There was a wide altar in the middle of the grand hall. On top of it lied a young woman who seemed to be in a deep sleep. Her body looked well developed and sturdy, and her childish face had a healthy, rosy complexion.

On the floor around the altar there were strange texts and markings, seemingly drawn by blood, forming a picture of a regular hexagon. At each of its corners stood a person in a dark red, almost black, hooded robe, stretching their hands towards the altar.

Almost invisible mist was coming out from their fingers, it flowed along the lines and markings on the ground and gathered on the body that lie on the altar. These six people were quietly chanting something and the chants filled the dimly lit grand hall in a waves of vibrations. Hearing these a regular person would quickly feel dizzy and suffocated.

A skinny old man with a gray face and bald head wearing black robe was standing in the middle, at the altar. His eyes were murky and so deep in the sockets, that if not for the occasional blinks, one might think he was dead. The old man was holding palms above the young woman’s pelvis and chest and somehow seemed to manipulate the white mist. It slowly circulated clockwise around the woman, formed a slow spinning ball in size of a watermelon above her belly and then entered her body through the navel.

Suddenly the old man shuddered and his eyes lost all murkiness, he got excited as he quietly instructed, “We finally have a heartbeat! Two more hours to stabilize the summon. The ritual has lasted for so long already – don’t you dare to loose concentration now! After two more hours we will get a ten day rest and then we can continue with the next phase.”

The other six people seemed to get energized by what they heard. The slowly dissipating mist got thicker again and the chanting, louder.

When Nick regained his consciousness, he still felt himself floating somewhere in the space. He could not see any galaxies or stars this time, but he felt warm and comfortable. Actually, he could not see anything.

Then he heard a weak sound like that of a drum accompanied by some weird chants. And he didn’t really hear per se, it was more like he felt the sound vibrations around him.

‘I hope I am still high and have not gone crazy yet. Those bastards better not use me as an organ donor while I am helpless.’ Nick thought to himself, but then he was overcome with drowsiness like he had exhausted himself by just thinking and he fell into deep sleep.

Few days later, when the seven people gathered in the grand hall again, it had several new additions. Just outside the hexagon drawing there was a vessel that looked like Japanese soaking tub. There were neatly stacked boxes nearby containing bottles of mixed volumes as well as herbs; a pleasant medicinal aroma was coming from those and filled the hall. A couple of young people in dark red robes were organizing those boxes and few others were bringing in more through the large door at the end of the hall. Near the door were several large barrels full of water.

“Leave for now!” The old man in black robe waved towards youths and ordered, “Your individual masters will call you when you are needed.”

The young apprentices bowed and quickly left the hall, shut the door and the silence enveloped the remaining seven people as well the young woman who was still lying on the altar.

“You all know your duties, but I will still go over them one more time.” Old man continued, “Continue feeding her one potion once every two hours. Two times a day soak her in the concoction for half an hour, gradually increase it by half an hour every ten days up to maximum of six hours. Elder Jan, you are in charge of supervising this. The exact herb extract and other supplement proportions are vital for the increase of resistances, but one slip up might lead to destruction of all our work. You can start the first bath right after we finish here.”

One of the six dark-red robed people silently nodded and walked away towards the boxes filled with herbs.

“Elder Agnes, your task is to monitor fetus’s condition as often as possible. If there are any deviations from the norm, discuss them with elder Jan so he can make the necessary adjustments. Elder Silvio, organize our three best apprentices to chant scriptures during the baths. Also monitor them so they don’t slack off or try anything stupid. In the beginning soul might still be unstable and we don’t know how the host will react to the intense treatment. All of you, don’t be shy and ask anything you need, elder Ernest will ‘earnestly’ provide it.”

Old man seemed to be very happy with the pun he just made and a huge crooked smile bloomed on his usually serious face.

Elder Ernest who was standing next to the old man gave a sigh and shook his head, ‘Old bastard has been making this ‘joke’ for over forty years and still finds it funny.’

But he obviously could not voice such opinion, so he just said in irritated voice, “Sure, call me if you need anything,” and turned to leave.

“Elder Sonor, you will be free for the next four months. I will need you to join me when we start clearing and strengthening the Qi pathways. And lastly, elder Dinnar. Your task is the most important. Although you don’t have to do anything here till the last phase, I want you to use all these months to research and improve the seal till it is better than flawless … even if we think it is perfect now.” Old man glanced over the present elders, “I will have to depend on you for the upcoming days. I got weakened way too much during the last month so I’ve decided to have my quarterly replenishment earlier this time. All dismissed!”

Elders silently turned to their respective tasks, but the old man slowly walked to one of the smaller doors at the end of the hall. He opened the door and entered a spacious room where bookshelves full of scrolls and books covered almost every wall. Boxes and sacks of different sizes were piled up in one corner near a huge table that had many flasks, herbs and even some animal parts on it, while a feint medicinal aroma came from there filling the room.

There were two more doors in the room. Old man proceeded towards the smallest one and entered his bedroom. At the side, facing the bed, there were three naked young girls kneeling, their hands tied behind backs and their heads hanging low. They were not unconscious, but their gazes were empty.

Old man got up on the bed, sat comfortably in front of one of the girls, put his both hands on her head and said with a smile, “Let’s get started!”

The girl had a bit rosy complexion before, but now she suddenly turned pale, her cheeks fell in and she seemed to be drying up. Old man trembled like he was in ecstasy and gave a loud moan. After some time girl’s dried up corpse fell on the ground while from the start till the end the girl did not make a sound.

“Good girl. Now … to the next one,” Old man’s eyes were shining as he settled comfortably in front of his next victim.

Sounds of chants woke Nick up. He was still floating in the dark, but this time he was able to distinguish that the chants were somehow different from the Buddhist chants he heard before. In fact it seemed like it was completely different language. While he was pondering what those stupid monks were doing to him and weather he will miss any ‘spear parts’ in his body when he’ll get out, an excruciating pain overwhelmed him. There was not a single part of his body that was not in agony. It only took few moments when the safety mechanism in Nick’s brain turned the switch and he passed out.

Next time he woke up, there were the chants again. ‘Don’t tell me …’ And the agonizing pain hit him like a train. He passed out. Soon Nick lost count how many times the cycle continued, but the problem was that the periods when he was conscious were getting longer. As soon as he woke up, he started praying to never wake up again, only to get another ‘treatment’ of intense pain. He was not religious, but he was absolutely certain he had died and for some reason landed in hell. Nick confirmed this theory as one day he managed to open his eyes and world around him was painted in deep crimson color.

He never had any special psychological training and, while the experience of loosing his loved ones did make him stronger, it was not to extent where he could survive a long-term torture. If this went on, anyone would loose their mind.

Thankfully, it did not. To be more precise, the tortures did go on, except Nick was starting to feel less and less pain. Then, after few more dozen cycles he just got this annoying itching feeling that turned in to a weird numbing sensation later.

With the pain going away, Nick started to pay more attention to his surroundings. The world did not change and was still crimson, but he could discern some sounds other than chants. Those seemed like hushed conversations but in a language he was not familiar with.

He did not know how much time had passed. The cycle continued and chants came with the already usual bit of pain slowly turning into itch. But Nick already did not notice that. He was fully immersed in analysis trying to figure out what those voices were conversing about.

Being top of the class foreign language student he soon was able to structure out some pronouns and simple verbs like ‘do’ or ‘go’. He obviously did not know if this language had a writing concept similar to Chinese Hanzi and Japanese Kanji or a western style wording formed from letters. For now Nick just ‘wrote’ the new words down in his mind with the letters from English alphabet. He tried his best to classify what he heard, make a categories of nouns, verbs, adjectives etc. These attempts to understand the language and its grammar rules served as means to prevent him from loosing his sanity, although he was not confident he hadn’t lost it yet.

‘As it turns out it is not as simple without a teacher.’ Nick thought, ‘I wonder if I can get them to pass me a grammar book in here … wait!’

Suddenly the fragments he had already understood started to make sense. He stared at the world around him, ‘In here! I am inside of another person! Wtf?! I am a child again … to be more precise – I am a fetus! Wait, wait, wait ... this is important!’

He tried to move his little lands, but it was really difficult. For the longest time he had ‘accepted his fate’ and been just floating around, and did not even try to move as a normal fetus would do instinctively. Hence his movements now were really forced.

‘Oh thank God, I am a male!’ Was the last thought before he passed out from exhaustion again.