As Amos vanished and I began to clean up the contents of the ritual, I wondered why so many contract-based summoners trafficked with faeries and demons. Faeries, I could understand to an extent. Many of them weren’t evil, simply… unusual. Professor Toadweather would probably be happy to kill a summoner that tried to trick her or capture her, she wasn’t going to try and murder everyone she came across. With that said, I’d still treat any faerie I didn’t know with the utmost of caution, and even with professor Toadweather, I’d take precautions if I needed to deal with her outside of a school context.

  Demons, on the other hand? While no bloodline made anyone intrinsically evil, the demonic planes emphasised traits brought to such extremes that they were what I’d call evil. Many of their powers, like the infamous true hellfire, grew in power through inflicting pain and suffering on others in a similar way to how dragonfire grew more potent with age. Some were clever enough to hold to deals, certainly, and they weren’t all crazed murderers. They had their place, as professor Toadweather had said. Enlisting demons of carnage and battle to fight against the other demons and the aberrants at the wall was hundreds of times cheaper than enlisting battle angels to do the same task. Some bits of knowledge were only located within the heads of demonic entities.

  I certainly wasn’t advocating for running and hiding from anything demonic, and refusing to ever approach them, but I still didn’t get why so many summoners intentionally went the route of trafficking with them.

  I could acknowledge that, to an extent, I was speaking from a position of privilege. Merely being friendly with Jackson meant that I had a jumping off point to associate with the wadjetktt and gadhar that I summoned. But a jumping off point was all it had been. Even without Jackson, I could have summoned wadjetktt until I found one who served a god that I could have a working relationship with. Or I could have done things the other way around, and looked at assorted god’s creeds first, and then attempted to call from their realms until I found one with wadjetktt to summon.

  Even if, amongst the thousands of divines in the world, none of them were ones that I was willing to work with, jumping to demons just didn’t make a whole lot of sense. It might explain using them more, sure, but it was ignoring the single most common type of plane across all of the endless planes: elemental planes! There were countless elementals, and even if sapience was a rarer trait among them than it was among demons, angels, or fae, rarer wasn’t the same thing as truly rare. All it took to have a network of fairly straight shooting alliances was the ability to conjure a more powerful elemental creature capable of speech, like the lightning ermines, or finding one sapient elemental like Seren.

  Speaking of…

  I glanced at Seren, who was sitting in an oil lamp that I’d placed to the side of the workspace.

  “Do you know any sages, Seren?”

  The small flame spirit seemed to hum and crackle for a long moment, before stating that he thought he did. There was an ancient flame from the circle of bonfires that had birthed him, named… the word he said next was distinctly in flametongue, but I thought that the best way to convert it to Ceylish would be the name Elaine of the Loud Crackle. I thanked him, then tossed him a stick of bacon, before continuing to work on my circle.

  As soon as it was completed, I fell into the chanting of contact otherworldly sage, slowly working my way through the spell. I failed once, but on the second time, I managed to get through to the very end, where I raised one hand and called out.

  “Aqil, eldest serpent of Amos’ village, from the realm of Effervesce, I summon you!”

  There was a flash of magic, and an instant later, an absolutely massive serpent appeared within the summoning circle. The wadjetkett, Aqil, was well over eleven feet long from the tip of his nose to the end of his tail, and his wingspan was similarly massive. I was suddenly very glad that contact otherworldly sage required such a big circle – if it had been small enough to just fit a human, then Aqil would have been crushed.

  A moment later, the scent of potent sunvenom stung my nose. This creature wasn’t as strong as Gerhard was, but he certainly stood above me in terms of raw bloodline strength. There was some lingering divine magic around him, and something else too, a power that reminded me of ash. I thought perhaps I might be smelling an affinity. Perhaps Aqil had hyperfocused on a potent ash affinity? Just how well did those powers work together? Before I could speculate, the enormous snake spoke.

  “You already know my name, but you do not introduce yourself? A poor look for you, little spark.”

  “Apologies,” I said, sweeping into a bow. For a moment, I contemplated using my divine name, Rhit, before dismissing it. If this was some other celestial sage from some other realm, I would, but both Amos and Effervesce already knew me. There was no hiding or separating myself from him. Instead, I introduced myself truly.

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  “I am Emrys of White Sands, also known as Emrys Dreki, though the latter is a name I’ve only recently reclaimed since the death of the Dreki Matriarch. I acquired your name through speaking with Amos, who lives in your village.”

  “Another little spark, and a well regarded one,” Aqil rumbled. “You have summoned me via the spell to contact a sage, have you not?”

  “I have. In truth, there is little enough information that I seek at present. I merely wished to introduce myself, to make your acquaintance, so that in the future we might work together as is needed.”

  “I see. That is a reasonable thing, and I would welcome meeting more people. A question before I go, though. You have the stench of that wandering shop and its keepers upon you. How is this?”

  “Do you mean the Charm and Fable?”

  The giant serpent dipped his head in an approximation of a nod, so I explained how I’d found the shop through a flyer containing a deal, wandered in as they needed a job, and had been offered one quickly. From there, Fable had become something of a mentor to me, though he was nothing official.

  “Bah. The old men have always been meddlers,” Aqil said. There was something to his tone that I couldn’t place. It wasn’t positive, but nor was it exactly negative. Perhaps resignation? “Fairly answered, though, little spark. Do you have a question for me in return?”

  “As of now, I know two divine sages I could call upon, and one elemental. Perhaps one fairy too,” I said. I didn’t know if professor Toadweather counted. “I would love to know the name of any sage you would find more appropriate for my relative level of power.”

  “I presume the second is saint Hykym?”

  “Just so.”

  “I will think upon this. There are many beings in realms of light, both divine and elemental, that abutt my great-grandfather’s. Finding one that is appropriate for you, however, is something more of a challenge. I promise I will bring you a name within three of your mortal weeks.”

  There was no pact magic to forcibly bind him to hold his word, but I believed the ancient serpent. He seemed an honorable sort, and was apparently a direct descendant of Effervesce, so I thanked him, and then bowed before he vanished into his realm once again. As soon as he vanished, I summoned saint Hykym. The elderly human looked like the ideal stereotype of a sage, with a long white beard and robes. As befitting his title, he absolutely blazed with divine power, and nothing else that I could smell. He took one look at me and snorted.

  “Summoners. I suppose one of the children in one of the villages around my wood gave you my name?”

  “One did,” I said, a touch more careful not to say Amos’ name, in case it would get him in trouble.

  “Oh, come off it boy. I’m not going to be angry at the kid. What do you want?”

  “Right now, I don’t have much that I want other than the names of sages that are appropriate for me to contact. But otherwise, how familiar are you with rituals that weave divinity, destiny magic, wizardry, and cultivation together?”

  “Not very. I’m no ritualist,” the saint responded. “Nor should you be. Working with that many powers is usually a fool’s game.”

  “Perhaps, but I am doing it to try and save my friend’s life.”

  That seemed to catch the saint’s attention, and he sighed and sat down, seemingly annoyed, but willing to help. I wondered how much of his annoyance was a facade he put on to throw people off – he was one of Effervesce’s saints, after all.

  “Right. Of course you are. Show me your spell. I can’t promise much, but I’ll tell you what I can…”

  The sage and I spent some time going over the spell, despite him not demanding a price from me. I wasn’t entirely sure that was how the spell was supposed to work. Then again, if I had been summoned by someone clearly in a poor spot looking for advice on integrating wizardry and bloodline magic in order to save one of their friend’s lives, I could probably spare an hour or two of free time.

  After the saint left, I used Maugrim’s surge, I started working to summon Elaine of the Loud Crackle, the eldest fire elemental that Seren knew. She appeared as a sparking ball of floating fire, each spark creating a pop or fizzing sound – and they were loud! Each crack rang out with the same force as an arrow clanging against a stone wall, and she released dozens a second. Despite the name, I hadn’t expected her to actually sound anywhere this loud.

  As her power bloomed in the room, I knew that I’d made a mistake. I’d trusted Seren, which was reasonable, but no matter how effective the protection spells were, Elaine of the Loud Crackle was too much for them. She blazed with greater power than Gerhard, the wadjetktt, and the saint together. Her bloodline fire put her more on the level of the Matriarch, the Erudite, or Elder Twywyll. And she seemed to possess other powers too, though I couldn’t smell it. Given the power of the crackling and sound, perhaps she was a songcaller?

  The ancient fire spirit turned and leveled her gaze at me, the whiter parts of the flame curling to form eyes, and all of the pops resolved into a booming voice. It filled the room and shook my entire body until I swore I could actually feel my bones vibrating with every word. Seren flinched on my shoulder.

  “KINDLING CHILD, YOU OVERREACH. I MUST DEPART.”

  “Kindling?! Wait!” I said, excitement leaking through, despite the fact I could feel my ears and eyes beginning to bleed. I pulled Seren into my ether pool to protect him. “Can you explain what me being kindling means?”

  The Matriarch had roared that word, calling me kindling, before she’d transformed into an aberrant. Then Elder Tywyll had used the term as well, implying some things with it, but refusing to properly explain what it actually meant. The elder fire elemental studied me for a long moment before sparks exploded from her. Each word was like a hammer blow, and I found my fire itself starting to shake and burn to enforce my body. I felt my already almost empty ether pool drain to nothing as my spirit was attacked. Orla materialized around me, her guardian bloodline magic enveloping me, though it did almost nothing at all as Elaine's words crashed into me.

  “YOUR BURNING GRANTS OTHERS DIVINITY.”

  At that, the ancient fire spirit vanished. Covered in blood, my ether and fire spent, I managed to flip open my grimoire and write those five words down. As soon as I had, I collapsed onto the ground and passed out.

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