Once everything was in readiness, Hadrian knelt in front of the eclipsed Summoning circle and began to calm his breath. The meditation helped him focus, make better use of his reserves. With a flick of his wrist, he nicked the pad of his thumb on his dagger, then pressed the slightest of wounds into a trigger rune set into the Summoning circle, and a blood-red glow began to seep through it. When the glow met its partner on the opposite side of the circle, the inner workings began to light up, pulling something within Hadrian off-kilter too as it searched Shoyden for what he seeked: a flock of glassbeaks.
As his circle began its work, he stood and knelt down in the smaller circle-pair. Once inside, he blasted trigger with a steady flow of green res, his last line of defense should things go awry. When the chain of glyphs was fully charged, it began to react with the secondary circle, which would alter the output of the first if such an output became required.
But that was the last line of defense, and the Summoning circle was tugging at his attention through the blood-link. He began to Flux djed into his body, muscle and bone, nerve and sinew, because one could never be too careful.
It came through, the first glassbeak. It was not large, about half the size that his circle could handle, amorphous and not quite solid until the entirety of it came through. He began to hyperventilate a little, trying to keep his nerves and breathing under control. There was nothing to be done but release it. This was that to which he had committed himself.
There was a snap within and the glassbeak, eyes having fixed on him, charged screeching from the Summoning circle, but the flare of hypnotic power struck it and it stumbled, confused and exhausted, to fall on its side, dead asleep. Hadrian took a deep breath, and muttered an incantation, a call. A second formed, larger than the first, and much the same occurred, although his hypnotic wall took longer to take effect, which made him nervous.
The structure of the Summoning circle was weakening. Perhaps he should have made separate circles for how many glassbeaks he wanted to summon. Next time. Next time. But before he could shut down the circle, the largest one yet appeared, almost too big for the physical size of the circle, and the circle shuddered and shattered as soon as the great beast was through, leaving little trace. It charged through the hypnotic wall, draining it of the last of its power, the sigil blasting itself out of existence.
It wobbled, punch-drunk, toward him and Hadrian finally felt true fear. It was confused, and might even fall asleep, but not before it reached him and even confused, it could kill him easily. He ducked, speed increased by that earlier Flux of djed, as the trigger went off and a whorling cocoon of earth, the secondary circle crystallized its structure into a diamondine egg. The great glassbeak crashed into it, but could not penetrate it, and Hadrian sent a blast of hypnotic suggestion through the warped prism of his safety to finally send the great beast into slumber.
It took him a few minutes to collect himself enough to produce enough res to work through his own barrier, the which shattered as soon as he passed through his circles leaving heaps of useless graphite dust and strange circular marks where all his circles had been. But the walls and ceiling remained Shielded; no sound had passed outside. All the same, Hadrian stood among three sleeping glassbeaks, and decided the time had come to leave.
He slipped through the door, leaving the scene of the crime behind, his steps held steady with Fluxed energy. Sondra would have Adrasteios saddled, bridled, and packed for him. It was past dawn now, hours of work behind him, and he could only hope that he was on the ferry and bound for the mainland before the destruction began.
A blow to the Ebonstryfe, to the Black Sun, and to Rhysol. |
