Kirs looked down at her schematics, going over her calculations again. Esmund was putting the finishing touches on the mirror of the ritual written in her notes. He hummed to himself as he worked, the noise indistinct enough that she couldn’t quite place the tune. A tavern song of some kind.

The air was heavy with moisture, the recent rains having polluted the air. Thicker and cloying, it seemed to stick to her skin as she worked. It was a miracle the chalk didn’t coagulate and thicken in the moisture.

Water buckets with diluted cleansing powder still sat in the corner of the ritual-room, their sharp scent still lingering on her nose. They’d scrubbed the whole room down in preparation. A partial cleaner and some material from Korfyi that Amalia called, wickum.

Wickum was a soft crumbly gray substance and dissolved easily in the water. It bound to mana, like dirt would water. Eventually, the energy would escape, but by then they’d be finished. She didn’t think it would be necessary for this ritual, but they were scrubbing the walls down, anyway. It was another variable they could remove.

In the center of the room, lit by glyph-lights shining an impersonal white, was a raised pool. The water lay undisturbed within the confines of its obsidian walls. It reflected the light oddly. She couldn’t make it out overtly, but when glancing at it from the side, the texture didn’t quite seem right.

She finished her calculation, confirming her result for the third time. This should be possible, not just in theory, but it was being done in other places. Amanaris even let someone choose their options. She just had to get it to funnel one mana-type.

“I think it’s ready,” Esmund said. He was dressed in black trousers and a gray shirt that hugged his shoulders and arms just right. He’d stepped away from the circles surrounding the pool and looked up at her. Amalia cleared her throat as she looked him in the eye.

“I’ll just take a look as well.”

Es sighed and shrugged. “Alright, but we don’t have forever. You promised it today.” He took a step back, moving deliberately as to walk wide of the circle.

“I know, I know,” she muttered, looking over the circles herself. Her calculations weren’t perfect. She’d been forced to create the system when working on Elusria-City’s shield. She’d since refined it, but it was still far from perfect. Combining it with Esmund’s honed soul-sight gave her a little more comfort, but with effects this complex there was no certainty. She didn’t think she could handle those big-eyes heartbroken look again, if she failed.

For another hour, she looked. Searching high, standing on a chair, and low, kneeling on the floor, for any flaws. This was as good as she could get it. There was no technique to replicate, there was no in-depth manipulation of an existing effect. This was something new. If she succeeded… The effects would echo throughout the ages. She’d reinvent and then revolutionize rituals all within her lifetime.

She straightened, scratching at her jaw, then nodded. Esmund gazed into her eyes. His dark-eyes, the faint rainbow distortion to his irises clear in the pale light of the room. Steadfast, those eyes were. They believed in her, explicit- and implicitly. Faith in the truest sense.

She felt her own heart rate, dismissed to a faint corner of her awareness, settle. He winked at her, smiling playfully, then turned and opened the door.

The door swung open to reveal four figures waiting outside. Laila, in a loose shift, sat on the floor before a bench, her hair in a messy and poorly knotted braid. Fingers fidgeting nervously in her lap. Her legs sprawled awkwardly underneath the shift in a display of that strange teenage growth.

Frija sat behind Laila, gently stroking her head with wide fingered rushes through the hair. She sang some kind of strange song the translation field struggled to translate. Her own red hair was in a much cleaner braid. Menace wasn’t with her. The cat was usually a permanent fixture at her side, if his appearance wouldn’t send strangers into frenzy.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Shiri sat next to Frija, smiling indulgently at both girls. She wore a simple yellow dress down to her ankles, unmarked by embroidery or other ornamentation, sleeves pulled back to the elbows. One hand behind Frija, the other on Laila’s shoulder. She nudged the other girl’s slippered feet with a booted one. Faint marks of droplets stained her shoulders and water was suspended in wiry strings of her own braid.

The last woman was Pashar, standing to the side. Her dark hair tied into a familiar knot. Her skin had lightened slightly over the last months in Vednar. Despite the Korfiyan sun-disk not burning the skin as quickly, it still worked harder than Elusria’s sun most days. At first, Kirs thought she too was wearing a loose shift, but it was too wide for the neck and sleeves, and fell in an obscuring square down her body. It was a man’s shirt.

“You’re free to go in,” Esmund said, stepping away. He smiled as Kirs as the women filed in past him, mouthing, “You’ll do well.”

Shiri put a warding hand on Frija’s shoulder as she wandered in. Her wide-eyes absorbing the details of the room. Her head on a swivel, she nearly walked into the ritual until her mother pulled her back. She continuing letting out sounds of awe, along with the occasional word that needed translation.

Pashar’s brows furrowed as she scrutinies the circles. Technically, this was three circles, rather than one ritual with three different functions. But it was only one of them she was truly worried about. Not that it would hurt Laila, but that it wouldn’t work.

“So, how will this work?” Pashar asked.

“You’ve done the awakening ceremony before?” Kirs asked. Pashar arched an eyebrow and gave her a distinctly disappointed look. “Right,” she knew she had. That was why she was the here. Kirs coughed into her first. “The beginning,” she stood in front of the first and most important circle. “Will start with you beginning the call. Once you signal, I’ll activate this ritual and it should, it will, cement the tether in a temporary structure. Then I’ll activate the second part to contain the pool and mana, and finally, flood it with the third circle.”

Pashar nodded. “Makes sense. How long do we have between contact and the first effect?”

“The circle takes approximately five seconds from activation until effect.”

“That has to be while we’re still attempting to connect?”

Kirs nodded.

“Not long then. Can you shorten the activation time? No? Then we might have to call it preemptively.”

Kirs shivered at the thought. Every tethered she’d interviewed spoke of something, presumably the Triplet Goddess, reaching down and leaving behind a fraction of something within them. That seed would eventually grow into the tether.

The Goddess didn’t always find fertile ground, however, and the attempt at seeding someone incompatible affected the soul. Ranvir claimed it was similar to scarring, though since the person was unable to even perceive the soul, no one ever noticed.

Once the awakening had failed, there were no more do overs. At least, not yet. Ranvir had a lot of theories about the soul, but it was hard to get in contact without direct access. And if this worked, Kirs had just invented a ritual that could interface with the soul as well.

“Is it happening?” Laila sounded as worried as she did excited.

“Yes,” Pashar said. With one hand, she pulled off the shirt that covered her and strode over to the pool. The steps into the container were the only part where circles didn’t surround the obsidian structure.

Without the shirt, Pashar was covered only in her bottoms. Three faint scars marked her back’s otherwise finely chiseled flesh. All three were finely healed thin blemishes the length of Kirs’ hand. One ran vertically down the top of her shoulder, the second horizontal above her hip, and the third curled around her waist.

Pashar was clearly in great shape, only emphasized by her casual walk and the play of her muscles as ascended the tub. Kirs glanced around at the other women in the room. Comparison is the thief of joy, she told herself, seeing that same burglar evident on their faces. Except for Frija, who seemed more preoccupied with the ripples of the water. Cocking her head side-to-side.

Then she gasped and looked up at Pashar, who stood in the sluggishly rippling not-quite-water to mid-thigh. “Are you coming?” she asked pointedly of Laila.

Laila coughed and looked around nervously. The door was shut tight. For a moment, she glanced at Frija, but she’d promised the girl could watch, Kirs knew. Finally, with a deep breath, she slipped off her shift, ending in a similar situation to Pashar. She hurried into the pool, gasping at the feel of the strange liquid.

“Ready?” Pashar asked, looking first at Kirs, then more gently at Laila. Once both nodded, she took Laila by the shoulder and back of her head and dipped her into the blood of the serpent.