end the spell.

He yanked his hand back as if burned.  The red final circle flared, almost blinding him.  Both the badger and the Bishop arched their backs at the same moment, screeching together in a chorus of agony.

Micah reached out with his mind, but his connection to the ritual and the badger were severed.  With Arcana, he could see what was happening, but at some point the new runes he’d added to remove the third prince’s influence had taken on a life of their own.  Once again the distant voices whispered, cajoling and prodding at the edge of Micah’s hearing.

The three circles pulsed, beating like a heart as the badger shrank, sapped of its temporal energy.  Before his eyes, its fur fell off revealing a small cub.  It stared at Micah, its eyes filled with fear as it grew even younger.  Then its eyes closed as it regressed past infancy.

Only when the badger disappeared entirely, shrinking and morphing as it turned into a fetus before curling up into itself, only then did the ritual stop.  The rainbow of lights from the circles cut out like a snuffed candle the instant they ran out of temporal power, draping the entire cave in the comparative darkness of the handful of magelights.

Micah blinked against the sudden dark, eyes working rapidly as he tried to return them to some sense of functioning.  Roughly in the direction of the ritual circles, he heard a pained moan.

“He-Hello?” A woman asked, voice trembling.  “Where am I?  What’s-  The last thing I remember Andrea was bringing me into the basement of a pub, saying there was something she had to show me, what’s happening?”