“Oh, Black Trapezohedron, sound forth from the spires of Zor’Aguhastra…” Yazata invoked.

  Slowly, the sense of the sublime that already filled the chamber began to grow. The sound of machinery intensified, and one after the next, seven pillars rose up from the floor, each depicting a different saint, eyes ablaze — these were not statues, but automata, so lifelike that, without the gleam of metal, one might mistake them for a living person. Each pillar-saint performed a different hand-sign, and with each sign, increasingly stronger waves of numinous pressure descended. Yazata spoke, but not in the language of man. She spoke four Words, just as she had done during the raid on Mirzaii 2. Then, she had made the ritual work by any means at hand, using six Red Hoods as stand-ins and even hijacking the Soul Furnaces of captured enemies. By comparison, under these conditions, in this ritual chamber, being facilitated under her role as executioner, things were completely different. Still, she had to make considerations — Juno Oldfield couldn’t be safely included in the ritual, but that meant she wouldn’t receive the protections that being part of the ritual afforded, so Yazata’s choices for how to carry out the execution had been severely limited. There was one choice, however, one that Yazata would not even consider were it not for Juno’s visored state — a state that meant she could see without seeing.

  Even so, the Witch cackled to herself as she drew occult symbols between Words using the Black Trapezohedron. Heat-haze distortion bled upwards from the weapon, and with each symbol drawn, the surroundings themselves grew increasingly more distorted. Blackhand glanced left and right, for she knew this. To her, it felt almost as if the entire ritual chamber was being drawn into the Astral Gulf, with some marked differences from an actual dive — no transition into an astral form, no loss of ability to breathe, no singing.

  At least, not until it started.

  There came a ceaseless, distant sound of unearthly tones, at once dissonant yet so beautiful it seemed to mutually magnify with the sound of the Twin Churches’ pipe organ. Blackhand only ever-so-faintly felt a familiarity. It was similar to Bulgarian choir, insofar the sun was similar to a candle. The incomprehensible magnitude of that distant singing from the deep simply could not be described within ten thousand words, let alone a few dozen. An indistinct shape seemed to coalesce, a figure only vaguely outlined by distortion. The only concrete aspect of its manifestation was the robed garment which it wore, betraying the presence of six arms, a humanoid torso, and a single head. Its robe wasn’t colorless, yet it didn’t have a particular color either; it was as if the robe itself was a window into the abyss, billowing to and fro in nonexistent currents.

  Three others followed in the shape’s wake, each outlined by a garment in the same manner. The second robe was tattered, and only had the hole for a head. The third had two head-holes and eight small arm-holes. The fourth wasn’t clad in a robe at all, but instead was wrapped by bright, mustard-yellow wrappings that trailed from its limbs and back, somehow managing to imitate the basic shape of a shrine maiden’s garments in the process — thus, one could discern that the wrapped figure had a mostly-human, feminine shape, the main aberrations being that it was “stretched out,” and had a head covered entirely by mouths.

  Stolen story; please report.

  HIGH THAUMATURGY

  SIGN OF BLACK SPIRE COMMUNION

  WITCHCRAFT HEPTAGRAM: XANTHOUS KING’S TRIBUNAL

  “In accordance with the Third Tower’s ancient accords, heed my shining words, o children of those chained in Zor’Aguhastra! Come forth, come forth and carry out this sacred decree!” the witch-inquisitor invoked, casting the scroll forward such that its full length sprawled out, hanging nearly to the floor. Indeed, the scroll’s contents far surpassed what she had read aloud; Neocalbian writing gave way to esoteric symbols that thrummed and crawled over the vellum. None besides Yazata could read the symbols, just like those upon her Black Bindings, but all who looked upon it instantly knew the meaning it contained.

  The four shapes each moved in a similar manner, with the wrapped one showing that it was a shallow bow.

  Then, they feasted.

  That was the only way it could be described.

  These beings, who had traversed the Astral Gulf to answer the inquisitor’s call, instantaneously darted across the ritual circle and set upon the condemned men. There was no gore, nor the tearing-off of limbs — the men were hefted into the air as if they were ragdolls, and the four beings dragged them into the middle of the circle, each facing a different cardinal direction. The first among the summoned, the four-armed being of many-and-none colours, grasped Aldritch by the head. The second simply made Ogura float, while the third grabbed Youssef by the limbs, and the fourth bound Hegio in its wrappings. Within moments after this took place, the colour drained from the men, their skin grew pallid and laden with cracks like the parched surface of a desert, and tears of blood ran from their eyes, and this blood was soon replaced by black, boiling pitch, rendering Aldritch’s eye-sockets into bubbling cauldrons. This process, somehow, proceeded for over a minute, and by the end, what was left of the condemned was better-described as mummies than corpses. By the time it was over, each of the beings gave a simple push, and a vague, luminous silhouette emerged from the corpse, briefly darting in a straight line before disappearing. The summoned beings once more bowed. For a moment, Blackhand felt something unsettling, and she was certain that the wrapped one had turned its head to look directly at her.

  However, the ritual ended before she could become certain. Yazata raised her hand in gesture and struck the Black Trapezohedron against her leg. The sense of something immense washed over all those present, and the world snapped back. There were no robed shapes, and the bindings by which Yazata had connected herself to the ritual’s participants simply retracted back up her sleeve. The only evidence left of the rite were the four mummies, still floating in mid-air, crumbling away into piles of dust on the ground.

  Abruptly, they collapsed all at once, with each mummy leaving behind a small, iridescent jewel within its dust-pile. Each had different colours, but there was no consistent pattern.

  A sense of finality began to settle over the procession as the organ music wound down and eventually stopped, Firminus walking out from behind the statues, stretching his hands.

  At least, until Blackhand doubled over, clutching at her stomach.

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