Norris carefully planned and set up the ritual space. He drew a big circle on the floor and added special symbols and patterns inside it. He placed candles around the circle and burning with incense to create a calm atmosphere.
The symbols and runes drawn were connecting the high dimensional entities responsible for the ritual. The arcane realm, The Echoing balance and the death realm. They also helped seal the space allowing no energy to leak or enter.
Most would use only The Echoing balance as the only one to receive the ritual but Norris introduce both the arcane realm and death realm. You can never be too sure. He'd rather invite more.
Some Mages, with pride, hated rituals. They instead believed they can study everything in the world and create it by themselves instead of asking from high dimensional entities. Norris doesn't understand their mentality and he really doesn't want to understand.
In these four days, he had being searching in his infinitepad how to set up rituals, examples of failures that were cited and why they failed. Norris came to the conclusion that rituals were governed by a set of principles that had to be respected in order to achieve the desired outcome.
After arranging the candles and burning incense, he arranged gems, pure gold and rare arcane agents. This was the payment for the ritual. From his days of research, Norris could easily see that the principle of exchange was key. Something had to be given in order to receive something in equivalent return.
After arranging the items for payment, Norris carefully gathered the materials he needed for his ritual. He began by preparing the mind metal, infusing thoughts and shaping it into a small, orb-like shape. This would serve as the container for the artificial soul. Next, he took the void sapphire and pure ectoplasm and placed it with a crystal with mental clarity properties.
He tied a thread or string around the vessel, symbolizing the connection between the creator and the created. He looked at this string. He was in a moral dilemma. Should he tie it down or let it live it freely. Norris emotionally was inclined to live freely. His philosophy is that life should have freedom even if relative. But rationally Norris felt it would be better to bind it to himself. That erases any possibility of rebellion.
Norris rationality being overwhelming in his undead state was about to bind it permanently. After struggling in his mind for a while, Norris still undecided, left it in the air. He was going to decide after the artificial soul's creation.
Norris added a vial of water or oil, symbolizing the essence of life or vitality, near the mind metal. Finally, he placed a small, delicate flower or plant beside the mind metal, representing growth and development.
Doing all these, Norris prepared the props, making them tools used to guide intent.
From his research these few days, he has come to an understanding that guiding the power was crucial, requiring a clear intent and focused will to channel and control the energy.
There must be no ambiguity. Be sure of what you want. Being ambiguous can easily lead to loopholes in the ritual. High dimensional entities are powerful enough to invoke greed. Precisely because they are powerful, don't act smart and give them a chance to define the terms.
He also recognized the importance of resonance and harmony, where the practitioner had to attune themselves to the energy and harmonize with the natural balance of the universe to avoid disrupting the equilibrium.
Twilight being the best time for rituals to other realms. The full moon, the best time to go to the dream realm. All this mystical factors should be taken into account. Norris looked at the remaining three days left. He didn't have the luxury to choose. Being in a limited timeframe, he picked the twilight hours of the moon for the next day.
Finally, he acknowledged the law of return, where the energy put out would come back to the practitioner, either positively or negatively, depending on the intent and outcome.
Ritual was the least scientific aspect of magic. Respect for the craft, the energy, and the universe was essential. A humble and aware attitude was necessary for navigating the complexities of ritual magic.
Next, he arranged vaious objects and tools that he needed for the ritual. These included a small bottle of liquid, some shiny stones, and a piece of cord with special markings.
As he worked, Norris thought about how the ritual would work. He imagined the energy flowing through the symbols and patterns, and the exact moment when the magic would happen. He worked carefully and precisely, making sure everything was just right.
The ritual space started to take shape, and the air began to feel charged with energy. Norris was creating a special place where he could perform his magic, and he was focused on getting everything relatively perfect.
Norris exhaled—a habit and touched his hair…skeletal head and watched as the final sigil flared to life. And with that he began the incantations from Juske with little modifications by him.
The air thickened with the weight of higher entities pressing in, drawn by the ritual's call. The mind-metal orb pulsed like a slow heartbeat, the void sapphire at its core drinking in the ectoplasm, the clarity crystal sharpening its edges into something almost alive.
It was working.
A whisper of unease curled at the base of his skull. But he dismissed it. Misinterpreting it as the doubts he had about failure. But he thought of what he had read briefly when reading about The Echoing Balance. There's a 0.4% chance of inviting foreign entities
He hesitated.
No. The ritual is sound.
The margin for error was negligible. Statistically irrelevant. He had accounted for everything.
He spoke the last syllable.
Light flared. The orb shuddered.
And then—
Silence.
The artificial soul hung in the air before him, a sphere of shimmering silver threaded with veins of blue and black. It had no face, no limbs, but Norris felt its attention fix on him. A consciousness, new and unformed, waiting. Norris was happy.
The thread lay beside it, untouched.
He should bind it now. He knew he should but he hesitated. He took out a coin to choose. Head's for bind, tail for freedom. As he threw it up, he already knew what he wanted. When Norris was about to implement his decision, he noticed something.
The coin clattered to the floor, but Norris didn't look to see whether it had landed on heads or tails. His fingers twitched, hovering over the thread
A gap.
A small one, barely noticeable. A spell—no, not a spell, a word—had slipped away from his memory.
The incantation for affecting the binding, something he'd known by heart was gone, now dissolved like smoke in his memory. He frowned. That shouldn't be possible.
Something was wrong.
Not with the soul. Not with the ritual.
A sliver of something cold and foreign had lodged itself in the back of his mind, thin as a needle, unnoticed until this moment.
When had that gotten there?
The entity did not speak. It did not move.
Norris looked around in the ritual room and discovered that the sacrifice was there untouched. And Norris, for the first time in a while, felt the creeping chill of fear.
That was impossible. The artificial soul had been created. How could the gems still be there??
Unless that was never the sacrifice collected.
He reached deeper into his memory, grasping for reassurance in the things he knew.
His mother's face.
A cold spike of panic lanced through him.
He could remember her voice, the warmth of her hands, the perfume clinging to her robes—but her face blurred at the edges, like an old photo washed away by the times. Her name?—he knew her name, he had to know her name—but when he grasped for it, his mind slid off the thought, slick and unyielding.
No.
His breath came faster. The ritual chamber felt too small, the air too thick. The sacrifice lay untouched, the gems still gleaming—impossible, because he remembered using them. Didn't he?
The entity did not stir. It did not need to.
Norris's hands trembled. He tried to focus, to think, but his thoughts were unraveling, siphoned away like sand through fingers. The artificial soul pulsed in its vessel, brighter now, hungrier. Equivalent exchange. A soul for a soul. A mind for power.
But he hadn't agreed to this.
Had he?
A whisper of doubt curled in his gut. How long had the needle been there? How much had already been taken?
He opened his mouth to scream—but the sound died before it could form.
The words were gone too.
Norris closed his eyes in exhaustion and maybe relief.
He had accounted for every variable.
Every one.
Except the 0.4%.
And now?
Now, he paid for it.
wait what is 0.4%??