These were the words Father Sandra spoke during his ritual. They were spoken with spittle-spraying fervor that quickly turned into a mad fugue.

“Spiritu aperti portus apertarem! Portus firmamentum inter caelum et infernum. Inter spiritu et deus. Inter a firmamenti et o vitalo mundus. Inter Spiritus Dei. Inter caelum et Mundum Vitalis. Aperti a porta! Aperti a porta! Aperi portem! Aperi ianuam!

“Spiritu, apertarem a apertarem! Portus firmamentum inter caelum et infernum. Inter Spiritu Deus. Inter a firmamenti et o vitalo mundus. Inter spiritus Dei. Inter caelum et Mundum Vitalis.

“Aperti apertarem. Aperi a portum! Aperi portem! Aperi ianuam!”

***

As soon as Father Sandra began the words of power that opened the ritual, things started getting weird. First the eight crystal pillars behind the ‘meditating’ undead minions shot up with a brilliant blue and purple light, stopping mid-air a few meters from the ceiling despite not having come into contact with anything.

The beams of light collected into orbs of condensed light which continued to grow in intensity until the priest finished his incantation.

Then an eerie silence fell upon the cavern.

Geometric lines corresponding to the diagram painted on the cavern floor below began to spread from the eight brilliant points. First they drew an enormous eight pointed star, inside of which was a seven pointed star. Inside that, a six pointed star, and then again inside of that a five pointed star.

There was a discordant, oddly resonant series of clunking noises, almost as if invisible cosmic gears were falling into place, and then the light show above began to move.

The shapes began to rotate within each other in opposite directions, showering the cavern in rainbow colors as they spun faster and faster. They began emitting a dissonant whine that grew louder and higher pitched the faster they spun.

Father Sandra began to cackle maniacally. “You see that, beastkin boy!? Do you see that?”

Felix didn’t answer. He felt his heart beat faster in anticipation of what was to come, and he felt a dull insistent tugging in the back of his mind, almost as if Status was kicking and screaming against the magic barrier produced by the suppression collar around his neck.

“Come ‘Umma Ghulah!” shrieked Father Sandra. “Break through the veil and accept this sacrifice. You shall be the Mother of Death, the cleansing breath to purge the unworthy! Take this infidel. Enter his body. Consume him! Take him as your vessel!”

The whine of the light show above got so loud it drowned out the priest’s voice. It already hurt Felix’s sensitive ears, when suddenly, like strings on a guitar being coiled too tight, the air erupted with a deafening cacophony of plucking ka-cha-ca-ta-ca-cra-clang!

The threads of reality popped and where the rainbow lights had spun into a perfect white circle, a bore opened into silent, pitch-black nothing.

A thick, tingling presence of magic descended into the cavern. It was so dense, that even though he was wearing a magical suppression collar, Felix could feel it.

Through that boring hole into nothingness, there was pure, unadulterated, pregnant-to-bursting intention. Felix suddenly felt that this magic was to the world what stem cells were to the fetus. It was magic of potential, containing the potency of infinite possibility.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” Father Sandra crooned. His cheeks were flushed with euphoria. “Lord! Thank you!”

In truth, Felix couldn’t deny that it was, indeed, beautiful. It was curious. Staring into this vast abyss of potential filled him like nothing ever had. Was this really… God?

The feeling passed and Felix shook his head to shake the longing he felt for more. He was grateful it was gone. A few more seconds of that and he might give himself willingly to whatever monster was supposed to come from there to eat him. If this was something the priest came in touch with on the regular, it almost helped Felix understand Father Sandra’s fanaticism. Almost.

Thankfully, the infinite potential that entered through the bore could not exist in its perfect state of potential within this reality. Something changed at the threshold of the bore.

Suddenly Felix was looking at what felt like the familiar sight of a television screen. At least, close enough. That is, if said television screen was dozens of meters wide and the control remote was being controlled by a bratty kid who kept changing the channel.

Winged creatures resembling angels flew in circles above a cerulean ocean. Flicker. A tree bearing pumpkin-sized apple fruit grew on the top of a hill to a backdrop of a sky made entirely of writhing catfish. Flicker. Flicker. Space, with its starscape resembling a surrealist pointillist painting.

Flicker.

There were what felt like hundreds of disjointed images flashing across the screen before it settled down.

The last image was that of a towering wall of grey sand devouring the dunes as it ate its way across the night desert toward the open portal. The illusion of the bore being a screen was gone as the cold wind and dust from the colossal monsoon poured through the bore.

In the distance the wall of roiling sand was approaching fast. An impossibly large shadow swam through the sand storm revealed by the bolts of red and blue lightning in its midst.

“Yessssss… Mother Death. Umma Ghula! Take this offering…” Father Sandra whispered, a twinge in his cheek betraying his sudden apprehension. He took several steps back from the altar and drew his wand.

The temperature in the cavern dropped dramatically. The monsoon struck the portal opening with a sound like a thousand tower-sized hyenas laughing.

Wind buffeted Felix, pushing him off the altar. He held on and shielded his eyes, but forced himself to keep looking at the portal opening until it was completely covered by a single, titanic brilliant ice-blue eye.

***