Prologue

Deep under the earth, the creature known as Karthinos scuttled forwards in the dark. Clutching a battered, ancient tome to its chest with two corpse-white, withered hands, it paused, unsure, as it came to an intersection in the crumbling, ruined passageways it traveled.

“Guidance,” it muttered to itself. Once again, pale green arrows sprang into existence across its vision, momentarily showing the way.

The creature felt its mana reserves drain further.

“Status,” it said, glancing for a moment at its mana levels. Too low for comfort, should it run into trouble again. It hoped its destination was near; already it had had to fend off one deep dwelling horror that it had no name for.

Karthinos had no wish to try and rest in a place such as this in order to regain his mana. Not until he had completed his quest. If his tribe’s legends were to be believed, too much hinged upon his success. Other gloomlings might even now be hunting him, jealous of the rewards he would reap for delivering the tome he now carried. They would be eager to take the tome from him if they knew.

He trembled slightly in fear at the thought of being caught, before forcing himself onwards, senses alert. Gloomlings were not a hardy species. Centuries upon centuries of defeat at the hands of humans and the other species that walked in the Light had seen to that. Now their once-proud, near-immortal race were no better than goblins. They had been reduced to sad, hunched wretches squabbling for scraps in the darkness, where once they had stood tall under the stars, leading entire armies of beasts and monsters that served the Dark.

Today, if the legends passed down by his species were to be believed, Karthinos would change all that.

He had found the book in a freak stroke of luck while scavenging aboveground for food. A sudden thunderstorm had driven him to seek shelter in the ruins of an old temple, long forgotten by the humans of the nation known as Ferimond. While looking around out of boredom and in hope of finding a juicy rat, he had come across a sealed chest that had been enchanted to keep out the elements. It had taken him some work to get it open, but inside he had found a treasure that any adventurer of worth would kill over: The original Chronicle of Champions, a history of an ancient war between the Light and the Dark, penned by Grand Archmage Merius himself.

While copies certainly existed, legend among the humans held that the copies were incomplete. Supposedly, the original version was the only place Archmage Merius had ever recorded the ritual that he had used to summon the heroes that had changed the face of the world. The gloomlings had long passed down a similar legend, but with a darker addendum: If the ritual was ever discovered, and brought to a certain place with the proper obeisance performed, the one known as the Dark Lady should return from her exile and grant power unimaginable to her faithful servants.

Karthinos turned, following the arrows that guided him. It would seem that those legends were true after all. While the gloomling lacked the magical knowledge to identify its purpose, the last few pages of the tome detailed an unbelievably complex multi-circle ritual, which he could only assume was the one in question. There was also the fact that as soon as he had picked up the book and recognized it for what it was, he had received a quest: he was to either destroy the book, or to bring it to a place deep within the earth and perform the proper rites. If the Voice of the World demanded he follow through with his tribe’s legends and restore his people, who was he to argue? He even had a special skill that would help him find the way.

At the time, he simply had prayed to the Dark Lady that he’d survive the attempt. Now, days later, Karthinos believed he was almost at his destination. He had cautiously crept through cavern after cavern, traveling the pathways deep beneath the earth, until the green lights of [Guidance] had led him to the crumbling remains of some enormous structure. Whether it was an ancient temple or a dead, long forgotten dungeon, Karthinos did not know. While he suspected the former, the interior was a maze of half-collapsed chambers and halls. If not for his guidance spell, he would have quickly become lost.

Even now, as he turned yet again down another branching hallway, archways of blackened stone passing overhead, he had no real idea where he was.

A sudden stirring in the air caused Karthinos to freeze in his tracks. A soft sound, almost imperceptible, like that of a long breath exhaled, echoed through corridor. Senses on high alert, the gloomling ducked into the corner between the wall and one of the arches. He cowered as a sensation he could only describe as the rustling of scales echoed silently through his mind, as though something pressed against his very soul.

He trembled in fear for several minutes. Then the moment passed, and the sensation faded. The sound did not come again. For several more minutes, he considered turning back, trying to find a different route. Who knew what lurked here in such forgotten places? He’d already nearly been eaten once, in the caves just before the ruin.

But no. The Voice of the World was never wrong. If it told him to proceed down the hall, that was where his goal lay. He steeled himself, clutching the book tighter to himself, preparing to run at the first sign of danger. He stepped out from his corner, and moved to the end of the passageway.

He found himself at the entrance to a grand hall, far grander than any he’d yet seen in this place. Massive pillars of obsidian stretched high above him to an arched roof that stretched into the distance. Embedded in the walls to either side ran a series of crystalline murals, some of them badly damaged. Each crystal ‘window’ appeared to depict some kind of dark force engulfing beings of light while a battle raged below. Statues of various grostesque figures stood between each mural, depicting some form of monster triumphing over what appeared to be one of the races of overworld. Here and there at the base of the pillars, dormant braziers made of bronze lay cold. Karthinos realized that he was standing in the nave of some long forgotten cathedral.

Karthinos examined the murals curiously, unable to read the script below them. He had never heard of any dark gods other than the one known as the Dark Lady, and he was not aware of any revered among the members of other races either. While the hated races of the overworld nominally worshipped a pantheon of various gods of light, the gloomlings of recent history had only ever known one single patron - one who had long been absent from the world.

The gloomling swallowed nervously. That would change today, he hoped.

Keeping an eye on every corner as much as he could, Karthinos crept forwards through the central segment of the cathedral. At its end, a raised dias held a large stone object which the creature had difficulty putting a name to. At first glance, it seemed like altar. Constructed of a black stone with streaks of red running through it, it formed a wide, chest-high flat stone etched with a variety of runes along the base, with two shallow bowls cut into the surface to either side. Parallel grooves ran from the bowls down the front of the altar, forming a channel around the base. Karthinos recognized them; those were for standard blood magic rituals, used to channel the power of blood into the runes at the base of the altar.

But the similarity to an altar ended there. The ‘altar’, if it was such, was backed by a high slab of stone that reached up taller than twice the gloomling’s height, and was ornately carved to give the impression of endless connected coils of serpents. A single, hooded serpent head topped the stone on the righthand side, slightly off-center. It looked forwards down the center of the cathedral, and Karthinos suppressed a shudder, for the carving gave him the distinct feeling of being watched.

To either side of the altar, two smaller, lower slabs rose up along the sides. These too were carved. Instead of the coils of a serpent, the tops had been carved into caricatures of the various races of the world, lying in prostration, facing the center of the altar. The ones closest to the foot of the dias appears to have been damaged, with deep gouges running through what Karthinos thought may have once been depictions of humans.

All in all, it looked like someone had turned an altar into a throne. The green lights of Karthinos’ spell led directly to it. It seemed this was his destination; Karthinos thought it fitting.

The gloomling began pulling various items from what passed for pockets in his filthy clothes. A pinch of herbs here, a vial of rat’s blood there. He was no mage, he only knew a few tricks, but he had a quest. The Voice of the World knew what was needed, had told him what to gather before coming here. He placed the objects he had gathered. Some went into the bowls upon the altar-throne. Others were burned in the braziers at the foot of the dias, the light of the flames piercing the back of his eyes. His kind had no need of such to see in the dark, and he had traveled long with no light of any kind, but he grit his teeth and endured it. Last of all, he cut his own palms with a sharp stone, dripping his own blood into the shallow bowls of the altar.

Then he whispered the name the Voice of the World supplied him, one that the world had not heard voiced for nearly a thousand years, and waited, trembling.

A black mist, so dark that even his racial sight could not pierce it, rose up from between his hands where he held them over the shallow sacrificial bowls. He tried to pull backwards, but found that his hands were stuck fast, suspended in the air. The mist poured upwards, and he felt his mana draining down to nothing as the magic pulled at him, and then started eating away at him when he had no more to give. He felt himself grow weaker and weaker, until with a sudden lurch he fell backwards as it released him. Rolling over, he clutched his precious tome to his chest and looked up to see the roiling mass of black mist form into a sphere above the altar. An eerie red lightning began to arc back and forth within, and Karthinos caught a glimpse of what his mind interpreted as an enormous serpent the size of a mountain that filled the entire chamber, and yet hung suspended before him.

His mind reeled as a sense of vast, unforgiving rage beat down upon him. He cowered on the floor, clutching the book to his chest, as the red glow resolved itself into a pair of eyes peering out from the black mist.

“WHO DARES RISK THE WRATH OF THE GODS TO CALL ME FROM MY SLUMBER?”

A feminine voice thundered out from the mist, thick with a strange metallic quality, as if speaking from a vast distance. The sound of it shook the entire chamber, causing several of the nearby murals to crack. Pieces of crystal shattered to the floor as the voice shook Karthinos to his very bones. The fiery red eyes gazed about the room, searching, and fell upon the gloomling prostrating himself on the floor.

“WHAT MANNER OF WRETCH IS THIS THAT DARES TO COME INTO MY HALL?”

A claw formed of mist reached out faster than Karthinos could react, and snatched him up by the throat, lifting him into the air. Terrified out of his mind, he could barely even bring himself to try and struggle free beyond a feeble kicking of his legs. His status screen sprang into existence in front of him, and the eyes seemed to take in everything about him in a single glance. The weight of their gaze almost like a physical blow.

“PATHETIC. TO THINK YOUR ONCE GREAT RACE HAS BEEN REDUCED TO THIS.”

Shame washed over Karthinos, but a brief spark of hope flared in him as well, as amidst his terror he thought of the legend that had brought him here. He forced himself to cease struggling. Still clutched by the mist, he tried to bow his head and extended the book towards the dark orb. He gurgled something unintelligible; the mist was choking off his ability to breathe.

“YOU BRING ME TRIBUTE? PERHAPS YOU ARE NOT SO UNWISE AS YOU APPEAR. LET US SEE WHETHER IT IS ENOUGH.”

Karthinos gasped for breath as he was released, tumbling unceremoniously to the floor. The tome was snatched from his hands. He prostrated himself upon the floor, trembling.

A deep rumble rolled through the room. A profound sense of glee washed over him as the rumble changed to a chuckle. Karthinos risked a glance upward as the chuckled transformed to a delighted laughter.

The tome lay suspended in the mist, opened to the final pages wherein the mysterious ritual was inscribed. Slowly, the mist coiled outwards from its dense sphere, spiraling down, and extruding six tendrils outwards to form the vague outline of a winged humanoid, tome held in one ‘hand’. With a clap of thunder, the mist resolved itself into solid form.

Before Karthinos stood a creature he could put no name to. She stood tall and proud, her skin formed of bright red scales at her core, fading first to a dark red at her shoulders and hips, and then to a deep black where her limbs ended in clawed hands and toes. A pair of great bat wings stretched behind her, flexing. The same piercing red eyes peered out from what would be an otherwise flawlessly beautiful face. Holding the tome in one hand, she gave an idle flick of her fingers. A slim, elegant black dress appeared from nothing, wrapping her nude form.

“Do you know what this is that you have brought me?” The creature asked, stepping lightly down off the dias towards him. Her voice no longer thundered through the room. Now it was silken smooth, melodic and pleased, with a hint of promise instead.

He prostrated himself in fear upon the floor, unsure if the creature before him truly wished for him to speak in Her presence. For surely this was the Dark Lady, Her chosen form a slap in the face of the gods the humans held dear.

A black, clawed finger pressed itself under his chin, raising his head upwards. The pressure continued as she used one claw to pull him upwards until he was kneeling upright before her, looking into her fiery gaze.

“Speak,” she commanded.

“The-” he swallowed, finding his mouth incredibly dry. “The rite of calling, mistress,” he whispered. “The ritual that brought the Champions of Light to the world.”

She smiled. Karthinos tried to repress a shudder, for her smile seemed to speak to him of a cruel vengeance long denied, but now at hand.

“And do you know why I have wished for so long to get my hands on it? What it does?”

Karthinos bit his lip momentarily. The woman, if she could be called such, still held him by the chin. He chose his words carefully.

“No, mistress,” he said, “only that you greatly desired it. Your humble servant does not presume to guess why your dark majesty might wish to summon heroes.”

She released him with a smirk in order to run one hand almost lovingly across the pages of the book.

“It is because this world is under a misapprehension. The ritual does not summon otherworldly heroes that serve the Light. It summons humans from another world, yes. But it does not summon heroes. Just people.

“It also forces the Voice of the World to... change them. Gives them the capacity for greatness. Makes them eligible for powerful titles, unique classes, and unusual skills. But they are just people. Potential heroes, yes, but ones who have yet to take up a cause.”

Karthinos trembled once again, but this time, it was the thrill of excitement running through him.

“M-Mistress means to make new Champions? Champions of... the Dark?” He whispered.

“Indeed,” she said, and then smiled. She turned briefly, placing the tome on the altar behind her.

“Now, what is your name?”

“Karthinos, Mistress,” he replied.

She lounged against the altar, regarding him thoughtfully for a moment, one claw tapping against her lips.

“You have brought me a tribute worthy of the very gods who once thought they were my betters, Karthinos. Such a gift is worth great reward. I can grant a great many things. Even the Voice of the World will bow to my will, should I see fit to exert myself. Tell me, what is it you desire most in the world?”

The gloomling licked his lips nervously. “Legends say that if we brought you the ritual, you could restore our people to our rightful place”

The woman frowned and flicked her hand dismissively. Karthinos flinched slightly.

“Your people are not who I am asking.”

She stepped forward towards him, her clawed toes making faint clicking sounds against the dark stone. Small puffs of smoke wafted upwards as her toes made contact with the floor, leaving scorch marks behind. She trailed a claw along Karthinos’ shoulders as she circled him.

“You brought me that which I have desired for millennia. You have provided me with the means to finally enact my revenge, when all my other servants before you have failed in their duty. They are dust. Unworthy. But you...? You willingly kneel before me, playing the part of the loyal servant.”

Once again she pressed a claw under Karthinos’ chin, once again lifting his eyes to meet his.

“So tell me. What is it that you desire?” she emphasized.

A tremor ran through him then, as he gazed into the eyes of a being more powerful than he could ever fathom. Could she truly make demands of the Voice? The prospect both thrilled and terrified him. That would make her stronger than even the gods the humans revered! He thought of his tribe, of the squalor and misery they lived in. How they had treated each other, fighting over scraps. He thought of the humans who hunted them for sport, to train their young. He glanced around, picturing the once grand nature of this ruined hall, and compared it the muddy holes his kind had called home. How they would be jealous, to hear he had been personally touched by the Dark Lady herself.

A spark of ambition bloomed inside Karthinos, and the woman smiled as his eyes returned to her.

“There it is,” she said, smiling knowingly. Then she gripped him by the chin, and her face turned hard and serious.

“Very well. Swear your allegiance to me, Karthinos, and be reborn!”

A system message floated before his eyes.

Do you wish to swear fealty to Lady Lethis, Serpent of the Night? Y/N This choice is irreversible, and will have wide ranging consequences, including permanent status changes to your race and class.

“Yes, I swear!”

Lethis released him, stepping back and gesturing upwards. “Then rise, my most faithful servant, and receive your reward.”

Karthinos stood, and was bombarded by status messages from the Voice of the World, filling his vision. At the woman’s gesture, the black mist from earlier arose and swirled around him. He felt his bones begin to shift as her power reshaped him. His posture changed, turning from small, cringing sycophant to that of a tall, proud warrior. His once-pallid skin twisted into dark, hardened scales. His fingertips sprouted small, sharpened claws which crackled with a deep purple energy as he felt new mana surge throughout his body. A thin tail with a wickedly barbed point sprouted from his backside while a host of new skill notifications scrolled past his vision. He mostly ignored them as he flexed his newfound muscles; time enough to investigate them later. He felt as if he could leap the entire length of the cathedral in a single bound, or reduce the altar before him to rubble with a single swing of his fist.

Not that he would do such a thing, for it would no doubt anger his new mistress.

Lethis was contemplating him as his attention returned to her, tapping her lips thoughtfully again with a single claw. Then she waved her hand, and the mist wrapped around him once more. Suddenly he found himself clad in armor made from some dark metal he was not familiar. It was as light as mithril, unbelievably so, and felt as if he could move freely without encumbrance. Finally, she snapped her fingers, and a long black spear of the same metal materialized in her hands. It was half again as tall as his new form.

She handed it to him as he bowed deeply.

Lethis then slowly circled her new servant, claws ticking against the stone once more as examined both his status and his physical form. Karthinos stood at attention, waiting for his Mistress’ command.

“It always fascinates me how the system adapts elements to fit each individual user.” She said, falling into a tone that seemed half lecture, half speaking to herself. “Especially when it comes to major titles. Intention, as always, proves important. Thus it is that new elements are constantly added to the system. For those who understand how to manipulate it to their advantage, ever greater power is always within reach.”

“Mistress?” Karthinos asked, confused.

Lethis patted him gently on the shoulder “No matter. Merely musing on the nature of reality. It’s been far too long since I last walked this world.”

Turning serious once again, she snapped her fingers and began to stride away from the altar into the ruins, carrying the tome in one hand.

“Come! We have a ritual to prepare.”

Several days and one tribal subjugation later, preparations were nearly complete.

Karthinos strode through the newly restored halls of Lethis’ lair, claws clicking lightly upon polished stone. He could scarcely believe the changes his Lady had wrought, wielding her command over the natural substances of earth, stone, and fire. While the temple was yet unfurnished, for Lethis had little sway over wood or metal, gone were the dust and debris and collapsed passageways; all had been remade in an instant with a wave of his Mistress’s hand.

Turning a corner, Karthinos entered the room that was to serve as both summoning chamber and dungeon. Behind him followed several gloomlings carrying an assortment of objects. Worthless beings, he felt, but more hands were needed if there were to be prisoners to deal with, so he’d tracked down his former tribe and forcefully ‘recruited’ them to Lady Lethis’ cause. Idly he wondered if any of them would prove worthy enough to receive her blessing.

He doubted it.

Karthinos gestured for the gloomlings to begin their final tasks, and they set about their work. The circular chamber was vast, with a high ceiling and a large central pit set many feet below the rest of the room. A single set of stairs barred with a heavy steel gate provided access to the center. Several gloomlings descended the stairs, setting steel shackles into the floor along the edges of the depression, near the walls. Others carried lengths of silver chain, stringing them between a series of enchanted pylons that floated above, at the edges of what formed a walkable gallery. Once activated, they would deliver a series of painful, debilitating shocks to anything that attempted to climb or fly out of the pit without first passing through the gate.

A second group of gloomlings carried various objects into the cells that lined the edges of the upper chamber, placing down mats of straw, wooden buckets, and setting additional shackles into the floor. Karthinos strode about the room, testing that the cell doors had been properly reinforced. With his new stat boosts, no mere human should be able to bend or break something he could not.

Their tasks finished, Karthinos dismissed the gloomlings and set to inscribing the floor with the ritual that was to be performed. While he had not yet had the opportunity to do any leveling of his new classes, several of them provided new, powerful magic. He channeled mana into his hand, and with one claw wreathed in arcane fire, began to carve away, leaving a trail of glowing scars behind in the stone.

Hours later, he had finished his task. Circles, diagrams, and runes covered the floor and walls of the central cell, all painstakingly copied from a series of scrolls that Lady Lethis had given him. Much of the floor was taken up with the patterns depicted from the Chronicle of Champions, but his patron had vastly expanded it in ways that Karthinos’ new skills were unable to identify.

Once he was satisfied that everything was exact, Karthinos prepared to return and summon his Mistress, only to find her standing behind him as he turned to exit the room.

He bowed. “Mistress Lethis, your instructions have been completed. The chamber is prepared.”

“Good. Let’s begin by examining your handwork.”

Lethis extended a clawed hand, and a thin streamer of arcane light extended down into the floor. The lines began to alight one after another as she tested for flaws, looking for any possible breaks in the diagram or imperfections in the shaping of the runes.

Karthinos hesitated only a moment before speaking up. His tail lashed a bit in agitation, for he felt he might be being presumptuous, but so far Lethis had seemed amenable to questions, so he spoke up.

“Mistress, you have expanded greatly upon the ritual from the book. I would ask what function these additions serve. The skills you have granted me could not identify their purpose.”

“I’m not surprised,” Lethis replied without looking up. Energy still streamed from her hand. “The Voice dislikes it when people interfere with its work. It is not inclined to assist people in such an endeavor.”

“I do not understand.”

“I designed this ritual shell myself, long ago, when I had a need to disguise my actions from the Voice of the World. You see Karthinos, the Voice desires to keep things interesting for everyone involved. It follows certain highly predictable patterns, if you know what to look for. As it did for me so long ago, if I were to summon an untutored child into the heart of my lair with the intent of forcing them to swear allegiance to me, the Voice would no doubt immediately give the child a quest to find a way to escape, plus ensure they had some potential means of doing so. Or perhaps it would lead a band of adventurers to my doorstep, leaving a trail of breadcrumbs that would cause them to discover the child and rescue it. Either way, if it survived, the child would end up receiving some sort of powerful title or class that would later come back to throw a wrench into my plans. Probably with some sort of revenge in mind.”

The light streaming from Lethis’s hand abruptly ceased as she closed her fist, and the glow from the diagrams faded. She nodded, satisfied.

“This hellishly complex circle I have had you construct is a means to prevent that. It temporarily silences the Voice of the World and prevents it from seeing what occurs within. While it will see the ritual itself, it will be blind to the end results for a few hours, thus giving me the time to do as I please without interference and to set the circumstances under which our new arrivals will receive their boons from the Voice.

“Now. Let us begin. Activate the wards.”

Karthinos leaped upwards out of the central pit, clearing an area twice again as tall as he was and alighting on the other side of the chains that formed a sort of fence around the area. He moved quickly between each pylon, channeling mana into each of them. Sparks of electricity raced back and forth along each set of chains as he activated each ward. Once complete, he descended the stairs to the gate, where he had inscribed the starting point of the ritual circle. Lethis was already standing in it, hands held outwards to either side. Her clawed toes dug into the stone beneath her.

With a twist of her wrists, a torrent of magic poured forth from Lethis’ claws and into the charging runes beside her. The runes drank greedily from twisting coils of purple and blue energy that poured off Karthinos’ patron in waves, and light raced across the walls of the room as the runes began to glow one after another. Karthinos grit his teeth and stood his ground as a wave of pressure pressed down around them. He heard the sound of grating stone as the walls of the chamber began to move, the activation of the circles causing segments of the walls to twist, bringing new combinations of runes to chain together together in a constantly changing pattern.

A dark energy suddenly surged overhead, and with a thunderous roar the fabric of reality tore open above the chamber. A half dozen swirling rifts sprang into existence as Karthinos barely suppressed the urge to flee, and a wave of nausea swept over him. Through each rift he caught glimpses of different scenes. In one, he saw a strange city all aglow at night, full of towering structures of glass and metal. Another seemed to be a small bedroom, with a young man sitting at a desk, shock written across his face. Others appeared to open into various rooms as well. Through one rift, a large blue metal object resembling a carriage rapidly approached at an incredible speed, with a panicked occupant clearly visible within. A loud screeching sound accompanied by a blaring horn blasted at them, cutting off suddenly as a human male was hurled alone through the rift, which winked out as the blue object disrupted its structure. With a sickening crunch, the man slammed into one wall at high speed.

Karthinos didn’t think he’d be getting up again.

As Lethis continued to power the runes, thick tendrils of magic rose up underneath the remaining five rifts, which then darted forwards into them. Karthinos watched as the young man at the desk was swiftly seized by a tendril, which then drew him kicking and shouting through the portal. It deposited him onto the floor, where one of the nearby sets of shackles set into the ground reared up of its own accord and snappped towards him, locking around his neck and wrists.

One by one each of the other tendrils drew forth another struggling victim. All seemed relatively young to Karthinos. Adults, but in the prime of their youth, if he was any judge of human ages. Four were male, if you counted the one who’d probably broken his neck, while the remaining two were female.

With a final clap of thunder, the rifts winked out of existence, plunging the room into darkness once again, and Karthinos breathed a sigh of relief as the pressure weighing him down faded. The humans whimpered in the dark as they lay on the ground, either pulling at the chains around their necks and wrists or feeling blindly around themselves. Belatedly Karthinos recalled that humans needed light to see.

Lethis seemed to have not forgotten, however. With a wave of her hands, pale orbs of orange magelight bloomed into existence at the roof of the chamber. One of the human females shrieked at the sight of his Lady, sobbing something about ‘demons’ as she rapidly tried to crawl away.

The other humans saw as well, and had varying reactions. One rose to its knees and began to pray, tears streaming down his face. One of the others froze, going pale. Karthinos detected a foul stench coming from him. The other two reacted much as the first woman had. Whatever these ‘demons’ were, Karthinos supposed that perhaps his Mistress resembled them.

“Be silent.” Lethis’ voice rang out, with a touch of mana infused into it to force her command upon the terrified humans. Their eyes bulged as their mouths clamped shut against their will. The young man who had been at the desk clearly attempted to speak but found he could not.

Lady Lethis gestured, as if for them to rise, and they were hauled to their feet.

“Now,” She said, addressing them. “Let me enlighten you as to your situation. You are now my prisoners. Those who swear themselves willingly to me will find that there are great rewards to be had, as my faithful servant Karthinos here can attest to. Those who must be forced to obey will find themselves on the receiving end of my displeasure.”

Her gaze lingered on the man who had been praying. “Whatever gods you may have adhered to in your old life will not save you, for they do not exist here.” Her eyes moved from person to person, as she paused momentarily to examine each of them.

“There are no police to call, no authorities to alert, no one to come to your rescue. To use a phrase that you should understand, you are not in Kansas anymore.”

Karthinos actually didn’t understand a lot of those words, but he held his tongue. Interrupting his Mistress would no doubt displease her.

“The only thing that matters here is my will, and you will do as you are told, or your fate will be much like that one there,” Lethis said, flicking her fingers idly at the now cooling corpse of the man who been had ejected from the rift at high speed. She allowed the five humans to turn their heads to look. Several of them looked like they were going to be sick.

“Now, which one of you-“

Suddenly she hissed as the sound of some commotion echoed behind them. She turned, just as two gloomlings staggered to the foot of the stairs, struggling with the thrashing form of an additional human between them.

Karthinos strode to their side and grabbed the woman by the throat, pinning her. Able to finally see her captors thanks to the mage lights dotted about the room, the woman froze, whimpering in fear at the sight of Karthinos’ scaled face.

As soon as Karthinos had a grip on the woman, The two gloomlings released her and threw themselves to the floor, prostrating themselves in front of Lethis.

“Mistress, we found this one in the tunnels! She appeared from thin air with a great thundering! We did not know what to do so have brought her to you.”

With a snarl that left the gloomlings fleeing for their lives, Lethis turned to the side, made several quick gestures in the air, and then flung one palm outwards towards the wall, where a status screen appeared.

Karthinos saw that the screen was strangely jumbled, mostly filled with strange letters that churned and twisted as if they resisted his attempt at reading them. At the top of the screen however, were words whose meaning was clear as day.

Critical Success! Due to your overwhelming skill with magic, your attempt at a custom ritual has been a critical success! Additional effects have been applied as follows: Multiple rifts have appeared across the land. Additional subjects have been summoned!

“Put that one with the others, then attend me!” his Mistress snarled at him, turning to stride out of the room. “Quickly, we must find where the others have ended up before they move and I can no longer trace them.”With a shriek of rage, Lethis’ fist crashed through the status screen and into the wall, dispelling the screen and sending stone shards flying. Karthinos flinched as one struck him.

“Then we can see to this lot.”