It went on forever. How were they not completely dehydrated by now? With the way they were passing each other around, males and females coupling indiscriminately in every possible pairing, I wondered how they weren’t completely chafed and raw.
The mages overseeing the ritual abruptly stopped chanting. Simultaneously, more than a dozen people dressed in gray robes entered the room. They were surprisingly tall and broad-shouldered, feeling more like bodyguards than members of the cult. Their masks were the same gray shade as their outfits. They held large trays with small cups, which they passed around to the people fornicating around the altar.
The greed with which the naked people reached for them and gulped down their contents seemed to answer my question about their state of dehydration. To my shock, no sooner did they finish drinking than they collapsed and then began writhing on the floor. It didn’t look like the torturous spasms of someone in pain or having a seizure. It resembled far more someone having an orgasm.
The magic circle beneath them began to glow with such brightness it nearly blinded me. Then all that light and energy gathered around the outer edges of the circle before igniting a series of runes that I hadn’t noticed before on the floor on the opposite side of the altar. It climbed up what almost looked like a staff planted vertically into the floor. At the tip of the staff sat a large ring in the middle of which dangled a strange medallion. The energy being sucked out of the orgy participants funneled directly into the medallion.
I would have given anything to be able to move closer to get a better view of the patterns on the magic circles and the runes engraved on the staff which held the medallion. It would give me a better sense of what type of magic it was absorbing.
The glow illuminating the magic circle faded, and the orgy participants suddenly stopped contorting themselves. For a split second, I feared they had died as they all went incredibly still. To my relief, I perceived the shallow movements of a few chests as they breathed. The high priestess stood from her throne and made a gesture with her right hand. As one, the gray robes each picked up one of the unconscious bodies. Their broad stature now made sense.
As soon as they exited the room, the priestess came closer to the altar without going down the three steps of the recess in the middle of which it sat. She spread her arms wide, exposing her essentially naked body in the sheer outfit she wore. My mind stupidly wondered at how painful her nipple clamps had to be. They were hollow rings with little screws that pushed two spiked pads against the sides of her nipples to keep them in place.
“Welcome, my beloved,” the priestess said, her sultry voice projecting loudly in the room, the domed ceiling providing the perfect acoustics.
A cold shiver ran down my spine. That voice felt impossibly familiar, although something felt off. Anyway, beyond the factthat it wasn’t sufficiently distinctive for me to be certain, the person it had belonged to died a long time ago. I was there when her head was chopped off.
“This momentous event has been a long time coming,” the priestess continued. “The moment of our ascension is upon us. Tonight, we touch divinity. Tonight, we also become demigods. Four decades, you followed me loyally.”
My back stiffened. Aside from the fact that her words echoed the dreadful ones I heard too often in my youth, I couldn’t decide if she meant ‘four decades’ or ‘for decades.’
“You never lost faith and made many sacrifices. I see you, and I shall reward you,” she said in a solemn voice. “Those of you who voluntarily give your lives to this endeavor shall be reborn this very night, elevated.”
This time, a violent shudder ran down my spine. It wasn’t just the familiarity of her voice that was distressing me, but even her speech pattern and mannerism matched in a way that shouldn’t be possible.
“We must go,” I whispered. “Something is way off.”
Lyall didn’t speak but simply gave me a discreet nod. It would be difficult for us to go unnoticed with no one moving but the gray robes. Just as we were beginning to move, the priestess turned to look in our direction. It was all the more uncanny that with her mask covering her eyes, she should technically not be able to see us.
“You may now wear your circlets before I reintroduce to you our prodigal daughter—the key element to our success.”
My blood turned to ice. What circlet was she talking about? As one, every attendee—except the gray robes—removed a circlet from the folds of their garment and sat it on their heads. It had a clasp which allowed it to be firmly secured on their masks. At the same time, eight gray robes started heading towards us.
“Lyall?” I pressed him, my voice thick with tension.
My stomach dropped when he emitted a string of curses.
“They’re not sentient!” he exclaimed in a low voice.
Simultaneously, a series of magic circles appeared on the ground. Horror twisted my innards when I realized that every other attendee stood perfectly inside those circles in small groups of varying sizes.
We did not.
This was planned all along. We fell into a trap.
“Impossible!” I breathed out, only to notice four more gray robes coming from behind us.
I immediately invoked a protection spell for both of us. Three black robes among the attendees removed their masks, revealing themselves to be Onis. They instantly began to use their powers to attempt to mind-control me.
“Welcome home, Eleni,” the priestess shouted. “Do not fight, my daughter. It is time for you to fulfill your destiny.”
Ignoring her, Lyall shifted into a Reinothar. The terrifying creature had a stumpy lower body without legs and two front arms whose hands could have almost passed for hybrids between an elephant leg and a palmed duck-feet. A shaggy, rust-colored fur with a few white spots covered his body. It was covered in a substance that could cause severe rashes and even burn through sensitive human skin. He didn’t really have a neck, the head protruding directly above the shoulder. It didn’t have a visible nose, just a massive mouth that took almost the entirety of the face. Vicious teeth framed the lipless mouth, and an extensible black tongue poked out of it. Its saliva acted as one of the most potent acids in existence. And two sets of glowing yellow eyes adorned the side of the head, almost at the position of the temples, right below a pair of horns.
The Reinothar’s forehead was made of solid bone, with three black tentacles protruding from it. They were smaller versions of the tongue that he could shoot out like spears over a two-meterrange. They would harden on contact with anything organic, impale its target, and inject it with their lethal acid. At the back of the head, four furry limbs extended from the bone cap, and ended with sharp bone points strong enough to pierce through metal.
His appearance made the creature seem deceptively slow and lumbering. But Reinothars could move at dizzying speed, and the flat bottoms of their bodies and hands secreted a mucus that could affect people’s motor system, leading to paralysis and even organ failure if exposed to it for a prolonged period.
The only attempt at mind controlling me felt like the annoying buzzing of multiple gnats in my ears. With three of them hammering me, I should have fallen prey to their thrall in seconds, despite my Inquisitor training. Although I felt a slight tug, their enticement distracted me more than it compelled me. I could only assume it was the protection afforded to me by Lyall’s seed.
