Chapter Seventeen
Awareness comes to me as if through water, muted, deadened.
Roesia snarls. Seb’s and Thio’s arms are lit up blue with readied spells. Darian’s strumming on his guitar, building his own spell. Marlow’s … gone, but that’s not unusual for a rogue. And Aaron’s coming around to flank me.
Teeth bared, hands in loose fists, I stomp the rest of the way into the room, envisioning my knuckles in Tem’s face.
The moment I get a yard away from the cultists, a wall of translucent green shoots up, encircling them and Bel.
It doesn’t stop me. I’m a tank for a reason.
I slam into the wall. A burst of electricity seizes my muscles, errant, annoying twitches that send me lurching back. Bel shouts noiselessly, thrashing again. The three cultists facing him don’t react to any of this, their heads bowed under their robes.
The wall remains intact. And Tem, behind it, smirks at me.
“Give us time,” Seb whispers behind me. He and Thio drop to the floor with their backs to the cultists, but they’ll still know we’re trying to break this wall.
I pace, mostly to keep Tem’s eyes on me, not Seb and Thio; but more because if I don’t move, I’ll tear at the floor, slam back against the wall, anything, anything to get through to Bel.
Aaron rounds the barrier, stops on the side opposite me. Darian and Roesia take up other points, each of us standing near a cultist.
Tem’s eyes slide around the room, and where anyone else might note that they’re surrounded and trapped, he only grins. “You can’t stop this. It’s prophecy.”
“Fuck your prophecy,” I bark. “And fuck your god.”
Tem’s face crumbles, revulsion he quickly schools back into rage. “I shouldn’t expect anything less blasphemous from a traitor to his own god. Urzoth has to be ashamed of you.”
His words do nothing to me. No pinch of reaction; no fear that he’s right. I don’t give a shit what Urzoth thinks of me. I hope he doesn’t think of me at all.
I keep pacing, moving with aggravated jerks like I’m the one in the arcane cage. “You want to talk blasphemy? Bel trusted you. You’re the traitor.”
Tem scoffs. “I have betrayed nothing; every move I’ve made has been in service to my lord Galaxrien.
I tried to get to Belzaroth’s father, but he’s in a heavily fortified prison.
Belzaroth, though?” He laughs, dark and cruel.
“Do you have any idea how easy it was to infiltrate the adventure party once I figured out who was guarding him? They were so desperate for help that they took me on with almost no questions asked.”
Just like they gave him to me.
Something clinks behind me, and Seb curses.
“Must’ve screwed with your plans when I took him from you,” I say to keep Tem’s focus.
He spreads his hands as if to say, Did it? “I knew his location still; I knew I could reclaim him when the time was right.”
“But the time isn’t right. Your own rhetoric says the spring equinox—”
“Yes. The spring equinox—in the Demonic Plane. Which is today in this plane. I merely needed to keep tabs on Belzaroth until the proper date.”
Nowhere in any research has a cultist ever mentioned the Demonic Plane’s calendar. Trust them to add a new factor because none of their other shit has worked.
Gods, I can’t do this anymore.
“You’re making this up as you go, aren’t you?” I throw in a chuckle even though my chest is crushing in with how hard I’m fighting not to look at Bel or lose my shit.
Tem’s brows pulse in a scowl. “You have no idea what I have done. Every ritual this past year has been thanks to me. I got a clipping of Belzaroth’s hair to test if his lineage would indeed react to the spell.
I had them try to do the ritual on a real person taken from Urzoth’s church as a trial run for today, to see how that church would react and if they would be a problem.
All of this has been thanks to me, and in only a few moments, this room will lift into the stadium and Galaxrien’s true followers the world over will see our lord rise! ”
I don’t point out that most of those rituals failed. But, wait—this room will lift into the field?
Every other ritual has been public, or at least reported on; Tem wants eyes on them.
The cultists begin chanting, low, murmured words I don’t catch.
And the room shifts.
The walls, the floor; they groan and shudder, and I brace my legs wide as we start moving up.
I clock other items between the cultists’ feet now, all things I have listed on the notepad in my apartment, the elements of the ritual. Including the gods-damned bottle of hot sauce.
My eyes fly to the chains. Bel’s in the handcuffs.
Looking at him stabs into me, a visceral knife gouging deep. I meet his eyes, trying to wordlessly convey a dozen different things.
It’s going to be okay. I’m going to get you out of here. I love you, I’m here, I’m going to save you.
I expect him to be terrified, or numb, or grieving, but he’s staring straight at me, eyes aflame.
He mouths a word I don’t understand. Something with an F.
I shake my head in confusion.
He repeats it, over and over, jutting his chin at Tem, who has his arms lifted, his head thrown back.
“Today is the day,” Tem proclaims over the chanting, over the room’s groans as it launches for the surface. “The blood of Galaxrien will free him. The blood of Galaxrien will free him. The blood—”
Movement yanks my focus up. Marlow’s crouched along the I beam that’s holding Bel.
“He’s saying fake the ritual,” Marlow signs. Thank gods I learned sign language; she’s not wearing her enchanted ring.
Fake the—
I whip a wide-eyed look at Bel.
Fake the ritual.
Steal Tem’s attempt at summoning Galaxrien.
The ceiling peels back so the harsh light of midafternoon plunges down on us. The I beam holding Bel stays in place, the focal point for Tem’s display, and the roar of the stadium rushes in. The game shouldn’t be starting yet, but the field’s moving; the crowd’s going crazy.
The ceiling folds back and the walls collapse as we continue to rise. In a few seconds, we’ll be visible to the entire stadium. To the world.
I shake my head at Bel, panic gripping my throat. He rocks on the chain as the room twists and shudders, and he mouths, Please, Orok. Then, I love you.
That clamp on my throat releases.
We’d barely started to plan. We were supposed to be smart about it, control all the factors.
But Bel’s right. We can hijack this. We can end it all, now.
I whirl down to Seb and Thio, who are crouched over an evocation circle, hands splayed and faces bent in focus.
“Seb,” I whisper. “We’re doing the fake ritual.”
He stares at me for half a second.
A manic grin overtakes him, and I swear he giggles.
“Can you?” I ask. “Lightning, thunder, smoke, fire?”
He digs in his component belt. “Enough. Yeah. Keep them distracted.”
The room vibrates and we all lurch to the side, the walls almost entirely gone. The crowd is a dull rumble of noise, growing louder, and distantly, I spot a speck against the sky; one of the stadium’s cameras coming to see why the field’s moving so early.
They’ll record everything that happens. Broadcast it in the stadium and across the world.
Which is what we wanted, to show everyone that this ritual won’t work—but in our plan, we were going to alter how Bel looks.
Now, he’ll be at the center of this, in his true form, his identity shown to everyone.
And Seb and Thio are clearly doing magic; but hopefully, those watching will think they’re working to undo the barrier, which they are.
I stay in a crouch by Seb and Thio but face the cultists. They’re still chanting, hands spread. Only Tem has his hood back, his face tipped up, eyes closed and a smile on his face.
Bel nods at me. It’s okay, he mouths.
The walls collapse until only the floor and the I beam remain, and we’re gliding past the field’s ground, lifting higher, until we come to a warbling stop at least fifty feet in the air.
An entire stadium’s attention is fixed on us, and several cameras broadcast what’s left of the room. On one of the massive screens, it’s clear that the runes on the floor under Bel are in the shape of a pentagram.
Aaron, Roesia, and Darian stay in a circle around the green arcane wall.
Marlow’s crouched on the I beam, trying to pry at the chains holding Bel.
They all eye me, then the stadium, but they stay.
They stay and they’re ready, and I wish I could explain what’s happening, but with each passing moment of strain and worry immobilizing me, I face Tem, and wait.
“The blood of Galaxrien will free him,” the cultists chant. “The blood of Galaxrien will free him.”
“Now,” Seb whispers.
Lightning crackles around the cultists. A crack of thunder bolts through the air. Flames burst to life at the edge of the platform, billowing smoke around us. That’ll help hide what Seb and Thio are doing, at least.
Tem cackles with glee. “Rise, our lord! Rise!”
The flames flare higher, the lightning surges blindingly white—
And then it fades.
Shimmers, pulses, and retracts. The ritual, failing.
The cultists stop their chanting, confused. Tem’s smile fades and he shakes his head.
Breath saws into my lungs, fisted hands gouging my nails into my palms.
It’s not going to be enough, is it?
“No, keep chanting!” Tem urges.
They’ll keep trying. And trying, and Bel will never be safe, he’ll never be safe, not until they get exactly what they want: Galaxrien Vossen.
So … let’s give them Galaxrien Vossen.
Seb and Thio are both frantic in spell work, hands flying, components vanishing, and spells falling from their lips.
I lean over to them. “Voice projection,” I murmur. “A voice projection spell.”
Seb glances at me, sweat pouring down his face, his eyes slitted in confusion. “For—?”
“Galaxrien’s going to make an appearance after all,” I whisper.
Even over the rumbles of fading thunder, the noise of the crowd, all of it, Seb hears. Thio, too—he pats Seb’s forearm and goes, “On it.”