Chapter 29: Concentric Summoning

LUCARION

My mouth goes dry as the Brazier fully faces me. The demon’s whole body swallows my vision. Flame rolls beneath iron ribs, heat pressing against my skin even from several paces away. I can hear the faint crackle inside him, like a hearth that never cools. If he stepped forward, I do not think there would be room in this kitchen for anything else.

I sense more than notice Flicker vanishing. My mind yells at my body to step back.

Indolyn steps forward instead.

She moves in front of me without hesitation, placing herself between us as though the size difference means nothing. The top of her head barely reaches the midpoint of the demon’s frame. The firelight gilds the edge of her armor and catches in her eyes, but her voice does not waver.

“It is none of a demon’s concern what their betters do.”

“I state fact, the kitchens answer to Belgorath.” He crackles, sparks shifting behind the lattice of his form. “See that you vacate before this becomes an issue.”

The heat flared slightly as he speaks. In the moment some small part of me realizes it has more to do with his biology than his emotions.

Though that didn’t stop my heart from beating its own song.

Indolyn does not move.

For a moment I forget that I am supposed to be the one with authority here. I am painfully aware of how small I am behind her back. If he struck, it would be her who took it first.

And yet she does not so much as flinch.

Only when the silence stretches thin does she turn, sharp and controlled, and guide me toward the exit.

The corridor outside feels cooler, though the scent of smoke clings to my lungs. My palms are damp. I flex my fingers, willing the tremor out of them before she notices.

Indolyn exhales sharply once the door closes behind us. “How dare he chase me out!” she whispered in a shout.

I nod, not trusting myself to speak. The words chase you echo louder than the crackle of flame had.

She rubs her temples, fingers pressing harder than necessary, then lets out a short, humorless laugh. “Ha. Once they learn who you are.”

There is something dangerous in her tone. A promise. A threat.

The silence that follows is heavy, not just with anger.

I glance back toward the kitchen doors, half expecting the heat to seep through and melt the stone.

I replay the image of her standing in front of that towering inferno without hesitation.

***

“I—I don’t really feel like meditating today” I told her sheepishly.

She looks at me with confusion for a moment before her eyes brighten. “How about something new?”

“New?”

She led me back to the library to an empty study room. Though I guess all the study rooms are empty since nobody else is allowed in.

I went to the bathroom before we started, as I felt the urge to pee. But I wasn’t able to relieve myself. Or rather this wasn’t the me who had to go.

When I walked in, the room had the furniture taken out. Indolyn kneels on the stone floor, chalk in hand, drawing a series of interlocking shapes. scattered runes, disconnected lines and curves.

“Come here” She waves me toward the center of the markings. “I am going to teach you another way of summoning demons”.

I hesitate only a moment before stepping carefully between the lines.

“Concentric summoning,” she says lifting three fingers. “Is the second of the three C’s of summoning.”  “You already learned Covenant summoning, or at least you’ve done it once.”

“Covenant?”

She let out a smirk that made her feel as large as the demon. “The little Hellhound” her emphasize on little annoyed me. “Covenant is the proper name for contracted Wroughtborn, though it’s usually only used for when the summon is particularly strong.”

“Concentric summoning utilizes your connection to your contracted demons to manifest pale imitations.” She gestures to the markings. “This is the summoning area. I want you to pay close attention to the patterns.”

I kneel beside her, studying the chalk lines. As I stare, the scattered shapes begin to align. The runes shift subtly, edges drawing toward one another. A faint pressure gathers in the air, as if the room is holding its breath.

“I see it,” I say, pointing to the faint curve forming at the edge. “That is the circle.”

“Yes. That is the first.”

First?

“There are three in total. The inner layer, the center layer, and the outer layer.”

“The space between the outer and the center layer,” Indolyn continues, “is what allows you to summon pale imitations. With time, the amount and variety you can manifest will increase and change. This type of summoning is used when large numbers of servants are necessary. Construction. Maintenance. As you have seen with Magnavex.” She says the name carefully. “She summoned multiple Grays for the library. They must remain within the summoning field.”

“The space between the center and inner layer allows you to summon Covenant Wroughtborn. They gain strength while within that layer. They may move freely, but the power amplification remains tied to their layer.”

“And the inner circle?” I ask.

She looks at me directly. “The inner circle is yours. You may move within it, but you may not leave it. The moment you step beyond that boundary, the entire structure collapses. All summons vanish.”

She guides me to sit at the very center.

“And now,” she says lightly, “we begin.”

From there she leads me through the process of imagining the circle overlapping the chalk she has left behind. It is nothing more than tracing lines in my mind, following curves that already exist on the floor. I picture them rising. Expanding. Interlocking.

I focus on Flicker. On the thread that binds us.

At first it feels forced.

The chalk lines remain etched into the stone, faint and imperfect. I trace them with my eyes.

Then I begin to layer the circle over them.

At first, my vision cracks.

The room doubles.

The chalk sits on stone, flat and harmless. But over it, another image rises, translucent and luminous.

The first time my sight split between Olive and Lucarion, it felt like my skull was tearing apart. Images overlapping. Buzzing. A swarm of noise behind my eyes. I had to force one world to recede before the other would settle.

But this…

This feels remarkably similar, only controlled. Not brain bursting.

Instead of rejecting one image, I let it superimpose over the other.

I allow the circle to sit over the chalk. Not replacing it. Not erasing it. Simply existing atop, it, like looking through clear water at something deeper below.

I realize, with a flicker of surprise, that this is easy.

I am not inventing the circle.

I am shifting focus.

I continue until I know how to hold two images without breaking.

The moment that recognition settles, the distortion smooths completely. The hum deepens. The circle becomes whole.

“Do not push,” Indolyn murmurs. “Let it settle.”

I slow my breathing.

I stop trying to create the circle and let it form itself.

The bond with Flicker hums faintly. Not fire. Not heat. Something steadier. I follow that hum outward, letting it trace the space between us. The chalk lines on the floor stop being lines and start being pathways.

The air shifts.

It is subtle at first. A pressure behind the ears. A widening in the lungs. The faint sense that the stone is no longer quite as solid as it pretends to be.

Then something aligns.

Not a sound.

Not a flash.

A loosening.

The resistance vanishes.

For the first time, I feel as though Lucarion is outdoors.

Not beneath stone.

The circle hums around me, faint but undeniable, and the room loosens. The walls disappear. The ceiling shatters. The air ceases to be. The stone beneath me feels distant.

The void expands outward and I fill the space. Depth in every direction.

Standing at the center of it feels like standing at the top of the world, where there is no tree line, no mountain, nothing to frame the sky. The world falls away in every direction. There is only distance. Endless and patient.

I am suspended in something immeasurable.

There is no canopy here.

No branches to catch the sky.

Only depth.

And I am at its center.

***

INDOLYN

The circle flares.

One hellhound steps out. Then another. Then another.

They pad onto the stone, heat radiating from their forms, eyes glowing low and watchful. Their paws leave no mark, but the air around them ripples.

Indolyn stares.

She cannot hide it.

“Yo—you did it,” she breathes.

Lucarion does not respond. His eyes remain glossy and unfocused, fixed somewhere beyond the room.

This was not shock. Seeing the infinite depth of Tenebros has that effect.

They are warned about it. About the moment when the void answers back and the self-risks thinning within it. Indolyn had been told the same before her first success.

But he had not been warned, she had never believed he would reach that point today.

Not on his first day. Not on his first attempt.

And yet here he sits, at the center of a stable field, holding multiple manifestations without collapse.

How?!?

It had taken her three months to manage this. Three months to learn how to keep her sense of self while letting the void fill her. Three months to stand in two dimensions at once without losing balance.

She remembers the kitchen. Lucarion shrinking back from Belgorath’s Wrothborn. His fear when he first saw a Behemoth. The rumors of him fleeing from an Imp.

She had measured him then.

Judged him.

Useful, perhaps. A symbol for Dormathis to maneuver. A banner Magnavex could rally behind.

But not this.

The hellhounds circle him in silent orbit.

The air hums with restrained depth.

And Indolyn sees it.

This is the power Tenebros grants.

This is the one who could save their people.

Their Champion.

***

LUCARION

I sit in the center of the inner circle, legs folded beneath me, palms resting against my knees.

The chalk lines are gone now. I now sit in the library proper. On top of a table.

What surrounds me is no longer dust on stone, but light suspended in air. Three translucent bands hum faintly around me, rising through the floor and ceiling alike. The inner sphere is small. I can take perhaps two careful steps in any direction before the boundary presses close. Beyond that, the center layer curves outward, and beyond that, the outer band glows faintly like a horizon drawn through stone.

The room feels wrong.

Not evil, or bad but Empty.

As if a thin portion that Abyss has been invited in.

“Focus on your connection to Tenebros,” Indolyn says as she slowly starts walk around the table, watching. “Do not force it. Let the connection guide the structure.”

I inhaled slowly and reached for Flicker.

The bond responds instantly. Familiar. Warm. Loyal.

The center band brightens, and Flicker manifests within it in a burst of green flame, landing lightly on the stone. He looks larger somehow, shoulders broader, fire burning steadier. The amplification hums faintly along my skin.

“That is Covenant summoning within a Concentric field,” Indolyn says with approval. “Now the outer layer.”

I swallow and shift my focus outward, toward the wider band of space. The void there feels thinner, stretched. I imagine the shape of Flicker, then reduce it. Less will. Less substance. A reflection rather than a presence.

The outer band flickers.

A second hellhound tears into existence beside the first.

Smaller. Its flames are dimmer, its edges less defined, like smoke struggling to remember its shape.

Then a third.

Then a fourth.

They circle within the boundary, never crossing the outer line. Their paws making little clacking noises on the stone. As they run between chair and table legs.

“Good,” Indolyn says, placing a hand on my shoulder. “Maintain the structure. You’ve managed to make the inner circle quite small, but it should hug you tightly.”

I adjust instinctively. I can feel the tradeoff. Every additional manifestation tightens the space around me. The inner sphere presses closer to my shoulders.

The void deepens.

And then,

Warmth. Sudden and soft.

Arms wrap around Olive from behind. My breath catches.

In the cave, Emma shifts in her sleep and presses closer, her face buried against my shoulder, fingers curling lightly into my tunic.

The inner circle trembles. The outer band flickers violently, and two of the hellhounds distort, their forms unraveling before stabilizing again.

“Hold it,” Indolyn snaps.

I force my focus back, but my heart is no longer beating to the rhythm of the void. It is pounding for entirely different reasons.

In the forest,

My ears burn. Across the room, Indolyn narrows her eyes. The blush is unmistakable. The summoning field pulses brighter. She misreads it instantly.

“My lord,” she says carefully, stepping half a pace away from me. “If my proximity is distracting you, I can give you space.”

My eyes snap open. “What? No!”

Indolyn’s brow furrows. “Then why are you flushed?”

I open my mouth.

Close it.

I cannot very well explain that a girl in another world is hugging my other body in her sleep.

“I am fine,” I say quickly. As Emma murmurs something unintelligible and tightens her hold slightly.

Indolyn’s gaze lingers on my face for a heartbeat too long before the door to the study room opens.

Splendith choose that exact moment to enter the room.

She takes in the scene in a single sweep, the glowing three-dimensional circle rising through the floor and ceiling, the pale imitations pacing along the outer boundary, Flicker standing proudly within the center band, and me red-faced and flustered.

Her lips curl into a smile that does not reach her eyes.

The void ripples outward, the outer band swelling for a split second before I drag it back under control.

Indolyn turns toward Splendith with clear irritation. “We are in the middle of instruction.”

“Instruction? In what why does he look like that, because I was just handling some tasks for Magnavex, and you too were supposed to continue mediating but here I find you hovering over our lord, one might think something improper where occurring.”

In the forest, Emma shifts again, her breath warm against my neck…

My blush deepens.