//Burton, whatever you may say, i did NOT misspell the word "first." Razz\\
-"Your destination has no name that I bothered myself to find out. The only interest it poses to me is as a strategic support point. My army is bombing the town with some of the ingenious machines that Qim produced, while their commanding officer, Arlin, is battling some...
woman..."
As I said the last word, a painfully sharp image of Steorra broke into my mind. I just stood there, looking into nothingness, a small drop of spittle running down from my open mouth. Steorra was the closest feeling I've ever experienced that one may dare to call "love". I quickly sent a wave of my energy, that, like a sonar, would recoil back to me once it found Steorra.
The energy came back into me, with a rather unsettling result. There were thousands, if not millions of individual small pings, from all directions. It seems she was blown to pieces... whatever scum did that will PAY!!!
However, now is not the time to think of revenge. The first step would be to resurrect her.
Since I was in the magic district of my land, I should take advantage of this. I went up directly to my own study, a large stone room with bare rock floor and walls full of books. There was also a bag of dark red sand.
I picked up the bag of sand, and began pouring it on the cold floor. I walked around, making patterns with the little pile of sand. The end result was a complex pentagram, consisting of seven smaller pentagrams. //a big grandma's cookie to the first to find them all!\\
I sat down in front of my creation, and closed my eyes. Reviving someone who has been
nebulized in that manner was pretty much impossible for me, back when I was still the pitiful worm calling himself a Necromancer. Now it is rather simple, at least compared to back then.
My mind had a hold of every single one of those particles now. I slowly tugged, trying to drag them forward, to this very location. It was hard at first, but after a few more practice tugs I got the hang of it. I slowly began backing them to Sizri, very, very carefully and slowly.
After some time, there was a small whirlwind of particles in the boundaries of my symbol. Time for the hard part.
I enriched every single particle with more energy than any human on earth (other than me) posessed during their entire lifetime. It was a lot harder than it sounds... it was like trying to control 10 million undead soldiers at the same time.
The energy boost drastically increased the particle cohesion. The whirlwind started taking shape of a twisted human body... evening out...
I could clearly see Steorra's outline now. The whirlwind was still there, though, so it seems that only one last step was necceseary. I sent another jolt, ten times stronger than the previous one, to every single particle.
The whirlwind exploded around the room, blowing the books off their cases. Even my reading table was knocked back down by the raging particle shockwave. I managed to phase-shift just in time...
After the initial power surge, the particles "cooled" off very quickly. The explosion took barely a fraction of a second, and Steorra was before me. She was unconcious, it seems. I retraced all my donated energy from her particles, and she fell down.
I stood up, and dove towards her. My hand instinctively reached for her shirt... NO! I am above this.
I restrained myself, which took more effort out of me than the whole process of reviving Steorra. Her beautiful shape was calling out to me, and judging by her short-lived alliance with the Crimsons, this may be the only chance to do this that I get.
Then again, miracles do happen."
--- --- ---
Ein scratched his head.
-"Okay... here goes..."
He slowly lowered down to his knees, just on the edge of the pentagram. His eyes were tightly shut, muscles on his jaws rippling from pressure. It was obvious Ein was stressed.
He began a chant in demoic-sounding tongues. The pentagram flared, and two lightning bolts struck Alex's hands, dragging him down on the floor. When he landed, some strange force spun him around in the diagram so that his limbs alinged with the pentagram's arms.
A deep rumble from the island followed. The crystals shook a bit, then... just fell through the floor, ALONG with the floor. The large airborne chunk zoomed off into the darkness of the void.
The purple shade of the Borderworld seemed to dim a little. Ein stopped chanting.
-"I have NO idea what I just said."
If Alex was still concious, he would be experiencing excruciating pain in his head.
