Never Summon a Demon, chapter 2 (Patreon)

Since I’m playing, I’m going to play.  I couldn’t decide whose point of view to use, so I’ve used an omniscient POV. Does it work or would you rather have more of one or the other?

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Logan slowly dragged his way back to consciousness. For a moment, he thought he’s passed out after getting drunk. Again. After Jack’s latest assholery, he’d been doing that a lot. Something stank. Badly. He forced his eyes open and shrieked at the sight of a tiny transparent doll. A doll wasn’t scary by itself, but this one had his arms crossed, and he considered Logan with an expression that landed somewhere between frustration and fury.

Shrieking again, Logan scrambled away, crab style. Phone. He needed his phone. He needed to tell someone that he had lost his ever-living mind. He needed to never drink again. His hand came down on a pile of viscous snot that smelled like rotting cheese.

His stomach rebelled and he started to vomit, but then the little doll was there on his hand. “The stomach has no poison in it. You do not need to expel waste.” It’s voice was a whisper with a hint of something bright like a distant wind chime.

“I… but…. Who?” Logan lost the ability to form words. Despite the fact that the doll moved like a person, the body looked like cloudy plastic—like one of those stress balls that you could squeeze and the opposite end would bulge outward. He had a brief image of himself grabbing the dolls legs and squeezing until the head tripled in size. A hysterical giggle slipped out.

The tiny being put his fists on his hips. “I am the storm, the mist that crawls along the ground and clings to the valleys, the pounding rain that drives the herds, and the gentle rain the feeds the seedling. I am the oceans where the leviathan hides and the tumultuous river that carves the sides of mountains—”

“Whoa, whoa.” Logan held his hands up, surprised when the creature actually did stop. “Um. I was looking more for a name. I’m Logan. Logan Clyborne. What’s your name.”

“That is my name.”

“What is?”

“The storm, the mist that crawls along the ground and clings to the valleys, the pounding rain—”

The sorcerer held up a hand to stop him. “I am fairly sure I’ve lost my mind. I’m just going to go with Bob.”

“Bob?” They rolled the sound in their mouth. It was round and buoyant and devious. “Bob. Bob. B-o-ob.”They sounded it out slower and the sound resembled water flowing over a smooth boulder, worn with age. They said it faster and it reminded them of a drowning man, his hands reaching down into the water as though he could push himself up out of it. To bob was a movement in the water. The word was beautiful and perfect. They had found a clever summoner. “I approve of Bob.”

“I am so glad. Good to know.” The tone was rich with sarcasm. “So, what are you doing here, Bob?”

“You summoned me.”

Fear rippled through Logan. He was a language student. He knew a dozen stories where some idiot called a demon, and it never ended well. Never. “No, I absolutely did not,” he insisted.

“You absolutely did.”

“I…” Logan ran a hand over his face. He was having flashbacks to being five and getting in arguments with his six-year-old sister. He took a deep breath and shoved the urge to say, “Did not” into a mental closet. “How did I summon you?” He asked instead. Bob pointed to Logan’s writing desk.

With a frown, Logan walked over. His notes from Latin class sat on the top of his Latin book. “This?”

“Your spell. Yes,” Bob said. Logan was going to regret giving a demon that name; he knew he was. It wouldn’t be the first time his irreverent sense of humor bit him on the butt.

“That’s not a spell. They’re notes. Poorly done notes with doodles. More doodles than notes, actually.” Logan had trouble focusing in Latin class because it was the only course he shared with Jack. Staring at Jack took precedent over learning a dead language. He wasn’t even specializing in Romance languages, so he had no idea why he’d signed up for the class. That was a lie. He’d signed up because of Jack.

“Doodles.” Bob rolled that word around and tasted the emotions. Their diviner had drawn without thought and had composed a spell without intention. He was a mighty sorcerer indeed or some greater power than they had inspired him. Either way, they had never before known a diviner with such power. Usually mortals poured every ounce of their magic into the symbols carved into an amulet and they could accomplish no more than making them stir in sleep. They would touch the spell and improve the odds of rain coming or a child surviving the first year. But this divinatore had woken them entirely. “The doodles have the power of the awakening in them and you have drawn them. That is magic.”

“Oh no. No. No no no no no.”

Bob studied the sorcerer, but these words did not appear to be a spell.

Logan climbed to his feet and grimaced as he considered the goop clinging to his fingers. His stomach rolled, but the urge to vomit had faded entirely. That surprised him because normally his guts took any opportunity to projectile vomit, a trait he had shamelessly taken advantage of in grade school. Still. It was gross. He headed to the sink and turned the water on.

“Blessings!” Bob called in his wind chime voice, but Logan was too busy cursing as he turned the water off and on to no effect. His fucking water was off. Perfect. Now he got to have a nervous breakdown and do it with a goopy hand. He snatched a towel off the counter and gave it an experimental sniff before wiping his hands. It was better than nothing. He shrieked again when Bob came into view. He was tall enough to reach Logan’s waist and he had turned a more opaque white.

“What the fuck?”

“To what do you refer?”

“You!” Logan waved a hand to encompass the demon’s whole body.

“You blessed me with water,” they said. The divinatore had been most generous for a short period of time and they could only hope he would bless them with that generosity again. They disliked being physically smaller than a human.

“I….” Giving up on the idea that he could understand any of this, Logan went to the less dilapidated side of his couch and wilted onto it. The demon followed.

Maybe this was a dream. Lucid dreaming or really good drugs could explain most of this. Logan didn’t normally go for the hard drugs, but he’d been stressed recently. If he was drunk and someone offered… well, he couldn’t guarantee that he would have said no. “Where did you come from?”

“I don't know.”

Logan had prepared himself for any number of answers, but that had not been one. “How can you not know?”

“Do you know where you are before or after your consciousness leaves that body?”

“Of course I don't, I'm a human.”

“Then logically you cannot expect others to know as well.” They knew they were with Nox and with other spirits. Sometimes when a spell made them stir, they would hear the whispers of the others, but he didn’t know where that place was. Perhaps the place was Nox herself. They did not know. They only knew one thing. “You called me on so I came.”

“Okay, we need to get one thing clear. I did not call you. I might have doodled on my Latin homework, but that is not the same as summoning a demon. And I want to make one thing clear right now. I am not selling you my soul.”

Bob began to suspect his new sorcerer was both exceptionally powerful and moderately stupid. “I am not purchasing a soul. Why would I want a soul?”

Logan held a finger up. “I am not falling for that trick. There is no phenomenal cosmic power that is going to convince me to make a deal with Satan. Up until this point, I didn't even believe Satan existed, and I still would not have made a deal with Satan.”

“So you are more adamant about not making deals with people who you do not believe exist?” They prided themselves on logic, on filling each gap of logic with their essence and recognizing when the gaps were too large for coherent thought. But this was less a gap and more a chasm.

“Now you're trying to confuse me.”

“I am trying to unconfuse myself.”

Logan firmed his voice. When it came to boyfriends, he knew he was a pushover. He wanted to be nice, but the line between nice and doormat was too thin. However, he had lines in the sand, and demonic deals were on the far side of that line. “I don’t care what you say or what you promise, you can't have my soul.”

“I already assured you I do not wish to have your soul. If you attempted to give me your soul, I would return it because I have no use for soul that is not my own.”

“Demons always want souls.”

“How many daemons have you known?” They wondered if, during the time they had slept, daemons had become more predatory. Given that daemons followed their nature, that seemed unlikely, but they had lived long enough to see the impossible made possible more than once.

“Including you?” Logan asked. “One.”

“Then 100 percent of the daemons you have met have no interest in souls.”

“Demons are always trying to trick someone.” Logan sounded so sure of himself.

They drew themselves up as tall as they couldn’t without the proper offering of libation. “I am offended.”

“Seriously? That's what you're going with. You're going with the soccer-mom, personally offended expression?”

They were doubly offended now. “I do not trick anyone. It is my nature to flow in paths that are logical and predictable. I am the rain that falls on the high plains. I am the stream that follows the path of—”

Logan buried his face in his hands. “Please do not start that list again. I am running the thin edge of a nervous breakdown and contemplating the possibility that I’ve fallen headlong into one when I wasn’t looking.”

“Despite your personal dislike of my name, it remains true that that is my name even more than ‘Bob.’ My true name captures the truth of my essence. Rain does not fall unless clouds have risen into the sky. Streams do not flow uphill against the force of gravity. The ocean does not randomly empty itself. For you to suggest that I am capable of trickery is to offend me at the deepest levels.”

Logan peeked out between two fingers. “Oh, so I suppose you want me to believe that demons are all good guys. Look, I have watched fantasy porn and I am just as big of a fan as the next guy. More even. But demons are not good guys. They trick and cheat and do shitty shit.” That was not exactly eloquent, but Logan was proud that he still had words to offer.

“Of course some demons embrace tricks. The twilight of an early winter's evening, the half-light of a darkened storm-born sky, the dimness of the morning light under the dense canopy of the forest—”

“You're clearly going for another name so let's just call them Twilight.”

“Rude.” They glared at this upstart of a sorcerer, but he showed no sign of relenting in his disrespect. “Fine. Twilight is the epitome of a trickster. It is their nature to confound and confuse. Had you summoned them, I have no doubt that they would have played many tricks, especially when you have proven yourself so stingy with the libations. You leave me starving when you summoned me from the sleep.”

“Starving? What are you talking about that you're starving?” Horror gripped Logan. He had once screamed at Jack for an hour after he’d invited friends over for dinner without warning Logan that they were vegan. He never wanted to leave someone hungry, and starving was magnitudes larger. Not that Logan studied Bob, he did appear dangerously thin. Were demons supposed to be thin?

“Do you think I am meant to be this small?”

“I don't actually know what size demons come in.”

“What size do humans come in?” they demanded. They should not have to answer such obvious questions. Daemons were personifications of forces as envisioned by human minds. When they were not roaming the natural realms or sleeping with Nox, their form was determined by those same human minds. “I assume you can see that this is not an appropriate size for a human.”

“It might be for a really tiny human. Maybe.” The tone Logan used for the last word conveyed his distress.

“Humans do not come in sizes this tiny,” they said, unwilling to offer any reassurance for such a rude divinatore. Power did not excuse one from manners.

“I saw a documentary on premature babies once, and a few of them come pretty close.” Logan offered a crooked smile that made them suspect he was one of those humans who used an attractive face and charming nature to excuse his less attractive habits.

They straightened up. Since Logan was sitting, they could look into his eyes. “I am a force of nature which has existed for untold millennium since the first humans could form words and speak spells, and you compare me to a mewling, newborn child?”

Logan winced. “You don't have to take offense. So, what do you need so you’re not starving, and if you ask for anything that even hints of my soul, I’m setting fire to the apartment and finding the nearest priest.”

They were definitely offended. This was such a rude divinatore. “I am water in all it’s forms. My name is water. The spell you used to summon me is water, and you ask the the form of the substance I require?” They had thought the sorcerer had offered water, but now they suspected he had been more interested in the milk solids currently staining his skin. Along with healing, cleaning was one of their greatest talents, but they made no offer. If their divinatore wished to be disrespectful, they could offer disrespect in return. Water always reflected what was cast into it, although often in a distorted form.

“Oh shit. My water is out. We have to do somewhere else and find you some.”

“Your water ran well.”

Logan gave him a confused look. “No it didn’t.”

“It did. I am most impressed with indoor plumbing because the water flowed so quickly.”

“But—” Logan looked at Bob and then the sink and then Bob again. “Well, at least I don’t have to call the landlord,” he said before whispering, “not that he ever answers.” His steps were more steady as he returned to the sink and turned the water on. Bob happily absorbed it, allowing both his density and size to increase until he felt like his old self. It was his nature to flow over one obstacle at a time. He needed water first, and then he could determine how to school his strange divinatore.