I grimace, flipping through the familiar pages of the Book as I pace outside the Circle. For all the times I’ve read it, for all the times I’ve used it to summon the demons I needed to bargain with, I’d never concerned myself with banishing. No demon would want to stay imprisoned in my circle, so they’d just… leave.
In hindsight, it does seem a bit cavalier on my part.
”This is a real problem, Twilight,” I say, shutting the Book gently. “There’s nothing in here that has anything to do with sending things home.”
“So that’s it?” she groans, pacing inside the Circle, matching me stride for stride. “That’s how you return a summoned entity back to their own world? You ask them nicely and they go away?!”
“It hadn’t been an issue until now,” I grumble. “The other demons I summoned just left on their own.”
“Other demons?” the alicorn says, stopping to stare at me. Her left eye begins to twitch. “Are you implying I’m a --”
“Come on Purple, you know what I mean,” I say, turning to her and trying to calm her down. “The rules must be different if you’re not a demon, and whatever those rules are, they’re not in here.”
She huffs, obviously as frustrated as I am, and sits back on her haunches. “Well, say the words to me anyway. Maybe it’s some kind of… aural resonance patterning? Maybe the sounds are what triggers an energy release in the Circle?”
She looks as desperate as she sounds, and I can’t afford to let her panic right now, so I nod to her reassuringly even though I don’t really think it’ll work.
“Sure, that could be it. Okay, hold on,” I say, kneeling down to pull the iron bar away from the arc of the Circle it’s been blocking. The Circle snaps back together seamlessly, and the faint yellow glow of its protective magic separates us once again.
I stand, flip to Chapter Sixteen in the Book, clear my throat and start to speak the ritual dismissal.
“Twilight Sparkle,” I say, raising my unburdened arm for effect. “For the present, you may go unto your destined place; but every time hereafter that you are summoned, you must give your obeisance to me without question.”
I peer hopefully at her over the Book, and she raises an eyebrow at me, unimpressed.
“The arm might be a bit much,” she says objectively.
“Worked fine the last time,” I say, feeling some warmth in my cheeks.
“Great. So you can summon something but you have no way to send it back where it came from. What kind of crazy pony comes up with this stuff?”
“Well, there are some banishing rituals in that book,” I say, pointing at a thick gold-leafed book resting atop my duffel bag, “but -- ”
“But what? Banishing sounds great!” Twilight says, standing up again in her excitement and approaching the edge of the Circle. “I want to be banished!”
“-- but they don’t just banish the demon,” I finish, shaking my head. “They banish all magic in the area. Every banishing ritual I know tells you to seal off all your magical implements before you start, because if they’re anywhere nearby when you finish, they’ll be completely drained and turn into junk.”
Twilight looks up at a floating glyph, and her ears flatten. “So it’ll banish the Circle too?”
“Yep.”
“And if banishing doesn’t actually send me back…”
I don’t answer her. I don’t need to; she already knows.
She looks at me, takes a breath, holds it, lets her breath go in a long sigh, and finally says “Ponyfeathers,” with such vehemence that her mane droops over part of her face, and I’m unable to stop an involuntary snort.
“What?” she asks, bemused, as she blows ineffectively at her mane.
I push the iron bar back over the Circle, slicing into its protective field so I can see Twilight clearly again. She’s defiant, but the worry etched in her expression is clear. She’s down, and we’re in trouble, but we’re not out of the game yet. The Book isn’t my only source for ritualized magic. The glyphs aren’t all gone. We still have some time.
“Ponyfeathers, huh?” I chuckle, leaning down, reaching forward and pushing the errant strands of mane out of her eyes. She watches me closely, and I make sure all she can see is confidence, determination and just a hint of amusement. I’m not sure if she completely buys the bravado, but I think she’s willing to pretend she does, and if that keeps her head in the game that’s good enough for me.
“Relax, Purple,” I say easily, reaching down for the gold-leafed book. “Don’t worry, we’re not lost yet. There’s bound to be an answer in here somewhere.”
* * *
“There are no answers in here!” Twilight grumbles in frustration, slamming the gold-leafed book shut with her hoof and slumping to the floor, defeated.
For reasons not entirely clear to me, neither spoken nor written English seems to pose any difficulty for Twilight -- but then, the demons I’ve summoned in the past have never had any trouble, either, so for now I’m going to chalk it up to something undocumented in how Circles work. Something else to add to my “I’ll find out later” list.
Regardless, while Twilight’s incredible reading speed, photographic recall and magical background has brought her through several of the largest magical reference volumes on earth in record time, all it’s done for us is to underscore the fact that there isn’t a single goddamned occult volume in my possession that describes how to send something home that isn’t demonic in nature.
I can see the desperation growing in her expression. Not a single page in any of my books had described any spells, rituals or incantations that could get her home. Not a hint of a magical operation in a lost text somewhere, not even a mention of any kinds of portals beyond the kinds that attract demons. Twilight knows she’s sunk, and as I watch her I can tell she’s starting to lose it.
She’s wrong, though. There is another answer. I’d figured it out when she was occupied with the middle chapters in the Golden Dawn reference book -- I just haven’t shared it yet. I was so sure we’d find something else. Anything else.
I avoid her gaze, because I want there to be any other way to fix this, even though I know there isn’t. Another glyph winks out, and from my seat on the floor I peer at its afterimage with a baleful eye.
“That’s seven left,” Twilight says, smiling nervously, and I nod absently. I can’t believe it’s going to end like this. Everything I’ve done to come so far, all the sacrifices I’ve made, two entire years of my life devoted to fixing one terrible, awful thing, and right at the goddamned end it all goes straight to --
“Harken?” she asks, glancing at me from under her frazzled mane. “Harken, what are we going to do?”
I turn to Twilight with a smile that quickly becomes even more genuine than I’d intended. What I’d wanted doesn’t matter anymore. All that matters is that someone’s life is at stake, and that if I show some goddamned backbone I can make a difference. This time, I can make things right. Maybe I’ll never be able to fix what I broke, but I can sure as hell stop something else from breaking.
Time to put up or shut up.
“Relax,” I say, my confidence and my purpose restored. “I told you I’ve got this.”
“But we didn’t find anything --”
“We did,” I say, standing resolutely. “You just didn’t recognize it.”
She stares at me, confused. “What are you talking about? I went through those books with every study method I know! There’s just no way out of this.”
I walk over to my duffel and kneel, pulling out a charcoal stick, some containers with incense, and a bunch of beaten-up knick-knacks. Balancing them carefully in my arms, I move to the far corner of the attic and kneel again, depositing the objects carefully. Finally, taking up the charcoal, I begin to draw, slowly and meticulously, on the rough wooden floor. The marks are thick and crude, but they’ll do the job.
“Harken? What are you doing!” Twilight asks, and I look up and wink at her.
“Saving your cutie mark, Purple,” I reply grimly, and I get back to work.
* * *
“Harken. Stop. I can’t let you do this,” Twilight says, her eyes wide and her voice laced with panic. She figured out what I was doing half an hour ago, right about the time her Circle dropped to five active glyphs. It took her long enough to work it out, but from her angle she couldn’t quite make out what I was drawing on the floor, and I suspect ritual magic isn’t really her forte anyway. It was only after I placed the sacrifice receptacles at the ordinal points of the new charcoal Circle that she realized what I was up to.
“You gonna come over here and stop me?” I reply, chuckling darkly to myself as I put the last details into the new Circle’s structure and drop the remaining nub of charcoal on the floor.
“It’s not funny!” she says, pacing back and forth within her own Circle, several yards away. “I read your books, remember? You can’t command a demon unless you’re purified!”
“Not true,” I reply, placing a roughly square piece of printer paper face-down in the center of the charcoal Circle. Black marker, bleeding through the back side, shows the outlines of a magic square, its puzzle solved with meticulous care, even if the components used to make the Circle were less than perfect. All the substitutions are reasonable, though. It’ll be fine. Definitely.
“Risk of infernal corruption!” Twilight shouts, louder this time. “If that Circle of yours has any flaws --”
“It doesn’t,” I insist, mostly sure I’m telling the truth, and I glance sidelong at her as I light a ball of incense with my lighter. “And this is no longer open for debate.”
I drop the incense into a dented brass brazier at one corner of the Circle and begin to chant. Twilight continues to protest, her voice becoming more shrill as I progress.
“The timing’s all wrong!” she calls out, grasping at straws. “The farther you are from midnight, the stronger he’ll be!”
“She,” I say, correcting her, and then I turn away to focus on the words of the chant. Only four glyphs, hanging roughly at each ordinal point in Twilight’s failing Circle, now hang suspended in its faded yellow magical field, and their glow is dim and sickly.
Pulling out my pocketknife, I cut off an uneven lock of hair from the back of my head and drop it into a well-used pewter soap dish resting at another corner of the Circle.
“Harken, no, please,” Twilight says, quieting. “Don’t do this. If anything were to happen to you because of this insane plan of yours --”
I ignore her and slice my hand with the knife, drawing a parallel line to the cut in my hand I’d made earlier and letting the blood drop into a tarnished silver cup.
Twilight goes silent as the ritual nears its completion. Whether she wants me to do this or not, she knows I need my concentration. In the corner of my eye I see her staring at me and absently biting her lip.
I speak the last word of the chant, and I blow on a sleighbell I’ve suspended from a length of twine from the ceiling. It clanks once, feebly, but once is enough.
As the Circle springs to life, it occurs to me that I haven’t jury-rigged a Circle this badly since the first time. But hell, it worked, then, right? And I’m much better at this now than I was then. Even though the last time I tried this, I inexplicably got a pony instead of a demon.
What could possibly go wrong? For that matter, what actually did go wrong the first time?
A bright light begins to emanate from the center of the makeshift Circle, and I decide it’s probably best to focus on the task at hand.
As before, the light fades, and the new Circle’s glyphs provide enough light to spy a dark form in its center. Slowly, the shadowy form stands, its limbs thin and its stench vile, and it turns to face me.
“Magoth,” I say, my voice rough, “You know who I am. I have summoned and mastered your brethren, and now I have summoned you. I have sealed this place by the elements of my body.”
“But I am not bound to you, am I, boy?” it asks, walking to the edge of the Circle and testing its protective magics. A pale, emaciated face with long, stringy grey hair and blood-red eyes looks up and grins at me from within a hooded robe made of sackcloth, hide and sinew. “Because that’s... not really what this is about. Is it?”
“I have not brought you here for the usual compact,” I say, winging it a bit.
“Planning to sweeten the pot, then?” Magoth asks, gazing over at Twilight and licking its lips lasciviously. “A trade, perhaps? She’s a morsel, she is. So brilliant, so juicy. She’d make a fine sacrifice. We could do business over her, you and I.”
“I neither bind you nor bow to you,” I say, refusing to rise to the bait. “I command you.”
“Command me, hey?” the demon repeats, its grin widening. “A little… premature for that, isn’t it? Shouldn’t we be discussing something other than… petty demands? Aren’t you the least bit concerned about fouling up all that hard work you’ve been doing for the last two years?”
“My concerns are my own,” I say, suppressing my anger. “By the Circle that holds you, I demand a service. Otherwise you will never leave this place.”
“I think otherwise, boy,” Magoth says, its expression growing cold. “It’s all too clear what’s going on here. You’ve managed to lay hands on an Equestrian,” it says, placing a strange emphasis on the word. “Such a luscious world she has, but her kind are not suited for this wretched Earth of yours, are they?” it taunts. “Even now she’s sucking that Circle dry like a starving child on a withered teat. I count four glyphs left. What does that give you? Half an hour until her death, perhaps? I think I have the patience to wait that long, at least.”
“What do you want,” I growl, moving to place myself between the demon and the alicorn. “You didn’t answer the summons just to gloat.”
“I could have, actually, but you’re right. I didn’t,” it says, grinning horribly, its black, empty gaze somehow staring into mine. “But I’d like to see you squirm a little, first.”
As if on cue, one of the glyphs in Twilight’s Circle expires, and Magoth claps her hands together in glee.
“Just the thing! Only three little indians left, my little sorcerer. I suspect the last of her precious glyphs will go rather faster — now that there are too few to cover her ordinal points.” Magoth peeks around me and leers at Twilight again. “And oh, how I’d cover her ordinal points…”
“Enough, demon,” I say, moving between them again and biting back my anger as best I can. “What do you want from me.”
“Oh, it’s not what I want,” the demon says lazily. “It’s what my brothers and sisters want. You remember them, yes? You’ve been making deals with them for nearly two years now.”
I grit my teeth. I can see where this is going.
“And what do they want, Magoth?”
The demon smiles widely at me, exposing rotted teeth in a ruinous mouth. “You’re a smart boy,” it says mockingly. “Your deals were not particularly favorable for them. I suspect you already know what they want.”
“Fine. I cancel those deals, and you send her back to her own home. Agreed?”
“Oh, oh no, I’m sorry,” Magoth says, still smiling. “No. You see, access to her world is not given to my kind anymore,” it says, twiddling its thumbs idly. “Much as I would have it otherwise. No, what you have done, boy, only you can undo.”
“Then in return, you’ll tell me how to undo it.”
“Alas,” Magoth says, savoring the moment. “I could, and I even would -- and if you order me, I shall! -- but in all fairness I should warn you, by the time you understand what it is you have to do, complete your preparations, and, dare I say, find the right location? Why, your dear new friend would have long since become a putrid lump of rotting and lifeless but vibrantly purple fur. I suppose you could skin her and wear her as a splendid new hat?”
“Stop,” I say, cutting the demon off as yet another of the glyphs in Twilight’s circle disappear. “I need her alive.”
“Ah! Then we come to the quick of it,” Magoth says, its features triumphant. “Emphasis on quick, yes? I can, indeed, tell you how to facilitate her continued existence -- indefinitely -- on this hateful rock of a world. I can even do it in time to save her life.”
My lip curls involuntarily. “And all I have to do is release your brethren from my contracts.”
“Precisely so. Do we have a deal?” the demon smarms, extending its bony hand to the limit of the Circle.
“We have a deal,” I say, toeing the tarnished silver cup filled with my blood past the Circle’s amber field. It passes through as if the field simply didn’t exist, and Magoth greedily snatches it up, drinking its contents down without a moment’s hesitation.
“Wonderful doing business with you,” it says, wiping its mouth and pulling a thick, ragged piece of aged vellum from within its hide robes. “This is the magic square you will empower. Use this one or recreate your own, I care not, but place it within an unadorned case of horn or bone. Then seal it in wax, ensuring there are no breaks between case and cap, and place it within the Circle she now inhabits. Once this is done, carry out your Circle activation ritual one more time -- clearly, this art, at least, you know. Finally, make certain that she is the first to touch the case when the ritual is over. So long as she carries it with her, she shall be spared from your world’s… inhospitality. While its energy lasts, at least.”
“Fine. What do I need to do to break those contracts and get you out of here?”
Magoth smiles again, and I swear I can smell the demon’s carrion breath even through the Circle’s protections. “Already handled. We did, after all, make a deal in your blood. That generally suffices for my brethren and I. Fare well, then, my good and ancient acquaintance. Though I strongly suspect we’ll meet again soon. We do keep finding each other, don’t we?”
Before I can reply, the demon winks abruptly out of existence, leaving only a wisp of oily black smoke behind. The Circle’s field dissipates, its glyphs dissolving immediately into thin air, and the vellum square Magoth had promised me falls to the Circle’s center. I wrinkle my nose as the stink of sulphur fills the room, but I don’t have time to do much about it.
I step into the circle to retrieve the square, but as I do I notice something out of the corner of my eye: one of the symbolic sequences near my feet is completely ruined, the charcoal smudged beyond recognition. I kneel to examine it, and I’m not entirely sure whether I smudged it on my way in, or whether it was like that before.
Naturally, it’s the sequence that dampens a demon’s magical abilities. Without it, a demon would be able to use its full power from within the Circle. A demon like Magoth would be able to take a Circle down with little more than an irritated glance if that sequence failed.
I shudder. It had to have been my carelessness, just now. Magoth would surely have broken the Circle otherwise. And me.
Yes. That had to be it.
I retrieve the vellum square and move to my duffel to find the components I’ll need for the ritual. Twilight watches me intently from within her own decaying Circle, and I work quickly, folding the vellum square and jamming it into a small bone scrollcase, avoiding her gaze as best I can.
“What are you?” she whispers, half to me, half to herself as I cap the scrollcase. “What have you done?”
I stand and turn to face her; her eyes are shining strangely in the dim light, and her expression lies somewhere between pity and horror. I only have one answer for her, and I let her have it.
“My job,” I say, lighting a candle and holding it over the scrollcase’s cap. “No matter what the cost.”