Chapter Text
Summons
1.01
I reached for my power and there was nothing.
I was sure there were bugs. I could see the infestation scurrying through the room: Flies and cockroaches gathered around four carcasses placed in the four cardinal directions, all of them surrounded by circles made of what looked like excrement. There were gnats flying through the air and spiders in the process of building their webs in the corners of the room.
There was also more than one rat that I could see, looking in, but not disturbing what looked like it was meticulous work. Disgusting, but meticulous nonetheless.
I took a breath and then slowly let it out, turning to face a girl who looked like she hadn't slept in weeks. She was wearing a dirtied dress, a sweater than was several sizes too big, with threads sticking out and generally looking unwashed. She was looking in my direction with equal parts fear and desperation.
"What's going on?" I asked. I looked down and could see an intricate circle drawn around me, three sets with symbols scrawled at set points between the circles; the entire thing was connected by lines that stretched to the piles of carcasses and bugs and stink.
Where had I been before? I thought and the image of a dark forest flickered through my mind, a fatigue that rang through my body and being chased, only for the ground to give way and for me to fall here.
The two things didn't connect.
"I called you," she said and there was that edge. Her voice shaking, giving me the air of desperation masquerading as courage.
I shook my head. "That doesn't answer anything."
She swallowed. "I wanted something scary," she said. "I wanted something smart, but not too smart. Which meant I couldn't get something too old, too used to this world. So I sent out an invitation, something new, something that isn't bound by the Seal of Solomon."
"Then you're lucky," I said. "Because I have no idea what that means."
A myriad of expressions passed over her face. "By that, what do you mean?" she asked.
I frowned, but answered, "I mean the Seal of Solomon, among other things."
Part of them being I was supposed to be dead.
The memories were clear in my mind: Alexandria just having killed Rachel, Director Tagg with a smug expression and me telling myself that I wouldn't suffer bullies anymore. I'd planned to kill them both. Kill Alexandria. Kill Tagg. Consequences be damned.
But then...Miss Militia.
She'd shot me.
Three bullets at first, but my bugs hadn't stop. I hadn't wanted them to stop. Then a fourth and final shot that had plunged me into hell.
And yet here I was, surrounded by filth and desperation, seemingly alive.
The girl stood tall, feigning a confidence I knew she didn't entirely have. She was holding her body wrong, wringing her hands and would look over her shoulder at even the smallest sound.
"As Thorburn Heir, I bid you to answer."
"No," I returned.
She deflated and quickly tried to keep herself together, but it was too late. I'd seen the moment's weakness and she knew it. That deflated her even more.
"Let's not start this on a bad note. You need my help for some reason. You're desperate, I've seen this sort of desperation before and it tends to send people to doing some stupid stuff."
Like not stopping even when they were shot. Like leaving their fathers in the aftermath of everything they'd done.
I held back the urge to sigh. What I could give to have the power to go back in time, to fix the mistakes that I'd made.
"Let's start things off slowly. Hello," I said. "I'm—"
"Stop," she said and there was that desperation again. "I'm sure that my defences are good, but...there's the chance that I missed something. Don't give me your name. I need you as my trump card and if your name gets out, people might come up with ways to work against you."
It didn't make much sense, but I shrugged. I hadn't been about to give her my real name at any rate. I'd fallen into hell with only my prison clothes. A minute in and I'd been hunted by things both big and small, some human or close to, and others more demon. I'd survived the only way I was comfortable: using bugs to make myself a costume, integrating bits and pieces of other things. Rats that were too large, the pelts of frenzied dogs and wolves and cats and other things.
All of it came together in a suit that was dark, but caked with dirt and dried blood. My hair was the only thing whose darkness was naturally so.
"You can call me Skitter," I said. "What's your name? Beside the whole Thorburn thing?"
"Molly," she said.
"Well, then, Molly," I said, doing my best to sound calm, even if this all didn't make sense yet. For the longest time I'd thought hell had been a delusion, that I was in hospital working through my recovery. But...it had felt so real. It still felt so real. It felt as though there was a hand just behind me, waiting to drag me back.
"Why don't we start from the beginning. You need my help?"
"Yes," said Molly. "I need your help. People are after me and...they've been sending things to give me sleepless nights, to make sure that I make a mistake that they can capitalise on."
"Vague," I said.
"It's...complicated," she said. She let out a breath, rubbing her hands over her face and shaking her head. "No. We can't be talking like this, not when there's still so much to be done. I wanted something that wasn't bound by the Seal of Solomon, but it's unfeasible keeping you like you are. Not if you're going to help me, not if I want to be sure that you can help me."
"That's the second time you've mentioned that," I said. "The Seal of Solomon."
"Because it's important," she said. "One of the most important things that magically exists because it's what protects the innocent even if it makes its own problems. But that's not important for you. Where I called you from is called the Abyss. It's...no one is sure what it is, but it's like the recycling bin of reality. I took you out of there before you could be changed too much, which means the Abyss is likely to call you back."
I swallowed, remembering the hell: A dark forest with the only source of light being from a small town in the distance. Every surface slick, every branch sharp and every space that should have offered shelter, cold and wet. There'd been enemies on every turn, meaning I hadn't been able to sleep for my duration. What was worse, when I tracked it, I didn't think that I'd spent more than two days in there.
"I have a feeling you already know that I don't want to go back," I said. "But what does this seal mean?"
"It means you follow the old rules of others," she said. "Not harming the innocent, losing power if you lie or break an oath, but you get a steadier footing in reality. If you manage to slip back into the Abyss, you might find that coming back is easier. You don't have to fight as hard."
"I'd need to know these rules," I said.
"I have a book," she said. "It's not all of them, but you sort of play it by ear from there." She rushed out of the room, making sure that she didn't step on any of the lines or the other symbols that were layered on the floor.
The moment she was out of the room, a study by the looks of it, I moved forward testing if my hand could pass beyond the circle. It couldn't, I was stopped by an invisible wall. I tried to push against it, bring my full weight to bear, but it wasn't worth anything. The circle was unyielding.
I stepped back, sitting in the middle of the circle and letting mind run through everything that had happened. There was falling into hell, or the Abyss as Molly had called it, which was real now when there'd been no proof before. I'd really died and it looked like I wasn't in own universe anymore. Or maybe I was and this had been something hidden from the general populace, or something I'd thought was cape business?
Maybe. Or maybe I was choosing to complicate things, and it was likely that Molly was just a master who had the ability to summon the dead when she had...representations of them? The bugs fit my power, but I didn't like it. Only being my ability.
I pushed the thoughts aside as Molly came back into the room, carrying a book with pages opened. She was starting to speak when there was a crash from outside. She started, glancing towards the window, shaking when three distinct guffaws started, followed by a song filled with an obscene amount of foul language. She slumped a little, still looking away from me. I could see it in her body language, how she was deciding to be stronger, how she would no doubt be thinking she needed to be crueler, and how that cruelty would be directed at me.
"No," I said. "Calm down. Can they get in the house?"
"No," she said. "At least I don't think so, but..." Her voice shook. "But they could. Something could slip past my defences and what then? I have to use you so—"
"No," I said again. "I'll keep breaking your train of thought, keep you from saying something stupid because I'm thinking that means something? I take it the 'Seal of Solomon' works on you too. That if you say something that might be an oath or definite statement, it'll mean having to do it?"
"How are you catching onto this so easily?" she asked.
What did I get from telling her the truth? Especially when she'd just been about to turn her anger and fear towards me? Bending me to her will?
But she was scared.
If I could. I wanted to be able to help her.
But I also didn't want to be controlled.
"I've been in enough high stakes situations that this doesn't even rate as a one," I said. "I'm calm, which means I can think through things. Take in the detail of what you're saying and figure out the rest. They can't get into the house because of your powers. I don't know who they are, but if they could have, they would have already."
"Or maybe they're trying to get as much fear from the situation as they can before they act," she said. "These things, they thrive from making my life miserable. And..."
"Take a breath. Calm down. You brought me here to help you. The faster you give me those rules, the sooner I'll be able to do that."
"Just like that?"
"You're thinking that it's too good to be true?" She nodded. "It's because I want to figure things out. How I ended up in...the Abyss. How I can..." I looked at her. "How I can get back home. How I can stop the end of the world."
"End of the world?" Molly said and she didn't believe me one bit.
"Does your world know about Earth Bet or Aleph?" Molly shook her head. "Then it's likely that you won't believe no matter what I say and we should leave it at that. The rules."
Molly nodded, opening her book and starting to read.
***
"The Abyss has a hold over you," Molly started. "It means it can warp you towards being more inhuman. I don't really have an idea what this means, because..." She stopped, looking at me with a spark of distrust. "Because, amongst other reasons, the text isn't clear on what that means."
"But if you were guessing?" I asked.
"If I were guessing, then you'd gradually move away from being you, losing more of your humanity," she said. "The Abyss is described as a recycling bin and when you're recycling something, essentially, that's what you're doing. Changing if from its old state to a new state."
"And humanity is a common enough trend in what's lost?"
"From the Bogeyman I've seen? That I've read about? Yes," she said. "The most common direction is empathy that's lost. Bogeyman come back angry and savage, only wanting to survive..."
"They kill," I said. It wasn't hard to guess when I thought about it in the big picture. The Seal of Solomon first and foremost protected innocents. The only reason that something like that needed to come to being was if there were a lot of...magical creatures that spent their pass time preying on innocents.
I took a breath and slowly let it out, hit by the first time about the stark differences between the air I was breathing now and the air I'd been breathing in the Abyss. Even with the smell of spoiled meats, this was still better. There was less in the smell of death than I'd been accustomed with.
"Can I see the book?" I said. Molly frowned at that, suspicious. "Statements mean something, right? If I lie, then I lose power?"
"You're new, you don't have that much power to begin with except what the Abyss granted you," she said. "But it would make it easier for the Abyss to reclaim you and it would make it harder for you to escape by your own power."
"Right. Then this can work," I told her. "I want to check the book because a part of me doesn't entirely believe that this is true. A part of me believes that there's a power at work and it's warped your mind. But that book, something concrete, might help me come to grips with my new reality."
"That sounds all well and good," she said. "But you could just pull me into the circle. Force me to break it."
"Which is why I asked my question before," I quickly put in, not missing a beat. She was scared and predicting the direction her thoughts would move was easy. "I promise that I won't try to escape this circle. That I'll only leave when you grant permission and I won't coerce you towards giving me that permission through threat of bodily harm."
She frowned, her eyes working in thought.
"Promise to give the book back if I ask for it," she said.
"I promise."
She quickly shook her head. "No. Say it. Repeat the promise."
"I promise to give the book back if you ask for it," I said.
She took a few breaths, biting at her lips before she stepped forward, stretching out her arm and throwing the book into the circle. It fell hard against the ground, hard enough that if she'd been a little weaker in the throw, it might have it might have broken the lines. The thought came of how I might have leveraged the situation to get out of here, but I remembered that I'd effectively locked myself in, now. If I lied, then I might escape the circle but then I'd quickly fall back into hell.
I bent low and picked up the book, starting to flip through it. It was old, the pages frayed and yellowed by age. I brought it close to my nose and it smelled old too.
I let out a long sigh as I opened it, flipping through the text. It would have been easier if the book had been empty as I thought, that this was all just some delusion brought on by her ability. But everything seemed too neat for powers to be involved. Or maybe all of this seemed too broad. Her ability had created this book, it had created abstract rules and it had now created a hell. It just didn't gel with what I knew about how powers worked. I just couldn't see a trigger bringing forward a power like this.
It was better right now to just think that this was another world, that it was a magical world and that I'd somehow fallen into it at death. If that was true, then all of this was something I needed to take seriously. I started reading through the Seal of Solomon and how it had come together: A 'Practitioner' had made it his duty to look for the worst Others and bind them under the seal, making it so they couldn't hurt innocents. The magic of the seal had naturally evolved as these things tended to do until the magic had found a way to act on every existing Other.
But there was wiggle room for newly born Others. Such as myself.
If I wanted to, I could disregard the Seal of Solomon and cause wanton chaos, but the book vaguely described that there'd be push back from the spirits; that things would work so I was out of the picture and innocents were protected. I couldn't help but take that to mean that either something would come after me or I'd find myself falling back into the Abyss.
I flipped through until I found something that pointed in the right direction of how things would play out for a denizen of the Abyss, a Bogeyman. It was as Molly had said, that I'd lose less ground to the Abyss by getting a firmer footing in reality. But through that, it would make it easier for me to be summoned, for Practitioners to bind me and have me do their bidding.
Servitude.
I'd be a slave.
"Are all Others slaves?" I said. Molly started. I hadn't been shouting and my voice wasn't heated, but there was a quality in it that terrified her. "Because that's effectively what I'm locking myself into. I get to partially escape the Abyss, but I open myself up to the whims of a new master."
Molly swallowed. "Every--" She stopped, clearing her throat. "Everything comes at a price. This is the price of your freedom in one capacity. Losing it in another."
"What was the cost to you, I wonder?" I said, my tone accusing. Cold. "Or does that not apply to Practitioners?"
"It does," she said, a whisper. She slumped a little. "But what that price is, doesn't concern you." Her tone changed, going back into that cadence of cruelty I'd stopped before. Even then, I'd sort of sensed that this was how things leaned. But to know it on such concrete terms was different, even if I didn't know why.
She took a breath, holding herself higher, straighter. "You have a choice here," she said. "Either you agree to be bound by the Seal of Solomon and you get a chance of staying you. Or I banish you back into the Abyss where it can further grind you down? Choose. I'll give you a minute."
A definite statement. There was power in that, right? I still didn't know the rules all that well, but the book had had an excerpt about Awakening and how Practitioners gave up lying so their words could have more weight.
I needed to learn more about this world, but I didn't want to learn it from the Abyss. I'd spent two days in that place and they'd been like constantly fighting the Nine. For that matter, memories of the Nine had been so much closer to the surface. Brian splayed and connected to a wall, my head being cut open and through all of it, knowing that if I just gave a little ground, I'd be stronger when the next thing wanted to attack me.
"I agree to be bound by the Seal of Solomon," I said.
Maybe this would be easier, working with something I understood on a level, working with humanity.
Molly let out a relieved breath. "Good," she said, a smile directed inward. "I'll have the book back."
I threw it, making sure to throw it so there wasn't a chance of it hitting the lines.
***
"...and I agree to be bound by the old rules," I finished, feeling the power to the words. For the first time I could feel bugs, moving from the pelt I wore. There weren't a lot of them, but they were select: Black Widow and Darwin Bark spiders; Japanese giant hornets; a few different species of cockroaches and flies; and few crabs that fell out of the costume I wore, seemingly from nowhere.
The book had said there'd be symbol of my accepting the binding, a power source. I guess this was it.
Molly let out another relieved breath.
"For your first task," she said. "There are things outside the house. I want you to kill or capture one of them. You have thirty minutes and then you have to return to this circle. In the time while you're out, you're not to hurt me or try to hurt me in anyway. Do you accept the deal?"
"I accept," I said, a little absently. I was feeling out the degree of movement with the bugs, already planning about how I'd start breeding the spiders and I was having them spooling out silk to use. Hell hadn't offered me the good stuff and I liked this, even if it had come at my freedom.
"Then you can go about your task," she said.
I stepped forward and then over the lines. At once I was hit by activity, my power reaching out and grabbing every bug. Those in the house I called them near, fitting them on my person and on the inside of my costume, segregating them for utility. There were other that I didn't pull close, instead letting them give me an image of the world outside.
I could feel the rats that were skulking in the rooms on this floor and the one below, and I tracked movement outside. The forms were wrong, the skin too thick on others while it was too hairy to be human on some. Most of the forms were short, the size of toddlers, but there were adult sized people too, standing with some of them talking. There weren't enough bugs for me to hear what they were saying.
"You aren't moving," Molly said, her voice shaky. I looked in her direction and she looked pale, scared. Did she believe she'd made a mistake? Had she made a mistake?
"No," I said, paying thought to what I said. I was bound to the truth, which meant I had to be particular. "At least not how I think you mean. But I'm about to, first though I need to ask. Do you have anything to eat?"
"Yes?" she said. "I don't know? What do you eat?"
"I'd really like some bacon," I said. "Maybe a cheese burger or something else fatty and 'bad' for you. But I'd settle for anything edible."
"I can make you a sandwich," she said.
"Do you have tea?"
She nodded.
"That too, please. And while you do that, you're going to give me an outline on what I'll be dealing with."