The trick to summoning rituals was, as Chandra had learned, not to overthink them. They were simple affairs: just put the ingredients in the correct positions, say the words correctly, and you'd have yourself a demon to do with as you chose. If you put too much thought into it, fear would surely mislead your hand and stutter your tongue, leading to all sorts of undesirable results. The best thing to do was, with every new ritual, to act as though you'd performed it a thousand times.
“Hlep toh nerata, vaasht il suul!” A bright flash came from the circle inscribed on her cellar floor in pig's blood, and she reflexively shielded her eyes. Chandra braced herself for the stinging scent of sulfur, but it never came. Instead she noticed a strong, sweet note of watermelon juice in the air, and her brow furrowed in confusion.
“Hello?” she asked of the empty space, studying the circle on the ground. The demon she had summoned was supposed to be small, but it seemed as though there was nothing there! Gods, how she hoped he wasn't microscopic. Those old tomes could be so vague sometimes.
“Hey sugar.” The voice came from right beside her ear and she screamed and jumped in response, throwing her arms up. She whirled around a few times, peering into the darkness.
“Where are you? You're bound to me, demon!”
“Oh yeah, baby, you know I like it rough.” This time the voice came from the other side of her, but she kept calm. She noticed a small figure laying on her shoulder, tied up in an absurd amount of leather restraints which seemed to come out of her skin, though she couldn't feel them. The demon put on a show of struggling against the bonds. As their eyes met, the demon grinned. “I'd tell you my safe word but it tends to melt the brains of mortals.”
“State your name, demon.” Chandra never indulged her summons in their games, instead preferring to show that she was thoroughly in charge right from the start.
The leather restraints fell away from the figure and disappeared as he rose to his feet like Dracula from his coffin. He was small, green and naked, but had no anatomy to cover up anyway. “Name's Dyn, darlin'. And no, before you ask, it ain't short for dinner, or dingbat, or 'His screams are inaudible over the din of the crowd! Oh god! Oh, they're tearing out his intestines! Oh it's too much, I can't watch!'” He straightened himself up and smiled. “It's just Dyn.”
“Well Dyn, I have summoned you to be my personal stress relief. From what I understand you can be tortured and tortured and tortured and you'll just keep on living for me to hurt you some more.” Chandra's voice was low and sultry, only part of which was for show. Her sadism was legendary, and when she'd finally killed the last living soul in her village she'd turned to the dark arts to create herself more victims.
“Oh that's very much the case, miss. You got yourself your own personal torture doll, the likes of which ain't been seen since my days at the Southern Shelf. Nice folks down there, really. Had myself a blast. So whaddya wanna do with me, huh? You gonna pull me limb from limb? Make me grovel at your feet before you squish me? What's the plan?”
“You seem eager to suffer, Dyn.”
“Welp, it's like I always say: there's nothing in life more important than job satisfaction, y'know?”
“We'll see how you feel about that soon enough. I think I'll take you up on your suggestion, though.” Chandra took her summon from her shoulder, gripping his arm between her fingers. “Suffer for me, little worm.” She gave a soft tug and his arm tore from his body with a soft crack, spilling a thin, translucent red substance from the wound. A second later another arm grew from the stump, filling in until it seemed as though there had never been an injury. Looking in her hand, Chandra suddenly noticed she was holding onto a six-inch worm that wriggled tightly around her fingers.
“Gyahh!” she screamed, flicking her hand. The worm clung on, but her sustained efforts eventually made it lose its grip, and she stomped it into the stone floor where it landed. She looked back at the demon Dyn in disgust. “How dare you!”
“What? You said you wanted a worm to suffer, so I did like you asked!”
Chandra had lost her calm demeanor. “You know what I meant, you little prick. Ow, fuck!” She yelled again when a sharp pain came from the hand in which Dyn was clenched. She looked at her palm and saw a series of pinpricks in her flesh, each oozing a drop of blood. The demon lay on the floor where she'd dropped him, covered in spines. He smiled up at her.
“I aim to please, darlin'.”
She stared down at him with more fury than she had ever felt in her life. “I am Chandra, Mistress of Fire! I have summoned you! I have bound you! And, goddamnit, you will obey! Now kneel!” She stomped her foot on the ground before Dyn, who fell to his knees, trembling before her. She took a few deep breaths, looking at the miniature form on the ground below. She was still in charge. Despite his infuriating playfulness, she was the summoner, and he would do as she commanded.
“Good. You will do as I say from now on, and you will not misinterpret my commands. You will obey the letter and the spirit of my orders, do you understand?”
“Y-yes, Mistress!” the demon said from his kneeling position. Chandra smiled at the tremble of fear in his voice.
“Good. Now accept your punishment!” She raised her foot up and brought it down hard on the little Dyn, slamming into him again and again to work out her frustration. She savored each stomp, each squeak that came from his lips, the feeling of her foot pressing hard against the stone. She even enjoyed the soft, plush texture of his skin, strange a sensation as it was.
“Jeez, you're really giving it to that guy, huh?” The voice was again at her ear, startling her so much she lost her balance and fell backwards, yelling profanities the entire way down. Chandra sat up and looked at what she'd been stepping on. A doll in the crude image of Dyn lay on the floor, torn up and ragged from the beating she'd just given it. “I'd say you really beat the stuffing out of him, wouldn't you?”
“I told you to accept your punishment!” Chandra shouted, her voice a shrill shriek. “Accept your punishment! Obey, you little fuck!”
“All right, all right, I'm sorry. Enough playin' around. You wanna hurt me? Go on. Call it a gift.” He stood up straight, now dressed in a white shirt with two buttons by the collar. “Take a shot. Take your best. Fucking. Shot.” His solemn demeanor changed in a heartbeat to a much lighter tone. “No I'm serious, I'm not kidding, take it. Come on.” He started undoing his shirt before seemingly realizing the buttons didn't go all the way down and quickly singed his finger with his tongue, using it to burn the shirt down the front, tearing it away to expose his green chest. “Don't you know anything?”
“You dare question me!?” Enraged, she flicked him hard in the chest with her finger, caving in his torso and sending him flying. An otherworldly screaming suddenly filled her ears. Chandra writhed in pain and clutched her head, but the sound seemed to come from within her own skull. Blindly she groped around for the little demon, screaming and cursing and spitting as loud as she could, yet still unable to hear herself over the cacophonous wails.
“ISN'T THIS WHAT YOU WANTED?” Dyn's mocking tone rose over the noise, a terrifying sound that reverberated and seemed as though he were speaking with several voices at once. “DON'T YOU WANT TO HEAR ME SCREAM, CHANDRA, MISTRESS OF FIRE?”
“Be quiet! Stop it!” The summoner was near tears at this point, clawing frantically at her ears.
“I'M ONLY DOING AS YOU ASKED, CHANDRA. I'M OBEYING YOU AS WELL AS I CAN.”
“Just stop screaming! Please, I'll do anything, just stop!” All of a sudden the screaming ceased, leaving Chandra alone in her cellar, the sounds of her sobbing echoing off the stone walls her only company. She laid there for several minutes, slowly composing herself. She'd never been bested before, especially not by something she should have been able to control. It was a hard, humbling experience, one she wished she could just erase from existence.
Slowly she crawled to her feet, looking around the room. The summoning circle was a mess, streaked across the ground by her panicked struggling. She stumbled from one corner to the next, searching the ground intently, but saw no sign of the little green demon that had taken it upon himself to torment her. She breathed an unsteady sigh of relief, but knew that her work wasn't done yet. She still needed to inscribe and activate a banishment sigil.
Chandra got to work immediately, reworking what she could of the summoning circle into the banishment sigil, inscribing the familiar runes on the floor of her cellar. Even as she worked, she spoke the words over and over again, as if just saying them would keep Dyn at bay long enough for her to complete her work.
The sigil completed, Chandra started the incantation again from the start, working through it with a practiced calm that settled over her when she cast spells. The activation for a banishment sigil was much less flashy than the summoning one, more of a warmth that spread throughout the caster, indicating that it was completed. Chandra knelt before the sigil for a long moment afterwords, shaking slightly. She was glad it had been easy to clean up her mistake, but she was still rattled that a mistake had been made at all. I'm sure she'll be okay, though. She's a tough cookie, and I think she's strong enough to handle what's coming her way next.
Sure is gonna freak the hell out of her when she sees these pages on her pillow tonight though, doncha think?