53: The Inner Circle
With its guardians falling the core of the manifestation ritual was exposed, and all its corruption with it. Twelve sacrifices hung, their auras consumed with despair, while another was strung to the very centre of it all, her own aura slashed with psychic engravings and mental scars that might never heal. The magical power focused by the castle was spinning around them, connecting them, bonding them in terror, and Phantasia wanted to cut those ties before it was too late. But how?
Maybe it would hurt, maybe it would even kill her, but Phantasia dove towards the circle and focused everything she had into a protective shell. At first the cyclone caught her, threatening to tear her apart and thread her essence into the very spell she sought to stop, but then she was inside.
The corruptive mist of the core dulled her senses. It was like the first time she’d entered the World’s End and been surrounded by a miasma of human despair. but she was stronger now. She could deal with this. She had to deal with this. She knelt next to the girl at the focal point of the ritual and ran her hand through her aura, sending waves of purifying energy to soothe her spirit. How much she could spare wasn’t an issue. If it took all of her power, it would take all of it.
And then she felt something next to her. Familiar auras, too obscured by the haze to identify, their warmth bushing against, almost encouraging her. Then there was a spike of fear, a cry of pain, and a black stain on the ethereal world that dripped like blood. Death. Phantasia took a few steps away from the sickening corruption as it struggled to take shape. An oozing, retching slime with a face caught forever in madness.
Then the sacrifices around her began to move. They were being lowered and moved away, one after the other, by the familiar-yet-indistinct auras of her friends until only four remained. Then her friends began to leave. They were abandoning the rest. They were running away! Phantasia wanted to scream at them, beg them to return. Couldn’t they see what they were doing? The remaining innocents were screaming, their despair ripping apart the streams of mana around her. They were afraid! She had to—
A force hit her like a strong wind, and she felt a slender arm grab her waist. Korrigan’s blonde hair swept around her like a veil, cutting her off from the surrounding horror, and she felt herself pulled away, out of the circle, just as more shaman began to flood into the chamber.
***
“Re-enforcements are on their way…”
Theseus felt the blood drain from his face. There were still four sacrifices strung up like raw meat, one bleeding from several minor incisions and another barely clinging to life as the gash across his midsection threatened to spill his innards over the bloody circle of death beneath him.
He felt something brush against his shoulder, like a prickling warmth. Ms Chiltern was standing beside him in her forest-green drapes, a sad look on her face.
“There’s nothing more we can do, now get out of here before you get yourself killed,”
