Well, what did he have to lose? All he could do was try. Everyone else was busy, so he might as well try. What first though? His Tae-Kwon-Do instructor always said that a clear head was the first step in any process, so Tom guessed some form of meditative trance might help. Tom went over and sat down in his chair. He closed his eyes and began to relax his body.
Actually, despite all the craziness going on around him, Tizzy and Rupert babbling on, and Jenn comforting Gastropé, trying to convince him he wouldn’t be eaten, it wasn’t as difficult to achieve a trance like state as Tom had feared. He simply concentrated on blankness, on whiteness. He let the sounds of the others wash over him. Pass him by, and go on, like water rolling over a stone in a brook. He remained calm, serene, unchanged by it. He cleared his mind and slowed his, hmm, he didn’t seem to have a heart rate. After a moment’s pause to consider his lack of heartbeat, he resumed his blank state. He wiped all the confusion, all the warring thoughts and clamoring memories from his mind.
Tom concentrated on images of Astlan, as he remembered them. He concentrated on fire. Consuming fire. Fire which ate all, which gave all. Fire, the birthplace of the Phoenix. Fire, the warm bath which could only caress him, fill him with gentle warmth. He imagined himself encased in fire, he was the living flame itself. He remembered when he was first conjured. The chanting, the braziers, he brought them back into focus, as if they were there.
Suddenly they were there. The braziers, the flame, the chanting, all were there. A voice was chanting a summons. Tom felt no compulsion however, the summons wasn’t for him, but for some other. It was also a weak summons. Tom felt that even if it had been for him, he could easily have resisted it. Nonetheless, Tom concentrated on the summons, focused his will upon it, his very being.
Tom saw a room, different then Lenamare’s. True, there was a lot of paraphernalia lying about, but very different sorts. Not so much bat-wing and blood magical, but more incense and reverence magical. A bald headed little man was chanting over a small flame adjacent to the one which was Tom. He was waving a small medallion on some sort on a chain.
“By the Holy Azrael and Azaphael, I summon thee. Come thee oh demon Krysfalkenon. Thy Holy Master Verigas calls thee to do his bidding. Answer demon! The Lord Tiernon will not tolerate insubordination to his Blessed Priests. Come demon! I conjure thee by thy true name. Come demon, come now.” The little man suddenly stared into the flame that was Tom. “I sense thee demon, get thee into this chamber. Come, come into this most Holy Place of Power!”
Ok, Tom thought, I don’t really need a second invitation. Tom began to imagine his body as the flame, began to allow himself to fade. Then he remembered why he was doing this, and pulled back slightly. He couldn’t fade through, he needed a gateway. Crap.
“Arrest ye demon. Thou canst not depart! I have summoned thee, thou must come!”
Annoyed, Tom said, “Don’t worry, I am coming.” The little self-styled priest jerked suddenly, aware that something was dreadfully wrong. He’d heard Tom, and he knew it wasn’t any little Krysfalkenon demon coming through the flame. Suddenly the priest’s chanting changed. It seemed to Tom that he felt the ties to the room weakening.
We can’t have that, Tom thought. Tom concentrated on the room, imagining a small tear in the space between him and the room. With a mental hand he stuck a finger in the hole and began widening it. Wider and wider so that soon he could get a mental hand in. The priest was now shouting commands at the top of his lungs. Apparently growing slightly desperate. Tom opened his eyes. There before him, between the chair and the table was a small hole in space, surrounded by a ring of fire.
Apparently the others in the room had heard him call out to the wizard, because they were all staring at him and the hole. He spared a moment of his attention for Jenn and said, “Well, you said you needed to go back? Are you ready?” He then turned back to the hole and stuck both hands into the hole, tearing it wider. On the other side of the hole was the room with the priest.
The priest was jumping up and down. As the hole got wide enough for the priest to see Tom, the priest stopped chanting and screamed a scream of bloody murder. For some odd reason that Tom couldn’t understand, and in fact, disturbed him greatly, the man’s scream caused him to smile. He opened the hole wider and stepped through.
The World of Astlan, is but many of a large number of worlds that exist in transcendental spaces beyond the vision of mere mortals.
