Домагой Курмаич - Mother of Learning

While this was going on, their other preparations continued. The Silent Doorway Adepts had finally agreed to open a passage to Koth, and Zach and Zorian used it to quickly claim the imperial orb. They did not establish contact with Daimen for the moment. The original plan was to evacuate everyone to Koth the moment a gate there was established, but that plan was now looking a lot less practical than it used to be. Talking everyone into cooperating with their plan while keeping them ignorant about the time loop was… impractical, to say the least.

Zorian was still a little pissed off that Zach had never tried to stop him when they had been discussing doing that, even though he knew this was practically suicide on his part. But then again… the situation was kind of hopeless. How would they ever be able to contain the knowledge of the time loop when they had no control over Red Robe and he had very little reason to keep things a total secret? Not to mention the problem of Zorian himself…

Princess was claimed as normal and bound to Zorian. Zach’s situation was deemed too unstable to have Princess depend on him. They had no idea how the bond with Princess would interact with his mysterious rules , and whether its presence would make it more complicated to adjust the contract he had with the angels. Plus, if Zach was compelled to go to a rampage or something, it was best he didn’t also have a loyal hydra at his disposal as well. His current skills were a headache enough.

Xvim also joined their little group of time loop aware individuals. They had already started talking to him before Zorian found out about the contract, so it was pointless to back off from him now … plus, they could really use his help.

Finally, the scheduled day of the summoning had arrived. Zach, Zorian, Alanic, and Xvim came together to Kylae’s temple, where they were greeted by Batak, the friendly green-haired priest that Zorian had met so long ago. Even though Zach and Zorian had been kind of rude and impatient these last few days, the young priest had never lost his temper around them and remained polite and helpful to the very end. He led them to the interior of the temple, which had been dramatically rearranged in the preparation for the summoning ritual.

The chairs and furniture had all been shoved to the walls to make space in the center, and a complicated circular spell formula had been inscribed on the floor in blue paint. Kylae was not the only priest present inside – eight more lower-ranking attendant priests had been brought in from elsewhere, and were currently scurrying around the modified main hall, double-checking the spell formula circle and making last-minute corrections. Additionally, there was a tall, male priest observing the proceedings with a cool, detached look on his face. His fancy blue robes, decorated in gold and silver, meant that he was someone pretty high in the Triumvirate Church hierarchy. He gave them a chilly, unfriendly look when they entered the hall, and then purposely ignored them.

"This is more involved than I thought it would be," Zorian whispered to Batak.

"Ah-ha… I don’t think you really realize the sort of thing you started," Batak told him with a quiet, nervous chuckle. "Even in the Triumvirate Church, it is not every day you get to summon an angel for a talk. This is a big deal. It’s especially a big deal when someone pulls as many strings as you did and does it all on such short notice. This has lot of people sitting up and taking notice, I hear."

Pulling strings? Zorian didn’t remember doing that…

He looked at Alanic, who noticed his look and gave him a small shrug.

"You said it was important," Alanic said unrepentantly. "I agreed with you."

They eventually retreated to the side and let Kylae and her fellow priests finish things. The preparations were lengthy, however, and Zorian couldn’t help but wonder if all of this was really necessary. There were lots of chanting and arcane rituals being performed, such as burning of incense and ritualistic bell ringing. Very little of it resembled structured magic as Zorian understood it. That was interesting because as far as he knew, angels could be summoned through any old summoning spell; it was just a matter of knowing how to contact them properly and them actually deigning to answer the summons.

Did all these little rituals count as proper contact procedure or was this just empty tradition that the Triumvirate Church insisted on following?

He didn’t actually ask that question, though. He had antagonized them enough recently with his request, and he knew from Alanic that the Triumvirate Church had some very scary resources to call upon when someone angered them enough. He wasn’t in the time loop anymore.

After what felt like an hour, the actual spellcasting began. Neither Zach nor Zorian had much experience with summoning spells, as they were useless and impossible to train inside the time loop, so the whole process was largely a mystery to them. All they saw was the circular spell formula on the floor lightning up with a soft glow and the air above it rippling like hot summer air.

"We’ve decided to summon a low-ranking angel to start with," Batak explained to them in a low voice. He wasn’t involved in the summoning and seemed to have assigned as their guide and minder instead. "Even if it cannot help you, it will inform its superiors about the issue and they’ll decide what to do about it from there."

"That’s fine," Zorian said. Low-ranking was fine. Less chance of it completely overpowering them that way.

"…servant of the Highest Ones, I implore you to grace us with your presence," Kylae intoned solemnly. "We, the lowly children of the dust, have a need for your infinite wisdom and guid- urk!"

Uh oh. This doesn’t sound too good…

"What’s happening?" Zach and Batak asked out-loud at the same time.

"The summoning is getting hijacked!" the blue robed priest said in a panicky voice. "I don’t understand! We preformed all the rites correctly! The demons shouldn’t be able to–"

"It’s not the demons," Kylae said firmly. She was calmer than the blue robed priest, but her voice still trembled a little. "It’s being hijacked by another angel. Someone high up in the angelic hierarchy has used their rights of seniority to substitute themselves with the angel we are trying to summon."

She then winced and stumbled in place. The other priests followed her action soon after, some of them falling on their knees.

"It’s… it’s too much," one of the attendant priests gasped. "We can’t supply enough mana for this…"

In the center of the summoning circle, a vague fuzzy outline flickered in and out of existence. Every summoning spell had to incarnate the spirit being summoned into something. A shell, a vessel that would allow them exist in and interact with the material world. The more powerful the spirit, the fancier the vessel had to be to contain them and let them manifest their power… and thus, the more mana one had to pay to create an ectoplasmic shell suitable for them.

The angel that had substituted itself into their summoning ritual was apparently very mana hungry to summon.

Before anyone could say anything, Zach pushed Batak aside and stepped up to the summoning circle. He observed the whole thing for a few seconds and then started pouring his vast mana reserved into the ritual. He may not have been familiar with summoning magic, but simply supplying power to the whole thing was not too difficult to figure out.

Zorian, Alanic and Xvim followed his example immediately afterwards. A few seconds later, Batak woke up from his initial daze and hurriedly joined them in trying to power the summoning.

Zorian’s mana reserves dipped dangerously low almost as soon as he started pouring mana into the summoning ritual. It wasn’t by choice – the angel on the other side of the ritual was aggressively pulling on every available mana source to fuel its descent on the material plane. No wonder the priests had reacted like they did. Having one’s mana reserves forcibly drained in such fashion wasn’t lethal, but it wasn’t a pleasant experience either.