He walked through the underworld, endless caverns around him, shrouded in darkness, and the heavy wind blew from the emptiness of the dark world beneath, almost blowing him off his feet, yet he carried on. He went downwards into a valley under the earth; the fog was thick and dense. As he passed through it, the specters moved away and hid from his sight, for they had not seen a living mortal for decades or even centuries. Edgar was closing in on the rest of the group, passing through different routes in the stone, shortening the way.

During that time, Kassandra slept peacefully in his arms, not awakened by the cold winds nor the mist on her face; she was clearly tired. It did not take long for the old witch-hunter to catch up with Eldon and Luthor; he could see them from afar, as torchlight revealed them in the dark caverns below the stone. By that time, Kassandra was already awake, and the two approached the rest of the group.

“You could practice caution, Eldon,” he said as he appeared from the darkness, but the men were clearly looking at something else. They found a magic circle, full of strange sigils, many of which Luthor could recognize as sigils of lesser dark deities that were banished from the world together with Aroseth after his fall. The circle was drawn with blood, which already dried and crusted at the stone below. It was covered with ash and surrounded by scorched bodies, petrified as charcoal, by blown-out black candles, and the lingering remains of black magic shined in the stone walls surrounding the place, in an invisible light seen only by the eyes of a witch-hunter.

“Strange, this is a sigil of Ivarath, the demon of insanity; this one represents Mora, goddess of death,” Luthor spoke as he pointed to the sigils at the ground. Eldon's heart was gripped with dread; it was unwise to speak their names out loud while standing in their realm.

“Keep your voice down! You don't want them to hear their names being told at such a site!” a concerned acolyte warned with a fright in his voice, despite the fact that those deities were long gone for thousands of years.

“The circle is broken; one of the sigils is missing,” Luthor proclaimed, clearly concerned, and he added, “A failed ritual, what remains of it, at least. Look at those damned souls, kneeling around the demonic runes; they did not know what kind of forces they were meddling with, their remains scorched by a surge of the black magic they invoked.”

“What is this?” Eldon stood in the middle of a circle and cleared the dark ash from the surface of the stone, revealing a mysterious sigil yet unseen by the witch-hunters.

“Strange.” Luthor's concern grew as the two inspected the lines that led from the sigil in the middle towards the ones at the rims of the circle, and the connection at the missing sigil seemed to be broken.

“Something escaped the circle,” Luthor concluded, and the dread overwhelmed the rest of the group as soon as those words left his mouth.

“This is why they needed the chalice,” Edgar explained. “The powers they meddle with are far beyond their capacity; crimson goblets, such as the one Kassandra stole, are used to connect the magical capacities of multiple casters so they can handle it together.”

“What do you mean?” Eldon questioned, holding his torch as the flame crackled.

“They form a circle and perform a ritual of blood sacrifice, each of the participants sacrificing his own share by pouring it into the chalice, and when the chalice is full, the main caster drinks the blood and absorbs the power, which allows them to handle the spells of such magnitude, not alone, of course; they still need the circle to harness it.”

“But if a spell of such magnitude is summoned inside a circle, what protects the participating acolytes from its power?” Edgar questioned.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

“Nothing,” the old man replied. “That's exactly what we have here.” Luthor concluded and continued, “Nobody knows what they unleashed upon the world, but one thing is certain: it isn't something easy to deal with.”

“The place of ritual seems old to me,” Eldon observed under the light of his torch. “By this time the entity could be anywhere in the world.”

“The Cult of the Merciful Ones!” Eldon proclaimed, his memory rewound to the moment when he bumped into Kassandra in the woodland. “Do you think they were summoning Mora and her sisters?” he asked and looked toward Kassandra.

“Indeed, that was her concern too before she sent me.” The young woman replied.

“Who sent you?” Eldon questioned.

“We have no time for the interrogation; the presence of the merciful ones could be the cause for the plague; we may be onto something,” Luthor concluded. As he spoke, a large ember fell from the torch fire and landed into the circle. As soon as it touched the ground and broke into many pieces, Eldon's head was filled with overwhelming pain and the sound of whispers and incantations.

“Damn!” the man yelled as he fell to his knees. “I can still hear the whispers! There are more! This is not the only site!” he yelled, and the glow of magic around him seemed to intensify.

“We must go,” Luthor's serious voice commanded. “For whatever it is that they unleashed, it certainly doesn't sleep.”

The group started moving in pursuit of whatever could be the source of the silent chant, and Eldon led the way by following the sound of the whispers and the lingering traces of magic. Deeper they went into the underground caverns, the louder the chant became, and they went where no innocent mortal had gone for many long years.

In one moment, as they ascended the passage, they felt a strong gust of wind coming from ahead, and as they climbed, they saw a massive cavern in front of them, bridged by a stone bridge made of massive stone bricks with gargoyles guarding its entrance and many extinguished braziers along its length.

“Let's move,” Luthor proclaimed, and he went first, yet closer he came to the underground bridge, the more repelled he felt by its dark energies. Regardless, the dreadful feeling wasn't enough to stop him, so he walked between the gargoyles and across the bridge.

“Your turn,” he shouted, and the rest of the group followed. However, not long after the bridge, the group was met with a large wooden gate. The surrounding wall seemed to be a fortification of a sort, yet it was clearly deserted.

“There is no way that we'll open it,” Eldon concluded, as he bashed the gate with the heel of his boot, yet the old wooden planks didn't even budge.

“May I?” Kassandra questioned, looking at Edgar.

“You can try,” he replied, and the rest of the group moved. The young woman closed her eyes and raised her hands in front of her, as if she were holding an invisible sphere, channeling power into it, as a small glitter of blue light appeared, and the motion of her hands spun it around as the sphere grew brighter and larger. The power seemed to be overwhelming, and soon enough the little glitter of light became an orb of arcane magic, radiating its energy with violent motions that stirred the air around the caster and the rest of the group as a powerful gust of wind blew through their clothes and hair as Edgar held his hand atop his hat to make sure it wouldn't be blown away and Eldon protected the torch with his body.

When the sphere grew into a size that could no longer be easily controlled by its caster, Kassandra threw it against the wooden gate, and it roared through the air before it slammed against the wooden boards of the gate. A sudden sound of explosion echoed through the caverns, and the flash turned darkness into day for a moment, and the wooden boards were turned into splinters, leaving a round hole blown straight through the obstacle, big enough for an adult person to comfortably pass.

The potential of the mageborn was great enough on its own, and when exercised by more powerful sorcerers, their apprentices could become a conduit of raw arcane power with very little limit to their capability, and Kassandra was an example of such gifted sorcerers; her power was clearly greater than she ever credited herself for.

“I think we can pass,” she spoke with a tired voice as her legs trembled; clearly exhausted from the raw magic she projected outwards, the girl was obviously depleted.

“That was impressive,” Luthor confessed as he stepped through the blown-through gate ahead of the rest of the group, and the others followed, entering a large stone hallway. The cave was no longer natural and wild, full of unruly stones and openings in every direction, but clearly man-made, surrounded by stone walls and pillars that held the weight of the rock above. Yet the whole room had an uneasy aura; a heavy presence could be felt; they clearly entered a cultist fortress.