Class is in Session
64 Searing 121
It is strange to think that the fourth floor is one of the lower parts of anything. Where Petra grew up, a second floor was an unheard of luxury, and anything approaching the surface was considered so high as to be equivalent to the clouds. It was only the mirrorcatch boxes which brought sunlight to her soiled world – now it streams through wide bay windows into a classroom of smooth wood beams and neat, orderly desks.
It is the Initiate’s job to assist in the education of aspirant magi seeking to prove themselves and don the robes. While the greater minds and finer powers lecture in general, Initiates are called on to hold forth on their particular subject of expertise. Petra is one such expert, and her expertise has drawn a modest crowd. Just how she likes it. With her back to a half-full room, she scrawls chalk on a blackboard, her hand wide, swirling, and precise.
Introductory Demonology
She turns on her heel, striding to the front of the stage. She stops in the light – half her body shines like gold, the other half looks dim by comparison. Noon slashes across her face, and her dark hair ignites in shades of onyx and gold.
A consummate showman, Petra lets Yesod slink from the wings and come up behind her, looming in the dark behind his mistress. Petra watches with some small satisfaction as the eyes glue to him. It is the first time most of them have seen a demon. It is the last time many of them will see a demon, if they’re lucky.
Luck so rarely favors the sorcerer. Punishment for tampering with what should not be, perhaps. Petra has never minded overmuch.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, this is Yesod.” She glances at her aidolon out of the corner of her eye, and sees the demon shudder as his name is called. His steel mask of a face tilts, as he scrutinizes the crowd. He understands her intent well enough, at this point, and while there is not a performative bone in his metal contraption of a body, he does what she wants. A slave to her ambition, even here.
“Yesod is a demon, a being of the Inferno. As the denizens of the inferno are legion, he is one of an infinite multitude. He is my aidolon, a permanently-bound summon. If any of you return for the second lecture, aidolons will be explained in detail. But for now, he will simply serve as a representative of hell.”
Styluses scratch on wax tablets, or pens on palimpsests. Even those who could afford fresh paper do not spend it here. If Petra is worth her salt as a lecturer, perhaps they will transfer the notes to something permanent – for now, none have such faith in her. She tries not to let it gall her.
“The actual spellcraft of summoning is simple, far simpler than other disciplines of personal magic. It is a piercing of a veil, and the retrieval of an outsider. The summoner might reach into the choirs of heaven, or the pits of the abyss. Some summoners have even drawn their thralls from more esoteric domains. One recorded summoner drew his aidolon from Nod, the Land of Dreams. A singularly powerful tool, but difficult to control.”
Petra paces the stage, hands behind her. She hates moving, in general. She prefers to stand still, like a hawk perched on a branch. The world will come to her, she will be sure of it. One way or another. But to be still is to lose the attention of her students, and try as she like, she cannot fix their inattentiveness or the limitations of humanity. As if able to read her thoughts, Yesod shudders in what Petra knows is dislike. She nods at him, as if to remind him of the leash in her hands.
For now. For now
“That is the difficulty of summoning. The more powerful the mage and the deeper their knowledge, contracts become more favorable and control more absolute, but no summoner may subjugate entirely the beasts they conjure. What we pull into this world is unnatural, inhuman, and often entirely alien. Their worlds are different than ours, the very laws of their reality wrong. It is the task of the summoner to determine what they want, and who they are – and then give what we can afford to give. Never more.”
Her red robe shudders with a breeze from a cracked window. Cold air leaks into the classroom, herald of an evening storm. Petra waits for questions, and sees none.
“Most aspirant summoners believe that celestials are the most natural choices. They are symbols of a divine justice, in many cultures. They represent values that are comprehensible to us, and have been passed down in religious law since the dawn of the world. This is an erroneous belief, and one that you would do well to abandon early. Celestials are driven, as a rule, by abstract ideas. Truth. Justice. Charity. Mercy. Purity. But what are these things to us? Our civilization is built on restraint and concealment. Our justice changes with the passing ages. Our concept of purity too. Nothing changes in the supernal realms – they are fixtures, permanent in their infinite variety. To summon a celestial is to have to bind yourself to alien dreams.”
“Demons provide an alternative.” She gestures to Yesod. “Yesod, a Demon of the Tree. I’ll explain what that means next week, to whomever will come and hear it. He is the Demon of Beginnings. The start of ambition.” Yesod shudders to be named, and twists his body another few degrees around Petra. She nods to him, and the mirrors shimmer into life.
The classroom is reflected in the magical silver. The mercury wobbles and coruscates, and the edges blur. They are sheets of fantastical mercury, and they orbit Petra in smooth circles. Some in the crowd admire the work as a whole, while some are lost in the reflections.
To stare too deeply into the wonders of magic. Ah, to have such potential, and walk such a knife edge. How many will tamp down their desires, and avoid the slings and arrows that will assault them in their Trial, I wonder?
“Demons are representations of humanity as it is. They are not the fears in our unconscious, or the ideals to which we strive, or even the world we inhabit.” With a cold, dismissive air, she casts aside the alternate planes from which her peers draw. “They are lords of fire and brass, and are mankind refined. Desire. Ambition. Passion. Self-actualization. Vendetta. Their fixations are comprehensible, because they are ours. They take from us what is and was and shall be in the inferno, and with them we pursue what drives us.”
Petra turns her back to the class and draws a diagram on the board. A graph with two axes – change and rationality. She fills them in with the four worlds. “Elementals are a stagnant view of what is irrational. Abyssals are a chaotic view of the same. For what comprehensible to us, Angels prefer stagnancy and Demons change. Balanced and Imbalanced equations. This schema is worth bearing in mind, for all magic is the power of change. Magic is the imposition of our will on the world, which must necessarily change it to more closely desire what we want. If there is truly an all-powerful being, he surely has only ever had to use his power once, and now the world dances to his whims perfectly, you and I and everyone who was or will be.”
Petra tosses her chalk against one of her mirrors and catches it as it bounces right back into her hand. That draws a few ‘oohs’ and ‘aaah’ from the less ambitious of the lot. The ones likely to survive, either by perseverance or failure. The ones too mediocre to risk death for power. Petra’s contempt is hidden well behind her mask of a face.
What contract would Yesod make with them, if they had summoned them? How would such lethargy bind him?
“Equations is the right word, for unlike the abyssals or the elementals, demons are rational. Equivalent exchange, with equivalency determined by the demon. To a demon, a pact is writ in blood and brass, and neither hide their truth behind lies or ambiguity. I gave something up for Yesod, and he gave something up for me. We have exchanged goods and services, and now work together for a predetermined goal. For shorter bindings, something more definite will suffice. Give your blood, or your gold, or your sight, or your happiness to a devil, and they will give you power, or victory, or treasure.”
“And here, an understanding of economics is crucial to every summoner. Summoning need never be a zero-sum game. Both your offering and the demon’s offering is valuable, but different to each. Like a merchant selling wares, be sure you find a reasonable price for a reasonable good, and always beware.”
Petra holds the quiet, and then glances at the sun, as it to judge time by it. It burns her eyes, even looking near it, but she finds some comfort in that. At least here she can.
True freedom is the freedom to fail, and to do yourself harm. Slaves are those who cannot choose incorrectly. No demon would ever forbid her that right, as hunger and poverty did.
“…we’ll break for a recess. While you rest, consider what you will give up, and for what? A demon summoner must have their ambition in mind clearly, for unless you know what you prioritize above all else, you will trade away your life and your opportunities and earn only an ignominious grave to be forgotten.”
Petra turns on a heel and walks out to get a drink of water, and make way for the next lecturer to come and give his brief introit. One more in the brisk procession, in and out and back in again according to an appropriately-arcane schedule.An old man, prating on the mechanics of some exchange or another. The buzz of pleasant satisfaction in her heart, knowing that the crowd will wait eagerly for her return, is an unexpected benefit of this part of her job.
