The headgear was holding the sweat to my head as I repeatedly slammed my right elbow into the practice bag. I was focusing on trying to improve my right side strikes since I was left handed. The illusion I had cast of Calmick’s face on the side of the bag provided a little extra focus to the practice.

I had spent twenty minutes in my empty apartment trying to avoid thinking about the past even as I had started the work on a protection circle on the worn kitchen linoleum. The apartment was cheap, most of my income went to paying back my student loans, so the circle was in the corner of the kitchen away from the large crack that went through the middle of the floor. Laying out a circle over that crack would symbolically open the circle and would be the equivalent of freeing the demon. I could think of more pleasant ways to commit suicide.

It wasn’t until I had finished the circle that I had started to hyperventilate and have small flashbacks to my teen years. I was still convinced I had to make a deal, but I had to be focused and precise as well. Since these would be my last days in this world, either way, I was planning to go out in style. Exercise at my martial arts gym to calm my nerves, a fancy lunch, and then time to prepare a bag of supplies for my new world.

Lisa was watching me from the bag two over from mine casting concerned glances in the mirror. I caught glimpses of her focusing on me as I pounded out my stress. Lisa hadn’t done more with her interest than to make small talk, she was subtle enough that it wasn’t definite she was interested, but my constant refusals of the guys had her moving in. It wasn’t that I was interested, I wasn’t disinterested either when it came to that. I just had a ten-year plan and a relationship distraction wasn’t in it. My past made it hard to even think about that kind of thing, man or woman. A relationship meant I would have to think about my problems and deal with them, I wasn’t ready for that.

I could tell Lisa was curious, I wasn’t here at my usual lunch time, I wasn’t practicing my normal combos, I was beating up the image of a man that I had cast onto the bag. All signs that something was up, but since I was avoiding catching her eye and didn’t seem to be interested in talking, she let me be. That was the nice thing about Lisa, no pushing.

I spent three hours beating on the bag in alternating combinations, far more than I probably should have. The feel of the sweat sticking to my body everywhere and then the warm shower to clean off was delightful. I had that nice light feeling where your body felt bouncy after a hard workout, that feeling that told you that the next day you would be sore and regretful but until then it was nice.

Apparently, Lisa had decided to stop being nice since she was standing outside of the shower stall, leaning against the wall not crowding me. I had changed inside the stall so I was clean and fresh wearing dry clothes while she was still soaked and messy.

All she got out was a polite and concerned sounding “How you doing Erin?” before my “Fine.” and escape.

I didn’t want to be rude to her, but I wasn’t going to see her again and I wasn’t looking for a one night stand before I left. Too many ways I could grasp on and try to stay or freak out from what I was planning. That’s when it hit me. I wasn’t staying. I really was leaving. I wasn’t letting anything hold me here, not even a chance of it.

I was going to deal with another one of those things.

It should have sent me hyperventilating again, it was probably a sign that I was as unhealthy as my therapist insisted I was, but it instead calmed me down. One thing I had learned from my experiences was that if you were going to deal with things, a big if, then head on and full steam was usually the best way. It had worked for my magical education, it had worked for getting in shape, and it had worked for my self-defense courses. Hit hard and fast and keep on hitting.

I drove back to my apartment skipping the fancy lunch entirely. I was keyed up and I was going to do this, any delay could have me procrastinating and quitting. The entire ride a tiny voice in my head screamed wordlessly about the possibility of seeing it again.

The circle was still where I had left it, white chalk infused with a small percent of salt. The start of the focusing runes around the edge.

The real horror of demonology is how simple it is to summon the things outside the worlds into the world. It took power, but nothing that any decent mage couldn’t produce, with a mana stone even a weak mage could handle it. A circle for containment, a few runes to focus the power into a point in the center of the circle until it breached the fabric of the world, and you have yourself a demon. Well, if one wants to come that is. But then, they always do.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Like most theoretical magic, the explanations for the less well-understood processes are, well, strange. Demons are creatures which live between the worlds, in the not-space and non-time between the worlds, the void. They see all that has been, all that is, and all that could be. The important part is that they can’t see it all at once, like an eagle's eyes which focused forward to hunt for prey, demons focused on the probable. They can be tricked, it’s even been documented that it has been done, it’s just so unlikely that counting on it would be insane.

Demon's always won. The gain was never worth the cost, it’s how they feed.

The chaos, destruction, and strife they cause is always the point of their actions. They may be vastly powerful beings of concentrated magic, but they feed like parasites on the mana generated from the chaos they cause within the worlds. The shells that we invite in with a summoning are the most they can manifest inside the world and the destruction throughout history has been horrific when those avatars have escaped their circles.

Deals, bargains, exchanges, some type of link is needed before a demon can affect the world. A summoning circle misconstructed would be an implicit agreement of freedom for the avatar and the destruction then caused was a smorgasbord for the demon.

Demonology is banned everywhere in the world. Even countries at war have joined together to stop a demon summoner. It’s a death sentence to summon a demon. Sentence to be carried out within twenty-four hours. Even family members of demonologists are shunned and in some places killed as well. I had been lucky when my Aunt had taken me in after my parents had died. I owed her more than I could say, she had reported her own sister and hadn’t even flinched at the news of her death during the raid. She had protected me, raised me from the age of fifteen, and now I was about to do something she found abhorrent, something she would probably be further shunned over as she had been shunned when she took me in.

I found myself just staring at the finished circle, the chalk rolling back and forth in my hand. All I would have to do was focus my magic into the circle and a demon’s avatar would appear. Possibly it.

I thought of all the possible alternatives. I couldn’t go back to school, my magical affinity wasn’t high enough to climb the ladder and my current bills would eat me alive. I didn’t have friends or family with access to any of the restricted grimoires or permission to use them. Nepotism ran rampant at the highest levels of magic and it was the only real way to reach those arena’s of power unless you were so powerful you could just force them to acknowledge you.

I wasn’t that powerful. I was creative, I was even pretty decent with rune construction, but I lacked the massive power reserves of an archmage. With mana batteries and enough time I could do anything an archmage could do, but an archmage could form a complex spell completely in their mind and do so faster than I could mark out a single rune.

No, going back to school wasn’t the answer. I had planned to move up at FMI, prove out my spell and lead a magitech team, pay off my loans and work on a spell to force my magical reserves to grow. It would have been expensive, insanely so, the protective structure alone would have taken half a pound of gold, but I could have done it eventually. All I had to do was gain enough money, enough power, to reach for more. But now I would be lucky to be able to work as a lackey for less I was making now, with a wince, I realized, had been making. I would be lucky enough just to pay back my current loans.

The scent of the chalk in my hands brought me back to the moment. I was procrastinating, fighting to not think about what I was planning. I couldn’t put it off anymore. It didn’t matter if the same demon which had hurt me before answered the call. It wouldn’t ask for the same thing it had asked for before. I couldn’t bear children anymore, the government had seen to that, so that avenue of chaos and destruction into the world was closed to it now.

Focusing hard on the task at hand I checked each rune, taking care to be sure each was perfect. Two of the runes were slightly jagged in their construction, probably fine, but I carefully removed them and spent the time to make them perfect.

The clean feeling from earlier had left and I was starting to sweat. I could feel my stomach knot and growl, I would need to eat soon but the thought of food made me want to throw up.

I would summon the demon, find out what it wanted to transport me to a safe place in a world where I could gather power, then I would dismiss it and prepare for my new world. I would gather copies of all the common grimoires, blow through what savings I had left buying rare materials, use my last paycheck as collateral for a loan and gather everything I could need.

Compared to the debt I owed my Aunt, what was leaving a few bills behind?

Sitting back on my knees I looked toward the finished circle and took a deep breath and began. I forced my mana into the activation rune, the mana spiraled around in a glowing pulse collecting on the surface of the containment circle. The single direction rune allowing the mana into the circle but not letting it push back out. The chaotic nature of the magic bounced around within the circle, without instructions for how to form the mana returned to its natural state. It coalesced into a high potential of chaos which had to go somewhere, but there was nowhere for it to leave, nothing for it to do.

Slowly over the better part of an hour the four-foot circle pulsed and waivered as space inside distorted and rippled. When the breach into the void happened it was sudden, a pinprick hole so small it could barely be seen formed and then smoke billowed into the circle. Claws, teeth, slime, and tentacles slapped against the inside of the circle forming from within the smoke, from the smoke.

Gently, almost daintily the smoke started to coalesce into the center of the circle leaving the form of a woman casually glancing around at the construction of the runes. Suddenly light blue glowing eyes were staring back at me.

“Hello, Erin Ara Weisz.”