Chapter 2: Rules Are Meant To Be Broken
I watched the reverse summoning spell take hold, analyzing the flow of the magick that first shattered into an infinite number of small particles before putting itself back together. The wizard or whatever he had been, disappeared. It looked kind of like what I would expect a reverse summoning to look like, yet it was noticeably different. Less violent, more guided rather, almost formulaic.
“Francis. Stop hiding and leave the poor soldiers alone...” I spoke into the silence and watched as my bodyguard stepped out of the shadows. Francis was a grim-looking middle-aged warlock of Serbian ancestry, tall and with broad shoulders, and as always he carried with him a copy of his personal bible. Not the Christian one, of course, we magical folk have had bad experiences with the church after all.
He was more of a free-thinking radical when it came to the gods, his belief ever-changing and yet never wavering. I was glad he had been pulled with me, otherwise, I would have easily found myself locked up in some kind of dungeon. Acting the part of the eldritch monster from beyond the veil was fun but they had used a vessel and my original self was probably pulverized into atoms somewhere between here and not-here.
I lacked strength and the summoning circle was made well enough that it suppressed most of my power. Of course, that protection had immediately faded once the summoner had abandoned ship. All of this when I had only just escaped my previous prison, the golden cage of my family's supervision.
“Only you end up in these absurd situations...” He sighed and with a flick of his wrist the soldiers, a dozen or so in total, dropped to the floor and were quickly bound with shadowy tendrils that slithered out of the darkness behind them. I could taste their panic and yet I squashed those instincts down with brutal efficiency, this was neither the time nor the place for senseless slaughter.
We needed information more than anything. As terrifying as
“What do we do with them?” I asked Francis, while drinking in the architecture of this place. It was some cannibalized form of baroque, less opulent than one would expect from something that used to be some kind of place of worship.
“Pah, we will find a way out on our own. Let's interrogate, kill them, and loot the bodies. I don’t think hostages are gonna be much use in this place.” Francis shrugged.
I pondered this while thinking about how I hated that he managed to keep his own body, while my soul was stuck in some kind of fragile grandma. Bulging muscles with runic tattoos, a slightly scarred round face that told snippets of various battles. His stereotypical eastern-European gangster look had always been an asset when it came to visiting the more shady parts of the magical underworld.
“Not the type of first impression I was going for...” I answered, drifting off trying to spot natural sunlight rather than the dim glow of obviously magical torches.
He stared at me in exasperation before rubbing his temples with his gigantic hands.
“First impression?! Lewana, You mindfucked some, rather important-looking local wizard while rambling about being locked up by the old gods themselves! How is that for a first impression, I swear to all that is holy and unholy, I can’t leave you alone for a single minute before you somehow create an international accident.” He sighed and traced one of his protection tattoos, a beautiful piece, designed by the Pazyryk Nomads around 500 BC.
“This time it’s an inter-dimensional one, you should be thankful that I spice things up once in a while.”
“Fuck you, try talking with people for once.” He scolded me.
“Come on! How is it my fault?!” I fired back.
“Because it is always your fault! I told you not to go into the pyramid without me and I come back to the whole thing being on fire with a gigantic portal displacing reality hundreds of meters around, you can count yourself lucky I am suicidal enough to jump into strange magical phenomena for the safety of members of your oh so exalted family. You stupid girl!” He ranted.
“Hey, that’s what I pay you for right?” I tried as an excuse, it was not like he was lying about what happened.
“That might be true, but your money is kind of useless for me in a different world! I don’t think the local banks here do swiss money transfers”
I groaned, he had a point. Bodyguards and mentors tended to be paid in usable currency.
“Ah don’t stress it, I will find a way!” I waved him off.
“And stop stabbing those corpses, you are sick in the head!”
I sighed and pocketed the nice-looking silver knife. “Everyone's a critic. By the way, what's up with the levels and stuff you think?”
“Levels?” He asked, confusion evident in his eyes.
“Uh yeah try to like.... Look really hard?” I tried to explain, but to be honest, I had no idea what I was doing either.
He looked at me in exasperation before attempting to follow my instructions nonetheless. His eyes widened in surprise, guess this wasn’t just another magical mishap by me.
“Level 24 Battle Witch? I guess that fits, what does it say about me?”
“Jackass!” I stuck my tongue out.
“I will show you jackass you useless brat!” He yelled before sighing again. “Seriously, I do believe this will be important to figure out.”
“Jeez alright!” I forced my eyes away from the soldiers who had all been higher level than me, curious. They had seemed rather ordinary, I feel like I deserved a higher level than those badly dressed fuckers.
Instead, I focused on Francis. The hints of softness his face had once held were hidden away behind scars and the curse wounds he had suffered throughout the years in my family's employ.
Class Guardian Warlock Level 44
“Pffhahah, Guardian Warlock. What an absolutely stupid title to have, I guess it fits... But about the level thing, is this just our age?!”
“It certainly seems so.” He answered
“This is stupid, I want to complain! Look at this guy over there!” I exclaimed and pointed at one of the soldiers at random.
“Look! Level 68, does he look like 68? NO! He does not. So obviously this whole system is scrugshit and I want to complain to whoever is in charge!”
Francis groaned before responding. “Use your drug-addled brain for once! This is obviously some kind of default value, I know logic was never your biggest strength but have you slept through every numerology lesson?”
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“So what if I did?” I waved his concerns away, sure maybe I should have paid more attention to the fancy number stuff my private teachers tried to pound into my head, but in the end, I was too good at magic and existing to bother with such unimportant details.
“This is just our initial assignment then, I wonder if there is a way to hide this identification thing. It seems like a decidedly terrible idea to advertise your talents to the world, I wonder how such a society can even function without constant conflict...” He started rambling
“So...” I interrupted him before he got the chance to turn this into an impromptu lesson on intelligence gathering and geopolitics.
“What DO we actually do with these guys? They are not really too intimidating, also their choice of fashion is rather questionable if you ask me. Seriously, silver armor on purple with green accents? They should sue the designer! I mean purple always goes well on anything but the green is truly offputting."
“I am sure they didn’t exactly have a choice! And regardless of their choice of dress, I will interrogate them in my usual gentle and kind ways. If that is alright with you My Lady?” He asked me in a mocking tone.
I knew exactly what kind of gentle interrogation Francis was capable of, I remembered the one night back in Paris...
I shivered and turned away from the poor sods.
“Leave them alive, will you? Just mind-wipe them if you must get up close and personal with em. In the meantime... I will collect the bodies and go exploring... Maybe find a way to get out of this fragile shell. Seriously, couldn’t they have used one of the kids at least? Might still be an option, what do you think?” I asked Francis.
He was an expert on necromancy and ritual-based magic, and even with such limited material, we should be able to craft an actual usable body. Not like it would have been the first time I lost parts of myself due to backfiring magical experiments.
He just waved me off as he dragged a shellshocked looking soldier behind one of the pillars. "We can figure that out later, just look around until I know whats actually going on."
Class Exalted Swordsman Level 118
I learned after identifying the soldier before he disappeared around the corner. What did the titles really mean? Specialiations? Or something more meaningful than that. I would hardly call Francis a Guardian in any way or form... Well, he did save my ass once or twice... maybe a dozen times actually. Details, details. I shrugged and turned back to the matter at hand.
I didn’t exactly mind being stuck in this body, but the lack of flexibility as well as the lingering touch of death did a number on my mood. As much as my mood could get worse, getting stuck in some other dimension, not like my family would miss me much, on the contrary, they would be glad to finally be rid of me. Funny that. The devil child finally blows herself up in some obscure Egyptian warlock tomb. What a fitting end to my story.
A few quickly cast non-verbal levitation spells and the bodies of the children started floating behind me as I left the chamber to explore and see what we were actually dealing with here. The first thing I noticed was the smell, it wasn’t exactly what I would call foul but there was a hint of something ancient and dark lingering all around us. And it wasn’t just the smell, it was the all-encompassing taste of dark magic that wavered through the dimly lit tunnels in front of me. It felt different from what I knew from earth but if there was one thing I was deeply familiar with, it was the dark arts.
The Wintersong family was an ancient clan of witches, wizards, warlocks, and druids. Deeply rooted throughout the history of the Earth with some that drifted so far into the dark that the elder council itself had been forced to raise armies and hunt them down like rabid dogs. I had been on that very path, dabbling with secrets that were never meant to be opened again.
Works about ancient runes, bound in human skin that still felt warm to the touch, as if the ink on the parchment was flowing blood. Books, where changing the pages was akin to digging around the very soul of the victims that had been sacrificed to create and bind them. They had reacted to me and my magic, influenced my thinking and soon I had been willing to even mutilate my own body just to feel a little bit more of the seductive power the dark had to offer.
So many nights I spent greedily drinking the darkest of magicks and in turn, it drank from me. A vicious cycle that I was too stuck in, too blind to see the true danger of what I was meddling with.
My own parents had been forced to put me under supervision in the end, I was growing too fast and too ambitious were my unsanctioned explorations into the depths of the lost libraries of Praque, Rome, Paris, and Budapest. I had even made deals to venture into the archives of the Vatican. True darkness had touched the very core of my soul, only Francis had still been able to reach me at that point, so lost I had been in my studies and my increasing frenzy that no purging ritual in the world would have been enough.
So he had cursed the surface of my soul itself, ironically the only way to stop a descent into this maw of madness, once it had started, was even darker magic. A curse of evil to ward off whatever I had started inviting into my mortal shell.
Francis had been in my family's employ since the very time of his birth. Taught by Elder Adrik himself he was brought up with the strictest of rules to turn into one who could not only stare into the abyss, but dive in and return with his humanity still intact. Yes, he was a cruel man, certainly nr to me or to his few friends and many allies but he was a weapon at his core. A tool really, created by the Wintersongs to be sent into war zones and return with not only his skin untouched but our enemy's blood soaked into his very bones.
Speaking of bones, there were a lot around. A curious thing because I felt the magic that was lingering inside them. Perfect for rituals such as the one that had been used to open a gate through the endless nospace that was the Nether-realm. I hadn’t lied too much when I addressed the poor wizard earlier. It was impressive even if the skills of creating foci and other magically crafted items seemed to be sorely lacking in this world.
Sure, the knives were very well made but that was because of the smith that had put his all into them and not due to the work of a talented rune carver, that part was amateur work at best. The less said about this abomination of a wand that I still held in my left hand, the better. Even as someone who had danced with darkness itself, it felt wrong, like a perversion of what it was meant to be.
It was as if the blood that flowed through the tree branch was not from this world. Not ours and not theirs, instead the only way I could describe this feeling of wrongness was “alien”. That’s what it was, not even demonic blood had such a complete lack of connection to life. It was... artificial? Maybe. That certainly would be a crazy achievement for a bunch of crazy medieval-looking amateur wizards.
I did not know the borders of this world, did not know the flow and the abundance of the arcane. I was ignorant of the rules this "system" imposed onto this world. And these rules seemed to be a lot more rigid than at home. The magic here felt… structured and tamed. Not wild and deceptive and violent like I was used to. It was like an open book, a river to be gently guided rather than the torrents after a storm at sea.
I was distracted when I spotted the massive gate that grew out of the shadows at the far end of the tunnel I was wandering down. The path widened and the ceiling started to stretch until I entered a giant hall, not too different from some of the old resting places of ancient rulers. The feeling of magic thickened again, the tunnels must obviously have some kind of dampening seals applied to discourage the spontaneous incursion of unwanted guests from beyond reality.
Back home every magical being worth their salt knew that you kept areas of high arcana presence very well guarded. Be it with seals, runes, technology-based dampeners, or even simple salt and iron circles. Somehow I was doubtful that these security measures had been kept up to date.
The hall I found myself in was hundreds of meters long and just as wide and even squinting I could barely make out a small shimmer of light from the highest point of the ceiling. And way up there, this might actually be real sunlight...
“An underground cathedral? But for what purpose? Not enough space up there? Wherever and whatever up there even was.
I sighed, getting out of this place without help would prove difficult. I hoped Francis would find answers. I was starving and I wanted to take a nice relaxing bath. As much the Wintersongs and the various other old clans had tried, flying was something that had always eluded us, without the use of crazy, harebrained schemes.
The other humans had found ways to fly with ease, their planes grew in size with each passing year and not a small amount of the magical world had tried to replace their feats through magical means. After the disaster of 1983 in Warsaw those experiments were quickly outlawed and instead the majority just traveled within the mundane side of the world. Portals were too unstable, and airplane food and movies on tiny screens were an interesting novelty for a lot of the older folk.
I turned my focus back toward my surroundings as I thought of what I would do. Giant statues stood their silent guard on both sides of me as I strolled further into the hall, the bodies of the dead children still floating behind me. The imposing figures had a lot of effort put into them, masterfully sculpted out of an unknown ashen-colored type of stone, each one holding a different object in their hand.
There were giant broadswords, axes, and mighty war staffs. One even carried a book and a scepter. Their eyes seemed alive and if I hadn’t been well-versed in such mundane illusions I would have probably looked for a different place. Instead, I started to roughly hone in on the geometric middle point to put my ritual circle around.
A good place really, considering the circumstances. An area saturated with the native arcana, surrounded by powerful numerology represented by the 16 statues in total, all of which easily reached 15 meters in height. Seven sacrificed children to form a layer with, myself as the anchor point to connect the seven with the eight for symmetry. Not perfect by any means, but viable enough.