It was a full four years before I could legally attend magic school. The age of adulthood is 15 here in the diamond kingdom for everything. If I wanted, I could petition to find my parents. Not that I needed to. I was sure I knew what happened to them.
Magic school sucked. It was full of pranksters and try-hards, all of my classes being a perfect balance of chaos and order. I was somewhere in the middle.
For my first year, I was the quiet kid. I never made any friends in town, so the kids around me were just as unfamiliar as the magic I studied. And speaking of magic, which I'm sure you've just been dying to hear about after that sobfest, it's actually kind've…. bland.
It really sucks. Up until my third year, I learned about mana circuits and ways to balance your diet to keep your body in tip top shape. Magic worked better when a mage was healthy, and spells would often fizzle out when a mage was unwell. That included if a mage ate too many sweets. The amount of times I've had to stop myself from buying danishes or cakes in bulk tortured me. But still, I followed my curriculum. One of the graduation exams was solely just a test of your health.
My second to last year was where I really let loose. Since I was able to use lesser magic spells, like simple telekinesis or conjure elements, I decided to use these spells like my Uncle would have: Mischievously
When I wasn't in class, because I was still a good student during my school hours, I would pull small pranks on my professors. Whether it was filling their shoes with water or making them think that their broomstick was haunted, I took pleasure in whatever I did. That is until that one day.
A few of my classmates got the bright idea to summon a lesser familiar.
Now only Magic Generals, the third highest ranked mage, could use summoning spells. And since we were Magic novices, which was below magic squires, we could be fined and serve time.
But we didn't care. We were gonna summon a screeching bat that would disrupt the classroom. It was supposed to be funny. It was supposed to be harmless.
As we sat in a great circle around the circle drawn in the ground, the four of us chuckled nervously. We'd never used magic at this level. We could barely summon a fireball, which was common for novices to be able to do at our age.
"There." one of my squad said. He had drawn lines inside a great circle. Supposedly, a familiar could only enter the world when we created a doorway from them. Dusting his hands on his robes, he declared that he was finished.
"Hell yeah!" another classmate shouted. "I can't wait to see the look on the dean's face when a giant bat flies into his room!"
"Will you quiet down please?" the last member besides myself muttered. Adjusting her glasses, she reminded us that we were not supposed to be in the summoning room.
"Ah, who cares? It's not like something bad is gonna happen."
We all opened the scrolls we had written down the summoning incantation on. Above it was listed the set up for this spell. All of the requirements were met but one.
"Hey," I pointed to the chalk. It had a scarlet hue when it was supposed to be red. "Isn't it supposed to be charcoal? That's clearly coal chalk."
"And?"
"Won't that like… mess the spell up. It says here to specifically use charcoal chalk to summon the bat. Any other chalk we use could alter the spell."
My nerdier classmate agreed. "He's right. Using the wrong type of chalk could have dire repercussions. We should clean this up and get some charcoal instead."
The other two declined. "We're already here."
"Besides, coal is basically charcoal." He pointed to the chalk. "Coal is even in the word charcoal." I couldn't disagree with that logic.
"I dunno…" the nerd mumbled. Still, she went along with us.
We chanted the incantation together, in perfect unison. We never practiced the spell, but we all coordinated so well as if some force was pushing us to do this the right way.
Around us grey energy swirled. It spun in a vortex over the summoning circle.
"Holy, shit! It's working!" i gasped
"Keep chanting you idiot. You're gonna mess us up."
The circle began to glow.
We thought we had it. We really thought coal was a good enough substitute for charcoal.
A sickening smell filled the air. The clean energy we called forth blossomed into a sickening yellow with white clots of mana flowing through it. The nerd stopped chanting, gasping in terror.
"Stop it!" I hollered. "We need to stop chanting!"
But one of us didn't stop chanting. The guy who convinced us that charcoal was a passable substitute for coal continued chanting. His eyes were as black as night, his skin going pale, black veins rising the surface of his skin. He began to levitatie as the grotesque mana took a hideous form. Giant brown wings flapped, skeletal in design with translucent flesh between each bone. A muscular, hairy figure rose, the horns on its head scraping the ceiling; stones crumbled from the ceiling and fell a whole thirty feet and squished my still chanting comrade.
The nerd screamed. The other guy's ear began to bleed. I could only stare in horror at the giant demon we had summoned as he looked back at me. His ivory teeth were the size of my arm, each of his eight eyes the size of my head. He could squish me under his foot if he wanted. Or impale me on his taloned fingers. It had ears on the side of its head, the only thing besides its wings that were bat-like. The ears twitch angrily. It stared down at the nerd and frowned. It muttered something in a language incapable of being spoken by mere humans. But his command's meaning was clear.
Her lips were stitched together with her own skin, the nerd's mouth disappeared into flesh. She could no longer scream. She covered her face, where her mouth was.
The other guy covered his ears, blood flowing between his fingers in thin scarlet strands.
My eyes began to burn. I cried out, clasping my hands to them. When I looked at my hands, my vision was red. Blood red. A black liquid pooled in my palms. I recovered my eyes, hoping to scoop my blood back into my sockets.
The beast let out a roar that shook the earth. The three of us wailed, our ailments worsening when it cried out its name.