//------------------------------// // The Summoning-Circle // Story: In the Company of Night // by Mitch H //------------------------------// SBMS121 The circle I asked Feufollet to draw was mostly ink and sawdust, long looping swirls that enfolded the low chair and the cot, with only a homeopathic tincture of blood to put some iron in the 'casting. I told her that I wanted her to close the door, not to lock it, let alone bar it. A discernable boundary, not a wall to be defended. I gave the Captain her sleeping draught, and she sat down on the edge of her cot and chugged it like a tumbler of rye whiskey. I walked across the circle, and sat on my own chair, to await her unconsciousness. As I did so, the Lieutenant was organizing her ponies upon the trail of the fleeing Marklaird, but I didn’t learn this until later. At that moment, I was simply investigating the Captain situation, and trying to draw out the Spirit, who was either sulking in her tent, or disappearing up her own existence again. Nopony had seen her in a talking mood since the Captain had awoken again, not Cherie, not me, not the witches or even the two Cakes. You can imagine why I was concerned, that our Spirit’s last appearance had been as a mad apparition raving incoherently like spiritual armeggedon upon the ramparts. As the Captain settled beneath her blankets, the circle began glowing. Feufollet hadn’t put that much energy into the 'casting, if it weren’t for the blood, I could have drawn the circle myself. I looked in alarm at the jenny, who looked up at me across from the gently shining lines. She shrugged in bemusement, clearly not straining in any serious fashion. Wherever the energy was coming from, it wasn’t from her. Dark mist was trickling from beneath the Captain’s blankets, curling about the legs of the cot and my own chair, my own hooves. No actual figure at first, just black and grey and blue tendrils, starlets winking in the deeper, thicker pools of shadow. Then the mist resolved in a rush, the Spirit rising out of herself like Leviathan breaching the ocean swells. She was in her Princess aspect for a change, oddly composed, looking about the great hall we had claimed for our experiment, meeting the gazes of the many ponies who sat upon the drawn-back benches against the walls of the chamber. Watching were three of the four cohort commanders, many of the support-ponies and a fair number of the sergeants and corporals. I had decided this must be an audience with a proper audience. I closed my eye in concentration, and then began. "Good even, fair lady. Do you know where you are today?" "Acolyte, we seemeth to have awakened in thy fortress, the 'Dance Hall’. Didst we fall asleep and yet not recall this? How peculiar." "Do you remember our last conversation, before the attack interrupted it?" "Of course we recall thy discourse, the substance thereof being that we art lacking in temporal continuity at times. Whatever happened to your eye, your leg? Who dared lay hooves upon our Acolyte?" "While you were facing the assault upon the walls - do you recall doing this?" "Yes, of course, the soul-devourers - fell, foul things, we hath encountered them before." "Truly? Interesting. Well, later for that, but while you were diverted by that attack, we suffered a second incursion, which slipped past our defenses unseen. A lich, our former employer, penetrated the Hall itself, and did great damage to the hospital and my ponies. I was involved, and did not escape unscathed, as you can see." The Spirit flashed in ire, and a change rippled across her visage, black chasing blue from her coat. "They DARE! Where are they, I will teach them their place!" The mist rushed out and found the edges of the circle, and rebounded. "Wait, what is this? Is this a summoning circle? What on Equestria is this?" "Vengeance can wait, Mistress. We have other concerns today, and ponies are even now pursuing she who gave offense. We have another task before us. Who lies beneath your heels, Mistress?" "My concern is that my subjects seem to have encased my self in a circle like some lesser demon or a squealing imp! How DARE YOU?" "You will find, if you try it strongly, that it is the merest wisp, the slightest of cobwebs, Mistress. We needed to test a theory, a hypothesis. That is the Captain of the Company beneath you, here with the two of us inside of this circle. When she went to sleep, you emerged." The Spirit looked down at the slumbering earth pony, and then looked up at me. "Meaning what, exactly?" "Meaning that my suspicions have been confirmed, that you have been affected strongly by the Captain, more strongly than was initially assumed. It had been noted that she never was seen when you were active, nor did the two of you ever meet in any other pony’s witness. The Captain insisted that you were our collective delusion, the madness of our crowd." "Yes, so I’ve heard. Nor would she ever let me inside of her dreams, the heathen, the infidel. What of it?" "I still cannot tell how extensive it is now, nor how distinct it was at first, but I think I can safely argue, now, with the evidence swirling around my hooves and the worthies of the Company in witness thereof, that she is hosting your self in some essential sense. The wick feels no heat from its flame; the mirror sees no reflection; the fountain drinks no water. You do not exist to the Captain, because she is your font, and she is not herself while she is You." The Spirit inverted her aspect once again, and blinked. "We hath no idea how to respond to that. Dost thou sayeth that we possesseth thy commander like a simple haunt?" "Lady, we have always known that you possess the Company as a whole, although your understanding of this seems to come and go with your moods. The fact that you are… focused through the Captain, however, is new information. And this focus has become a problem, do you not agree? You are stronger, more persistent, and yet… that very strength is causing problems. We need both You and our Captain." She looked down at the sleeping mare. "We hath never truly exchanged a word with yon filly. She is a door ever closed, an unlighted apartment, an absent tenant. How art we to address a pony who never is present while we art?" "I have hopes that you might find your way into her dreams, and work matters out between the two of you. Can you try this?" "We still hath no entry to this pony’s dreamscape. Perhaps the little thestral might know a way which we ourselves hath not discovered?" "Good idea, Lady," I said, then, more loudly, to the audience, "Cherie? Has anypony seen Cherie? We need her services." This was the point at which we discovered that the filly had disappeared. Nopony had seen her, not for the better part of a day, perhaps longer. This is the sort of thing that happens when an apprentice’s knight was bed-ridden and immobile, and the ponies supposed to be supervising her are off chasing vengeance and bloody-hooved retribution. While members of the audience combed through the rest of Dance Hall trying to track down the truant thestral, I discussed many matters with the Spirit in her Princess aspect, trying to determine the edges and gaps within her understanding and comprehension of the world. Did she know anything of the moon-prison upon which she was supposedly exiled? Was there anywhere that she went when she was not with us? It was like trying to scoop up night-mist in my hoof. She just flowed away like wisps of vapour. We were talking like this, of nothing of particular interest or relevance, while a hoof-full of the remaining audience dozed half-asleep upon the benches of the great hall around us, when the unbroken circle flashed white with a terrible energy. The rest of the hall was burnt away from our sight by the witch-light glare, and the Spirit and I inside our summoning circle spun about, looking for the source of the attack. When the Marklaird expired upon the pikestaff, the Spirit and I were isolate, sealed within that cob-web circle. And the fire of the lich flowed through the greater focus of the Company and its own circling walls that surrounded us like a second summoning-circle of stone and earth, miles in circumference. Dance Hall burned like a second sun.