Far Horizons: Tales of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror. Issue #18 September 2015 | Page 91

Ted quickly prepared everything for the ritual. When
Zetal got back, everything was prepared.
“Alright, now be careful not to step in the
invisible sand, just stand over here in the middle of
it all.” Ted pointed at a place on the floor. Zetal nodded and stepped in. Aksel followed him in the circle,
holding the large Grayat egg. “Now, you need to sit
down.” After Zetal sat down cross-legged on the floor,
Aksel handed him the egg. “Drink it.”
Zetal stared at Aksel with a ‘you have to be
kidding me’ expression.
Ted rolled his eyes. “Just poke a hole in one
side and drink it. It’s not like we made the rules.”
Zetal sighed, and broke the top of the egg with
his fist. He drank it as fast as he could, trying to spend
as little as time as possible tasting the uncomfortably
salty insides. Texture wise, it felt like he was eating
an unconscious slug. He tried not to puncture the thin
veil, but failed. The green insides of what counted
as yokes were very bitter and smelled terrible. When
Zetal finished the egg, Aksel handed him the vile of
blood.
“Don’t tell me I need to drink this too.”
“No. Paint these symbols,” Aksel handed Zetal
a piece of paper with a body diagram. “On the same
places this shows them. I am going to be chanting
in the meantime.” Aksel sat down outside the circle
and chanted slowly as Zetal painted the symbols on
his arms, hands, legs and chest. They were small and
jagged, so he had to use his nails, which was a pain
since they were short. Aksel paused every few seconds to see Zetal’s progress so they could finish at the
same time. He had to slow down significantly, and he
thought that made him sound like he didn’t know how
to read. It frustrated him to no end, and he couldn’t
even curse in his head because he would mess up
the pronunciation. He did feel a bit better when he
glanced over to Ted, he had the expression on his face
that he got when he was listing a string of curses in
every language he knew.

As both Zetal and Aksel wrapped up, Ted
picked up the jar of jelly and tossed it to Zetal. “Now
open that and draw this on the floor.” He pointed to
a parchment that was tacked on the wall, with had a
large rune that looked like a rigid spiral that formed a
teardrop shape.
“This is the gateway?” Zetal asked as he was
staring at the finished result. Aksel started chanting
again, with his eyes closed. Grey light crawled from
his hands, across the floor and stuck in the sand around
Zetal. Ted fought to hide his smirk as he was observing Zetal squirming, because the runes on his body
started to sting. Aksel was gutsy, trying to get away
with dimension magic in front of Zetal. There was a
small difference between normal extremely advanced
demonic magic and complicated dimension magic,
but it was an obvious one. Ted was just hoping Aksel
didn’t forget the words, and had to open his eyes. Even
Zetal, who was staring at the light with a focused look,
would notice Aksel’s eyes turning from dark blue to
white.
The sand on the floor lost its invisibility, and
the rune in the middle sank in the ground like water
in soil. Aksel opened his eyes as soon as the lightning
vanished. His eyes had just turned back to normal
so they felt prickly, and he had to resist the urge to
scratch them. They would hurt a lot more that way,
and the bandages on his wrists couldn’t absorb all
of the blood. The jacket hid the fact his sleeves were
soaked. “That’s it.”
Zetal stared at the runes on his hands. They
were burned in his skin. “I assume these will stay in
forever?”
“Yup. Now all we need is to wait on the clay.”
Ted smiled.

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