"Here's the plan. We are going to create a surplus of what our elements need. In this case, the energy that fifth-element users need comes from the act of sacrifice. We can make a few smaller sacrifices around you. And the energy released should make up for the difference in the energy lacking from not using a real person as a sacrifice."
She waved her hand, and all at once, five tall figures made of shadow with glowing white eyes appeared behind her in the dark, "Go get everyone and tell them the crow calls," she said, and sent them off with a flick of her wrist.
"You have spirits that serve you, too?" I asked her, the shivering in my body had lessened, and her and Henry's voices had grown closer, while the ringing sound had stopped torturing my eardrums and now had ceased altogether.
"Yes, how do you think I knew how to bind your spirits? I've bound plenty of spirits in my days." She brushed her thick curly hair from the left side of her neck, revealing a thin white scar running along the other side of her neck. "I had a bit of channeling weapons implanted under my skin, and so does everyone who is permitted to use their abilities. Speaking of which..." She twisted around in her chair and reached behind her, and produced my channeling spear and set it down on the ground beside her. "You will be needing to use this, I imagine, to cast your element."
"But before we continue this conversation, I need you to know. Violet, no matter how you perform this ritual, you still need to sacrifice a high being to activate your powers, and with that, there will always be pain involved. Of course, I can still perform the ritual in your place, but if I do it, it will cause far more deaths because I will require a lot more lives than you would have. I'm talking at least fifteen more."
"Henry..." I shot him a panicked look, "I thought, I wouldn't have to kill someone. And I can't let Alyzzea sacrifice someone!"
Then a thought occurred to me, "Wait, Henry, before we came over here, Lacy, guardian angel, told me I needed to bring Arnold with me. So he has to have something to do with being able to do this."
Henry met my gaze, and his electric blue eyes fell to his hands, before returning his focus to Alyzzea, "Is it possible we can use a fake higher being, one that is artificially created?"
Alyzzea's eyes lit up, and she leaned forward in her chair."In theory, it would be possible, back when seventh element users were just as common as we were, they used to sometimes create such beings for our rituals, but this was a far lower success rate than if you used a regular sacrifice. I'm assuming you are thinking about using that young seventh elemental user you brought with you to create this artificial being? Although, judging by the fact that he is still a child, he most likely doesn't have the skill to create on that level yet."
"What do you mean by level? What exactly does he need to create?" Henry asked.
"Something with feeling. It doesn't have to be as complex as an actual human being, but it needs to be able to feel emotions like love and hate."
"He can do something like that," Henry answered, "at least I know for sure he can create hate in his creations, and I'm sure he can create whatever other emotion you need him to. I was with that little freak for a year, and I watched him do things that weren't supposed to be possible, and hopes aren't possible again."
"Of course, I'm not sure if he can create the higher being that you were considering, so we will just have to continue to move forward with this and hope it meets your approval. But what is this thing about deadly consequences? How high are the risks?"
"The risks, Violet may end up sacrificing herself instead of the artificial life, and her sacrifice won't even count, because she can't wield the power of her death if she's dead. There is a one out of three chance this will happen with the artificial being, while with the traditional way, it's only a one out of twenty chance. Of course, that's one of the less nasty risks. You also run the risk of several other nasty things occurring that would make you wish you were dead. Would you like me to list them?"
"Honestly, I really don't want to know everything; the less I know, the less pressure on me. Now I guess we have to ask Arnold to make this creature for us. Where is he anyway?"
Alyzzea opened her mouth to answer my question, but Henry beat her to it, "He's down the hall, sleeping. He regained consciousness and came with us here shortly after Alyzzea took over your body, but he was certainly suffering from magic exhaustion."
I shivered at his words. The first time it was mentioned that Alyzzea had taken over my body, it hadn't really instilled a proper reaction in me, probably because I had just woken up and been a little out of it. But now that I was wide awake, it felt creepy as hell that she had done that.
" And then whatever you call them are in the room with him. They followed us all the way here and were pounding on the door until we let them in. Not sure how you slept through that," Henry added.
"You mean his clay dolls?" I asked.
Henry shrugged his shoulders, "If that's what you call them."
"That is what I call them because what are they besides that?" I said, glancing behind the couch, and spotted a corner of the entrance to what I guessed was a hallway.
"Well, I'm glad we are talking about him," Henry said, and the strain in his voice let me know how much that sentence had cost him. "Because he's also part of the plan. He can make the fake souls for your Necromancers to sacrifice, which will then make it easier for them to channel their element through Violet."
Henry remained silent on the couch beside me, but his silence said it all. He didn't want Arnold to come with us, but there was no logical way to argue against why he shouldn't.
"Are you feeling okay enough to join me upstairs alone to get cleaner clothes to change into?" Alyzzea asked, and she stood up while she ran her hands over the length of her skirt to smooth out the wrinkles that sitting had created in the black fabric. Once standing, she reached behind the chair and retrieved the lantern from the corner.
When the lantern was in her hand, she turned her gaze to Henry, who was still sitting beside me on the couch, "Unfortunately, you can't join us. Upstairs is only for the dead and those who can control them. I can't stop you if you really insist, but I warn you that if you attempt to go up there, you may never come down. Understood?"
Henry and I nodded, but for different reasons, and with great care, I peeled my body off the couch, while Henry lightly spotted me from behind, just in case. Once on my feet, I felt pretty strong, stronger than I had felt in the last two days, except for the normal fatigue that comes from great emotional distress.
After another five seconds, Alyzzea stopped smoothing out her skirt and walked over to the stairs, carrying the only source of light in the darkroom. She passed Henry and me without a glance and walked around the couch I had just been sitting on and began to climb the stairs. When she was halfway up the steps, she called. "Glenda, be a dear and light the fire so we have some light in this room."
All at once, a woman appeared beside the fireplace. She was dressed in a black dress with white cuffs. Her brown hair was pulled into a tight brown bun in the back of her head. Despite my being able to pick out all these other details, her face remained in shadow. That was until the fireplace behind her exploded to life, and I could see the black holes where her eyes should've been.
I had just placed my foot on the first step, while not taking my eyes off the ghost standing in front of the fire, when Henry joined me on the landing, caught my elbow, and pulled me to him. His head turned towards the fire, and I could tell he was both startled and unnerved by its sudden lighting. If only he could see the woman standing in front of it as I could. It was so much more unsettling when you could see her.
The flickering flames were dancing off her gaunt, pale face in strange ways. Abruptly, she vanished as she had just poofed out of existence, but I could still feel her presence.
He turned his head to look at me. Our eyes met, and he stepped in between me and the stairs, "Are you sure you are alright going up there with her by yourself? Scream if anything happens, and I'll be up there in three seconds."
" First off, Henry, you'll literally probably die if you do that, as she said. Secondly, if I'm with her, I'll be fine, don't you trust her?"
"I don't trust anyone I've only known for more than a couple of hours. And I don't trust people who want to make human sacrifices."
"What about me? I made a human sacrifice?"
Henry averted his eyes. "You had to. You didn't want to, you were given no choice," he replied quickly.
I studied him for a second before letting my own eyes drop to the carpet. "She thinks we have to, and I don't think she exactly wants to sacrifice people either. I trust her, she's someone who just wants to save her world."
"That's what makes her even more dangerous to us. She is just interested in saving her world and has very little interest in saving ours and us if it came to that."
"Stop being so paranoid," I said and brushed his hand away, "If I need help, I'll scream, and you will be up there in three seconds and probably get yourself killed, and everything will be alright."
"A lot can happen in three seconds," Henry mumbled and stepped aside, and let me slide past him and towards the stairs. I could hear him walk across the room away from me, but I didn't bother glancing in his direction to see what he was up to.
"Wait!" Henry commanded just when my foot had touched the first step. I turned to look at him, annoyed.
"What?" I asked dryly. I saw that he had the channeling spear in his hand.
"Take this with you so you can at least defend yourself if something happens up there," he said, and I let out a short scream when he abruptly tossed the weapon across the room at me.
I ungracefully scampered up four stairs just in time to avoid the spear that crashed into the wall with a loud clang, before falling to the floor.
I glared at Henry from the steps, "What the hell? Why would you throw a weapon across the room? That could have impaled me!"
Henry gave me a sheepish look and shrugged his broad shoulders, "Sometimes I forget you have little faith in your hand-eye coordination."
"I don't think it will do much, but if it makes you feel better I'll take it," I said before adding, "And sometimes you forget that there's a reason why I have little faith in my hand-eye coordination," I said, while I climbed down the stairs to retrieve the channeling weapon that now laid on the floor, "It's hard to have faith in an ability you don't have with a sharp object ."
Once I had the spear securely in my hand, I ran up the stairs before Henry could stop me again or throw something else in my general direction. When I reached the top, I found myself at the beginning of a very long hallway. There were closed doors made of dark wood on either side of me, and from behind one of them I could hear Alyzzea's muffled voice,
I walked over to one of the doors, I swore Alyzzea's voice was coming from, and gave it a knock and waited. Alyzzea stopped talking, and silence surrounded me.
"Hello? Alyzzea?" I called, but there was no answer. Something felt off. I gripped the channeling weapon in my hand tightly. Goosebumps deformed my skin. The dead were nearby. I watched a black smoke began to swirl within the glass crystal ball at the end of my spear.
With no warning, the door swung open, and a pale white face emerged from the darkness beyond it. The face was haggard-looking with sunken cheeks and eye sockets, and of course, gaping black holes where its eyes should've been. It had matted blond hair that hung limply around its face. The face leaned in closer to mine and stretched its mouth open wider than should have been allowed, and began to scream.
I stared back at the ghost with wide eyes, while she continued to scream into my face. I was not scared by this specter, more so just surprised at her appearance.
All of a sudden, Alyzzea was standing behind me and shutting the door. The second she closed the door, the strange feeling went away.
I turned to face her and saw that she was holding a bundle of black fabric in one hand and a pair of black high heels in the other. "Here," she said pushing the black clothes into one hand and the shoes into the other." Whenever we go out to do a job we always wear all black. It kind of fits in with the whole Necromancy vibe we all share. Makes them take us more seriously," she turned and began to move down the hallway quickly, despite her cumbersome looking dress.
"Who are they, and what was that about in that room?" I asked while I hurried after her.
" That spirit, don't mind her. I was in the midst of crossing her over when the undead epidemic struck, so I had to put her on hold. She isn't too happy about it, as you can probably see. If it had been the boy downstairs who opened that door, he would be dead."
"Oh, good thing he didn't then," I said and laughed nervously, while a small chill went down my spine. I pictured Henry opening the door only to be torn to shreds by pale white hands.
The spirits in this house were powerful. More powerful than any spirit I've ever encountered. I would be glad to leave this place.