Proceed

You spend the rest of the day catching up with your half-brother Martin. However, a little nugget of thought keeps eating at your brain about the possibility of summoning an otherworldly creature to help you. Despite Martin and Akina's flat refusal to assist, you still feel as if it is your best bet to end this quickly. Any other possibility will either get you caught or **** into a relationship that you don't necessarily want. Therefore you decide to sneak off after everybody's gone to bed and attempt it yourself. You hope that your blood connection to a succubus gives you enough latent powers to perform the summoning, even if you haven't actually managed to tap into that power very much.

The day passes quietly and the sun sets. You find yourself in bed waiting quietly for Akina to fall asleep. Hours pass and it seems like she will never even doze off. You almost nod off yourself before you hear her breathing slow. You sit up and slowly slide out of bed, adjusting your nightie to cover yourself appropriately as you step for the door. After the first step Akina's eyes snap open, "What's wrong?" she asks.

You almost jump back in surprise, but stiffen instead as you become fearful that you've been caught. You think quickly before answering, "I have to pee."

Akina sits up, "Well, there's a chamber pot in the corner."

"I...uh...Would rather have my privacy." you clench your teeth, hoping she buys it.

She eyes you for a moment, then shrugs, "Fine." The she lays back in bed.

You resist the urge to breathe a sigh of relief and step out in the hall. The castle is very dark at night with the only activity being night guards patrolling. You navigate them carefully and head for the library. The guards you don't manage to avoid, you manage to talk your way through them until you arrive at the library. You peek your head in and find it to be just as dark without even the occasional torch on the wall for light. Stumbling around in the dark room for a few minutes, you manage to find an oil lamp. After lighting it, you turn and shut the door.

You wander the various shelves of the library. It's nothing like the library in the capital, but there are still many many book there. Spending about an hour, you walk through examining various book titles trying to find some of the more occult books. After collecting five or six, you move over to a table and start paging through them. Most of them are useless for what you want and explain things from a research perspective. Only one actually explains how to set up a summoning circle and what you need to actually summon something. You read it thoroughly, looking through the best ways to summon a celestial being. Afterwards you work on collecting what you need and slide the table out of the way to begin working. You draw on the ground with a piece of chalk, doing your best to mimic the magic circle portrayed in the book. Drawing it large enough for a person to stand inside of it, you work on drawing the various wards and protective marks that surround the circle.

After a bit of work, you step back and examine your work. It's a bit rough, but it looks like the diagram in the book. The final step is lighting candles around it and channeling your magic to actually summon a celestial while speaking the proper words. The book explains that while some simple magic doesn't require an incantation, higher level magic definitely does. You steel yourself and light the extra candles you gathered and place them an even distance around the circle, then stand and put your hands forward and concentrate with all your might before shouting "ficer cuma leneras emolire ipsa probare!"

Nothing happens.

You pull up the sleeves to your nightie and work yourself up to a second attempt, "Okay. Let's try this again. ficer cuma leneras emolire ipsa probare!"

The circle glows faintly and you feel a tingling in your arms, but other than that nothing happens.

You growl and grit your teeth and concentrate with all of your might, "ficer cuma leneras emolire ipsa probare!"

Suddenly you feel a warmth flood through you and it feels like your hair stands on end as the circle glows brightly. The candles surrounding the magic circle flicker before the flame suddenly grows as tall as you. The sudden light blinds you as you succeed in your first attempt at real magic. You feel the energy drain out of your inexperienced body as the magic pulls from your life **** and you collapse on the ground.