Thorough preparation means swift execution. The ritualists were met in the hallway by seven costumed acolytes, each carrying a beeswax taper emitting a terrifying white light and a musky, piney gray smoke.

“Now is the hour.” Mr. Red and Ms. Black chanted.

“Now is the hour. Justice is at hand.” The acolytes chanted back.

“The stars align.”

“Darkness falls on the evildoers.”

“The stars align.”

“Enlightening the wise.”

“Now is the hour.”

“Now is the hour. Now is the hour. Now is the hour.”

The acolytes arranged themselves in formation and marched in step towards the ritual chamber. Mr. Red and Ms. Black walked carefully behind them, each forming mystic seals with their hands and reciting certain names, calling upon particular Powers and Dominions, even Thrones, to bless their work this night. To block the eyes of their enemies, and to grant good fortune.

Truth skulked behind them. This ritual was far, far beyond his limited experience. He could hear invisible bells tolling in counterpoint time to the slow steps of the marchers. He could hear the whispers of terrible things slowly gathering, peering at them through the shadows and the cracks in the light. Emerging from the darkness under the candle’s flame.

His shaky grasp on local reality was being steadily pressed. The island was already covered in one layer of reality manipulation, and to Truth’s silent horror, the ritual was imposing a second layer. Or a third. He wasn’t sure how many layers had been stacked up at this point. It seemed to be infinitely reflecting into fractal protrusions, each intruding unexpectedly into layers below and jutting painfully into layers above. He imagined a thousand sea urchins, all expanding and contracting from the size of a poppy seed to the size of a house. All of them violently flew through the air, as Truth tried to cross a chasm on a slackline.

It seemed there was more to those ritual costumes and props than he thought. Starbrite had its faults, but its people were generally quite good at their jobs.

Truth wondered if the acolytes knew the walls were subtly bending inwards, held back by the light of the burning tapers. He wondered if he knew the hymn they were singing reflected back on them from the hidden geometries of the black cathedral they inhabited. He was certain they didn’t know about the uncountable beings waiting in the nave, watching their procession. Beings that defied easy categorization as angels or devils. Truth wondered what he looked like to those watchers.

What would he see if he looked for his reflection on a candlestick? Would his face smile up at him from the reflection in a baptismal font? In this strange place, what would the Tongue of One Who Speaks For God look like?

Truth let his hand drift over his first aperture, sensing the godly blade inside. He felt his eyes involuntarily widen. He had always wondered how the Tongue could just… materialize and dematerialize. How it could live in his aperture, appear in his hand, then return to its home, instantly and without pain.

Easy. In the finest tradition of jank craftsmanship, its forgers in Siphios had no real idea what they did. The Tongue was built around a fragment of an angelic weapon. Literally a higher dimensional construct. The steel was just something to hold on to. The actual weapon operated on a less material level. It was quite smart enough to decide where and how to emerge in these shallow waters. Why did the sword get stronger along with him? Because he was better able to impose on local reality, and better able to endure the changes imposed by the sword.

He had the sudden eerie feeling that he was the bit of steel the weapon had wrapped around itself, so that it could interact with this lower realm. He shook the idea loose and forced his awareness down to a more secular level. The hallways had emptied ahead of the procession. It seemed to stretch endlessly between two points in a gray oblivion, punctuated by unmarked doors, the shifting harmonics of the hymn reverberating and disorienting listeners with the echo.

Truth didn’t understand the magical technology operating the ritual, but he understood the intention behind the technology. “We come from the stars. We come from lands beyond your understanding. We are the hidden hand distorting the fabric of the world. In all our invisible glory and transcendent righteousness, we descend upon the world below. We part the infinite gossamer veil, to slaughter the wicked.”

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They reached the ritual chamber. One acolyte opened the door, while the rest formed a double line and proceeded the ritualists into the room. In the center of the formation was Harmony. Knife in hand. The silvered steel nearly as hard as his eyes.

The chanting took on a new, more urgent tone. The tapers were set in prepared holes in the floor. A thurible was lit and handed reverently to Ms. Black. She walked the boundaries of the ritual, the pale blue smoke mixing with the smoke from the candles. The smells mixed, layered over the shifting lights and vibrating sounds. The nature of the room shifted, changing from the peak of modern technology to something ancient. Something so ancient, it had become dislocated from time.

Truth could hear drums rumbling. Where were the drums coming from? No one had been carrying drums, but he could hear the basso thump in four-four time. It wasn’t until the first splash of bright red blood from Harmony’s chest that he realized. It was the thunder of heart beats. The very first music any human hears.

Mr. Red was calling and abjuring, binding and forbidding, hands in constant motion, tongue never tripping. Harmony’s hands never slipped. The knife cut steadily along the proscribed path. Harmony would pull his skin tight where he could to make sure the cut was clean and straight. Truth felt an odd pang of pride. Harmony had only practiced twice, but he was still nailing it.

Harmony was always the steady one out of the Sibs. Thoughtful. But not soft. Truth would never forget sitting at the table in the apartment they grew up in, seeing how calm Harmony looked when he said he would join the Meat Market, the cannibal gangsters that ruled twelve dense blocks in the slum. Literally cannibals- they had the cheapest ground pork in the slums, but you never found a body on their turf. Harmony figured they would be the best choice if Truth didn’t get into Starbrite.

Harmony had been right. He would have done well. Someone with the guts to carve on themselves was at least lieutenant material. He wouldn’t have ended up running the gang, though. Truth could see it in his eyes, even now. He was determined. Bravely doing his best for his people. Playing by the rules, patiently waiting his turn as he slowly built seniority. Truth silently sighed.

If you want to achieve greatness, you have to be ready to crash out. Harmony never was.

Truth, on the other hand, beat a Level One to death with a soup can before he opened his apertures. He didn’t even hesitate.

The walls were shaking now. Truth suspected that the celebrants were seeing at least some of what he was seeing. Terrible faces pressing inwards through the wall. Terrible reaching claws, stretching inward, recoiling from the light. They were hearing the baying of infernal hounds. They were hearing the creaking of the gibbets, smelling the hemp and the tar on the ropes. Tasting the rotten iron of the hanging hooks.

Truth forced himself to look at the truth behind the ritual. There was an enormous raising of power. The power wasn’t just in the ritual implements or Harmony’s sacrifice, though. There was a drawing maelstrom feeding into the room. A tornado running in reverse, sucking up energy from above and funneling it down into the room below. Truth struggled to imagine where it could have come from. Not from the atmosphere itself, there was too much of it, and it was too steady. Too pure.

The System. They are pulling magic from everyone with the System. It must be raising Hell all over the world, even if they are only drawing a tiny amount from each person. Looks like Starbrite is ready to crash out too.

Layers of meaning were unfolding around Harmony. Truth couldn’t understand what he was seeing- coarse thread stitching into him, flowers blossoming, rocks breaking, a fox trotting steadily. Truth forced himself to look away, to try to see the bigger picture.

A ritual is an extended spell. More complicated and more powerful, but still a spell. So the ordinary rules must, at some level, apply. You have the mages’ intention. You have the spellform. You have the sacrifice. And then the energy fills the form and catches the energy of the universe and acts as leverage, pushing around far more energy than what was expended.

Reduced to that level, he could more or less understand what was going on. The first scream ripped out of Harmony. Harmony probably couldn’t see what was gnawing on him. Hopefully he couldn’t see it.

“We summon you, Terrible Ones. Great Ones. From the Depths of the Infernal Realms, we call you.” Truth watched the enchantments shiver and shimmer over Mr. Red and Ms. Black. Wards and protections against anything and everything that could be imagined. Certainly beyond anything Truth could comprehend. He had lost Obliteration, his sharpest weapon against mages. No sneaky one hit kills available here.

The pressure was rising. Truth watched Harmony start to collapse. He wasn’t done yet, but it was almost any second now. He could see Mr. Red and Ms. Black keeping a careful eye out, constantly moving, watching each other’s backs. If someone was going to jump them, now was the moment.

Truth laughed. Yeah, they really never had little brothers, did they? Sometimes, big bro was just a prick for no reason.

Truth rushed into the middle of the ritual, breaking the lines and shattering runes as he went. He felt the instant reaction from the Ritualists, spells to bind, block, blind and kill forming at the speed of thought. This is what they had been waiting for. The acolytes all collapsed, their lives forcibly ripped from their bodies and poured into some vile curse, lashing down on Truth. But Truth was very fast. Magic and curses had a hard time reaching him these days. And, he was willing to admit, he could be childish and petty as hell.

So he rushed into the eye of the maelstrom. Grabbed Harmony by the ankles, spun him through the air once to build up speed, then smashed him right into Mr. Red, launching the ritualist directly at Ms. Black.

At which point things got messy.