summoning

“Raven.”

You sit upright. Something about my voice sounded off. You look beside you in your bed then remember I wasn’t staying over tonight. You’re too certain about what you heard to just chalk it up to sleep, and so you check your phone for the time. 3am.

You’re considering calling. The blood feast from the night before has given you a palpable current of vitality and a tingling all under your belly button suggests a midnight snack would be fun.

Then you hear it again, fainter but more urgent. Barely a spoken word, more a thought, cast into your mind. “Raven!”

In a flash of insight you recall to mind that I borrowed one of your grimoires a few days ago. You’d wonder if I was trying to astrally project, but the edge to my… voice… was certainly distress.

You throw off the duvet and run to the bookcase you store your things. It’s been a while since you performed formal magic like this but urgency lends your hands speed.

You box the Tarot. The Hierophant and the Queen of Swords throw themselves out, The Hierophant landing reversed beneath the Queen. Yep, I’m in trouble. Who’s this Queen, your intuition wonders?

Murmuring thanks and an apology to your cards you recall the two volunteers and search for the pentacles you require. Even as your hands move you commence the descent into a walking trance.

Your environment is swiftly made sacred, sanctified by memorised words, the pentacles you draw in the Cardinal directions, the invocations of benevolent entities. All is calm.

In the calm of your mind my voice comes louder than before: “Raven, please!”

You draw from memory an astral form to pilot. Pausing only to flex each joint, link sensation to your real body, you command your avatar: find him.

The sound of my voice is your guide, but you would have been able to find me had I been silent. You need only listen to your gut. I have fed you, let you in, and a part of me wanders inside you.

Your avatar arrives outside a circle broken by my hand. My stupid, stupid hand. I’m in the middle, cross-legged and transfixed, staring at the other presence nearby.

Something old, spiteful, bringing with it the stink of cold, dead things brought up from deep seas. With care you inspect the beast: curling tentacles writhe in a mass the size of a garden shed. The thing has extruded a pseudopod towards me, jerking it up and down like a toy offered to a dog. Arms and legs flail near to me in a mockery of life.

In a mockery of you. The resemblance cannot be denied. The mannequin has long, black hair, white skin, large eyes, fey body; but monstrous, the hair painted on, the skin like bone, the eyes wide and staring.

From the middle of the undulating, squirming mass of suckers and wet flesh an eye the size of a dog blinks and stares at you. You in your avatar offer it a wolfish grin.

“Raven!” I call again, relief coming off me like steam. “Help!”

The marionette is flexed in your direction. You see a bad mirror, jaws opening as if on springs, carved wooden lips giving out onto an unnatural fleshy tunnel.

You bare your teeth. Something in the urgency of your arrival made you build your avatar wolfish. The sea-thing balks, thrusts its Raven-puppet towards me.

You fall upon the outstretched limb, tearing with claws as sharp as thought. It retreats but rears up with more tentacles, unwilling to give up quite so quickly.

Despite the energy and effort of keeping the thing at bay you speak, clearly and calmly. “Andrew, listen to me, you need to repair your circle.” You give me actions, words, gestures to perform. You hear them take effect as the space around me becomes gradually cleaner.

A wild attack by the wounded marionette smashes and breaks on the newly reinforced circle. The creature howls with a voice like a shipwreck then limps away, trailing glowing ichor.

“I’m sorry,” you hear me say, clearly shaken up. You round yourself in your avatar to regard me. “I was trying to find you, bring you here.”

Your slightly oversharp fangs, your wolf-touched features, these make your words hiss as you speak. “You should have been more careful!”

“I know, I’m sorry!”

You become aware I’m staring at you.

“Is that really you? You’re so… Deep?. There’s so much of you…”

You’re not sure what I’m seeing but it’s clearly having an effect—I’m in awe. You stretch, articulating your avatar consciously to reinforce the link. Having been woken, you desire to have a little fun with me.

“Yes, it’s me. I’ll prove it.” Without the slightest resistance, you step over the boundary line and into my circle. I look up at you, open-mouthed and joyful. “You already let me in.”

“I already let you in,” I repeat, as you descend on me. My light plays upon your claws and teeth. Unobserved, a tiny light under your belly button also answers. “Thank you. For coming.”

“Mhmm. Any time. Why don’t you show me how grateful you are for saving you?”