The op lich is a returne.., p.25
The OP Lich is a Returnee, page 25
“Ah, so the one responsible is either an organization that may or may not still exist, all these centuries later, or they are a god?”
“Yes. And, either way, if the ones behind the seals are still around, then they will make their presence known once we start looking for the seals. One way or another.”
I took a breath. “No, the problem is the ‘why’. Why go through the truly titanic effort to shut away magic, all around the world? If a religious group were behind it, then sealing away magic would allow them to control ‘heretical’ doctrines that did not conform with their dogma. If the seal was created to keep something out, unsealing the seals might release a tide of demons into the world. Or, if it was meant to seal away someone or something too powerful to destroy, then breaking the seals might unleash Cthulu from his dark slumber, or worse.”
“I must admit that none of those are particularly pleasant prospects, Akagawa-san. Even if Cthulu is not actively malevolent, the stories all say that simply looking upon him in the flesh can cause madness. And if it is some other god sealed away, well, that would cause so many ‘fun’ discussions with the world’s religions since magic became a thing. I can only imagine what would happen if some ancient god was sealed away, and then released in the modern day.”
“Yes, I can imagine that would be of some concern to you, and the general public. Unfortunately, without examining the seals, and their environs, there’s no way of knowing for sure who did it, and why. Which comes to why I asked you to meet me here today.”
“Ah, I was wondering that. While I do like Yokohama, and this Nakazatokumano Shrine is quite pleasing to the eye, it did not seem like the typical place that you would call to meet.”
Indeed, when I contacted Koyama, and asked to meet with him, the place I specified was this shrine, in Yokohama. I hadn’t told him the reason for the meeting, though he’d guessed enough of it so far, or why this location. In my defense, it was simply funny watching him try to figure out why we were here, and it gave me an excuse to wear my miko outfit again.
“We are here, Koyama-kun, because this shrine was built, knowingly or not, almost perfectly in place over a nexus of ley lines, just as the school I attended in Seattle was. It is my theory that, when the Grand Summoning stole us from this world, the magical ‘pulse’ of the ritual pushed through the long-dormant ley lines, and hit the closest seal like a hammer, causing a crack in the seal, and allowing magic to become active once more. If anyone had been capable of sensing magic at that time, then they likely would have been able to at least pinpoint the nearest seal in the network.”
Koyama nodded apprehensively. “Then, in order to find the seals, you are going to cause another Awakening?”
“Oh, no. Nothing so dramatic,” I shook my head. “Well, not on purpose, at any rate.” I grinned at the stricken look on Koyama’s face, and continued. “In truth, my intention is to send my own pulse, to try and see where the ‘blank spots’ are. With as much as I’ll be limiting my magic to prevent causing more damage, I probably will only be able to detect the closest seal. However, that will give us the clues we need, in order to move forward, since I’ll be able to find the other eight seals once I get to the first one.”
Koyama breathed in deeply, and said, “Very well then, Akagawa-san. How can I help?”
“Once I explain things to the keeper of this shrine, you can best help by making sure I am not disturbed for the duration of the magic. I’m sure you’ve heard the stories about what happens when a mage is startled mid-spell? Well, they are all true, and barely hold a candle to what some of my spells could do, if I lost concentration in the middle of one.”
“Ah, that sounds… bad. I will definite do my best to keep you from being disturbed, once you begin.”
Chapter 73 – Ritual Magic
Explaining things to the shrine’s keepers was not that difficult. I was, to put it mildly, a little famous in Japan by this point, so they were happy to do this for me, so long as I tried to avoid damage to the shrine itself. In return, all they asked was if they could watch, and get the ‘starter lessons’ on magic that I’d given Kinjo-kun. The lessons I was only too happy to give, but I had to put my foot down on them watching from inside the shrine. It would be far too dangerous. Instead, I offered to have cameras set up, so that they could see the ritual, and its effects, from different angles.
While the cameras were being obtained and set up, I set about using the shrine’s facilities to purify myself in human guise, as I had before, not even a year ago at Hie Shrine. Purification would enhance my power temporarily, allowing me to better focus the energies at my command. That, I hoped, would be enough to keep there from being any unfortunate accidents during the rite.
Moving into the central shrine area, dressed in my miko outfit, I began preparations. I would need a magic circle, to control the magic, and focus it properly. Normally, I would engrave it, or at least paint it, to ensure its stability, and add a bit of permanence. It was possible to just project a circle with your will, but even a momentary lapse in concentration could cause the circle to fail, to devastating results. Thus, something you did not have to focus on was best. That said, however, I was a guest here, and I did not wish to damage the shrine, or the grounds. So, I had to go with an alternate method.
I called forth twenty skeletal undead from my pocket dimension. Not warriors, or even mages. Well, not by my standards, anyways. They were slightly better stock than the ‘normal’ human skeletons in this world, of course, since they belonged to the MAGIC team that had tried to stop me when I visited CIA headquarters in my ‘Karen’ moment. Still, that only meant that they were barely qualified as servants, by the standards of my army, especially since their souls were still locked in gems, rather than put back in their mindless bodies.
Each of the skeletons held a torch of blue flame, as they arranged themselves in three circles around the shrine. Four stood at the cardinal directions. Six formed the next circle, and ten the one after that. Each circle faced outwards, holding their torches aloft. As they stood, ghostly blue light began to spring from torch to torch, forming the three circles. The whole thing was crudely done, and hastily, but it would serve its purpose well enough for what I had planned.
In the center of the shrine, I took a breath to center myself, and felt the flow of mana running through my body, and through the circle outside. The skeletons, and the circles they made, were an extension of my own power. They came from me, and they were mine, without any souls of their own. Their mana responded to my will alone, and, focused through the blueflame torches, the formation they created would serve to send my mana out, into the ley line, without causing dangerous side-effects.
As I stood in the center of the formation, I tapped into the flow of power, and began to add to it. No longer just a simple flow, but a stream, with direction. With a will behind it. And then, I began my ceremony.
Powers of Magick rise
Course unseen across the skies
Pass traceless through the land
Gather now in my hand
By Four and Six and Ten and One
Let this my power now become
Magic fire now all reveals
Seek forth the hidden seals
Evocations here shall not avail
Enchantments no minds assail
Illusions ripped and torn asunder
Transmutations turned to plunder
Life springs from the well anew
Death reaps its harvest due
Light brings hope into the night
Shadow hides until its time is right
Fire rises to scorch the Land
Water surges to meet the sand
Earth stands strong as stone
Air calls cuts quickly to the bone
Above them all and yet below
Magick knows which way to go
Lines of power stretching far and near
Show me the vision sought most dear
Death comes now, let us pray
Life returns, in its own way
Shadow cloaks us all from the day
Light forces eternal night away
Water pours through every soul
Fire boils the seven oceans whole
Air blows with the force of a hurricane
Earth stands, the stones they sang
Below them all and yet above
Magick rises gently like a dove
Lines of power hidden near below
All your secrets I now shall know
By the Forbidden Texts of Albarame
By the Sacrificial Lore of the Name
By the Incantation of the Unspoken Word
By the Summoned Heroine’s Voice now heard
By the will of the Athelian Spire
By the cries of the Dark Choir
By the powers of the Ancient Shield
The Lich Queen demands you yield
POWERS OF MAGICK RISE
COURSE UNSEEN ACROSS THE SKIES
GATHER NOW WITHIN MY HANDS
SHOW ME WHERE THE SEAL STANDS!
As I spoke, I danced. Well, dancing was not the right word for it. Just as the words and my intent guided the magic to do as I wished, so did the forms and poses I struck with my body. Each one had meaning, turning my body into simple runes that helped to channel the magic of the spell.
Outside the shrine, I knew that the elements would have arisen. After all, I called them all here, including the untamed power of raw magic itself. I did not know what form the elemental manifestation would have taken, beyond conjuring up wind and clouds as magic excited the air around the shrine. But that could wait until later. I had a trace.
The magic flowed through the ley line, pulling my consciousness along with it. Swirling through the land. It pulled me quickly down the home islands, across the East China Sea. Across the land. Into the central part of China. A word appeared in my mind, taken from the reflection left upon the land by the people living there. Xi’an.
The vision passed on, focusing on an ancient tomb. A tomb filled with soldiers standing guard, in eternal vigil over the burial site of their emperor. I knew this scene. It was famous all across the world, after all. The Terracotta Army of Qin Shi Huang, first emperor of China was instantly recognizable.
I moved through the necropolis, passing ranks of soldiers, chariots, horses, and more. Deep in the necropolis, I saw a door, made of jade. And beyond it…
The vision passed, and I was returned to my body, in the shrine. Now, at least, I knew where to go. The closest of the nine seals was in China, buried somewhere beneath the tomb of the first emperor of China. Was it done knowingly? Or was that happenstance? The tomb was built some two hundred years before the common era. That would put it in the roughly eight-hundred-year span of time that I’d figured the seals to have been constructed in, between 400 BCE and 400 CE.
I took a deep breath, and went through the motions of dispelling the circle. First, I cleansed the room, dismissing each of the elements in turn. Then, the skeletons in the inner ring of the formation stopped holding their torches aloft, and brought them to chest height, and the light faded, the circle breaking. The same happened for the second and the third rings. Only then did I step outside the shrine building.
Koyama and the leaders of the shrine ran up to me, wild-eyed, as soon as they saw me. I held up one hand to stall their questions momentarily, and opened a portal to stow away my skeletons. There was no need for them, right now, and I had no reason to try and intimidate these people with having my undead minions just looming over their shoulder.
Turning back to the shrine’s keeper, I bowed respectfully. “Thank you, Onishi-sensei, for the use of your sacred grounds. With your help, I was able to uncover a clue to the hidden history of magic in this world.”
“No, no, Akagawa-dono,” the priest waved his hand. “You have promised us training, and what we can learn simply from watching your ritual is more than enough. I am just glad that our humble shrine could help you. However, I do have one question. What of that?” He pointed to the grounds behind me.
Looking back, I sighed as I saw what had become of the grounds. “That, Onishi-sensei, is why I said that it would be too dangerous for any being not taking part in the ritual to be inside the circle with me. Without the protection of the ritual magic, you would have been caught up in that.”
‘That’, referred to the fact that the entire area within the magic circle had been… transfigured. The cherry blossoms on the trees were no longer pink, but black, and radiated shadow. The grass conjured a pale gloom, making everything below the shin impossible to see. Even the stones and wood of the shrine itself had turned darker, and even though the sun was high and there were no clouds in the sky, the area looked as though thunderclouds were hanging directly overhead.
Looking back at the priest, I said, “That was leakage from the elements as I called them. Specifically, the element of Shadow. If my belief is correct, then the seal closest to this shrine is the seal of the Wellspring of Shadow.”
Koyama frowned. “Wellspring of Shadow? I have not heard of such a thing.”
I chuckled, and said, “Yes, I would have been incredibly surprised if you had. You see, in every world there are nine wellsprings of mana, which allow magic to spread throughout the world through the ley lines that crisscross the world. As you know, it has been suggested that the reason magic was so muted in this world, to the point where most believed that it didn’t exist, is that there was a seal in place, one that was weakened when my class was summoned to another world.”
“And the logical place to seal magic would be at these wellsprings?”
“Exactly, Koyama-san,” I nodded. “If you were to seal away magic, then the ideal place would be at the eight elemental wellsprings, and the Prime Wellspring. Think of it like turning off the water to a house at the street. Yes, you might have to go and find where they hid the valve, but once you found it, the process is easy enough.”
“And by the same token, turning the water back on is easy enough, if you know where the valve is, yes?”
“Ah, Koyama-san, this is why I like having you as my liaison with the government. You catch on so quickly. Yes. If we can find out where the wellsprings are, then not only will we be able to potentially unleash the full breadth of magic back into this world, but we may also be able to find out the answers to many questions regarding the seal.”
“You honor me, Akagawa-dono. But when you say questions, you mean like who created the seal, and how they did it? I wouldn’t think such a thing was possible for any individual, even one of your power.”
“No, it is not. However, I expect that we shall find that the individual wellsprings were sealed separately, by different groups, but all backed by a common entity, who needed magic sealed away, for one reason or another. The ‘how’ of it does not interest me, beyond the academic question, save for knowing whether it is possible to safely lift the seal. No, the real question is ’why’.”
“Do you have any ideas, Akagawa-dono?”
“No good ones, I’m afraid. The first possibility is that it was a means of control. I had suspected that the seal was made sometime in the eight hundred years between 400 BCE and 400 CE. There were a few major powers that could have benefited from ridding the world of magic. However, even the largest and most powerful of them did not manage to roam across the entire world.
“The second possibility was as a means of stasis. If a super-advanced civilization was falling, then sealing magic could lock the civilization away in a moment of frozen time, waiting until the time was right for them to return. Basically, think of the myths of Atlantis, or other such ‘lost cities’.
“Third, and finally, the seal on magic may have been made to power a seal and keep something else away, some titanic danger that even those capable of creating a seal upon magic could not, or would not, destroy. A rogue god, or perhaps an entire pantheon, perhaps? Maybe even all the pantheons. The rise of monotheistic, imperialistic religion began in that time period, so silencing all the gods would be one way to ensure that your religion conquers all.”
“You are correct, Akagawa-san. None of those ideas please me much.”
“No, I did not expect they would. But, if I am to find the answers, then I must visit China, and find out where the other wellsprings are. That will allow me to examine the seal in full.”
“I believe I know the answer already, but my superiors will want to know why you can’t just let the seals be?”
“Remind them of what happens to a dam when you put a hole in it, and water starts leaking through. I need to inspect the dam to see whether it ought to be repaired, or whether a controlled demolition should be done. The alternative is potentially waking up one day to the sirens as the dam breaks uncontrollably.”
“Yes, I was afraid you’d say that.”
