Prologue: Joanna (Part 2)

Joanna woke up, realizing that she didn't have anything to do.

Like many times before, she went to her bookshelf and pulled out The Book.

From the moment it appeared on her doorstep, she knew it was a forbidden grimoire. The writing in the book was in ancient Ng'rymathrian, a language of a lost shamanic clan who were known for their talents in dark magic. The language was lost to time, long before the founding of the empire, but rediscovered in the age after The Transmigration.

It didn't help that it described summoning rituals for hell-spawn demons (corrupted spirits that had been previously banished to a hellscape dimension, rather than mere abyssal or chaos demons).

She had leafed through some of it once or twice, and could safely say that it had the creepy feature dial stuck at thirteen. Blood red ink; images that played illusions on the eyes; and the package completed by hundreds, if not thousands, of whispering voices whenever the book was opened. The voices whispering tantalizing secrets, and screaming terrifying horrors. Reading it for too long gave her a headache, but from the book, she'd learnt new alchemical relationships, and even chanced upon the formula she was currently trying to use to create polychromatic crystals.

The formulae in the book required very high levels of manna control and potency; even to superhuman levels, steps above her current capacity. She knew that such performances were possible if she could become a sequencer, or could get herself a powerful-enough familiar. But she didn't have the backing or the money for either; weighed down by her student loan and housing finance loan, she'd had to overdraft on her bank account to even get the cash to buy materials for her experiments.

She knew she was too weak, and she was now out in the cold and alone. Unwilling to go back to her mother a failure, or face her father after refusing his patriarchal and archaic advice that she get hitched. It was worse because she'd been among the earliest kids in her high school to show magical aptitude and the first in her class in university to contract a familiar. She eventually received one of the 10 wands awarded to the 10 most outstanding young magicians during her graduation.

She had been at the top of the world, so why had it gotten this bad? Why did she get demoted into a mere pawn, powerless to control her fate? Why did the biggest opportunity she could imagine turning into a bottom feeder job in a company that was to be her stepping stone instead had become the casket for her future? She was angry and frustrated and disappointed! What did she do to deserve this? Was it her fault that she didn't come from a respectable mage family? Was it her fault that there were monsters among the geniuses of her generation? Was it her fault that she wasn't born with the absurd gifts that the sons of heaven from royal families, established magical families and pagan races were born with?!

She took out a stick of chalk and collected the candles and pig's blood necessary for the ritual. She drew the three concentric magic circle, stabilising the energy architecture using some modifications of her own, keeping the book open, trying to channel the whispers and mad rants into a chaotically cohesive source of inspiration. She started chanting as she added the runes, creating synchronous manna channels to form the summons conduit.

She let her anger pour into the chalk, an act she'd been warned from a young age not to perform; emotionally aspected magic tended to go haywire, creating undesired effects. But right now, it felt just right to attenuate the magic with her own emotions, pouring her soul into the spell. She could feel the energy building up in the manna structure she was building, even if she was only half-way done. And as she completed it, her spirit vision could see the multidimensional energy hovering over the magic circle.

She then began the ritual. First placing 5 candles in the appropriate points, then lit up 6 frankincense sticks and placed them in a vase at a designated point in the circle. She then poured out 3 rings of sealing oil around the outermost circle and finally poured the pigs' blood (which she'd mixed with some monster blood) on the circle. The chalk started to change colour from purple to a smouldering red.

She read the incantation that she'd created, a modified version of the one in the book, doing her best to ensure the summons put her in authority (unlike the traditional contracts in the texts that seemed to consider the demon a partner). The summons was officially underway once she threw a handful of sulphur, and it was now too late to turn back. "One cannot unring a bell," her professor always used to say.

The book started to laugh, all the voices trapped within it maniacally gleeful. A breeze blew within the room, growing louder and stronger until it created a violent black whirlwind within the magic circle. A sudden omen of danger caused Joanna to shut her eyes, both spiritual and physical; and just in the nick of time before the air changed into a foul choking smell of acrid smoke and sulphur that sent her into a coughing fit.

"Why have you summoned me?!" the voice, calm and silky soft, came from within the circle. A handsome gentleman stood within the circle, which had now burnt into the wooden floorboard. "You are my summon, and by right of contract, are bound to serve me!" Her voice shaky, as she shouted at the demon. She could feel it ooze an intense killing intent in her direction, she knew it was dangerous and she couldn't let it take the advantage.

"Mortal child, thank you for freeing me, now, let me free you of your life." the demon tried to walk out of the circle, but the sealing oil proved an impenetrable barrier, and even then that was barely enough. The demon's voice started to change, as it pounded against the barrier which started to warp under its brutal force.

"You are bound to me demon, you have two choices, become my familiar or return to whichever hellscape you came from!" She shouted, she wasn't too worried about the barrier, even if it broke, there were two more redundant ones. She could also cut off the link at any time, ending the summon. However, holding the link up in the first place was consuming a lot of manna and she couldn't sustain it for long.

The demon raged and fought its binds, but a flicker due to the strain on Joanna caused it to stop cold. "You are using a dynamic summons contract?! A child with a manna pool deep enough to summon me on a dynamic contract? I accept your offer. Hehehehe..." the demon laughed as it accepted a name from her: "Gilgamesh".