Chapter 7: Summoning a god

He had been working towards this for the last two decades. And it was finally time.

Lord Braxton Teriz had founded this organization purely to elevate his level of power to that of a god. He had always been skilled with handling his mana, more so than his peers, but as he got older, he seemed to hit his peak.

Seeing his limits, he started to work around them. At first by absorbing mana from other sources, which hurt, but left him stronger. He used increasingly stronger sources, and thus started this organization to acquire better sources.

Eventually some followed in his footsteps, gaining power, and soon enough he had a dedicated following of hundreds of supremely skilled and powerful mages.

When it got difficult to acquire strong sources of mana, even with this organization, he had a brilliant idea. Why not go straight to the source? And so began the two decade long endeavor to design a ritual to summon and capture a god.

The god they targeted was the least known of the main twelve, Stellarite. Their domains uncertaint, and their followers few. Who better to supplant than a god with few followers.

So here they were, in a large hall. It was highly decorated of course, because it was here he would achieve apotheosis, nothing but the best would suffice.

In the center of the hall was The Circle. The Circle was the culmination of all their hard work. A highly complex circular disk made entirely out of magically conductive crystals, constructed in such a way to guide and enforce the barrier, and conduct the summoning.

On test runs, without the summing, I was fueled and operated by a hundred of the most skilled of them, with the rest giving their mana willingly to the task. And what a magnificent barrier it was. Since the testing, they have had the utmost confidence that no entity, mortal or otherwise, could escape its confines.

Once they have the god captured, Lord Braxton Teriz himself would be the first to take mana and ascend, to be followed by the rest of them in order of competence. By their calculation, about a hundred of them could get immortality from it, though only Lord Braxton would go through apotheosis and ascend to godhood. After all, how could a god fuel the apotheosis of more than one person?

So here they stood around The Circle, chanting as they performed the ritual. The chanting only serving to keep everyone in unison, and adding to the mood.

As they reached the peak of the ritual, something happened. In the middle of The Circle reality bent in on itself, revealing pitch black speckled with points of light.

The hole in reality then grew out into the shape of a person, albeit the nature of it stopped it shy of actually looking like a person beside the number of limbs. 

An aurora then flared to life out of the beings head, flowing down as if being hair, and finally a pair of intense eyes appeared in their correct location, their irises glistening with ever changing color with an intensity not found in reality.

They had done it, and just before cheering, the entity known as Stellarite spoke in a modest voice that boomed through reality itself.

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“Greetings mortals. Since you so incessantly wanted me to come here, I thought it nice to actually show up.”

Before Lord Braxton could say anything about the entity being trapped, it casually walked through the barrier. The magic not reacting to its presence caused more than a few of the people gathered to panic internally, though they had practiced enough to maintain the magic.

Then the entity turned around and touched The Circle. Unknown energies flooded through it, turning it and the barrier into the same blackness that composed the entity, though the energy only persisted for a moment, before receding, having seemingly done nothing.

“It is quite an impressive piece of magic you have constructed and performed. Had it been one of the other eleven gods, they would be trapped, at least until they decided to ignore causality.”

Lord Braxton balked at that. He had chosen this one because he assumed that the number of followers reflected the power of the deity, but this meant that it was the opposite.

“You are all performing perfectly, except Teya, Barnell and Marcell. Teya and Barnell, you need to sharpen the windings a bit more, and Marcell, you need to loosen up a bit, take the corners a bit less sharply.”

Everyone froze from that comment, and the people called out started to sweat, but did follow the instructions.

“That is good. This might be the best piece of magic in the world, and once you pass on from your mortal lives, I will happily accept you into my domain. Despite trying to overthrow me.”

While speaking, the entity walked back into The Circle, and once it reached the center, it started to expand. By the end of the sentence, it had grown to encompass all around them, replacing everything except the people with the speckled darkness.

The true scale of the entity's head now became clear, at least as clear as incomprehensibly large can be.

Braton realized his mistake at this. How can mortals compare with this, and he got the distinct feeling that this was the bare minimum a god should be able to do, to overwrite reality. The very world around thrummed with that knowledge, forcing them to comprehend the gulf of power.

After forcing them to think about their actions for an uncomfortably long time, a new entity appeared. It looked like the reverse of the original summoning, reality bent in on itself, showing the world they had known their entire life. It quickly grew to encompass everything, leaving them back where they started.

Nothing had changed. It was as if a god hadn’t just descended onto reality.

Everyone, including Lord Baxter Teriz, sat down to contemplate their future actions. Godhood was clearly off the table, but immortality would still be on the table.