Legion spoke while Serenity was still trying to understand enough of the ritual to actually do something. “Zanzital is fighting the Viper outside their assigned room. Raz is tearing up the metal plates on the floor of the room; he says they’re difficult because they’ve partially merged into the rock. Daryl is fighting in the other room, but doesn’t expect it to take long.”

The Viper heading to the escape room was not a surprise. The metra melding into the floor, on the other hand, was a very unpleasant surprise. They’d planned to lift the segments out of the way as a fast way to disrupt the wards; it was a violent method and could cause explosions in the active portion of the ward, but it would quickly remove the chance for a ritual to function.

Unfortunately, it sounded like these were more advanced than Serenity had expected. Force would still take them down, but the faster way might well be to take control of the ward instead. With control,. The melding could be canceled and the pieces would be easy and safe to remove.

Serenity traced the wards that surrounded the ritual. They were active, but the ritual’s activation was already starting to interfere. There were some relatively safe paths, safe from both the ward and the ritual, but they shifted quickly. He waited for one of them to pass by the entrance, then hurried in.

Wishing he could bring others into the protected middle of the ritual was pointless. The path shifted too quickly for anyone to get through with only his directions, and neither Rissa nor Blaze had the magesight or training to navigate the wards and ritual. Serenity wasn’t certain about Legion; she might have magesight but without the training it was probably still insufficient. The fact that all three had hearts wouldn’t help; even a minor slip could end up with them getting caught in the activating ritual.

Serenity had to deactivate the ritual before it let go or come up with some way to protect his friends. They were far too close to be safe, especially if the ritual was designed to cover the entire base the way Serenity thought it was.

Raz tried every offensive Skill he had on the ward structure. None of them affected it at all; he couldn’t even get into the room. He could see in, but that was all. It was hopeless; he needed to be at a higher Tier to accomplish anything here without a specific wardbreaking or antimagic Skill and he simply hadn’t learned those yet. He was still learning how to set wards!

It didn’t help that he was right next to the ward; the entire room wasn’t warded, but there was very little space outside the ward. It was still safer inside the room, where the high-Tier people fighting in the hallway were less likely to hit him by accident. One stray hit probably wouldn’t kill him, but he wouldn’t be in good shape.

Raz stopped attacking when he’d tried each of his Skills and looked at Legion. The man was still trying things; Raz didn’t entirely understand what he was thinking but he had to be thinking something. He wasn’t just attacking the formation itself; instead, he attacked the air, which halted the attack at the edge of the ward, the floor, the walls, and the ceiling. There didn’t seem to be that much point to Raz; none of the attacks were damaging the ward or its underlying material any, any more than Raz’s had. They needed Zanzital to finish the fight so he could take care of the ward.

When the sounds of fighting outside picked up again, Raz turned to the entrance and peeked outside. Zanzital was still holding off the Viper with a Skill that seemed to have made a wall of spikes and blades; they moved to slice the Viper whenever he came close. The change was that it was no longer just Zanzital and the Viper fighting; Raz saw flashes of both Daryl and Gabriel beyond the wall.

Raz ducked back into the room, glad that no attacks seemed to be headed his way and intent on keeping it that way. His eyes lit on Legion before he realized who he hadn’t seen: the other Legion, the one who should have been with Daryl and Gabriel. “Where’s your other, ah, you? The one with Daryl and Gabriel.”

Raz’s tail twitched in annoyance and embarrassment. There had to be a better way to say that, but he still wasn’t used to Legion.

“I’m in the other warded room, performing similar tests to what I’m doing here.” Legion frowned and stopped attacking. “The results aren’t the same and I don’t think it’s just the different Skills I have available. The floor here is reacting differently. Do you have any Skills that can affect stone? It doesn’t have to be an attack Skill; in fact, it’s probably better if it isn’t.”

Raz frowned and dug through his Skill list. Environmental manipulation was the theme of his latest Path, one he’d picked at Aki’s recommendation, so there ought to be something. Basic Stonework (Magical) jumped out at him. He’d only ever used it to adjust details in Aki’s dungeon, but it ought to work elsewhere as well. “I do, probably. What do you want me to do with it?”

Legion grinned at Raz. “Dig under that panel. We can’t get them up because they’ve stuck themselves to the stone, but they’re not stuck to each other. If you can remove the stone under them…”

Raz grinned. Legion’s plan should work. It would probably be slow, but it would work!

Serenity reached the center of the ritual. The first step was removing the device that activated the ritual; it probably wouldn’t do anything more, but Serenity didn’t feel like risking it. A single blow from his ax cracked it and destroyed any chance it had to react to more commands from outside.

The second step was to shut down the ward. It wasn’t going to do any good anyway; it was designed to work in only one direction. Bidirectional wards existed, but this wasn’t one of them; this only restricted anything from entering.

Removing the ward was more difficult than destroying the receiver, but it still wasn’t difficult. The ward was separate from the ritual yet still established using the same setup; all he had to do was touch the keypoint and focus on taking the ward down. Serenity felt somewhat lucky that whoever made the metra panels hadn’t included some sort of authentication; it was a pain to manage, but Serenity knew he would have. They’d simply depended on the wards themselves to keep people out, and that didn’t work against someone who could read the mana currents once the ritual was active.

To be fair to the craftsman who made the panels, the method they’d picked would work well until the ritual was activated, and they’d probably assumed that would happen only when the ritual master was already inside and therefore able to defend the ward. Fooling a ward took time and skill, the same skill that could be used to bypass authentication required to shut it down.

Once the ward was inactive, Serenity could see the spellforms created by the ritual far more clearly. One thing was quickly obvious: this was definitely not a ritual created to make Hollow Ones, no matter what the Viper said. It reached for something, but what it reached for wasn’t here.

Serenity had two options: he could watch the ritual and find out what it really did or he could destroy it. Destroying it might well trigger a collapse related to whatever it was supposed to do, but starving it of power first would reduce the impact and possibly make it fizzle out. Better, with the ward down he didn’t have to do it alone; with the knowledge that this wasn’t the ritual he was afraid of, he could ask for help.

“Everyone, get in here. I need you to remove or destroy the cores around the edge of the circle. Don’t step inside and if you can get them out with tools, do that.” With the ward down and the ritual at the stage it was at, reaching across the lines would be unpleasant but not dangerous.

Blaze was the first one through the door. Legion was right behind him. Blaze had a stick that he used on the first core he came to; it shattered. No, wait, that wasn’t a stick, it was a metal bar and it seemed to be broken on the end Blaze used to smack the cores.

Legion reached out to grab a core. She hissed the moment her hand entered the ritual, but she grabbed the core and dragged it out anyway. Instead of heading to the next core, she hurried outside the room and grabbed a piece of debris to follow Blaze’s example.

Rissa didn’t enter the room. :Can the three of you handle it without me?: She didn’t speak out loud; Serenity wasn’t immediately certain why. :I need to be out here to keep an eye on the workers. They’re not that close, but they’re watching and I think one of them is pretty sure we aren’t supposed to be here.:

Serenity reached out to the ritual; he had to balance it or the distorted mana input would unbalance it and make it explode violently and unpredictably. The fact that it was using monster cores was bad enough; destroying them like this was a great way to turn a ritual into an extremely inefficient bomb with weird side effects.

There was a nagging familiarity to the ritual as he balanced it, something that resonated with him and his Affinities. Was it summoning undead from somewhere? That could be quite dangerous and he hadn’t had time to find whether or not there were control nodes, much less where they were. He might be able to control whatever it summoned or he might not, but at the least he could deny the Viper its aid.

Serenity watched Blaze and Legion work for a moment. Realistically, they were probably working fast enough that a third person wouldn’t speed things up much; it would make the balancing easier, but it wasn’t necessary. :Yes, they’ve got it. Has anyone alerted them to the trouble outside? I’m expecting a runner any time now, it’s been long enough.:

:No,: Rissa stated firmly. :I’d have seen that; both of the entrances are visible from here and I’ve been keeping an eye on it. They’re just nervous.:

Serenity huffed to himself. :Fine, but if they do come in, let me know. If they’re hostile, get in here and close the door.:

:I can talk my way out of it,: Rissa countered. :That’s what the armor is for, right?:

:They speak Empire, not Bridge,: Serenity objected. :They’ll understand it, but using Bridge will make you even more suspicious.:

:I know.: Rissa’s voice held a smug grin; Serenity could almost see the expression on her face. :That’s why I’ve had Blaze teaching me their language whenever we had time. Tell him I won the bet.:

:Bet?: Serenity didn’t like the sound of that.

:He thought you knew and approved.: Rissa sounded positively gleeful. :So we bet a week’s worth of cooking on it. He’ll be taking my turns for the next week.:

Serenity could only shake his head. Blaze should have known better than to bet anything with Rissa; she only bet on sure things. “Blaze? Rissa says to tell you she won the bet.”

Blaze started laughing as he smashed monster cores.

When the last one was smashed, Serenity directed the ritual to discharge. He had to use up the rest of the mana it held before he could safely leave the circle’s center and actually dismantle it. By now, he was fairly confident that it was a summoning ritual of some sort and that whatever it summoned should be weakened enough to be easily dealt with.

When a shadowy winged figure holding a sword made of more shadows appeared in front of Serenity, he knew he’d guessed wrong. There was nothing of Death about the figure in front of him; it was definitely not Death-based undead.

Lillene

A winged man with a sword made of shadows ... hmm, I wonder what that could be ...