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Ari's out collecting mushrooms on the Blood Moor.
Yes, there are demons, and zombies, and once he saw some bipedal cows with halberds for some reason, and yes, they could theoretically kill him. But he has a very sharp scythe, and he can conjure fire and lightning at his whim, and just in general, Ari can take care of himself.
Uncle Deckard told him not to go too far. Ari told him to go teach his grandmother to suck eggs.
"How common are demon attacks, anyway? Do you fight them everyday?"
"Me, personally? Pretty much. Most people, no. A forester or someone else who lives far away from civilization might, but they'd mostly encounter carvers and the like, nothing like what I killed; that thing was clearly from the depths of Hell. And someone who lives in a city and doesn't leave its walls would see almost no demons or undead. There's people in the big cities who don't even believe they exist. Stupid people, but still."
"I guess that's good news for Sactuary's future tourism industry. At any rate sounds like a good reason to share warding secrets."
"Please. It sounds me and Gabe are going to have some experience with the demon fighting lifestyle."
Ari will listen studiously. His magical education may not be up to the finer points of this, but after fifteen years learning from Deckard Cain he's good at integrating information after the fact.
Temple main flaw as a teacher is being too enthusiastic to remember that people can't absorb magic knowledge like a sponge, but he is not too bad.
Dal-Giulikian is not a slow learner, but apparently he hits a limit and excuses himself to talk to his superiors.
Temple bids him farewell. Also, he hopes that Ari doesn't mind to have his body draw-over with a sharp to illustrate some ritual steps.
What a great student / model!
Eventually, things wrap up and people have to report to various other people, draft proposals, get feedback and change plans accordingly. Most of it's fairly technical or political and doesn't affect Ari directly, except that the triplets and Katur are too busy for a day and a half to show up.
Then they have place to create the portal, possibly a portal hub. A simple but enormous building made of stone that was obviously magically created (or they just keep stadium-sized things empty and unused).
Ari is called to be a portal focus so they can target his universe. Inside he will find the largest ritual circle he has seen, by a large margin. Someone needs to telekinetically lift Ari to put him in the right place.
And they do the ritual and as a result there is some spacey-wacey weirdness in the shape of a circle...
...and now they have a portal, to somewhere that looks like a swamp, except with more red. It smells terrible and the sorcerer in charge of the spell decides this isn't a good place to have a portal to.
...more space weirdness that resolves itself into a new location, this time a desert with no discernible features to pin point the location.
They try again.
This one opens out into a hilly grassland. Some cows can be spotted in the distance, chewing placidly on the turf. Meanwhile, about twenty feet away there's a platform etched with arcane sigils, glowing blue, and generally doing its level best to look impressive.
"Ooh! Waypoint! I can use that to get to New Tristram and find Uncle Deckard!"
"Lucky," Dawn - who is around supervising the thing - says. "How long until you come back? And do you think someone might mind that we placed a portal in this particular hill?"
"Nah, the Sisters of the Sightless Eye don't do property rights and I'm pretty sure this is the Tamoe Highlands, so they're the only ones who'd object. I'll be like a minute, the waypoint's like ten feet from Uncle's place."
"Good. In that case, we are going to start warding the other end of the portal," Dawn says, though that's more of acknowledgement that there are sorcerers crossing the portal to do just that.
Henry approaches and gives Ari a quick peck in the lips.
Ari makes a little delighted noise, then makes his way to the waypoint. When he gets there, the whole thing flares with blue light and he vanishes.
He's back a few minutes later, swearing.
"That fucking moron decided to go into the fucking cathedral without me!"
"Well, it's full of fucking demons. I can probably take them, but I won't turn down backup. He can probably take them, he's a perfectly competent Vizjerei, but he could also break his fucking hip and get eaten by zombies."
"Count us as well," Thomas says waving at his nodding brothers.
"How many people should we send?" Dawn asks. "We do have combat sorcerers."
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