James Davis - Circle of Skulls

"Choice," she said, spitting the word with a brief sneer. "He told me that that there were rules among his kind, ancient laws that even the gods were bound by, and that they required a choice, a balance between this world and theirs."

"What choice?" Jinn asked. "Who chooses?"

"It doesn't matter now," she said with a grin, "because, unlike him, I am not bound by laws or balance." Bright energy crackled across her fingertips, arcing down her wrist as she whispered an arcane phrase. "And I will not give you the chance to hurt him!"

"What-?" Jinn began, mystified, and he leaped to the side as white bolts of electricity flew from her palms. He rolled to the floor, blinded as the stone wall behind him erupted in a shower of sparks. She chanted again and his sword was ripped from his hand and flung to the far comer. Her eyes and fists blazed with red fire.

"Sathariel said I couldn't kill you," she growled. "He said it was impossible!"

Jinn swore and covered his head. Unable to strike back or escape, he hoped merely to survive. Heat filled the room and Rilyana screamed. Jinn braced himself for the fire, but it never came. He heard a loud crash followed by a silence broken only by a heavy breathing and the constant hum of the ritual circle. Raising his head cautiously, he saw Rilyana slumped against the wall, groaning and swearing as she tried to stand.

On the stairs, leaning on one elbow, her hand still steaming from a well-placed spell, Quessahn sat, glaring at the human. Teeth clenched and grunting in pain, the eladrin stood and brushed her hands off on her robes, muttering angrily.

"Sathariel was right."

Cold wind whistled through the borrowed ears of the nine skulls. Branches snagged at their clothes, snapped, and fell around them as they landed in a low crouch on damp grass and hard soil. They tore through the garden, boots crunching on deadfall, their nose lifted high, sniffing like an animal. Callak's body was weak, softened by a life of luxury, but their power made it strong, despite its physical limitations. Broken bones shifted in their right leg, and they could feel a torn hamstring worming its way up their right calf, loosed from its moorings.

Several of the nine skulls were amused by the sensation of pain, as with all they had nearly forgotten about the trappings of warm flesh. Pausing alongside the mansion, they grinned and tried to peer within the tall windows of the house, catching a familiar scent, one of family and connection.

"This one," Effram said as they slid along the wall and pressed their hands against the front doors. "All of them, I think."

"Gathered together? A gift or a ruse?" Graius asked.

The others, desperate and feeling time slip from their grasp, pressed Callak's hands against the hard wood, the oak feeling soft and pliable to their collected strength. They pushed. "Whatever it is, let us be quiet, swift, and watchful," he said as the door began to buckle. "Above all, be swift. If we hadn't written this last possession into the ritual, Tallus would have abandoned us completely. I doubt he will waste time waiting for us."

"Fortunately he is more buffoon than wizard," Graius added. "But be aware, the deva's witches are unaccounted for, and at least one of them has some real power."

"Duly noted," Effram said as the doors gave way, ripping away from their hinges and splitting like soft pine.

They prowled, well hidden in the dark by the shroud of shadow that clung to Callak's body, appearing as little more than a pair of emerald flames, floating through hallways and empty chambers. The scent grew stronger, smelling of fearful children and hushed breaths, puffing in time with fluttering hearts. An aura of heat drew them to a large drawing room.

A chorus of quiet whimpers greeted the skulls as they slunk forward, drawn by the stink of primal fear and… something else, something older. Bright eyes huddled together, their bodies dressed in nightclothes, as if they'd been stolen from their beds. They shivered and the skulls forgot their caution, but Effram remained troubled.

"Who brought them here?" he whispered as a shudder passed through Callak's body, a pang of curious weakness that gave the skulls pause. It grew to an odd ache, a pain they could not ignore. "What is this?"

"The witch!" Graius growled and pointed as a figure hobbled from the shadows. The skulls attempted to react, fighting inside Callak's head for consensus, centuries of magical knowledge cluttering their ability to cast even one spell at a moment's notice.

The figure drew closer and stood between them and the children, revealing itself to be an unfamiliar old man, a broad smile stretched unnaturally across his wrinkled face as he addressed them.

"Not who you were expecting, eh?"

Mara turned a wide circle in the alley, slow and deliberate, enjoying the drizzle and cold. She sprinkled fistfuls of salt on the cobbles of Pharra's Alley, sparing a disdainful glance at the House of Wonder, voices raised beyond the wall as the Watchful Order attempted to question the wizards within. She'd been compelled to wait until they had forced the gates open. An ancient scroll, drawn from her vast collection, had served well to mask the alley in illusion and hide her actions from those within the courtyard, but time was growing short, and she risked drawing the Watchful Order's attention, something she had managed to avoid for several years. Despite her hunger for the souls of the skulls, she had no wish to involve the authorities in her life any more than was necessary.

She focused on the circle of salt, whispering incantations and taking pleasure as the enchanted grains hissed on and between the cobbles.

"You can't be killed, can't be harmed, and you flaunt a long-avoided grave. You know and do far more than you should be able, considering your pathetic condition," she muttered, hoping that the nine skulls might hear her. "Yet this pitiful alley is your place. You return here time and again." The last grains of salt slipped through her fingers. "And I bid you return now!"

The salt sizzled and burned, white smoke gathering in streams that spun around the circle. It was an old and crude form of summoning, the enchanted salt a gift to her from an amorous and ambitious archfey whose name she could not recall, but for her purposes it was effective. More so as she knelt and pressed a stained strip of cloth to the cobbles, a torn shred of discarded dress soaked in the blood of the Loethe family.

The circle flared to a bright glow, tendrils of green rising into the spinning smoke as tiny arcs of energy lanced through the wide column. A distant murmur rose from the center of the circle, soft and muffled, growing louder by the breath until it became an angry cursing. Four spherical objects manifested, wreathed in green flame, swearing madly as they took shape, their empty sockets glaring at the hag.

"You face us alone, witch?" one said.

"Indeed I do," she replied with a grin, hearing the desperation in its voice and stretching her long fingers, a spell readied at the forefront of her mind. "And I intend to summon your brothers as well."

"You summon your own death!" it responded. "Leave us and we shall not hunt you down for this offense!"

"I was banished to this world and survived the wrath of Asmodeus himself," she said. "Pray pardon if I choose to decline your generous offer. Now come!"

Bolts of blue energy flew from her hands as she leaped, narrowly dodging four streams of green flame from the enraged skulls. She laughed at their efforts, inciting their fury to greater heights as she danced around their circle, hurtling spell after spell at the indestructible skulls. They spat more fire and chanted spells of their own, though with each they found their power weakening, the magic leeched bit by bit into the ensorcelled salt beneath them.