Erelia turned back to her estate in a fit of frustration. The gaudy display of Lilith’s military might and her own lack of power to retaliate fanned the fires in her heart.

“That SNAKE! She wishes to make a fool out of me? I will have her head mounted on a pike in the town square!”

Drudging her feet up the flight of stairs, Erelia opened the door to her room. She hastily searched through her desk drawer to find the vial of Ymir’s blood.

It is a shame that I must use this now, but I don’t see any other way to go about this...

She strode to a blank wall bearing seven oddly shaped holes in it at the furthest edge of the chamber and placed a hand on it. Chains began to emerge from her arm and ran into each of the slots. With the last hole being filled, the wall began to disperse itself, showing the illusion that it truly was.

Where a partition once was, was now a hallway running into a small room, a slightly elevated stone altar on the floor. Resembling the illusory wall, this altar also had seven apertures perforated into it.

Erelia popped the cork off of the glass vial and stuck a finger into Ymir’s saved blood. Knelt over, she smeared the blood across the smooth stone surface, connecting each of the boreholes to make a seven-pointed star.

“This should take care of our pesky little guests.”

The iron appendages once again emerged from her arms to fill the boreholes with magic. The thick liquid shone bright with a red-violet glow and the heptagram of blood had begun to rise off of the stone on which it was formed.

“If that damned Lilith wishes to utilize blood magic, then I will return the favor.”

Suspended in the air, the seven-pointed sanguine star began to twist and turn in a clockwise motion. It spun and spun, until its original form was no longer recognizable, it had become a vortex made of both organic matter and arcane magic.

Though this spiral of grotesque nature seemed two-dimensional, footsteps could be heard from beyond the surface. They drew closer and stopped.

A garbled voice came from the other side, “Who has summoned me?”

“We have a slight problem here.” She paused, irritated at laying down her pride. “Gather as many of the knights as you can; I am opening the gateway... and send that damned dramatic fool to inform the King that we may be late to his meeting this evening...”