Chapter 26: Calling Up Demons

Perspective: Warnado


"I'm telling you, Fire should have sent me out," Warnado said frankly.

Warnado sat in the training room, trying out a new technique he had come up with. He had his hand held in the shape of a gun and adjusted the size of the flame on the tip of his index finger.

Amanda nodded along unenthusiastically.

"Helix, I agree, your magic is unaffected by the crystals. You are also much stealthier than Kay-"

"You are bowling a perfect game so far," he laughed.

"But there's a difference between stealing the keys to a fairly low-security prison and sneaking around the Entity's inner sanctum."

"A-a-and gutter-ball! Sorry, you were doing so well. Better luck next time."

She crawled over and placed a hand on his shoulder. She gave him a look that was simultaneously a warning and a display of affection. Her eyes squinted with a stiff, reluctant sternness.

"Helix," she grunted and that was the only warning shot he needed.

"Okay," he conceded. "I should have been sent because I've learned a lot since then. Yes, there's been hiccups-" he stopped himself from glancing at his gauntlet, "but I'm becoming a real powerhouse."

Amanda looked at the now-invisible burns that had marked her palm and didn't bother pointing that these hiccups had always needed to be resolved by someone else.

"You're getting more powerful, but not more subtle" was the diplomatic solution she came up with.

"Oh really, watch this. Finger-point precision. Going to burn that dummy right between its eyes!"

He raised his hand and called out a spell. Fire exploded out from his finger and scorched the dummy, not even reducing it to ash that could be swept up or blown away with a wind spell. Instead, there was a half-destroyed corpse of straw and flame which was upsettingly conspicuous and very hard to hide or explain. Amanda elbowed him in the ribs and waited open-armed for a concession.

"...Okay," Warnado smiled. "You might have a point."

"Funny, I thought so too."

They laughed, and that was when Warnado noticed Shadow entering and walking right towards him.

"Hey sensei, how're things?"

Shadow lifted her hand and pointed her palm at the burning dummy. Runes lit up along the skin of her arm that was not covered by her robes, a blindingly bright beam erupted from her palm and struck the dummy. When Warnado could see clearly again the dummy was gone, not just incinerated gone, but disintegrated gone. The magical barrier protecting the room took on a deep purple shade in the place it was struck by the beam.

Shadow took a deep breath and said: "Sorry, I needed that."

Her hand was slightly trembling and Warnado knew something was wrong. Shadow had emphasized a lot just how functionally non-essential all of her bodily functions were. She didn't need to eat or sleep, so Warnado could think of exactly no reason she would be trembling, that indicated one of two things.

Option one was that she was worried about her brother going off on a likely-suicidal mission. Option two took it as a sign that she had finally lost control of her magic and was going to explode with the force of a supernova at any second. These were not mutually exclusive.

He gave Amanda a panicked look and her patient scowl of chastisement convinced him option one was most likely. He nodded apologetically and turned his attention back to Shadow.

"No worries, as you could see, that dummy was pretty much finished anyway. Such a shame, he was two weeks from retirement…" He looked at his feet with mock mournfulness and Amanda snorted reluctantly. Dropping the act, he asked, "Anyway, what brings you here, Shadow?"

From seemingly nowhere Shadow produced a chest made from a dark-blue wood and began to rummage around inside.

"So," Shadow said. "When summoning a demon, the most important step is preparation."

"Okay. We're doing this now... What's this?"

Warnado's eyes furrowed into a rigid line as he tried to process what was going on. Shadow wasn't usually this curt.

"A lesson. On demon summoning."

"Oh, okay!" Warnado squeaked, heartbeat quickening as his eyes were drawn down to the cursed gauntlet he wore. "I'll talk to you in a bit Amanda?"

On the one hand, he really didn't want her to leave, and he definitely didn't want to jump back into demon magic after losing control during the ambush. On the other, Fire's mission was clearly shaking Shadow's usually unshakeable coolheadedness - not majorly but she was usually so detached that this agitation stood out like a sore thumb. Complying with her was the best way of helping her through this as painlessly as possible. She had done a lot for him, both as a teacher and in helping him come down from two demonic episodes. He owed her this.

Amanda nodded understandingly, waved goodbye and departed. As she reached the door, she threw an encouraging smile. Warnado couldn't help but reflect on how lucky he was to have found her again.

He heard a thud and was ripped out of this sweet reflection. Shadow had taken a thick, leather-bound book from the chest and tossed it onto the ground. She drew out several pieces of chalk, then closed the chest.

Shadow opened the book and quickly flipped to a page somewhere near the beginning. The page had an illustration of what looked to be some kind of arrangement of symbols.

Shadow continued: "The first step in summoning a demon is knowing which one to summon, you usually get this either by reading demonology tomes such as this one or from personal experience. Knowing what kind of personality and traits a demon has is not only important for your well-being as a summoner but also for making sure the demon can actually manifest where you want it to."

She made a set of low-quality iron armor appear in the same manner as the chest, it looked to be one of the near-rejects from their forge. Lucy had once decided to vent to Warnado about how she knew their apprentice blacksmiths were learning as quickly as they could, but she wished they'd learn a lot faster. Lucy took the safety of the soldiers incredibly seriously.

Shadow said: "We will skip the selection step since I already know this demon, it needs a set of armor to possess, its condition is secondary." She pointed at the drawing in the book. "The next step is setting up the summoning circle and runes. This is a step many summoners either skimp out on or sometimes just plain screw up, it may be tedious and takes a while, but it is integral to your success. Incorrectly drawn lines and poorly selected runes can lead to unanswered summons or to the more hostile demons escaping."

"Alright," Warnado muttered tensely. "Anything specific about measurements I should know about? Any particular brand of chalk they like?"

His mentor replied: "That depends, some demons require special chalks, others need the lines to be drawn in other things like mud but for most plain chalk is sufficient, the runes themselves are what matter."

"And does the size of the runes matter? Could they theoretically be any size?"

He was surprised by how calmly he was handling this. It was just a bunch of runes and lectures. This he could deal with.

Shadow nodded. "In theory yes, however the actual summoning spot needs to leave enough space for the desired shape the demon should take. If you summon something that needs to take giant forms, you'll need bigger runes. If you want a tiny demon, you can get away with smaller runes."

"Oh okay. As smaller runes mean a smaller demon, we need circles roughly large enough for a creature that'll fit in that suit of armor. I get you."

"Yes." Shadow started by drawing two simple concentric circles. "This demon is not very complicated in its rune requirements, but it'll need a couple nonetheless."

Shadow drew four identical runes on the sides of the circles.

"Wait." Said Warnado. "I can read these, they just say 'stay', that's all it takes?"

Shadow explained: "The runes used are written demonic language, each represents a different concept and applying the right combination allows you to establish a pre-contract of sorts. The known runes are not the complete set mind you, by its very nature these ones are very crude versions of their concepts. They need to be simple to be drawn in chalk, which is why the next step of the summoning is so important."

Shadow drew a couple more runes, "dwelling", "metal", "work" and so on. Once they were done, she added some extra lines around the runed circle, including a bigger circle some distance away, which she placed the armor into.

She said: "The final step is instructing the demon, this is your task Warnado."

And that's where his heart began to pound away, each beat an earthquake in its own right.

"Most demons simply need to be told what exactly the purpose of their summoning is," Shadow continued. "For specialized demons like this one it usually just comes down to 'do your job, here is what else you need to be mindful of'. However, for more free-spirited or dangerous demons you'd need actual contracts that you need to check for loopholes and invalidating clauses. If worst comes to worst, you'll be stuck in an hour-long debate on demon law."

Warnado's eyes kept darting toward the gauntlet on his arm. Images of the tin throne, and the shifting, half-complete creature that sat upon it, flashed before him. He felt the need to straighten up and look big and intimidating so it didn't get any ideas. Suddenly it struck him that his legs were quivering a little, so he started pacing back and forth.

"Oh sure, the guy in the gauntlet is just a stickler for the law! Real fun debate that was!" thought Warnado

"During this time the demon is still bound by your runes and other containment measures if they are set up properly, you can send the demon back whenever you want as long as no actual contract is formed, which is nearly impossible to do on accident since the demonic language bypasses any tricky wordings our languages have."

Warnado couldn't keep quiet anymore.

"Couldn't you summon this yourself?" he pleaded.

Shadow said: "That was the intention, I'd do the summoning you'd do the instruction. While Wodahs can speak demon in theory, demons usually don't take instructions from something that is neither human nor a demon."

Warnado was panicking, now. He remembered the overpowering heat. How he'd pleaded at the foot of the tin throne to no avail.

"Can't it speak English?"

"Demons speak many languages, but they will only accept instructions in their own, it's part established protocol and part insurance. Using the demonic language both guarantees the demons can't use any double meanings or word trickery to scam the summoner, but it works both ways, no tricking demons into bottles to grant wishes."

He tried to nod along, then hung his head.

"...I can't do this," Warnado conceded and turned away. "Let's do this another evening. There has to be something else you can teach me."

Shadow suddenly raised her voice. "Warnado, this isn't just a lesson. We need this demon to assist our smiths, you heard Lucy. If our troops don't have proper armor, they'll get themselves torn apart for nothing! You can't make this about you!"

The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. This was the angriest he had ever heard her, and he was suddenly glad he couldn't see her expression.

He whirled around to see her clutching her face with one hand. He felt as though he hadn't eaten for days, his torso full of sharp, stabbing pains.

She slowly said: "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have yelled at you. I'm just… just so worried about Fire and I let that influence me. I'm not being a good mentor right now."

"No, no," Warnado mumbled. "I am making this about me. Summon it."

He breathed deeply and braced himself, trying to remember the way Wodahs spoke and testing a few key words. The words came naturally to him as he thought of them, as though he'd always known the language deep down and only needed someone to remind him it was there.

"I'm ready."

Shadow reached into the chest once again, this time she pulled out a sheet of paper.

"I already wrote down what you need to convey in advance. This demon shouldn't be difficult, I worked with it before, and it has proven to be reliable."

"Sounds…" He scanned the page. It was difficult. His eyes kept slipping around and reading the line before or after. Finally, he had the gist.

"Sounds doable."

Shadow positioned herself in front of the rune circle and raised her hands, her runes lighting up as she focused her magic. Warnado could practically feel the veil thinning between here and wherever the demon came from. A small ember appeared in the circle and rapidly grew into a vaguely person-shaped flame-thing. Shadow returned to a normal posture and gestured to Warnado.

"Your part starts here." She said.

"Hello," Warnado said in the stiff, strange demonic tongue.

The flame-thing nodded what could be interpreted as a head. "Greetings."

"Okay." He pulled out the note and recited. "The armor you need is in that other circle, you can possess it as soon as we have a contract. Help our blacksmiths out and instruct apprentices, obey instructions given by section leaders and anyone further up in the chain of command."

"Clear enough, is that all?" it shrugged.

Silence hung in the air. The demon didn't seem aggressive, just sort of bored. It began to tap its almost-foot, sending up a small spray of sparks about.

"I think so…" Warnado trailed off. Then, he laughed nervously. "Oh, and feel free to whistle while you work!"

The demon began to slowly flow along the lines connecting its circle to the one with the armor. Then, it simply filtered in through the gaps. The armor began to glow with a deep purple flame Warnado had come to associate with the demons, and he watched it march off with purpose.

"Should we follow it?" he asked Shadow.

"We can if you want to watch it work," she answered.

And with that they set off at a leisurely place and quite directly travelled to the armory. It had marched there on instinct, without making a single wrong turn. Warnado knew better than to ask why: magic was the answer, however unsatisfying.

It immediately moved up to an empty anvil and began beating some iron into shape with its hands, its flames melting the metal down into a molten soup. To this soup it added chunks of obsidian and sprinkled in blaze powder, from the resulting alloy it created miniscule threads with its hands and wove them together.

"Firesteel," Shadow said, as though it explained everything.

And sure enough, after a few minutes, the demon began to whistle in its own strange way, strange hisses and cracks harmonizing with the central melody. It was positively benign.

"Are many of them this docile?" Warnado asked distantly.

He just couldn't reconcile this remarkably normal creature with the tin throne, or the avatar of flame he'd assumed, or his father's corpse… It was like a square peg in a round hole. A piece of a jigsaw puzzle that had gotten mixed into a pizza box instead of one of the slices.

"Demons are like us in a way. Most of them don't leave their home dimension at all, those that do usually do so for a reason. Some are interested in us and our culture, others enjoy specific tasks like this one, of course there will also be ones who come for sadistic reasons, enjoying suffering of mortals and all that. Their reasons are as varied as the demons themselves, it seems you encountered mostly bad ones so far, especially the one sitting on the other end of your gauntlet."

"You got that right…"

And they sat there for a little bit, until Shadow finally spoke.

"If it's alright with you, we might need to summon more demons, Lucy would appreciate some alleviated pressure. Maybe once you're more comfortable you can do more parts of the ritual..." she stopped, her eyes widened. "The first note from Fire just arrived, come Warnado, we need to get the others!"

Without one word further, they were on their feet and running to learn what had happened.