Heavy footsteps landed rapidly between lines of people that stretched more than a mile long. Damerian Claudiere didn’t particularly like running, but in this instance, he needed to be in front of the crowd. The last several decades of his life were devoted to this spell and his focus was being drained by the physical exertion. He remained steadfast in his sprint. The last spell he cast had taken only ten years to build and had been far more successful than he had hoped. He made contact with a power outside of anything anyone on earth could imagine. It spoke to him directly, informing him that his ultimate desire could be achieved. After three centuries of work, he could finally meet her once more, he simply needed the power of RULE to bring her back.
For RULE to become a presence on earth, it needed an invitation. Permission to bring itself through some kind of veil. It required that invitation to be sent from someone representing a great power on earth. It had given him directions on how to achieve that power. It seemed simple enough at first but the amount of magic necessary would require a sacrifice far larger than Damerian’s previous spell. Ten years of work, finding the perfect mix of psychotropics, antidepressants and other drugs to bend the wills of the common man enough to gather in one area. Contact with RULE was made with a sacrifice of only fifty thousand people. This time, more than ten times that were gathered in the city. Thirty-seven years of work creating the drug, distributing it and tainting as many consumables as possible, including the water table in the area with it.
More than a billion dollars of Damerian’s own money had been spent to accomplish the feat and now more than half a million people had consumed enough of it to be brought into line. The drug worked its way through the bloodstream to the brain and made the person susceptible to suggestion. Once enough of it was consumed, the mind would be weak enough to crumble under a specific command. That command was to gather near the fountain in the center of Temuco Square. It was not simple to achieve a simultaneous issue of that command over multiple forms of media. A large portion of the money he spent was buying advertising space on every television channel, radio station, and audible advertising on the most popular internet sites of the area. His voice had been heard by everyone here over the last several years, subtly suggesting that they obey his command when it came. They had done just that.
Damerian’s rapid pace slowed as he reached the head of the crowd. He climbed up a stone lattice that encircled a fountain to look out over the heads of the mass of humanity before him, none of them making a single sound. Temuco may not be the loudest of cities in the world, but it was never silent. Until tonight. Damerian raised his hands in front of his chest and clapped once. The heads of every person from Temuco and a great many of its surrounding cities turned to gaze spiritlessly at him. From his right jacket pocket, Damerian removed a scroll. Unfurling the scroll, Damerian read it internally, as his captive audience wouldn’t have understood it anyway. After verifying that everything was in order, he placed his hand in the middle of the scroll and uttered a single word, “Cel.”.
The scroll erupted in light, sending hundreds of thousands of hair thin purple lines of light up into the night sky. Damerian collapsed to his knees in exhaustion. It had been more than a century since he had had to run, taxing him physically and now the spell had taxed him spiritually. He rallied himself, wanting to look upon his achievement and frowned. The spell had successfully cast but the crowd were still on their feet. Looking to the sky, he traced a few of the retreating lights through the night air and saw that they were not attached to the people in front of him. Panicking, Damerian looked over the now inert scroll to find his mistake. He had gone over it with a fine-toothed comb, having found no mistakes earlier but the results proved he made one.
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Damerian removed a magnifying glass from his left coat pocket and a flashlight from his right pants pocket. Holding the flashlight with his mouth, he scanned the scroll with the magnifying glass. Over and over, he looked at it until he saw it. The barest hint of a line slightly out of place on one of the scripts. The brush he had used to paint it must have had a stray bristle and had barely touched the parchment. That was all that was necessary to make such a spell run wild, instead of being focused where he wanted. Damerian internally admonished himself, cursing his eyes for having not seen that his equipment wasn’t perfect. Cursing his hands for not being stable enough to keep that single bristle from touching the parchment. He began to curse his mind for being impatient and not calculating enough before another voice entered his head. The voice of RULE.
“Damerian Claudiere of Temuco Chile, Earth, in The Solar System, Milky Way Galaxy in Universe LM13113, this is RULE. Respond with affirmation of invitation.”
Damerian’s heart raced with anticipation as he responded. “I Damerian Claudiere invite RULE to earth.”
“Accepted. Gateway opening. Await further instruction.” RULE said within Damerian’s mind. Its voice echoed with almost palpable power. Damerian did as he was told and waited.
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A bit more than six thousand miles north of Temuco, a black sedan came to a tire screeching halt in the middle of a road in a rural town in Wyoming.
“I take you felt that as well, Stefan?” A man said from the backseat of the sedan, speaking to the driver. The immaculately dressed driver turned slightly, his eyes hidden behind designer sunglasses and a frown adorning his face.
“Yes sir. It felt distant. South but ever expanding in all directions. Necromancy, for certain. Disgusting practice. What do you suppose it was?”
“I cannot be certain. It was what, forty years ago since we last felt any magic? As much as I am loath to admit, I never did trace it to its caster. It too was Necromancy if I remember correctly.”
“It was sir. It was in nineteen-fifty and if I remember correctly, it originated in the east. Most likely in China. It must be the same caster. How many would have had to have been sacrificed to achieve that level of power?” Stefan asked, his frown deepening.
“Too many, Stefan. Far too many. I have put too much work into this little world of ours to lose so many humans to something I did not orchestrate myself. Cancel our meetings for the day. No, the week. I will not fail tracking this person this time. We know they are from the Scholomance and they made the mistake of overusing their power. Contact the Weathermaker and see if he or his ‘dragon’ can narrow down where the cast came from. South America is large, after all.”
“Yes Sir.” Stefan stated and began driving again. His foot smashed the accelerator to the floor. The electric car made minimal noise but its acceleration was the best in the world. The view from the tinted windows became a blur as the car made its way north, to the humble cabin his boss called home.
Stefan made casual glances in the rear-view mirror and watched as his boss had gone from his usual, mildly irritated expression to that of seething rage. He had not seen his boss make a face like that in centuries. Not even the last time they had felt this Necromancer sacrifice people did he look this angry. Whoever this Necromancer is, they better pray whatever that spell they cast was, was enough to protect them because his boss was pissed.