Have you ever got really drunk? Like, black out drunk?

I have, once.

Last year’s summer festival, innkeeper Gregorix got carried away and opened eight kegs of the sweetest, most refreshing apple cider I ever tasted. Next thing I remember, me and a couple of similarly wasted older woman – whose name shall remain a secret, woke up naked on a roof-top.

That was the sum total of my experience in that particular situation. I tell you this so that you don’t judge me so harshly for seeing the red robed guys chanting and dancing all around me only to remark groggily; ‘Wild night, eh fellows?’ and promptly turn back to sleep… well, I couldn’t turn, being strapped to a stone table an all.

That’s when I realize something wasn’t quite right:

There wasn’t an age inappropriate bed-mate laying around… Oh, no. Never mind. There was an unconscious girl right beside me. Huh… She looked almost my age though. Was I finally getting over those repressed mommy issues?

I took a closer look at the girl. She was verry pretty all right; long eyelashes, full lips, a nose as cute as a bottom, the whole shebang. She looked like a sleeping angel, her raven black hair cascading all the way down from her widow’s peak… wait…

“Chin-face!?” I tried to jolt up, but yet again my straps constringed me. I struggled with my bindings but quickly gave up and called for a nearby robed man, “Hey pal? Would you mind taking these off? I mean, I don’t mind playing it kinky, but I am pretty sure I royally screwed this one up... get it? Royally? Cuz’ she is the duke’s gran daughter…”

“Rog shanek a’ thagg nobogh’! Ah’l thoorg sara’k mahou’l!” the guy kept up his weird chanting, undeterred.

“Right, tough crowd… Then could you perhaps tell me what’s going on here?”

“Nush zargod’d et sharok!”

“No? Well then, nush zargot to you to, buddy.” I was starting to believe these people weren’t going to be of much help.

I took a big breath and tried to shake the fog out of my mind. How did I end up like this? I eyed Richia’s sleeping form. Should I ask her? Nope, I didn’t like my chances dealing with miss psycho after she realize whatever we did last night… Maybe I could get the heck out of there and pretend none of this ever happened? Yeah, that was a sound plan. Let’s go with that.

I wiggled my arms and legs, testing my bindings; most were uncomfortably tight, but the one on my left hand had some give, I could work with that. I continued wiggling my hand inside the leather strap, losing it little by little, but it was slow progress.

Meanwhile the chanting of our robed voyeurs grew in intensity. Somewhat creeped by their enthusiasm I tried to speed up the process with some spirit-craft. I started casting a sky-glass, figuring I’ll use it to shove the stripes at an odd angle or something, only for my will to slide off the spirits as if they were oiled.

“What the…?” I frown.

I have never felt spirits this skittish before. It was ten times worse than in the entry exam, but that was insane! There was like what, ten guys in the room with us? Even if they were casting powerful spirit-craft none stop for hours, the spirits in the room shouldn’t be this frantic… well, unless they worked together in one big ritual, but that was just stupid…

My eyes widened. Didn’t professor sour-butt say something about the Agorian priesthood and their crazy ass rituals? Something involving human sacrifices?

For the first time, I took a good look at the place:

It was a round stone brick room with a domed ceiling. The walls were carved with dancing demonic beings, the only illumination coming from the black candles burning an unnatural red at each corner of the bloody pentagram, at which center Richia and I laid.

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“Hey bud…” I asked the hooded figured from before, “This might be silly but, you and the pals here wouldn’t happened to be Agorian cultists? Because, and don’t take this the wrong way, this looks an awful lot like a Blood Ritual…”

“NAGARASH ZEC’T EMATOMUN!”

“Neat… thanks for the talk buddy… I think I got the gist of it now.” I gave the guy a thumbs up then, freaking terrified, violently shook my strapped wrist in an attempt to escape.

I struggled against the binding, now with renewed desperation, yet if anything it felt even slower than before.

“Hey! Chin-face! Wake up or we are toast!” I scream my longs out over the maddening chants of the cultist, but it was for not.

Richia slept soundlessly, maybe unnaturally so given the situation. The cultists have clearly done something to her… Maybe to the both of us. Damm! Was that why I couldn’t remember anything…?! No! None of that mattered! Right then I only needed to think how to scape! Was anything here working in my favor?

Well, for starters, whatever this ritual was supposed to be it seemed delicate; these cultists were exerting control over a large amount of spirits. To do that while coordinating with each other should require all of their focus, so it stood to reason that none of them could do much with the ritual going on. A small comfort if anything, but at least they wouldn’t stop me from fiddling with the straps…

“Huh…? What is that?” something snaped me out of my thoughts.

There was no other way to describe it; a pinprick of darkness floated near the ceiling. I only noticed the small dark thing in the deem room because it seemed to pulse and writhe, getting bigger and bigger each second. Soon tendrils of inky shadows extended from it, dyeing the verry fibers of reality as they slowly reached for us.

I was taking a wild guess here but, pretty sure that wasn’t good.

*Snap!*

Finally, the strap on my wrist gave way and my hand was free! Immediately I grabbed to release my other hand. Meanwhile the cultists chants grew manic, the alien darkness approaching faster and faster, gaining substance, becoming life like.

I drew blood from my wrist in the process, but I managed to wiggled my fingers under the strap and rip it open in a desperate show of strength. But it was too late!

Looking up I saw the writhing darkness creeping ever closer, now only a few feet from my head! My legs were still bound and I wasn’t going to make it before it reached me! I looked around franticly for something, anything to stop the nightmarish tendrils closing overhead. My eyes froze on the few blood droplets coming down my injured wrist.

“That’s it!”

I dipped my finger in my wound, turned awkwardly to the stone table and used the blood to sketch a single rune; the delay-ritual.

Immediately I threw my focus inside the rune. This was a desperate move on my part. I have no illusions that I would be able to holt the ritual completely; for starters I didn't understand the fundamentals behind it, and it seemed to be an order of magnitude more complex that anything I’ve ever seen. It had a ton of moving parts and the combined wills of nearly a dozen experience spirit-crafters behind it. I couldn’t possibly contest it as whole! So, I did the only thing I could:

I latch my will to the closest spirit-construct, halting the spirits in the middle of their frantic dance. It was hard, not the least for the frenzied state they were in, but somehow, I managed. I grabbed at the construct with the metaphysical equivalent of my fingernails and threw everything I had into the delay rune.

I felt the spirits around me holt in place and a note of horror entered my captors’ voices. The tendrils of darkness coming for me stopped mid air and started quivering. All at once the cultist’s wills attacked me in a metaphysical struggle to wrestled back the control of the spirits they lost.

It felt like being gang on by a group of barbarians. I had to resort to focus-split only to withstand their first onslaught… Now my bleeding nose and pounding headache told that I wouldn’t withstood a second one. So, instead of fighting, when they came for the second round, I waited to the verry last moment and release my hold over the delay-ritual.

Like in a tug of war, my enemies heaved with their will only to fell on their asses when they found no resistance. And in this case, falling on their asses meant shredding the spirit-construct around me to pieces.

Instead of closing on me, the creepy tendrils exploded in all directions. For the first time since I woke, the cultist stopped chanting to howl in horror as the darkness grab them in my stead. They were all flung backwards before whatever those tendrils where dissipated, the ritual now inactive.

“What was that?!” An alarm voice asked from behind a door somewhere at my back.

Crap! There were more of them?! Ofcourse they would have guards at the door! Ignoring them for now I tried to unbind my legs, that’s when I felt Richia finally stirring beside me.

“Good morning sunshine,” I whispered her way, “I am glad you enjoyed your nap, but we are in a pickle right now so I would really appreciated if you keep quiet… C-chin-face? Are you feeling all right…?”

A haunting whale came out of her throat, freezing my blood and standing my hairs on end. As a series of violent spasms racquet her entire body her skin ashen and her extremities elongated. She foamed at the mouth, struggling against her bindings, making dipper, guttural sounds that have no business coming from a human, let alone a tiny girl. Worst still, from the corners of my eyes I saw the down cultists underwent similar transformations.

Wana hear another wild guess? This wasn’t good either.