“A powerful ritual, once completed, will manifest results almost instantly. It’s the really powerful ones that make you wait. No one knows when annoying suspense got tangled up with quality, but it’s exactly the sort of jerk-ass thing most would blame on Hermes if it hadn’t started before his birth. Some suspect him regardless.”
—Olympian Priesthood in Thirty Days!
(Day 24: Rituals Best Avoided)
AT THE BASE OF MOUNT PARNITHA, Stout regarded Kindgood across a rock where the nine brass cans lay open. “That can’t be it, can it?”
Kindgood cast about for any change in the world. Beyond the deafening quiver of air that had whooshed out of nowhere when the last can was opened, all was silent. There were neither bright flashes of light from the heavens sent to purge the false gods from the Almighty’s creation, nor archangels wielding swords of blazing white. There was not even a single bush that might be considered mildly smoldering. He had the terrible suspicion that he’d fallen victim to the spiritual equivalent of the joy buzzer—that the cans were some great bit of mischief on the part of the false gods or their followers, intended to mock the efforts of the faithful, and that the NCMA would certainly refuse to reimburse him the cost of plane tickets and lunch for all seven of them.
Stout awaited his answer with the look of a man similarly troubled. As the one in charge, Kindgood knew it remained up to him to respond appropriately to his fellow’s crisis of faith.
“I think you did something wrong,” Kindgood told him. “God grant me strength to forgive you. I will do my best to make sure our superiors understand you didn’t mean to . . .”
A swirling bit of blue light appeared between them.
Stout stepped back, pointing. “A sign! By the glory of God, a sign!”
Kindgood stepped back a bit himself, fighting his own amazement. It was indeed a sign! He’d done it! Holy crap, he’d done it!
“God has chosen me to be filled with the power of His forgiveness!” Kindgood declared to the group. “I opened myself up to Him that I might forgive you, Gabriel Stout, and through me His glory is made manifest! I am the vessel through which He creates—” Kindgood pointed at the growing light, grasping for words. “—This!”
All seven of them staggered back as the light crackled and swelled. Ribbons of energy rippled across it and stretched the light taller and wider until it was a broad, blue vortex an arm’s span across. Power gusted forth like a burst of wind to knock the group on their backs. The vortex swirled faster, continuing to grow and rising into the air above them as the brass cans trembled and rattled in place.
Pure power whipped Kindgood’s hair and tugged at his clothes. “Now the false gods’ time is at an end!” he yelled, exhilarated. “Now they shall reap the fruits of their blasphemy! Now we shall—”
The pull grew stronger, grasping at loose stones.
“Now we shall—”
A seagull shot backward over his head and into the vortex with a shrill cry.
“Now we shall . . . withdraw to safety and rejoice in—um . . .”
The vortex’s lower edge sliced into the stone beneath it, cracking it in half and sucking the brass cans and their lids into blue oblivion. Stout scrambled to his feet on the other side, lost his balance against the pull, and tumbled screaming into the vortex after them.
“Run!” Kindgood yelled it more to his own body than to the others, who hardly needed him to tell them that at all. As the frightfully blue maw grew, both looming above and spinning like a saw blade into the Earth itself, someone grabbed his hand and tugged him to his feet. Desperate, he yanked on the helping hand and flung its owner backward to gain ground for himself. The helper disappeared into martyrdom; Kindgood didn’t look back.
“For the greater good!” he called in apology. “I must escape to spread word of your sacrifice!”
It bought him no more than a few seconds. The pull raged stronger around him. It yanked the soil out from under his feet and set him scrambling. He fell forward, then up, legs flailing, arms grasping helplessly as he toppled head over heels into the vortex with the final thought that God sure as heck better be grateful.
Though there were none left to witness it, the vortex continued to grow, sucking in everything nearby until it was as tall as ten men. There it halted at its full dilation, blanketing the surrounding landscape in sudden, vortex-ie silence. The pull subsided. The blue light faded to gray mist. For a moment, nothing moved.
And at last a hand appeared from within, then another, and nine long-trapped entities began to crawl forth from their prison, gasping with the effort of their escape. It goes without saying that they were incensed.
Having said it anyway, it’s still an understatement.