An Ancient Invocation

The mage dare not light a candle in the gloomy stable, not yet. He waits with bated breath for the others, staring at the freshly killed animal before him. Blood streams from the wyvern’s heart to his feet, and his silver dagger drips with the same. It has been a surprisingly easy task – the wyvern was trusting. It had not taken many visits for the wyvern to come rushing to him, eagerly awaiting a morsel of dried fish like a horse searching for a lump of sugar. A pang of guilt had almost stopped the mage from plunging the silver dagger deep into the beast’s heart, but it was soon replaced with the rush of fulfilling his purpose.

“Well, Frederick. Let’s see what we can get done here tonight," a sultry voice slurs from the stable door. The moonlight reflects a silver glow off the painted face. The priestess stumbles through the door, clearly already under the effects of wisdomroot smoke. Two other mages support her on either side.

Frederick had not been idle. While he dared not light a single candle until the others had arrived, he had taken his time in preparing the ritual after he made the killing blow. The stream of blood that ends at his feet is swept in a rough circle around the wyvern, sweeping away the hay bedding in his path. A candle is placed at each cardinal direction, and then further still others for the ordinal directions between. Eight candles stood unlit, which Frederick takes upon himself to light with a flame appearing at the point of his finger.

The two mages guide Levitia closer, and makes her kneel before the spectacle of the downed wyvern. They each also take up their positions at one of the now-lit cardinal candles. Frederick lights a sprig of wisdomroot, allowing the fumes to waft into the air.

The four begin to chant. The candlelight flickers. With a surge of ecstasy through his chest that he cannot explain with the wisdomroot smoke alone, Frederick swoons. Before his world fully fades into prismatic colours that pulse at every chant, he can swear that the dead wyvern moves.

It does not remain moving for long, if it did move at all. The life force that sustains it and that tries so valiantly to resurrect it, leeches from it, bleeding from its open wound into the waiting souls of each mage present. The candles at each corner flicker brighter and brighter.

Frederick returns to himself, cold, jagged ice stabbing the walls of his veins. He shudders, he wants to scream, but no sound escapes his mouth. He looks down at his hands, eyes widening as black lines encroach from his forearms, his blood appearing like ink beneath his skin.

The cold is gone. The lines fade somewhat.

All Frederick can feel now, what he is sure no mage could have felt for generations past, is raw power.

His eyes flit to Levitia, the turncoat priestess who would dare pervert her holy teachings like this. She is hunched forward, hands on the ground in front of her, hair falling over her face as she pants in exertion. She is a genius.

Thoughts of how this power will save Grosberg, how it will purify magic from the mages’ damned superstitious dependence on those damned twin suns, manage to momentarily drown out the nearly immediate cry in his bones for more.