I stood frozen at the scene playing out in the middle of my crummy apartment. What had started as a bit of role-playing fun to keep me busy as I waited to skip town that night had somehow turned into an actual, very real disaster. The air itself was vibrating. Each breath brought a grating metallic scent into my nose and mouth. Light was somehow flowing off my lamp and from the small gaps under the door and curtain, draining into the chalk markings on the floor like water into a storm drain. Moments ago, before my conception of reality was shattered, they had been white, as chalk normally is. Now however they had transformed into a color that was somehow at once both black and red. Like fire overlapped with burnt wood. With a CRACK a gale suddenly roared from the center of the room, sending the table and chair I had pushed out of the way to accommodate the summoning circle spinning onto the floor. Further CRACK’s began sending fractures through the floor and walls.
I was shaken out of my daze when a splinter the size of my fist glanced past my face, cutting my cheek slightly. I shook my head and scrabbled backwards, hands searching for the crumbling book that had started all this. I fumbled as I pulled it towards me and it fell back onto the ground, but as it did the cover flipped and it miraculously fell open to the section I needed. Uncannily convenient, but I couldn’t spare it any thought at that moment. The floor in the center of the room was now indented a good six inches, and the CRACK’s were only getting louder. I had followed the book’s warnings, I really had: don’t attempt these rituals, and if you do attempt a ritual, only do it once you’ve memorized it to a degree that you dream about it, and think of it more than you think of you lover (not that the latter part had presented much challenge). But as diligent as I was I had not prepared at all for the shock of the ritual actually working. How could I have! Mainly, I hadn’t bothered studying how to cancel the invocation, which I was now seriously regretting as the procedure was twice as long as the primary ritual and seemed to involve reagents such as “moonish water” and “smoked birch heartwood”. The book also mentioned in a footnote that the one known time the ritual was left half-complete it took two weeks to burn out and destroyed a small barony in the process. It seemed the only way out of this madness was to see it through.
I gulped, and reached for the kitchen knife I had placed next to me at the start. I had, as I said, of course not expected to actually reach this final step. I had smirked earlier as I positioned the knife, freshly washed in red wine (the last of my last box) as per the instructions. It was just a game, after all. One I had taken to quite an extreme, but it was my last night in the place anyway. I breathed in.
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Don’t think about it, don’t think about it, don’t think abou-
I drew the knife across my palm. I recoiled back, clutching my bleeding hand. It had cut a lot deeper than I thought it would, and it HURT. Gritting my teeth I opened my cut hand and flicked it towards the circle, which was now glowing a dangerous-looking orange color. Most of the blood fell short, but a few drops managed to cross the threshold where they suddenly altered course, spinning around and slowing drawing into the center around seven feet off the ground. There they froze, and began drawing in the room’s light. Not in the way the circle was pulling streams of light off the lamp, this was pulling from everywhere and everything, from the walls, from empty space, from my blood-covered shirt, everywhere. The process left behind uneven, unnatural shadows that seemed to twist and shudder in tune with the vibration of the air. And then the madness stopped, and all gave way to peaceful darkness. No, it was darker than darkness. I couldn’t even tell if my eyes were open or not. And then, quick as a blink, it vanished.
The madness had left and been replaced with a person. Or rather, someone I could immediately tell was not a person at all. She stood in the center of the wrecked room, twirling the little spheres of my blood around her fingers.
She wore a long one-piece dress of an incredibly deep blue interspersed with streaks of crimson. Her hair fell to just above her shoulders and was the dark red of dying embers. She scanned around the room, gaze passing over me without a second thought. Her expression changed slightly as she continued looking. Was that confusion? Suddenly her face snapped back to me, eyes the color of rich honey staring me down.
“You. Where’s your master? It’s dreadfully impolite to not show yourself for the summoning. I know etiquette has lapsed somewhat this century, but I’d have thought this much was obvious.”
“U-uh, I summoned. I summoned you.”
She rolled her eyes.
“Yes, I know you preformed the ritual, but who bade you do it? I designed the summoning clause myself, I made sure it was just obvious enough that you can coerce another into doing it that anyone selfish enough to attempt the summoning in the first place would immediately try to pass the cost off to some hapless individual.” She gestured at me for that last part. “Now where are they?” Her eyes narrowed and a slight smirk played on her lips. “I only go through with this because I so enjoy ensnaring the greedy in terrible bargains. I’ll make sure you’re left out of it if that’s what you’re worried about.”
I let out a kind of nervous giggle, and promptly learnt that sheer terror CAN mix with embarrassment.
“About that...”
She looked me up and down, then looked around again, more frantically this time, before looking me up and down again.
“No way.”