2:003 on the 60th day of Winter

There were perhaps fifty mages packed into the ritual chamber. I was at the back near the door with the other newly awakened. After a short silence a stone disk rose from the floor carrying a man in purple robes. I thought I recognized him as head of one of the mage families in the city but I couldn't remember which one.

"For those of you I haven't met before, I am Mage Garnett" he said in a booming voice that was clearly amplified with some sort of magic. "Today we will be summoning a death worm from the plains of terror. Given the worm's nature, extra precautions have been taken. The first of these is that Mage Flood will not be participating in the ritual. Instead, his task will be to surround the worm in a sphere of water as soon as the chambers are opened."

Flood gave a wave to the crowd at his mention.

"The summoning cage will then be rolled into the back of the carriage." said Garnett. He pointed to what passed for a flat-bed truck on Root. It was an expensive design that was driven by water magic and controlled through mechanical levers. "The iron-skin legionaries have cleared the streets all the way to the wall where the demons are currently attacking. The worm will spend no more time in the city than is absolutely necessary."

Then he went over the steps of the ritual again and confirmed that everyone was ready.

The gong was struck three times to signal the earth and air mages to begin the isolation process. Four mages placed their hands on large cylinders embedded into the floor. There was a thrum of power in the air. After a long time of this the gong was struck two times. This was everyone's signal that the central chamber was ready. They would wait precisely five measures for everyone to clear their minds, crystalize the image of the death worm in their imagination, and muster their will.

I was told to focus on the green color along with a light mage in the group of teens I was with. Apparently red death worms were older and more aggressive so they wanted to make sure they got a green one. This was all a bit too close to using 'the power of positive thinking' for my taste. Then I remembered what my printer spell felt like. A clear picture of the end result was a shortcut to the dizzying complexity of subatomic physics. Everything would just fall into place. I may be going about this the wrong way. They gave me the color because they think I'm a light mage but my enhanced senses are those of a death mage. Then I had an idea.

If this worm really put out radiation then maybe I could help with that part instead. I held up my hand and descended into the microscope, focusing on the background radiation. It was rare, but every once in a while, a neutron would decay into a proton, or a stray nucleus would drift through my augmented vision. I tried to focus on pulling more of those from the direction of the summoning chamber.

The gong struck once, just when I finished preparing. I visualized the worm as clearly as I could while also focusing on an increase in the level of radiation without applying any death magic at all. It only took about five marks to notice the change. Stray neutrons started pelting my hand in increasing frequency.

I looked up to see earth mages lifting the top of the outer chamber into the air. It was followed immediately by the inner chamber and then we could see the central chamber drifting lazily through the air. A tongue of water whipped out to seize the central chamber and place it into a ring just outside the pool of liquid air. The top of the chamber twisted off to reveal a sturdy metal cage now filled with a corpulent green worm. It exuded the horrible smell of rotting flesh and had a circular mouth filled with rows of razor sharp teeth. I instinctively backed up a step. Through the microscope I could sense a torrent of alpha radiation and my detector necklace showed a deep blue color.

Then water surrounded the caged monster and my necklace’s light changed to a soft red color. Two long chains plunged into the water a mark later to wrap around the cage bars. Three men on each chain then dragged the cage forwards. It took a lot of effort for them to get it up the ramp and onto the back of the wagon but they managed it in only a measure or two. By this time we could see the worm looking around at us through the ball of water. The worm was coiled around the cage but was probably only three times as long and it was wide around. It didn't have a lot of room to move, even in the large cage. It struck me that we had supposedly just pulled it from its home. Though, if the name 'plains of terror' were any indication, perhaps it would prefer it here.

Flood jumped up on the driver's bench next to the legionar at the controls and seemed to not be having any difficulty maintaining the barrier. Both wore bracelets that glowed a bright green for whatever reason. With a flick of the driver's wrist, the cart began to move, quickly leaving the room and our sight. I let out a breath and could feel the mages around me do the same. Marcus found me and slapped me on the shoulder.

"How about that worm?" he said with a big grin on his face.

"Ya, that was a huge green worm." I said dryly. "Did you know that was what we would be summoning?"

"Ya, Flood told us a few days ago." he said, still smiling. "I wanted to surprise you."

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

I scowled at him.

"You should have warned me." I said. With some notice I could have prepared better. Though, now that I am thinking of it, I should have come in my armor regardless.

"I can't really imagine how that thing will fight demons." he said losing a bit of his good cheer.

He had a point. It did seem rather squishy. Then I thought of something.

"Hey, do you know if there are books in the library on summoning?" I asked.

***

0:063 on the 61st day of Winter

The next day I made my way to the library to look up whatever I could find on summoning. It was so different from how light and death magic worked that I couldn't figure out the mechanics of it. Not that it really needed mechanics. I guess I am always looking for some explanation, a model of reality that makes sense. So far, death magic without applying my will, seems to simply modify how gluons work. Similarly, unaspected light magic seems to modify how photons work. Extending this model, I think that water and earth magic modify how the theoretical gravitons work. Nothing about that model should be able to transport a monster across space. It was a contradiction and it was starting to really bug me.

I had learned later that the death worm had only been a temporary reprieve at the wall. The demons kept their distance to lure it into a field where they were able to drop rocks on it until it died. Disappointing but I suppose that you have to try a bunch of strategies to find out what works. The impact on my own situation was far more substantial. Because the city leaders were worried that death magic poison would find its way back into the city somehow, by accident or by the demons using it against us, they had commissioned a bunch of death magic detectors. Now all the Cinderlords and a bunch of other prominent people were wearing bracelets that would be able to detect my magic if I slipped up on containment even once. I suppose it was actually a good thing because it kept me vigilant but it was also one more thing to worry about.

Back at the library, I worked with Husina again and together we pulled several primers on summoning. The introductory text on the subject basically restated what Mage Bolt had said but it had a very interesting warning.

Never attempt to summon a human. It never ends well.

Well that was ominous. I ended up switching to a history book after that. It described how mages will, on rare occasions, summon their own nightmares to reality by accident. Common summons were slimes, snakes, spiders, and other things that make our skin crawl to look at. The author called the phenomena dream manifestation and described how some very smart mages a few hundred years ago figured out that it happened more often in dark, cold, places with little or no wind. They thought that the mages were performing astral projection and then pulling the monsters back with them. So, of course, they started to try to do it intentionally.

The author then had a whole chapter describing the subculture of demonologists. Basically, a bunch of social outcasts getting together to summon demons and other monsters in caves dimly lit by candle light. They found that by working together, and imbibing no small measure of hallucinogens, they were able to summon larger, more complex creatures.

Then a woman named Alyssa Stormcaller came along, she was a wealthy duchess that got involved in a demonology group. She funded an extensive research program that incrementally led to the current form of the ritual. Basically, summoning works exponentially better as the barrier that separates the summoner from the summoning chamber gets colder, darker, and is in less physical contact. She was the one to discover that suspending the chamber with earth magic also made summoning more reliable and effective.

When a summoning fails it can go very wrong. The most common failure is the death of the summoned creature. Explosions are also common. On rare occasions, when not enough is known about the creature, there are too few mages in the summoning, or if the ritual is disrupted, it will fail in strange and bizarre ways. One memorable case occurred when a Morgeth demon summoning was disrupted by a battle. The ritual completed to reveal a small wooden doll with lungs and a mouth of flesh that endlessly repeated the word "Morgeth" until it died.

Summoning was so weird. I kept reading and eventually found why the primer warned against summoning humans. Alyssa's husband died and she tried to summon him back to life. Instead of pulling his body through space or even summoning his ghost, the ritual summoned a doppelganger that looked like him. It acted mostly like him but was violent and malicious. He, it, was eventually killed.

Then came the first demon war. Why had I never read about this? Apparently there was a gigantic war about a hundred and fifty years ago that drew in every major power on the continent. This was the first war where summoning was widely used. Whole armies of demon soldiers were fielded by every side. By the time the dust settled almost a quarter of the population had died of one cause or another. As many of the demons no longer had humans to command them, a bunch of them banded together and settled in several of the abandoned countries.

I had to look back at the first page to when the book was published. Sure enough it was pre - second demon war having been written about 40 years ago. I was leaning back in my chair thinking about the implications of what I just read when Husina came back in. She carried another small stack of books which she set them down on the table before putting her hands on her hips.

"Well don't you look comfortable." she said.

"Did you know that humans summoned demons?" I asked. "I had heard before that demons could be summoned, of course, but I had never heard that they are only here because we brought them here."

"Ya, they talk about that in a lot of the old records of the continental war." she said. "I think a lot of the mages regretted unleashing demons into the world. They felt like it could lead to the end of humanity. Sure enough here we are." she gave a helpless shrug.

"Yes but there was almost a hundred years between the first demon war- sorry, you called it the continental war- and the mess we are in now. What changed?" I said.

She had no answer to that and gave another shrug. I sat up straight and looked at the stack of books she had brought only to freeze. On the top of the stack was a book with the words "Summoning of Heroes" written on the spine. I slowly picked it up from the stack and looked at Husina thinking it was a joke. She didn't seem to see anything wrong so if it was a joke she was good at hiding it. Opening it to the first page I nearly dropped the book in shock. My eyes wet with the tears of loss as I read.

On The Summoning of Heroes

by Holda Aegis

1197