Chapter 28: Ledas: Rituals
"When I told you about early birds, I didn't mean for you to come before they even prep your room." Smoothy was yawning at Ledas, who was leaning against the wall next to the chamberlain's office. "Don't you need sleep? My shift ended after midnight yesterday. I like to sleep too, you know."
"Oh, sorry?" He apologized, though he didn't catch the meaning.
"Shove it," Smoothy grumbled. "Since you are an early one, Wraith made the other two get here too."
"The other two?"
"Follow me."
A few minutes later, they were in the Wraith's office. There, Wraith just gave him an old book and ordered him to follow the greedy spy with a hand gesture. "Your first assignment," was all he said.
Smoothy was silent as they moved down to the dungeon and even deeper through a hidden passage.
The whole way was lit with gently glowing magical lights, providing just enough light to avoid stumbling as they walked the hundred-yard-long corridor.
It ended in an octagonal carved-out room about 6 meters wide. Two battlemages sat on the far side. In the dead center was a glowing red crystal as tall as Ledas himself. It was etched with runes filled with gold. Lines from the runes led to stone tablets positioned on a circular table around the crystal.
Ledas felt fascinated. He had seen such crystals before in various ruins he visited with his father, but most were looted, golden filaments stripped from them by looters, and the crystal itself broken down to souvenirs often found in nearby villages.
He looked at the runes, trying to decipher them. Collision, trait check, identifiers, and something that created barriers and force.
"Oh, the masterful court mage has arrived," one of the battlemages proclaimed with a sarcastic tone.
"Give the kid the benefit of the doubt. Hello, kid, I'm Victor, this is Ben." The second mage sounded unenthusiastic and slightly patronizing.
Ledas looked at the stone and tried to perceive it through his magical sense. It was not a precise sense like vision, but more akin to hearing with your ears stuffed or a sense of smell.
The crystal was filled with magic; it felt like a lot. He had no point of reference, though, so 'a lot' was an abstract feeling. Enough to make him snap out of the self-inflicted enthrallment.
"Hello, I'm Ledas, nice to meet you." The runes and the tablets completely captured his attention again. These were arrays of traits and exceptions.
It was a sphere spell, a massive one. He did have a reference though; it was way bigger than the ruins of a castle he was exploring while his father went to the dungeons below.
"Is this the city barrier?" Ledas asked the two mages standing there, making the first one raise his brow.
"Yes. We need to add that thing to the barrier activation." Ben the battlemage pointed somewhere behind Ledas.
Ledas turned around. What he saw sent him into a panic. He jumped back, falling onto his back, and hastily cast a shoddy barrier spell in front of him. Cowering behind it, he crawled backward, barely managing to stand before running into one of the corridors. He saw nothing, heard nothing, felt nothing but sheer terror.
When he finally came to his senses, he felt that he had hit his head some time ago. He was sitting on a bench in the corridor right next to the octagonal room. Water was pouring on his head from a spell. The Victor guy was crouching in front of him, gently slapping his cheeks.
"Wake up! Hey, do you hear me?" He turned to Ben. "Ben, if he doesn't come to his senses, you'll be doing all the work yourself!"
"Why should I do it? Stop whining, Victor. How could I know the kid would almost piss himself from it? You said not to treat him like a child, he'll be fine. Plus, I didn't put it there. It's needed for work." Victor continued to pour warm water over Ledas' head.
"Why is that thing here?!" Ledas asked, coming to his senses. He no longer sounded scared but pissed off. He strode into the octagonal room.
The beast's severed head was massive; it would take three people to form a circle with hands around it. It was no longer burning by itself like it was during the night of the attack, but its massive jaws still made Ledas very uncomfortable. Well, as it was not a jumpscare, Ledas felt more or less fine around it.
It could barely have passed through the long corridors leading here. It felt slightly absurd to the battlemages that he hadn't noticed it in the side of the room when he entered.
"We need to add beast traits to the barrier's protection system. They're not native here, but someone still managed to bring one, so it's a security concern. It's not that scary; it's dead," Ben shrugged.
Ledas knew this thing was a security concern a bit too well for his own liking. He nodded to the mages and delved into the task laid in front of him. He would make sure these types of creatures would never get through.
Ledas opened the book; it was the instruction on the town defense and a ritual circle to figure out someone's "traits".
This book stated that the ritual was created almost a millennium ago to answer the pure scientific question of whether Elves, Dwarves, and Humans were descendants of Elves as Elven legends claimed, or not.
The short answer was no. Elves, Dwarves, and Humans have <
Ledas loved to read magical books' intros and it took only a minute or two.
It took an hour to figure out how to do the core of the ritual. One can draw and do movements as required in a ritual, but just as in shorter spells, most of them require comprehension for the mental part of the spellcasting to work.
The core of finding the traits was quite short, so he drew an empty circle on a piece of paper and moved his hands to form runes instead of drawing them.
One has authority over one's body, so one can 'ask' one's blood about which main traits one has.
A drop of his blood in the middle of the circle on the paper, a chant, and he connected the spell he was keeping formed with his runes to the circle on the paper. In a few seconds, he had an impression of words in his head.
Two strong ones: <
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And two weak, distorted ones: <
Ledas blinked a few times; it worked from the first try! He felt so fulfilled that he almost forgave his father for slapping his hands with a stick every time he made a mistake in the arcane theory.
It was strange to be confirmed as an aberration though, knowing that the two battlemages playing cards on the bench were most likely very proficient aberration slayers. All of Arshakion's battlemages were stationed in the north against them regularly.
He was calm though. He learned that he was 'different' when he was six, and stopped being afraid around people at around nine.
He tried to guess what the first weak word was; he was neither an Otherworlder nor an Oath holder. The current summoning spree began three years ago, while the previous one was almost a century ago to fight the wicked one. That was common knowledge, but he didn't know the details. He hadn't made any magical oaths as well.
"Well," he thought, "I'll do that properly next time when I have free time."
With the help of the other two, he drew the ritual circle on the ground around the beast's head. He triple-checked every detail and adjustment he made to ensure the ritual wouldn't test things he wasn't interested in, like if the creature was <
Getting others' traits was a much more complex endeavor. It initially requires taking over the authority over the creature and checking which traits it had one by one from a list you had to form. And the first thing was almost impossible to do with living creatures.
{
Initialize Array… Get actor Authority …. Loop creature type array … Does Implement Interface…
}
When Ledas started to power the ritual, he instantly felt his main magic pool drained, making him shiver from perceived cold. The ritual was running many questions asking what this head was and what it was not. Letters appeared on the tablets in magical script connected to the ritual.
<
> <Ledas thought about adding magical Aberrations to the barrier's defenses, but many animals and insects were Magical Aberrations, not to mention Ledas himself.
<
Ledas was left to install it by connecting it to the crystal, and it took him about an hour to do so. The other two returned to cards in the meantime.
"Excuse me," Ledas mumbled tiredly and cleared his forehead of sweat. "I think I'm done as per the manual. Should we go to the wall?" He wasn't very confident if he hadn't botched the thing, but the ritual was quite straightforward once unnecessary parts for specific use cases were cut.
"Sure there is; you're not done yet," Ben interrupted him casually. "Cut off a piece of that monster and throw it at the crystal."
"Why?" Ledas raised his brow.
"Because," Ben replied, raising the stakes by five silver.
This didn't answer Ledas' question, but he took out the ornate dagger gifted to him at the funeral and took a good minute slicing off a piece of loose flesh from the monster. The dagger was very sharp, but this beast's hide was extremely sturdy.
He had spent a few hours with the head in one room, and it didn't feel intimidating now. It was dead.
He took the piece of the beast's lip and threw it at the crystal.
The second the crystal and the flesh connected, Ledas was deafened and blinded by the blast. He crouched, his hands protecting his body and ears. His ears hurt like hell; the mages were holding theirs too.
"WHAT THE FUCK!" Ledas shouted, his voice sounding muffled to him. His vision returned quickly, but the piece of flesh was not to be found.
"BEN, YOU STUPID IDIOT, YOU TOLD ME HE MESSED UP THE RITUAL!" Victor shouted at Ben.
"BUT HE DID!" Ben shouted back.
Smoothy ran in after five to ten seconds, looked around, and shouted, "WHAT HAPPENED? ARE YOU ALRIGHT?"
"YES, THIS IDIOT JUST THREW A PIECE OF MONSTER AT THE CRYSTAL," Ben shouted to Smoothy.
"BECAUSE YOU TOLD HIM TO!" Victor shouted at Ben again.
"WHAT'S WITH THE RITUAL, IS THE BARRIER SAFE?" Smoothy tried to look at the crystal or the table; they looked just like before. He didn't know arcane, and if there was a problem, he wouldn't be able to tell.
"I DON'T KNOW," Ledas shouted, in a slightly lower voice as he was regaining his hearing.
"IT WORKED AS INTENDED!" Victor proclaimed. "DO YOU THINK ANY OF US CAN BREAK IT?"
Ledas used minor healing on himself, and his hearing was fully restored, so he did the same for the two mages, Smoothy, and two other security people who rushed in from deeper in the tunnels. The blast didn't make their ears bleed, but it was extremely uncomfortable and quite painful even down the corridors.
"So what was that about?" Ledas asked Ben with a confused voice.
"It's the fastest way to test if the change works. The closest walls are 15 minutes away by foot. I thought you messed up, and I was about to win another game. You had some things missing from the ritual, so well…"
"Ben would like to apologize to the new court mage, right?" Victor looked at his colleague. "I thought you botched the ritual too. I apologize for not warning you and others to close your ears in advance and for doubting your capabilities."
Ledas really wanted to shout at Ben, but he had done enough stupid things for the day, so he took a long 20 seconds to think while people were looking at him.
He nodded. "No offense taken. I wasn't sure if it worked either." If he had taken offense, it could have been interpreted as him asking for an IOU or a favor back. Smoothy's presence reminded him of the advice: 'Don't make favors for the nobles; they wouldn't like to owe you until you prove yourself'.
The court mage was smiling on his way back, he whistled on his long way through the underground corridors and moved with a light skip all the way to the Wraith's office where Smoothy led him.
"You got two favors in one day, impressive," Smoothy smirked.
"I did?" Ledas stared with a smile. "I thought I said it was fine…"
"Wait here." Smoothy, as always, didn't expand on the remark. He entered the office first and closed the door. He called Ledas in only after a few minutes passed, interrupting Ledas' contemplations on how favors worked. Wraith asked for an oral report and nodded after hearing that <
"Runeward. Good job as expected. Tomorrow you will meet King Arshakion to take the oath when the sun is at its zenith. Understood?"
"Yes, Sir." Ledas wanted to raise his hand in a salute but stopped midway. Did he have to salute? He stood confused for a second.
"In the evening, the etiquette instructor will come to your new quarters to teach you how to behave properly before you create problems. For the next month, you will not be allowed to leave the castle on your own."
"Why? Did something happen?" Ledas guessed that Wraith was informed of his screw-ups.
"No, it's going as planned. There is work to be done, but even when you are done until the etiquette instructor deems you proper, you are not allowed to leave the castle."
Ledas stood silent for a few seconds.
"So this work is related to the King and requires good manners and secrecy?"
"Close. Good manners are required to not piss off other Generals and the King. Secrecy will be required for the task."
"Oh, the Oath you mentioned is required for the secrecy. Right?"
"Runeward, you are asking too many questions. You are trying to ask me what the task is while I clearly implied you will learn it from the King tomorrow. But I will fancy this request this time, so you won't blabber in front of the King tomorrow." Wraith took out a fat tube from his desk and laid out a stack of twenty pages of runes and inscriptions with very little notes on them.
Ledas glanced through them. It would take at least a week to figure out what this spell did. To his surprise, he saw a familiar piece. During the examination for Mage's Association, he had to optimize that small piece.
"This is from the exam..." Ledas started to blabber. "Was the ritual part ... organized to find someone who can perform this... I, I am not s-sure I could, can, will be able to perform it. It's an ancient ritual of kinds."
"Correct. This is the 'hero summoning' ritual. Any more questions on why you cannot leave the castle?"
Ledas stood baffled, his eyes opened wide and his jaw dropped a few centimeters.
"Dismissed."