The Quests of Fable

Ch. 6: Spells, Summoning, and Slight

About a week had passed since Fable had gone to lunch with the headmasters, and she had gone through dozens of books already to try and find new spells to learn. So far, she had been able to cast spells for shooting fireballs, healing (within reason), growing plants that would be under her control, freezing objects, summoning water (just water, without a container), and minor illusions. Almost all of these had gone horribly wrong at some point, but they had also all gone right at some point, too. Fable had taken the headmasters' advice and gotten plants for her room, which seemed to help.

Fable's own idea to help with controlling her magic, however, was a bit different. She had heard other students and initiates talking about ways to focus their magic and make it easier to use, and one of the ways that Fable felt she could do was to summon or train a familiar. She opted for the "summoning" route, seeing as how she needed to practice her magic more. Besides, she was curious as to what she would get.

Fable decided to take a few days to prepare, and then do a dusk summoning in the woods to the west of the town. No one ever really went there, so hopefully she wouldn't be interrupted.

The first thing she needed to do was draw a summoning circle. Fable found some old ruins in the woods that had a part of the stone base still intact, so she drew her design on the floor there using charcoal. It had two concentric circles connected by smaller circles with swirling lines inside. In the center of the inner circle, there was an octagon with lines running from each corner to the central point. That was where the familiar was supposed to appear.

Next, Fable gathered her ingredients. She would need a cat's whisker, a dragonfly's wing, a crow's feather, and a dragon's scale. Each ingredient would go in one of the eight circles connecting the two concentric ones, with an empty circle between each one. The empty circles would later have small carved pieces in them that corresponded to the ingredient to the left.

Fable managed to get the dragon's scale and the carvings from the potion stores, which were accessible to all students and had a surplus of rare ingredients that anyone could use. There were spells in place to stop mages from taking the ingredients for unlawful purposes. Fortunately for Fable, the summoning of familiars was encouraged.

Finally, she would need to find and practice the incantation. It was in old Amiysan, like most spells. She found a version of it in the magical beasts section of her copy of An Unofficial History of Magicks and How to Use Them, but she decided to stick with the version she found in the library.

At long last, she was ready. Fable had prepared the circles, laid out her ingredients, and she had borrowed the spell book she needed from the library so she could read the incantation from it. She waited until she could no longer see the light of the sun in the sky, and then she began.

"Sivatek tu silatek, maren tem lohcam," Fable chanted. "Fahnsiya lohcam, fahnsiya an silatek."

The charcoal circle was glowing with a white light, and glowing vapor was starting to roll off of the objects. The center of the circle had a pulsing ball of light pushing out of it.

"Maren fahnsiya, fahnsiya maren."

The light at the center was spinning and swirling now, slow but sure. Just a moment more...

"Me fahnsiya, maren tu me."

The lights swirled faster and faster, drawn to the center by some unnatural force. It got so bright that Fable had to shield her eyes, and when the light dimmed enough for her to look again, something was in the center of the circle.