“Anyone want something absolutely revolting?” I asked blandly, hefting the box of sandwiches up so that they could see it.

Looks of confusion were swiftly replaced with unconcealed delight when Roba pulled out a prawn butty.

Many of them started their meals with a mumbled, ‘aefel ya Ystrava’, even for something so informal as this lunch. While everyone sat around munching on their putrid little parcels, doing their best to make me nauseous with the enraptured sounds they were making, I got to work. I went around and shared the sorcerous sight with them, to begin with, so that they could watch as I formed a force-matrix atop my desk: a glowing azure cage.

“What is happening, Hool Raz?” Menild asked around his mouthful.

“Just testing something. Something that until recently might’ve gotten us thrown in prison.”

That got their attention. The chatter in the room died down. I had an avid audience as I completed the cage and checked its structures for weak-points, every pair of eyes fixed on the glowing box I’d created, its bars of pure power.

The trochoids were good, trailing the circles such that the curtate and prolate lines streamed at non-intersecting vectors. Finally I stepped back, and tore off a chunk of my own cheese butty with my teeth. I stood, spinning my force-lines lazily with one hand until they were at maximum strength.

“Vot do ve test, Raz?” Ghena said.

Immediately the speculations broke out, from half a dozen different throats:

“… seen ze cage spinning so fast…”

“… if ve can do zat? I do not think…”

“… trapped inside the shields…”

I held up a hand for silence, and received it almost instantly.

“We’re going to find out what happens when an eldritch is used to power an ensorcellment. It was your idea, Nafala, Roba… Do you want to do the honours?”

I wasn’t the best master in the universe, but I wasn’t going to put one of my imps into a magical machine that was going to kill it. I knew most of them by name, now. Not their true names – those largely-unpronouncable contortions were there at the back of my mind, of course – but the names I’d given them. Condemning one of the poor things back to the Twelve Hells as nothing more than a wisp of potential, awaiting rebirth – that would’ve been a bit of a low blow after all we’d been through together.

My pupils used the Cant of Odim, the standard invocation for dual-casting a low-rank summoning spell, the same the world over. Perfect for when you didn’t have a named demon in mind. Banned, until my little talk with Deymar. Thanks to the cage, they were able to leave off the initial pacifism commands, vastly reducing the cast-time. When they were done, a spiny little critter burst into Materium, all wings and claws, teeth and tails. He wore a tiny beard, formed of what appeared to be icicles, on the very end of his pointy chin.

Stolen novel; please report.

It took him only a few seconds to realise he was behind bars; he spun about, biting at the force-lines then, when that didn’t work, he tried putting his wing-barbs through the momentary gaps in the matrix.

“Hold on, little fella!” I nodded gratefully to Nafala and Roba, then cast my glance across the classroom. “Anyone got any idea what this is?”

My answers were shrugs and a few muttered guesses.

“It’s got three diverging tails, see, with two wings, and only two limbs. The prime tail is segmented…”

“There’s no way to knowing,” Roba said stubbornly, stepping back and regarding his eldritch with a critical eye. “It is random, this spell.”

“But the thing it summons still has a name and type,” I pressed. “It’s a vauntagliar. Colloquially, a winter’s imp. Rare…” I smiled, and gestured vaguely at our surroundings, Telior. “More easily reached up here, I’d imagine.”

“I have seen its kind before,” old Menild said wistfully, putting down his sandwich and approaching my desk for a closer look, “but I did not know about this.”

I nodded at the critter. “Vauntagliar, right?”

The imp met my gaze, loosed a pitiful sigh, then warbled in Infernal: “How much longer?”

I chuckled, and I wasn’t alone – there were a fair few in the room with a good-enough grasp on the hell-tongue to find his question mildly amusing.

I did my best to give him a supportive smile. “I’m afraid you’ll be taking a… less-direct trip back home, Sir Javen. It might be awhile.”

The imp just pawed at his horns with the corner of his wing, looking fairly anxious.

I turned aside to grab an unfinished light-globe, nothing more yet than a dim glass orb, then I twisted my fingertips at the cage, releasing petals of force from its outer layer with the imp still trapped in the bud at the centre.

“What are you doing?” the little guy moaned.

“You’re going to power a light,” I said plainly.

“A light?” he cried in disbelief.

“Don’t worry.”

“Worry? You great git –”

“Silence!” Roba thundered.

I spun the shape about the fiend, and watched as the first few particles of his being were ripped away, joining the whirling, glowing blue box. It was as though his body were made of blood and tar, streaks of red-black matter pulled from his torso, his wings, the top of his head.

“Owwwww…”

I eyed the globe’s sorcerous nexus, sitting at the astral heart of the ball, only awaiting a source’s imprint in order for it to activate. As the shield absorbed some of the infernal essence, I gestured sharply, joining the vector to the nexus with a single line of will.

The red-black arc leapt across. The clean, yellow-white light of the globe sputtered into life, casting its warm radiance against the walls with the others.

“It worked! Hool Raz!”

I looked at Menild critically. “Did you doubt me? The only question is, how long will –”

The imp’s baby-like death-cry cut me off with my answer.

I spun back to stare down at the eldritch, and before I even locked my gaze on it the imp was ash, right down to the beard. After a few moments the petrified shape shuddered, crumbs of charred material drifting down towards my desk – and then it collapsed in a puff of grey dust.

The essence failed. The light died.

I lowered the force-cage with a wave of my hand, and turned to face the class. Many of them had put down their food but still had gaping mouths full of bread-prawn paste.

“And that was just a single light-ball.” I reached out and brushed the imp’s remains to the floor. “Guess there’s no short-cuts to power sources – back to the rune work, ladies and gentlemen. After your lunches, of course.”

“Don’t you vont one, Raz?” Ghena asked, flashing me a cheeky smile. “Zey are delshious.”

“Gods, not again,” I muttered – in Telese.

That caught them off-guard – the room fell immediately into silence, then uproarious laughter.

* * *