"Today, we're going to be taking a trip to participate in an academy tradition that has been passed down from days too old to be remembered even in history," declared Menel Lothren, the professor of Advanced Powerscripting.

Alisa stared, wide-eyed. Professor Lothren had been well on his way to becoming Alisa’s favourite teacher in the few weeks they’d had before the chaos. With the restructuring of the academy into a dragon mage school, Professor Lothren had been moved to teaching year 3 exclusively, much to Alisa’s disappointment, and this was his first time addressing the entire academy since then.

She leaned forward slightly, pen poised to take notes. Ancient traditions sounded promising.

"It is a form of magic no longer used, from before the circles were codified and we began to understand layering and conditionals and triggers and everything else. I must stress that you should never attempt to duplicate the ritual we're about to participate in, or use any part of it in your own experiments."

Alisa could almost swear he was staring right at her when he said it. Not that it would stop her. Her heart sped up in excitement at the idea of a form of magic lost to the ages. Something so ancient and powerful that it was still in use even today. How could she resist the allure of something like that? Even her doorway spell, for all its rough and irregular construction, was still based on the same principles that carried through into modern circle powerscript. Something so old it was built on different principles altogether? She had to see it.

"You've been told that supernatural beings do not exist. Gods, demons, any of those non-tangible beings of power beyond magic, spoken of in religious texts and ancient fantasies; and it is true, there is no such thing. But it was not always so.

“Long ages ago, beings of power did walk our world, and though they've now been driven away, there is always the possibility - remote though it may be - that they may one day return. Any such event would be disruptive beyond belief, and it's silly to think that anything of such transcendent power could slip into our world without being noticed. But, as a precaution, just in case there exists something like that which could evade our notice, this ritual has been passed down through uncounted ages."

Professor Lothren held up a thin volume, its pages thick and cover worn. "If anyone has further questions about the ritual's purpose and history once our trip is over, I will make this book available afterward. Be very careful with it. It wouldn't do to cause it any damage."

He looked about sternly, but Alisa doubted more than a handful of people would care enough to request to borrow the volume. It didn't look or sound like the sort of thing anyone but a dedicated scholar of magic would care about.

Alisa wanted to read it, desperately.

Professor Lothren continued for some time, describing the safety precautions involved in the ritual, the actual physical steps participation in the ritual would require, and warning signs to be alert for in case something went wrong.

"Anyone who cannot take this seriously, who will not treat it as the invocation of powers far beyond our understanding, may remain here and study for the next class."

A handful of people took the offered escape, but Alisa grew only more determined to see it through. This was going to open up whole new vistas of consideration! She'd never seen a powerscript that wasn't based on the modern circles and layers design.

The group left the academy and boarded a drifter that stood waiting outside. The boat-like craft lifted into the air as its slanted exhaust vents roared into life. Alisa ordinarily would have been studying every available surface, trying to divine the powerscript that made it functional, but today her thoughts were full of ancient forgotten magics and the mysterious ritual they were about to witness. No, more than witness! Participate in!

Alisa's class spent a little over fifteen minutes skimming through the sky, bonded dragons flying on either side of the drifter, packs of wild dragons scattering with screeches and bellows of annoyance as they got out of the way.

Then they slowed to a stop and descended, landing in a shallow valley. Stones lay tightly packed together, lines of silvery metal binding them into what Alisa finally recognized as the ritual... she wasn't even sure what to call it. It was a powerscript of some sort, but not a circle, not symmetrical, and not adhering to any of the conventions she knew. It made her twitchy to look at it, to see familiar strokes from different layers crammed together like puzzle pieces shoved in place by force with no regard for the picture they formed.

The ritual script spread out through the entire valley, silver gleaming, and Alisa was surprised by how clear of grass and ivies it was. She'd expected someplace overgrown, but this appeared to be well cared for.

"There is no way to be certain that an entity's power is acting upon our world, as its mere presence is enough to set off the ritual," said Professor Lothren as they took their places. "The only sure proof is that we can detect when they are not present at all. This ritual will sense even the weakest presence of supernatural beings, regardless of whether they are currently attempting anything untoward. As such, it has two possible outcomes: results uncertain, or no interference detected."

They all took up their places around the strangely shaped powerscript, placing hands on the massive power channel carved through the center of the massive spell. Everyone had to be in contact, so Alisa's hand rested on the silver channel while someone else's hand sat atop hers, and her other hand lay atop someone else's.

Alisa tried to figure out what the script was trying to accomplish, but it was like trying to read something written by a Ponrevian who only barely understood trade script. Some of the lines were almost familiar, but they were off, and then needed corrections, so even the simplest actions took far more space and energy than they should, and some were so garbled with after-the-fact corrections and adjustments as to become indecipherable.

Alisa took back any thoughts she’d had of trying to integrate the ancient ritual into her own research. Though the ritual not-circle sprawled its way through the whole heart of the valley, she was willing to bet she could whip up a powerscript to accomplish the same thing in a quarter of the space if she could only figure out what it was trying to say.

Then the ritual started, and the professor began to hum a slowly building tune. Alisa let power flow directionlessly from her hand into the channel, as though she were turning on a light, and felt the power resonate with the music. She found herself humming along, matching the quiet repetitious tones as power pulsed through her and out in thick warm waves.

The channel began to fill, and she felt a tug on her hand as the line moved down the meandering script. Others were humming now too, some more successfully than others. They left a line of power behind them, thick and strong and filling the channel of the massive spell.

What could need this much power?

It took nearly a half hour to fill the whole thing, the humming rising and falling, speeding and slowing, everyone stepping along with odd solemnity as they slowly filled the spell’s awkward overwritten script with the excessive power it required.

Then Alisa felt the spell snap into place, rejecting any further power, and leapt back instinctively. The rest of the group moved away, quickly clearing the effect area before the spell fully activated.

Alisa felt something flicker through her, intangible in a way she rarely imagined possible.

There wasn't anything intangible about magic. It was non-physical, but could be felt and interacted with. This was something else, a premonition, a mental shiver of uncertainty. A question made manifest, a question that flickered through her mind so fast she barely noticed it, couldn't grasp it, but felt it all the way to her soul.

"What was—"

Then the deep scent of ash and hot lemons washed over her, the power residue of such a large spell and so many dragon mages hitting her almost like a physical wall. She coughed and blinked away tears, then the question came flickering back through her, withdrawing as suddenly as it had appeared.

NEGATIVE

The response reassured the professor, who smiled. "I always know it'll come back negative, but still. Best to be safe."

Alisa waited until they returned to the classroom before asking any questions, listening to the queries of the others, thinking over the strange spell. It was no wonder ritual magic had been abandoned in favor of modern mage-bonds and creature familiars. Walking in a line for minutes and minutes just to power a single detection array seemed a complete waste; no modern spell would take more than five minutes to cast.

Still, as the grumbling class dispersed, she approached the professor anyway.

“Could I see that book, please?” Hopefully it would contain some explanation for what exactly they’d done.

To her disappointment, it wasn’t a dissection of the spell, but rather a treatise on why it existed.

‘When once the Gods were slain and the Powers sealed out from our realm, yet required we a surety of the seal and its efficacy remaining. Thus created we, this spell has a single function: to determine if our world is being acted upon by God or Power beyond that allowed us by the pacts and seals bound upon us with our victory.’

Alisa spent a minute parsing the ugly, archaic language, then skimmed through the remainder of the volume looking for anything important.

‘The action of Gods or Powers can be detected only by the confidence of this spell returns ‘NEGATIVE’, else know that the Powers have broken the seal, or that some Gods have hidden from us and survived their destruction. They can hide their presence from the world, but not from magic.’

The spell, she eventually gathered, could not actually detect the presence of gods, but it could detect that it was being interfered with. It would either return ‘NEGATIVE’, meaning all was well, or ‘UNCERTAIN’ which would mean deific or other influence interfered with its check. And if that ever happened, it would be a precursor to such chaos that The Traitor’s rise to power would appear calm and sedate in comparison.

Impossible, of course. There were stories with gods and powers; fantasies of higher beings beyond magic itself, greater than dragons, wiser than phoenixes, more cunning than a thousand scholars. But though the book spoke of them with confidence, she couldn’t help but believe it was exaggerating. It seemed far more likely that a group of powerful mages had gotten together to create a ritual that did nothing, or was supposed to do something that failed, perhaps sponsored by a king or country. They took the payment and constructed the ritual, claiming it would protect the land from ‘Gods and Powers’ when, in reality, it provided only a meaningless affirmation of the non-existence of things that had never existed in the first place.

For all she knew, the spell could be detecting the absence of elephants. But even if it was ultimately a pointless tradition, she was determined to find something of use in the whole experience. At the very least, she’d discovered a way to utilize dragon magic at a large scale. With the way her own power kept fluctuating, she’d begun to despair of ever finding the right size to draw enchantment arrays at.

Perhaps this could lead her to new discoveries in the future, for all its inefficient construction. Perhaps she could bring ritual magic into the modern era, up to the same standards as casting circles and enchantments.

It would always be clumsy and inefficient, but maybe she could find a way to make it less so.