Aspasia

"Cautiously I entered the cold, damp chambers of the lower temple, immediately feeling the vile tension in the air. Underground frost nipped at my skin, invading my warm breath. Heavy, pervading charge tingled briskly around me. I could barely see them in the beaten fading torchlight, but the walls seemed to grip and contract, unnerved by the bathing of Aspasia's piercing voice. Two farakis of the temple escorted me solemnly though anxiously to the main chamber, and never uttered a word. I could feel their uncertainty however, their fear. Their awe. And after a long, dust covered ancient staircase down the criptum, we were there. At the very entrance, the sight within just froze me. I stood calmly, exhaling in astonishment. Aspasia was showered in light, a gentle stream of purple white radiant energy,
engulfing her in epiphanous beauty that the spell produced. It was absolutely mesmerizing. Brushing my shoulder, one of the faraki
passed me by unconcernedly, mindlessly enchanted by fluorescent dance. I had wondered for a second if they were aware of the danger of gazing at the spell without proper warding and glancing at the stiffly trembling figure of the other servant, bearing his terror under a fully covered face, I realized his friend had fallen under the spell's sway, and reaching out I quickly pulled him back.
With profound gesture and sudden sobering awareness, the faraki thanked me profusely and hurriedly left the chamber. The other followed behind him in a similar urgent manner.

They should not have come. The ritual is not something they were prepared for. Regardless of the temple life, of lonely meditations, perpetual retellings of the legends of her return, regardless of their faith. Without adequate force of a ward, one does not
just gaze at the wondrous power of Aspasia's magic. The sages books speak of her winding force. Underestimated them I did too however, thinking myself strong with ages of experience and knowledge behind me, but I too felt the pull, I felt the wrenching opiating force, the beckoning suction in the farthest reaches of my soul. My very bones. It called me in, making me lust the wondrous light, caress it intimately, be one with it. Blessed me to release myself, and abandon life. For that is exactly what that deceiving flamboyant miasma truly was. A powerful and utterly deadly spell, which can rend one's flesh and lacerate one's soul out of existence itself.
That not being its primary purpose of course, but such an enormous amount of manayilic energy, focused so intensely, can only produce such a devastating and dark side-effect. And like a beautiful Tuskun rose, or a glittering snow covered forest, it gleams with beauty and calming force, yet hides the blade of death behind the veil. And I wonder what would have happened if I had kept staring at this wondrous thing, regardless of my powerful wards, but the air turned dark. Aspasia dropped on her knees, laughing. Divine halls of godlike infused rays and scatterings of energetic fluid lights had been replaced by decrepit texture of centuries crumbling faces of old, arches, statues and glories of bygone times. Deep, looming sounds started seeping through the opening gate. Earthly roar, reverberated trough already cracked, aeons old walls in the dark, rumbling the temple through its very fundaments.

The spell worked. Ulthvad had come."