The Ritual — Surrendering to Forces Greater Than Yourself

As they all touch Alona, Pryter, and Arne, something curious happens. The twins enter a trance state, and an invisible force field erupts around them, while Alona surrendered to the Magix. Three rows of ten and the Trotter Queen leading the way, the Trotter Trees launch their attack. Alona raises her right hand over her head and casts the spell that she memorized in her mom's recipe book. This spell absorbs the power of the Blaerie nation instead of just the twins, because she improvises some words. Using the twins' power, she siphoned from the enchanted trees, flowers, rocks, the sun, stars, wind, and everything. She formed a huge ball of energy and threw it back at the Trotter Tree. Despite the attack, the tree's shield managed to deflect it. The Trotter Trees drop their strongest attack, called the 'biggest strike.' Using the 'take' spell, Alona snatches the Trotter Tree's power attack and redirects it back at them. A powerful electric current electrocutes the first trotter, which then turns into a Snap Dragon flower. The ritual is the road. The surrendering to forces greater than yourself is the road. You do not become by deciding to become in a single moment. You become by surrendering — by letting the force field erupt around you, by letting the enchanted things absorb into you, by forming the ball of energy from everything that touched you and throwing it back. And through the ritual, you come out changed. You lost your powers. You gained new ones. You entered a trance and you emerged from it as a different version of who you were. Not because the ritual made you change. Because the ritual made changing possible. This is what the gallery does. The visitor surrenders to the artworks. They siphon from the colors, the stories, the emotions, the becoming categories — from everything that touched them — and they form a ball of energy and throw it back. And through that, they come out changed. Not into someone else. Into a clearer version of who they already were, inside the body they walk around in. The mirror remembers. When they come back, it shows them the distance between then and now.