[https://i.imgur.com/tPvm19V.jpg]

Chapter 1: The Cost Of Overconfidence 

[Amos]

I sighed as I heard the bell ring as the door opened. "Son of a fucking whore," I growled under my breath and put the coffee dispenser I was cleaning out down on the metal counter of the industrial sink. Jenna chuckled under her breath as I leaned against the edge and breathed in deeply, holding it for three seconds before letting it out in an attempt to calm myself. I opened my eyes and put on my customer service face, it slipped into place like a mask, a friendly smile curled the corners of my lips, and the angry downward jutting of my eyebrows smoothed out. Drying my hands on the company apron that I was required to wear, I stepped out of the kitchen area and into the store propper. "Hello," I said as I made my way over to the register behind the counter, "how can I help you today?"

"I would like to order a pizza," the man was in his mid-forties, but it had been a rough forty years on him. His once brown hair was now streaked with grey, and he was balding. He had his hair pulled back in a ponytail at the nape of his neck that went to the middle of his back. On his chin there was a beard of some form, neither a full one nor a five o'clock shadow, but somewhere in between.  And his entire face looked like a piece of leather that had been left out in the elements for years, complete with the wrinkles and cracks. 

"I'm sorry," I said, the noises coming from my mouth suitingly apologetic, even if I didn't truly feel them. "The kitchen closes at 11:30," I didn't have to glance at the clock to know it was past that, in fact, the store was supposed to close at midnight exactly, and it was 11:57.

"Closed?" he asked, looking down at his watch, "you can't just throw a pizza through?" 

"No, unfortunately, it takes something like thirty minutes to get the oven warmed back up, and it's been shut down for almost thirty minutes now, I'm also pretty sure Jenna already put away the doe and other ingredients," I said with an apologetic shrug. 

"I can wait, go ahead and fire it up again," he said, and even with my years of retail practice, it was hard to not snap at the guy.

"Unfortunately we close in-" I looked at my watch, "two minutes, so-" I let myself trail off, the half-smile still in place, the mask still firmly on my face.

"This gas station closes at midnight?" he asked, one of his bushy eyebrows raising, "In the city?"

"Yes sir," I said with a nod. He just stared at me as if I had just said something remarkably stupid. 

"That's fucking retarded, what kind of gas station closes at night in the city?"

"This kind of gas station," I said, I leaned forward a little, resting my hands on the countertop as I did so, not in an aggressive way, well, not entirely in an aggressive way that is. "Sorry about that, is there anything else I can help you with?" He looked at me for a moment before shaking his head in what looked an awful lot like derision to me, I tamped down the desire to let the man know exactly how I felt about that.

"Pack of Camels," he said and I stepped back from the register and grabbed a pack of camel classics off of the shelve and was halfway back over when he corrected himself. "Camel unfiltered, you got any of those or are you all out of them like the pizza?" I turned on my heels, breathing in deeply and holding it as I fought the urge to call him on his shit. I made my way back to the cigarette case and put the camels back, before pulling a small sign down that advertised camel lights and pulled a small pack of camel unfiltered out from the area behind. 

"Only have soft pack that work for you?" He looked at me like I had just spit in his face. 

"Fine, whatever, what's it going to cost me?" I rung it up and placed it on the counter next to the register.

"That will be $5.95 after tax is said and done," I replied sliding the cigarettes over to him.

"Jesus H Christ, how much of that goes into your pocket before you put it in the register hmm?" I ignored him and watched as he slid the card, taking his sweet time. As the receipt printed the doorbell chimed and four men right around my age walked in, they only looked slightly drunk.

I felt a headache begin to form behind my eyes.

"Still open good," one of them said as they made their way to the back, to no doubt get more beer from the cooler. I fought the urge to scowl or cuss out loud and handed the asshole his receipt, pointedly ignoring the smug look of satisfaction on his face. As soon as he was out the door I walked over to the kitchen entrance and peeked in at Jenna.

"Hey, can you do me a favor?" I asked, and she looked up at me from the dishes she was washing. Jenna was a fairly attractive woman, about five foot seven or so, with reddish-brown hair that she kept in a ponytail every time I had ever seen her, and a pair of rectangular rimmed glasses. I had never asked her, but if I had to guess I would say she was twenty-five ish, she had that cute but nerdy girl look about her. "Can you go and turn off the back row of lighting, wait a bit and then slowly turn them all off, if we are lucky it will corral the drunkards towards the register so I can get them out and lock the door."

"Sure," she said before wiping the soap suds off of her arms on her apron and moving past me towards the back of the store where the light switches were. The plan worked like a charm and I was able to get them out, I even smiled and wished them a good night, despite the throbbing headache that was growing in intensity behind my eyes. After the door was locked I went over and grabbed a bottle of Advil and dry swallowed three of them, while I was shutting down the register. The headache however was having none of it, as I worked it got worse and worse until it was nearing migraine territory, in fact that might just be what it was.  I finished the register and half stumbled half walked to the kitchen where Jenna was now mopping. "You look like shit Amos," she said and I nodded slowly so as to not aggravate my headache.

"I'm gonna give you my store key, do you think you can mop my floor and lock up the store?" I felt bad for asking her to do my share of the cleanup but I didn't think I would make it home if this headache got any worse. 

"That's fine," she said, walking over while I struggled to get the key off the ring and hand it to her. "You sure you don't want me to give you ride home or something?" 

"Nah, I can walk, its not to far." I had a car, I just hardly ever used it to get to work seeing as I only lived a block or two away in an apartment complex. Besides, with a headache like this I doubted I would be able to drive, the lights were starting to hurt my eyes.

"Okay, you be careful, I'll drop this off in the morning," she said as I handed over my key and made my way out of the door, swaying more than those slightly drunk men that had been in the store a few minutes ago. It took me a lot longer than normal to get to the apartment complex, and an embarrassingly long time to get up the external metal stairs to the third story of the building. I had just gotten in when the nausea started…

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[Ityira]

The room I had set aside for the ritual wasn't dark per se, it just lacked natural light, which was something I very much enjoyed. Normally I would have done this out in the open, proudly showing off my magical talents, but this time…

"The risk is too great," I whispered to myself as I pushed a lock of silver hair out of the way, tucking behind my long pointed ear. I bit my lip as I read over the stolen tome one more time, mentally translating the ancient words written on its pages, which were both thick, and brittle with age, a strange juxtaposition, after all, normally thick meant strong, study, but in this case these pages were anything but. That however was to be expected, seeing as this tome was over two thousand years old, even with the best preservation magics that was getting to the end of its life. I turned the page, or at least I tried to turn the page, instead the corner I had gripped in my finger was no longer part of the page, and as I looked at it, it crumbled to dust between my fingers. I looked at the book and was torn between the need to read the next page again to make sure my translations were right and my desires to not hurt such a valuable tome.

Cursing Vloran's name I carefully grabbed the corner and turned the page. This was all his fault, all of it. He was jealous of me and my abilities, of my natural-born skills, and he was right to be jealous, after all I was the best of this generations of thaumaturgus, and as such it was no surprise that someone as asinine as he was to feel vindictive. Normally I would have simply shrugged it off, it would have been beneath me, but then the pretentious prick had gone and dragged my family name through the mud as well.  He had the gall to claim that the only reason I was ranked so high was because no one wanted to upset my father the Grand Magus. 

As if I hadn't earned my place, I would prove him wrong, prove them all wrong.

Which was why I was here, with a stolen book that I could only half translate. I was the best thaumaturgus of my generation, and I specialized in the creation, enchanting and animation of automatons, creations of wood, and metal, and sometimes stone or gems, designed for completed pre-programmed instructions.  Automatons were without a doubt the greatest creation of my people. With this single application of spellwork and mechanics they had removed the need for manual labor, and wars were no longer fought the same way. Some had feared that these creations would replace the workers, but that was not the case, instead of a team of farmers needed to work a field now only one farmer needed be present to task the automatons, allowing the other farmers to have their own fields and their own automatons, meaning more was getting done, same with builders.

As for craftsmen, well, no matter how well built the automaton was it was not a creature of finesse, it had neither the fine motor skills nor the creativity to fill roles like that. No the largest change the discovery of how to make automatons had brought about was the way wars were fought. Instead of sending units of men into war inanimate objects could be created to do the fighting. They were not as skilled as a well-trained warmage, or a ranger, or even a knight, but when compared to the average soldier who was nothing more than a farmer pressed into service and given a spear they were vastly superior. Automatons had no fear, had no reservations, and felt no pain, and as such they had quite easily conquered the entire continent and brought it under one rule, spreading the prosperity of my people across the entire land.

That's what my father told me, and I was inclined to believe it.

The only issue besides the physical resources needed to make an automaton was the need for a power source. This came in the form of transposed power gems, which were gems filled with power from a different reality. Ultimately it was unknown what exactly this power was, or where it came from, there were a number of theories, the most popular of which being that the power, which in some ways resembled a soul's essence came from a reality where demons lived, and each transference gem was filled with the soul of a demon. It was the theory I ascribed to, seeing as if you fed to many transference gems into an automaton it was liable to stop following orders and go berserk, killing both itself and anyone around it in a demonic frenzy.

Which was why I was here, I had created a great automaton to prove I was not just the Grand Magus's daughter, that I deserved my position in the thaumaturgical order.  The only issue was that the automation I had constructed had too many features, too many command prompts enchanted into it, which meant it would need more transposed gems to power it.

 Five gems to be exact, which was three more than an automaton could safely use.

Which had led me on a hunt for a more powerful source of transposed energy than a single gem could grant, which had led me to this ancient tome that I had stolen from the Grand Archives. If I had translated it correctly then this was a more powerful version of the ritual used to pull transposed energy into my reality.

I read carefully, taking note of the words I couldn't translate, and tried to piece it all together. There was one section my eye caught on, the same section my eye had caught on last time. If I was translating it correctly then the spell tome was warning me that this ritual would require great willpower. That was nothing new there, seeing as every time you pulled energy into the world you needed will power, if your will was not sufficient then you were liable to fail at the transference and could even injure yourself.

Besides, I had a will to shove this victory down Vloran's throat and watch him choke on it, which would no doubt more than suffice.

Taking a deep breath I began the incantation, the runes I had carved into the wooden floor around me lit up as though they were filled with molten gold, and the room started spinning around me, or perhaps I was the one spinning, it was hard to tell. Closing my eyes I felt the connection to the other world, felt the connection I had to the other reality, and willed it to my side.

As always the energy on the other side resisted, but I pushed forward, working hard to force the energy into my reality. A headache started to form behind my eyes and I squinted them shut tighter as I forced myself to will the power into being…

[Amos]

I leaned over the toilet and willed myself to not throw up, willed myself to not empty my stomach into the porcelain bowl. For some reason this headache was making me pissed, like really pissed. I felt the need to lash out, to punch something, and to make matters worse I didn't know why I was so mad, which just in turn made me more pissed. I growled, it was an animalistic sound, the sound of it highlighting my frustration. Without knowing why I punched the back of the toilet, feeling the spike of pain clear my head a little, feeling the warm trickle of blood as it ran down my split knuckles and onto my fingers.

The pain felt good, almost euphoric.

I did it again, and again, the top layer of ceramics cracking under the repeated blows and my hand going numb with the strikes. I had gone past the point of caring, however, and was firmly in cornered animal mode.

[Ityira]

This thing, whatever it was, was fighting me something fierce, all the other transposed gems I had filled had been only a slight struggle, if the theory about demons was real then perhaps the standard spell only pulled those who were weakened, like the sick or the dying, but this…

This one was not being easy, in fact, it was almost like it was attacking me mentally. Sharp stabs of pain spiked behind my eyes, first only a single one, then over and over and over. My ears started ringing and it was only then that I noticed I was screaming, screaming so loud the sound was reverberating and echoing in the room, screaming so loud I was hurting my own ears.

I shut it out, focusing all of my will on finishing the spell, it had been started and now could not be stopped. I poured all of my frustration and pain and determination across the link, I couldn't afford to lose, I couldn't afford to be distracted now.  If a weak transference could injure the caster if failed then what would this one do? Kill me?

I heard the sounds of feet coming down the stairs, moving quickly. I needed them to stay away, I needed whoever it was to go away, a break in my will and concentration now could prove fatal.  I couldn't divert anything to tell them this though, couldn't ward the door, couldn't do anything. A pounding sounded, quick, like the person on the other side of the door was scared. Without any way to stop it the door was blown open, fragments of wood flying, spinning all around the room, and in walked my father, mother just behind him, both looking worried, scared.

The looks on their faces was end of the struggle for me, one look at their faces and all of my will drained away in a second, the fear, the worry, it was too much. "Daddy-" I said, reaching for him, and he stepped forward to reach for me, but before our fingers could touch I was yanked away, like someone had tied a thick rope around my midsection and attached it to a horse at full gallop. His eyes widened, and looked past me, behind me. 

I was able to turn slightly.

A transpositional portal had opened, like one I had seen and used to pull power for automatons time and time again, but this one was massive, easily twice the size of a normal one. I didn't even have time to scream before I was pulled through it.