“Not again…” Sylfa murmured, staring at the summoned creature with clear disappointment. “It was meant to be a healer. Why… what am I doing wrong?”
She looked down at the grimoire, inspecting the runes one by one.
I monitored her thoughts closely, hoping she might remember something useful, or perhaps realize what mistake she had made. But instead, Sylfa’s head snapped toward the summon and Kayle, who was already charging at it.
The woman was grinning, excitement written all over her face as she ran toward the creature with both blades ready in her hands.
“Do not hold back!” she yelled as she passed by the summon’s side and swung her right hand, leaving a thin, shallow cut.
The creature’s eyes darted toward Kayle. A rough breath escaped it as its body shimmered green and its skin darkened until it was almost black. The shallow wound, where a trace of green blood had appeared, closed as if sealing into a scar. The blood no longer welled from it.
“STOP!” Sylfa yelled and jumped between Kayle and the summon.
Kayle clearly had not expected that. She barely managed to stop her momentum, her blades halting only an inch from Sylfa’s body.
A heavy silence settled over the field.
Sylfa was fuming, her round, pale face red with anger. Her silver eyes stared fiercely at the woman before her, narrowed beneath her thick brows.
“How could you?” she screamed, ignoring the mages who had stopped practicing their spells and were now all staring at her, Kayle, and the summon. “How could you attack my summon? He can FEEL!”
“What?” Kayle frowned. She had looked just as angry when Sylfa first stepped in, but now she seemed genuinely confused.
“He is a living creature. He can feel pain!” Sylfa repeated. “How would you feel if someone summoned you only to attack you for no reason? I summoned him with the promise of an introduction…”
“You were trying to summon a healer…” Kayle argued.
“That does not matter! Never hurt my summons. Never!” Sylfa yelled, glancing toward the creature, who had apparently canceled its spell and returned to its normal color. Her eyes settled on the tiny wound, which had almost healed already. “Do it again, and we are no longer friends!”
Kayle’s eyes widened. She seemed confused about what she had done wrong, and only now realized how much she had angered Sylfa.
“But…” she muttered, no longer confident. “I have been practicing on your summons all this time. How is this different?”
“No. You were practicing on specific types of summons. They feel no pain. Besides, I always explained to them why I was summoning them. This is different!” Sylfa said firmly.
Explained why she was summoning them? What?
I was confused.
Obviously, I had noticed the two helping each other before, but I had never bothered to listen to their conversations or properly observe what they did. But that was not what intrigued me now.
Summoners made a promise when using their magic?
I clearly had not done that. Nor had I noticed Ninali…
Ninali.
Now that I thought about it, I had not witnessed the first time she summoned Eshma. I had only seen her summon it when the velmoryns hunted Kurraghal.
I recalled the exact message the system had shown me back then, and as I did, I realized that I had overlooked a very important detail.
“Her flames contracted a creature from the Netherworld called Eshma…”
That was exactly what Guidance had shown me back then, and I had never considered the possible meaning of the word “contracted.”
So that’s how it is…
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
I grew more and more convinced that summoning magic was not simply a mage’s mana bringing forth whatever creature the runes directed it toward. If contracts were involved, and if summons had feelings as Sylfa claimed, then there had to be a greater power involved.
What if there was an Authority over summoning? A god that controlled it?
If there was a God of Merchants, a Goddess of Fertility, and if I had even obtained insight into a power that might one day allow me to manipulate fate itself, then why couldn’t there be a God of Summoning?
I needed more information. I needed to figure out if it was possible to create an area where summoning was impossible, a place where only creatures that belonged to that world could exist and roam.
But how?
How was I supposed to obtain such information when I had failed to learn even more about the runes?
I have to try at least.
I had three options. The easiest, and probably the most straightforward, would have been contacting V and asking him to sell me that knowledge, but I had already tried something similar. I had asked him to bring me seals that canceled summoning, and he had only brought the two now in my possession. Even those had been far too expensive.
I could also ask Karla. An elf who had lived longer than anyone under my command might be able to provide useful information.
But I still chose the third option.
Sylfa and Kayle were no longer interesting to me, so I willed the Window to shift.
I never got bored of this sight.
A giant floating window without a frame, hazy and distorted at the edges, hung before me. Once, it had been my entire world. Now, it felt almost like a third eye.
Back when I first became a god, it had been my only means of interacting with the outside world, my only way to perceive what was happening beyond my realm, where I had thought myself trapped.
I no longer thought of my kingdom that way. If anything, I felt most powerful and confident when I was inside my realm, but the Window’s role had not changed. It was still one of my most important powers.
I watched as it zoomed out from Eriavel.
My settlement shrank first, then my oak guardian, then the forest itself came into view, vast and ancient, only to grow smaller as the Window continued pulling back.
On one side, the endless sea appeared, stretching so far it seemed to swallow the horizon. On the other, a massive landmass unfolded before me, and once again, I was reminded just how tiny Eriavel was.
How tiny even my forest was.
The Window zoomed in on one of the small villages located near the city where Aria and Avenor had made their stop.
The village was inhabited by humans, most of them busy with their daily tasks. It was afternoon, and the clear, sunny day allowed them to work the fields, cut wood for the winter that had arrived not long ago, and wash and dry clothes before the cold settled in again.
Unlike the busy humans, however, two figures were not occupied with tasks that could be called mundane.
“See? I told you I had enough mana,” Avenor said with a smirk, a small fireball hovering above his hand.
“How?” Aria murmured. “You barely had any mana back in the cave. How did you manage to…”
“For the thousandth time, Aria, I have a unique skill that increases the growth I receive from Essences. I already told you that…” Avenor rolled his eyes and extinguished the fireball.
He reached down to pick up the book from the ground, his fingers brushing the brown grass already touched by winter.
“Now will you finally teach me how to augment my sword? I don’t need spells that require long chants and should be hurled from a distance,” he said, frowning. “I keep telling you, I’m a melee fighter, and I don’t intend to change that.”
Aria’s eyes regained their clarity as she furrowed her brows in disapproval.
“Such a waste,” she murmured. “If only I could grow my mana as quickly as you do.”
“I’m a blessed one for a reason,” Avenor chuckled, earning himself a glare from Aria.
“Are you?”
The two had grown very close, to the point that Avenor had revealed most of his secrets to Aria, save the part about me. He knew that even if our relationship had warmed a lot, and even if he no longer feared that I might discard him someday, I would show no mercy if he revealed even one of my secrets.
Aria took the book from him and began flipping through the pages, searching for the part Avenor was interested in. The book itself had been written by her. She had copied everything she could find about magic in the previous keep where she and Avenor had spent some time, though only now had she started studying it properly.
That was one of the main reasons I had chosen Aria.
Not just because of the book, but because of her insatiable thirst for knowledge about magic, and because she was very close to one of the largest keeps on the continent. I suspected that she could find quite a lot of information about magic there. Unless humans didn’t care about it…
I wanted to observe them a little longer and see how Avenor handled new magic, whether he was as talented at it as Amon. But as I watched them, Amon’s voice whispered directly into my mind.
“Verde, should I help them? Do you want any of them as your first human believers?”
I had no choice now. I had to shift the Window and decide what Amon should do. The God of Many Faces was not something I could take lightly, and I knew that if Amon had asked for my instructions rather than making the decision himself, then the matter was truly that important.
So I quickly focused on the connection I shared with Aria.
“Learn what humans know about summoning magic,” I whispered into her mind.
Aria flinched, nearly tearing one of the pages in half. Her eyes darted around as she processed what had happened, but she collected herself quickly.
“By Your will, High Father.”