They would be running it close. They were out of reserves and already there was one of the twenty, feeding the ritual with mana, signaling that himself closing in on empty. Helena has sent Anden to fetch at least one of the mages on lookout duty, hopefully both. Those posts weren't meant to be left unmanned, but current circumstances called for extreme measures and thankfully, they were staffed by the best.
Tired as everyone was, the ritual neared completion, it was observable in the way the small spot sucking in mana out of the formation on the ground. Slowly but surely, it was growing dark, from the outer reaches dimming to the inner circle.
Anden wasn’t bursting in just as the tired man dropped to his knees and hands, refusing to break the connection, scraping the last dregs of mana he could. No one knew what would happen if it was less than twenty who fed the ritual for any appreciable amount of time, but they were about to find out.
The mage keeled over, unconscious, the tendril connecting him snapping. And… nothing happened. They knew nothing would, for a moment, they saw it happen many times as they replaced mage after mage during the course of the morning. Sixty-eight men and women drained themselves for this marvelous piece of magic, handed down from the gods themselves about three centuries ago.
Seventy-one now, three more dropped, connection failing. Still no adverse reaction apart from a slight darkening in the arkenstones’ glow.
And suddenly, every connection disappeared, even the web woven in-between was gone. They didn't snap violently nor did they slowly fade away. What was there one moment, in the next just… wasn't. Absent in the blink of an eye.
"It is finished," said Himmel as he took a knee. The twelve who comprised the heart of all of it were drenched in sweat, hands trembling from the exertion and several knees looked on the verge of failing.
Four guards pushed themselves away from a wall to escort them out to get rest and all but one let them. Himmel righted himself and took a wobbly step to where Helena and her group stood.
“I wish to see it to its conclusion.”
He made his way over and Stuart reached a hand to help steady the man until a chair was brought over. The mage unceremoniously collapsed into the seat.
Three men burst into the room, too late. The one leading them swept his gaze over the now almost empty room before pausing on Himmel and then stopping on Percy.
The captain beckoned them over. "It is done. Since you two are here, why not help us welcome our visitors and, gods willing, saviors."
Thirteen people were left in the room at this point. Six paladins, the two mages with Himmel and the royal crier, and, finally, three guards posted near the room's door.
Bewitched looks pointed at the locus and the small black sphere above it, one and all. As they watched, the ball started to grow slowly, almost imperceptibly. Then it beat, sounding like a heart, and got bigger. Ba-dump, larger, ba-dump, bigger, ba-thump, brighter. One more and they heard a voice, unintelligible behind the thrum of the black heart. Another and the voice grew louder and more numerous, overlapping with what sounded almost like a scream.
One last stroke of the black faux-muscle and darkness, impenetrable to the eye, swallowed half the room in a sphere. It stayed there for ten seconds during which deep silence fell over everything.
Then the black was replaced by white and all the people had to shield their eyes from the sudden turn in luminosity. They were blinded as they all tried to pierce the veil to catch a glimpse of what was inside.
Slowly, oh so slowly, their sight returned. First, there were only shadows, which soon turned into silhouettes.
They were here. We succeeded, was Helena’s thought as a figure moved to the side.
The beugler, unphased by his loss of sight, took a step forward and began his prepared speech. “Welcome, men and women of the beyond. You, who have adhered to the will of the gods for so long. Welcome in our humbl…” His prim and proper voice trembled and then wheezed.
The smell hit first… and the screams second. Helena had to cover her ears and tried not to gag.
***
Darkness. It was all-consuming. Even more so than the pain wracking Ixalia's left hand, arm, shoulder, and side. She felt nothing below her waist, which seemed like the better of the two options.
The sensation her nerves were feeding her brain was pure anguish. As if every fiber of her being was set on fire and deep-frozen at the same time as it was stabbed, slashed, and crushed, all at once.
Then it would abate for just a moment only to return full force, torturing her anew after the short lull.
She fought through it. Somehow. Ixa groped in the dark with her right hand, fumbling and finally finding Sidy. Her friend lay before her, just where she had last seen her as they both collapsed their shields and let the mana dissipate instead of absorbing it back in.
That would have been a deadly mistake.
Mana-poisoning was a misleading term for the phenomenon. Different aspected mana did not play nice. Mostly it tried to repulse its brethren, just like the barrier Ingrem taught them. But if constrained inside a channel, be it an organic or an artificial one, then it was forced to interact. Both types of mana would then be consumed while releasing wild magic.
As the name implies, it was random, predictable in scope only by the amounts of annihilating energies. The effect was anyone's guess. That wasn't the problem, though, at least not the only one.
What killed was a total and complete deprivation of mana in the affected matter. Everything had at least traces amounts of it in itself. Inorganics like rocks and air withstood the lack without a problem.
Flesh and bones were another matter.
Before the lack of vision hit her, Ixalia watched as her left appendage, from her fingers to her shoulder, slowly blackened and shriveled. When all was done, it looked mummified and as if belonging to someone half her height. The arm was shorter by more than a third and did not stop hurting.
She didn’t know whether she was dragging herself towards Sidy, or if she was towing her friend to her. It didn’t matter. What was of importance was the fact that she had her. Arm snaked under her armpits, she clung to her.
Then, she could see again. And hear. And smell! At first, she didn't know who the blood-curdling scream belonged to, until her throat ran hoarse and the pitch changed as something tore inside. The final piece of evidence that it was her, who was making such a racket, was that it stopped just the moment she came up for air.
Taking stock of the situation, she first noticed the room. It wasn't the one they were in just moments before. It was about twice the size and made of stone blocks with long curtains by the sides of big windows, letting the morning sun in. The walls were covered with tapestries and even several paintings.
People were moving about in a corner, rubbing their eyes. One of them took several steps forward and spoke. His words were drowned in a new wave of screams, this time, not hers, not only hers that is.
Of the twenty-some people who attended Ingrem's lessons, she could make out maybe fourteen. And some of them did not look like they were supposed to, she recognized them only thanks to their faces. And one of them she couldn't discern the identity of at all.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Then there were the bodies. At least four were definitely dead, with varying degrees of damage to their bodies. Two piles of flesh were to the side, one charred slightly and steaming heavily, the other without any recognizable limb or hair, both bleeding profusely. She couldn’t make out if they were dead or not as the less grilled one seemed to be mewling and whimpering.
To the side was a mound of lard, shivering slightly, with only tatters of clothing left to cover its dignity. Oh, it’s just Zev. The impossibly calm thought came to her in this utterly maddening situation. The boy seemed to be mostly unharmed.
Ixa's gaze fell to the remains of her left arm and a shiver ran through her. She refused to look down and below her waist. It would be just as bad, probably worse. Not something that needed to be on her mind right now. Not that there was much room in her head to begin with, with all the pain and confusion she was feeling.
Instead, she focused on the precious object hugged tightly to her breasts. The mage was lying on her side, right hand trapped below as Sidy sprawled slightly over her, pinning her to the ground beneath.
Just as they teach you. First, help yourself and then others. Can’t do much if you die. She felt her core adapting to the local ambient mana already, filling with small amounts of energy for her use. It was a marvelous organ, dependable as ever.
She cast the broad-scale spell first and finding that she wouldn't be bleeding or dying anytime soon, turned her attention back to the other, unconscious, girl.
She… was bleeding out. Her right hand, the one she used to pump mana into Ixa, was cleft in twain. Someone could have said it was split in two, but that description wouldn't do the injury justice. Starting at the tip of Sidy's middle finger was a jagged tear going down her finger, through her palm, and up halfway through the forearm and the humerus. Bone splinters poking out here and there.
Ixalia wouldn’t even know where to begin healing such a wound. And she didn't, she extricated her arm from beneath, reached around to her back, and peeled off her medic bag, quick-release buckles doing what they were designed to do.
No fishing around was necessary. Right outside, easy to get to, were two tourniquets. She pulled one off and began putting it around the arm, just below the shoulder, as high as she could get it. All the magic in the world, and this was still the fastest and most reliable way to control massive bleeding.
Putting the last twist, she could manage, in, she was almost done when a gunshot rang out, reverberating through the room and hurting her ears even further. If that was even possible after all the loud noises of the immediate past.
***
Swords were drawn on instinct before the group even knew what they were dealing with. It took a moment filled with unearthly shrieks and wailing for them to regain enough sigh to assess the situation.
“Fuck!” Helena first saw the mound of shredded meat nearest to them. She didn’t who, or maybe what, it was, but it was as dead as a doornail. Pus and feces mixed with other bodily fluids to make an ungodly smell that made an almost successful attempt to excavate everyone's breakfast.
“Stuart! Get Himmel outside, now! Anden, get reinforcements, on the double!” shouted Percy.
Helena saw it too, then. “Demons!” There were seven aberrants and two fiends in the room. If the people they translocated here were in the middle of a fight with demons, it would explain their difficulties with the ritual and the state of things.
Four were clustering together, apart from the rest, looking around confused. One had massive crab-like claws at the end of its arms, its hands, mangled and torn, flopped flaccidly at the wrists, another had boney spikes growing everyone from ruptured skin that bled slightly. The other two she had almost mistaken for humans. They had pointed ears and the hands that they were holding each other by were fused together.
One of the other aberrants, with a twisted head leaking some kind of a liquid and no distinguishable features, was stumbling around as if blind. Its whole body was warped and malformed and it had trouble standing.
Those were the ones not an immediate threat though. Approaching a collapsed man was a demon covered in fur, with wicked claws on one hand. Another, holding a woman around the shoulders, had a sort of wing sprouting from its thigh, the rest of the lower leg and its counterpart covered in tumors and charred slightly.
The last aberrant mostly looked like a blue-haired girl, but with pointed ears, her lower half notwithstanding. This long abomination of a creature was in the middle of tearing a woman's hand in half, literally and down the middle.
Closest to the merenese soldiers was a fiend. Two of them, each on the opposite side of the group looking like a normal person would. Only the brown skin, indicative of a starved demon, betrayed them for what they were.
“Kill the demons, protect the summoned!” Percy ordered as he leaned into a run.
Faster than anyone else was one of the house guards. He made two quick steps and thrust his spear into one of the fiends, killing him on the spot.
Next was Jehen, who fell the furry creature and saved the terrified woman with a second swing. Percy made an attempt at the twisted one, but it stumbled and crashed to the ground before he slew it.
Helena chose to try to save the girl being ripped apart on the ground and sprinted forward. Pjotr was just in front of her, going for the largest cluster.
When the two remaining guards were about to attack the other fiend, a loud bang ricocheted around the room several times. One of the men dropped down and a ping sounded out just as a dent formed in the other’s cuirass.
The thunderous noise repeated and the other one crashed down, dead. Helena's eyes swiveled to its source and found one of the arrivals, a man standing over another, pointing an unusual contraption to where the soldiers just died. And he was turning to point at her.
What?! We aren’t the demons here!
It didn’t matter, the item the man was clutching spewed fire, and a sharp pain in her thigh brought her low, soon followed by one in her arm. She had just enough time to look up to see him squeezing a finger for the third time.
Before he could finish the small movement, an ice dart hit the attacker in the shoulder and screwed up his aim. Sharp pieces of stone bit Helena in the face and a small divot appeared where they were torn from, just a hand’s width from her head.
The man’s hand pivoted again and he shot. A grunt and a crash sounded from the direction of the mages. A second shot was loosed in close proximity and then two ice shards buried themselves in the man’s torso. Just then, Percy was upon him.
***
Ixalia looked up and saw Liman taking a second shot. She followed where he aimed with her eyes and saw a man in medieval armor falling to the ground, blood soaking his front and a slight mist left behind where he stood.
Just behind the two men was another, holding a spear, whose tip protruded from Hugo's chest, with an uncomprehending expression, staring at the metal blade, tears ran from his eyes. He slumped forward without ever closing them.
To the other side, a huge man in full plate tried to kill Nerman, but missed when the secretary fell on his own. In a similar armor, a slightly smaller soldier ran a person through and cut down another, neither of whose did she remember the name of, and gently pushed Beatrice, out of the way.
Clad in red bulky clothing, probably some kind of a protective garment as well, a woman was running straight for her. Liman's pistol barked and she crashed to the ground, a second shot striking her near the shoulder of the dominant arm. The third bullet missed and Ixa saw her savior taking aim at two men near the wall.
They stood close to a long table laden with food. Water was flowing from two carafes and turning to ice in front of them. One dropped with a hole in his stomach but the other launched his spikes and hit Liman, who staggered but remained on his feet.
His next shot landed in the head of the combatant who injured him.
As this was happening, the big knight stabbed Nerman. The smaller armored person took a step back and ran to help the mages.
Close to the downed woman was another swordsman, who had just now managed to reach a group containing Loui, Peter, and Jerry and Perry. He slashed at the cook’s midriff, the weapon catching on one of the bone protrusions covering the man all over before it could cut him any deeper.
In one fluid motion, the soldier extricated his blade and shoved Peter into the duo holding hands, making them tumble into a heap of tangled limbs and claws?
Three steps more and he impaled Liman through the belly. At that moment a massive shockwave erupted from the dying man, throwing everyone to the ground and launching the two armorer fighters, who were close to him, across the room.
One crashed into the still-standing spearmen and the other fell over the woman lying on the floor, neck twisting at an unnatural angle. The giant didn’t escape unscathed either. His leg was bent at an angle and he hit his head pretty hard.
***
Pjotr wounded spikey and pushed crab-hands straight at the conjoined twins. A short dash later and his sword was embedded in the main threat.
Helena thought that it was over now, that they did it, saved most of the people they brought over. The two paladins flying through the air proved her wrong. She let out a loud grunt as Pjotr landed on her, but his neck snapped with an even louder, terrible crack. His body effectively pinned her and with her wounds, it was doubtful if she could get out from under him.
Her husband was luckier, his fall was broken by the last guard still standing. He was visibly dazed and his leg was broken, but he remained alive. The spearman got out of it with bruises and quickly began pulling the large captain out of the room.
With Stuart and Anden gone before everything started and Jehen pulling the hurt mage away, there was no one left to deal with the demons. Luckily no loud sound announced the death of either of them. The item's wielder lay dead in the middle of the ballroom. The locus is gone, and it wasn’t there at the start either, Helena realized. Not that that tidbit helped her in any way right now.
Moments later, she was left alone in the room and prepared herself to see a massacre of the still-living people, who her companions left behind. And her own death soon after.