Liam stared at the strange obese vantablack-covered man sitting on his ritual room floor. How did someone like that get invited to a Tutorial before someone like him?

Liam couldn’t make out any details about the man since the utter darkness about him made that impossible, but even if he was wearing a jacket, he had to be just huge. Surely he knew to take care of himself! The body was a tool, and one always had to take care of tools.

Still, Thomas did seem to know a lot of stuff about rituals. He’d even managed to get lucky and land in one of the Angel of Death’s Tutorials, then asked the sort of questions Liam had always wanted to know. Maybe he’d been invited first so that he could tell Liam and then Liam could ask better questions when he went?

Yeah, that had to be the reason.

Thomas turned towards Liam. He said he was blind, but Liam wasn’t sure he believed it; Thomas certainly didn’t act completely blind. He was creepy enough, though; he didn’t quite face Liam head-on when he was talking to him. So maybe he was blind and had extra-good other senses? Liam had heard that could happen. “So, Liam. Can you tell us about what you saw? I know what I did, but I’m not sure why or how you’d have seen a - did you call it a resonance?”

Liam was thrilled to explain it. He’d done some amazing work here. “Yeah, can you believe this is supposed to be over a century old? I couldn’t either, but I guess there’s no reason it couldn’t be, it’s just metal and glass. Frank found the legs with an old journal. It doesn’t say who wrote it, but it has to be Aleister Crowley, the dates are right and the symbology fits with The Book of the Law. The diary starts right after that would have been published-”

“Charlatan.” Liam was interrupted by Thomas’s girl. What was her name? Clara?

Liam ignored the interruption. “-and it ties in with everything else, especially seeing the influence of the Golden Bough on the time period. There’s a distinct similarity to some of the alchemical texts of-”

“Whoa. Hold up there. Assume I’m not a scholar of Earth’s magical literary traditions. What did you see?” Thomas’s interruption at least made sense, unlike the girl’s. Frank scolded him the same way. It was too bad neither of them could see the beautiful intricacy of the blending of multiple mystical traditions and its evolution through time, but it was still wonderful to have someone interested in his results.

Liam hopped up from his desk chair; it really wasn’t that useful in the carpeted room, since the wheels caught in the carpet, but it was still the most comfortable chair he owned. He carefully stepped over the paper he’d used to help create the ritual circle; he didn’t want to have to go through the effort of recreating the circle if he tripped over it again.

“So, I said Frank found the legs, not sure where he got them. He loves coming up with stuff. There are a bunch of rituals in here, I think this was as much a practice book as anything since they’re often not very different from the previous one. I made sure to only do the final ones of each sequence since those will be the best configuration.” Liam held up the book before realizing he was making a fool of himself and pulling it back to his side.

“They weren’t building-block rituals, then?”

Liam didn’t know what a “building block ritual” was. “What?”

“A series of rituals where each one sets up the conditions for the next. They’re pretty rare, but having only a slight change from one to the next is a pretty classic way to build them; it’s in line with the Ktz-” Thomas stopped and shook his head. “If they’re not, they’re not.”

They couldn’t be. Liam had never heard of such a thing, and he’d studied Crowley extensively. He shook his head. “The book doesn’t say anything like that. I really think it’s Crowley’s notes from when he was developing some of the later rites. There isn’t much similarity in layout, but the symbology is absolutely perfect. There must be a missing set of notes somewhere that reformats everything.”

Liam watched as Thomas nodded once, slowly, acknowledging his point.

Liam grinned. It was nice to have his expertise recognized for once! “Some of the rituals work, others don’t; it’s even more evidence that it was a work in progress. I’ve made it through them all now; I only performed a handful of them, the ones I could get all the ingredients for. I still don’t know what some of this stuff is. Most of them weren’t worth much, but there was one that charged you up with fire energy that was awesome. I bet it’d be really nifty in some of the dungeons.”

“The one that uses this thing,” Liam tapped the focus’s legs, “was right after the fire one, and it took me two years to decipher enough of the book to have this ritual figured out. Six months ago I figured out what the missing piece was.”

Liam sighed a little, remembering. Frank had pestered him incessantly about the ritual once he told him what it did. It’d taken Liam quite a while to remind him that the rituals had to be tested for safety first; even a little mistake could have big consequences, and there had been those few times where Liam made that tiny mistake. Not that he was going to mention those to Thomas. He wanted to get as much information out of Thomas as possible before he mentioned him to Frank.

Frank would probably tell Liam he couldn’t talk to Thomas anymore, after all.

Liam hoped Frank would find a volunteer soon; he really wanted to do the test, but the most he could do without a volunteer was animal trials, and with the cost of the ritual itself he didn’t want to do more tests than he had to. The mice had all been fine so far, and it was time to move on.

Liam tapped the colored glass center. “It’s this thing. It was sold at an estate sale a few years ago, Frank said he’d try to buy it off the person who bought it. It’s pretty ugly if you aren’t going to use it for the ritual, so I didn’t expect it’d be tough. Took Frank about a month, the guy must not have wanted to sell. I’m just glad Frank didn’t ask me to help pay for it.”

Both Thomas and Clara seemed to react to that. “Weird, right? Why wouldn’t anyone want to sell this?” Liam definitely wouldn’t want it in his house if it weren’t needed for the ritual. The magical designs on it were unnerving, like many magic items, and the pattern was otherwise dull and uninspired.

Clara seemed upset for some reason. “Sell it? Why would -”

She stopped when Thomas put his hand on her shoulder. “What does the ritual do?”

Liam grinned. This was almost as good as talking to Frank! “The ritual is to open your ‘other eye’, to let you see magic directly and work with it that way. It even says it’ll let you see across the planar boundaries! Why, we could see into the realm of the gods!”

Liam couldn’t wait for that. He wanted to not only see the gods’ realm, he wanted to go there. If he could do that, he could steal some of the power and methods the gods used, and it would no longer be a mere borrowing of the power of the gods to perform magic; it would be his own power. Once he had that - he could make his own rituals!

Thomas stared more or less at Liam, clearly shocked. It was an amazing thing, so Liam could understand Thomas’s surprise. He hoped Thomas wouldn’t make the connection to stealing the fire of the gods. That hadn’t been done since Prometheus, after all, and Liam didn’t want anyone warning the gods he was coming.

He was sure he could manage it if he could just find the right ritual.

For now, though, he needed to make this one work. Frank was really interested, too, and Frank was going to be key to Liam’s plans for the future.

Liam didn’t pay attention to Thomas’s mutter about “doing it the normal way”. Liam wasn’t interested in being normal. The ritual should be more powerful than anything normal anyway.

“Resonance. You said it resonated with what I did?” Thomas looked at the device in the center of the circle.

“Yeah. It went completely dark, like you are and like it does during the ritual. I figured it had to be close or it wouldn’t be that dark, plus I thought I felt something, so I went outside. I had no idea it was you until I saw a dark spot that turned out to be you.” Well, Thomas and a slime. Liam shivered a little, thinking about the way Thomas had stuck the slime under his clothing. He didn’t want to think about what that felt like; cold and nasty, probably.

“Is it still completely dark?”

Why was Thomas asking, couldn’t he - oh, right. He was still pretending to be blind. Or maybe he really was blind? “No, it’s back to normal. I think you might be getting a bit lighter, too. At least, your face seems a bit brighter. Your clothes aren’t, though.”

Liam heard Thomas grumble something about identify, but it didn’t sound like anything Thomas wanted to share, and it wasn’t interesting enough for Liam to care.

“So, the ritual is pretty straightforward; I’ve inscribed the circle as the book called for, and there are six candles-” Liam’s phone rang.

It was Frank, so Liam put on his earbud and answered. “Hey, Liam, everything good there?”

“Yeah, it’s been a great afternoon. There was a magical incident in the parking lot; Thomas did something that resonated with the artifact I’ve been working with lately. So we’ve been talking about it, and get this: he was in a Tutorial with the Angel of Death!” Liam stopped, waiting for Frank to react with the enthusiasm that deserved.

Liam was disappointed by Frank’s response. It was like he ignored the exciting part. “Is there anyone else there?”

“Yeah, Thomas’s girlfriend Clara. Why?” Liam didn’t really care about Clara. It was clear she didn’t know or care anything about rituals; she was clearly there because Thomas was, so he’d ignored her.

“That makes a lot of sense. Right. You said you were talking to them about the ritual? Why don’t you see if they’d like to stay for it, see you cast it? Maybe one or both of them would be willing to volunteer?”

Frank always came up with the best solutions. Liam was looking for volunteers, after all. It’d be a great opportunity; they’d get the benefit of the ritual and Liam would have the chance to do the final fine-tuning with a human ritual target instead of an animal one. Win-win, the thing everyone always told him to aim for.

Liam wondered if Frank would be sending any help to get the two to volunteer. He’d done that before, when Liam was slow. Well, Liam would just have to try and see if it worked. He could be convincing, but sometimes he really did need Frank’s help.

Frank was the gofer, after all. Liam did the interesting stuff; he didn’t care how Frank managed the boring parts.