Summoner (Ash and Magic 1) (3 page)

Out of that void there was a brief flash of something red and large.  Whatever it was rocketed up out of the abyss toward the ceiling and then the void was gone, replaced with a rough and broken ground that didn't look anything like the classroom's normal floor.  The red thing flew high into the air, arcing up to the towering roof of the lecture hall before beginning a long, slow spiral toward the ground.

Whatever it was, it was roughly humanoid in shape and had huge, leathery wings.  Its skin was bright red and it looked to be at least eight feet tall.

Everyone's attention was suddenly focused on the powdered silver circle.  They were interested in whatever had come out of the brimstone but the other was simply too flashy to not pay attention to.

The lines of the silver circles flared to life like birthday sparklers.  Sparks flashed and danced, racing around the circle until they met each other, then starting on the next set of designs.  They swirled and danced and then Ash was looking upward.

She hadn't noticed what was on the ceiling earlier, and right now she was the only one paying attention.  The design on the floor in the center of the silver circle was fairly simplistic, more bait than anything else.  On the ceiling was a pattern that looked as complex as what had been drawn in the center of the brimstone one.  More complicated, since it had to be scrawled on the uneven timbers in the roof.

That pattern flared to life with sparklers now, and then became another hole.  This one was not a void, it was a shiny tunnel into a realm of clouds and sunshine.  Bright light streamed out of it, illuminating the room and a wind rushed the other way, blowing sweet-smelling air into the room.

Motes of light, sprigs of holly and butterflies fluttered down out of the hole and filled the room with a warm, happy feeling.

A silver creature, humanoid like the red one and festooned with wings of pure light, flew out of the hole and dove down to the ground.

The hole in the ceiling covered itself over with a shimmering sheet of clouds.

The entire room gasped as the two creatures, whatever they were, finally settled onto the ground in the middle of their respective circles.  The interior of the spells was roomy by human standards, three or four people could stand in there without feeling crowded, but these things were larger than life and had wings besides.  They looked crammed in, caged inside their respective circles.

"Class!  I would like to introduce you to the real point of advanced summoning: celestial and infernal beings!"

Applause started randomly from the back of the room.  Within moments, everyone except Ashley was standing and clapping.  This was the single most interesting display of magic they'd seen in a classroom.  Montgomery definitely had it easy on that count, though.  It was hard to demonstrate War magic in a lecture hall and most of the other schools were not particularly flashy.  While the students were used to seeing spells go off in the middle of class, this was beyond anything they'd seen so far.  This was something else.

Ash wasn't standing because all of her attention was focused on the red being.  The infernal.

If she followed the spell correctly, Melketh was its name.  That was the last ingredient in the summoning.  Normally spell triggers, including for low-level summons from tangent planes, were decided on by the caster.  English words, short and descriptive, were the favorite.  For creatures as strong as these, however, their true names were required as part of the spell.

If she was right about what had been written on the floor, the names were the command words.

"You all laughed when I made you sign a waiver at the beginning of the semester, but this is the reason.  These are some of the most powerful and dangerous creatures that you will ever encounter in your lives.  Particularly Mel, here."

There was a smattering of laughter throughout the room but, really, no one was paying attention to the professor anymore.

Everyone was staring at the two creatures, trying to drink in as much of their features as possible.

Ash could not look away from Melketh.  He was glorious!  He paced back and forth inside his small circle, growling occasionally and running his hand along some invisible barrier on the inside.  There were crackles of energy as he did so and he had a contemplative look on his infernal face, as if he were studying the spell from the inside.

Melketh's skin was a deep, deep crimson.  Calling it red did a disservice to the true hue.  It highlighted his muscles perfectly, and he had a very large number of muscles.  He had a mostly human body, but so much larger.  His abs looked like you could smash rocks on them and your eyes could trace every line of his biceps, highlighted by a thin sheen of what might be sweat beading along their extraordinary length.

His wings were the thing that attracted everyone's attention at first.  They were the kind of wings you would imagine a demon having: huge, leathery, awe-inspiring to behold.  When they'd been fully extended in flight they looked like they were ten feet or more across.  Inside the circle, he had them folded tightly against his back and they formed a cape of sorts.

"Now, class, this is the perfect time for me to start discussing the nature of power as it relates to extraplanar creatures."  Montgomery had a famous 'lecture voice', which he was dropping into now.  It was a kind of sing-song drone, which had earned him a number of unflattering nicknames over the years.  If you asked him about it, he would tell you that he'd developed it unconsciously because of the complicated nature of the summoning arts.  Some of his spells could take days to complete, and often required extensive memorization of long texts, so he half-sang them in order to help himself remember.

"Oh, wait."  His real voice popped back for a moment.  "Feel free to get up and look at them up close.  They have agreed to be here, so they should behave."

Melketh laughed.  It was a deep, rich sound that rose up from his perfectly muscled chest.  Everyone who heard it smiled unconsciously.

"Ah, hmm... just be careful with pictures."  A number of students who'd taken out their cell phones stopped and looked up at him.  "The true visage of Mel has been known to drive people insane."

One student, whose flash had already gone off, blushed and put their phone down.

There was a tense silence: was he serious?  All of the multiple layers of defense he'd put up to contain the creature, and taking a picture of it could still drive you insane?

That was definitely an unsafe thing to have in a classroom.

"I'm just kidding!  There hasn't been a phone built that can capture a proper image of either of them."  Montgomery's tone was light but he frowned at the end of the declaration.  Maybe he'd been looking for a laugh.  "Anyway, everything I'm about to explain is covered in your text books so if you don't end up taking notes just read up on it later."

Everyone started streaming down out of their seats to get a closer look at the extraplanar beings except Ash.

She was stuck in her seat, staring.  It was almost as if she was unable to look away.

Melketh had her entire attention.

His face looked shockingly human.  It was long and angular and clean shaven.

Also: red.

If you could ignore the color, he seemed to almost be a man.  A handsome man.  Between the powerful muscles and the beautiful face, he was the kind of person that you would fantasize about days later if you bumped into them on the subway.

"So!  Let's talk about extrinsic versus intrinsic power, shall we?"

Crowning Melketh's head was a pair of horns.  Long and twisted, they curved around the back of his head and ended just above his shoulders.  He was bald but the horns looked like they were hair.

Or a crown.

"Extrinsically powerful creatures are those like you and I, creatures that have limited innate magical power and so instead have to learn to channel the magical energy of the world around us."

Ashley remembered to breathe and stood up, intending to go down there.  Only, she couldn't make her feet work.

Melketh's fingers ended in sharp claws.  The nails were black in color and came to a wicked point.  From a distance they looked well-manicured and tame, but up close his size meant that they were actually quite dangerous.  Ash shivered all over at the thought of those claws, at the damage they could do.

What would they feel like caressing your skin?  Pushing with just enough pressure that they tickled you, reminded you of their lethality without drawing blood.

Where did that thought come from?

"Intrinsically powerful creatures are those like our friends here.  They are innately imbued with magical energy, and that is the energy they can channel.  Since it is their own, they do not need to use spells or external foci like we do."

There was one other shocking aspect of Melketh: his phallus.  It was massive and he was naked.  It hung between his legs, swinging back and forth as he walked, and Ash's eyes kept going back to it.

She was licking her lips without realizing it, wondering what it would be like to touch that thing.  The rest of him was all hard planes and angles, powerful muscles and unforgiving lines.  That looked like it would be soft.  Velvet in your hands, stirring at the...

"Psst!  Ash!"  Cassandra broke off from the crowd surrounding the creatures and stood at the bottom of the bleachers, looking up at her friend.  "You're staring."

"I, what?  Oh!  Oh, sorry."  Ash finally tore her eyes away from Melketh and bustled down the bleachers.  She had to get a closer look at him.

Could she get a closer look at him?

Would he know what was raging in her mind?  Would he sense her desire?  Would that make her vulnerable to his power?

"Intrinsically powerful creatures are also, of course, extrinsically powerful by their very nature.  However, few have the need or desire to learn magic and spells like we do so they do not often possess the capability or understanding to use magic the way humans do, hence the classification."  Montgomery was facing the boards now, writing out complex equations.

"He's something, isn't he?"  Cass met Ashley at the bottom of the stairs and they both looked at Melketh.

The other creature, En'lethial-dra, looked female.  They both knew it was silly to assign gender to creatures like this because they did not work like humans did, but it was also hard not to.  Between his muscles, classically male facial features and enormous cock, Melketh looked like a man.

En'lethial-dra, on the other hand, had a very female look: large, curving breasts; hourglass figure; shining hair that looked like it had been spun of light; and a face that looked, to most, like the most beautiful woman they'd seen.

Almost everyone was clustered around the celestial, admiring her, and she was showing off to them.  She turned this way and that, flexed her wings, and even spoke.  No one could understand her of course, her voice sounded like twinkling silvery bells, but everyone swooned when she spoke.

Ash and Cass were the only two who approached Melketh, daring to get near his raw, aggressive strength.

"And this is why it is so difficult to summon some creatures, such as these two.  In the same way that a boulder's mass makes it difficult to physically move and its lack of magical connection makes it easy to teleport, these two are not particularly heavy but to transport them magically is... a trial."

Ash stepped up right to the edge of the first circle.  She could see, now, that there was an invisible wall of force just around the edge of that circle.  It left a faint shimmer in the air and it would prevent her from accidentally crossing inside and breaking Montgomery's complex spellcraft.

What would happen if someone accidentally did that?  Melketh would escape, probably, and then what?

Chaos?

Death?

It sounded like he had some sort of understanding with Montgomery, maybe he would respect that?

Ash pressed her fingers against the wall of force, leaning against it so she could get a better look at Melketh, and the infernal stopped pacing.

He turned and looked at Ash and she saw fire in his eyes.  His iris was completely black, but by contrast the pupil was not.  It looked like it was from a distance but when you were this close you could see that there were flames there, distant flames, flames that threatened to burst forth and consume you.

Melketh held Ashley's gaze across the layers of magic which held him and a slow, mysterious smile formed on his blazing red lips.

Professor Montgomery kept lecturing and everyone kept ignoring him.  He wrote formulae, expounded on the nature of metaphysics, and even threw in a few jokes.  Sometimes someone would laugh but most of them were too busy looking at the creatures.

Most of the students spent some time looking at En'lethial-dra, then came over and gawked at Melketh, then went back to watch the celestial as she demonstrated flight and did a few flashy spells that looked like they were first sphere in power but nonetheless impressed people already primed to think she was amazing.

Even Cass ended up watching the celestial.

Ashley, on the other hand, just kept staring at Melketh. He eventually broke her stare and started pacing his circle again, slamming his hands against the spells that kept him inside but his eyes always came back to Ash and her piercing attention.