Side Story: The Bases of Magic 3 – Conjuration

The room they enter now has a few circles on the ground, candles lie around and impregnate the air with several different heavy scents. These quickly vanish once the staff’s enchantment gets to work and a neutral smell takes its place. “As you can probably guess we will talk about Conjuration next. Ever practiced it?”

“No.” Catherine says. “Conjuration isn’t widely practiced in the part of Estara I am from. The few times I have heard of it was to summon an Incu or Succubus at some noble party.” Uklag leans his staff against a nearby wall and cracks with his fingers, “Listen well then. There are two kinds of summoning, although some talk of four. These are Spontaneous and Ritualistic Summoning. The reason some talk of four is because these can be done with or without names, but more on that later.

Spontaneous Summoning is when a mage waves his hand.” Uklag does so and suddenly a single Imp appears from the ground. The demon is short, chubby and has extremely long limbs. “WHY DO YOU CALL?!?” It yells in a high pitched voice and gains a hated glare from Uklag in response. “Fucking Imps.” He says and kicks the thing which then disappears. “…when a mage waves his hand and calls upon the forces of the demon realm, in exchange the demon realm spits out a Demon of power relative to that given. The demon will not be able to take his full strength with him and disappear after a short time when you use this method.” Uklag walks to one of the circles on the ground.

“However if you go for a Ritualistic approach.” He lights a few candles and mumbles some kind of mantra and a few seconds later another imp appears. “WHY DO YOU CALL!?!” the demon yells. Another kick, but this Imp sticks around. “WHY?” He asks. “Shut up you useless piece of dirt.” Uklag commands and the Imp becomes quiet. “As you can see he has more energy than the last one, but I used the same amount of energy to summon him. He will also stay around longer – albeit not long.” A few minutes later the Imp disappears with a loud BANG. “I hate these things.” Uklag says. “Lastly there is named summoning. You can do it with both methods but many demons are too powerful to be summoned with the Spontaneous Summoning. What you do is take out a name and either follow their specific instructions, more powerful Demons will only hear you when you do certain things, or just call them. For example.”

Uklag turns to the circle again and channels magic. “Akzurk, I offer you my power, I offer you a chance to step into this world. Hear my call, Fiend of the other Realm. Take my offering, AKZURK!” A bang, a flash of fire then a Fiend with black skin, standing at two metres, with “an incredibly dumb face appears.” Uklag completes the mental list. “WHO CALLS ME?!” The fiends grumbling voice echo through the room. “Remember me?” Uklag asks with a wide smile.

The Fiend freezes. “Oh.” He says and gulps. “Hello. To what do I owe the honour, Master…?” “Uklag. Just showing my apprentice the ropes.” He points over his shoulder at Catherine, “Ah, such a beautiful apprentice, how fitting of your greatness…what is the lesson?”

“Named Summoning. You can go now, I will call you another time…and it won’t be nice.” The demon disappears with repeated bowing and excuses. “What was that about?” Catherine asked, “Oh, he was just the former owner of this base.” Uklag says. “But with that the lesson is over, let’s move to my workbenches for the last two.”

“Wait I have two questions, Master.” Catherine says. “Oh?” Uklag stops in his tracks and indicates that he will listen. “First you didn’t mention the binding and second what happens to the energy mages give to the demon realm?” Uklag laughs loudly. “Not stopping at the small questions, are you Catherine? Okay, binding is a contract with a demon, basically you ask them for their mark and a term. If you manage to fulfil the term before they run out of energy the mark will become a binding and from that point on you are their permanent anchor in this world, in return they continue to serve you…most of the time. If you don’t manage to do it the mark will burn itself into your sub consciousness and permanently delete the name from your mind. For the second question – I don’t know.”

Catherine blinks a few times. “You don’t know?” she asks uncertainly, “As in you don’t want to tell me or you seriously don’t know?” Uklag shrugs, “I really don’t. Maybe the Demons feast on the energy or maybe they give it to their local Arch Demon and they then have some kind of measuring contest. Maybe they try to break down the barrier between our dimensions by using it, eventually murdering or enslaving us all, whatever it is I don’t particularly care because even if it is that last thing it will be aeons before they have enough.” Uklag then starts walking again and Catherine soon follows.