He had been falling for a long time. A really long time. Like a really, really long time, if you were being dramatic. It felt like he had been falling for years, time had long since lost meaning in the dark void. He was still chained up to his neck and could only move his mouth and face, he put this to good use by singing and telling himself jokes nearly the whole time.

The voices in his head were unnaturally silent, usually you could hear a background murmur if you tried, but he couldn’t hear a peep.The only reason he knew he was still falling was that his hair was blowing back, he couldn’t feel the wind blowing against his face, if there was any, because he had become numb from the unceasing cold.

“How many baby ducks were following the mother duck?” he asked himself, “None! They died in the oil slick! Haha!” he laughed at his own joke, even though they had long since stopped making sense. He had tried to fall asleep to pass the time, but wherever he was, sleep apparently was impossible. Being awake 24/7 was really starting to take a toll on his psyche, he hadn’t had a single hallucination or heard a single voice, unless this whole thing was somehow a hallucination.

He screwed his eyes shut and screamed as loud as he could, there was no particular reason, it just seemed like good fun. The man felt as though he understood what it was like to be blind, to see absolutely nothing, just… dark. He let out a sigh and opened his eyes again, opting for the darkness of the void rather than the darkness of his eyelids. But instead of the absolute darkness that he had grown used to, he was instead greeted by a brilliant pin prick of light in the dark.

It probably wasn’t that bright, but for a man who hadn’t seen light in what seemed like forever it was nearly blinding. He blinked back tears as his eyes watered, the light was growing larger and brighter as he fell towards it. To hell with not going towards the light, he wanted to get out of here!

He fell closer and closer until finally his vision was swallowed whole, the brilliant white light filling his mind entirely. When he opened his eyes he had to squint against the light, though this light wasn’t the perfect white light, instead it was the orange flickering of firelight. He shielded his eyes again with his hand, attempting to adjust to the new change of lighting.

The ground under him felt like stone, it was cold and slick like it hadn’t been cleaned in a long time. It reminded him of the stone inside a cave he had played in when he was a child, now that he thought about it, he could hear and smell things that reminded him of a cave. The sound of water dripping from stalactites, the smell of stale air and earth. The only difference than the cave he remembered was the firelight and the chanting.

‘Chanting?’ He thought. ‘What’s going on?’

It wasn’t in any language he knew, and the air felt charged with the energy he felt when the portal first opened. His eyes adjusted to the dim torchlight, and he took a cursory glance around for the first time since he arrived. He was indeed in what looked like a cave, surrounded by several cloaked figures. Their cloaks were a dark purple in color, and gave off a sinister air.

Arrayed around him were multiple torches, and braziers, set in a circle. He looked down and saw he was still covered in those thrice damned chains, though they had receded down to his waist again. He looked again back towards the cloaked figures who were chanting at him, they were waving their hands in arcane patterns while strange geometric patterns floated around their wiggling fingers. The man sitting in the center of the circle thought they looked quite silly.

The man was on his back on the cave floor, he sat up, pushing himself with his arms. He yawned and stretched, satisfying popping noises sounding out from his joints and back. The air was warm compared with the void he had been in and he was feeling extraordinarily tired. He could hear the voices chattering in the back of his head, though they were strangely quiet and subdued.

The funny looking guys that were chanting at him seemed to be quite busy with whatever they were doing so he decided to take a quick nap. He lay back down against the cold stone floor, closed his eyes, and was instantly asleep. He wasn’t about to let a silly little thing like an ancient summoning ritual get in the way of his nap.

The cloaked figures stopped chanting and wiggling their fingers and stared at the sleeping figure. They looked at one another, confused at the sight before pulling back their hoods. The three of them stepped forward into their runic circle and walked over to the man. One of them stooped down and reached over to poke the figure.

“Get your hand away from it! We do not know what manner of creature that is! For all we know it could be an archdemon clothed in the guise of a man, it could tear your heart out as fast as that!” the man snapped his fingers to show him just how fast ‘that’ was.

The cloaked man that was reaching towards him recoiled violently and straightened out his robe, “I knew that… I wasn’t gonna do it.” he pouted.

“Goddamn noobies…” he muttered back, the third man stood further away from them and had been silent throughout the whole exchange. He stepped forward into the torch light revealing a grizzled face with a milky eye and a balding head.

The grizzled man looked towards the ‘noobie’ and scowled sending him into a flurry of motion where he stepped further away from the sleeping creature and stooped into a subservient position. “Scan the creature. Use one of the [Identification Stones].” he called out in a voice not too dissimilar from two boulders grinding together.

“Are you sure we should use one of the Stones? We only have a few left, and it could be wasted on this summon.” he asked in a halting voice, afraid of gaining the older mage’s ire.

“Do it.” the leader replied, scorn filling his one good eye.

The mage hopped to it without another word, fear was plain on his face, he knew what had happened to the last man to disagree with their leader. He stalked away from their summoning circle towards the back of the room, it was darker over there without the torchlight so it took him some time rooting around in their packs to find the Stones.

They were simple enough looking until you looked at them with mage sight, then they blazed brilliantly with a wide range of colors. They seemed to contain every known color inside of them, he took the smallest one and went back towards the summon. The ‘noobie’ was still hunched over avoiding any eye contact, his childlike face betraying his naivety. Their leader looked towards him expectantly, so he made his way to the center of the circle.

He clasped the stone between his hand and began the incantation, words of power spilled from his lips as he cast a high level spell. It was a spell nearly any class could learn at high enough level, but required a Stone to use if the second party wasn’t willing to be scanned, and even with the Stone anyone with a high enough level could stop the attempt.

He finished the spell by crushing the stone between his hands, multicolored sand spilled out from between his fingers and a Status screen appeared, visible only to him and his party, the three mages.

Name:

Tobias

Level:

1

Class:

N/A

Race:

Human

Titles:

N/A

Affinity:

Madness - 97%

Traits:

N/A

Skills:

N/A

Spells:

N/A

Abilities:

N/A

Stats:

STR - 8

CHR - 8

AGI - 10

DEX - 10

INT - 9

WIS - 9

The leader scowled deeper and it seemed that the lines on his face were permanently etched in, like a statue. The ‘noobie’ looked up for just a moment to quickly scan the page, his bright blue eyes flitting across before, again, being cast down towards his feet. The mage who had scanned him sighed, he knew that he was correct in not wanting to waste their Stones, but he wasn’t going to say anything for fear of being the next summon sacrifice.

“Put him with the rest. He will obey like all the others.” the grizzled man looked away, casting the incident out of his mind. He stalked towards their packs in the back of the room and grabbed the necessary ingredients for the next summon, [Stalk of Moonlight], [Petal of a Golden Child], [Blood of a Hero]. Nearly all of the ingredients were of [Ancient] quality or more and had taken massive amounts of resources to obtain. Though even with these rare ingredients they still needed sacrifices, and for that he walked into the connecting room.

As soon as he passed through the tunnel that led to another room he felt the familiar disturbance of a ward, this one blocked sound and smell. As soon as he passed through it, like a pebble tossed into a pond, he was submerged in a cacophony of sight, smell, and sound.

Screams and sobs echoed discordantly through the room and and the smell of excrement and blood was overwhelming. Arrayed against the wall were lines of cages, made from natural elements inside the cave. Raw metal and stone were formed together to keep captive thirty five sacrifices, men, women, and children alike.

There used to be more, though their ranks had been whittled down. As soon as the grizzled mage stepped into sight of the cave dwelling prisoners, their cries took on a new level of desperation. Fear dripped palpably from their words, and their cries for help and pleas to be left alone were unheard as the mage walked towards the end of the room.

His soft leather boots caused nearly no disturbance or noise as he walked steadily, peering into each cage for their next sacrifice. A hand shot out of one of the cages and snagged on his resplendent robe, “Please! Let us go, we did nothing wrong! Nothi-” his pleas turned to screams of agony as the hand the prisoner had reached out was violently severed from his body.

The grizzled man growled, his robe was already covered in dirt and grime, but now it was truly in need of a wash. Blood now covered the bottom of the robe and he looked at the offending man with rage in his eyes, “You.” he stated simply, with all the finality of death.

“No! Please take someone else, not me!” he choked out through the sobs, but they too were cut off as the mage cast a simple sleep spell on the man, not for any sense of mercy, but because it was easier to move them when they didn’t struggle.

The mage levitated the prisoner out of the cage that dissolved around him, using his magic the mage carried him back down the prison hall, through the connecting tunnel and into the summoning room. Blood dripped in concentric patterns from the man’s severed arm, he was placed roughly in the center of the circle and the mages got into their positions. The previous summon of the man like creature that wore a strange dirty gown that revealed its posterior was nowhere in sight.

The three mages stood silently, the two older mages not sparing a single glance at the bleeding man in their midst, while the youngest stared intently at the patterns of blood running on stone. The grizzled man placed the three ingredients around their sacrifice and stepped back, raised his hands, and began to chant. They spoke in tandem with each other, like a well oiled machine, their words were layered and smooth. The three ingredients blazed brilliantly before being replaced with a swirling storm of color that hovered over their sacrifice.

The storm of color seemed to sharpen down to a point and three lines appeared, they connected and dashed over the stone ground until they formed a triangle. Centered in the triangle was the one armed man, his skin was leaking blood now and his whole body was spasming. His eyes flew open but instead of eyeballs there were brilliant orbs of green light.

The man’s mouth opened and the same light blew out of it in a cone, illuminating the cave room in an eery glow. His skin peeled back and his body began twisting and writhing on the ground. Once the entirety of his skin was gone his flesh seemed to bubble and twist, forming what looked like gnarled bark where once there was a man. Thick roots shot out of where there were once legs and branches came from where there used to be arms.

Small green leaves burst from the wood and began to shake violently. The glowing eyes and mouth closed, leaving a blemishless piece of wood. That was until a roar like a forest being felled sounded out and the roots shot together, interweaving like a tapestry, forming arms and legs. The creature shot to its legs and charged at the mages. The youngest, on the far left, startled back while the other two trusted in their magic to keep it contained.

And contained it was, as soon as the treant reaches the border of braziers it rebounded off an unseen wall sending out ripples in the air. The creature fell back and its glowing eyes and mouth closed yet again. “Treant. Probably a juvenile summoned for its high earth affinity. Put it with the others.” the grizzled man ordered the youngest mage.

The mage, still startled from the sheer ferocity of the creature hesitated, “Now!” called out the leader. Startled out of his inaction, the mage stepped into the circle and summoned one of his own bound familiars.

“Guil, carry the tree, put it with the other summons.” an unnatural and unseen wind blew violently under the treant at the youngest mage’s command. It tossed it into the air like a cat playing with its dinner and carried it away towards another connecting tunnel where the other summons were located.

“Hesitate again and we won’t need another prisoner to sacrifice.” the old man stated.

“Y-yes sir.” the youngest mage’s eyes darted towards the middle mage, fear evident in his gaze.

On the far right the other mage turned his hazel brown eyes towards the older man, sweat streaming down his brow, “May we rest, sir? My mana is bordering empty.”

The old man scoffed at him, “Your low mana cap makes me wonder why you were chosen for this operation.” the brown eyed mage gulped and paled, he wasn’t usually one to stand for abuse. Not even from royals, and why should he? He was a self made man, from the slums of Azuld, he had scraped his way all the way to becoming a King’s Mage. Yet in front of the one eyed mage he didn’t feel powerful, he felt like a fly that had accidentally caught the gaze of a spider.

The brown eyed mage stood stock still for a moment, worried that he wasn’t going to be able to rest, or worse. But the grizzled mage sighed, “Rest now, take this.” he said and handed the brown eyed mage a bottle with blue liquid that had flecks of gold inside of it. The mage took the bottle and retreated to a dark corner of the cave, gulped down the mana potion and sat down. He put his head in his hands and wondered just what the hell he had gotten himself into.

He knew he would do anything for his country, even using sacrifices to raise summoned warriors wasn’t enough to make him question his loyalty. But he still wondered why in the hell he had to work with that scary old man. He looked old, and if you were a mage, that meant you were old. Many mages had ways to make themselves look younger, and once you reached a certain level the aging process would slow. So for someone as strong as him to look that old, he either had no desire to look young or he was truly ancient.

“That’s long enough. Come, let us begin.” the voice ordered out towards the mage. He stood up from his corner and walked back towards the mage circle, and began the ritual again. In another room of the cave a strange wind blew in carrying a humanoid tree, it dropped the tree with a crash that startled a gown wearing man awake.

“Oi! What the hell was that for?! People are sleeping here!” he called out. There was no answer, besides the sound of strange grunts, groans, howls, and other animal noises that echoed in the huge stone room he found himself in. He looked around and noticed that he was in a cage made from raw metal and stone, it looked like it grew directly out of the wall, and was cold to the touch. As far as he could see there were identical cages lining the walls in every direction around him, though he couldn’t see far in the unlit room.

He couldn't quite make out the occupants of said cages, but he could tell most weren’t human. There seemed to be a wide array of animalistic shapes around him a, cat here, a supersized slug there. Although he couldn’t see details he could have sworn that his neighbor had wings and glowing red eyes. He yawned and stretched again, realising again just how tired he was. He fell asleep to the smell of blood and waste, along with the sounds of wild beasts and the voices that echoed in his head.