Phraum stood over the scrying pool, his body completely still in anticipation as he watched his daughter near the entrance of the Styrian temple. She was nearly undiscernible in the river of white, purple, and blue robed women that poured in and out of the great buildings’ columned entrances, but Phraum’s eyes managed to pick her out of the crowd. Ashara moved through the entrance of the Styrian temple and Phraum dispelled the image of his daughter from the scrying pool. It was time for him to unleash his distraction.

  The mage marched out of his laboratory and headed down to the lower levels of his tower where the summoning was taking place.

  “Finally, I shall have what I desire, and the opportunity to use it,” Phraum muttered to himself as he climbed down the stairs to his destination.

  Phraum felt a tingling sensation crawl up his right arm and looked down to find Sizth’s metallic lizard-like form crawling up to his shoulder.

  “Hello old friend.” Phraum said, continuing down into the depths of his tower.

  “Hello old friend.” Sizth repeated, cocking its little head sideways.

  “The time is almost upon us, I will soon bring a chaos beast into this plane and have the means to discern the future, to begin navigating through the planes as Inter-Planar and the humans do.”

  “Inter-planar and the humans are one in the same, old friend.” Sizth said, its eyes narrowing in discomfort as the words left its mouth. “And you will find them here near the end of your experiment.”

  Phraum knew of this of course, he was counting on it. Sizth had explained to him during the beginning of his scheming that bringing forth a creature from the void, a being of chaos and entropy, would cause the Inter-Planar ships that traded on Ilithir to attack the beast. Those ships would likely be the city’s only hope of stopping the monster, since the families didn’t have the military forces necessary to defeat such a creature, at least not on Ilithir itself.

  “Everything will turn out all right, if not as planned.” Phraum said, finally reaching the black steel doors leading to the summoning chamber.

  “Things will certainly not go as planned, not without that device you seek.” Sizth said, its metallic voice scratchier than usual.

  Phraum nodded, then watched as Sizth hid itself as he strode up to his mages. Each stood in a point drawn on a sinister looking flaming summoning circle, its inside slowly opening into a black void full of golden orange flames that slowly grew brighter and brighter. The mages had stopped their chants now, standing idly over the opened portal into the void. Phraum could see their eyes glowing with the same light as the flames within the portal from behind their purple visored helmets.

  “We’re ready master Phraum.” Said one of Phraum’s lieutenants as he the mage headed over to the summoning circle. “On your word, we’ll coax the creature through and send it out into the city.”

  Phraum nodded and stepped closer to the summoning circle and looked down into the black flaming void within. There he saw it, the energy of the beast he was going to summon, and the swirling power of the plane he was stealing it from. Slowly, yet instantly, he felt the world around him begin to blur and the image—the fire—within the circle started to grow clearer and clearer. The flames slowed and coalesced around a figure shrouded in blackness, then that blackness took shape alongside the flames. An onyx-colored beast formed, its body the shape of a large feline, and its head like a flower of blooming orange flames. It turned towards Phraum, exposing its black disk of a face, devouring all the light that shined into it.

  And thoughts as well, Phraum realized as his mind began to slow to a near halt. He tore his eyes from the creature and stumbled away from the summoning circle, his mind suddenly racing. The creature had been consuming his thoughts! Pulling his mind in, stretching it like a rubber band until it nearly snapped. Incredible!

  “Get ready!” Phraum called after he regathered his senses. “We’re going to reach in and pull the beast out, then send it out into the city like I taught you!”

  The mages standing in the points around the circle nodded, but their eyes remained locked onto the image within the portal, enraptured by its violent beauty. Phraum closed his eyes and reached into the magic circle with his own magical essence, willing the creature to move with the latent energy within himself. He felt the beast stir, and his ears rang as they released a roar, a howling scream like that of a comet flying through the sky filled the mage’s mind as he connected with the creature. Phraum’s body buckled for a moment at the intensity of it all, then he felt a sudden sense of relaxation wash over him as the sound reached a fever pitch. A loud and melodic groan came out of the creature, and it sprang out of the summoning circle and into a portal conjured above by Phraum and his mages. He caught a glimpse of the creature as it passed up into the portal, a hulking whale sized feline of pure onyx surrounded by blazing orange flames. Beautiful, yet monstrous, a sublime specimen finely crafted by chaos.

  Phraum felt his mind and body relax from a weight he didn’t know he was carrying, and the orange glint emanating from beneath his fellow mages’ helmets disappeared. Everyone in the room relaxed, and Phraum let out a sigh. There was a tiny heat in the back of his mind though that continued to flicker, quietly searing the corners of his mind, reminding him the beast he had just unleashed from the abyss was still near.

  “Begin scrubbing our involvement in that creature’s summoning immediately! And be prepared to answer the family’s call as well!” Phraum ordered. “But not too prepared, we don’t want to be caught now, do we?”

  Phraum turned and began to head back into his own laboratory to destroy any evidence stored there, a smile on his face. Though he had certainly doomed no small number of people within the city, he had also taken the first step in understanding the cosmos as Ilithir’s rivals did, as he dreamed he could. Summoning the creature was a great risk and perhaps a great sacrifice, but the reward for such an action could change the shape of the universe.

  Phraum believed that that was well worth the risk.

  Maron could not believe what he was seeing, did not want to believe it. A few moments ago, he had watched Ashara enter the Styrian palace and now he was watching a screaming orb of fire descend onto the city center. It blazed through the sky until it struck the ground hard kicking up a large puff of flaming debris that came raining down on the city, luckily a few miles away from where the young bodyguard was sitting. Below Maron, Worship Lane quickly turned into a flowing tide of panicked Azurans screaming and running away from the few chunks of molten rock and concrete that made it to the area. The young bodyguard flinched as a piece of debris sailed past him, striking the building beside him.

  “By the goddess...” Maron muttered as another howl rang through the air, at first a squeal like that of a great whale, and then a melodic hum like that of a brass orchestra. It shook the building he was crouched on and the ground beneath it.

  The sound was followed by a series of explosions and even louder screams from the inhabitants of the city center. Maron watched as flying warships of Ilithir, and the Inter-Planar company quickly hovered over to the crash site of whatever was making that insidious sound. Soon after, the young bodyguard heard cannons start to bark, no doubt the ships responding to whatever threat they had found.

  Just what sort of distraction did Phraum cook up, Maron thought to himself as he watched the chaos unfolding in the streets. Over towards the crash site a warm orange light began to envelop the area, and the song of the howling creature grew louder.

  Maron gripped the cement edge of the roof he was laying on and peered over to the Styrian temple, its priestesses and supplicants running around anxiously.

  “Be quick, Princess...” Maron muttered as the glowing orange light began to grow brighter and brighter.

  Whatever creature had just landed on Ilithir was fearsome indeed.

  Ashara had expected to waltz into the great Styria family temple and go through evening worship, take in the beautiful sights of the ornately decorated halls and, finally, after lavishing ample praise upon her goddess, receive a message from Phraum on how to next proceed. She did not expect every window in the temple to shatter and the ground to shake as some creature crashed into the city while wailing to the heavens. She hadn’t even made it into the great chapel of the temple before catastrophe seemed to strike outside. Out in the halls, Ashara felt her knees shake as whatever crashed into the city began to cause havoc.

  The commoners began to panic and either offer up prayers to the goddess or flee the temple, while the nobles rushed around seeking answers, summoning guards or priestesses to explain the situation. Troubled, but determined to see her task done, Ashara followed a group of noble girls deeper into the temple as they sought shelter.

  Though many of the girls split off into different parts of the shelter, a good amount of the noblewomen followed the path Phraum had outlined on his map, giving Ashara ample cover to move inconspicuously. The girls left the main hall and took a right into a corridor leading to the private altars. After passing by each of the lavish fountains, granite tables, and marble pedestals that made up the Styrian ritual sites, the group ended up approaching the entrance to the temple’s basement. There half a dozen guards dressed in black and white uniforms stood huddled together lost in frantic conversation, likely discussing the chaos unfolding out in the city.

  As she approached her objectives, Ashara slipped out of the crowd and hid behind a pillar to survey the entrance to the lower levels of the great temple. The corridor leading to the stairwell to the basement was huge, as open as a gymnasium, its marble columns and walls adorned with golden finishes and various carvings and statues set in the walls. Aside from the guards though, no other means of security seemed to be present. The women Ashara had been travelling with approached the guards and began to demand answers from them.

  “What’s going on?” One of the robed women asked.

  One of the Styrian guards, a tall, helmeted woman dressed in a white and black uniform with a needle gun slung over her shoulder looked over to the woman and motioned for her to stop.

  “We don’t know. We’re trying to contact the Palace, but our crystals and mirrors aren’t working.” Replied the Styrian soldier.

  “The mirrors aren’t working?” The woman asked incredulously. “Has the magic failed?”

  “Again, we do not know. We’ll find out shortly, until then find shelter in the chapels, but not down here!” The soldier took her rifle in her hands and together with the other five guards beside her stepped towards the robed women menacingly, sending them scurrying backwards.

  “Not you of course Princess, you’re free to enter.” One of the soldiers said, recognizing one of the women in the crowd as a Styrian noble.

  “Well, you know how it is girls.” She said before leaving the group and walking quickly towards the soldiers.

  The women began to argue with the guards, but a few brandished rifles and unsheathed swords silenced them quickly. Cowed, the women angrily retreated down the hallway they had come from to seek shelter near the entrance of the temple.

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Now or never, Ashara thought to herself.

  The Princess pressed down on her wristband as Phraum had shown her earlier and felt her body vibrate softly as she began to disappear. She quickly—and quietly—dashed past the grumbling group of disgruntled women over to the Styrian Princess and followed behind her as she descended the stairs leading down into the temple’s inner sanctums.

  Ashara followed behind the Princess, steadily moving past guards and defenses that normally would have detected her. All the Psychics and magicians she passed seemed to be at a loss as their constructs and tools failed to work, much to Ashara’s relief. She slipped past many fallen detection orbs and malfunctioning lightning pyres as she followed the Styrian Princess through the inner sanctums.

  The pair crested a corner and began descending an enclosed spiral stairwell when they stumbled upon a distressed psychic in the arms of a priestess. The inside of the psychic’s helmet, which was filled with coolant to protect the psychic from overheating, was bubbling and the psychic was groaning in pain.

  “I-I-I c-c-can’t f-feel my t-t-thoughts!” The psychic stuttered out in a garbled voice. Her hands were pressed up to the glowing purple visor of her helmet, face contorted in pain.

  “Your thoughts? Mysandi what are you talking about?” The Priestess shook her white robed companion with a few gentle shoves and began to beg her to answer.

  “Something is...devouring my mind!” cried the psychic before collapsing onto her knees, slumping down onto the stairwell wall.

  The Princess Ashara was tailing stopped for a moment to regard the scene playing out in front of her, but quickly continued her way down the stairwell, unbothered by her distressed kin.

  This one is cold, Ashara thought to herself with an inward laugh. She took a moment to study the struggling psychic before continuing into the depths of the temple. The Princess found the inner vaults just as pristine as the rest of the temple, following the Styrian noble through vaulted corridors carved out of white marble and draped with purple flags bearing the Styrian family symbol. Where there wasn’t a flag, an intricately carved statue of the goddess or one of the families’ ancestors always took its place. Ashara would have admired the place’s beauty if she wasn’t so jealous.

  Finally, they came to a fork and Ashara split down the path to her right while the Styrian Princess continued down the center corridor. The Demora Princess considered trailing the Styrian to her destination to make sure her exit route was secure but thought better of it due to her time constraints. Whatever Phraum did to disable the security constructs might not last forever, she had to hope when she was finished with her business that the Styrians were too busy panicking to notice her little intrusion.

  As if the distraction had read her mind, a great rumble shook the temple, nearly sending Ashara to her knees. She righted herself and continued down the corridor until she found another stairwell, the final stairwell she needed to descend to end up in the corridor with the vault she was looking for. As she began her descent, she heard two voices echoing up the stairs. Panicked, Ashara quickly pressed herself up against the stairwell wall and prayed she wouldn’t be noticed.

  “What in the hells is going on up there...” One of the voices said, a soldier dressed in black and white.

  “It sounds like a monster is rampaging through the city streets!” The other voice exclaimed; a priestess dressed in white armor.

  “I doubt you’re far off.” The soldier agreed.

  The two walked by Ashara oblivious to her presence. With a sigh of relief, the Princess rose off the wall and made her way down the stairwell to the vaults below. She scanned the corridor once she left the stairwell, at the end of the hall there were two more paths leading to what she knew were more vaults and another stairwell. In the corridor she stood in were eight vaults, four on each side of the hallway. The vault she was looking for was the third room to her right.

  The Princess slowly crept down the hall, searching each of the vault entrances for any straggling guards or Priestesses. Discovering none, she headed into the vault she was looking for and moved over to the center of the room. In front of the princess was a statue of the goddess, clad in battle armor with her hands raised in the midst of casting a spell.

  Ashara licked her lips in anticipation and decided to move back to the entrance of the vault to give the hallway one last scan before she began her demolition. She peered down the hallway to make sure no one was around, once certain the coast was clear; Ashara produced the cylinder holding the scroll her father had given her and popped it open. She poured the thick tan parchment into her right hand and tossed the empty tube aside when she was finished.

  The Princess unrolled the scroll and scanned its arcane writing, feeling each word’s power enter her mind as her eyes passed over them. Focusing on the new power bouncing around in her brain, she uttered the words written on the scroll and felt the air around her swirl with power as the mana within filled the room and eliminated all sound. Ashara opened her mouth to say something and smiled when her ears heard nothing.

  She picked up the discarded tube she had brought and shoved the used up scroll back in the container and resealed it. She then walked over to the statue of the goddess and began to feel around its pedestal for a pressure plate or button of some kind. It was common for such statues to have a mechanism built within that allowed them to be moved to reveal secret passages and the like. She found one near the back of the statue and pushed down on the pressure plate and watched as the pristine sculpture sank silently into the floor to reveal a white rectangular doorway of stone. Ashara was familiar with these passages as well, and they would not open without the correct command. Luckily Ashara possessed an alternative means of entry.

  The Princess reached into the sash she wore across her chest and pulled out the two charges her father had given her. She set one charge near the top of the doorway and one near the bottom and simultaneously pressed down on the buttons that would begin the glowing timer on each of the bombs. Once finished she quickly moved into the hallway and took cover to await the inevitable explosion. After fifteen seconds, she felt a small reverberation and peered back into the vault to find the doorway destroyed, its stones now littering the floor of the vault and the passage it once hid.

  The Princess walked back into the vault and carefully stepped over the debris to the entrance of the sanctum. Instead of chandeliers and lamps, the passage was illuminated by hanging braziers of blue flames. It gave the sanctum an eerie atmosphere that made Ashara smile as she thought about her defilement of the place. There was something so sweet about doing something so forbidden that made her heart race as she approached Phraum’s prize.

  As she neared the end of the corridor Ashara’s eyes spied her target, a glowing blue device that looked like a writing tablet, except instead of being made of stone it was made of flowing sliver metal and blue light. There could be no doubt, this was the artifact Phraum sought.

  As Ashara entered the sanctum another roar shook the temple, and she nearly stumbled into one of the vaults walls. The rumbling continued as the roar grew louder and louder, switching into the strange melodic hum from earlier. After a few moments of struggle, Ashara managed to rise to her feet and approach the tablet. She saw what was clearly supposed to be a ward of protection on the pedestal holding the strange device, but the spell’s power seemed to be warping.

  Ashara hesitated for a moment, until the ward abruptly shattered, its magical power dissipating into thin air. Shocked, Ashara took a step back and was further surprised as the blue flames of the hanging braziers suddenly turned into a brilliant orange. Startled, the Princess ducked behind the pedestal holding the device and looked around the room. The braziers began to swing back and forth as the flames inside of them grew wilder and wilder, sizzling with a sickening screech that scratched at her ears.

  Ashara quickly grabbed the tablet from its pedestal and rushed back out into the hall. There she locked eyes with two guards coming from the opposite side end of the hall. One of the guards called out to her and pulled a pistol from her belt. Ashara ignored the woman and quickly ran towards the stairs. She heard two bullets zip past as she bolted into the stairwell and began climbing. She activated her wristband again and hurriedly retraced her steps through the lower levels of the temple.

  Ashara found herself near the entrance of the lower levels of the temple, where the six guards from earlier were now holding back a mob of panicked worshippers. The Princess turned and found several more guards appear from the inner sanctums, bolstered by two priestesses and a mage.

  The Priestesses began to chant their incantations, and the mage began to weave a magic barrier into being.

  “The spells are working now; you just need to focus harder than usual!” The mage called.

  One of the priestesses finished her chant and yelled out into the crowd, “Step back!”

  A purple aura enveloped the crowd and for a moment they all stopped pressing against the line of soldiers and took a step back. The aura quickly dissipated, and the crowd surged forward again, this time smashing against the mage’s barrier.

  The other priestess moved over to the line of soldiers and began to heal those who had sustained injuries pushing back the crowd.

  “What’s going on outside?” One of the soldiers asked the priestess.

  “They’re saying some monstrosity is rampaging through the city, its just passed by the temple.” The priestess replied.

  Ashara passed her tongue over her teeth anxiously. Maron was out there, her exit path was blocked, and she had no way to contact Phraum. The Princess looked up at the shattered windows near the ceiling of the hallway and had an epiphany. She searched around for a wall covered in enough carvings to climb and began her ascent, doing her best not to harm any of the religious symbols she passed on her way up.

  She searched the window frame for handholds that wouldn’t slice her hands open and pulled herself out of the temple and onto the roof. Ashara crawled up onto the roof of the temple and began to move towards the front of the building where she had entered from. She traipsed over slanted shingles and shimmied along the temple’s great dome until she finally got a vantage of the building’s entrance.

  “Hells below...” Ashara muttered as she took in the carnage before her.

  The street was covered in glowing embers and molten stone, float discs and their passengers lay strewn about the roofs of the temple’s neighboring buildings and a flying ship had crashed into the bank across from the temple. The bank Maron was laying atop to watch over Ashara.

  “Damnation!” The Princess cried out in horror.

  Surprised at her own reaction, Ashara quickly shimmied around the dome to the corner of the roof and began to climb down, carefully maneuvering over the layered stone until she made it to the edge of the roof. She peered over its edge and scowled when she found the supporting column beneath too thick to slide down.

  “I wish Phraum had thought to give me some rope.” Ashara mused aloud as she looked for another way down.

  Seeing no clear path to climb down, Ashara looked to the living complex beside the temple, separated by a small alley, she would have to jump the gap. The Princess took a deep breath and moved a few steps away from the edge of the roof. She lurched forward, summoning as much power as she could into her legs as she ran and jumped to the apartment building. She cleared the gap, sailing over a space about twice her height until her feet landed on the concrete floor of the complex’s roof. She stumbled forward a few steps into a roll to break the momentum of the landing.

  “Ooh you got it girl,” Ashara huffed with a wry laugh as she rose to her feet.

  The Princess quickly found the stairs leading down into the living complex and began to climb down to the ground floor. Most of the domicile doors were open, their inhabitants crowded around the shattered windows of the rooms overlooking the street where the carnage had taken place. Ashara ignored them and continued to the bottom floor of the building and burst out of the wooden doors into the ruined street.

  Heat assailed the princess from the warped stones of the smoking street, and she pulled the sash wrapped around her chest to her mouth to keep the acrid smell from burning her lungs. Eyes watering and her skin tingling from the sweltering heat, Ashara quickly moved up the street to a clear portion of the road where the stones weren’t a molten mess. Catching her breath, Ashara began to collect her thoughts.

  While Maron was extremely important to her, the Princess did not want to risk meandering in the inner city while it was being devastated. Ashara cast a glance over to the smoking ship lodged in the bank’s upper levels and let out a sigh. With Phraum’s prized device in her possession she could not afford to go look for her endangered bodyguard. A brief feeling of rage and sadness passed over Ashara and she turned east towards the hills that held the Demora compound.

  “Unbelievable, simply unbelievable...” Ashara muttered to herself as she marched her way down the street, thankfully away from the sounds of carnage emanating from the west.

  Ashara moved past the now vacant entrance to the Styrian temple and continued heading east until she felt someone grasp her shoulder. The Princess immediately spun about, drawing a knife from her robes and pushing its tip against the person who dared touch her. She was pleasantly surprised when she found Maron, the sharp featured and short haired male dressed in a black form fitting stealth suit standing behind her.

  “Are you alright Princess, have you recovered the artifact?” Maron asked, forehead wrinkled in worry.

  “Yes, and yes. What the hells happened out here?” Ashara asked, doing her best to hide the satisfied smile spreading across her face.

  “Some huge flaming beast came rumbling down the street earlier causing havoc.” Maron replied bewildered. “I saw it pounce from rooftop to rooftop, until it got here and sent some flaming beam of energy at the ship you that crashed into the bank. Thankfully I had left my perch to come find you by then.”

  “Saved by your dutiful heart.” Ashara purred. “The goddess smiles upon you Maron, and me.” The princess produced the silvery blue device she had stolen from the Styrian temple and gave her bodyguard a quick peek at the prize before sliding it back into her sash.

  Another transfixing hum filled the air causing Ashara and Maron to find cover in the doorway of an abandoned shop. From the west came a sinister flash of orange light and the sound of an airship falling out of the sky soon followed.

  “Let us be gone from this place.” Ashara muttered before dashing down the street, Maron in tow.

  She had secured her father’s prize and now would wait for her reward. Ashara could feel it, her life was in for a great change after this triumph. All she had to do was hide the artifact away in her quarters and await her father’s instruction. This was it, she thought, the moment she would ascend the Demora ladder and earn the respect she so rightfully deserved.

  Another roar and a flash of orange light sent reverberations through the ground beneath Ashara’s feet, and she stumbled, only managing to regain her balance after grabbing onto Maron for support.

  “Perhaps I should save the celebrations until after I reach my chambers...” Ashara mused aloud.