Chapter 19 – Another Ritual for Baby Ray

Baby Ray was experienced, so when he felt squeezed in the familiar darkness of warmth and safety, he didn’t panic. He also knew that if he wanted to be an awesome baby, he could absolutely not say anything to Vormie. Vormie was a big meanie.

“Oh? How come you are so quiet?” Vorm was looking forward to its favorite entertainment, called ridiculing Ray.

Baby Ray refused to answer. He didn’t really understand, but he felt he should stay quiet. He didn’t know why, but it was super important not to talk to Vormie.

But Vorm continued, “Hmm… I see, I see! You are a stupid baby that can’t even talk, you probably don’t understand what I’m saying, do you? Aw, you poor thing.”

Baby Ray wasn’t going to answer, he knew he—I’m not a stupid baby!! I’m a smart baby! I know I shouldn’t talk to you!

“Aren’t you talking to me now?” came the mocking answer.

Baby Ray started mumbling, That… um… well… yes, but…

He didn’t know what to say, he felt overwhelmed, on the verge of crying. Finally, he wailed, I hate you Vormie, you are always so mean to meeee!!

Vorm just chuckled, but as Ray kept wailing, it soon regretted provoking him.

Hours passed as Ray was squished and squeezed towards freedom.

I’m finally free! came baby Ray’s triumphant cry. Literal cries as the cold air hit his skin, as someone touched him, as he took his first breaths. He cried and cried, he couldn’t help it. Soon, he realized no one was eating him. Instead, he was carefully washed and bundled up in a warm blanket. Everything seemed to be fine. For now. He was tired and wanted to sleep, but he still felt uneasy. All he could see were blurry figures. Who knew if they were big bad guys planning something very bad?

Vormie, are they going to eat me?

“No, it doesn’t seem to be the case this time. I don’t see anything suspicious, other than all these women here being your blood relatives.”

Okay then… good… Reassured, Ray drifted off to sleep.

While Vorm said it couldn’t see anything suspicious, it felt something wasn’t quite right. There were like a dozen women here, all around the same age, all half-sisters. But that wasn’t what it found weird, humans always had all kinds of family structures. No, what it found increasingly suspicious was something else, yet related to their family. It wasn’t sure what it was, but it didn’t have to wait for long to find out.

The door opened and a man came in. As soon as Vorm sensed him, it understood. It couldn’t help but snicker. Snicker, until the man, that was baby Ray’s father, carried the fool to somewhere, and Vorm’s snickering was cut short. It realized. What it understood earlier was just a fragment of their madness, but now, it all lay bare before its eyes. It only took Vorm a fraction of a second to comprehend what was going on, but even it was mildly surprised.

Baby Ray was woken up by hysterical laughter. Vormie? What’s going on?

With laughter in its voice, Vorm excitedly started explaining it, “It’s a ritual! Hahahaha! It’s a ritual again! But don’t worry, that little demon summoning ritual the last time? That is nothing compared to this one. You gotta see this!”

Ray tried to look around, but all he could see was the man holding him, everything else was just a blur. I see a man?

“Right, your stupid baby eyes. Let me help you out with this.”

Ray’s mind was suddenly flooded with incomprehensible sensations and he cried out in pain.

“What? I dumbed it down for you. Ah fine, look.”

The incomprehensible sensations and the pain went away, and instead, Ray could see a clear picture in his mind. He saw it clearly, but he didn’t understand. The baddies are all naked?

“That’s not the important part, can’t you see the engravings on the ground?”

The pretty patterns?

“...Yeah, the pretty patterns…”

Vormie I don’t understand! Explain it to me better, are they gonna eat me?

“No, more like... you will eat them.”

What??! Vormie I don’t want to eat humans!!

“Too bad.” Then Vorm added reassuringly, “Don’t worry, you will only eat their blood.”

Baby Ray was not reassured at all, however. I’m not a vampire to eat blood!

Vorm snickered, and said, “Not yet.”

Not yet? I’ll be a vampire...?

“Yup, they will make you a va—” Vorm cut itself off, seemingly thinking of something. Then, as if admitting defeat, it cried out in frustration, “Ah, enough of this! You should anticipate and appreciate this ritual properly.”

Ray’s mind suddenly cleared, escaping from that child-like state. Frowning, Ray grumbled, If you could help me think better all this time, why hadn’t you done it earlier?

“Because you would die in a week. Now, it’s irrelevant because of this ritual. Here, appreciate it.” A rare excitement hid in Vorm’s voice. That was never good.

Ray paled as his mind was flooded with more pictures. What is going on?! You said they are making me a vampire? Am I to suck the blood of all these people?

“They are sacrifices.”

What? No, there are thousands of people here!

“7776 to be exact, you are the 7777th, the one to become a Vampire Origin.”

Vampire Origin?

“Well, an imitation of one in any case. A proper Vampire Origin ritual is on a whole different scale, this is like the poor man’s version of it. Creative, but pretty nasty.”

Sacrificing thousands of people… Nasty? That’s an understatement.

“Ah, no, that’s not what is nasty about it. It’s just a few thousand people, even you had killed more than this many. No, what is nasty about it, is something entirely different. Disgusting, but I guess it would achieve what they want. You’ll see soon enough.”

Ray ignored the comment about how many people he had killed as he became thoroughly frightened and annoyed. Can you stop being so enigmatic? It’s not cool at all.

“Tsk, don’t be so impatient, it’s no fun at all if I tell you everything ahead.”

Ray gave up making Vorm explain why it called this ritual nasty. Instead, he focused back on the people, and asked, So, all these people are forced to be sacrifices...?

“No, not forced, they are willing.”

All the pity Ray had felt for them was gone. Crazy people, why are they doing this?

“Stop asking for spoilers, I’ve told you already, you’ll learn soon enough.”

Ray forced down his frustration, he didn’t want to give Vorm the satisfaction of getting angry with its stupidly enigmatic comments.

All this time while Ray was talking to Vorm, nothing was happening. The man, Ray’s father, was silently gazing at the ritual. Ray heard him say something, and a naked woman came. The woman took Ray out of his blanket and started carrying him into the middle of the cavern.

Thanks to Vorm’s pictures, Ray knew the floor was delicately engraved everywhere, and as they approached the middle, the engravings became more densely packed. Ray briefly wondered how long it took them to prepare this whole ritual. It was crazy, especially the very center. It was a pool, dug into the ground, with incredibly dense, exquisite engravings on its floor, centering around six channels. The pool was empty now, but Ray was sure it was not meant to hold water.

He was put down in the center of it on the bottom, and left there. This circular pool was frighteningly big. Based on the woman’s height, Ray guessed it was around 2 m deep, with a diameter of 7 m on the upper part that sloped down and narrowed into a flat circular bottom with a diameter of around 3 m. Ray was curious how many cubic meters of blood it could hold, but he had long forgotten how to calculate the volume of circular things. In any case, he knew one thing for sure. It would be a lot of blood.

Say, Vorm, are they trying to drown me in blood?

“Hmm, it’s worse than that, but you could say that I guess.”

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Ray snapped, Do you enjoy being pointlessly cryptic and all mysterious, alluding to worse things than I can imagine just to annoy me?!

“Yes, why else would I be doing it? Look, your question is even more pointless.” Vorm snickered derisively.

Ray decided to move on, at least he shouldn’t keep entertaining that jerk. Great. So am I going to be the undead kind of vampire?

“No, you won’t die.”

Ugh, will I become the kind that is full of vitality then?

“Would you prefer to be the undead kind?”

No, actually. The full of vitality kind of vampire makes sense too, and overall preferable not to die in the morning I guess. It’s just that the kind of vampire I have as a standard in my mind is from a series with a zombie raiser, vampire hunter female protagonist that was a bit gruesome, but pretty good crime-solving shit, until… the series turned into a fucking orgy—Ray paused, realizing something—hehe, fucking orgy. Vorm, do you see what I did there? Hehe, fucking…

“…….”

Okay, okay. In any case, I just hope I won’t sparkle. I’d rather burn to ashes.

“Really? I thought you would want to avoid pain at all cost.”

Pfft, I’m pretty experienced, I’ve got tortured a lot as a Storm Wolf, pain is nothing to me.

“Ah right, you haven’t realized it yet that Storm Wolves have a really high pain tolerance, incomparable to humans.”

What…? But it hurt a lot…

“Really.”

...I’d rather sparkle...

“You don’t have to worry, you won’t sparkle.”

*

Aleeniel quietly gazed down at the floor, at the beautiful engravings, the fruit of all their dedication, their tireless efforts. It had taken a long time, years. It was still Lord Alkoutrath’s time when they found the lost research of Elziindreil, the most gifted High Priestess that ever was, and probably would ever be.

Unfortunately, no one knew what had happened to her. She, and all her research, had disappeared without a trace one day two hundred years ago, never to be seen. Until a few years ago, when it was unexpectedly found deep in the Blood Mountain. Had she made her way down there? Into the depths no one had ever been to? Or had she died closer to the surface and her research carried down by one of the Blothcraads? No one could know, and it didn’t matter. What mattered was that her research was successfully completed, and they found it still intact.

Aleeniel smiled, a rare sight, but fitting for the occasion. Pride of what they had achieved swelled in her heart. She could still not comprehend all the intricacies of the Grand Blood-Ritual—it was way too advanced even for her—but she didn’t need to. She understood enough to prepare everything to the smallest detail and guide the ritual when it was all ready.

Her thoughts wandered, and for once, she let them be. This was the last time anyway, she could indulge herself that much. Elziindreil was very thorough, she hadn’t only provided the ritual circle itself and the process of activating it, she included thorough details for the preparations themselves. It wasn’t that the Scarlet Temple was sloppy when preparing for rituals, they were always very careful and thorough. Well, that was what they had believed until they saw Elziindreil’s instructions, her thoroughness on a whole another scale.

They carefully chose this cavern that was big enough, but only had a small entrance, so it could be easily sealed when needed. Digging out sections to make it completely circular, evening out the ceiling and the floor, all these things were not an issue to order to be done, the Scarlet Temple had only needed to supervise. Of course, some of the slaves had to be made examples of, so the rest knew to do a more perfect job. Their wailing was a bit noisy, but this motivation turned out to be sufficient. Despite being just slaves, they did an acceptable job. Unfortunately, that was all they were useful for, the rest of the preparations had to be done completely by the Scarlet Temple.

Drawing the specially modified cleansing ritual of Elziindreil that would completely wipe itself off as well, not leaving a single trace, was not difficult, if a bit time consuming, given all the measuring they had to do due to its scale. They didn’t mind using some precious materials either to ensure it was all perfectly cleansed. Constructing a chamber with a permanent peak-quality cleansing ritual before the entrance of the cavern was logical, if costly, so anyone who entered would be perfectly cleansed to keep the cavern pristine. But this was only the start. Elziindreil called it “Preparing the Blank Page”.

Anyone would have thought at this point that they could start drawing the Grand Blood-Ritual Circle, but of course, Elziindreil would have laughed at that naivety. The next step, she called it “Preparing the Surface of the Blank Page”. Aleeniel could agree with that, it was paramount to make the surface as smooth as possible, the issue was… an unmatched talent like Elziindreil was always provided with any material in any amount required without question. There was no price the Scarlet Temple was unwilling to pay in order to nurture a genius whose research could become a brilliant invention that could immensely contribute to further strengthening their Family.

This was all understandable, and not a burden normally. The problem was… the scale of the ritual, and Elziindreil—who was always provided with everything—paid no heed to the material cost. Still, they followed Elziindreil’s instructions closely, even if it meant digging deep into the Treasury of the Scarlet Temple. In the grand scheme of things, if they could succeed—no, they would succeed—it was a small sacrifice.

However, Aleeniel had to admit, the substance Elziindreil invented was ingenious, if unreasonably costly. Precious, rare materials were used up in piles—even a Bloodcore—but the substance that was created awed everyone speechless. As instructed by Elziindreil, they concocted this substance in the pool in the center of the cavern. They hadn’t understood how they were to evenly distribute it, there were no further instructions after it was done, only to leave and seal the cavern. Nevertheless, they followed the instructions, wholeheartedly trusting Elziindreil.

Then, they understood. As soon as they mixed in the last ingredient, it was as if the whole substance came alive and started crawling out of the pool. They hurried out of the cavern and sealed it for a month. But they were even more astonished upon unsealing it. A pure white. From floor to ceiling, everything was pure white. When Aleeniel crouched down and touched the surface, it was smooth, like nothing she had ever felt before. It felt smoother than the most carefully polished stone, yet it was not reflective at all. As expected of Elziindreil, even ensuring that the surface was non-reflective, so they could easier see when they were drawing.

At last, they had finally started drawing the Grand Blood-Ritual Circle. Of course, they used special pens invented by Elziindreil. The marks left by these pens were impossible to remove, yet the sponge—invented by Elziindreil—could remove them without a trace. There were even different colors of pens, to make the measuring and planning easier. Even so, it took a long time. Even if there were almost two hundred active Priestesses of the Scarlet Temple, the scale and the complexity of the ritual was unheard of.

The Grand Blood-Ritual Circle consisted of many subordinate ritual circles, with a hierarchy even within the subordinate circles. The innermost circle, the First Circle, controlled the Grand Blood-Ritual, and consisted of six Cores.

The Second Circle supported the First Circle, but it was divided into Primary and Secondary Supporting Circles. Behind each Core was a Primary Supporting Circle, and to the right and left of those, two-two Secondary Supporting Circles on each side.

The 3rd Circle and beyond were only Dependent Circles, but their quantity was astonishing. Each Supporting Circle connected to six Dependent Circles in the 3rd Circle, and those each connected to another six Dependent Circles in the 4th Circle, and those, yet again, connected to another six Dependent Circles in the final 5th Circle.

It was mind-numbing. The whole Grand Blood-Ritual Circle consisted of 7777 ritual circles. The Focal Circle, the 6 Cores, the 30 Supportive Circles, 180 Dependent Circles in the 3rd Circle, 1080 Dependent Circles in the 4th Circle, and finally, 6480 Dependent Circles in the 5th Circle. But the issue wasn’t even in the number of the ritual circles. No, if that was all, Aleeniel wouldn’t think that Elziindreil was insane. Yes, she respected Elziindreil immensely, but only someone insane could have created this ritual.

No, the issue was that the Cores imitated the design of the Grand Blood-Ritual Circle itself, meaning, each Core was a five-layered ritual circle with 6, 30, 180, 1080, and 6480 ritual-nuclei in the five layers. Luckily, the Primary Supporting Circles were “only” four-layered with 6, 30, 180, 1080 ritual-nuclei, while the Secondary Supporting Circles were three-layered with 6, 30, 180 ritual-nuclei.

Unfortunately, all the Dependent Circles behind a Primary Supporting Circle were also three-layered with 6, 30, 180 ritual-nuclei, but luckily, the Dependent Circles behind the Secondary Supporting Circles were only two-layered with 6, 30 ritual-nuclei. The Dependent Circles in the 4th Circle were either two-layered with 6, 30 or just a simple one-layered with 6 ritual nuclei. Lastly, all the Dependent Circles in the 5th Circle were one-layered ones.

It was an enormous, never before seen undertaking. Still, they had never even thought of giving up or uttering a single complaint. Unfortunately, they also had other duties they couldn’t neglect that consumed their time. Nevertheless, they diligently worked, line by line, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. Elziindreil called this stage “Sketching Up the Ritual”.

After they had finally drawn the Grand Blood-Ritual Circle, they were done, right? Of course not, Elziindreil would have never been satisfied with that. This was the first time Aleeniel had questioned the necessity of following every single instruction of Elziindreil, but they had already spent too much time and too many precious materials to deviate and potentially fail the ritual due to their laziness. So, they followed the next step, “Carving the Ritual”. Yes, carving.

Maybe Elziindreil had some semblance of conscience, because the pure white stone-like material she had invented, and they had drawn on, made carving it extremely efficient. Using the carving pens—invented by Elziindreil—they could carve into the pure white material like hot knife cutting butter. It was magical, the solid material resisted everything else, nothing could leave even a scratch on it, but these carving knifes sliced into it easily. Not only that, the pure white turned into a pale gray, making it very easy on their eyes. The best part? The carving pens could only cut into material where they had already drawn beforehand.

Everyone of the Scarlet Temple had thought carving the Grand Blood-Ritual Circle would take longer than drawing it, but it turned out to be much faster, only taking half a year. After that, there was only one final step before they could conduct the Grand Blood-Ritual. Elziindreil called it “Preparing the Offerings”.

7777 offerings, including Aleeniel herself. Aleeniel High-Bloodborn, Head Priestess of the Scarlet Temple, born to Alkoutrath the 39th Patriarch of the Bloodborn. She would gladly offer herself up with her thirty-five sisters. It was an honor. She pitied the sisters who could not be there. It couldn’t be helped, the Scarlet Temple had other duties it had to fulfill, they could not all be offered up.

The most important offering, however, wasn’t even her. Elziindreil in her research insisted that the Focal of the Grand Blood-Ritual had to be the first-conceived of the Patriarch by using her modified Conception Ritual that required the sacrifice of one of the Blood-Sons and a High Priestess.

Aleeniel had never seen Lord Alkoutrath express his regret about being unable to meet this requirement. When he was told of it, he just calmly acknowledged that he wouldn’t live to see the completion of the ritual, but it would fall onto the next Patriarch. Aleeniel, however, knew his Father’s hidden desires, making her even more determined to succeed, to then proudly stand in front of him in the Afterlife.

Aleeniel sighed after reminiscing about their arduous journey to prepare everything perfectly, and lifted her head with determination to gaze upon all who were chosen to be offered. Her determination was reflected in the eyes of everyone she saw, her sisters and the Low-Bloodborns alike. She smiled. 7740 Low-Bloodborns, over a third of their adult population. It would temporarily cause some issues, but with this ritual their gain would be tremendous. She shivered in excitement.

Aleeniel nodded to her sisters and closed her eyes. She needed a calm mind. There could be no mistakes. Everything had been perfectly prepared and it was up to her to lead the Grand Blood-Ritual. It wasn’t just his Father’s deeply hidden wish, but her wish as well for the Bloodborn to reach new heights. No price paid was too high, everything had to be perfect.

Her thoughts slowly fell away. Nothing, but the Grand Blood-Ritual mattered.

When a few minutes later she opened her eyes again, her gaze was serene, devoid of any emotion, but determination. Her sisters looked back at her with the same calm, resolute gaze, ready to do anything to succeed.

“Blood Above All,” she said solemnly, her tranquil voice spread throughout the cavern.

Her sisters repeated in unison, “Blood Above All.”

And when it was said the final, third time, all the Bloodborn united in one notion, “Blood Above All.”

As the last note of their declaration faded, an eerie silence spread.