No students were allowed within a mile of Lexandria University's research buildings. The magics practised there were so powerful and dangerous even in the best of times that only experienced wizards could be trusted to enter those hallowed halls. This wasn't just for the protection of the apprentices. Some of the experiments conducted there required magics so fragile and delicate that the slightest trace of residual magic left on a student who hadn't cleansed himself properly after a spellcasting lesson could wreck them irretrievably. In the best case, this could merely result in weeks of work ruined, leaving the wizards unhappy but otherwise no worse off, but a malfunctioning high level spell always had the potential to cause terrible destruction and loss of life.
Today, even these stringent precautions were redoubled, however. Every proctor in the valley was put on duty patrolling the empty fields surrounding the research complex to make sure no exceptionally resourceful student found a way to sneak in, and the teaching wizards made especially sure that every pupil was accounted for. The reason for all this was that the main conjuration room was filled to capacity with wizards and priests preparing to cast the most dangerous spell they'd ever dared to attempt in their lives.
Tragius watched the preparations from the neighbouring observation room, wishing he were twenty years younger. Now that they knew that a Demon Prince from the Pit was in command of the Shadowhosts, now that they knew his name, they would finally be able to hit back at him. Deal him a blow that would, hopefully, temporarily loosen his hold over his army, the first time anybody in the world had been able to do so since the Shadow had first formed over a century ago. All this time, the Demon Prince had sat, snug and safe in his monstrous and diabolical palace in the depths of the Pit, secure in the knowledge that, no matter how his armies in the worlds of the living fared, whether they won or lost, there was no way that his mortal enemies could hit back at him in his impregnable stronghold in the Inferno. He was like a klann player, the old wizard mused. Pushing pieces across the board. Hoping to win but knowing that even if he lost, there would always be another game, another chance to win. The mortals he fought were merely pieces on the board, not capable of striking back at the entity moving the pieces, not even supposed to know that such an entity existed. Tragius smiled grimly. That was all about to change. The pieces were going to hit back at the player, and hit him hard. He only wished he could be a part of it.
There were two teams of spellcasters in the conjuration room, a dozen wizards and priests in each team, forming two concentric rings around the circle of arcane symbols drawn in chalk on the floor. It had taken three days to draw those symbols. Each one had been drawn with exacting, agonising care from a set of templates normally stored in a massive steel safe in a cavern deep under the mountain, where they were guarded by deadly warding spells and magically created guardians so dangerous that they were themselves imprisoned by a whole array of warding spells. Another team of wizards had then spent two days checking and examining the symbols to make sure that they were as perfect as it was possible for imperfect mortals to make them. The tiniest errors, even a bit of graininess caused by the stick of chalk crumbling, would ruin the spell, with consequences so terrible that the word 'disastrous' was totally inadequate to describe it. Several symbols were erased and redrawn simply because the examining wizard didn't like the look of them, without being able to say why, and the erasure was so thorough and complete that the area of floor on which it had been, and on which it was redrawn, shone like a mirror. Even now, minutes before the ceremony was due to begin, the examining wizards continued to scrutinise them, and a single word from any one of them would be enough to postpone the proceedings indefinitely, or even cancel them altogether.
The inner circle of wizards were the ones who would open a portal to The Pit, hopefully to the exact spot at which the Demon Prince was currently located, and they had been prepared as meticulously as the circle of symbols. Every one of them had fasted for three days, had spent the previous six hours chanting a long series of tongue twisting magic words over and over again until their voices rasped hoarsely and their throats burned. In addition they had just emerged from a bath in which certain special and slightly poisonous chemicals had been dissolved, bringing them all out in a mild rash. Their snow white robes were newly woven, never having been worn before, and had themselves just been washed in the same oily water so that they were still mildly damp.
The outer circle of wizards and priests were the ones who would attack the Shadowlord while the portal was open. They hadn't needed to undergo any special preparation, but were no less nervous than the first team since they would share the consequences if anything went wrong. The portal would be one way only, allowing spell effects to pass in one direction while, hopefully, preventing anything from coming through in the opposite direction, but as an added precaution it would only be open for approximately half a second, giving the Shadowlord as short a time as possible to become aware of it and respond before it closed again. Most of the spells that were to be hurled through required several seconds to cast, though, and if they came to their culmination an instant before it opened, or an instant after it closed, they would hit the wizards standing opposite, so exact timing was vital.
"Five minutes," said the overseer, meaning that there were only five minutes to go until midnight, when the ceremony had to begin. The two circles of casting wizards tensed, and the wizards who'd been examining the chalk symbols quietly left the room. One of them, Raptor Rendaven, one of the world's foremost authorities in demon summoning, came to the observation room to sit with Tragius and the other senior wizards who'd be watching the event. He was a war wizard serving in the Imperial Beltharan army, a battle hardened veteran who looked much older than his forty three years, and he'd returned to the University at Tragius's request to help with the preparations "Well, we've done all we can," he sighed as he sat down. "It's all down to them now."
Tragius nodded, and behind them a priest mumbled a prayer to Ramthara, Goddess of Life and Growth.
"I find myself strangely comforted by this wall," said Raptor, tapping the three foot thick wall of magically transparent granite that separated them from the conjuration room. "I know perfectly well how little it'll protect us if anything goes wrong, but there's still a primitive part of me that takes comfort from a strong, solid barrier between me and the danger."
"If the worst happens, there isn't a place in the world that'll be safe." agreed Tragius. "We could be in there with them and be in no greater danger."
"Then why in the name of the Gods are we doing this? Is the situation really that bad?"
"It is," replied the older wizard. "Unless a miracle happens, we have very little chance of winning this war by conventional means."
"But you must know there's no way we can actually kill him," pointed out Raptor. "I mean, this is a Demon Prince we're talking about. I'm not sure if it's even theoretically possible to kill him."
"We don't need to kill him, just weaken him a bit. You know how the Shadowarmies are. Organised from the top down by sheer brute force. The Shadowlord retains his position and authority because he's the biggest and strongest of them all, but if he's weakened, even just a little bit, all his deputies will take the opportunity to depose him and then fight amongst themselves to be the one to replace him. While they're doing that, they'll be neglecting their armies in the living worlds, who'll be left temporarily leaderless and in confusion. Every Beltharan and Fu-Nangian General has been informed of what we're going to do, and if we succeed they'll all launch major offensives at the same time. It may be the best chance we get to turn the tables on them. Maybe the only chance we'll ever get."
"Whose crazy idea was this?" asked Raptor.
"Mine, actually," replied Tragius with a slight smile. "I got the idea when I heard that a group of our graduates had asked the Emerald Oracle for the Shadowlord's true name, giving us the handle we need to attack him personally. If this works, I intend to recommend those kids for a commendation."
"If it doesn't work, it may be the Shadowlord who gives them the commendation. In person."
Tragius nodded gravely. "Yes, but if we're all going to die anyway, I'd rather die taking a swing at him. Dammit, he probably doesn't even know we exist at the moment! He's waging wars on thousands of worlds, in this universe and others, and he can only give his personal attention to the few that give him the most trouble. I don't want to be like the bug that gets trodden underfoot without even being noticed, which is what's happening now."
The thirty second warning bell rang in the conjuration room, and the casting wizards looked in Tragius's direction for his final go, no go decision. Tragius glanced at the other senior wizards around him, one at a time, and saw them all give small, hesitant nods of affirmation. Tragius felt the weight of responsibility grow even heavier. A part of him had been hoping that someone would scram the ceremony. It would have let him off the hook, allowed him to call off the whole thing without losing face. Now, though, the final decision was his. He could still call it off, but he wouldn't be able to point the finger at someone else. Everyone would know that he'd chickened out.
He sighed, took a deep breath and gave his own nod to the casting wizards, just as the bell rang again, the twenty second warning. The inner circle of wizards nodded back to acknowledge the order and stopped chanting the words they'd been saying for the past six hours. Silence hung in the chamber for a few moments, and some of the wizards beckoned to assistants to bring them glasses of water from which they took a swallow dip. Others cleared their throats nervously. The bell rang a third and final time, the ten second warning, and the wizards glanced at each other as if asking each other if they were really going to go through with this. Then fists were clenched, chins were lifted defiantly, and as the final few seconds counted down they began the casting of the spell.
Twelve strong, determined voices spoke together, uttering tonguetwisting words that had no known meaning in any known language. They were, as far as anyone could tell, nothing but strings of nonsense syllables, but Tragius felt the hairs lifting on the back of his neck as the words seemed to merge together, as if they came from a single throat, and the very air around him seemed to grow thick and heavy, as if he were sitting at the bottom of the ocean. Power thrummed around him as the words continued to issue from the spellcasters. He felt the power building, a pressure that seemed to push the walls outwards as if they were made of rubber. Real fear gripped him and he half rose from his seat, the words that would abort the ceremony forming on the tip of his tongue, but it was too late to stop now. Interrupting the spellcasting now would have who knows what disastrous consequences. They had no choice now but to see it through and pray that it went well.
He settled down in his chair again, mentally counting down the last few seconds, and the spellcasters in the outer circle began the casting of their spells. Some of them held wands and staffs which they held out ahead of them, pointing to where the portal would appear. Others made subtle and complicated movements with their hands. One of the priests merely put his hands together and bowed his head, and a flickering nimbus of light began dancing around his head. Those whose spells took longest to cast began first, the others joined in a second or two later, so that they would all come to culmination at the precise same moment.
Tragius, his brow now covered with beads of perspiration, his hands gripping the armrests of his chair, counted down the last few seconds in his head. Three, two, one... A clock in the outer courtyard began to chime midnight, and as it did so every spell being cast in the conjuration room reached its climax at the exact same moment.
Power poured from the twelve inner wizards, meeting in the centre of the room where it flared in a flash of brilliant light. Most of the power leapt across a transdimensional chasm to The Pit and formed a bridge connecting the two planes of existence, but due to some microscopic imperfections in the chalk symbols, and interference caused by motes of dust floating in the air, some of the magical energy was scattered and lost, manifesting itself as the spontaneous casting of low level spells and nocumes. A lurid orange glow and the smell of mustard filled the room. A small area of wall turned to mud and trickled down to the floor, and a deep, solemn voice from nowhere chanted the words "The sheep are not to be trusted."
Tragius trembled in terror, waiting for a random spell effect to blast him out of existence, while in the other room the flash faded, parting like a curtain, leaving behind a blackness so intense that it seemed like a physical thing, a solid chunk of nothingness beside which the darkness of the deepest caves would seem like a light shade of grey by comparison. It hurt the eyes to look at it, but it only lasted a fraction of a second before opening in turn to reveal a scene out of a screaming madman's worst nightmare.
Many of the wizards casting the spell had never seen The Pit before, and the sight before them now was enough to make even the most courageous man run away screaming. They were Lexandrian wizards, though. The best in the world, and every one of them knew what might happen if their concentration was broken now, at this most critical moment. Only one of them faltered slightly at the sight of the nightmare of evil revealed to him, and even he was able to pick up the thread of the spell again before any serious damage was done, so that all twelve of them spoke the final words in perfect unison. "Ettrekiol Dumnaphage Par Kronvaliaz Ghub. Lottoch. Bezdabel. Taan-emur!"
All the lesser nightmares drew aside, revealing an infinitely worse nightmare, the mother of all nightmares. Someone screamed, and several wizards broke position, staggering back in blind panic. Fortunately, the spell had been cast correctly and the portal closed again half a second after opening, but that half second was the longest in any of their lives and time seemed to crawl at a snail's pace as several things happened in quick succession.
Those wizards and priests in the outer circle who'd been able to withstand the terrifying sight of the Shadowlord completed their attack spells precisely on time, and a barrage of death magic flooded through the portal, striking the Prince of the Undead in his Bone Castle in the very heart of The Pit. Whether it had any effect on the Demon Prince, it was impossible to say, but it immediately became aware of the puny mortals who had dared to strike it in its own stronghold and launched a devastating counterattack with lightning, unbelievable speed. The one way filter across the portal, which was supposed to prevent any such thing from happening, was torn to shreds creating, for a fraction of a second, a two way opening between Lexandria University and The Pit. The Shadowlord's power flooded through, an infernal darkness that preventing the observers next door from seeing what happened next, for which they were later profoundly grateful.
Tragius, Raptor and the others heard screams of utter hopelessness and despair, mingled with soulrending sobbing and several voices begging for mercy. Tragius leapt to his feet and ran to the door, but Raptor grabbed his arm and held him back. "No, you fool!" he shouted, right into his face. "You'll expose us all!"
Tragius shook him off, but he knew he was right and returned to the window, his face ashen faced with guilt and horror and, as the conjuration room slowly cleared, they saw what had happened to the poor, lost souls next door.