The End of our Time: A Tale of Lie

"There are... more of you?" Lucien’s brow furrowed, his face twisting into an open scowl.

"Yeah..." Rowen muttered, staring down at his boots. "We're just a side cell. The main branches operate somewhere else... I don't know the locations. They don't talk to us. We just take the orders coming down the pipe."

Lucien didn't answer. He just tapped the heel of his shoe against the stone floor, the steady, sharp click-click-click echoing down the dark hallway.

Mo leaned slightly out of the charm handle. "How do you know he isn't lying through his teeth?"

"Mana fluctuations," Lucien said, his tone entirely flat. "When someone lies, their internal flow spikes. Their mana stutters. Once you know what to listen for, it's pretty obvious."

Is there anything this guy can't track? Mo thought, shaking its metaphoric head.

Lucien ignored the spirit and stepped closer to Rowen. "What about the voice from the festival array? Who was that?"

Rowen flinched. His eyes darted toward the side exit, then back to the floor. "I... I'm not sure. I think... I think that was the guy at the top. It was my first time hearing it, too." He swallowed hard, his throat clicking. "I hated it. Every time that voice hit my head, it felt like... like my fingers weren't mine anymore. I swear, that's all I know!"

Silence stretched.

It was a dead end. These two were just low-level tools, completely blind to the actual architecture of whatever was being built.

Lucien had assumed the thing floating over the altar was a rough avatar of the God of Sacrifice. But the more he heard, the less that lined up. The mana signature was wrong. It was terrifyingly powerful, frighteningly close to a divine frame, but it didn't carry the distinct signature of the divine.

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So what the hell had they actually pulled through the seam?

Lucien pressed two fingers against his temple, a sharp pulse of irritation throbbing behind his eyes. Gods above... all this blood and ruined stone just to summon a mystery? It was fascinating, sure, but it left him right back at square one.

More questions. Zero answers.

With a slight flick of his wrist, the shifting, colorful chains dissolved into a cloud of fading light particles.

Rowen and Dally hit the floor, gasping for air and rubbing their raw wrists. Neither man made a move to get up. They just sat on the cold flagstones, staring at Lucien’s boots like two dogs waiting for a whip.

Lucien looked down at them, his eyes narrowing thoughtfully as a slow, polished smile returned to his face.

"Well now..."

"Since the two of you built the fire..."

"---It's only fair you help put it out, right?"

The smile widened, but his eyes stayed dead cold. Both cultists went slick with sweat.

"I-I... we can't stand up to that thing!" Dally stammered, backing himself against the wall. "We don't have the magic for it! We'd just get in your way!"

"Don't worry about it," Lucien said mildly. "You opened the door. Which means you know the banishment sequence to shut it."

The two men froze.

Because Lucien was right. They did know the counter-array. It was part of the standard emergency prep in case an invocation went unstable.

Rowen squeezed his eyes shut, letting his head thud back against the wall. Why did I take this contract?

Watching the sheer, miserable panic on their faces, Mo almost felt a tiny drop of pity. Almost. They had brought a nightmare down on an entire valley, after all.

"What's wrong?" Lucien tilted his head, his pale eyes narrowing into sharp slits. "You're not thinking about running off, are you? After you ruined my entire afternoon?"

He stepped closer, his shadow falling over them.

"Now..."

"---You pay the tab."

"It's only fair."

His expression was almost gentle, but to Rowen and Dally, he looked far worse than the multi-limbed horror waiting down the hall.

Lucien was already mapping out how to use them as spell-fodder to force the entity back through the seam. The two cultists traded a hollow, defeated glance, completely out of options. Neither had the nerve to say no.