A deal worth making

Marental the Atlantean ramped the flow of corrective mana up to the maximum. The imbalance stopped increasing, yet did not grow smaller. At the same time the storage drained quickly.

„Why, why, why“ he muttered. An imbalance in a hexagonal ritual requires at least two major mana leaks. One leak would stall the ritual but not imbalance it. Frustration and fear were barely under control in his assistant's voice as she reported that no leaks were to be found. This was worse than he feared, they did not have multple leaks, but an oversupply at one point. He needed to locate it as soon as possible. He couldn't just run. The connections to his soul were already made. He really did not want to risk an uncontrolled severing of those. He put his probe on the input check points. One of the sacrifices yielded too much. The flaw was not with the ritual, but with the sacrifices. That soothed his pride, but not his fears. An issue with the sacrifices themselves was very hard to fix without shutting down the ritual itself and replacing the connectors. However, one cannot shut down an imbalanced ritual after the channel to the void has already opened without triggering the catastrophic failure one hopes to avoid by shutting down the ritual. „Twins!“ he shouted having read the label on the cable conducting the mana. „Why did I not check for that?“.

His assistant cast him a questioning look. „Abandon the site. We cannot correct the imbalance.“, he ordered. She went, almost running, around the circle and tossed chalices arranged around a diagramm into a bag, respectfully keeping her distance from the ritual diagramm.

Marental carefully disabled and unlocked connections on the platinum band he was wearing around his head. His assistent notified him that the conducts to the corrective depots are degrading. Obviously they were. They had not been designed for continously running at maximum. Nevertheless he acknowledged the report with approval. One does not live more lives than worth counting without being detected by laxness with proper procedures. He had demonstrated that to her by slowly disintegrating her predecessor, who had hesitated to redo a checklist with a smudged unplacable check mark a second time, before her very eyes.

The aperture at the center of the diagramm widened and the glowing outline of a male human body dropped to the ground below. „Premature opening“ his assistent shouted dutifully. „Bail out!“ he shouted back. An alien aura reminiscent to his senses of a scrying spell poured out of the aperture. He hurriedly brought his shroud to the maximum. Electric arcs terminating in his assistant and the pair of guards at the entrance burst from the aperture. Her wards gave his apprentice time to shriek. The guards were instantly incinerated.

Marental then and there decided to leave with extreme and undignified alacrity, disconnected the last connection, used a flash step to the entrance and hit the button for the emergency barrier.

I float through a space full of psychodelic lights in colors I have never seen. In fact in colors that should not exist. An insistent voice calls out to me „FIRE“. I think of fire as ordered. Heat, flames, light, a chemical reaction, in fact a concept that can be extended to any exothermic reaction, redox reactions and more esoteric associations of passions, animation and at its core the contradiction of beneficial warmth to destructive powers ...

„SPACETIME“ the voice interrupts me. That is rude, but also interesting and quite an abrupt change. Space, time, gravity, time dilation and … the multiverse? I am mentally a bit overwhelmed.

„AIR“ nice of the voice. Gases, flight, weather, the gentle breeze of an afternoon on the beach, the cool mist of an autumn fog, a dragonfly zipping over a lake, the flight of a bat at dusk, the power of lightning in a tropical thunderstorm …

„PERCEPTION“. I see a pattern. Images of images, viewing distant areas, exotic radiations, generation of pictures, blocking views …

„LIFE“ This is getting a bit easier. Biochemistry, biology, enzymes, ecology, health, growth. Why do I know about biochemistry? In fact, what is biochemistry?

„DECAY“ I should not ask questions. Simple at the outset, yet branching into the endless variation of thermodynamics and entropy, age and even the structure of atomic nuclei.

„SPELL“. Now that is interesting. Manipulation of the laws of nature bound into algorithms, operation of auras, attachment of spells to objects and spells, the properties of mana ...

I drop onto a hard floor and faint.