The first thing I asked myself as I hurtled through the unforgiving dark was, Why? Whose fault is this?

Anetofikanik. Fellow Acolyte Anetof. Fellow Forgets-To-Attend-To-His-Studies Acolyte Anetof. It was definitely his fault. I blame him. Bitch can’t tell a fertility rune from a letter in the priestly language.

What was supposed to be a purification ritual, a summoning of one of Diunlum’s (she the blessed) angels, had gone very obviously wrong. Instead of summoning the sacred winged spiders to bathe our misdeeds in their cleansing song, we summoned a great sucking hole of fucking pure black. Perfect way for my first official festival ritual to go. Just chirpy-perfect. I, as the closest one to the unholy abomination we summoned, was the first to be pulled in. As I smudged several of the summoning runes right before it took me, I’m pretty sure that I was also the last. The beautiful white skies and orange-red treetops was the final fleeting glimpse there was to see of Arach’thanas.

Again, Anetof, I blame. Whoever put him on circle-scribing duty “so he could get some practice in” was due for some strangulation. Y’know, if I was in the same dimension as them ever again.

That seemed like a very doubtful possibility though. Here I was, tumbling through a void of chitin-piercing cold and darkness, screaming my heart out. Some of the screaming was the sheer, garbled terror one would expect from being sucked into a broken space between worlds, expecting no less than the sweet release of death. Some of it was my most creative swearing yet. Disappointing, how none of it was recorded for posterity. It was a good thing that none of the Elder Priests were there to hear me.

To my surprise, I did not meet death at the end of the dark-space-between-worlds, but a blueness above. And, after half a moment’s continued shrieking and plummeting, something met my abdomen. BOMF! That something and I then both met a prickly, grassy, dirty ground.

“DIUNLUM DAMN IT!”