Professor Kal

Ryan waved over to the two women, happy to see that the Professor was safe. "Are you alright? What happened last night?"

"What? You're not gonna say hi to me?" Marissa said with a playful pout on her face.

"Hi, Marissa." Ben said, filling in for Ryan.

"Hi'ya Benji!" She said with her usual bubbly air.

"Sorry, Hi Marissa." Ryan said before redirecting his attention to the Professor. "Professor?"

Sarah didn't feel like retelling the entire saga of the night previous, so told him the shortened version. "Well, I just ran into Marissa last night while I was out and about. It was getting late, so she let me stay with her for the night. Oh, and this is her brother, Jack. He had just gotten into town to help with their sister as well."

With that introduction, the silver haired man gave a small nod. Ryan and Ben both turned to him and greeted him in kind, leaving their questions unasked.

"They both wanted to check out the inn, so they were kind enough to escort me back here." Sarah said, her chipper tone surprising the two students.

"That's awfully nice of them." Professor Kal's voice interjected itself from the top of the stairs leading down into the basement.

Ryan winced at the gravelly sound, not turning around to look at him. Ben spun around in shock, thinking instantly of the two envoys from the church. Sarah's uncharacteristic, good mood turned sour when her eyes fell upon the man that had pawned off all of the work onto them, only to run off somewhere for over a week. Marissa kept the toothy smile on her face as Professor Kal walked over to them, his face a mask of neutrality. They stood there in awkward silence as both Professor Kal and the man with the silver hair, eyed each other up and down. Even the taciturn Marissa started to display a hint of worry as the standoff continued.

"What's wrong with you?" Professor Kal asked, breaking the silence. "It looks like you'd get a sunburn from a candle."

Marissa acted immediately, pulling Sarah away from the two men. It would take all of her power just to protect the woman should her master decide to rampage after being insulted in such a way. Ryan and Ben didn't move from their spots, they just shook their heads and gave the man an apologetic smile, hoping that Marissa's brother wouldn't take too great an offense.

Without missing a beat, Jack retorted. "You're much shorter than I had expected."

Now it was Ben and Ryan's turn to back away in fear. They held their breaths, just waiting for something terrible to happen.

He didn't wait for a response from the man, just turned on his heel and headed back down into the basement. Leaving everyone with an extremely confused look on their faces as they watched him disappear down the stairs. After he was gone, they all swiveled to look at Jack, the same looks on their faces as their eyes probed for an answer. He just shook his head and shrugged his shoulders, as if he was just as confused as everyone else.

After they recovered from that strange encounter, they all stood around and chatted for a few minutes before Jack suggested that it was time for he and Marissa to take their leave. After Marissa promised to come and visit in the future, her and her 'brother' walked out into the wintery afternoon.

"He knows." Silus said in a matter-of-fact voice.

"Knows? Knows what? That we're..." Marissa trailed off.

"Yes of course."

"Does that mean…" Marissa started, her voice full of worry. "You promised you wouldn't hurt Sarah!"

"Calm down, you were standing right there as we came to an understanding, you have nothing to worry about."

Marissa had a muddled look on her face as she ċȯċked her head to the side. "Is that what all that was? And what makes you even want to tip-toe around him anyways? I'm not complain'n, I just don't see the reason."

"Did you not smell it?" Silus asked, keeping his voice low.

"No, not that. The way the man smelled. I bȧrėly picked up on it myself, so I cannot blame you for failing to do so."

"He smells just like all men do." She crinkled her nose. "Disgusting."

"Never mind." Silus sighed. "Just keep your distance from him from now on."

…..

Later that night, once the inn had fallen asleep, Ryan made his way back down into the foreboding basement. He was pleasantly surprised to see that the bloodstains had been cleaned as he walked down the last few steps before the basement door. Not bothering to knock, he opened the door and went inside the musty room.

What greeted him was a room that was drastically different than it had been before. It was now spotless, the curtains of spiderwebs draped across the thick supporting beams were nowhere to be seen, and the dirt and grime had been scraped off of most of the flagstone walls. Even now, there were a handful of skeletons, with brush and bucket in hand, scrubbing away at the walls.

Heavy metal tables were interspersed throughout the room, each one lacking an inch of space on top as they were covered in mountains of paper sketches, notes, equipment he was unfamiliar with, and several large jars filled with a clear liquid that contained alien looking creatures. The only section of the basement that wasn't filled with what he would call junk, was the center of the room. There, a perfectly level area had been set up, leaving plenty of space to work in.

Professor Kal was sitting in a finely carved leather chair, the skin used to upholster the furniture still had the soft fur of whatever creature had gave its life for him to sit on. He was reading from a thick book, its cover was as black as coal with no title or words visible to Ryan.

Putting the book down, Professor Kal addressed his student. "Ah, you're finally here, we can get started." He stood up. "Here, take this and draw the circle in the book over there. Make sure to leave enough space for another one, we'll need two of them side by side."

He looked at the pages filled with step-by-step instructions on how to complete the magical array, the only problem was that it was written in some strange language he had never seen before. "Uh, Professor. I can't read any of this."

Professor Kal turned from what he was doing to address the boy. "It's got pictures, doesn't it? Use that thing between your ears, lad."

Swallowing his consternation, Ryan studied the runes and geometric shapes laid out within the book. Most of the symbols shown, he wasn't familiar with, he wished he could read the passages to gain an understanding on their function, but he was still able to draw them out without that knowledge. He first started by tracing out a large circle roughly five feet in diameter, doing his best to keep it as circular as possible.

The next step was placing a square within the circle, each corner overlapping the previously drawn line. He took a few minutes to study the intricacies of the runes that were supposed to fill the margins between the square and circle. This is where most of his time and focus were committed, runes were incredibly important when it came to crafting a magical array. They are the instructions for what the mage wants to circle to do. How they are drawn and where they are placed, all have an effect on the amount of mana used to activate the circle, how long that mana will power it, how powerful the effect will be, etc. The other aspects of the circle have an impact as well, but not nearly as much as the runes do.

After nearly thirty minutes of painstaking concentration, the margins had all been filled with chalky runes of power. A five-pointed star, representing the five families of magic, took up the center of the square. The margins within the star also requiring hundreds of runes to be drawn within them. Ryan let out a tired sigh, already mentally strained from the work. He shook his hand, working out the cramps before getting a new piece of chalk and diving back into the magic circle.

Wiping the sweat that had accumulated on his brow, Ryan took a step back to admire his work. There was hardly an empty space left within the magical array, he could almost see the runes of power glow with a magical light as his eyes scanned his work for errors. Not seeing any, he turned to the Professor next to him. "I'm finished."

Peering over at his work, Professor Kal commented. "Not bad for a beginner, you're lucky that your affinity will make up for the mistakes or else I'd have you start over."

Taking that as a rare complement, Ryan beamed.

"Knock that look off your face." Professor Kal reprimanded. "Watch how I do it."

Ryan made sure to follow along, keeping a close eye on the Professor's fluid movements and artistic way of drawing his runes. It was almost that the way he drew them added something more to them, gave them more substance. It was beautiful to watch, by the time he was done with the circle, it looked like an artist had completed a masterpiece right before his very eyes. His magic circle, when compared to the Professor's, looked like a child had drawn it.

"See, easy." Professor Kal said with his hands on his hɨps.

"What now?" Ryan asked, still admiring the Professor's work.

As Ryan closely studied the Professor's magical array, Professor Kal walked over to two long tables with white sheets draped over them, hiding the contents underneath. Grasping both sheets with his hands, Professor Kal yanked hard, revealing the secrets they were concealing. The nȧkėd corpses of the holy envoys were laying peacefully on the tables, their bodies almost as white as the sheets that were covering them. Scalpels, saws, manually operated drills, and other grotesque tools lined the tables next to the bodies.

Ryan looked on with trepidation as Professor Kal spoke with a sense of grandeur. "We prepare the meat puppets!"