“Serenity?” Aide’s voice rang in Serenity's mind before he was even really awake. Adrenaline - or whatever his body now used that served the same purpose - shot through Serenity. This had to be both important and urgent; Aide wouldn’t wake him otherwise.
“Yes, Aide?” Serenity scooted carefully away from Rissa. She was still asleep; he didn’t want to disturb her. He might not get more than a couple hours’ sleep tonight but that was no reason she couldn’t.
An image appeared in Serenity’s mind. It was clearly a park, but whatever the main subject of the image was, Aide had removed it to focus on a slightly out of focus corner. There were two people clearly laying out a ritual of some sort; it wasn’t very far along yet. Other people were learning ritual work now, but that wasn’t the important thing; the important thing was that all of the supplies for the ritual were lait out to one side and among the supplies was a pair of familiar-looking vases.
Aide clearly knew when Serenity noticed the vases, because that was when he started his apology. “The image was taken several hours ago, shortly before sunset. It was posted soon thereafter, but it didn’t cross any of my filters until someone added the tag #modernwitchcraft. The match is good, but I cannot tell from the picture if these are Solomon vases or the ones being used to summon demons.”
“Do we have a location?” It was probably already too late; a glance at his internal clock told Serenity it was already past midnight and the main reason he could think of to set up a ritual in a park at night was to aim for sunset, midnight, sunrise, moonset, moonrise, or possibly some other astronomical time. At a guess, since they were obviously going to miss sunset, they were probably aiming for midnight.
Well, it was also possible that they just didn’t want to do the ritual at their homes; apartments weren’t good places for rituals, after all. In that case, he’d still probably missed it; it didn’t look like they were doing an extremely complicated setup.
“The picture still had its metadata,” Aide told Serenity. “The location is a park in Kansas; here is the map.”
Wait, Kansas? Kansas was in Central time, wasn’t it? That meant it was an hour earlier there, before midnight. Maybe he wasn’t too late after all. Serenity shifted to his human shape, hurried quietly out of the bedroom, and pulled on some clothes and his armor-self, shifted to hide under his clothing. “Call Russ and let him know what’s going on; I’ll meet him there. It’s too late for a rental car, isn’t it?”
“The closest rental car locations are all closed for the night,” Aide confirmed after a moment.
“Right.” Serenity triggered the portal out of Aki’s dungeon to reach the closest portal node to the park in Kansas. He had a personal flyer; when they picked them up for Legion, Rissa bought a few extras. Her foresight in this case was probably not magical; it didn’t really take magic to tell someone that they’d need a way to travel faster when they were buying devices to do just that for others.
----------------------------------------
“Are you sure about this, Nat?” Misty stared at her friend. They were all in the park because she promised “some cool new magic shit,” but Misty wasn’t certain a demon summoning was a good idea. Weren’t they supposed to eat the people who summoned them? Yeah, that was from movies before the Voice arrived, but an awful lot of those movies turned out to be really similar to what Misty saw every day now.
“Don’t call me that, Crow. I’m Raven; you know that!” The other girl pushed her dyed-black hair out of her face with her hand. She wouldn’t wear a hair tie or use hairspray; one was “a relic of the male hegemony” while the other was “planet-destroying idiocy.”
Misty was pretty certain that hair ties were just useful if you wanted to have long hair and that no one knew enough to say what was “planet-destroying” anymore. The ozone hole was gone; there were no explanations but it wasn’t there anymore. Misty knew there was something weird about the atmosphere now, something about an “impossible lensing effect,” but she was sure that was just magic. It made sense the planet would have magic; everything else did, after all. Well, everything except children without a Path other than Human. It totally sucked that she was too young for a real path when the Tutorial happened!
She knew that was why Nat wanted to do the summoning; it had to be. Everyone knew that the Paths you got were based on what you did, and they’d qualify for their first Path soon. Misty was a little bit ahead of Nat, but they were both close enough that they should get their first real Path within the next couple of months. It was time to do anything that would help them get a better Path now, unless they wanted to get stuck with a bad Path and have to wait until they finished it.
Demons were supposed to be powerful, after all, and Nat … no, Raven wanted power. Misty wasn’t sure why; all Raven would say was that she needed it. Misty wanted power because she wanted to fight; delvers were rich. Raven had always insisted that she didn’t want to delve, despite the money, but her family had money that would send her to college. Misty’s family didn’t.
No, Nat … er, Raven … was right. They needed to do this. “For a Path, right? Ok. What do we need to do?”
“Here,” Nat handed a stack of paper to Misty. “Pick the one you want; I’ve already picked mine. While you choose, I’ll get the layout started. We’ve got time; that’s why I told you to tell your parents this was a sleepover.”
Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!
Misty started looking over the pages. Each one had a fantastical picture and a short description. Most of them weren’t interesting; after all, who really wanted a demon of boredom or alienation? The demon of joy was weird but Misty didn’t see how good feelings would help her in a dungeon. Wrath was interesting but there was a note about it being “uncontrolled rage” and Misty didn’t like that; what if it meant the demon might turn on one of the people she went into the dungeon with?
“Are you done yet?” Nat’s voice interrupted Misty’s thoughts.
“I’ve got it down to these four,” Misty told her friend. “Aggression, Resolve, Obsession, and Anxiety.”
Nat’s nose wrinkled as she frowned at Misty. “I guess I can see Aggression, Anxiety, and Resolve; you’re thinking about taking them into a dungeon, aren’t you?” She didn’t stop to give Misty a chance to answer. “I can see why all of those would fight for you. Aggression because it wants to fight, Resolve because it’s determined, and Anxiety because it’s afraid. Why Obsession, though? That’s the one that looked useless.”
“A couple things, really. It said that the obsession could be affected by the ritual; it also said that Obsession demons are only dangerous if their obsession is threatened. What if I made its obsession … me?” It seemed to make sense; that way, the demon would protect her. The only real downside in that case was that the demon wouldn’t protect anyone else and probably wouldn’t attack until something actually threatened her.
She kind of liked the picture, too. It was the only one that actually looked like a demon. She knew better than to make her choice based on that, though, and she definitely knew better than to admit to Mat that she’d even considered appearance as a factor.
“An Aggression demon really seems the best for in the dungeon,” Misty admitted, “But I don’t think it’s a good choice if I can’t dismiss it; it’ll get in trouble. Will we be able to dismiss these and then summon them again easily?”
Nat shook her head. “I think this is permanent.”
Misty sighed and looked over the papers one last time. Maybe the Path she’d get would let her store the demon somewhere when she wasn’t using it, but she shouldn’t count on that. It had to be either Obsession or Resolve, then. She really liked the idea of having someone that was hers, but the combat restrictions really weren’t worth it. “Resolve,” she said sadly. “It’s probably the most controllable and that’s important.”
Nat nodded and picked up the paper with the Resolve demon’s information. As she walked away, Misty was able to see the drawing on the back; they each had one. She thought it was part of the ritual, which was confirmed when Nat set it down inside the circle she was drawing with one of the two pottery things on top.
It looked sort of like a fancy tall clay glass or maybe a flower vase? Misty wasn’t sure. The really odd thing about it was that it was painted in colors and patterns Misty didn’t think were all that pretty. That probably meant they were magical. “Where’d you get the pots?”
“Same place I got the rest of it,” Nat grinned at Misty. “You don’t think this was easy to find, do you?”
Misty shrugged. She kind of thought it had been; Nat was usually not bid on doing a lot of work. It was true that she was willing to spend a lot of time online, though, and she sometimes found the strangest things there. Misty wasn’t sure how she did it.
There was probably a shopping site somewhere that sold demon summoning instructions. That would make sense; everything else was sold online, magical or not. The vases were probably the only thing that actually had to be snipped; the rest of it looked like printouts Nat did and stuff she’d bought at the local craft store.
They’d probably be horrified to know that their supplies were being used in a demon summoning ritual.
“Here, take this; read it a couple times. You’re going to sit over there, on that yellow pillow. Make sure your feet are totally inside the pillow’s edges; the instructions said that’s important. You wouldn’t believe how much of a pain it was to find big enough pillows.” Nat handed Misty a couple sheets of paper and a flashlight.
Misty read the words as she made her way over to the pillow. About half of the page was instructions in English; she needed to sit on the pillow, recite the words when Nat said to start, and think about what she wanted the demon to be as she said the words. The instructions said that was the hard part, but how hard could it really be? She needed something to stand between her and danger, resolved to protect her. That was how it tied into the demon type, which the paper said was important.
The words were definitely going to be the hard part. They weren’t words, at least not in English. They didn’t look like any other language she’d seen, either. She muttered a few of the more difficult words under her breath; exactly how were you supposed to say drvniquiriusu anyway?
Misty fell asleep on her pillow, still staring at the paper since there wasn’t anything else to do. She didn’t wake up until Nat shook her arm. “Wha?”
“Wake up! We need to start the ritual in a couple minutes. Here’s some pop.” Nat handed Misty a Mountain Dew. It wasn’t Misty’s favorite, but at least it wasn’t a Red Bull. Nat knew better than to hand Misty one of those. They worked, but Misty didn’t like them.
Misty chugged the drink, then made sure her feet were inside the pillow’s edges and her flashlight was pointed at the paper she needed to read while Nat hurried off into the darkness.
Nat’s voice rose and fell as she chanted; Misty couldn’t make out any words until Nat went back to English. “Your turn, Crow.”
It took Misty a moment to remember that Nat was still using the name Crow for Misty, the way she used Raven for herself. She shook herself and started reading the words off the paper. How exactly was she supposed to pronounce this gibberish? It sounded good when Nat read it, but Misty knew she was tripping over it.
She was halfway through the page when she realized she’d forgotten to visualize the demon she wanted. She tried to keep its image in mind and think about what she wanted to do while she read the words; it was hard! She was pretty sure she’d slipped up in one spot and sait “protect me” instead of “parakaia,” but it ought to be close enough. It was the best she was going to do without practice.
Misty let out a sigh of relief when she finished. It was good to be done.
There were two lights in the circle ahead of Misty, between her and Nat’s flashlight.