In one of the higher up floors of the building, was a round meeting hall spanning across the entire floor, with twelve chairs arranged in a circle. At the center of the circle was an altar made of six different kinds of stones - each kind made one sixth of its round cross section.
Of the twelve seats, only six of them were occupied by human-like figures. And of the six figures sitting in their chairs, only four of them displayed any signs of life. Aside from these four seats, all others sat either shriveled and decaying carcasses or just simply piles of ashes, bone fragments and skin.
A pale young man in a dark red suit stood outside of the circle with his head and shoulders held low. His body was trembling, and fog formed from every breath of his.
“There are some more disturbances in the flow of Qiyun. We have to control it.” A hoarse, elderly male voice echoed in the meeting hall.
“Feedback stopped coming in from the Old Pearson House Site.” A squeaky elderly female voice cried: “They have failed, yet again. This cannot be allowed to go on. Everything is losing its stability!”
“Silence, you cowards!” Another voice shut the previous voices down. This was not one singular voice, but one made up of two voices speaking in almost perfect unison: “You should have already thought of this. How are you even still pining for the circle’s completion?”
“It will complete. All we need is just earth … ” The female voice argued.
“You can’t even complete the fire circle. And the difficulty of completion is growing exponentially.” The voices in unison roared: “You’ve bitten way more than you can chew and you know it. You’ve doomed this ritual from the start! It’s your own stupidity! You should handle it!”
“No!” The hoarse elderly male voice barked: “It’s something we ALL have to deal with! It’s threatening ALL OF US and ALL THAT WE HAVE! The chains - they connect and bind all of us! Don’t you forget that!”
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“Only when you’re trying to use the power of the council will you call it ‘us’.” The voices in unison scoffed: “But when the offerings are in front of you, you just can’t help yourselves, don’t you?”
The two elderly voices went silent for a brief moment, as if they didn't have any meaningful ways to respond or retort.
“Just know that I will be coming for you for recompense.” The voices in unison let out a high pitched and satisfied laugh: “What else do you have that we can use? Don’t expect us to foot your resources for you.”
“We will send our top executors on it.” The elderly male voice answered: “Our best. We need to start using the back up sites. We have backup watchers in the lineup to take them up as well. ”
“And with whose preparations? Whose papers, whose wood, whose cinnabar, whose incense and whose ink? Have you thought about it?” The voices in unison asked, with a rather insinuating tone.
“We will cover half of it.” The elderly female voice answered.
“Eight.” The voices in unison countered.
“Six.” The elderly male voice sounded even more frustrated than usual: “This concerns you as well. And don’t forget, the earth circle is going to be yours. If this circle is not correctly and carefully concluded, don’t think for a minute you can conclude it successfully?”
“Seven and a half, and we’ll send each of our own top executors to help you activate the backup sites and calm the collapsed ones. ” The voices in unison giggled: “What do you think? I just counted our days, your circle’s are due in - what, three days? Even if you pile on a bunch of smaller rituals to suppress the darkness, you can stretch it to - maybe a week? Our circle is still 15 years away from when you finish it.”
“Six and a half, and you do all the other offerings you just mentioned.” The elderly male voice responded.
“Deal.” The voices in unison giggled: “Whenever you’re ready, I’ll send out our men.”
The other two voices sighed and grunted, before chanting a spell in low voices together. After a short while, a wave of dark energy exploded from the center of the meeting hall and propagated through the rest of the building.
The voices in unison chuckled after decoding the message in that energy blast, so they chanted right after and unleashed another blast of dark energy shockwave.
“There’s a disturbance in the building.” The voices in unison said.
“What?!” The elderly male and female voices gasped at the same time.
“Didn’t you sense it earlier? There is a disturbance inside the building.” The voices in unison asked, their voices full of impatience, despise and a hint of frustration: “A few bodies that don’t respond to our calls and our commands. They don’t belong in this building. We have intruders.”
“What?! How is this - ”
“You’ve been stuck in your chairs for too long, you've lost touch.” The voices in unison cursed: “They need to be dealt with and handled. ” Right after this, they began chanting again.
“Boom!” Before the chant would complete, a muffled explosion came from below. And almost right after, the energy inside the building gushed and shot everywhere, as their containment measures were put out of commission.