Up there, in the clueless world above, four monks could not suppress a shiver at the echoes of agony coming from the maws of the Aperture. It was not the first time that some cruel breezes carried up the hints of gruesome deaths taking place in the city's deepest recesses, but you never really got used to it. Especially when you recognized the voice, as they did now. The Isur had met her doom, they were sure; and, even though they did not care for her airs of arrogance, they mouthed a silent prayer for her soul.
Ialari felt like she was taking a stampede right on, each bolt scraping at her very being as it bolted through. Slivers of madness wounded her as they had wounded others before; yet the Isur refused to die. Her life hanging by her willpower alone, she finally reached for two of those cruelly dissonant memories, grabbed them, and pushed them together. There was a brilliant flash behind her eyes and noticed that those particular memories no longer felt like shrapnel across her mind. They were still as ugly as ever, but they were not hers. She could see where Ialari Pythone ended and where Amir Berliotz began. It was all the Forge really needed.
She took two more memories, sharp and jagged like a stalactite, and forced them together with an effort of will. The bigger the chunks, the easier they were to follow around and manipulate. At some point, she even caught glimpses of the very thing she was looking for - Dominion, that is. She saw through Berliotz's eyes as he opened doors onto luscious grasslands too green and under skies too blue to belong in this world. The grass withered and died in his wake, poisoned by his malice.
He had trapped many of his enemies on the other side. He did not even know whether they could actually starve there or be forced to exist pointlessly in that borderless Sea of Grass for untold centuries. He didn't really care either way. He had only been a beginner at the time of his death, having used Dominion as little more than a dumpster and occasional storage area. He hadn't seen his death coming, and thought he had all the time in the world. Overgiving just ripped his body and soul apart one day, and that was the end of his experiments.
Ialari coughed up blood, exhausted, as the entity stepped out of her body, now whole again. Her body was still being rocked by tremors, though those were diminishing already and her heartbeat was getting closer to normal. She had her Isur body to thank for being able to withstand this without rupturing, and her Isur mind for having the willpower to actually forge a man's mind anew.
Speaking of the man, he stood now in front of them, radiating cold ghoulish power. He looked real and vivid enough to be touched, and most observers would be fooled into thinking Berliotz was alive. A thin smile creased his sharp features as he examined Ialari's pained form. "Quite remarkable indeed," he murmured, "you might even be able to live to tell the tale if your organs didn't take too much damage. And I am whole! Whole again!" He balled his hands into fists several times.
"It is time to fulfill my end of the deal," the wizard said, though Ialari knew all too well he wasn't doing this out of any sense of fairness of justice; simply put, he thought the gods would punish her just as hard as they had him with the Big Split (because it must have been the gods, right? Berliotz was just too good in his own eyes to have possibly petched anything up). "There are words involved. Also blood, but you've got more than enough of that dripping off of you."
Ialari had retained enough of Berliotz's memories to know what he was talking about. She remembered his opening of the First Door in his laboratory. "It's a short poem in the Ancient Tongue, actually." He laughed at the notion. "Such an inside joke. We always said the Ancient Tongue had no magic whatsoever in it and we kept drilling that into our students as fact. And at the end of the day, the Ancient Tongue does have a few tricks up its sleeve. No wonder it does - if you were a god wishing to teach magic to some backwards, barely-civilized people of old, wouldn't you adapt to their customs and language at first? No chance of them ever picking anything up if you didn't."
The words started resurfacing in Ialari's mind. There were two parts to the poem, one in the Ancient Tongue and one that seemed to be at the speaker's discretion. The first part was the actual formula, the second was the would-be Domineer's statement of intent. What use the latter served remained to be seen, but Ialari could remember it clearly now. Berliotz had gathered his blood in a bowl and dipped his finger in his own redness. Then, he had painted the rough sketch of a door's lock on the floor with his blood. The keyhole and handle were easily recognizable.
And he had spoken the words as he did so.
"Ruwe q'ala daràq
kèshak simas sutlàs
daeq daeq'vat asag
Rok a'djas abasast!*
Show me to the untamed lands.
I have glimpsed them in the eyes of the dead,
I have craved them in the dreams of the dead,
I have pried them from the fingers of the dead.
So it shall be written,
so it shall be done."
And then he had reached out for the imaginary handle...
* Up and down are the same,
space is the greatest lie,
I make and am made anew,
reborn in my Dominion!