by Sophie Park
Ashley had to lock herself in there with the spell, otherwise she'd be endangering the entire dorm.
All her friends...
If the spell went sideways, it could be very dangerous. There were three layered magics involved, hence the three circles: the first was the one that created the passage to the infernal plane. Hell. Professor Montgomery refused to say it, but that's where it was. Hell. The second was the anti-magic field that would keep Melketh's magic from affecting anything outside the circles. The third was the magical anchor that would keep it all in place as long as she needed it to be. That one would actually be transported to Melketh's realm before it activated, which meant...
What did that mean?
Ashley had never summoned something from the infernal plane before. She'd practiced with a huge number of other creatures: elementals, faerie, animated objects, Greeks, mythical monsters, even forgotten sages from other galaxies. They were sometimes powerful in their own way, always strange, but this was something entirely different.
Her magic had never been exposed to the infernal plane, but once it was?
What would that mean?
Well, it would mean it was easier for her to contact it in the future for one. It would also make it more likely for things from that plane to contact her unbidden. It didn't happen often, but sometimes faeries tried to summon her instead of the other way around.
Why hadn't she thought of this before?
Well, Professor Montgomery didn't have that problem, right? He was not constantly fighting off demons, which meant that there had to be some degree of safety to this process.
Right?
Right...
This was the most dangerous thing she'd ever done.
It was the most terrifying thing she'd ever done.
It was the most exciting thing!
To think...
What would happen if she succeeded? What would happen if she failed?
There was only one way to know for sure.
With a deep breath, Ash grabbed two large magnifying glasses on rolling stands. She wheeled them into the manse and closed the door behind her. The heavy thud of the stone slamming felt altogether too final. She'd done this a dozen times before, and never once had the noise of the door sounded so... loud.
Loud.
Ash drew in a deep, shaky breath, then fiddled with the calibration on the magnifying glasses.
"Analyze!" She pointed one at each of the outer spells. "Analyze!" Immediately they brought up complex rectangles of light with graphs and charts that showed the magical flux of the spells she'd wrought. They were mostly calm now, showing the way the latent magic of the world flowed in and around the circles, but they hadn't been activated yet. Analyze was a more powerful version of Identify, fourth sphere, and in addition to better resolution on the information it provided it had recording capabilities.
No matter what happened, as long as she survived this, she would be able to figure out what went wrong.
"Analyze!" She used her portable identification focus to monitor the third spell, but she wasn't confident that she'd get anything useful out of that data given that that spell wasn't going to activate until it was on a separate plane of existence.
"Alright... okay. Alright." Ash paced around the exterior of the outer circle, looking at her handiwork one last time. There was precious little room left in the manse with the circles and the Analyzes happening. At the middle of each of the walls of the manse there was barely a foot of space available to walk between the circle and the wall, and three of the corners in the room were dominated by her recording spells.
She finally came to rest in the last corner.
"Here goes..." Ash took a deep breath and looked at the piece of coal she was holding.
"Going to summon a demon."
"Yes. Yes sirree, going to summon something that can make a fine paste out of the most powerful mages in the University without breaking a sweat."
"Right..."
"So..."
"No time like the present." Ash flexed her fingers and looked at the black marks the coal was making on them. She was going to have to wash off after this. Of course, she still smelled like brimstone, so she'd have to wash for a very long time...
"Whooo... alright."
"Ummm... okay. Okay okay okay."
"Okay!"
"M... wait!" Ash formed the first syllable of the demon's name and felt the magic tugging at her, hoping to draw the rest of the sound out of her mouth. She'd never felt that before, like the spell was asking her to cast it...
Ignoring that for a moment, she'd forgotten something very important. The abyss, the wind... she'd been thirty feet or more away from it when Monty activated his spell, so it was nothing more than a powerful tug. What would happen if she was so close?
Good thing that, among other things, the manse came equipped with rings and harnesses for just this situation. Well, probably not this situation, but anyone experimenting with gravity needed them on a nearly daily basis.
Ash lashed herself to the wall of the manse, cinched the leather belt so that it was good and tight, and then considered the lump of coal in her hand.
To the naked eye, it looked so unassuming. Ignoring the spells in the middle of the floor, the activation object itself was so... well, it was coal. Nothing more, nothing less. It wasn't exactly something you'd see someone walking around with but it was also not something you would expect to have the power to summon a demon...
To the magical eye, on the other hand, coal was an amazing substance. It held the collective knowledge and power and magic of the creatures that formed it. Mostly algae and other single celled organisms, but they'd lived so long ago! Ash felt the age of this thing right down to her core when she held it.
She'd never used coal in a spell before, for exactly this reason. It was so powerful. The well of its energy went deep, deeper than anything except maybe oil or diamonds, and the collective memory of thousands of millennia of pressure and heat and death and struggle pressed up against the edges of her mind. Through the lens of the Analyze spell, the coal looked like a writhing blanket of black worms. Formed of energy and memory, tendrils of power wriggled and crawled and swirled around on the surface of the rock. You couldn't feel them, not on this plane at least, but they still made Ash's skin crawl just to look at them.
This was such ancient magic, such powerful magic, that even holding it seemed like sacrilege.
She shouldn't be doing this...
She...
"Melketh!"
She had to do it!
Even knowing what to expect, the opening of the abyss took Ash's breath away. First figuratively, as it snapped open on the ground less than a foot away from her, and then literally as that howling wind started up.
Standing this close to it, she could feel its power. In class it had been a curiosity, a flashy spell effect from a professor who was not normally known for his flash or showmanship. Here, it was a wild thing. Whatever was on the other side was... hungry.
It wanted out, it wanted to come to this realm, and it wanted to consume...
The entire plane, the entire infernal plane, felt like a living, breathing, malevolent creature. It wanted to come to Ash's world, and when it got here?
Well, then her anti-magic field would keep it from doing anything too heinous.
Right?
The Analyze pointed at the AM Field suggested that it was holding and doing what it was supposed to. Any magical power which passed the invisible barrier of the field would simply be torn apart, rendered null and void. Magic was never destroyed, of course, but that was the beauty of an AM Field. Properly created, it could maintain itself indefinitely as it repurposed the magic it ripped apart to power itself. Even without that property, as long as she was standing here she would continue to fuel it with new power. It was literally the only thing standing between her and disaster.
It seemed like a very long time since she'd activated the spell. The manse was filled
with the smell of smoke and flame, and every loose bit of material was rattling under the power of the wind that was trying to suck everything inside the manse onto the other side of the three magical circles.
Was it supposed to be like this?
She had not anticipated the amount of magical draw this would place on her. Montgomery made it look easy to maintain two circles for an entire lecture, but she was already panting with exertion and questioning every decision that had led her to this moment. For the moment, her magical matrix was holding and her flux was within normal levels, but she could feel the tax that the spells were putting on her. Keeping them up like this was slowly overloading her whole system. She only had, maybe, five or ten minutes before she reached her personal limit.
Like a muscle, it was a limit that you could build up over time. Ash had simply underestimated how much stronger Monty was than she...
Or maybe something else was happening. The Analyze spells indicated that everything was okay, but the abyss was not closing.
Why wasn't it closing?
What had she done wrong?
She'd read the tome back to front three times, taking notes and memorizing everything important, including the name of the wizard who first attempted something like this and written about it.
The tome didn't say anything about how long the spell should last, but surely it should be finished by-
"What the Hell are you thinking!" A voice, rich and male and powerful, boomed from inside the circle.
Ash gasped and the second half of the spell that she remembered from class kicked in: a huge, red humanoid burst out of the abyss and the howling void closed, replaced with red hot rocky ground.
Ashley Cook felt a very physical release of tension when that happened. Holding the spells open had been on its way to killing her, but with Melketh's appearance the power draw tapered off considerably. In fact, she started to feel a positive feedback!
What was doing that?
A quick glance at her Analyze showed that power was roiling off of Melketh in thick, palpable waves. When it hit the AM Field it fed back into the spell until even that spilled over and started to rejuvenate Ash. Her personal reserves were quickly replenished and all of her metaphysical organs stopped straining under the pressure of channeling all the raw power she'd had to channel to keep the spell operational.
With Melketh here, she was actually gaining power.
"That was really fucking stupid Monty!" Melketh lashed himself in a rapid, angry circle along the inside of the spell. "Why in the everloving fuck did you not tell me you were going to do that!? Do you know what was trying to come through?! Do you even fucking know- wait."
Ash was staring. She couldn't help it. Melketh was just as beautiful as he had been in class, only now she was in a confined space and the only thing that separated the two of them was her magic.
That actually made the meeting more intimate. She could feel, right down to the base of her spine, every time he touched the edge of the AM field. He was testing it like he had back in the classroom, only now she shivered in pleasure as his hands ran across the bounds of the spell. It was like...
It felt like...
She could swear it felt like he was running his hands across her body, exploring it. Possessing it...
"You're not dear old Monty." Melketh's voice was silken smooth and filled with a kind of admiration. "Who are... oh, yes. The little wannabe summoner. I know you."
"You...?" Ash was proud of herself for being able to form even that single word.
"Yes. Monty talks about you. A little too much, I thought, only..." Melketh stood to his full height and considered the spell that contained him. "How did you do this?"
"I... you know, the, uhh, the tome."
"Tome."
"The tome of... the one that details the spell, you know?"
"No. There's a tome!?" Melketh frowned and looked around the room, as if he could see the book. "Someone wrote down the spell! That's insane. Who would do that?"
"Seraniteth the Grey?"
"... oh. Is that how Monty figured out my name?"
"I think so."
"That bastard!" Melketh spat, a black glob of liquid that boiled away immediately when it hit the superheated floor on his side of the circle. Ash could feel the heat of the infernal plane radiating out from Melketh, but most of it was dissipated by the protection spells woven into the room. "He made me think he went on some sort of epic quest to... oh well, this is still impressive."
"Umm..."
"I am honestly surprised that you are alive, little one. Do you know how dangerous this was?"
"Uhh..."
"Here, let's try something a little more... friendly."
In the blink of an eye, the interior of the circle changed. The heated rock was gone, the swirling flames disappeared, and even Melketh changed. The eight foot tall red demon became a six foot something man in an expensively tailored suit. He still had the same general features, minus the wings and horns and red skin, but he looked... almost human, like this. You could almost forget that he was an immeasurably powerful demon lord. He was now standing on a tiled floor, black and white ceramic, with a small chair in the middle.
"How did you... never mind, that's not so hard." Ash felt like, in this moment and in this place, there was such a thing as stupid questions and asking stupid questions was not a good idea.
"No it's not." Melketh laughed and sat cross-legged in the air in front of Ash. "So. Why did you summon me, little one?"
"Okay, uhh..." Ash took a deep breath and realized that she should start sounding less stupid in front of Melketh. Considering all of the feedback she was getting from the spells and a few glances at her Analyze data, he might not be nearly as contained as he looked. There was a good possibility that, if he wanted to, he could rip straight through her AM field like paper.
Could he?
"I wanted to see if I could." Ash decided to be honest.
"Ha! That's the best answer I've ever heard!" Melketh's laughter was like a deep, rich bell filling the room with its sound. She heard it more in her chest than with her ears, and the reverberating echo of it made her smile. "To see if you could! Well! You can!"
"I see that."
"There's more to it, I think, but I'll let you think on it." Melketh stretched out his long legs and started to pace the space he was contained in. "Do you know who I am?"
"Umm, well, Mel-"
"Stop! Don't say it. My name has power, as I'm sure you know. Yes, I am Mel. What else?"
"A demon?" Ash finished lamely.
"Mel the demon. Sure. How about you?"
"Ash... uhhh, Ashley. C-"
"Stop! No full names. Ash will do fine." Melketh crouched down at the edge of the circle and looked at the leather belt that was still holding Ash to the side of the room, even though the wind was gone. "You can unbuckle if you like, Ash."
"Oh... oh, okay." Ash nodded and undid her leather buckle, letting it fall unneeded against the wall.
"Huh. Why did you do that?"
"You said I could!"
"You believed me?"
"Of course! I mean, uhh... why would you lie to me? I mean, you're... you're stuck inside there. Right? You can't get out, you can't... harm me. Why should it matter if I'm buckled in?"
"I can't, can I?" Melketh's smile was secretive and he tapped a finger against his lips as if he were considering her words. "Sure, I probably can't, although I think maybe for reasons other than what you're thinking."
"The summoning spell actually summoned a piece of your plane, allowing you to co-locate with our plane inside that circle. If you tried to cross the circles you'd be trying to cross the actual barrier between planes, and you're so intrinsically powerful that would be... uhh, difficult. You have too much, you know, magical gravity..."
"Oh ho! So you understand what you wrote."
"Of course!"
"Good. Now, why haven't I torn this room and the University to shreds with a storm of magi
cal death?"
"You're too nice?"
"Funny."
"Okay, it's the AM field." Ash gestured at the second spell, the one that was making her feel so great right now. Or was that the sound of his voice? "It would negate any magic that tries to cross it."
"Hmm, close enough. That's good work, by the way."
"What?"
"Monty always... flubs his minor arcana. He puts a little serif on the end of some of the runes. I hate serifs."
"Seriously? Typography is what bothers you about Monty?"
"Well, it matters in something like this. Those runes are the only thing standing between me and your world, you know?"
"How..."
"I'm sure you can feel it, right? The power that the... AM field, as you call it, is feeding into you?"
Ash nodded. There was no way not to feel it. Her entire body was tingling with energy now, and she was finding it difficult to stand still. She paced back and forth across the interior of her manse, too jazzed to sit still.
Part of it was his power that was bleeding over into her, but part of it was just... plain old elation at having done something so complicated! This was amazing! It was incredible!
No one was going to believe her.
Even with the Analyze data, they might not believe she'd done this. How could they? The idea that she would be able to replicate one of the most complicated known summoning spells in her dorm room was frankly laughable.
"Okay. So, you know I'm strong, and you also know that power can be transferred from one being to another."
Ash nodded. It sounded like such a simple concept now that he said it, but when she stopped and thought about it she realized that she'd never heard anyone talk about this kind of direct power transfer. Spells were all about reshaping power, turning it into something tangible, never just... moving it around.
"What I'm talking about is what ancient cultures called sacrifice: if I started killing everyone at the University with magic, I could take their power and use it to punch a big enough hole between planes that I could cross."
"You..." Ash took a step back until she felt the comforting bulk of the manse's stone at her back. He could do that?
"Oh, it would probably take the entire population of Seattle to do it, but it could be done. Only..."
