Random guy was sitting in front of us as stoically as possible. Some people probably knew what his name was, but I forgot. It shouldn’t make any difference for the ritual we were attempting either way.

  We sat outside, more or less. We were surrounded by great pillars carved with various runes. Expensive, no doubt. They were meant to enhance the ritual. Or rituals, assuming they worked right. We had a lot of them to get through.

  We had practiced as much as was feasible without actually altering the curse on a target. Now, we had to actually try. We would still be able to abort the process partway through and let things settle back to how they were if we made a mistake, but only up to a point. Once we hit that threshold, we had to finish. It would also be a huge problem if we were in disagreement about when that was.

  Fortunately, I wasn’t going to be the judge of that. Nor was the king or Riala. Instead, it ended up being the domain of Malaliel for several reasons. First, she would have to be honest with both herself and us about whether it was working. She had a decent sense for curses to go with that. She would also be free to observe since she wasn’t actually doing anything else. Finally, she was both connected to divine magic and not of this world. That last bit was quite important given the source of the curse was divine.

  “It might not be a god,” I remembered discussing with Midnight. “There could be angels involved- or something like clerics and not any sort of direct divine intervention.”

  “I see,” Midnight commented. “And given the strength of this curse, how likely is that?”

  “Uh… well, it’s more likely to involve a deity directly.”

  Was that fifty-one percent? Ninety? Such calculations were difficult and pointless. Ultimately, if they could just annihilate people, they would have done that to the king. The King. I was pretty sure his title was his name now.

  He was the one that had most of the power. More than the other five of us combined. Since precisely six of us could participate, we had split into three from this world and three from without. The King, Riala, and one of the great mages. Not Yalith, because she was both very far away and probably not the best that Aidura had. An eager learner? Yes, but she said herself she had no talent. Just curiosity and time, plus hard work.

  The king clearly had everything. Talent and innate strength, effort, copious time. Lucky for him, not so lucky for the locals who wanted him dead. Maybe he deserved it, but the people of Earth didn’t deserve to be pulled into this even if he did. So we were going to stop that.

  Midnight, Inasyah, and I were responsible for the other-universe side of things. Stability was more important than raw power there, so Inasyah just had to stay focused. It would be fine because today wasn’t even a full moon in either the local system or on Earth.

  The King and his side had clearly been preparing this ritual for longer. Decades, maybe. They had perfect form as they began. There had only been a few modifications to incorporate extradimensional casters as the balancing point- less than a tenth of the ritual was altered. So they only had to memorize those changes in the days of practice we took.

  We had to memorize the whole thing, which was why we had recorded it. Making sure our various devices were charged for today was critical. The Many-Colored were quite curious about them, but we wouldn’t be explaining technology until later… if we even stayed in contact with this world.

  By which I meant Extra. I probably would, because their magic was fascinating.

  Translation had been getting a lot of work lately. The magic words that made up the verbal components of spellcasting were especially relevant, as that was a shared magical language. Something innate to this world, perhaps, but I had at least carried some of that with me as it worked on Earth during supply runs.

  The ritual didn’t have a set length. Most of it was repeatedly reaching out for the curse and peeling it apart layer by layer. Yet we weren’t trying to dismantle it, but instead form it into a malleable state where we could change a few things.

  I focused on keeping it intact. The King was strong, and that was his main contribution to things here. If he had to focus on fine details, he would be inefficient. Riala was clearly taking over a lot of the work right around him.

  As the curse unraveled, it became far easier to see. It was just magic, but buried deeply inside a person. Very interesting. It was also no wonder it only worked on weak people, because it had such complexity that a certain amount of resistance upon its formation would have made it fall apart instantly. Until its hooks were properly locked it, at which point it took… well, all this.

  No part of the verbal or somatic components was automatic to me. I had barely reached the point of proficiency where it was familiar. I was used to spells just working, at least until I hit a certain mana threshold. Even then, I never wrestled with a powerful spell for more than a few moments.

  The curse became more and more real as I held strands of it between my fingers. Fragile. Malleable. It was a good thing I wasn’t responsible for putting it back right. My mere existence was what we needed to guide this connection back to Earth.

  But we weren’t quite there yet. There was about twenty or thirty percent of the curse yet to unravel. Such complexity went far beyond simply binding people to the plane- but the rest of it hardly mattered. It might even be considered beneficial.

  “The tipping point approaches,” The King declared. “Should we proceed?”

  Malaliel continued to stand nearby, causing no disturbance to our ritual. She took in everyone’s states. “Yes. You can accomplish it.”

  “Then we continue.”

  He gave another tug. Nothing too sharp, and the curse wouldn’t easily snap. To be honest, it wouldn’t be that bad for us if it did- we could at least bring people back to Earth.

  Everything was going fine. I could feel things being rearranged, and I was prepared to help attune people properly to Earth again. I had enough spatial proficiency to do it, and it might help that I’d naturalized myself to the planet.

  Then it appeared.

  A swirling ring of yellow lightning. No, at best it had superficial similarities. The energy signature didn’t match.

  It wasn’t a storm. Storms had many components. This was just… energy. And it was not happy.

  I was pretty sure of that before it tried to kill the random guy. Then I was very sure.

  Nobody was in a state to do anything about it. We were all focused on manipulating and stabilizing the curse. Nobody, of course, except Malaliel.

  She threw herself in the path of the attack. The energy stabbed into her, twisting like incandescent wire. She barely managed to slash at it. A normal sword couldn’t cut energy, and hers only temporarily severed the connection. But it was long enough for me to feel a retraction of energy. Not from the sky, but from The King. I maximized the amount of mana I was inputting into keeping the curse stable. So did everyone else, based on what they had left to spare.

  His voice was… angry. I’d heard him speak sternly before, but this was different. “You don’t even have the courage to attack me. How dare you think to assault one from another world. Your iniquities against these people already reach too far.”

  The mountain trembled. I was reminded we were sitting on a volcano. The ground burst outside of the ritual area, spraying lava into the skies. It would have been utterly terrifying if it wasn’t clearly on purpose.

  Random guy wasn’t good at feeling mana, so he screamed.

  The lava blasted into the sky and clung to the energy there, wrapping around the wriggling radiance. The glow of both rapidly faded as the lava hardened, dropping long strands of crystallized blackness that shattered against the ground around us as each part hit.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  The curse was straining against us. With The King’s power withdrawn, we were quite short. I couldn’t say the diversion was unnecessary, though. That power could have easily killed the subject of the ritual. It almost killed Malaliel.

  Not that she would admit that right now. She planted her sword in front of her. “Finish the ritual.” She glared into the sky, watching.

  The curse was nearly tugged apart as The King reinserted himself into the process. It was not due to his own clumsiness, but even a momentary separation made the ritual difficult. It had to be six. That was important in this world.

  The change to the curse was simple. Planar transference wouldn’t be restricted. No, it would even be enhanced. And yet, in some ways the target of the curse would be more tied to this plane… to the point where they always counted as being here.

  That was the trick. They would count as being here… and we would take them back to Earth. Nobody could abduct more, and they were already in the world so they couldn’t be drawn back. I sure hoped it worked. I offered up my connection and my understanding of spatial magic as the strands began to be manipulated.

  After the brief diversion, everything went well. At the very least, we put things back and our volunteer showed no discomfort. We just needed to test it now.

  I strode towards the people standing in the center. “Time to go back.”

  That ritual sure took a lot out of me, but I could still cast Gate. I just had to be extra focused as I reached further into the latter half of my mana.

  “Go on,” I prompted random guy as Extra’s teleportation hall appeared before us. Then I pressed on Malaliel. “You too.” I turned to the rest. “We’ll be back sometime later today. Or I’ll get in contact with you.”

  Midnight nodded. “I’ll watch over people here.”

  I was glad to have him. We needed someone who could cast Gate in an emergency. He still wasn’t quite at a level where he had enough mana to cast an unupgraded gate, but we had plenty of upgrades.

  The Gate closed behind just the three of us. “Someone will come to take care of you in a moment,” I commented to the random guy. “You can go out to the lobby. There are snacks.” I tossed him some cash from Storage.

  Then I pushed Malaliel along. I had already contacted Zorphax to ask for whatever medics they had on hand. I might be able to Teleport us to a powered clinic somewhere depending on the assessment.

  “Nngh,” Malaliel said after a few moments. “Why am I here? I’m fine.”

  “You’re really not,” I said. I wasn’t sure precisely how presumably-holy light hurt angels, but apparently it could. Well, Malaliel had accomplished the same task with a sword so maybe it was just the physical trauma that Malaliel had to worry about. The divine nature might have been dampened. She didn’t look great, though.

  -----

  Malaliel was dangling in a funny sling. Beds weren’t great for people with wings, especially when they needed to rest. “Thanks,” she said. “I kind of locked up there.”

  “No problem. How is it?”

  “... It’ll heal,” she said. “Unfortunately, this might set back our plans quite a bit.”

  I shrugged. “We’d need to build some countermeasures for… whatever that was… regardless.”

  “A god.”

  “Not a very good one, if it was,” I declared.

  Malaliel snorted. “Sounds blasphemous.”

  “It didn’t even speak. What do I care?”

  I had carefully studied the remnants of the energy inside Malaliel, both to see if I could help and if I could counter it. I was pretty sure I couldn’t do anything to the power inside of her without hurting her at least as much… but it was a form of energy.

  I was pretty sure it would take an advanced form of Energy Ward to deal with it, but… I had that. It was kind of like light. I was pretty sure I couldn’t use that sort of energy, but blocking it was different. If mages couldn’t defend against divine power, wouldn’t they just die? I practiced a few methods. Maybe The King would have some methods that would work in his world.

  -----

  “I just blasted it,” The King shrugged. “I hadn’t anticipated needing a ward against external assault to deal with the curse. So no, we don’t have any specific counters. Is your angelic friend alright?”

  “She will heal,” I said. “There are people working on it. I don’t think she could lie about that, either, but if she did I know someone who could help.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Someone who can heal the unhealable?”

  I shrugged. “You do have healing magic here, right?”

  The King made a face. “If you mean something beyond potions and salves… it’s mainly the heroes. Which means we don’t have much.”

  I pondered. They did have good potions. You could barely even tell that Evija had a spear through her guts. She’d been moving around the next day. Part of that was Riala avoiding hitting anything too vital, but that was still a lot of stuff to put together.

  “Well, we have various options,” I commented. “Like good surgery. And I’m pretty sure Malaliel resisted the worst of the damage.”

  The King smiled. “I was worried they were some sort of trap, you know? The angels. You were clearly convinced they couldn’t lie, but that’s not part of our local myths.”

  “Sounds more like her kind,” I gestured to Inasyah. “But I saw where she came from and it wasn’t here. A lot more blood drinkers. Funnily enough, those are the ones that can’t lie. Though it’s different from Malaliel.”

  I was fairly certain Rositsa could say anything that was technically true, even if it was deceptive. She was still just generally truthful- like most people- but she had the capability.

  Malaliel looked sick when she told people they were going to be alright, as long as there was any doubt about that. Even if she was going to do everything in her power to make it be so.

  “So what’s the plan?” Riala said. “We have thirty-five more to go. If something like that happens again we’ll need her, but we can’t exactly ask her to sacrifice her health again.”

  I pondered for a moment. “I was thinking we use a roof.”

  Midnight burst out laughing. The King did too, but for a different reason I think. “That is a good one! Alas, I doubt even our best materials would hold up against divine power. We certainly will, but it’s not a complete solution.”

  “Well obviously you enchant the roof. Like your other things.”

  Riala pursed her lips. The King didn’t seem to care about national security. Or maybe… he was the national security. He gestured vaguely to the palace around us, “You overestimate how well this works against things we haven’t specifically engineered solutions for.”

  I nodded. “Sure. It’s a bunch of precise wards. So just… do that.”

  The king shook his head. “How would we even block divine energy?”

  “Well… like this?” I held out my hand. Indeed, Energy Ward at the standard cost didn’t work. I had to spend 10 points of mana instead of 4 to get something stable. “See?”

  He poked my palm. Obviously, it just felt like anyone poking a glove would. “I can’t tell if that would work.”

  Midnight had my back. “If he thinks it will work, it will. You should see what he does to Dark Star. It’s actually hilarious.”

  Inasyah nodded. “Yeah, she falls right out of the sky! That’s why she’s been avoiding him for a while.”

  Come to think of it… she really hadn’t picked a fight with me since I got good at reverse Energy Ward. And that also meant Gloom and Spot, because sending less of their alliance against me was a terrible idea. Likewise, there was a good chance I could show up to reinforce Great Girl if necessary. Or Midnight, since he could just do whatever I did.

  The King stroked his chin. “One with the power of a Dark Star? She sounds powerful.”

  “She is,” Inasyah said. “Though it’s hard to explain exactly how. Earth’s power system is…” she shrugged. It was both hard to explain without various related concepts and Extra agents really shouldn’t be doing it when there wasn’t an official connection.

  “Anyway,” I said. “Deepest Night and I might be able to add this sort of thing to your wards. I mean, for just the ritual area. It… doesn’t seem to be a problem for The Capital in general?”

  The King shook his head. “Truthfully, I have only witnessed divine power on rare occasions. The first time, I got this,” he lifted up his shirt, revealing a wicked scar just above his hip. It was clear that these people had different thoughts on royal dignity. I liked this version.

  Riala put her arm around her husband. “It goes all the way through. Wanna see?”

  I tilted my head. At that angle… “No thanks.” It really didn’t matter if it came out of his lower back or his buttcheek.

  “I was still young,” The King sighed. “But I was already causing a ruckus. It was a good thing Riala was there to save me from the surrounding hordes of attackers.”

  “They were mostly dead when I got there,” she said. “He doesn’t remember because of the blood loss.”

  That was great for them.

  “Anyway, I can at least temporarily enchant something with this kind of ward,” I said. “I might need some materials, though.” We’d have to see what it clung to best. I certainly wasn’t an expert in Enchanting. Midnight and I had exactly one completed project between us, and it was already something that mostly worked without us.