Chapter 52: Disruption
Lyra dived to the side, but Faye remained motionless, watching Joel’s reaction with a quizzical eyebrow. Before an irate Theseus could react to stop him, the emotional Raven swept his blade forward and struck the crystal, sending it flying across the chamber like it were a baseball. Hitting the wall hard, it shattered into sparking dust. As its magic faded, so too did the ocean shimmer on the walls, as if someone had pulled a plug in its depths and it was now draining away to oblivion.
“Like that was hard,” said the Raven with a smug grin. “Let’s get on with the others! I’ll show those bastards they can’t suck us dry for this shit,”
“An unexpected emotional outburst,” said Faye, returning her attention to the altar, “However, you have caused more harm than good. By destroying the crystal you have removed a part of the circle itself. This will be detected by the masters of this ceremony. If they do not attempt to intervene, they will use the opportunity to escape with their sacrifices and postpone the ritual,”
“You fecking twat,” said Lyra, pulling herself up on the altar.
“Aww, man, they were gonna know sooner or later anyway, and we stopped it, right? No one’s gonna die anymore, so we did good, right?”
Faye was silent for a moment, eyes closed in concentration. “I can feel the water element draining from this place. It is too fast. They will notice. Without a focus point the circle will not complete itself and the ritual will not even start,”
“Wait,” said John, “I figure these towers are like batteries, and our job was to suck their power dry so they didn’t have enough charge to complete the task, right?”
“That is correct,”
“So can’t we just stick in a replacement battery? Something cheap and tacky that won’t do the job and ends up draining the others just as fast to make up for it?”
“We do not have a—“
“Will that do?” Lyra was admiring a tiny dark gemstone she’d placed on the altar. Compared to the magical splendour of its previous occupant it looked more like a pebble scooped up from the dirt. “When we got attacked by a leansídhe in the tunnels I sucked it into this thing. Probably ain’t much power but…”
“That is adequate,”
***
Phantasia kept a cautious distance as Ceres and Korrigan waltzed past the spectres of the shaman guarding the Wind-element tower. She was still a little uneasy with the idea of being ‘invisible’ since she would have surely noticed something amiss herself, the same way she could see auras and corruption and entities like the leansídhe.
Like the Fire tower before it, the Wind node reflected its elemental properties. Sweeping, wild lines branched out into floral patterns across rough, barky textures, all bathed in a hazy springtime green. The crystallised mana atop an altar of wild vines and grasping roots tainted the world around with slimy, groping tendrils, which resembled the lecherous shape Phantasia recognised as human lust. Four shaman spectres hovered nearby, ignorant to the approach of the two witches.
“Wouldn’t it be easier just to break the circle?” asked Phantasia. It would have been her plan, had she not met with her new allies.
“That’d be fine if it weren’t such a big ‘un,” said Ceres, “See the circle ain’t actually started up yet, so if we go and cut bits outta it, it ain’t gonna start up. And then they’d be on ta us an’ stop it all. If we waited ’til the circle started up proper, we wouldn’t have time to save the sacrifices, so we gotta do it like this,”
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