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All I knew was that this very evening I’d be calling Dekkak to this gleaming black and silver surface—after spilling blood. Or maybe the blood part came after the demon was here. I didn’t know when or even how much. But there would be blood. Mine.
Fuck. Me.
Instinct and habit yammered at me to prepare and make ready, but refused to give me any specifics on how or what to do. None of my usual habits or personal rituals were needed for this summoning. Well, except for the shower I always took before a summoning, this time as a courtesy to anyone standing beside me, but I wouldn’t be doing that until later this evening.
At a loss, I attempted to diligently pore over the materials I’d brought with me but gave up after only a few minutes. There was nothing I needed to memorize. No sigils to double-check for what to use and in what order for my diagram.
Because I wouldn’t be using a diagram.
Nearly twelve years of being a summoner. Twelve months in a year. At least one summoning every full moon. Okay, so I’d only performed a handful in the past year, but even so, I’d drawn out well over a hundred and fifty summoning diagrams in chalk and blood during my summoning career. That didn’t even count the several hundred in chalk alone that I’d drawn just for practice.
Simple, low-level summoning diagrams could be sketched out in about an hour. For my first reyza summoning—Kehlirik—I’d spent nearly five hours on the diagram, checking and rechecking every aspect.
The summoning of Dekkak would be the biggest I’d ever done in my life—and I wouldn’t draw a single sigil. Not the slightest dust of chalk. And that was freaking me out.
Be lordy. Yeah, right. Beeeeee the ritual. Beeeeee the summoning.
Beeeeee scared out of my mind.
Ugh. Stop being such a ninny.
I rested my head against the smooth bark of the tree. The leaves rustled high above. My fear retreated, and calm clarity took its place.
All right, so I’d never realized before how much the creation of a summoning diagram calmed and focused me. Chalking sigils required me to scrutinize every detail, every nuance, every fragment of the whole. The process embedded the many aspects of the ritual in my consciousness in a way rote study could never accomplish. It gave me an intrinsic and nearly instinctive awareness of how all the pieces fit together. The ritual diagram was more than a complicated picture. It was a set of instructions, a recipe. An incredibly complex program.
Want to summon a demon? There’s an app for that. I thought with a quiet giggle. And the nexus was one hell of a supercomputer.
But how was I supposed to hold the entire program in my head? How was I supposed to know what to do?
A breeze stirred the branches, vibrating the trunk pleasantly against my back. Iridescent shadows rippled and danced over the grass and my legs, like a mystical alphabet holding the secrets to the universe.
Ohhhhhhh.
For a human summoner, the sigils were important, whether floaters or chalk-sketched. They were human-comprehension-sized building blocks that defined and specified the parameters and the limits of the conglomerate summoning blueprint. No ordinary human summoner could hold the complete essence of a ritual in their head, which is why the preparation of the diagram—using discrete units—was so important.
But at the end of the day it wasn’t the loops and swirls and curlicues that mattered. It was what they conveyed. Just as black marks on pulped wood were only significant because they could form words that conveyed ideas and meaning.
My problem was that I’d been struggling to understand how I could be the ritual with my puny little human brain. I’d forgotten that the nexus not only allowed me to draw on Rhyzkahl’s power, but also to tap his demi-god-like resources to know the ritual in full then shape and control the potency accordingly.
Relieved, I sent a wordless thanks to Rho for nudging my thoughts in the right direction. I let my attention drift to where Mr. Lordy himself was pulling cucumber vines and tossing them into a pile a beyond his orbit.
With Idris arriving in the next day or so, it was time to break the news to Rhyzkahl that he was a daddy. I briefly considered ordering him over to me, then decided I was feeling too good to be confrontational. Instead, I stood and made my way to the heap of plant detritus.
“Why are you destroying your cucumbers?”
“They have ceased producing,” Rhyzkahl said as he chucked another clump of vines onto the pile. Dirt scattered onto my feet, which was no doubt by intent. “As they have outlived their usefulness, they must be removed and the soil replenished so that others may thrive.”
“Uh huh. Are we still talking about cucumbers?”
He straightened, dusting dirt from his hands as he glowered at me. “Do you yet insist on engaging in this folly?”
It took me a second to realize he meant the impending summoning. “Unless you have a brilliant idea for some other way to rescue Elinor, yes.”
“And so, without the gimkrah, you seek to summon an imperator.” He spat the word. “Your imprudence will cost you your life, Kara Gillian.”
“Nah, I think I got this shit,” I said cheerfully. “Though, I gotta say, it wasn’t easy digging up information about the Jontari.” I cocked my head. “Don’t suppose you happen to know why it was censored?”
“For a multitude of reasons that remain valid to this day,” he growled.
