BT - Book 1 - Chapter 33

Micah threw the reagents on the ground in frustration as the ritual fizzled once again, filling the air with an aurora of strange colors and smells before the circle burned itself out entirely.  From the other end of the clearing, Telivern snorted at him.

“I’m sure this is funny for you buddy,” Micah rolled his eyes as he wiped the ash covering his hands off on his trousers.  “You didn’t brag about being some sort of incredibly powerful summoner only to have every fucking summoning ritual fail on you.”

Telivern cocked its head and pawed the grass of the grove before pointing its horns at one of the two Brensen lounging in the shade of the trees.

“No,” Micah ran a hand through his hair.  “I can’t use one of them.  Onkert are already incredibly powerful for someone my age.  If I show too much potential too early, the Golden Drakes and the Royal Family will either kill or enslave me.  I’m not a big fan of either option.”

He sighed.  Unless there was a comet he hadn’t spotted, Micah had performed the ritual perfectly. Four failures in a row wasn’t an accident.  Something was wrong.

Tracing his toe in the dirt, Micah went back through his steps.  The only thing that went awry was the final step.  As the temporal energy coursed through the reagents into the ritual circle, the sense of connection to Elsewhere was off.

Rather than the boundless power he was used to, the ritual felt like he was trying to force a bucket of water through a straw.  As much as he strained, only a trickle of the other plane came through, not nearly enough to complete the casting and open the portal.

The entire time, he could feel his connection to the two Brensen.  Every time he tried to draw on the energy from Elsewhere they stood in the way.  Micah couldn’t be sure, but it was seeming more and more likely that summoning had a maximum limit.

Still, he couldn’t help but think of the tantalizing feeling that ran through his body both of the times he summoned the Brensens.  Like he was cracking open a door to peek into the splendor of Elsewhere.  Something deep inside him whispered that the door didn’t have to be cracked open.  If he just pushed, he could open it completely.

Two Brensens wasn’t enough to fight the Durgh.  If that was his limit, as powerful as the Daemons were, Micah might as well give up now.  

He opened the Ageless Folio, flipping through his years of notes on ritual magic.  Micah’s face furrowed as he looked for an answer.  Anything that even discussed the problem.

Finally he slammed the Folio shut in frustration.  If anyone else had struggled with summoning too many daemons at once, they hadn’t committed their problems to writing.  Of course, given the cost in life energy for keeping a demon on Karell, it wasn’t surprising that the limits of the magic weren’t properly explored.

Micah sighed and slumped against one of the large nearby trees.  Only he had developed the ability to substitute temporal energy for life energy.  If this problem were to be solved, it would be something he’d have to do on his own.

A wet snout pressed against his cheek.  Without looking up, Micah reached out and ran his fingers through Telivern’s fur.

Acceptance.  Reassurance.

His mind flashed over everything he had.  Another chance to rekindle his friendship with his old team.  Telivern.  His parents and Esther. Micah’s breath came faster, in short and shallow gasps.

Things were finally going right.  He finally had a chance to avert the invasion and live his life happily until this happened.  No one had ever said anything about ritual magic having upper limits.  Hells, almost all the reading on the subject heavily implied that the only limits were his skill and ability to supply reagents/power.

He had too much to give up now.  Micah closed his free hand into a fist while the fingers of his other rhythmically ran through Telivern’s fur.  Mursa didn’t set him down this path just for him to shrug and give up at the first sign of difficulty.  He might fail, but he wouldn’t give up without a fight.  

Support.  Reassurance.

“Thanks Telivern,” Micah looked up at the concerned deer. “I don’t know what I’d do without you around to ground me and keep me sane.  I think I have it sorted out now.  It might not be easy, but I know what I need to do.”

Micah pulled back both of his hands and opened the Ageless Folio once more.  He opened the book to his notes on the Brensen summoning ritual and began jotting down his own annotations.  He didn’t need the full ritual, just the segment that opened a deeper and wider portal to Elsewhere. 

Clearly there was a limiter preventing him from drawing power directly from Elsewhere.  That was his stumbling block, the only thing standing between him and an army of daemons warding off the Durgh incursion.  

All he needed to do was cast the ritual so that he could stand before the doorway of power once more.  This time he wouldn’t peer through or take a handful of the other plane’s energy.  He would step through himself.  With the power of Elsewhere coursing through him, he would be able to anchor the daemons to himself.  

Frantically, for almost six hours straight, Micah worked without rest.  Checking astrological charts and cross referencing it with the Folio’s record of upcoming weather.  He copied runes from the Bresnen ritual, making slight changes, repurposing the ritual.

Finally, almost a half day later, eyes bloodshot and hands shaking from stress and lack of sleep, Micah began carving runes into the dirt of the clearing.  He took a sip from his water skin, trying to steady his nerves as he finished the ritual circle.

Quietly he began placing reagents from his supply of common materials around the perimeter of the circle.  One of the Bresnen squawked at him as Telivern looked on with a fair amount of worry in its soft brown eyes.  Micah didn’t even notice, all of his focus centered on the ritual.

It would work.  He just knew it.  Already he could feel the power from Elsewhere singing to him, just behind his reach.  His eyes flashed, lit by the internal fires of his ambition.

Micah slapped the Folio shut and took in a deep and ragged breath. 

He reached forward and touched one the great trees ringing the grove.  For a second the trees sang to him their ballads of bygone times.  Then the ritual began.  Micah’s voice rose to a crescendo as he recited the words from his spidery notes in the Folio.  Rune after rune lit up in the circle as an unnatural wind began to blow through the clearing.  Both of the Brensen perked up at the scent of Elsewhere born on those gusts.

Micah closed his eyes, no longer needing them to feel the ebb and flow of energy swirling around him.  The two daemons glowed like suns flanking the swirling portal that would ordinarily be used for the summoning.  His hands flickered as he gathered the threads of energy, guiding them to the portal and stabilizing it with the skill of a maestro conducting a symphony. 

The Brensen flapped their wings, chirping excitedly as the vortex of energy connected with a snap.  Suddenly the boundless potential of Elsewhere filled the clearing.  The wind whipped through his hair as a mad smile erupted onto his face.

He stepped forward, Telivern’s worried snort unheard as the song of Elsewhere echoed through the hearing.  The tree shrunk visibly as its history and importance was drained from it.  Lovingly Micah ran his hand over the edge of the burning ring of energy as it hovered in the air.  It was cool to the touch, sending an electric tingle of power up his hand as he tasted its potential.

There, he would be without limits.  The Drakes and the Royal Family would be ants beneath him as he became a being of intellect and will.  The weaknesses of flesh, the weakness of Karell would only hold him back.  Without any further hesitation Micah stepped through, heralded by the crooning of his Bensen.

His body disintegrated in a lightning strike of white hot agony.  For a fraction of a second he was nothing more than a cloud of dust before that dust lost all meaning.  

The pain forgotten, a new reality stretched past him.  Instantly he recognized the truth of things. Physical form and distance were illusions, invented by the slab of meat between his ears to try and assign meaning to chaos.  The mists of Elsewhere took whatever form his will assigned them, changing shape in time with his thoughts and emotions.  Here, he could have anything he wanted so long his mind could shape it.

Nothing existed except intellect, time, and primal energy.  Everything else, Karell, his family, the Golden Drakes, even Jo, it was all a lie.  A lie told by the gods because they knew that humanity wasn’t ready for the truth.  Limits meant to guide wayward children down a path that would shield them from harming themselves in some careless mistake.

An entity brushed against his mind.  In a fraction of a second he shared a lifetime of thoughts with the creature, a daemon.  Tasted its curiosity.  Its amusement at the concept of mortality. Its confusion at Micah’s limitations.  Why he would choose to be restricted to five senses when he could instead sample reality in millions of other ways.

In that moment, his mind shattered.  Micah knew that he’d gone mad by any conceivable metric, but at the same time those metrics were meaningless.  A shackle holding him back.  His mind expanded as he observed the cosmos as it truly was.

A gentle hand reached out of the mists, its solid yet feminine shape a shock in the formless mists of Elsewhere.  It brushed the entity he conversed wordlessly with aside.  Softly, it touched Micah, a cool rag against the burning coals of his madness.

Bit by bit, he came back to himself.  Concepts such as family, the Durgh, and Jo regained meaning.  His goals and ambitions began to solidify and grow once more.

Silently, the hand withdrew, its work done.  Micah took in Elsewhere once more.  Its beauty and untapped potential still called to him, but he wasn’t ready.  He knew that now.  One day he might join the ageless entities that lurked there, but for now there were mortal hopes and ambitions that he could not set aside.

With a flicker of will, his former body condensed from the mist.  He merged back into it and willed himself through the portal as it guttered out.

Micah fell to the grass of the grove, gasping for breath as he tried to frantically fill his empty lungs.  Marveling, he looked at his hands, not even noticing that the great tree that he’d used to power the ritual was nothing more than a sapling.  They were without blemish.  Every scar and stain was gone.  He’d been born anew by his own hand.

He closed his eyes, a smile spread across his baby smooth face.  In the darkness he glowed just as bright with the power of elsewhere as the Brensen.  Instinctively he knew that his summoning would no longer be limited.  He was no longer just an entity of Karell.  He existed with a foot in both worlds.