"She looks just like Kallista..." remarked Lenore in my head. I was blinking in shock at the unexpected being in the cage before me. The locking mechanism was quite simple; without the enchantment on the cage, the dryad might have escaped on her own. Opening the door did stop the enchantment but the dryad was still out of it for a time. I pulled her out of the cage and asked Ylva to wait until she started moving. With that done, I moved to the other cages, opening them and taking various animals out, pretty much anything from winter hares to elk and even a tiger were caged here.

There was still a sacrifice on the altar so I pulled the wolf off, healed it up a bit and placed it close to the others.

With Ylva watching over them, I started my sabotage of the complex magic formation. I was pretty much flying on a wing and a prayer, using intuition, Lenore's sight and sheer ignorance, believing that I would be able to do what I wanted with my Dark and Blood-Magic. There were no runes, so that part of me only helped with an intuitive grasp of the magic I was messing with, no true information.

Breaking the grounding, two sturdy channels into the earth around the ziggurat that would only start taking in power when a certain strength was reached, was easy; simply break the connection and watch the channels unravel in a low hum of escaping power.

When I was done, Ylva called me over, the first animals were stirring. Unsurprisingly, the first to snap out of the magical stupor were the tiger and a large elk.

Using Lenore's gift of understanding, I spoke “Please, don't be alarmed, I don't mean you harm. If you wait for a bit, there will be a distraction to cover our escape.”

Both looked at me with understanding but neither answered with anything I could understand, even with Lenore's gift. I looked around and saw that the rest was lucid enough to have heard and understood me and the dryad looked at me confused.

“What...? Who are you?” she asked, blinking away her confusion.

“Name's Morgana. I was asked to help those caught here by a friend of mine. Maybe you would want to meet her, you could accompany my group and me for a few days, I believe it would be a good idea.” I told her.

Leaving her to fully wake up, I went and pulled the still sleeping guards from outside into the temple, using magic to make sure they stayed asleep. With my sacrifices collected, I had to shore up the dam, making sure that it would last about five minutes with the life force of six nymphs collected behind it as I planned to channel the two amber crystals I had in my athame into it as well. Looking at the decay, at the low level it would last for a while but the stronger pressure of more power should make it decay swiftly. I went back to the former sacrifices and told them my plan.

The dryad was back on her feet, albeit a bit shaky. “I thank you. My name is Adra, I would like to take your offer. Travelling alone has been rather unpleasant.” Her tone and look were far from the excitement I expected from someone who had been caged and waiting to be drained on an altar. Well, maybe she would warm up a bit after we got out of here.

With my sacrifices prepared, I sneaked to the edge of the temple-area, scouting a good exit path. There was a small gap in the hedges close to the water, sadly the hedges were lined with more web-like spell formations, giving me pause. Still, I was able to carefully construct an ice-bridge over the water, giving me a swift path out of here.

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Back at the altar, it was time to complete the sabotage. I had thought the next part over and over and hoped it would work like I wanted it to. The magical construction of the dam looked practical, easily up to containing the power of a normal sacrifice, stronger by far than the lake-like buffer they had. But I was able to strengthen the buffer by adding my own blood-runes into it. I wasn't sure if the hodgepodge of magic would work the way I wanted but after adding the runes to the buffer and adding a slowly unravelling weave of darkness and blood to the dam, I hoped that my instinct was guiding me right.

Now or never, it was time.

Using Ice-Runes I fitted a tight gag over the first nymph while in the same moment piercing her spine, drawing blood and breaking the nerve-connection between her brain and her body, making sure that she was both unable to move and unable to scream. Even her nose was closed up, making sure there was no noise. With one hand on the altar and the other on her neck, I drew on my blood magic, not gently or even with focus on efficiency but with a brutal directness, simply ripping her vitality out of her and feeding it into the sacrificial magic formation. It took me about a minute to rip the last shreds of life from her and amongst involuntary muscle contractions the nymph perished. Moving to the next, I repeated the process, causing all four nymphs to expire in short order. Looking at the almost overflowing buffer, I placed the two pieces of ember-looking life-force on the altar and watched the weave that held the dam together slowly unravel.

At the rate I had maybe a minute for the weave to unravel, then the power would rush into the crystal and hopefully wreck havoc. With a look to Ylva, I asked her to tell Sigmir to get ready to run, our fire-attack would not be necessary.

“Come on, let's get out of here.” I told the animals and the dryad before moving over to the apple-trees. Shortly after I arrived, I felt the magic weave I had placed to hold the dam rip apart. The next moment, I was blown ass over tea kettle when a magical shockwave ripped through the air, destroying the flows of magic around me and blasting apart the complicated enchantments. My insane idea had apparently worked like a charm. I started taking apples with both hands when the other shoe dropped, making the shock wave seem like a mild breeze in comparison. A sudden pressure assaulted me, bringing with it nausea and vertigo and causing me to break out in cold sweat.

I looked over my shoulder to the source of the pressure and almost lost my dinner. Between the dark crystal I had just blown up and the light crystal, a rainbow out of magical energy visible to the naked eye had formed, the different colours clashing with each other, scattering sparks of colourful light into the air.

In the middle at the highest point, however, was a shimmering, similar to the light of a mirage and a strange mottled greyness spread out. It looked like a rip in reality itself, and out of that rip tentacles were oozing out, spreading the pressure and profound sense of wrongness I was feeling. It reminded me of the Nethersprite we had fought before, only amplified by a few orders of magnitude. A short moment of mental calculations told me that I had gathered eight apples and there was nothing holding me here.

I took of running, all thoughts of stealth forgotten, now only speed counted. The former sacrifices and I were running across the green space and I was absent-mindedly wondering just what I had unleashed here. The temperature was already plummeting around me when I reached the opening. There was noise disturbing the nightly silence now, strange garbled cries of the invading entity contrasting the commanding shouts, pained cries and shouted incantations of the defenders.

I took a moment to look back and saw brilliant flares of magic impacting the tentacles, trying to force the being back into the crack.

Well, not my circus, not my monkeys.

With that thought in mind, I made it over the ice-bridge, following Ylva into the dark, looking for Sigmir. As the various animals scattered into the dark, the rescued dryad, Adra, was following me, looking aghast but following me nonetheless. I guess any place was better than a city that was currently warring with a giant Nethersprite. In the darkness in front of me, I heard more of the strange cries the Nethersprites gave off, and could not wait to meet up with Sigmir. Just as I thought that, the large shape of Hringur became visible in the dark, guided by Sigmir to rendezvous with us.

The moment Sigmir reached us, Adra materialized a small, dancing light, just bright enough to see a little. Sigmir took a single look at her while taking Ylva into her Hallow, before offering her a hand-up to ride behind her. In the meantime, I had taken out my own command crystal and summoned Elding beside me and mounted her.

I took a last look at Tegi, seeing the rip in reality slightly larger than before and even more tentacles flailing around. With a strong sense of “Nope, not my problem”, Sigmir and I asked our mounts to get us out of here.