I had the whole day to work on my other stories but nope, my traitorous mind decided to write this instead. Happy April Fool's, I guess?


"Try this spell, I think you'll like it!"

Chise held the scrap of paper close to her face, examining it closely. It contained a few lines of instructions, scribbled out in a near-illegible script.

"What exactly does it do, Torrey?"

"Beats me!" He laughed loudly. "It's a summoning spell for something interesting. But I'm pretty sure Thorn will murder me if I attempted to cast this spell."

And so, against her better judgement, she took the scrap of paper home and made preparations.

"Chise, are you sure this is safe? The alchemist copied this from an unknown book deep in the college library, we don't even know what it's supposed to do." Ruth sniffed at the magic circle she had drawn on the ground with alchemical chalk, sneezing once when some of the powdered chalk tickled his nose.

Chise checked the instructions again, frowning as she glanced back at her setup.

"He said it's a relatively harmless, low-leveled spell. We've tried casting magic ourselves before and nothing terrible has happened before. This should be fine, right?"

She swapped a few materials she had laid throughout the circle. Checking the instructions again, she grinned in satisfaction.

"That should do it. Ruth, come here."

The Church Grim sighed at his master's recklessness and utter disregard for personal safety. "Could you at least wear some form of protective equipment? We don't know if anything is going to spontaneously combust."

Rolling her eyes slightly, she dug up a pair of lab safety goggles from her school bag. "Yes, yes. Is this better, big brother?"

"All of my worries have mysteriously vanished." He replied sarcastically. There was no way to change her mind once it's been made up, so the least he could do was to remind her to take some caution. If anything, her eyes would be safe, he supposed.

She patted Ruth's head as he approached. A long, wispy tail coiled around her staff, sending a stream of magical energy through the staff and into her being.

"Evergreen vines of spring

Wind thyself 'round the ring of gloam

Bring forth that which was once placated, the wall of blighted spears."

The circle began to glow. Green vines emerged from the floor of her bedroom, forming a ring around the circle of a metre in diameter. The free ends converged towards the centre, reaching into the wooden floorboards. In the back of her mind, Chise began to worry about possible damage to the floor, but that thought was interrupted as the vines began to pull out of the circular portal.

"Something's coming."

Ruth took a defensive stance in front of Chise, who subconsciously held her staff up to the glowing figure that was taking form in the middle of her room. The glow intensified, until it was near impossible to keep her eyes open. She brought her left arm up to shield her eyes, trying to keep a visual on whatever was happening.

Then, a familiar scent filled her senses.

"Elias?"

She gingerly lowered her arm, only to be greeted by the sight of her mentor in the middle of her room, frozen in his usual book-reading posture in a familiar green armchair.

Amber eyes flicked up from his book, blinking out a few times as he refreshed his vision. Once his mind finally caught up with the reality of the situation, he closed his book slowly, a hand blindly reaching out for a bookmark that remained on the coffee table downstairs. When it encountered nothing but air, he simply folded a corner of the page and set it down on his thigh.

"Chise."

Gulp.

"Y-yes?"

"Where did you learn of this spell?"


A few strands of singed hair later, Torrey finally agreed to seal the book that contained the 'Pilum Murale Summoning Spell' deep inside the library's archives, never to be touched again.