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Summoner's Edge
Involuntary Summons

Involuntary Summons

"It seems like this up-and-coming summoner has a novel approach: summoning other summoners! Let's see how she fares in: THE ARENA!"

Exactly as expected, Kana thought bitterly as she heard the announcer's voice finish to the raucous cheers of the crowd. The prize was substantial for taking part in the arena: make it three rounds and get enough to live on for life. That wasn't quite what she was after. She just wanted to live.

Two summoners enter, call their creatures, and when the battle is done one walks out. The crowd waited with their thumbs up or thumbs down buttons ready, just in case the loser survived the battle. No one had survived the crowd vote.

The bell sounded. Outside her small bare cell, the timer had begun. More powerful creatures always took longer, so the established contestant always got a head start on the summoning and the challenger a one minute penalty. Outside her opponent would be scraping the circle into the floor if he was a traditionalist. He wasn't. Anhar the Bloody would be throwing out his rope, the symbols already carved, his contracted ritual forms halfway through. Kana fingered her athame, felt the bronze dagger's keen edge and checked the runes upon it.

Well this was going to be embarrassing, and short, she reflected. The crowd knew it as well, for whoever she summoned would have no time to call their own creature. Most likely they'd surrender immediately and then she'd be at the mercy of the crowd. This was a comedy spot for them, a stupid little girl dying horribly for the crowd.

It wasn't her fault she'd developed this power, that her ability was to summon other summoners. She couldn't even control them, so she wasn't slaving, but it was an uncomfortable power for the council. To be treated like they treated their summons, at the beck and call of another, was not to be borne. Even when she'd begged, offered to give them her summoning tools, offered to only use it under supervision to call them back from danger or death on the battlefield, they had pretended to agree.

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Then she'd been brought here, tricked here, only to hear her name being read out. A nice way to get rid of an embarrassment she thought, and clenched her fingers tight round her blade. If they didn't call something too big, maybe she could defend herself. Not a chance, she knew. They wouldn't send Anhar in as first opponent if she was meant to live.

The bell chimed loudly as the door opened. The wall moved forward behind her, and she strode out before it could push her out onto the sands. The crowd cheered raucously as she confronted the Council's most feared executioner.

Anhar was halfway through his summons, his hands raised and the barrier of magic around him whirling in many colours. His thick black robes were marked with the bones of his victims as trophies. Kana took in the symbols before him at once. The Draconic Obsidian Emblem. She was dead.

Her hand clenched round the dagger so hard it bit into her palm. She grinned wildly, threw her own arms up and began her chant. No circle needed, for a human was no supernatural threat and so low-powered she need not fear he would finish first.

"Veni Draconica," he cried, reaching the last line of his chant as he raised his staff above his head.

"Veni, Veni, Veni, Anhar the Bloody!" she shouted, blind to everything else, her arms upflung as the bloodstained athame cut the air.

He looked up in shock. Torn instantly from his circle in a whirl of colour he reformed in front of her, glaring down. She did not even wait for him to form, her upflung arms descending and burying the athame in his neck. He staggered back, reeling and clutching at his wound, and without even thinking she cut his throat.

Ankar collapsed. His summon died with him, the colours fading into silence. The arena was still for a single instant. The crowd erupted to their feet, some cheers, some cries of 'cheat'.

Kana didn't care. She pulled the enchanted, armoured, cloak from the corpse and draped it round her own shoulders, ready for the next fight. Her shout drowned out by the crowd, she raised her dagger to the crowd in challenge, glaring at the Councillors watching from their box. Send out their next, if they could find one. She'd serve them the same.

And when she had, she was coming for the Council.

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