Sergeant Chase stepped through the doorway first and off to the right, pointing his Magearm pistol in that direction. I stepped out right behind him and moved to the left, swinging my cane in a wide arc, ready to unleash another bolt of lightning. Athena came out between us, lifting her shotgun to point straight up and looking in that direction.

Silence. I was starting to hate the silence in this clearing. Less than a hundred yards in any direction I suspected we’d find birds, squirrels, probably some deer…but in this clearing, nothing. We couldn’t even hear the life outside of it. It was absolutely eerie.

As a generality, eerie isn’t a good thing in the supernatural world. Sure, sometimes eerie can be harmless, or even fun. But most of the time, it just means something nightmarish is about to happen. At least, in my experience.

“Anything?” Chase asked.

“Clear,” I reported.

“Clear,” Athena agreed.

“Clear,” Meyers added, then rolled to his knees with a little groan. “Ow. I think that thing wrenched something in my back when it pulled me off my feet.”

From behind us, still inside the doorway, Artemis made an unhappy sound. Based on that, I decided to revise my statement. “Not entirely clear, but nothing in sight.”

“Fair enough,” Chase said. “What happened when it reached the grassy area? Why didn’t it flee into the trees?”

Good question. I didn’t really have enough information to go on, so I made my best guess. “I’d say it hit a boundary created by that large circle to keep it contained here. It’s just a guess, but it’s a reasonable one. Whatever the boundary was designed to do, it obviously wasn’t meant to stop spells or people from crossing it…just that thing, whatever it is.”

After a moment, Chase said, “That sounds complicated.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Athena replied. “Setting up a circle to keep a single entity contained while letting everything else through is tough, but not really compli -“ She was cut off by one of those ear-piercing, spine-shivering screams, and a moment later the creature dropped out of the sky and landed in front of us, giving us a good look at it finally.

The bulk of its black mass appeared to be made up of a billowing, constantly shifting cloak of some fabric that was so smooth and dark that it almost seemed to absorb light. It had no hands that I could see, but its face was just visible beneath the voluminous cowl. Its skin was pale…not the same healthy pale of my own fair complexion, but a pasty, sickly, fish-belly white.

It had no eyes or nose. Just empty, skeletal sockets.

Without a word to one another, Chase and I blasted the creature with lightning again, and Meyers joined in from off to the side. It staggered away from us, but the bolts didn’t seem to have much effect on it other than that.

Then Athena’s shotgun boomed, and I caught myself ducking slightly as it fired just a couple of feet away from me. That was a habit I’d need to curb. But Athena’s shot was at least more effective than the lightning bolts Chase, Meyers, and I had hit it with. The creature’s cloak - or maybe the voluminous folds of black cloth were actually part of the creature itself - fluttered and rippled with the impact of the buckshot. The shot didn’t do any visible damage, but the creature staggered drunkenly for a moment before darting away to our right, rebounding off the invisible wall of the circle again, then vanishing around the side of the building.

“That was bracing,” Chase said breathlessly. “Why didn’t our spells have any effect on it, but the shotgun did?”

“Even if it wasn’t much,” Athena muttered, handing the shotgun to Meyers as he approached and pulling out her LeMat revolver. “Silver?”

I shrugged. “Try it. It’s worth a shot, no pun intended.” I looked at Chase as Athena broke open the revolver’s center chamber and replaced the shell there. “If it’s from some other realm, then I suspect it’s reacting to the metaphysical mass of the ammunition. Which means we need to try something that channels energy more efficiently than lead. Silver is good for that, so is iron. But we probably won’t kill it that way.”

Frowning, I turned to face the doorway where Artemis was crouched, her eyes on the sky. “This creature, whatever it is…I don’t think it’s native to this plane…this dimension,” I added, seeing the blank looks on Chase and Meyers’s faces. “We need to figure out how it got here, and undo it.” I pointed into the open doorway. “Our answer is probably in there somewhere.”

Chase nodded. “You go and look. We’ll keep that thing out here.”

I nodded, then hesitated. “As long as there isn’t another entrance to the building that we didn’t see.”

“Point,” Chase said. “All right…you stay here, I’ll go in and look. Meyers will stay here with you. If I find something that looks likely, I’ll come back and get you.”

“Sounds like a plan,” I replied, trying to sound confident and upbeat. A moment later, Chase had stepped around Artemis and disappeared back into the building.

> Artemis said uneasily. >

“We got that,” Athena said, tension rippling in her voice and in her presence in the back of my mind, as her tail lashed back and forth. She thumbed back the hammer on her revolver and flipped the lever that dropped the centerline hammer into place. “I hope silver has more of an effect on it.”

“Me too,” I said, moving back a little so that I was standing out of her line of fire no matter which way she had to shoot. I didn’t have far to go…after only a couple of steps, my back bumped into the wall of the building. At least that should be solid enough to protect us. I hoped. “Meyers, if that thing comes back, let Athena shoot first.”

“Will do.” He finished reloading the shotgun and moved to stand on the other side of the open doorway from me, with Athena between us. “I really hope you’re right about silver being more -“

With an inhuman shriek, the thing shot out from around the building to our left - it must’ve circled all the way around - and rebounded off of the large circle’s invisible barrier a third time. Its momentum and angle carried it straight at us, its cloak stretching out towards us like two arms as it came on, still shrieking.

Athena’s LeMat might be more versatile than a pump-action shotgun, but it didn’t have the same range. She let the creature approach almost to within arm’s length before blasting it…so close that I felt a wave of intensely cold air rush across us from the force of its approach.

But the silver buckshot she’d loaded had as dramatic an effect as we could’ve hoped, entirely out of proportion with mass of silver discharged, in fact.

There was a brilliant flash of light that emanated from each point of impact, and the creature was actually blown all the way back from where we stood to crash against the invisible barrier that kept it trapped in the clearing. It crumpled to the ground, seeming to deflate into a pile of deep shadows.

Athena quickly reloaded her revolver, hissing softly as she dropped the still-smoking spent shell casing before sliding in a fresh one.

“Think that killed it?” Meyers asked, taking a tentative step forward.

I shook my head grimly. “No way are we that lucky. I could try fire…”

“With all this dead grass around? Great way to start a forest fire.” Athena sighed. “Still, it’d be better than getting…eaten, or whatever.”

“Well said.”

“Alys!” Chase’s voice called from inside the building. “You’d better come and see this!”

I looked over at Meyers. He smiled and gestured to the door. “Go on. I’ll keep an eye on that thing and holler if it starts moving again.”

“All right,” I said, reluctant to leave him alone out there without checking to see if that weird creature was still alive or not.

Athena nudged me gently. “Go, I’m right behind you.”

Artemis was already up and moving deeper into the building as I turned and hurried through the doorway. We passed through the inner door and into a dark hallway. With a small amount of Anima and the slightest of efforts, I created a second wispy ball of magelight and sent it up over our heads, lighting up the hall. There were a few old picture frames hanging here and there, but the pictures had long ago been destroyed by mold and mildew, and now showed nothing but vaguely ominous yellow and brown stains.

I stopped at a second door - this one much older and made of half-decayed wood, which fit the exterior better - near the end of the hallway, which led deeper into the building, and a moment later Athena bumped into my shoulders. I glanced over my shoulder and saw she’d been walking backwards, her revolver pointed warily down the hallway. Her head turned and her eyes met mine for a moment, during which I felt her fear as strongly as my own. She flashed me a brief, uneasy smile, then turned back to her defensive vigil at my back.

“Sergeant?” I asked the open doorway.

“In here,” he said. “Bring that light, would you?” The circle of a small flashlight beam played across the floor just through the door.

I hesitated. There were all manner of things that could mimic a person’s voice perfectly, and several that could even have projected the beam of light. The atmosphere of this place was making me paranoid.

Artemis looked up at me and flared her nostrils. >

I bent and ruffled her fur as I brushed past her into the room. >

The room we entered was a large one, and probably took up most of the rest of the undamaged part of the building. It was big enough that my magelight wasn’t enough to show us all of it, so I pumped more Anima into it and brightened it until the whole room was lit up.

Sergeant Chase was standing at the outer edge of what appeared to be the remains of an incredibly complex ritual circle, putting his little flashlight away and staring at a red and pink mass at the center of the design. After a moment, I realized that a hand was sticking up out of the mass. And a bare, bloody foot. At angles that were impossible for a living human to achieve. Then the rest of the shape sank in, and I gagged as my lunch tried to claw its way back up out of my stomach.

“What is this?” Chase asked quietly. “This is…I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

I swallowed a couple of times and coughed to clear my throat. “I…I’m not sure. Give me a minute.” I walked over to him and started examining the ritual circle, trying desperately to ignore the mound in the center which had once been a living person.

In a twisted way, it was a work of art. I say that about a lot of greater ritual circles, because in a very real way they are. But this one was impressively complex, even if most it had apparently been laid down with chalk. There was a single large outer circle, about fifteen feet in diameter, drawn in yellow, with two curving lines that arced from the inside of the circle and looked like they might touch under all of the blood - semi-circles, with a large piece of quartz placed at each of the four points where they touched the outer circle. A ring of thick Norden runes ran around the inside of the main circle, and as I moved closer I saw that the half-circle lines within weren’t actually solid, but were made up of small, densely printed Latin, which read ‘Open the doors. Tear down the walls. Break the chains that bind.’ Over and over again.

That sounded ominous.

Within the nearest semi-circle were two concentric circles about two feet in diameter, drawn to resemble a compass rose, except I was pretty sure it was reversed, with the arrow pointing south. On the far side of the…remains…the chalk had been smudged and smeared away, but there was enough left to guess that it had probably been a mirror image of what I was looking at. That was pretty common in ritual circle design.

There were two smaller circles touching the outside edges of the main circle, and based on their placement I guessed that there had been a third on the far side. With a third there, they would’ve been spaced evenly around the outside edge of the big circle. The two that remained each contained a single graceful-looking pictograph of some sort, which felt familiar to me, but which I couldn’t place immediately. There were two more prisms where the smaller circles touched the larger one, and the melted remains of black candles opposite the prisms.

The nearest small circle had a ring of repeated Hebrew surrounding the pictograph, which read ‘Tear down the walls,’ several times. A repetition of part of the Latin within the main circle. I hurried over to the other intact small circle, and found a ring of Greek text, which again read ‘Tear down the walls.’ The pictographs were the same in both of the smaller circles.

Interesting.

Finally, I saw the remains of yellow and green candles that looked like they’d been placed at the Cardinal points. There had probably been a fourth around the other side, where the circle had been destroyed.

And the gods alone knew what had been in the middle, beneath the dismembered remains of whatever poor soul had been sacrificed. Considering the complexity of the rest of it, I imagined that the center had contained something equally ornate.

“What is this?” Chase asked again.

I shook my head. “Beyond it being a complex ritual circle, I’m not certain. At a guess, I’d say it was a summoning circle of some sort. But the construction is all wrong. They’re usually designed around concentric rings, to keep whatever is summoned trapped. This is…” I shook my head again. “I really don’t know. I’ll need time to study it.”

Outside, the creature shrieked. The walls barely muffled the inhuman sound, and a shiver ran down my spine. The shriek was closely followed by three quick reports from Meyers’s shotgun. Then a scream of pain that was all too human.

“Meyers!” Athena turned to go to his aid.

“No!” Chase snapped. “Stay here and cover the hallway. If that thing comes in, you’re all that’s between us and it.” He looked at me. “I don’t think we have time for you to study the circle in detail. Does this,” he gestured at the floor, “have anything to do with that thing being here?”

I knelt down and reached out to touch the large main circle. As soon as my fingertips brushed against the chalk line, I sensed the power flowing through it. The sensation shot up my arm like a jolt of electricity and made me jump back slightly. The Anima there felt even more greasy and damaged than the energy out in the clearing. I shook my hand and flexed my fingers, trying to make the tingling go away. “Oh yeah, I’m pretty sure it does. Though how a broken circle could be anchoring something to this plane…that makes no sense at all. If the circle was keeping that thing here, it should’ve vanished as soon as the circle was damaged.”

“How do we get rid of it then?” Athena asked from where she stood, just through the door and in the hallway. Another shriek sounded from outside and she glanced at me. “Do something quickly, I think it’s coming, and I’ve only got four silver buckshot shells left on me.”

I rose and looked back down at the ritual circle. “Damn it,” I whispered. Then, louder, I said, “Chase, help me destroy what’s left of the main circle. If we can break up what’s left of that, it shouldn’t be enough to anchor that thing here.” I hesitated, then added, “Assuming that’s what’s keeping it here, of course. If not, we’re back at square one.”

Chase grunted, dropped to his knees, and started scrubbing at the chalk with one sleeve of his jacket pulled over his hand. “I don’t have any better ideas. If you think of one, let me know.”

I nodded and got to work myself. After a moment, I saw Artemis scrabbling at the chalk with both forepaws…it was slow going for her, but she was making progress, and every bit counted.

“Oh sh-“

Whatever Athena had started to say - I had my suspicions - was drowned out by the boom of her gun and inhuman shriek. Within the confines of the building, the two sounds made me duck my head and instinctively cover my ears for a moment.

“Sweet Jesus…” I heard Chase begin praying in the wake of it as he frantically scrubbed at the chalk. “Poor Meyers…”

“Work faster!” Athena yelled, frantically reloading her revolver.

Figuring it couldn’t hurt, following Chase’s lead, I silently sent up prayers to Brigid - from the Celtic pantheon that my mother followed - and to Odin. I’m not very religious, but I have a soft spot for those gods, and it never hurts to ask for a little help when you’re doing something under pressure.

Another ear-piercing shriek filled the air, making Artemis flatten her ears and causing Chase and I to clap our hands over our own. It was cut off by the boom of Athena’s revolver.

“Hurry up! I’ve got two shots left!” I heard her reloading as I stared at the floor.

This wasn’t working. The energy was still pulsing through what was left of the ritual circle. “There must be something in the center holding the construct together,” I said.

“The body?” Chase asked, stopping his frantic scrubbing.

I shook my head. “No. A dead body doesn’t have the metaphysical mass to hold together a spell like this once the circle has been disrupted.” Except in Necromantic rituals, I added silently. Fortunately this didn’t look or feel like one of those. “There must be something underneath it.”

We stared at the bloody mass of body parts.

“Right,” I said. “Let me see if I can use the existing energy paths to destroy whatever it is.”

“Sounds good,” Chase said. His face was absolutely expressionless, but he sounded strained.

Ignoring the remaining chalk lines on the floor - there was still quite a lot, we really hadn’t gotten very far at all - I reached out with my magical senses and touched the Anima in the room. Immediately I could sense the warped energy wrapped around and through the ritual circle, so I quickly cast my Aura Sight spell.

It’s one of the first spells every Hermetic Mage learns: to literally see energy. It makes learning new spells tremendously easier if you can actually see what went wrong when you tried to cast it.

In this case, it let me see the Anima flowing around the ritual circle, filling in the blank spaces where it had been wiped away with bands of dark violet energy. That made me shudder a little…under ordinary circumstances, Anima - even Anima that’s been channeled into a ritual like this one - appears as a bright blue-white color to me. The dark violet color of this Anima told me that the ritual had either had a very destructive intent, or had gone badly wrong.

Either way, a large blob of it pulsed darkly in the center of the circle, beneath the remains of the sacrificial victim. It was a concentration of energy considerably greater than that in the rest of the circle, more than enough to both hold the ritual together and anchor our mystery creature on this plane of existence.

“Got it,” I said, shifting my cane to my right hand and rising. “This might be a little bit messy…”

“Quickly please!” Athena shouted.

“If you rush a miracle worker,” I shouted back, paraphrasing a book we were both fond of, “you get lousy miracles!”

“Ha ha…hey, it just headed back out the door rather than rushing me again,” Athena said, and I felt her confusion through our bond. “You still might want to hurry.”

“I’m hurrying.” I was reluctant to draw on the local Anima, so I quickly considered my options, even as I mentally prepared the spell I was going to cast.

Everyone has their own Anima resources. Every living plant and animal on the planet generates Anima constantly, not to mention the planet itself; the result is an effectively unlimited amount of energy. From a practical standpoint, there’s a finite amount of Anima any one living thing can contain - or use - at any given time. Plants, animals, and the planet itself ‘shed’ Anima at all times, and that energy is freely available to anyone who can tap into it. Spellcasters have more than most; like any muscle, the more you use it, the more you can. As such, I have a fairly large amount of Anima available to me at any given time.

That said, I - like most spellcasters - still preferred to draw on free Anima in the world around me. With so much energy available, there’s no reason to exhaust yourself needlessly, and using up your own reserves of Anima is like any other kind of exertion…it’ll flatten you, and leave you in desperate need of rest. There are, of course, ways of drawing Anima directly from living things and places of power, but they tend to be harmful, or even outright destructive. I don’t do that.

Which meant that if I didn’t want to touch the ambient Anima around me - which was warped and twisted by the ritual and whatever darkness had existed in the clearing before that - I was stuck using my own.

So be it. That’s why spellcasters work on building their own reserves. A couple of lightning bolts and my aura sight weren’t enough to leave me exhausted and without resources.

“What’re you going to do?” Chase asked, rising from his crouch.

“I’m going to destroy whatever focus is holding this ritual together and keeping that thing - whatever it is - here.” I grimaced. “I just hope it’s not organic.”

“Why?”

“I’m going to make it go ‘splat,’” I said. “At least, if it’s organic.”

“Ah. Gotcha.” He prudently took a few steps back.

I pointed my cane at the bloody mass in the center of the circle and sent my Anima flowing down its length. I gave it a half-turn and made a lifting motion with it, my spell extending from it to wrap around whatever the anchor item was…and a moment later, with a rather horrible squelching noise, it poked through the top of the pile, then lifted free and floated up into the air, dripping blood and bits of something that I tried very hard not to identify.

Thankfully, what rose out of the mess wasn’t part of the mess. As the gore slid and dripped off of it, a chunk of crystal the size of my head - it looked like raw amethyst - was revealed. “Okay, this is good,” I said, examining it with my magical senses.

“So you can destroy it?” Chase asked hopefully.

“It’s amazingly complex,” I said slowly. “It could take me hours to safely unravel all of that energy.”

“We don’t have hours,” he said, stating the obvious. “Is there some way you could disperse it or disrupt it quickly?”

“Without it blowing up?” I hesitated. To my eyes, with my Aura Sight spell active, I could see the energy woven into and through it. The streamers of black, brown and dark violet energy binding it to the remains of the ritual circle on the floor, to the bloody human remains, and to…

My eyes widened. A streamer of glowing black energy writhed and rippled straight up out of the crystal and into the ceiling. As I watched, it quickly whipped away from me, arcing towards the back wall of the room. It stopped, pointing almost directly away from me.

“Uh oh.”

“What ‘uh oh’?” Chase asked.

“Athena!” I called. “I think the monster’s about to…”

A section of the back wall suddenly…decayed, for lack of a better term. The paint peeled and flaked away, the drywall rotted and collapsed, and the timbers within splintered, blackened and shriveled up. The black-cloaked creature came in through the hole it had made, black and dark violet energy pulsing around it in unsteady waves.