Tired from the exertion, Vultressant went and sat in a chair next to Oeister’s desk. “Where is the Fae realm?” he asked.

Oeister looked up with a start from a book that he had been reading and asked, “What was that?”

Had the Sage not seen him sit down? “The Fire Sprite that I summoned said that she is from the Fae realm. Is that part of this world?”

Oeister shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said. “The Fae might live on another planet or in another realm of existence. They seem to be able to travel to this world with relative ease. Some show up only at night, while others only seem to come out at specific times of the year. Fae creatures are also much easier to summon than creatures from other realms, especially the nether realm, so the fact that your first successful summoning was a Fae creature is not surprising.”

“So these realms are not on this planet?” Vultressant asked.

“As far as I have been able to determine, no.” Oeister got up and removed a book from one of the shelves and brought it back to the desk. He opened it to a page, then turned the book around so that Vultressant could see. The page contained an illustration of separate landscapes that appeared to be layered. He pointed at the layer fourth from the bottom and said, “This is our realm.” The image was full of small hills and grasslands, and there were other images that depicted the dual suns of this planet. Oeister then tapped the layer above and said, “This is the realm of the Fae.” The left half of the image was of a starry night, and there were malevolent-looking creatures both on land and in the air. The other half was of vibrant colors and verdant land, along with a host of fairies walking or flying about.

“Hopefully Elida is from the area on the right,” Vultressant said.

“What? Who?” Oeister said, looking confused.

“My Fire Sprite,” Vultressant said. “She told me her name this time.”

Oeister looked at him dumbfounded. “I know the name of only one of my summoned creatures, and that came from weeks of...interrogation. Your first one just offered it up to you? It’s likely a lie, and ‘Elida’ isn’t her name.”

Vultressant shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll call her whatever she wants to be called.”

“Doesn’t matter?” Oeister asked incredulously. “If you know the name of your summoned creature, then it won’t be able to resist your commands, or it’s at least much harder for them to do so.”

The Sage had said that he used his summoned creatures to do his fighting for him, but Vultressant had something very different in mind. “That little wisp of a Sprite won’t be fighting. I’ll probably just ask her to scout things out for us.”

“She glows,” Oeister said flatly. “How the hell is that going to work?”

He made a valid point, but Vultressant wanted more options for his spellcasting, so he decided to change the subject. “I might just call her up for info on another Fae or something. Regardless, can we get back to the realm stuff?” He pointed at the book on the desk.

Oeister was still looking at him as if he were a fool. “According to this document and several others that I’ve seen, this is how the realms are layered. I think it’s likely that the realms are just different planets, but most scholars of this world see it this way,” he said, pointing to the picture. “The realm of the Fae is just above our realm, so they can access our realm under certain circumstances. They can be drawn to this plane more easily than to the other planes because it is supposedly easier to go down than up.”

“What about the one below us?” Vultressant asked. That image appeared to be of a cave system.

“It’s apparently easier to travel downwards than upwards.”

“Then once the Fae get to this world, how do they get back?”

“The Fae creatures are native to their own realm, be it a planet, a plain of existence, or something else. I’ve read that it’s generally easier to get back to your home realm than to get away from it.”

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“What about a Demon of Shadows?” Vultressant asked, remembering their encounter with the demon. “What realm are they from?”

Oeister’s eyes opened wide, and he tapped a black section below the illustration. Vultressant waited for a moment for him to explain, but the man said nothing. “It’s below all the realms?” he asked hesitantly.

Oeister shook his head. “No, this is the bottom realm; the nether realm.”

Vultressant looked at the page more closely, and he realized that the black area was part of the illustration. There were actually four realms below this one, not just three. “I thought that you said that it was very difficult to summon things from that realm.”

“Incredibly difficult,” he confirmed.

“Well, we found a crazy temple where a Goblin was summoning one. The thing nearly wiped out our entire party.” Speaking about the incident, Vultressant remembered the ring that he got from the encounter. “Hey, can you identify this?” he asked, holding out the hand that he wore the ring on.

Oeister frowned, not looking at his offered hand. “How did you escape the demon?”

“I distracted it with a fire spell while our Night Stalker killed it.”

Oeister’s frown deepened. “I have done a fair amount of research into the creatures from that realm, and if you had actually fought a Demon of Shadows, then you would have all been incapacitated by mental attacks and slowly tortured to death. Maybe if your level was much higher, you could have escaped, but...”

Blassie and Rena had reacted similarly. Even after they had given the two the creature’s core, they had still looked skeptical. Neither of the two said that they believed the story, so they might have thought that the core had been stolen. “Our Night Stalker is immune to mental attacks.”

“That’s pretty impressive, and it explains his ability to withstand the primary attacks of the demon. What about you? How were you able to cast at all?”

“Oh, when it hit me, I went down and couldn’t think at all.”

Oeister pursed his lips. “What about before it hit you? How were you able to cast?” He seemed to finally notice the ring on Vultressant’s finger. “Where’d you get the ring?”

“From the Goblin that we think summoned the demon.”

Oeister eyed the ring. “Let me see if I can identify it.”

Something about the conversation felt wrong. Oeister had a strange look that was neither friendly nor open. His mood had definitely changed from the normal friendly manner that he had displayed since they had met him. Vultressant moved his hand closer, but he closed his fist instead of taking the ring off to hand to Oeister, as he had with the Enchantress. Oeister held his hand over the ring, and Vultressant could feel his power. After a minute, he nodded and said, “I believe that this ring is the reason that you could cast in the presence of the Demon of Shadows. It hinders telepathy and... something else that I can’t identify. After you killed the demon, did it drop a core?”

The Sage seemed to have reverted back to his normal demeanor, but Vultressant didn’t know if he should speak of the core given the quick change. The core was with the Enchantress, so there was likely little harm in telling the man. “There was a core, and Taloc is having a sword made that has it as a component. Why did it drop a core and not an essence?”

“Then the Goblin fellow didn’t summon the demon; it made it to this plane on its own, or possibly with help,” Oeister said. “If a creature from another realm travels to our realm and dies, it drops a core. Creatures from this world killed here will either have an essence to extract or will drop a core. It is almost always an essence, but some will drop just a core. The one exception is a summoned creature. If the demon was summoned, then nothing would have been left behind after its death.”

“Well, that’s not true.”

Oeister looked as if he were surprised by being corrected. “Which of us has been on this world longer? I know what I’m talking about.”

Vultressant took on a lecturing tone. “You have made a case that something always happens, so I just need to offer one counterexample to disprove your statement.”

Oeister held up a hand. “Players, like me and you, drop neither, so I’m not counting that as a counterexample. Actually, I don’t know what happens after our last death, so something might drop then.”

Vultressant shook his head. “I have two counterexamples, actually, and neither are players. The Goblin Summoner had no essence when I went to extract it, and he was the first one that I went to. Also, there were these demonic cultists who essentially turned to goo and evaporated after we destroyed the jewels in their foreheads. Their swords were left behind, but they didn’t drop anything else. The cultists might have been summoned and therefore not a good counterexample, but the Goblin’s body was still in this realm after it died.”

“Gems in their foreheads, huh?” Oeister asked. “Well, if their essences were within the gems, then once you destroyed the gems, they died. That seems more likely than all of them being summoned. That’s a lot to handle.”

That made a great deal of sense, but there had been no gem on the Goblin, and his body remained after death. “That is certainly possible, but what about the Goblin?”

Oeister smirked and pointed at Vultressant’s ring. “Did the gems on the cultists look anything like that gem?”

Vultressant eyed his ring. The gem was smaller, but it looked similar to the cultist’s gems. He never got close to the demon cultists, but he remembered the gems on their foreheads had been red and shaped like a baseball diamond. The gemstone on his ring was green, but the shape matched. “Maybe,” he finally admitted.

“Well, that was strike two,” Oeister said, “because I think your Goblin’s essence is in your ring.”