"Master," pronounced Benedict, "are you sure you wish to leave us?"

"You see, Ben," I turned to my protégé, "every new generation outstrips the old, and I am by no means young, and even with this body I remain an old man. Simply put, the people need a new leader, and when I'm gone, the cult needs someone to lead. The leader will be you."

"We've prepared the portal and the sacrifices," Ben bowed his head, "so your transition will go smoothly."

When my past body fell into total disrepair I had to replace it: move my soul into a new, younger vessel. But the soul suffered from such a transplant and began the process of destruction, and I would not want to lose the natural catalyst of magical energy and, in the worst case, my 'I'. Also, I didn't trust even my most faithful followers, so I didn't talk about this problem.

I would try to heal my soul, but, unfortunately, in our world, the reserves of magical energy are very, very scarce, so for such an operation I would need to be transported to a world nearby, where magic lives and breathes, and is not just a faded shadow of itself.

"Let's head to the hall, Ben," I climbed down from the podium and traveled with my heir deep into the camp. I was the head of the cult of Keys and Flesh, and now I was going to use my knowledge to open the portal.

"Master, you should know that some of our brothers and sisters are overcome with doubt," Ben informed me as we walked.

"There should be no doubt in the minds of folks. Remember that and don't make my mistakes," right now, as I was leaving this world, I wasn't all that interested in knowing about the cultists' support. "You prepared exactly thirty people? How old are they?"

"Yes, exactly thirty. Most of them eighteen," Ben paused his pacing for a moment, then continued. "All virgins."

"I see," I nodded. "The most important thing is that they're young. Their souls are still strong and can have a huge positive impact on the ritual."

These are the children of my followers, so some of them are unhappy with the fate of their sons and daughters, but their wills are suppressed enough that they are afraid to speak out. Some truly believe that these sacrifices will be made for the good of the entire community.

When we reached the ritual hall, or rather the building in which it was located, Ben opened the doors for me, stepped aside, and let me go in first.

Once inside, I saw a room painted with magical formulas: a ritual circle in the center of the room, diverging in large but less detailed circles across the floor, was also painted in a replica on the ceiling with similarly large outgoing circles; the walls were painted with rhombuses that interlocked with each other to form a chain that bound the entire room.

When the door closed, I also discovered that there was a continuation of the chain here. Ben put a lock on the door to keep anyone from coming in, and I looked around again: in the center of the circle lay a victim with bound hands and feet, with a sack over their head that prevented me from determining their sex.

Everyone else was sitting on their knees along the walls, in the same state. Only mooing could be heard throughout the hall.

"Master," Ben pulled from under his robe a ritual knife and an ancient artifact left to the cult from the first leader, "it's time. You know what to do."

Handing me the items for the ritual he stepped back to the door, awaiting my actions.

I walked over to the ritual circle, stepping right into the center of it, to the bound victim. I didn't know their name, and I didn't need it.

I placed the cubic artifact on the floor and began to cut into the victim's stomach. The tungsten knife easily passed through the flesh, and as I began to guide it downward, from the chest to the navel, it easily cut through the body. The victim made sounds of agony, apparently suppressed by the gag.

Next, I placed the artifact inside the prisoner, reciting the words of the spell. In the past, when symbolism was given great importance, keys and doors were also understood to mean more metaphorical things, like knives and bodies.

The magicians of antiquity, with the help of sharp tools, tried to find secrets hidden from the eye of the common man by opening doors. And not necessarily just their own. The experimenters of antiquity were more powerful magicians than modern ones, because of the greater power of magical influence in the world. Magical radiation, in modern terms.

Gradually it weakened, and today's mages are not much stronger than the average human. Some schools of magic have disappeared altogether, leaving room only for the magic of flesh and other more material things like water, metals, earth, and wind.

Placed inside a human body, activated by my magical power, the artifact ignited, spreading throughout the insides. With my hand, I scooped up some of the melted artifact and splashed it onto the circle, charging it with additional energy.

"Get to it," I nodded to Ben to also begin the slaying of the other children. Thanks to the 'chains' that bound the entire hall, their souls won't escape anywhere and will stay here, and when everything is ready, they will dissolve with pure magical energy, becoming my tool to open the portal.

Ben pulled another ritual knife from under his robe and began to slit the children's throats, while I stood up from my seat and clutched the cold weapon I was going to use.

"Master Yakov, Master Benedict!" the door began to bang very hard. "We are under attack!"

It was to be expected. In terms of lethality and firepower, magical cults have been vastly inferior to government forces for the last couple centuries. Our hour has come.

"Don't open the door or the souls will escape," I instructed Ben, and he began killing the captives faster than before. "Brother Bob, the cult has defense plans!" shouted I stepped closer to the door. "Run to the barracks and get your weapons, and those with Powers let them stand under Brother Barrett's leadership!"

When I wanted to return to the unfinished business, I turned my attention to the people Ben had killed. They had incisions in their necks, but no blood; they were trying not to shake, and in the dark hall it was all unnoticeable, but as I came close to the door, and consequently to the 'murdered' ones, everything became very clear.

"Wind!" though I was a flesh mage, I was over a thousand years old, and I knew some tricks from other schools, too.

After casting the spell, a wave of air charged with my energy and the energy of the room headed toward Ben, but he used the same trick and repelled my ripples with his own.

Maybe I hadn't noticed, because I had my back turned to him and his victims, so I couldn't see him freeing the prisoners.

It was too late to regret my inattention now that one of the teenagers was standing behind me, and, judging by the silence, was casting spells rather than reading them.

After preparing his charms he hit me in the back and I felt as if I had been stabbed. He had apparently caused sharp spurs to grow on his metacarpal bones, 'sharpening' his knuckles.

I'd have to act on my wits, for there were many of the freed, almost half of all the prisoners, but they knew only simple spells and charms, and even the unicum among them had advanced no further than a year's training from their peers, which was not up to my level.

After the blow, the one behind me swung his fist to the side, intending to strike again, but instead of fighting, I leapt forward, hitting the center of the hall. My back burned with pain.

"Metamorphosis!" the magical energy hovering in the air reached for me, allowing my body to increase in size unhindered.

Unfortunately, I hadn't set any parameters for the metamorphosis, causing my body to grow uncontrollably: bony outgrowths and swollen muscles to tear at the flesh, and the flesh itself, which had also undergone growth, hung off me in layers, looking more like slime.

I paused the energy ingestion and the growth stopped. Ben wasn't sitting idly by, either: he didn't have the same experience as me, but he had wit. Instead of wasting what little magic I had left on 'metamorphosis', he used it more efficiently: he spent it all on 'bonding'. He used the corpses of those left behind after my massacre as material for growth.

Compared to me, he looked incoherent: fragments of the dead blended together badly, posing as separate parts that didn't belong to him. He was a little smaller than me.

The former prisoners, realizing their powerlessness, tried to huddle in corners. The more initiative ones freed their classmates. I knew from experience that it was not possible and very dangerous to underestimate the weak, and that when dozens of such people united against one strong, they could still win at great cost. I must get rid of the initiators and finish off the bound ones while Ben fiddled with the bodies of the dead.

As I approached the right wall, while Ben was absorbing the bodies of those at the front wall, where the corner of the wall meets the left wall, I bent a little, brought my arm up to strike and slammed four men with a strong swing, then, pressing my arm tighter against the wall, turned back, smearing the corpses and killing a couple more behind me.

The cornered men squealed at the sight of me. They'd already removed their sacks, and I could tell that most of them were boys. Oh, and most of the initiators were boys, too. I guess there just weren't enough girls in the class.

I looked around. Ben was almost ready, and the corpse lying in the circle with the artifact spilled inside was easy prey for him and if he absorbed it or destroyed it, it would be very difficult for me to teleport. I'd even say impossible.

My left hand, unlike my right, which I had just used to draw on the wall, was full of spurs, sharp and blunt, like a mace.

I stepped over the corpse with the artifact in two big strides and got beside Ben, then raised my arm up and struck the first blow.

I hit the area that could have been called the neck, but instead it was a mess of facial fragments and rudimentary outgrowths that used to be the limbs of young men.

The upper part of Ben's body jerked unnaturally to the side, almost flying away, while the lower part seemed to remain in the same stiff position, and when this jelly creature came to its senses it turned toward me with a great sweep, wrapping both arms into one great hammer, which flew heavily into my chest.

Unfortunately for the enemy, it was from my rib cage that most of the bony outgrowths hidden by the skin came out. As his fists collided, they were able to break off the bones, but then they're stuck together and turned into a mess.

I was thrown back a little, but I raised my left hand and struck again, nailing the fists to the ground, which hung in the air for a split second. I couldn't help myself and knelt down on my knees too, but it was for the best, because with my right hand I could reach the seemingly soft side, from which I could get deeper to the center: to Ben himself inside that meat machine.

But when I tried to break through the soft flesh, I ran into a lot of bones and muscles that made a kind of shield-plate.

The enemy took advantage of my hiccup and abruptly pulled his broken fists from under my arm, but he couldn't pull them out and instead pulled his arms out without them, after hitting me the same way he did the first time – by putting his hands together.

But now he hit me in the head, and he hit me not with the stumps of meat that were left from his fists, but with the shoulder part of his arm, which, as it turned out, also had a lot of bones and muscles that could take me down.

Then Ben came at me with his whole body, and I, in the heat of battle, put out my left arm, but the weight of the enemy was really impressive, and, as I realized, he was falling on me with the side that had the most bones.

In the end, the mace became a kind of addition to the body that fell on me. I felt the bones of my upper arm break off under Ben's weight, and my own chest was pierced by the bottom of it. It would have hurt if it weren't for the adrenaline.

With my free hand, I began tearing chunks of flesh away from Ben's side, fumbling for weaknesses in his defenses. Realizing this, he began to climb higher, towards my head, allowing me to free my left arm, which I propped up under my foe. With my other hand, I grabbed his head, then threw him aside with force.

Clipped arms and heavy body prevented him from retaking the initiative, so I struck him in the chest with my left hand to begin with. Blood spurted, shards of flesh flew, bones crunched, and he stirred more than ever.

I hit him again, and then again, and again, until he stopped floundering. Apparently Ben's own body, the connecting part of the whole system, had been crushed.

Both he and I had used up a lot of the magical and soul energy in the air, so all I had to do was kill the rest of them and count on the unstable portal to get me to the other world without much danger to my life.

I listened. Our battle with Ben had prevented me from hearing the noise of the battle between the cultists and the invaders, who had apparently broken quite deep into our lands: the sound of airborne equipment, call signs, and gunfire could be heard right outside the building itself. I need to hurry.

***

Controlling the energy in the air, I gathered it together into a single cluster and prepared to strike the artifact with that power. The artifact was essentially canned soul energy, rich in magic from long ago. There was enough of it to gather only 30 people here.

In any case, when one was in the center of a concentration of a large amount of magical energy, it could be compared to being in a room with flammable gas. Any flash and there would be an explosion.

Except that in order for this flash to happen, it is enough just to sharply push the energy between each other. And when it comes to the soul component, the explosion is much stronger. Being in a closed space, in which the energy is not dissipated, and with the presence of magic circles that limit the radius of the explosion and centralize it, you can count on the rupture of space.

In other words, a portal could be created. Quite little was known about the world on the other side, other than that it simply existed. Few mages dared to travel there.

I listened to the sounds of the assault again, and realized that I wouldn't go back, even if I wanted to.

I hit the artifact with a blob of energy. Those droplets on the floor became part of the circle, reinforcing its ability to contain the exploded energy. I was briefly blinded and stunned, despite the barrier.

Next, a vast sea of magic from that world poured out of the otherworldly source, energizing the entire hall. Using it, I returned to my original appearance, but without clothes. I didn't have time to transform my skin into some sort of clothing, so I had to find a cloak at least.

I looked around, but I was surrounded by corpses of people with torn bodies sprawled across the walls, nothing left of their former clothes. There was only one corpse whose state of dress suited me.

Except that it looked surprisingly intact. How could this have happened? If he was the one I'd killed in the beginning, why hadn't he been absorbed by Ben?

As I got closer to the corpse, I noticed something twitching. Charms. It's got to be them.

"Realignment!" shouting the word, I transformed my arm into a monstrous form of itself: elongated at three elbows, with bony growths and inflated muscles tearing the skin in many places.

I grabbed at some limb, but there was nothing more I could do: he finished the caste, and I went far back – into the portal. Wind. In any case, the boy or girl I didn't let go, and they will go with me.