Darkness. Darkness and pain and blood. The blood is the life. The blood is the source. The blood is the power. Control the blood and you control the power. Control the blood and you control life.

Chanting echoed through the rooms and passageways. The ritual swelled and ebbed and swelled again. A ring of robed and hooded figures, the source of the chant, stood in the center of the room. The cloth draped around them was shadowy, with darker stains throughout. Symbols were drawn roughly on the back of each, shaped out of that same black stain as if painted on with a hand dipped in blood. Another circle of silhouettes lined the walls of the round chamber. These emitted a droning hum that rose and fell in pitch and volume, interweaving with the chanting as in some malefic dirge. At four regular points around the room, a drummer struck out a complex cadence through which the repeating ritualistic speech wove. At times, the drummers thumped out their rhythms with each other, emphasizing and amplifying the pattern they shared. At other times they paired off with separate rhythms or even split off so that four separate beats pulsed through the space, but always the patterns fit inside each other, creating a complex wicked symphony.

The inner circle of figures obscured a writhing mass of flesh on an altar of black stone. Leather cords cut into flesh swollen and blackened, pinning down what used to resemble arms and legs. The unfortunate creature’s flesh had been removed, yet their dark sorcery kept it alive. Blood poured from the flayed victim into a trough that surrounded the sinister altar.

The surrounding figures all stood with one arm outstretched over the object of their dark ceremony, angled down to the thrashing body. Every arm was slit lengthwise up the wrist. A thin stream of blood ran down. At the palm of extended hands, the blood split unnaturally, a rivulet running to the tip of each finger and thumb. From there the stream of blood flowed not down but across, bridging from the spread fingers to the grisly mass in the center.

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The chanting swelled. The droning intensified. The drums pounded harder, faster, the patterns more complex, more frenetic, harder to comprehend but still somehow synchronized.

At some silent command, or some preordained marker in the malevolent fugue, the inner ring closed their hands as one. The blood stopped its flow. The room went silent. The form on the altar was still.

Time passed. The watchers waited.

The blood in the stone channel surrounding the altar began to churn.

The watchers watched.

The blood began to flow, circling the altar. Then it began to pulse, waves forming on the surface, then disappearing. The blood began to trickle over the edge, then flowed up the sides of the altar. Slow rivulets worked their way up the black stone, making their way to the prone body. More streams worked their way up the stone, then more, until the entire altar was coated with blood flowing back up towards the form above. Flayed fingers twitched. Skinless arms flexed. The blood in the trough exploded, fountaining upward in a wall of gore, a solid ring surrounding the altar like a crimson curtain. The liquid peaked above the altar, then curled inward, dropping back down onto the ghastly subject.

The level of the red fluid in the trough dropped as the blood showered upward. The last of it left the trench, arching upward and onto the figure on the altar. The body absorbed it all, the last few droplets arcing through the air and into the victim’s flesh. Not a drop remained in the channel below.

The creature opened its eyes.

The figure at the head of the altar spoke in a gravelly, growling voice.

“Arise, Dragon of Blood.”