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Conjuration

Take these ingredients and place them on the corners of a nonagon drawn in leftover slug dew. MAKE SURE they are left over, or else your conjuration could be interrupted and could cause serious damage to the user. Kneel on your dominant knee at the tip of the nonagon facing where your desired person last left. If they are a demon, stand on the western-most tip. If they are traveling, sit on the south-eastern tip. (There must always be a point facing exactly south-east). If their location is unknown, kneel on any point that is NOT south. Light a candle and place it in the middle of a bucket of water at the center of the nonagon. If all had been prepared correctly, it should sink to the bottom and the flame should burn charcoal black-tornado white. If the flame is purple, dowse yourself in the broth and run. Do not attempt conjuration again. (Note, purple flames are more common with spirit summon technique.)

However, once the black flame is lit, you should be prepared for the final step. As you kneel/stand/sit, a symbol should glow above the bucket. It stands for “How many leaves are enough to tip the pail of eventuality?” The answer is “A fortnight’s collection by cow tail.” The second symbol should appear after 4 minutes and 26 seconds. It means, “What virtue of sincerity can feed the dragon-plume’s garden?” The answer is, “Typhoid ringlets,” for those summoning after 6 a.m. The answer is “Valence challenge calling,” for those summoning after 7:06 p.m. Finally, a voice shall ring out in ancient tongue,

“Vi achekol’el Tretier. Hi alemik t apakul hon?”

At this point, focus all your energy on whom you wish to summon, your memories, feelings, and intentions related to this being. This energy should be channeled into the nonagon, and within a minute your conjuration should be there waiting to interact.

A boy sat secluded in a deep forest moist with aromas, preparing a campfire. Laid out in front of him was a sack-full of supplies and a myriad of thoughts. Slowly, he unpackaged each one of them. With his slug dew, leftover from last night’s meal, he drew a nine-sided shape in the green sand of the forest. The dew turned the sand a deep blue, almost neon. He used his gyro-tractor to perfectly measure the angles and distance necessary to make the regular polygon. Gyro-tractors were perfectly functional in alchemy as in conjuration.

Carefully, he placed each item from his sack on a different point, leaving the southern point for him to kneel on, like the rabbi had told him. Then, after placing a bucket of minty water in the middle, the boy withdrew his hickory bronze bell and played the Ballad of Dusty Streets. Before he lit the candle, he crushed up more mint to float in the bucket. After lighting the candle, he would turn it upside down and put it in flame first. This was a secret method only utilized by the rabbi and her students.

The boy sat there, staring at the candle. Something so serene, yet so important stood in his hand. In a morning market, one such as this could be easily overlooked for the majesty of a dragon’s egg or the complexity of an engagement crown or the usefulness of a compartmental fraction solidifier. However, a fifty cent candle lit in a cavern could potentially rescue a priceless life. In the House of Prayer, the ritual of lighting a candle in a room left dark for twelve hours symbolizes the enlightenment and salvation of civilization. From there, hundreds of candles are lit, each with a slight discoloration from the original yellow, but together with the energy of the long lost sun.

And now, the boy held one in the palm of his hand. He struck the match like he did when burning sacrifice cards. This time he swore he would create, not destroy. The tip of the flame swept over the wick like a cloud passing over an old cabin, leaving behind a fortress of snow. When the boy held his breath, the licking flame would become still, as if it were holding its breath as well. Any wind now would be unpredictable and ruin his one shot at summoning. He had to be quick.

Swiftly he submerged the candle flame first in the milky water. Agitated smoke bloomed from the bucket like a bizarre form of flora. The first symbol appeared. The boy answered, “Lolip crazy,” like the rabbi had told him. The second symbol appeared. The boy nodded his head, like the rabbi had shown him. The third symbol appeared. The boy wrote a T-shaped symbol six times on the back of the old grocery list, like the rabbi had written him. Then he returned the list to its original spot and wait for the smoke to dissolve. A voice rang out. “Vi achekol’el Tretier. Qaz manter erentoi. Hi alemik t apakul hon?” The boy focused, and all his senses faded. The visitor had arrived.

She was beautiful with lilac hair and skin like pleasure. Her eyebrows rested mid forehead, waiting to be awoken so that they may move and emote. Beneath them were her eyelashes named Shameless and Flustered. Their neighbors, Curiosity and Colorblind, were a deep shade of red, almost brick with enough crimson specks to make them look like lava. A nose drawn by canyon waterfalls stayed perfectly centered on her face. Below it, two lips swollen from prolonged exposure to braces mouthed forgotten lullabies to the lava pools above. Her clothes were made of silk, but again, her skin was made of pleasure. No symbol of aristocracy could disguise her gentle yet heart-thumping past. Her wings rested parallel to her body until the boy fell onto his hands and broke her stillness.

“Tooth?!” she exclaimed, now aware of the shift of space around her.

“Listen, I can explain. I needed to talk to you,” the boy pleaded. His hands shook intensely. “I was upset when I didn’t get the chance before you left.”

“Is this a summoning circle? Are you summoning me?”

“Please, before you get upset, know that I’ve been training day and night for this moment.”

“I’m not worried about you, Tooth. I’m worried about how I’ll return.”

“Don’t worry, I used vixen butter in the broth, so you’ll have a safe return within five minutes. But the more time we-”

“Did you clean the copper screw before using it? And is that the emotion-item? It doesn’t look bigger than a district-issued atlas.”

“They’ve changed since you’ve left-”

“And are you sure that’s a 90 degree cut on that tanzanite? If there’s anything wrong with the ingredients I could be put out of commission for good-”

“Minnow, I know. Don’t worry I’ve double-checked everything. This is very important to me and I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you.” The boy ran his fingers through his hair as silence fell around them. He looked down and pushed his glasses higher. “I’ve known you for so long, and I’ve done so little for you. I wanted to make it up to you, but I was afraid I couldn’t do that with our… status.”

“Are you suggesting we get back together?”

“I didn’t know if you really meant what you said when you stood at the paladin statue. And you taught me so much, not just about conjuration, but about life and futures and feelings.”

“I am ascended, Tooth! Not only would a relationship be breaking code, but the distance fissure would be impossible to mend.”

“I could make it work. By gathering supplies every week I could contact you for three minutes every weekend.”

“What happens when you run out of emoted items”

“The recipe doesn’t say it needs to be my emotion.”

“Are you planning on stealing?”

“Oh come on, Minnow. Don’t you remember those gemstoned hair beads you took from the mall nearly every time we passed that miner vender. If your hair is that important to you, imagine how important it is for me.”

The forest dwelled in quiet for the five peaceful seconds where both magicians stopped shouting at each other.

“What does that grocery list say?” the girl said, scooping it up. “Coal? Noodles? Kale? It sounds like you’re living like a plebeian. How many times have you tried to contact me?”

“That doesn’t matter. What matters is that you come back. I need you here.”

“I taught you conjuration so you could get a job and make a difference in the world. If all you’ve used it for is attempting to retrieve me, then clearly you’re more selfish than I’d realized.”

“I’m not being selfish, Minnow. I’m doing this for you. I told you, I want to make it up to you. Right now, you’re making my life impossible.”

“Move on.”

“So I guess you did mean what you said at the paladin statue.”

“... I was very harsh back then.”

“And you’re being harsh now.”

“I tell you what. I’m not coming back, but maybe you can-” Suddenly her image flickered and the woman was gone.

The boy screamed in rage. He kicked the bucket, splashing water and smoke everywhere. Desperately, he searched his bag for extra items. He only found plastic juice, pine fungus, a rusty nail, and a crushed seed. To make the list, he tore off a piece of his shirt and scribbled “NIBS” on it in mud from the trees. He used a handful of sand for the mineral, wet with tears and spit. He threw the bag in for a big emotional item. Then he dumped the vixen butter broth on himself. With his knife, he cut off two of his fingers. His scream of pain and misery echoed through the woods. As his two nubs of flesh and bone dropped on the fading polygon, he kneeled and prayed for a restoration in his conjuration. His body quivered as gibberish flooded from his lips.

His prayer succeeded, but he had forgotten to reset the bucket. His body was seized by some unseen force and jolted from head to toe. He lay dead before he hit the ground. The woman was summoned again, but the boy’s body was buried under the dead leaves fallen from the shock wave he had created. She warped away after five minutes and ate an egg soaked in broth.