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"Summoning circles are all about shape and form," the girl with spiky blue hair said as she drew in chalk on the bare stone floor.
The girl, who wore a cornflower-blue dress and looked like a rebellious twelve-year-old, was being watched by a young man. He was wearing plain black robes that were threadbare in some places, singed in others. At one time they might have looked sinister and occult, but now they just looked worn. Both were standing in an open space in a large library. Countless shelves overflowing with antiquated tomes ran off into the distance. While it might have looked like a young girl doodling on the floor under the watchful gaze of an elder brother, the truth was a little more complicated.
The young man's name was Phil Rowling. He was a warlock—okay, student warlock, previously of Wargsnouts College for Warlocks. This library wasn't located on Earth but in hell, or some plane thereof. The young girl's name was C?r?l?a and she was neither a girl nor young. Girls didn't have blue horns curling out of their spiky blue hair, they didn't have long slender tails terminating in a devil's point, and they definitely didn't have large bat wings emerging from their backs. C?r?l?a even had a pair of tiny vestigial wings on her head, located behind her pointed ears.
C?r?l?a was a succubus and while she looked and acted—most of the time—like a young girl, Phil knew she was far older. So old he couldn't even begin to guess. He saw it sometimes—a flash of ancient knowledge in her ruby-red eyes.
"It's about bending and distorting the latent fibres of the present plane of reality, and rearranging them into a new alignment that touches on and intersects with an adjacent and contemporaneous plane," C?r?l?a said.
She continued to draw, with a precision and skill that belied her youthful appearance, a complex series of circles, lines and symbols.
"The methodology of circle summoning is simple and precise. The inner circle opens a connection to the plane or planes of choice. This allows the summoned entity to enter this plane of existence.
"The outer circle forms a barrier to prevent physical matter and other energies from seeping through into this plane. Its purpose is to keep the summoned entity within the circle for long enough to allow the summoner to set out the terms and conditions of the contract.
"As long as the summoner is proficient in transcribing the design, circle summoning is one of the safest techniques of daemon summoning."
The girl stopped and looked down at her work with a satisfied smile.
"See," she said. "It's simple mathematics and topology."
Phil looked at the baroque, highly complex tangle of lines and curves C?r?l?a had drawn on the floor. If this was simple, he wasn't sure he wanted to see complex.
C?r?l?a put a finger on her lips. "That one might be a little too complex for your current level."
Next to her on the stone floor was a child's bag shaped like a cartoon whale and a mop and bucket. She used the mop to wipe away the chalk design on the floor.
"Now you try," she said, tossing the piece of chalk to Phil. "We'll start with something simple. How about the same circle you used to summon Rosa and Verde?"
Was that a good idea? It hadn't exactly gone well last time. Rosa and Verde, two other succubi, were the reason Phil was here. He and a fellow student had summoned them in a misguided attempt to setup a night of sexy fun. Jake, the other student, was dead and Phil was alive but in hell, where things were...complicated.
C?r?l?a was waiting. Phil stood there awkwardly. Surely she didn't expect him to draw the circle from memory.
"Oh," C?r?l?a said. "You didn't have a chance to commit the design to memory."
Phil shook his head.
C?r?l?a tutted. "A diligent circle summoner should spend weeks drawing the summoning circle over and over until the design is etched into his memory. Don't tell me you took the book out of the library and just copied the design off the page."
Phil glanced guiltily at the floor.
C?r?l?a shook her head. "Humans. Always rushing. Hmm... Mr Grinstead."
She tapped her tail on the floor. A complex circle appeared on the stone floor as if drawn in ghostly white light. In the centre of the circle the floor vanished to be replaced by a pool of abyssal black shadow. A strange creature rose up out of the darkness. It looked like a blue-skinned ape with a toothy crocodile's snout for a head. It was no more than a foot in height. Two delicate pairs of wings, flimsy like a fly's, fluttered behind its back. They didn't look sturdy enough to support the imp's squat form, but that didn't stop it rising up until it was hovering level with C?r?l?a's head.
"What was the name of the book?" C?r?l?a asked Phil.
"The Daemonica Malefique," Phil replied.
"Go and fetch the Daemonica Malefique from the library at Wargsnouts and bring it back here," C?r?l?a said to the hovering imp.
The familiar gave no outward sign of acknowledgement. It turned and—wings whirring behind it—flew in a slow straight line. A portal opened up in the air before it like a circular window. The imp buzzed through and was gone from the library, the portal closing up behind it.
"It won't be able to get it," Phil said. "The Wargsnouts library is protected by all kinds of—"
The strange circular porthole opened up again and the imp came back through. It was clutching a heavy tome in its claws that was almost as big as it was. Phil recognised the book as the Daemonica Malefique.
"Very good, Mr Grinstead."
