Never Summon a Demon on a Day Ending with Y (Patreon)

I want to be a little goofy, but I don't know.  I'm not sure how the POV works or whether I should start with the human's POV. Maybe I should alternate.  You tell me.

Summoned by ancient words and forgotten rituals, they dragged themselves to consciousness one molecule at a time. Humans were such annoying corporeal creatures, always over or underestimating the needs of their kind. This time, the summoner had severely underestimated. This time the human’s foolishness required them joining molecules until they became drops and then joining the drops until they could claw their way toward wakefulness.

Whatever divinatores or tempestarii had sought them, the sorcerers had provided an entirely inadequate sacrifice. The lack of libation meant the nuance of human thought escaped them. Each time they were summoned, human culture and language would run through their mind with the nimbleness of a fire that leapt from one leaf to the next or stream that tumbled over ancient rocks. But this wakening was different.

Harder.

They had slumbered far longer than before. Sleep clung to their being as if Nox herself, that ancient lady, tried to hold them captive in her realm. But they persisted. It was their nature.

Individual drops of water joined until they could manifest a vapor that crept along the floor of some richly appointed dwelling. Evenly planed and polished woods covered the floor and colorful furnishings filled the space with joy. The finishes would befit a king although the room was no larger than a cleric might claim.

Words came slowly to them.

Apartment.

Student housing.

They struggled to parse the true meanings behind such alien terms. The finishes were manufactured, not crafted by a skilled hand. Most odd. But they understood that this was the poor dwelling of one who had not completed his or her studies.

Most summoners who called them studied language and ritual. However, the term “student” had an unfamiliar taste on their tongue. “Student” came with a lack of sleep. With a desperation for coin. With an uncertainty that drove melancholy and madness.

How odd.

They required more water to fully manifest. Perhaps the sorcerer who had woken them enjoyed cruelty. They hated serving such masters, but they still had some hope that the summoner was only a fool. They had served many fools—and often the fools regretted the decision.

They were not without weapons.

They could pour themselves down a sadist’s throat and fill each cell until the oxygen was driven from the blood. They had done that before.

Twice.

And once they had actually intended to cause death. The other time was not their fault. The divinatore who had summoned them sought protection from water, but they were a creature of water. Water could only add more water to a situation. Worse, they had not understood that the libations were not libations as much as a flood. They had manifested too large too quickly.

But the fault was not theirs. They could only follow their nature. It was not their fault that nature caused each drop to tumble into each other until they could create one magnificent whole. But thought came more slowly than form when the proper offerings were given. Comprehending the slippage of time and the mutable nature of magic required time, and during that time of contemplation, they had not realized the divinatore who had summoned them had been trapped within them.

Only when they searched for the lips of the creature who had formed the sacred words did they find the lifeless body inside themselves.

They shivered in revulsion and tiny droplets fall like rain inside the apartment. No. They could not afford to divide themselves. They had so little that sleep beckoned like the stagnant pool at the bottom of a long stream. They darted about, pulling the moisture back to themselves. It wasn’t enough.

They drew water from the ceiling above where metalwork allowed water to seep into the fibers of glass so tiny that even the gods could not form them. Lights flickered as the water passed the strange lines of fire. Electricity. They understood that if they stained that unstable water with their essence, the electricity could turn into proper fire that would dry out their tiny form in a blink of an eye, and they carefully moved around those neatly contained lines.

They finally possessed enough magic and libation to manifest eyes and small hands, and they sought out the ritual words in hopes of finding the divinatore who had summoned them from sleep. The room was small, but in their current form, it required several minutes to navigate from the couch over the Xbox controllersacross the pizza box to the chair and the table on which the divinatore was clearly working on some great treatise.

They studied the notes the missing diviner had left behind, and they found the sacred words placed between poorly spelled Latin nouns and the magical symbols with the power to waken him. But the overall incantation was unfamiliar.

Cat and temple and childand father and mother and water were all crowded onto fragile sheets of paper, but most of the words were not only illegible and poorly spelled, but empty of magic as though the divinatore had not yet given them life.

Yet each word was richly decorated with spirals and dots and fantastical forms that could only be more magic. Triangles intersected and lines touched the words before converging into crescents and spires and more spirals. So many spirals, each more elaborate than the one above. A word in unfamiliar script was the most decorated of all with outlines growing ever larger around it and wisps of scholar’s ink scattered like fur around it. But they did not know the word yet. Thought still came too slowly, although they did know it was English.

What on odd divinatore had called them. They could do nothing more but wonder at what natural magics the diviner might desire before they slid back towards sleep. Even great forms of magic must yield to entropy when there was no path forward that they could tumble down. And so they slipped into a light slumber as they waited for the sorcerer to return or for Nox to gather them back up and return them home.

Noise woke them. Clamorous noise like a hundred spirits all demanding the attention of the same divinatore at once.

“Oh no. No. Fuck no. Not a chance no. I’ve already given you a second chance and a third and a fourth. You just keep—” The divinatore fell silent. The paper was stained with the magic of this one, so they sat and waited while their summoner argued with a small piece of glass and metal.

“You don’t respect me at all!” he screamed. This sounded like one who had summoned him to lay a curse on another. They could perform malignant tasks, but they much preferred healing. Healing was their favorite magic.

“Oh, fuck you and the horse you rode in on.” He poked the small square with an anger that should have broken it. A cell phone. The divinatore used a cell phone, which meant he argued with a person. So strange. They had seen many ages, but this one was particularly odd.

“Why do I keep letting him back into my life when I know he’s just going to do it again?” The divinatore asked, his face tilted up toward the ceiling.

“I do not know, but I can seek such knowledge if that is the task you will set for me,” they answered. The divinatore whirled around, screamed and then dropped a large jug of white liquid. They did not recognize the milk until the jug broke, spilling across the floor. They were on it in a moment, taking the water into themselves and leaving behind a foul-smelling sludge that even a starving cat would reject. However, when they tried to thank the divinatore for the new libation, they found he had collapsed, all his limbs askew in a way that resembled death or a head injury.

Slightly larger now, they moved to their divinatore’s head and settled in to wait for wakefulness to return. They were quite good at healing and they knew the human body and all its intricate secrets. The divinatore would have no more than a few seconds of unconsciousness and then they would require answers.

It was rude to awaken a magical aspect of nature and then leave them alone in the apartment. He would impress that on his new divinatore… just as soon as the shock wore off enough for him to open his eyes.