An Inexperienced Apprentice

Ishara entered the mortal world, and felt her demonic visage melt away as she assumed a human face. The limits of the spell **** her shape, but her own nature had its influence in the result, so while she was neither threatening nor familiar to the wizard who had called her, she was as she intended to be – a creature of unsurpassed beauty.

In the form of a young woman, with high, firm breasts and a complexion like honeyed milk, she might have been a statue of a muse, or a painter’s ideal of his forgotten young love. Blonde hair spilled in a single, thick plait down the center of her back, and she wore a diaphanous gown of white silk, offering only the most base hint of the charms she carried beneath.

Ishara was in a library, she could tell. A stone floor, covered with carpet, a pair of comfortable chairs before a fireplace that burned with light and warmth and yet needed no fuel – a wizard’s sanctum. The bookshelves were lined neatly with grimoires and texts of blue and silver leather, and a work table stood against a wall beneath the window. It was night-time in the mortal world, and the stars glittered coolly on glass beakers.

In the center of the room, the carpet had been pulled back, and glyphs of protection and binding had been drawn on the stone, meant to call her, contain her, **** her to service. How strange, Ishara thought, that a wizard of the means suggested by the luxury of the library wouldn’t have a more permanent summoning circle, rather than a temporary construct of chalk.

She had her answer quickly enough. She finished her turn, and caught the intake of breath as she beheld her summoner. A young man, no more than a boy, really, of nineteen or twenty, wearing roughspun with dirt on his fingernails. Not remarkable in appearance, with resentment rather than wisdom and power in his eyes. An apprentice, Ishara mused, with more aptitude than sense, who had tried his hand at summoning.

If Ishara had been as her mother, she could have simply tested her power against the runes that bound her in the circle, and many succubi could have won against untrained apprentices. Newborn, Ishara was not so sure that she could **** her way free, and the consequences would be. . .unpleasant.

But there were other ways. Just because he had spoken the invocation correctly, did not mean that there wasn’t the subtlest of flaws in the circle meant to contain her. That would mean testing, though. First. . .

“You have called, and I have come,” Ishara said. Her voice was the ringing of bells, the whisper of desire between bedded lovers in the dark, and she saw that the young apprentice shuddered at the effect.

“I.. . .I did,. Yes, I did summon you, and bound you, and you must do me a service,” the apprentice said. His voice stammered in the beginning, but he cleared his throat and spoke with some bit of authority. “I command you to reveal your kind and your name to me, demon.”

“I am Ishara, my summoner, and I am a succubus.” Ishara felt the compulsion to obey. Even if she was improperly bound, the apprentice had not made a mistake in the command runes, and she could not resist a direct command, until they began to negotiate service. “And what may I call you?” Her voice ran against the apprentice’s skin like a wisp of silk, and he shuddered. He was not smart enough to command her not to use her enchanting voice against him; and she could see that she might easily win the battle of will between herself and this unprepared wizardling. She took a step towards the edge of the circle. Two more, and she would have to step over the line to go any further.

“A succubus? I didn’t mean, that is, I was trying to. . .” he stopped, and regrouped. “My name is nothing you need concern yourself with, demoness. By the rules of Hell, I may command one service from you.”

“That is true, my summoner,” Ishara said as she took another step. One more. “But your sacrifice only opened the way that I might come to you. If I am to serve you in one task, you must bargain for it. What would you have me do?”