Elean groaned as she woke up. Grease stained her face from the salted antelope haunch she’d somehow managed to eat almost in its entirety before practically drowning herself in sweet, fresh water from the aquifer that burbled through the back corner of the small cave network that made up her primary ‘home’. Like any good and experienced Sentinel, she didn’t keep all of her supplies here. There was no aspect of the Compulsion or even of the Sentinel community that forbid sneakily making off with another’s stash, so long as you weren’t caught. Hadn’t she raided more than a few laxly hidden stores herself?
Her mentor had taught her quite well that the only way to preserve your resources was to hide them well and in as many different places as possible, like the ground squirrels that were rife in the Inner lands, burying their spoils in the ground only to find them again in the spring. It didn’t matter who’s buries supplies you found in the spring, finders keepers was the natural way of the squirrel. Such was also an unspoken rule of the Sentinels.
With a loud belch, Elean rolled to her hands and feet and looked at the almost stripped piece of meat that should have been a week of food for her. She took a few more bites before returning it to hang in the small room she used for curing. The salts she’d traded pelts and meat for with the Inner lands. The smoking process was a tricky one, less because it was complicated and more because another Sentinel might see the smoke from even beyond the horizon and come to investigate.
What time was it…? It was nearly dark outside. A quick consult of the Network told her there still had been no intrusion by the Summons or anything else that required her attention. Most of the life of a Sentinel was spent with nothing official to do beyond just stay alive. She was used to it. If something that was flagged as urgent were to occur, it would wake her up through the connection, setting off her Compulsion and driving her to address it immediately.
It was just the next day. She’d slept for almost one day, but her Life was just about fully restored, which meant she could hazard another attempt to read the warning in the tome. It was strange though, she was so groggy, not like she’d overslept but more like something had woken her up in the middle of deep sleep. What was it?
Feeling with her Mana, she didn’t immediately identify anything amiss. Maybe there was a tiny flicker of something… nothing tangible though. Not even a sense of direction or the nature of whatever it was. She searched around since her Storage pack had been discarded somewhere, eventually finding it. Digging around in the space that was larger inside than outside, her hand finally found the little tome. Grumbling to herself, she set it aside and then set about cleaning up. First the trash was removed from her pack and three days of emergency supplies stuffed inside. It might be bigger on the inside, but it wasn’t that big. Mostly it was a very small pack that didn’t impede her movements.
Plus mass was mass, it weighed the same as what was put inside, and she kept a spare long knife, a small back of charcoal, a set of minimal light leather armor, and a few sets of spare underclothes in there. It was pretty packed already and could barely fit two waterskins and a half dozen biscuits and some sheaves of antelope jerky. Even still it could barely be closed with all of that in it, the draw string holding back the contents only just.
Then she went about preparing to clean herself. She had grease all over her face and her tunic. This just wouldn’t do, if only because it would degrade the materials, she would need to wash this out…
Wait. Her heart almost stopped for a moment as the tingling she’d been subconsciously ignoring intensified. Her Mana reached out and still found nothing really awry but… but this feeling was just like that of the Essence in the tome. Cursing, she grabbed the tome and tied it up in a cloth, securing it tightly inside the breast of her clothes where it wouldn’t be dislodged by running. The cool evening air met her face as she exited the cave. The entrance was hidden by a rock similar to the knowledge stash, which she’d stupidly left open. Thankfully none seemed to have discovered it’s location.
Given that the nearest Sentinel might be a full day’s run away, that was no surprise, but she was still paranoid. The rock slid back into place and she didn’t bother to fix the bits of earth or grass that were disturbed by its movement. She would do that later, if there was a later. If there wasn’t… either she would be gone, free of the Talor lands entirely, or she would be dead. Or worse, her very soul damaged or destroyed.
Her heart beat erratically, but she sought to calm herself, focusing on her breathing and breaking into a casual jog. Her enhancement was activated and the thousands of micro-spells started doing their thing, calibrating to her current state and adapting constantly as she increased the pace.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Run as fast as she’d ever run, the grasses swishing as they were magically parted, her passage creating a wind that blasted at her clothes and scoured the skin of her face. Her eyes watered terribly until she remembered to use another spell to create a little shell of air around them. Faster, faster! She had to get there in time to enact the Ritual!
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Warnings be damned, because if she missed this chance, she would be. She ran. It had taken her a little over two hours to traverse the distance the day before. Most of a day the first time as she hadn’t been rushing to investigate the interlopers on the very edge of the Outer lands. Now though? It took her less than an hour. Her muscles were screaming, the enhancement was actively holding some of them together with spells and she’d actually started to leak Life energy from the extend of the damage. The enhancement system was designed to theoretically address this type of damage for combat but she’d never actually stress tested it.
The pseudo-regeneration was holding her together though for the moment and she saw the tree line rush towards her. Slowing down was hard, more mentally than physically, Essence was building up in the area like a static charge during dry lightning storms. She tore through the trees as fast as she dared, the destination lit up to her senses now like a big light spell. It was definitely the Summon’s camp. It still seemed to be gathering, though she was detecting structured weaving and spells of a complexity and raw power that terrified her. She didn’t even begin to understand what these dense patterns meant and most of the symbols were completely foreign, though clearly of the same source as those she was used to.
Elean skidded into the camp and witnessed the four Man staring at her in alarm and confusion, two long lines of fish in various states hung over a heavily smoking fire that was close to dying. Each of them was eating at least some of the meal but they mostly looked terrified. Breathing heavily, heart thundering, enhancement trying to adjust to the combination of shift from heavy exertion to her stop and the fear, she leaned against a tree.
“Sentinel? Sentinel! Was… uhhh was ist es?” She held up a shaky hand. Of course they didn’t feel it. They didn’t realize what was happening. They had no Archives, no Mana. No senses to interface with it.
“Ein… moment… bitte.” She got her breathing under control and they waited, hesitant, concerned. No, more than that, they got together and were ready to protect themselves. “Owl-lan… ich muss einen Magie machen. Es gibt Sie Magie auch. Alle… Sie..” She couldn’t quite recall how to say all of them, but the point seemed to get across. They exploded into rapid chattering conversation in that strange language that sometimes sounded a bit like each of the Summons languages she knew, with words here and there and even what she suspected were some similar grammatic structures, yet it was definitely not something she could follow. Especially not at the speed they discussed.
It only took a few minutes before Alan shouted something and the others looked a bit grumpy but didn’t argue when the fat man turned back to her.
“Ich will Magie haben, aber nür Ich. Wie machen wir dieses… uh… machen?” She winced a bit. It might have been amusing before, their struggle to communicate or the odd behavior and appearance of these Man, but now it was just frustrating.
“Kommen Sie hier, holt meine händen. Es wird… es wird dir weh tun.” Alan frowned and shook his head. He didn’t understand. She repeated it and made a grimace and sound like she was in pain. The group was a bit alarmed, but Alan said something to them and they stood back again. The man held out his hands. They were still coated with juices from the fish he’d been eating, that detail forgotten in her sudden arrival.
“OK, Sentinel.” Elean shook her head. The least she could do is give her name and not her title, given what the Man was about to experience.
“Ich bin Sentinel, ich heiße Elean.”
“Uh… oh! OK, Elean.” The fat man… Owl-lan… smiled at her. She felt selfish. She felt guilty. Even though she would be forced by the Compulsion to kill them otherwise, still she felt deep inside that she was tricking them, taking away the choice in the matter. Not that they had a choice in continuing to live otherwise. They didn’t know. They didn’t understand. The moment they’d set foot in the grassland, they’d been marked for death.
She closed her eyes and accessed her Archive. The spell was there, the Ritual embedded into it as detailed script. The spell structure filled with Mana as she attached it her Nodes, a surprisingly small draw. This part was just creating the Ritual afterall, which already now was scribing itself in glowing blue structures onto the world around them. The Ritual was unlike any she’d seen or read about before, rather than scribing onto a flat plane, it formed into a sphere. Very much like the shape of an Archive, which encircled one’s Soul, one’s core.
Her Archive trembled but held stable. She hadn’t been expecting that… what was it doing to her Archive…? The Essence structures were descending around them and interacting with the Ritual. Several tendrils attached to the empty points for up to three other casters to supply Essence, Mana, or Life. Different, smaller strands attached to the two positions for reagents. One of the strands for a person visibly bulged with so much Essence that Elean was sure it would burst and turn the entire region into a massive crater. The leaf litter started to swirl and blasted out from under their feet like shifting sands. They were lowered almost a foot until the ground grew more solid and they found footing again, though they were wholly unable to move from their positions regardless.
The other Summons had stepped back and were shouting while shielding their faces from the debris flying around. Elean could sense the Essence patterns attaching to them and fusing into their bodies and their Souls. Somehow the ones that were descending to reach Owl-lan were filtering through the Ritual however, being redirected and modified somehow. The partial warning flashed through her thoughts. She didn’t even have a chance to think further on it though, as her Archive was suddenly torn from her Soul and fed into the fire that was the Ritual.
She couldn’t even scream before darkness consumed her.