“Places, places everyone!”

Arkk and Vezta stood at the very center of the ritual circle. Arkk took the anchor position, the point where the most magic would flow, while Vezta stood in a symbolic spot. She existed less as an active participant in the ritual and more as a simple connection to the beings that brought her to this world as well as the idea from ages past that people could traverse planes as easily as Arkk could hop on a horse-drawn carriage and travel the Duchy. There was a large altar between them, covered in intricate metalwork designed to channel magic this way or that.

As much as Arkk felt he could craft working ritual circles and maybe even design a few aspects himself, staring at the altar boggled his mind. He hadn’t the slightest idea how Zullie and, later, Savren had worked out what was needed. Not to mention how they assembled such a large and complex ritual.

Arkk didn’t want to say that he would be surprised if this worked. That implied a lack of faith in his employees. Still, if they all stood around and nothing happened, he doubted he would be particularly shocked.

There was an undercurrent of fear lingering at the back of his mind. Not that it would work but that he would manage to screw something up. Having spent most of his life blowing up ritual circles—or animals affected by his magic—standing at the very center of this complex, experimental, and even theoretical ritual circle didn’t exactly fill him with feelings of reassurance. Savren and Zullie were here. He doubted they intended to blow themselves up. The pylons jutting up from the waters drew his eye. Four large pylons stood in the water between the bridges. Not high enough to connect to the roof. They were each topped with smaller ritual circles, tangentially connected to the main ritual via thin wires.

“Those weren’t in the original design,” Arkk had commented upon first seeing them in the small model.

“Magic bleeders,” Zullie had answered. “We weren’t sure about the level of magic you or Agnete would output but, anticipating too much, we’ve decided to err on the side of caution and add magic bleeders into the array. If the level of magic increases beyond safe levels, the excess will be channeled into the pylons where smaller arrays will disperse the magic safely.”

Arkk had nodded along. “They were absent from the original design because you wanted to overpower it anyway.”

“The original design was made before Agnete was a consideration,” Zullie had said with a shrug, “but yes, there wasn’t any concern then.”

So they had some precautions. Nothing should blow up today. Still…

The real reassurance was knowing that he could teleport himself and all his employees instantly should something go wrong. The bandits wouldn’t be safe but… Callous as it was to say, Arkk didn’t feel nearly so conflicted about leaving them behind.

Savren and Zullie were the only two who weren’t in position, as far as he could tell. They were running around the room, making sure that everyone else hadn’t stepped out of their spots in the time it took for everyone to get settled. They were all standing up, some looking quite a bit more nervous now than they had been during the meeting earlier.

He spotted one bandit out of position, having stepped forward to peer down into the smooth silvery water. Arkk was about to yell at him to get back but Zullie saw him first, grabbed him by the shoulder, and wrenched him back. She promptly started chewing him out. “What did I say? Don’t touch the water, don’t move, don’t even breathe. Do you want to be the one explaining to your boss why we had to cancel to find a replacement? My boss isn’t going to be happy with your boss if that happens.”

Noticing that they were looking in his direction, Arkk glared. A faint red light reflected off the silvery water—odd because it didn’t reflect anybody. He maintained the glare for just a moment, making sure that the bandit noticed, before glancing aside with a small smile.

“Enjoying yourself?”

“More than I should,” Arkk admitted to Vezta. “I look forward to the day I can get them out of my fortress. It just feels… dangerous to have them around. Throwing a little weight around, making sure they know who they’re dealing with, that does feel nice.”

“I have to say, it is an unconventional situation. Most Keepers in the past would never have allowed potential enemies so close to their [HEART].”

“After that little stunt one of them pulled trying to get into the treasury, I did make up some extra security features in the hallway outside both rooms. Lesser servants are standing by, ready to drop anyone who approaches either door down a large pit. Beyond that, we should be able to handle any ideas that they might get. You, me, and Agnete.”

“For the majority, I agree. Some of them, those here, possess magic that is harder to plan around. While we could handle them, I’ve no doubt, I do worry about potential damage to your [HEART] before we can react. Seeing the gremlin’s stealth spells makes me worried.”

“Ah, damage to the Heart would be a concern if we were playing host to someone like Inquisitor Vrox. Thieves, however, are going to be less inclined to immediately attack a magical artifact. They’ll want to steal it. Assuming the piles of gold surrounding it don’t draw their eyes first.” Arkk shook his head. “I’m more concerned about a knife in my back while walking through the hallways.”

“Master, someone of your status doesn’t walk through hallways.”

“Not since inviting them here, that’s for sure,” Arkk said with a sardonic chuckle. He continued looking around the room, making sure that nobody else was causing problems. His gaze landed on Hale.

The young spellcaster looked nervous, shuffling her feet and rubbing her hands while looking around the room with ill-disguised awe. She wore a relatively nice dress that the tailor servant had made. It was simple, like most everything the servant crafted, but still leagues nicer than anything someone from Langleey would have worn. Arkk couldn’t help but feel like she looked out of place here.

Agnete, eyes glowing and face stoic, stood opposite from Hale, wearing an outfit fashioned after her old inquisitor uniform, a long coat with several straps holding it closed across her chest. In comparison to Hale, she looked perfectly at ease. Maybe even a little irritated with how long Savren and Zullie were taking.

Having a sudden thought, Arkk teleported Zullie straight to him. The witch stumbled but was used to moving around enough that she quickly caught herself.

“Problem?” she snapped, lips tight and tone terse. “If not, I’ll thank you to leave me to my job. This is stressful enough without—”

“I just wanted to ask about Hale.”

“Hale?” Zullie quirked an eyebrow, turning her head to look over the bridge. “What’s wrong with her?”

“You did tell her what she needs to do, right?”

“It’s just like activating a ritual circle. Let your magic flow.”

“I know that. Does Hale? Or did you assume she already knew?”

Zullie crossed her arms over her chest, glaring over the top rim of her glasses. Notably, she didn’t say anything. That did not reassure Arkk in the slightest.

“Go remind her,” Arkk said with a small sigh. “And do be nice about it.”

“Nice? I’m always—”

Arkk teleported her away before she could finish, dropping her off right at Hale’s side. The younger girl let out a small yelp, hopping aside before realizing who was there. Zullie shot Arkk one more glare, which he returned with a light wave of his hand, before bending at the waist to speak to Hale.

“Will she be alright?” Vezta asked, watching them as well.

“Hale? Or Zullie?”

“Both,” Vezta said with a light chuckle. “Mostly the smaller of the two.”

“Zullie says her magical capacity is surprisingly high for someone who wasn’t taken to an academy as a child. Honestly, I’m more worried about the bandits. According to Zullie, none of them have a formal education. They all just stumbled through magic, teaching each other rituals and spells. Not often very successfully. Lexa says that everyone had their spells that they kept secret from the others, not wanting their usefulness usurped. It wasn’t uncommon for some to try to sabotage others. Likely by teaching them bad practices.”

Vezta shook her head, touching her brow with her fingertips. “Something of a mess, isn’t it?”

“Nervous?” Arkk asked. “I am. But I’m excited as well. Like… What if this works? War aside, casting great magic like this is something I dreamed of when I first started blowing up my ritual circles. I mean, not exactly like this, but—”

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“Arkk,” Savren called out, now standing at his position in the ritual circle. “I’ve accomplished assessment and appraisal of all our allies. Awaiting your adjuration.”

Waving a hand to show his acknowledgment, Arkk turned to find Zullie hurrying past several of the ritualists, moving from Hale’s position back to her own. As soon as she arrived, she opened her mouth to call out as well only to notice Arkk watching. With a huff, she nodded her head.

Arkk took a breath, flashing a smile at Vezta. “This is it.”

“I eagerly await the outcome.”

Humming, Arkk raised his voice. “Alright. We’re beginning. Listen for Savren and Zullie’s callouts.” With one last sweeping look around the chamber, Arkk knelt and planted a hand in the designated spot.

“Arkk,” Zullie called out from across the water. “Start slow. Ready when you are.”

Arkk nodded and began pushing magic into the ritual array. Just a touch at first. Like he had done before finding Fortress Al-Mir. The tiny scraps of magic he pushed into the circle were more prodding than proper flowing as he worked to make sure nothing was amiss.

“Good. Increase output slowly.”

Arkk obeyed, moving from his careful probe into a more proper flow, much like he might do if he were powering a regular ritual array. The large altar in front of him began to glow. Slowly at first; his magic took its time to weave through the interlaced diagrams of metal. It accelerated as he turned up the flow rate of his magic, flooding through the altar array. With a slight popping of his eardrums, the entire altar thrummed with a low violet light.

“Hold. Maintain output but don’t increase any further,” Zullie called out. “Alright, stabilizers! Your turn. We’re starting with the four closest to me and Savren. That’s me and the idiot opposite from me in case you lot haven’t been paying attention.”

“Simply sluice the sigils set before you,” Savren added, speaking a little quieter as he looked to the two bandits at either side.

Arkk kept his head down, eying the array to make sure the intensity of the glow didn’t increase or decrease. At the same time, he could peer throughout the room using his total knowledge of Fortress Al-Mir. In sort of a double-vision, he kept monitoring the altar while also watching the ritual arrays around the bandits light up as they followed directions. Their purpose here didn’t require anything quite so complex as the altar around them. It was more like, should someone’s magic output dip for any reason, their magic would make their way through the ritual circle to steady it out until the original caster could correct their error.

Even with only the four active, as soon as some of the light made its way across the bridges and to the central altar, Arkk found himself relaxing. It wasn’t quite as strenuous to maintain the exact level of magic output that he had been when Zullie called for him to hold.

“Excellent. Alright, Hale, Agnete. You’re up. Take it slow at first. Steady. Breathe, Hale. You’re fine.”

Turning his attention to the youngest person in the ritual circle, he watched as Hale clenched her fists. Her hair, tied into two long ponytails on either side of her head, wafted about her shoulders in a way that normally would have required a fairly stiff breeze. The levels of magic in the air, continually rising as the ritual went on, charged the currents with enough energy that magic alone held her hair against the forces of gravity.

The smaller rituals atop the pylons in the water were slowly brightening, their intensity helping to illuminate the room. Arkk wondered if he should pull back somewhat only to shake his head. Neither Zullie nor Savren had said to stop. Everything must be going according to plan.

Hale took a deep three breaths, eyes scrunched shut, before she slammed her hand down on the platform. The components around her feet immediately lit up with a bright violet.

“Slower, Hale. Pace yourself.”

The metal channels around Hale’s feet immediately dimmed, only for some of the stabilization magic to divert, keeping it at a low steady glow much like that of the central altar. Aside from some winces from the bandits, everything seemed fine on that side of things.

Agnete, calmer and more experienced, didn’t require any assistance or beratements from Zullie. There was a bit of an oddity, however. Rather than the violet that suffused throughout the rest of the ritual circle, the array components around her feet were a dim orange. More flame-like.

While Zullie was focused on Hale, Savren noticed the oddity around Agnete. He stared for a long moment. Arkk could see the wheels turning in his head. But he didn’t say anything. A few moments later, when Zullie looked around, she also stared, thought, and decided to proceed anyway.

“Next stabilizers,” Zullie said. “That’s anyone who isn’t currently doing anything. Start pushing your magic into the array.”

The remaining bandits, and one orc, followed Zullie’s directions. Arkk watched carefully for any sign of subterfuge from the bandits. He didn’t expect anything from them, however. Not after that whole discorporealization warning from the meeting earlier.

“And now us.” Zullie’s voice carried over the gently rippling pool of water, though she was talking more to herself. She and Savren locked eyes over the top of the central altar for a brief moment before both knelt.

Violet light coursed across three bridges. Amber light emerged from the last. They merged together at the central platform, brightening the few dark parts of the array around Arkk. On the other side of the altar, the rings around Vezta brightened as well. Vezta’s many eyes darted back and forth, watching the changing and movement of the light as it swirled around her. Her expression, calm and serene, belied an almost frantic anticipation in the back of her eyes.

After spiraling around her, the magic funneled back toward Arkk, cresting the edge of the circular altar. The light’s path took it directly to the center of the metal diagram. A shaving from the crystal archway stood upright at the center point. The magic poured into it, bringing forth a brilliant luster from the formerly rough piece of crystal.

“Okay. That looks good,” Zullie said. The genuine surprise in her voice was a bit disturbing. “Arkk, next part. Remember, you need to—”

Arkk knew the ritual front to back. He might not have been involved too heavily with its actual design but he had gone over every detail, in detail, with Savren and Zullie. Yet, whatever reminder Zullie thought he needed fell by the wayside as the ground shook. Roiling waves of the silvery water crashed out from the central platform, rippling out to the outer edges of the pool.

Hale shrieked in shock and several of the bandits shouted. The glowing light on the altar flickered even as Zullie shouted out, “Calm. Do not move. Do not stop! Everyone keep pushing magic into your arrays or you’ll destabilize the whole thing!”

Savren echoed her sentiments, though in his far more verbose manner.

They kept speaking, kept trying to calm everyone down. It worked. The flickering of the array ceased and the low violet light glowed steady. Even still, there was an undercurrent of nervousness suffocating the large room.

“Was that supposed to happen, Zullie?” Arkk called out once the witch stopped trying to get everyone under control.

“Look, Arkk,” the witch shouted back. “There isn’t some book I can cross reference that says ‘Oh, in case of quakes, divert more magic to the paradimensional entanglement array’. This is cutting-edge magic here.”

“So is that a no?” Arkk said, trying to keep levity in his voice. A little humor helped calm people more than shouting at them any day of the week. It helped show that nothing was wrong, everything was under control. If he wasn’t worried, nobody else should be either.

Even though he was worried. The fact that even Vezta looked mildly alarmed was enough to set the hairs on his neck on end.

Connected to Fortress Al-Mir as he was, he didn’t detect anything wrong with the rest of the place. That quake hadn’t damaged anything. No lesser servants were scurrying around trying to repair the damage. It was almost like it had only occurred within the room.

“Back down before barrier-breaking breaks our backs,” Savren said, voice raised.

“Right,” Zullie agreed. “We’ll shut everything down, examine what that tremor was, and try again in a few days.”

“Start with the stabilizers or the strong-sigils won’t stop.”

“Yes, Savren. Thank you. I know how to shut down the ritual. We’ll go in the same order that we started with. That means the two closest to me and the two closest to Savren. Pull back slowly so that—”

One of the bandits, the one directly to Zullie’s left, started to scream. “I—I can’t stop! It’s—” Gripping his hand with his other wrist, he tried to rip it away from the array. With a vigorous wrenching of his arm, he succeeded, though not entirely. Bits of flesh from his fingertips and palm remained behind, trailing sticky strings of blood. Hand still gripped to his wrist, he stumbled to his feet and teetered backward. He tried to steady himself with a flailing of his hands.

Tried.

The moment both feet left the protective ring he had been positioned within, he froze.

He didn’t quite stop moving. Like a feather floating loose through the air, he started drifting lazily toward the vaulted ceiling. His hair, short and brown, turned gray as it grew at an alarming rate. The young skin of someone in his mid-twenties paled, wrinkled, and started crumbling away. His eyes shriveled up along with his tongue. By the time the man drifted into the ceiling, he was little more than a withered skeleton. Even that crumbled to dust at the gentle impact.

Most everyone in the room stared with undisguised horror. It was some small consolation that Hale had her head down, focused on the array in front of her. She hadn’t seen the man’s gruesome demise.

“Damnit. I told them… Nobody move. What part of do not move do you people not understand? Sit where you are and don’t do anything you aren’t told to do. Now, you there, on Savren’s left. We need to balance the array. Slowly pull back your magic.”

“I… I can’t either. It’s like it’s sucking it out from me,” the bandit said, voice unsteady.

“Okay. Don’t panic. Just… Okay.” Zullie sucked in a deep breath, eyes darting back and forth over her array. A thick dribble of sweat worked its way from her brow to the lens of her glasses where it dripped down to the glowing lines below. “Okay. Think. Give me a minute to think.”

Savren was just staring up at the crumbled bones and decaying clothes, frowning in deep thought.

Agnete looked stoic. She simply kept her hand down and the lines around her steady.

“I can teleport us away,” Arkk said, offering up that possible solution.

“All at once?”

“Yes,” he lied. He wouldn’t be able to bring along the bandits, being non-employees. Perhaps with the rest of them gone, the ritual would shut itself down and they would be safe. Perhaps not. “Unless you’ve got a better—”

Another quake shook the room. Far more violently than the first. Arkk had to grab onto the altar to keep himself steady. His other hand was still pressed down against the array. Like the bandit, he couldn’t remove his hand. He didn’t try.

Instead, he tried teleporting everyone.

His mind shuddered. Nobody moved. Locked in place, they were stuck. It was a feeling he had felt only once before. When the inquisitors invaded and that ice marble fell to the ground, freezing a number of them in place, his powers had refused to function. It was the same now. They were trapped in place, held captive by the ritual circle.

“Arkk, get us out of here.”

Arkk blinked. He tried again only for that same lurch to throw his mind.

He tried peering out of the ritual room, only to find a black void awaiting him. Even if he could remove them from the room, he couldn’t see anywhere to place them down at. There was no territory around. It was like the only thing that existed was the ritual chamber.

“Arkk?”

A third quake hit. This one warped the space around him. The central platform started to stretch and bend, twisting into a small marble that he and Vezta stood upon. The rest of the world fell away. The walls, ceiling, floor, and water twisted in space, stretched off into infinity. His awareness shrunk further, cutting him off from Zullie and the others as the space they occupied spread out.

He and Vezta stood atop a sphere the size of the [HEART], alone in a black void.

Alone until two violet lights burned down from the expanse overhead.