Avina channeled her mana out of her soul as she spoke the incantation. The mana flowing through her transformed under the language of creation as it left her body and entered the ritual circle.
The small circle upon which the basket sat began to pulse in a feint white light, which only grew brighter as more mana poured into it. Then, a few seconds after it began pulsing, it stopped as the entire circle became glowing white. At this point, Avina had also ended her chant and watched the center circle dim as the energy traveled throughout the rest of the ritual circle, which caused the entire thing to give an almost unnoticeable glow.
Once the entire circle was filled with feint power, Avina felt how it began pulling in the surrounding mana. The pull was slow at first but grew by the second, and with the intake of mana, the whole ritual grew brighter and brighter.
Then, without warning, the entire ritual went dark, leaving Avina staring dumbfoundedly.
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Emeline watched as the ritual went through its phases and couldn’t help but compare what she saw with the other few divination rituals she had seen. Even though she couldn’t tell what Avina was saying with her magical chant, Emeline remembered the sound and rhythm of other divination rituals, and the cleric's chant was close enough.
However, she was completely unaware of the actual magic going on. She had been told that to use magic, you had to first feel the mana all around you, but she wasn’t sure how to feel mana and had given up. It's not like she needed it. After all, plenty of magical items made life easier, and she could use those just fine.
After the chant, the circle in the middle glowed white, and then the energy spread throughout the ritual just like she had seen before. The oddity came when the entire ritual went completely dark. As the few times she had seen it before, it had instead dimmed down but had never gone fully dark. Usually, after it reached peak brightness, the blue dust would be blasted upwards by some invisible wind before glittering as images were projected above the ritual.
The issue was that she didn’t know much about magic and could only guess that maybe divination rituals had changed somehow. After all, it had been years since she last witnessed a divination, and maybe magic in general had changed.
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Avina couldn’t believe what had just happened. The ritual had failed. The issue was that she didn’t know what caused it to fail. So she mentally replayed the steps she had taken to prepare the ritual over and over again.
There was nothing.
She had done this same ritual hundreds of times over the years, each time successfully. It was even to the point that she knew it by heart.
Eventually, however, she remembered someone else was in the room with her and turned to look at Emeline, who was looking at her questioningly. Emeline, seeing she had Avina’s attention, spoke with worry evident in her voice.
“Is everything alright, Cleric Avina? I am not an expert on divination rituals, but the few I have seen did not end like this.”
“Uhh…” Avina said, trying to buy time to figure out a response. However, not wanting to lie or give fake excuses, she just spoke the truth.
“I am not sure, Ms. Emeline. It seems the ritual failed, but for the life of me, I cannot figure out what went wrong.”
“I see… is Jasmine alright?” Emeline responded worriedly, glancing at the basket where the infant was still sleeping peacefully.
Avina, clearly taken by shock, dashed towards the ritual circle. Of course, this only spooked Emeline even more, and she also rushed to check on Jasmine.
A quick inspection of the infant brought relief to both women as the newborn seemed to be just fine.
Emeline, now holding Jasmine, regarded Avina once more and asked for further clarification.
“So, should we come back tomorrow? Or are you able to try the ritual again?”
After some contemplation, Avina answered. “Hmm, unless you have other commitments that you must attend to, I am more than willing to try again.”
“Jasmine currently takes priority over everything. Please go ahead with your preparations,” Emeline replied.
Emeline watched with surprise as Avina spent the following hour completely dismantling the ritual. It turned out the rituals weren’t just forever embedded into the floor like Emeline believed they were. Instead, the various metal shapes and the runic symbols were removable. In fact, it seemed like the entire floor was removable and adjustable and the setup was clearly made to allow each room to adjust for and work with an endless number of rituals.
Finally, once all the ritual pieces were completely removed, Avina began placing all the various ritual pieces back down as she followed what had to be some sort of guide. For her part, Emeline just watched in amazement as the ritual pieces were placed back down and seamlessly fit together as if they had never been apart.
After the entire ritual circle was back to how it had started, Avina motioned for Emeline to place Jasmine back in the basket at the rituals center. Once that was done, Avina quickly but carefully spread the dust around the ritual before stepping back out and chanting again.
Yet, once again, nothing happened, and everything had shut down. Avina, clearly frustrated, carefully picked up Jasmine, giving her to Emeline to hold and with a -
“I will be right back,” she hastily left the room.
Emeline, taken a bit by surprise over Avina's actions, couldn’t even reply in time before the cleric had already left the room. Luckily, she didn’t wait long. A minute later, Avina entered the ritual room with two more clerics.
The clerics were both beast folk and a bit shorter than Avina, but had forms that were bulkier yet somehow lithe like those often seen in the more feline-oriented of their kind. They both had short-cut coats of well-groomed fur that looked soft to the touch.
One had deep gray fur, while the other had deep orange fur with dark stripes crossing horizontally across their body. However, their furs turned a much lighter shade of color around the inner and frontal areas of their necks, arms, hands, and, to some extent, thighs.
Emeline watched as the new clerics and the frustrated Avina spent some time looking at the ritual guide and inspecting the ritual itself. Then, after some deliberation, all three clerics seemed to reach an agreement and quickly modified the ritual. The modification was simple as they just enlarged the ritual's central circle. Once that was done, they motioned for Emeline to place Jasmine in the basket again as they added even more mana dust.
With everything complete, all three clerics stood shoulder to shoulder, facing the ritual, and, in unison, spoke the activation chant once more.
“Ethereal forces, woven and spun; In the Crystal's Embrace, the journey's begun;
Past and future intertwined; In the sacred art of fate's design.”
Much like last time, Emeline looked with held breath as the inner circle filled once more with light before spreading outward throughout the ritual. Unlike last time, where the ritual glowed faintly, this time, the rest of the ritual circle glowed with a much brighter light as the energy spread through it. Then, once the entire thing glowed, it grew in brightness much faster than before.
Seconds passed, and the light only grew brighter and brighter until, eventually, Emeline was forced to close her eyes. Soon after that, Emeline heard a faint hum, which grew louder and louder until finally, after what felt like forever, she heard the sound of stone cracking, and the light that had been piercing through her eyelids disappeared.
Emeline, clearly knowing something had gone wrong, quickly opened her eyes and scanned the room, which was still faintly illuminated by the light stones on the wall.
Seeing the three clerics on the floor, she didn’t hesitate before sprinting towards Jasmine.
Yet as she reached for the child, a feint white dome of light sprung around the basket, which she reasoned was some sort of shield. Luckily, after pounding at the thing a couple of times, it disappeared, and she was able to grab the infant before leaving the room to find some help.
Emeline came to a stop at the reception area and hurriedly informed Jill of the situation. Jill hastily left her small office, and Emeline waited for a few minutes before her worry got the best of her, and she headed back to the ritual room.
Approaching the ritual room, Emeline saw that the door was closed, which only caused her to worry even more. So she opened the door and rushed in, only to pause a few steps in.
Inside the ritual room was a light blue-skinned woman with deep blue hair and piercing pink eyes. From her appearance alone, Emeline guessed she could have been a Sea Elf or even some sort of water or ice Realm half-breed. However, the most rattling thing was her presence. It was subtle, but to Emeline, the blue-skinned woman felt dangerous yet magnificent. She also radiated such a strong sense of Peace and Freedom that Emeline felt like she was standing in front of the statue outside the temple. The presence was also so familiar yet powerful and commanding that Emeline instinctively began to kneel while tightly holding Jasmine.
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Funryn Zefree Jubyl was the Grand Cleric of Zefree in the Kingdom of Lezi. The Grand Clerics were those in charge of the entire holy structure within a kingdom. As such, they were ambassadors who helped facilitate the cooperation between their chosen deities and the local government. This often meant resolving issues within their assigned kingdoms and ensuring their deity's will was carried out.
To properly carry out their duties, all Grand Clerics were considered A Rank individuals, putting them close to the peak of power, as A Ranks only fell behind S Rank entities or Demi-God level existences like Realm Monarchs. Either way, all these powerful entities had and could manifest their presences. These presences were effectively their own sub-school of magic, and all individuals were expected to follow certain rules regarding said presences.
One of the more well-known rules is following proper decorum by withholding one's presence. This rule is followed by many for a variety of reasons, but it is especially followed by those who served World Deities.
The issue is that those to whom World Deities give mana will slowly infuse their bodies with that deity's aspects, concepts, and the god's very presence as they refine and reforge their bodies. This infusion means that when their presences are on display, even passively, they unwillingly blare out their deity's presence.
Now, during D Rank, a presence is weak and barely detectable by others who do not serve the same god. Additionally, in D Rank, presences, in general, are only valuable if amplified by a ritual or magical item. Even at C Rank, a presence is still not very powerful, and unless someone actively uses it, it will fail to accomplish much. However, at C Rank, those who served World Deities can be much more easily identified as both their active and passive presences will begin to show aspects of their gods.
B Rank is the big divider, and when the real problems begin to occur. These problems mainly occur due to a god's clergy and their passive presence.
Unlike passive presences, active presences can be controlled, and certain aspects can be changed in order to interact with the world in a less disruptive way. As such, a clergy's active presence would allow others to benefit from a god's presence while not having the disruptive aspects of their passive presence.
The root of the problem is that all sapient creatures who feel the presence of a god immediately kneel and prostrate themselves to said god. This means that if a high-ranking clergyperson went around a city while displaying their passive presence, it would cause a huge ruckus, as many would simply stop what they were doing and show obedience to the force of nature that were the World Deities.
Luckily, this presence ability has restrictions. The first restriction is that the presence of a god through their clergy does not affect other clergy of the same god, as those who serve a deity and receive their mana already have part of their god within them, which effectively nullifies any further outside presence from their fellow clergy.
The same is true for those who served other gods; they already have a divine presence within them, nullifying any other gods' presence.
Finally, the last restriction is brought by rank, as B Rank clergy cannot affect an A Rank individual at all.
So, due to the many issues brought about by their passive presences, clergy are expected to restrict themselves while in public. Of course, some clergy do not like this idea because, for some, restricting their presences often feels like rejecting a part of their god. Sadly for them, all, even the immorally aligned deities, expect their clergy to limit themselves when in public, though the immoral clergy have very different reasons for doing so.
The darker gods know that their clergy are very much under a constant kill-on-sight rule, and so as not to be discovered, they will obviously hide themselves. On the other hand, the much more moral deities do not wish to gain backlash from kingdoms or the populace due to their presences, causing an untold number of accidents in the streets.
With all these restrictions, all clergy like to release their passive presences when possible. This is often done within their temples as their presences will naturally blend with and be diluted by the temple's own divine aura, which would then remove all annoying side effects.
Another reason they do so within their temples is that B Rank clergy or above do not usually partake in dealing with the more common folk. This is partially due to their presences still affecting others when they come too close, even within their temples. However, the main reason is that high-rankers are expected to deal with much more essential duties that often do not involve commoners.
This all means that an A Ranker, such as Funryn, is constantly blasting their passive presence within their temple, as they obviously do not expect to randomly run into or have any contact with civilians.
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Funryn, who had just returned from speaking with some fellow Grand Clerics, was heading to her office when she heard Jill, who was agitatedly explaining to High Cleric Po about some knocked-out clerics in a ritual room.
Approaching the panicked woman, she told Po not to worry about it and that she would see what was happening. Priestess Jill then hurriedly took her to the ritual room in question, and sure enough, three clerics lay on the cracked ritual ground.
Seeing this, Funryn quickly released her presence as she entered the room and was able to scan the clerics. Her scan promptly told her they were fine, just knocked out due to almost wholly emptying their souls of mana, even their very cores. The whole situation was odd. All clerics were trained in the practice of rituals, and something was not adding up. So Funryn told Jill to head back and attend to her duties while she healed and questioned the clerics.
Not hesitating even for a second, Jill left the room, closing the door behind her.
However, only a few seconds after Jill left, the door opened again, and Funryn felt the presence of a civilian woman and an infant. Quickly, looking over to see the woman and address her properly, she noticed the woman beginning to kneel. Luckily, Funryn was an A Ranker and had the skills and reflexes to remember to constrict her presence, stopping the woman.
Emeline, who had begun to kneel, suddenly felt the presence disappear and looked up, meeting the woman’s eyes before quickly breaking eye contact and shifting to look at the woman's shoulder. There, Emeline saw the woman's rank, which identified her as a Grand Cleric of Zefree. So once again, Emeline held Jasmine tightly as she attempted to kneel. However, she was stopped dead in her tracks before she could get too far.
“No need for that. Please come here, speak with me,” the Grand Cleric said softly.
Emeline heeded the words and approached the Grand Cleric, who continued speaking. “I am Grand Cleric Funryn. Now, fellow free spirit of our lady, what may I call you and the beautiful babe you hold?”
“Her name is Jasmine, my lady, and I am known as Emeline.”
“Ahh, Emeline, the current mama bird of the Free Spirit Orphanage,” replied Funryn with clear recognition in her voice.
“I have heard good things about you and the great job you do at the orphanage. Now, I would ask that you please head back to Jill, as I need to heal them,” Funryn said, motioning at the three passed-out clerics. However, feeling Emeline’s worry and hesitation to leave, she quickly addressed it.
“Do not worry dear, they’re okay, just unconscious. However, something went wrong with the ritual, and I will need some time to address it.”
“Oh, thank Zefree, they're okay!” Emeline exclaimed, evident relief in her voice. “Would it be best if I came back another day then?”
“No, that won't be necessary. Once I get some answers from these three, I should be able to figure out the issue and will arrange for a new ritual to be made,” answered Funryn.
Then, with a simple smile and a “Thank you,” Emeline left the room.
Funryn looked at the three clerics and channeled some mana from her soul. Being an A Ranker meant she didn’t necessarily need to use incantations for certain spells that were attuned to her mana. This was especially the case if she used her deity's mana.
So, with her will, she shaped the channeling mana into a healing spell, which entered the unconscious clerics. Only a few seconds after her spell took effect, she heard the groans of the clerics as they woke from their unwanted nap.
A few minutes after waking, all three clerics found themselves seated in front of Funryn, who began her questions. And unlike with Emeline, these clerics got the more severe and commanding side of Funryn.
“So, what happened?”
“Well,” Avina said, gathering her memories before continuing.
“I prepared the Low-tier Divination Ritual for Emeline, and like many times before it, the ritual started just fine. However, as it reached its zenith and flared up to be activated, instead of moving to the last phase where it connected to the Realm of Knowledge and the World Crystal, it instead fizzled.”
“What do you mean it fizzled? Rituals don’t just fizzle! Did you perhaps do it wrong?” Funryn questioned with a bit of puzzlement and a slight tinge of annoyance.
Not wanting to get on the Grand Cleric's bad side, Avina hastily recalled the latest ritual as she attempted to explain what had transpired.
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Avina stood in front of the Mid-tier Divination Ritual with her fellow clerics. After starting the ritual, everything had gone smoothly, but not for long. And unlike before with the Low-tier-Divination Ritual, things got worse. The ritual grew too bright, and she was forced to close her eyes. Then she felt the accumulated mana begin reversing its path as it headed toward the center of the ritual.
Once she felt the mana reversing, she knew something had gone terribly wrong, and she feared for the child's safety, so she yelled out to her fellow clerics.
“Cast the shield spell on the babe! We cannot allow her to get hurt no matter what!”
Soon after yelling, she felt the energy from her fellows as they began the incantation, and she, too, joined in.
“Blessed be this protective ward; By divine love, forever stored;
In the name of light, I cast this charm; A shield divine, to keep from harm.”
Avina felt the spell take root, and soon after, the loud humming the ritual had been emitting ended, and for a second, the room was left in an eerie silence. Then, just like the silence before a storm, so too was this silence broken by a wave of force that struck the shield.
The shield almost gave out under the pressure, and Avina knew they wouldn’t last long under this constant bombardment of power. In fact, just that first impact had taken a quarter of her total unrefined mana. She just didn’t have enough regular mana to keep up the shield for too long, and she knew what she had to do, and clearly, her fellows did as well.
They had all synced up through their spell and had a connection of sorts, which allowed them to be somewhat aware of each other. So she felt when they reached the same understanding and in unison, their inner cores opened as their refined mana began trickling out.
The trickle soon became a stream, which then turned into a raging river, and their bodies were overcome with pain as the pure mana flowed outward and into the shield spell, all the while reforging them in the process.
Yet, as they boosted their spell, they still felt the backlash of the ritual attempting to break it, and so they held, knowing full well what it meant to yield and break.
And slowly, as they held, the force waned. Then, after what felt like an eternity, and just as the last of their mana was about to trickle out, they felt the force disappear and were embraced by darkness.
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“Hmm, I see,” said Funryn as she heard the full explanation.
“Something clearly isn’t right, and I think there is a good chance some other deity is involved in this and is blocking divination.” This time, she spoke out loud but not aimed at anyone as her face furled with concern.
A minute passed with Funryn seemingly deep in thought before she came to.
“Alright. Avina, go speak with Lady Emeline and tell her everything is fine and that we will begin in an hour or so. Also, make sure she and the baby are comfortable until then.” Then, regarding the other two, she continued. “Go tell Po to begin setting up a Divine-tier Divination Ritual.”