Four Kings of the World

Deep within the Astral World reside four great spirits who love and shelter humankind, recorded in Holy See scripture as the cardinal guardian angels even though most of its priests reject magic outright. Each king governs a direction and an element: the East commands wind, the West water, the South fire, and the North earth. Their combined summoning, the Formation of the Four, ranks among the simplest of spells, yet a student mage may need a year of practice before conjuring it successfully.

Once the formation takes hold, the caster need only keep a rough subconscious sense of direction for it to persist. The barrier repels astral beings and ethereal forms well, but it loses half its strength against anything with physical substance and does nothing to stop solid objects. Schierke wields it often, raising it to defend the church of Enoch Village and later to shield the Black Swordsman Party's cabin from crocodile pishacha. Farnese eventually learns the incantation herself, calling the kings to guard the Seahorse, to display her growing skill after the Corridor of Dreams, and to protect the Kushan capital by annihilating whatever nears the ward.

The group comprises the King of the East, the King of the West, the King of the South, and the King of the North, invoked together through a shared incantation that praises each in turn. Berserk's official guidebook pins every ruler to his element, and the summoning verse borrows from the Kabbalistic Cross of the pentagram's lesser banishing ritual, whose later passages call on the four elements and the archangels stationed at each compass point.