There were many branches to familiar magic, but the main two were summoning and taming. Taming required a mix of skill, innate talent, and natural charisma with animals and monsters alike. Needless to say I wasn’t suited for taming. Summoning on the other hand was a much more realistic option, but for summoning magic tended towards being a bit random in what you ended up with. In summoning you were just as likely to end up with a dragon as you were to end up with a slime, and the outcome of the summoning varied wildly based on a countless number of conditions.

If taming was an art, then summoning was a science. One required real talent, whereas any idiot could attempt the other but only the dedicated and gifted could excel at it.

As I watched the green cat monster shift around on the tree branch far above me I quickly decided that I didn’t want to test and see if I had a gift for taming. I had a suspicion that a lot of would-be tamers ended up eaten when they tried to obtain their first pet.

With a soft sigh I decided that my best bet was probably to leave as quietly as I could since the cat didn’t seem interested in moving any time soon. Stowing away my water skin I carefully picked myself up and slowly moved away from the cat’s tree. When I was far enough away from the tree that I felt comfortable again I canceled my magic and returned to visibility.

There was no way for me to figure out my way to the road outside of randomly heading south and hoping for the best, so I decided to keep walking east.

As I walked I turned over the new issue on my mind, summoning. I didn’t know a lot about summoning, in fact I knew very little about most magic and only made my few tricks by playing around. What I did know was that summoning was a magic of the null element, and as such I should be able to do it. My affinities were light and water, but I should be able to cast null spells without much problem as null was an element that did not clash with my affinities. Still I would need to draw a circle to summon, and I think there was some sort of cost or sacrifice involved in the process too.

Sighing in disgust I ducked under a low hanging branch and tried to remember all I could about summoning magic and how a poor and ignorant novice like me could hope to pull it off.

I would need to make a circle, but that was as easy as finding a stick and drawing in the dirt. The spell chant was… not something I knew so I’d have to dump in a ridiculous amount of mana and focus more than I have ever focused before to have the spell actually cast. It’ll probably need some sort of price if I want to summon something permanently, so I’m probably going to have to offer up a sacrifice or ten… What else? Maybe a bit of my blood to better link the magic to me, oh and using a catalyst of some kind in the middle of the circle probably wouldn’t hurt either.

I nodded my head, that seemed like it was a good enough to at least qualify as a rough summoning spell. I’d probably have to make up my own chant to better help me focus on what I want the magic to do, but hopefully my slapdash version of summoning would work close to what the formal spell does.

It was times like these that I really resented my social class. All I had to work off of were fairy tales, old legends, and second hand accounts. All the real magical knowledge were hoarded away by the nobility and a few schools who managed to buy up any book or tome that was written by a mage. As a farmer’s son there was just no way for me to get my hands on real teaching material for magic. I was lucky enough to come from a household that could afford to buy me a book for my birthday, and doubly lucky at that when one of those books was the legend of Ark the magus. I probably knew more about magic than any other commoner kid my age, but that still wasn’t enough for me to be able to cast real spells.

Still, I had stumbled my way into a learning a few things from all my time spent practicing with my mana. That coupled with my bit of knowledge on mana has lent me a bit of confidence…

“I can just try it, and if it doesn’t work then I’ll just have to try things in new way.”

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*

Sitting in a small clearing of trees I ate half a bag of trail mix and a dried strip of jerky, I would need all the energy I could spare for this next part. Washing down my dinner with some water I looked over at what I had managed to put together.

I had drawn a rough circle in the ground with a stick, the circle was a little more than five feet wide since I could fit inside it when I laid down. Around the circle I had written a few things, I could hardly call them words of power or spell script though. What I wrote were things like ‘Please summon a powerful servant’, ‘Please let what I summon obey me’, and ‘I’d really like something that can protect me please’ so it was more akin to begging than any sort of magical language. Plus everything was in common, but from what I understood any sort of clarification of intent either spoken or written can help spells. It was just that some languages worked a lot better than others for that sort of thing.

I also had my sacrifices ready, two dead squirrels and a bird with a broken wing. I knew my sacrifices were pretty lackluster so I also had a bit of a trump card ready, my own blood. Blood held a strong importance in all sorts of magic and rituals, so it was my hope that adding a bit of my own blood would help increase the worth of my sacrifices. Of course I didn’t really have a set amount of blood ready to offer up, but my idea was to just cut a shallow line in my arm and let however much comes out be added to my sacrifice.

Sadly I didn’t have any sort of catalyst prepared, so I decided to just try the summoning without it. After all it seemed like a better idea to have no catalyst at all and get a random result than have a weak catalyst and get a really weak creature as a pet. If all else failed then I could always try putting in a animal skull or something and hope that works.

With my meal over and my preperations as complete as I could get them I decided to start. Standing up I grabbed my sacrifices and stood at the outside of my circle. Mustering up all my mana and saying a silent prayer to whatever god would listen I started my spell.

“I summon thee, oh great and powerful servant of mine. I offer thee these humble sacrifices…”

I tossed my dead squirrels and the wounded bird into the circle before I pulled out my knife, gritting my teeth I cut a line into my left arm and held the arm out so that the blood would drip into the circle.

“And hope that they please you. Now servant, come forth! Answer the call of thine master!”

Half expecting my spell to fail I was genuinely surprised when the circle flashed and my sacrifices disappeared. Watching in disbelief I saw my circle disappear as the earth glowed and began to flow like water, at the center of what had once been my circle I saw something emerge from the ground. Suddenly I felt a stinging pain in my head, and I fell to my knees as the stinging grew into a sharp stabbing agony. I was flooded with feelings and thoughts that didn’t seem like my own, and then there was just a constant painfully loud ringing that drowned out everything else in the world.

*

I must have passed out because I woke up face down in the dirt. Sitting up I looked around to see that it was now night time and my circle was gone. I let out a sigh, it had looked like it was working but in the end nothing had happened. Maybe I had gotten close with my attempt but had been just far enough off for the spell to fail. Regardless I’d have to try to add something new or do something differently when I tried again, just maybe I would hold off on attempting another summoning for a day or so.

Stretching lightly I tried not to think about how exhausted I felt. I would need to find someplace safer to spend the night, and since my mana was all dried up at the moment I would probably need to eat a bit more food before I rested. The sudden thought of food reminded me that my pack was filled with food and I had left it unattended behind me as I passed out. Turning around and hopping that no critter had gotten smart and made off with my food I saw something that made me freeze.

There perched on top of my abandoned pack was a large black bat with deep red eyes, and all around the pack were the dried up corpses of squirrels and birds.

I felt a flash of insight as I saw the bat, and I knew that it was mine. My summoning spell actually worked, and the pet I had summoned had been loyally guarding my back while I had been passed out. The bat seemed happy that I was awake now, and I did not know how I could tell all that just by the bat tilting its head and sniffing.

“Dark Blood Bat, Rank 0, female…”

I didn’t know how I knew so much about the bat, or I guess I should call it my bat now, I just did. Maybe it was part of the spell, but I felt connected to the bat. It felt like a trusted friend I had been with for years, the sort of friend you could count on for anything.

“Ok, this is weird. I’ve never heard of summoning doing something like this, it should just poof up a monster that is forced to do what you tell it to not make some sort of link between the monster and the summoner.”

The bat shuffled side to side a bit on top of my pack and I could tell that it was concerned about me.

“Well, I fucked up…”