Published: 21 Oct 2024

Inverted Chordal Structures

Time was up and we made plans to invade the museum. Ready or not, here we come.

Now we could have taken the train in. There’s a commuter rail line from Canterbury to Boston that runs fairly regularly. And it is cheaper than the cost of parking to take the train in and back home. We’d done so many times on family outings, like to see the Celtics play or catch the Bruins on the ice at the Garden. It was really convenient for that, since North Station is right under TD Garden. You literally go down an escalator, around the building and you are in North Station. The rail lines are right there. Plus, there’s a T station a few blocks from the Garden, so you just hop on, change to the green line a few stations down and pop on out to where the Museum of Fine Art stands. Easy peasy. Especially since neither one of us had a car. Or a driver’s license.

You’d think that would be the way of it. Or, a more pragmatic approach might be to think we had some magical conveyance packed up just for the occasion. A souped up sports car powered by dragon wings, maybe. Or a flying Delorian for that “Back to the Future” vibe. Heck, I’d have settled for some tricked out motorcycle or broom sticks, like in Harry Potter’s adventures. Even a magic carpet, for fucks sake.

But nooooo! Mr. Genius Meryl had a different plan. One that made sure to keep my back cramped for hours. One that forced me to be totally uncomfortable the whole way into the museum and made me have to wait for HOURS until I could get out and move. His master plan.

My cell phone buzzed a silent alarm, waking me from a short nap. I clicked and dialed Meryl’s phone, and I stretched around as much as I could in my confined state. It wasn’t easy staying rolled in a ball like that, and my back ached from the position.

“Good, right on time.” His voice was just as annoying over the phone as it was in real life. “The guards are on their lunch break. Curious that it is still called lunch this late at night.”

“I’m glad you find the semantics so interesting, but can we get on with it?”

“Alright, keep your panties on,” he teased. “I don’t think anyone’s in the monitoring room. You got the place to yourself for about half an hour. You’re good to go!”

“Finally! I’ve had to pee for the last hour!”

“You can handle your dick and empty your bladder soon enough. As long as you get my Stone out you can whistle your Star-Spangled Banner for all I care. Okay, you’re cleared to move.”

To give you the full impression of what happened next, I kind of have to step outside myself for a second. Get outside the box as it were. You see, I’d been sitting inside a standard medium-sized shipping box, full of those annoying, Styrofoam packing peanuts and bubble wrap for several hours, waiting for the night security watch to take supper. That’s right, in order to get past a couple of million bucks worth of sophisticated security cameras, alarm systems both mundane and magical, and the two elderly night watchmen, to get into the museum in the first place, I was mailed.

In an Amazon box, no less.

Using a bit of Matter and Entropy, I caused the packing tape outside the box to loose its stickiness and simply peal itself off. I popped through the top of the box, marked fragile, in a shower of those infuriating packing materials. They spilled out around the box as I stood up and was finally able to stretch. It felt soooo good to be standing after so long stuck in that box. I stepped out and noticed I was in some kind of a storage room. I peeled my cell phone out of my pocket and brought up the floor plan, checking my ear buds. They were wireless so I didn’t have to worry about them tangling other things as I moved about the halls.

“Okay, I’m in the main receiving area, I think.”

“You think?”

“I didn’t read the sign as I went through the mail slot, okay?”

“Oooh, someone woke up on the wrong side of the box this evening,” he teased.

“Remind me to kill you some time,” I said, in a higher than normal sounding tone of voice. As I stretched to work the kinks out of my compressed form I actually expanded. “That shrinking spell you put on me is wearing off. Gotta admit, that part was pretty smart.”

“Yes, it’s almost like I’d broken into places before.”

“Okay, wise-ass,” I said, hearing my voice revert to normal as the rest of me did as well. I pulled the small flashlight out of my pocket and checked its red light setting, perfect for moving around in the darkness and detecting silent alarms. Or so I’m told. My body reached full normal height as I walked to the door. I looked back and could scarcely believe that I’d spent six hours in that cramped little box. It looked barely big enough for aunties cat.

“The Egyptian Exhibit is towards the front of the main floor. To the left from where you’re coming. There should be a…”

“You know I’m looking at a map, right?” I interrupted him. I flicked my finger across the screen, moving to the Egyptian stuff. “I can literally read the map in my hand. It’s not as if you hadn’t drilled it in enough times that I know it by heart.”

“Alright, alright. I’m just nervous.”

“Trust me, I wanna get out of here as much as you do. This place is creepy as fuck at night.”

“At least they don’t have dinosaur bones hanging about.” Of course he had to say that. I looked around and felt the coolness of the shadows, deep and dark now that the exhibits were closed for the night. It was all bright and airy in the light of day. Now in the dark of night, the corners and high vaulted stone ceilings seemed to swim with unseen horrors. And from what Meryl had described as the guard dogs in this place, there might very well BE something swimming around up there.

Not that a hanging rack of allosaurus skeleton wouldn’t make it like ten times creepier. The dusty old shadows of that would definitely throw some serious spooky vibes about the place. Thankfully, this wasn’t that kind of museum. Still didn’t help my nerves any.

“Yeah, well. Keep an eye on the guards,” I said, opening the door to the storage room. “I’m heading for the Egyptian rooms now.”

Now the storage area that my recent, achy, cardboard confinement was in was really a large closet. Sweeping the light around the area outside, I could see it was a closet that was part of a kind of a truck dock. There were several bays where a truck could back up and offload its goods, take on others. No windows, no skylights. I’m kind of glad I didn’t have to like climb in through the vent ducts or shimmy up drain pipes or something. I mean, knowing Meryl he might think going in on the power lines might be a good idea. I’m really not built for any of that ninja stuff.

Anyways, the back area was a big cubic space, with other storage rooms like the one I’d come out of set into one wall, going down a hallway. There were restoration rooms along the hall, where art works could be taken to have repairs or clean ups. Also there were administrative offices. And the security room. On the opposite wall was a large heavy storage area with crates marked “Italian Renaissance” and “Christmas in New England” and “Americana” on the sides. Must be where they kept things for seasonal display. Must have been eight or nine bays like that, stacked three high.

Now, you may ask, why wasn’t I worried about detection from security cameras. I mean, the truck dock seems like a soft entry point. At the very least it should be swarming with cameras, infra red laser beams, motion detectors, trip wires, pressure sensors and so forth. Ah, glad you asked. I was wearing a device around my hips that looked like a steam punk version of Batman’s utility belt.

Oh, it gets better. It acted on a couple of principles of magic at once, combining effects. Powered by diamond crystals, placed in the harness I wore all around me, that somehow warped light so things like cameras and “electric eyes” and things like that simply looked right through me, or around me, to be specific. It was heavy, but it kept me invisible, even when shining light out from it. It also had a muffle spell laid on my tennis shoes, so I made no noise on the floor.

So, equipped with my bent light belt and my true to life sneakers, I made my way to the access way. I passed through a large set of doors and into the area marked by bathrooms on the left of the grand staircase. The echoes of this great hall were immense, normally. The soaring flights of polished granite and marble, so skillfully laid in, were a monument to the beauty of the artifacts contained in these walls. It was a shame I was going to have to loot one of them.

“Where are you?” Meryl said, his voice squeaking with anxiety.

“Hold your water, shorty. I’m coming into the great hall.”

“Okay, don’t touch the staircase.”

“I’m not even beside the staircase,” I lied. “Why?”

“Because it’s got a hair trigger alarm on it and a powerful magical enchantment on the stairs.” I took a step back from the sweep of the stairwell.

“Oh, what, does it cut loose with a bolt of Prime or something.”

“Don’t be daft! It’s got a sticky spell laid on it.”

“Sticky spell?” I asked, passing by several sculptures and wall hanging pieces, set into niches in the walls. Students would come and sit here during regular business hours and sketch out what they saw here, learning from the old masters how to deal with light and dark, shadow and shape. There were several padded seats along the walls, folded for the evening that such students would use.

“You don’t wanna know. So don’t trip it, and don’t even think about going upstairs. Okay, from where you are the first corridor on the left is the sword room. Don’t go in there?”

“Why, does it have some sort of…” and I stopped, inhaled in surprise and dropped to one knee, ducking behind and expensive looking planter.

Ahead of me, a door opened and a uniformed guard stepped out. As the door closed, he burped, farted and wiped his nose with the back of his hand, before putting that hand down the back of his pants to tuck in his shirt. As he turned and walked in my direction, i readied a stun spell. He strode past me with an uneven gait, and this smell… wafted off of him like cheap cigarettes and booze. Not that I know what expensive cigarettes smell like. I had to hold my breath for fear of gagging in his wake.

“Marc? One of the guards might be near you. Are you there?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m here. You just missed him. Apparently, the bathrooms aren’t all listed on the map. He just passed me by. Smells like a bad movie biker bar?”

“How’s that?”

“Like he smokes and drinks too much on the job.” I stood as he walked around the corner, where I heard a door open and close. I waved my hand in front of my face to clear the air.

And nearly ran smack dab into a wall of swords. Not like a wall with swords on it, but like a virtual wall of swords, suspended in the air. There was a Japanese sword, a Greek sword, a Roman gladius, something that looked like it came straight out of Aladdin, and even a French cavalry saber and a German broadsword. Like not in their display cases at all, just hovering there, hungry.

All of them quivering, turning in place, bumping each other in the air as if ready for me to cross a line in the non-existent sand. I swear I could hear them VIBRATING with the urge to kill something, anything that dared enter their domain.

“Whoa… I think I know why not to go in the sword room.”

“Yes, they do tend to be very territorial,” Meryl said, dryly. “And they don’t need to see you to sense you.” Meaning my invisibility thing wouldn’t count for squat against a razor-edged supernatural attack squad of ravenous cold steel, denied the taste of blood for far too long. I gulped and stretched my collar out a moment, fearing for my neck. Gingerly, I step past them, keeping an eye in their fearsome direction.

“Ri-ight, noted,” I replied, faking a British accent. “Moving on.” I strode past the sword convention and slipped around the corner of the Egyptian Exhibit. As soon as I crossed the threshold, I could “feel” them. It is similar to walking into spiderwebs, the sense of old, hungry things, caressing my skin. I even flinched as I entered. But the sense that many magical patterns were reaching for me, seeking any of the little patterns I had strung up for basic defensive purposes.

Perhaps I had better explain that better. If you “hang a pattern” then it is fully formed, usually attached to something and waiting for you to push some Quintessence into it. Like with one of them I had a ring, with a perfectly formed and Meryl tested healing rote set up. A complete pattern. According to Meryl, there are many kinds of defensive and offensive measures that I could have in a ring, but it is far wiser to not have to think up a healing spell on the fly…or more importantly in case you wind up laid out on the floor, crushed, or bleeding out, or burned to a crisp. So one of the patterns I had hanging about, ready to put in a battery, so to speak, was one of Meryl’s rings with a ready-made healing spell.

So, while I had a few things on me with hanging patterns, I had a few others that were “hung in space.” Just spells waiting for me to activate and direct them. And you can better believe, it was some serious stuff.

Okay, so saying that, my spells were “hung” in the air all around me, ready to go. I stepped into the cool, deeply shadowed area of the Egyptian Exhibit and felt all sorts of filament like touches of old spells, residual magic and power-hungry ancient enchantments, reaching out, weakly, to find any grasp of power. Not gonna lie, it really felt creepy. The spiderwebs analogy is only barely accurate. I felt like tiny leeches were seeking to latch on, like lampreys, and drain anything from me they could.

But more than that, I could feel the reaching of the various spells trailing in the air and tangling. I mean this was YEARS of tangling, as artifacts were moved about, unsuccessfully sealed, or never properly discharged, safely. Paths crossing and re-crossing, knotting up. Meryl was right, this was a mess of mammoth proportions. I literally felt like ducking and weaving just in the threshold, like walking a vastly overgrown garden path, tripping over weeds and thorny vines. Only, like, overhead and mid height and stuff, not just at my feet. It was that bad. I never noticed that before on field trips to the museum, but in my Awakened state, it was a physical thing. Like ten years of Christmas tree lights all jumbled in a pile, knotted up, and forgotten about.

“I’m in. Gah! There’s a lot of stuff trying to hook onto me.”

“Just hungry old spells seeking a powerful source. It’ll pass when they…” and his voice cut out for a second. “…-re the big stone to the left?”

“Uh, you’re breaking up. What was that?”

“I said, it’ll pass.” He was getting agitated. I could hear the stress in his voice. “There should be a large stone on your left, lot of hieroglyphs. Stony guy sitting.”

“I see it.” Was pretty hard to miss, it took up much of that first room. The “stony guy sitting” statue was easily 12 feet tall, if not bigger. It cast a big, dark shadow into the left side of the room. The ancient smooth stone looked as if it had just been polished from the set of some Hollywood epic. It was very dramatic and iconic in that Egyptian art sort of stylized way.

I took a chance and risked a look at the stone with my enhanced senses. Regretted it at once. The whole stone was glowing, faintly. Even the eyes of the statue. Which meant old, long decayed magical energy. Clearly magic had been used to move this block around in antiquity. Possibly something more, but I didn’t have the time at present to explore this stone’s past. I had another stone to get. But it gave me a baseline of what to expect as far as other old magic throughout the exhibit.

“Okay, just past that stone guy, you have one room on the left and one straight ahead that elbows to the left as well. There should be a large room on the left, just past the big stone. Last time I scoped the place, there was a large boat in the middle of the room, huge glass case, other displays all around. Do you see it?”

“Yeah, I do.” I started towards that room.

“Okay, nothing to see that’s too important in there,” he said. I froze with my foot above the raised marble threshold to that room.

“Meryl,” I said, taking a big sigh and backing out of that room, “We really got to work on your communications skills.”

“Well, there’s at least one active mummy in that chamber. If you disturb his stuff he’s gonna get irate. So don’t go in there unless you have to. They’ll talk your ears off.”

“Meryl!” I hissed, quietly.

“Yeah?”

“Focus!”

“Okay, okay, don’t get your knickers in a twist,” he said, trying to calm himself by berating me. “You want the room straight ahead. It should have artifacts and artwork along the walls, spaced out, set up on little pedestals and platforms. You are looking for a standing stele about your height. In the back corner, beside it should be examples of Egyptian jewelry. Go there and be careful.”

“I hear and obey, oh great one,” I intoned tonelessly. I moved through the gloomy first room, complete with diagrams and translations of the ancient statues and pottery. The canopic jars in the corner took on a sinister aspect in the darkened room. Made all the spookier knowing that such things held the remains of a mummy’s guts in the smooth alabaster vessels. I strode past, still feeling the need to shudder, with all the tangles and reaching spells around me.

As soon as I entered the chamber, I could see it, and see why it was so much of a problem. It took up the whole corner of the room. The displays and explanations went off to the right side, back lit at this late hour, but glowing brightly in my mystic vision. The stele was a bit taller than me, easily eight feet wide, a narrowing plinth of rock from bottom to top, much wider at the base. Two slender statues of Anubis seemed to be mounted on the same base stone, the left one missing his staff weapon’s top and a corner of his tall, pointy ear, left side. It looked otherwise brand new. The paint on the inscriptions looked fresh, bright and new. It clearly delineated each of the hieroglyphics in stark, vibrant detail.

This was the famed Stele of Amarna-Ka. I stood in awe of how much magical energy seemed to suffuse this stone, and with my mystic sight, I could see the lines of power tangling and pulsing softly, spreading all in various directions around the museum. Holy fuck, someone sure made a big mistake taking this thing here and not sealing its power over the years. Seemed kind of stupid that someone hadn’t thought to fix that problem, almost as if their incompetence was on purpose.

To the right of the display was a placard, with a recitation of the translation as well as an explanation of it. I immediately covered my mouth, reading the words in Egyptian, and almost reciting them. It was the Egyptian prayer of resurrection. Posted for all the world to read. And in the presence of so much energy, those words had power! All it was waiting for was the right push of energy and receptive hearts. I could feel my own heart beating faster as I read the words silently.

Animate Me! Renew Me! Cleanse my Body, cleanse my Ka!
Animate Me! Protect my Reflection and my Shadow!
Animate Me! Renew my Spirit, Renew my Flesh!
Animate Me! Make me to shine like Ra, like Horus, like Osiris and Isis!
Animate Me! Guard me, Seal me with your Golden Light!
Animate Me! Quicken my Mind! Revive my Body!
Animate Me! Give wings to my Limbs!
Animate Me! Consecrate me!

I stood entranced, hypnotically reading. I could almost hear soft chanting in an accent I couldn’t identify.

It repeated these lines over and over, wrapping around the sides of the stone in clean lines, three times. The upper part of the stone showed a pair of gods opening the gates of heaven, handing a golden ankh to a seated figure. It was decorated in lapis lazuli and carnelian, painted in gold upon the stone, with clear glass inlaid into the eyes. Even if it wasn’t a powerful mystical artifact, this was a work of impeccable art. Mesmerizing.

The words echoed in my mind, building and flowing, gathering power… until I realized Meryl was shouting my name in my ear.

“Marcus!”

“What, I’m here!” I shouted back, probably a little too loudly.

“Don’t dwell on the words. You are especially susceptible to the power of that invocation.”

I shook my head to blank my mind. “Sorry, I wigged out there. That thing has a lot of power.”

“You should have seen the original temple back in the day. You okay in there?”

“Yeah, yeah. Just a little cobwebs.” Yeah, I know that didn’t make sense. It is what it is. “What was that?”

“It is the resurrection passage from an early version of the Book of the Dead. Chiseled and poured into stone by a true master, Nohtepshep the Lesser.”

“Never heard of him.”

“He was a true powerhouse of the ancient world. A very capable Mage and a cunning artificer.”

“And a good friend,” I said, paraphrasing Alec Guiness in Star Wars.

“More a competitor. If you get the chance, talk to him sometime.”

“Sure, I’ll send him a spiritual E-mail.”

“Wont have to go far to send it, he’s in the next room.” Out of habit, I made ready to repeat his statement as a question, but I risked a look over my shoulder and shuddered.

“Maybe later.” I said with a sigh. ”To the left?”

“Right, to the left.”

“Okay. Big glass case, kind of elongated?”

“That’s your target.”

As I closed on the case the stele actually increased in brightness. “Whoa, got some action here.”

“Just the stele reacting to your presence. As long as you don’t touch it, shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Is it readying defenses?” I asked nervously. I swear those Anubis statues twitched a little when the glow increased. I know I was invisible thanks to the belt, but it was unnerving, feeling like their eyes were flicking about. Scanning for targets.

“Could be. Best get back to the mission. Sooner you have the Stone, the sooner you can get out.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I agreed, gulping. Nervously, I approached the glass case. It was a long rectangle of glass about four feet off the deck. The case was easily 10 feet long, more than 4 feet wide, the top angled. Inside were “wonderful things,” to quote Howard Carter. There was an intricate, elaborate golden collar necklace, easily a foot wide, with embedded carnelians and lapis lazuli gemstones. There were beautiful, beaded earrings, long finger extensions of pure gold, solid bronze bracers for a warrior’s wrists, jewel studded upper arm wraps in the form of asps and crocodiles, and many rings featuring ivory and gems of every hue and shade.

And more than half of them had some pattern laid on them. The patterns tangled and wrapped around each other, snarling, each trying to leech any power they could. Now, these weren’t as potent as the hungry leeching of the Stele of Amarna-Ka, but it was such a mangled mess that undoing it would take either a massive effort or a single move similar to Alexander severing the Gordian Knot. I could see that most of the patterns in the case were either defensive or vanity based. Better than make-up, I guess. Those Egyptians sure were horny a lot.

In amongst all the others were a set of ankh decorated earrings, a three tiered necklace and elaborate rings, a complete set. Clearly this belonged to a wealthy socialite, the carnelian gems layered in gold a clear sign. Off to one side of the set of rings was one particular ring. It was just as Meryl had described it. The ankh symbol curved around the flat, oval shaped stone, glinting brightly in my mystical vision. I was drawn to it, almost pressing my hands on the glass case.

This was the Philosopher’s Stone. To be honest, it wasn’t the most magnificent thing in the collection before me. Clearly there was a different type of gold in the metal of the ring than the rest of the jewelry there. But the red color of the stone was very nearly a match for the other stones used. It was easy to see how it had gotten skipped over. Only another person with mystic sight would be able to tell the stone was different.

“I have eyes on the prize,” I said simply. “Checking for alarms and traps.”

“Very good, very good, Marc.” I could hear the tension in his tiny, little boy’s voice. It seemed so weird to hear that inflection in such a young pitch.

“No words of wisdom?” I asked, pulling the ankh wand out of my back pocket. I ran it over the glass case and flicked it up into the air above the case. An elaborate pattern revealed itself, clearly an alarm and response spell. “Got the pattern of the alarm spell. Seems pretty simple, even with the hungry spell trying to sap it. This is really tangled.”

“More to the need to be quick as well as accurate. You have about ten minutes,” Meryl said, I could almost see him looking down to a watch. “Try to separate out the alarm spell, just around the ring.”

“On it!” I said, returning the ankh to my pocket. I gently reached into the pattern and leveraged the trigger up and out, effectively disarming it. The entire spell didn’t vanish, mind you, just the triggering mechanism. The security agents in charge of the museum would never know the difference unless they looked specifically for it. As a side thought, I dissolved the trigger, just to be safe.

“Okay, so the trigger is out and gone. Going to look for electronic sensors. I think there’s a couple of contacts along the back of the case. Seems like the hinge is towards the front.”

“That’ll make the lid more difficult to remove. But I think you can handle it. First, deal with the contact points for the electronic alarms, then…”

“Meryl, I got this. I’m not gonna need to disengage the alarm at all. I’m gonna co-locate it.”

“Hmmm, ballsy. You think you can handle it?” he asked.

“We’re about to find out. Okay, lemme focus here.”

“Good luck.”

“Isn’t it bad luck to wish me good luck at a time like this,” I replied, rubbing my hands together. I concentrated and focused on the area around the ring. I put my mind into the Correspondence Sphere and slowly opened my eyes. I flexed the area around the ring and felt space warp. “All places are one, all places are one, all places are one,” I repeated aloud, as if going over a mantra.

Cupping my hands, to define a space, I asserted my will. Now, it might have been cooler to say I created a portal to reach through the glass and pluck the ring right off the velvet. Or even to say I used a combination of spheres to make the glass insubstantial and phase through the case as if it wasn’t there. And while that could be spectacular all by itself, what I had in mind was much simpler. Rather than go around all the alarms, I simply pulled the ring out from where the alarms were.

Similar to when Meryl took me up to the top of Denali in Alaska, I co-located the ring into the space in my cupped hands, and simply picked it up, then let the co-location end. I opened my hand to look at the Philosopher’s Stone, safely in my possession. Instantly I could sense the energy waiting with the ring. “I got it, Meryl,” I said, looking at it. “So much trouble over such a small thing.”

“Okay, okay, we are running out of time here. Make your escape.”

“Right.” I turned around and stopped dead in my tracks. A flashlight beam swept across the entrance of the exhibit wing. It panned back and forth, moving in time to the metronome of footsteps. I looked around to find a place to hide. I wasn’t worried about being seen as much as him walking into the area and boxing me in.

“What is it?” Meryl said, his voice rising in panic.

“Guard,” I hissed into my shoulder. I don’t know why I moved my head to speak into the microphone. I glanced around to look for a place to hide and my eyes fixated on the stele. I mean it was kind of the biggest thing in the room. I carefully moved between the jewelry case and the stele, ducking behind it.

The same guard as before followed the twitching flashlight beam into the exhibit hall. Instinctively I ducked lower, even trusting my belt to maintain my invisibility. He crossed into the hall, in the first room, snuffing back snot and running his sleeve across his nose. Noisily so. I cringed at the sound.

Another guard’s voice rang out. I could see his beam passing into the opposite chamber to the far left of the entrance. “Yo, Jimmy. The Egyptian wing clear?”

“Yeah,” the disgusting guard rang out with a very pronounced Southie accent. “Fuckin’ dead in hea’. I’m movin’ upsta’s,” he said, scratching his nuts extensively. He looked at the seated figure and practically spit, “Whadda you lookin’ at, peckah head?” The statue didn’t respond in any measurable way, although in my mystically enhanced vision, his eyes flashed with what I can only guess is anger. The guard turned and walked out, without even looking into the room I hid in.

I relaxed, sighing. “Marc, what’s happening?”

“We caught a break. The guard’s an idiot. Didn’t even come into the back area,” I said standing up. I opened my palm and looked down at the ring. “I’m heading out, got the Stone.”

“Be careful!”

“Relax, I got this.”

You know how it is that you can do something so stupid by just not thinking about what you are doing? Like the kid that drops his bike in the front yard without using the kick stand when called in to dinner? Or the way some girls unconsciously flick their hair out of the way when they flirt? Even how some folks never use their turn signals in the rain or fog? Just stupid, thoughtless stuff. Yeah, that kinda stuff.

I didn’t think about the powerful alien artifact in my right hand, nor about the Unicorn’s Gift on my left wrist as I stood up from a slight crouch behind the huge stone… and I put my hand on the stele.

And the whole motherfuckin’ world… shifted!

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