Ignite the Sun
Chapter 89: The ritual (3)
CHAPTER 89: THE RITUAL (3)
Alison led the four of them to a large empty building not far from the fortress.
"She’s inside - I can’t go in since apparently my aura disrupts the wards." She shrugged. "I’ll stay here until you’re finished though."
"You don’t have other work to do?" Isara raised an eyebrow.
"No, Maya offered to cover my duties for today."
"...and you let her?"
Alison snorted.
"She might be prone to ditching her job, but she can fulfill her assignments properly when she needs to." She pointed at the building. "Now go, from what Sylara told me you actually have quite a bit of set-up to do."
***
The structure was completely gutted from all walls and rooms that weren’t needed structurally, leaving the place as a one large hall with a few support columns.
But it wasn’t even the weirdest part about the interior - that would be the plants.
Along all of the walls hundreds upon hundreds of vines grew from a myriad of differently sized and coloured pots - and all of them very moving.
Each and every one of them had its tip dipped in some sort of paint, and was scribbling furiously on the walls. Together they were creating some sort of mindbogglingly large enchantment, comprised of incredibly complex runes, most of which neither Calen nor Isara had every even seen.
"Is... Is she controlling all of that?" Isara whispered.
"I think so." Calen nodded, his eyes wide. "This is far more impressive than what she did to the avatar of the ancient one."
While Calen and Isara were impressed, Elira was straight up left speechless - now that she had some idea about how much focus and power it took to do even the simplest tricks, something like she was seeing seemed impossible.
No, it should be impossible - to split your mind between so many instances simply wasn’t feasible for a regular human.
Then again, they did establish that Sylara probably wasn’t one...
"I’m in the center, come here!" The Guardian yelled, probably having sensed their presence.
They found her in the exact center of the building, just like she said - she was standing with a book in one hand, and a piece of charcoal in the other, looking intently between the pages of the tome a something on the ground.
When they came closer Calen realised what was on the ground - a magic circle, or to be more precise an unfinished version of one.
It was also surrounded by eight braziers spaced evenly around the circle.
"Ah, you’re here, good." Sylara remarked without even looking at them
"Alison said you needed my help?" Calen prompted.
"Well, I didn’t actually need you - I could have finished the thing by myself, but it would have taken a few more hours, and you’d probably like to see the show in the evening, no?"
"Well, difficult to say whether I would like to see it since I have no clue what is it about, but yeah sure let’s go with that." Calen nodded. "What do I need to do to help?"
"See this pattern?" She pointed to a circle in the book. "I need it on the ground, but recreating it while splitting my attention to the protection wards is kinda annoying - Let Isara finish the drawing, and then trace over it by melting the stone along the lines. After you’re done with that light the braziers and wait for me."
She gave the book to Isara and took off in the direction of the most unfinished part of the grand enchantment covering all the walls and ceiling - which was apparently the protection wards she was working on.
"This is one hell of a circle..." Isara mumbled while studying the design.
Calen had to agree - while the construction of the circle wasn’t particularly complex, the runes used to create it were baffling to say the least.
Not only where then just as unknown as the ones covering the walls, but they were also connected to each other in a strange way, making the entire enchantment look... off.
Isara picked up the piece of charcoal left behind by Sylara and was about to start drawing, but she suddenly stopped and frowned.
"What is it?" Calen questioned.
"It’s the circle." She said. "It’s incomplete, there are two elements missing."
He studied the circle once more and realised she was right - there where two very obvious spots where something was missing, the only problem was that they couldn’t tell what was missing since they didn’t know any of the runes.
"Isn’t it obvious?" Elira sighed. "It’s a ritual to connect two things, and there are two things missing from the enchantment - I’m no expert in terms of magic, but it seems like the most logical answer. Or is that not possible?"
Calen and Isara looked at each other and grimaced.
"No, it’s definitely possible - and now that I think about it, it lines up with everything we know about the ritual." He sighed.
"It does?"
"Yes - acting as a conduit in a magic circle is quite uncommon, but it definitely was done before, and therefore we know what comes with that - pain, a lots and lots of pain."
"When you put yourself as a part of the circuit, you’re not protected from your own magic like during casting. It will completely fill you and follow through, causing an enormous amount of pain." Calen explained. "And this one will be powered by divine flame, I can’t even begin to imagine how painful this will be."
"Oh, look there are little annotations for some parts of the circle." Isara noticed as she diligently copied the design to the ground.
"Anything interesting?"
"Umm, yes, but I don’t think your going to like what’s written here..."
"I’m going through the ritual either way, just read it."
"Well, it says here that the pain is so strong that the risk of you passing out is extremely high, so part of the enchantment exists solely to keep you awake while you experience pain that would normally knock you out."
"Fantastic..."
"On the bright side it also says here that it will drastically improve your pain tolerance as a side effect."
"Uh-huh, any other weirdly specific functions?"
"Once the ritual is complete it will put you into a pseudo-stasis to allow your body to adjust much faster than it normally would."
"Probably why the recovery time mentioned was so short in the book I’ve read..." Elira nodded to herself.
For the next half an hour Isara drew the circle while pointing out all of its weird features she found.
Once she was done, she moved away to make room for Calen, who was going to actually create the circle, rather than just sketch it out.
"Do you guys think Sylara will be mad if Iook through this book?" Isara asked, putting the ancient tome in her lap.
"I doubt it." Cassian shook his head. "If she minded she would have probably said something, instead of just leaving us with a full access to the book."
Calen gathered a small ball of very concentrated flame on his finger, and put it to the ground, slowly tracing the charcoal lines.
This method seemed to be very effective, as it left smooth and fairly deep impressions of fis movements in the stone - and most importantly it didn’t require much focus, letting him continue the conversation with his companions.
"So, what’s the rest of the book about?"
"It has a lot of reference circles, but I can’t read most of them so I can only guess their application from the vague descriptions." She explained as she leafed through the book "Almost all seem to be rituals of some kind though."
"Does the book have a title? Maybe we could reference a similar work to understand more."
"Strangely no - actually the thing doesn’t even have an author, I think this is someone’s original work rather than a published book."
"But whose - Antonio’s?"
"Nah, no shot." Isara chuckled. "This is far too well written, and the contents don’t fit what we know about him - why would a guy who rebeled against the Sun God make a guide for his chosen?"
"Good point, but if not him then who? We don’t know many other distinguished mages with connections to Sylara."
"My master wrote it, actually." Sylara approached them. "I finished quicker than I expected."
"Your master? The one that Antonio called a tree hugger?" Cassian asked.
"One and the same." She laughed. "She was much more talented than I am, and through the centuries she compiled a very comprehensive compendium of knowledge on various topics - the one you have here is a collection of rituals."
"May I ask why Antonio was so antagonistic towards your master?" Elira queried.
"Don’t let my grandfather’s words fool you - pun intended - he might badmouth master, but in reality they were very close friends. They simply liked to compete against each other, and it just so happens that they were both sore losers."
"So there wasn’t any jealousy going on because of you?"
"No, in fact it would be quite strange considering grandfather was the one who asked master to teach me." Sylara smiled. "But I can tell you more about that later - for now let’s focus on the ritual, after all we’re almost ready."