Work Text:
Forever in an endless ebb and flow of pure unadulterated energy, Yoongi floated in and amongst his brethren. Though some enjoyed taking shape and physical form instead of remaining vague and viscous, Yoongi preferred his natural state of being. It was exhausting, for one, to keep hold of a temporal form. It was unnatural, for another. One need not take shape in the realm of demons, for the entire realm was an ebb and flow of fluidity. Souls in and amongst each other in an ethereal dance, reflecting light in a way no other gaseous being could be expected to do.
It was as Yoongi was just putting his finishing touches on a piece of music, one of the infinitely many tunes and rhythms floating about that one could tune into if one wished, when a deep pull on his essence caused him to lurch forward. He attempted to ignore it, but the unsettling pull jerked him this way and that as something akin to nausea boiled up throughout his soul. He, regretfully, would have to finish the piece another time. Yoongi was being called to Terra. Or Gaia or whatever it was that humans called it of late.
Yoongi gathered the remaining bits of his form, some lingering amongst his fellow souls in fond interaction, and others relishing in pure creation of colorful scenery. There was no need for scenery, but Yoongi found that adding liquidus colors and the occasional solid form gave his surrounding a much more pleasant aura. Other artistically-inclined souls were want to agree.
Though Yoongi had never been summoned before, many of his brethren had added their experiences to the shared collective, giving the sensation an uncomfortable familiarity. Yoongi followed the pull in his soul to the best of his ability, though he found that it was quite uncomfortable to simply… dematerialize. He was broken down, atom by atom, as his form was transported and rearranged into the physical world of Terra.
Chalk and incense tickled Yoongi’s nostrils as his form materialized bit by bit. It was oddly confining to have his entire form held within a single frame, but Yoongi forced his discomfort from his mind and instead chose to focus on the matter at hand. A human had summoned him, a human intent on binding him and using his magic to enhance their own.
The human in question appeared to be much softer-looking than those in the shared memories of his brethren, and perhaps held a bit more youth. Age was a terribly vague concept to a formless creature such as Yoongi, and he hadn't had enough contact with humans to understand the intricacies of their species.
The human stood a meter or so from the intricate chalk circle that Yoongi had materialized in. The creature hadn't noticed Yoongi yet, so he felt free to inspect the human’s handiwork. The chalk circle had been drawn with great care, over what appeared to be a few stray pencil marks outlining the correct pattern. Yoongi eyed the various symbols and markings with minor awe. It was a mildly altered form of an ancient binding spell that had summoned his brethren for millennia.
A classic choice, in Yoongi's opinion. From the little he had gleamed from the collective pool of his brethren's memories, many witches had long since abandoned the ancient incantations for more... cruel and savage forms of binding. He'd seen dozens of his brethren treated as slaves of their summoners, shackled to their each and every whim until either the witch died or slipped up long enough for his brethren to free themselves and wreak havoc upon their unsuspecting victims.
At least Yoongi's summoner had the decency to summon him in accordance to the old ways. It allowed for a much more balanced relationship between summoner and summoned, one that didn't end in grotesquely draining each other dry. That, at least, Yoongi could appreciate.
Yoongi spared another glance at his human summoner. A few candles flickered as the young witch puttered back and forth between pages of incantation, seemingly incredibly focused on the contents therein. Yoongi smirked. There was little harm in messing about with a human so distracted. After all, the witch seemed to hold little ill intent. Yoongi took the opportunity to send a ripple of air over towards the witch's candle, effectively snuffing it out. The little witch frowned, but without so much as lifting their head, reached over to the candle and reignited the smoking wick with a pinch of their fingertips.
Yoongi nearly chortled. He sent a second smidgeon of wind across the wooden desktop, sneaking between a variety of herbs and incense before arriving where the candle lay. As the candle snuffed out once more, a lengthy sigh escaped the young witch's lips. The human sat up with a start, jerking their head over to the source of the wind.
The witch's jaw fell agape as their eyes met Yoongi's. Yoongi smirked and offered a slight bow, a custom he'd learned centuries prior during his one and only visit to Terra. The young witch jumped mildly, as if a shock of electricity ran straight up their spine. The human offered a quick bow in return, a rather stiff one if Yoongi's limited knowledge of humanity held true. This time, Yoongi actually snorted, breaking into a great grin. His grin had brought about fondness if he remembered humans correctly, and it was perhaps a great kindness to greet his summoner in human pleasantries. Humans could be so... touchy when it came to the supernatural, and Yoongi saw no need to agitate a creature willing to choose a partnership with a demon over enslavement.
The human spoke in a soft tingling of bells that lightly tickled Yoongi's ears. The sounds, however pleasant, had little meaning to him. There was a vague familiarity in the spoken word form, but in wracking the shared memories of his brethren, he could find no resemblance to any human language he knew. Yoongi cocked his head to the side in human fashion, raising an eyebrow as he eyed the young witch. The witch frowned, obviously disappointed in the lack of effective communication between them. After a few minutes of tapping their shoe and both crossing and uncrossing their arms a few dozen times, the witch finally looked back to Yoongi with a grin stretching across his face.
"You're probably not too used to dialects, huh? The witches before me... they probably all studied in Seoul, yeah? I bet I'm your very first summoner from Busan."
Ah. The witch was speaking some form of Korean. No wonder they managed to be the first to summon him. Yoongi slowly moved his head back and forth, allowing the human to share in his recognition. The little witch's eyes shone with a light comparative only to life on Yoongi's home plane of existence. The depth, the brightness, the ability to smile across any and every sense simultaneously, it was a rare gift among human beings. Yoongi couldn't think of single instance that his brethren had shared containing such a gift, but perhaps those memories they chose to hold near and dear to their own hearts. An understandable sentiment.
The little witch nearly skipped as they circled around Yoongi, eyeing him up and down in what Yoongi supposed would be some minor form of awe. “Sorry,” A light blush crossed the little witch’s cheeks. “I just didn't think you would actually come! Namjoon gave me the incantation and worked alright for him, but… but he speaks like a million languages and I've always been pretty bad at spell casting and-” the light blush against the little witch’s cheeks darkened to a deep pink, a few shades of blue away from being plum.
Yoongi chuckled. The human appeared to be just as novice at binding as Yoongi himself. This would play to Yoongi’s advantage. An inexperienced summoner would give him more leeway and allow for more of a partnership… though if Yoongi were honest, the design of his summoning circle indicated that in his summoner’s intent anyhow.
Had Yoongi been as jaded and wary as some of his brethren, perhaps he would have taken the opportunity to bind his summoner into an unfair exchange, something representative of what cruel summoners would have bound him into. Yoongi saw no need in such a fuss, however, and instead focused on the blushing witchling in front of him.
A muffled “ahem” echoed its way out of the little human’s throat. The human appeared the be at a loss of how to start a proper conversation with a being such as Yoongi. Yoongi wondered exactly how many failed attempts the little witch went through before Yoongi was successfully summoned forth from his blissful world of everlasting fluidity.
The little witch gnawed at their lips before speaking once more. “I-I'm Jimin! I… um… I'm a witch… but I guess you knew that already, huh? I… um… I heard from Namjoon that the best way to get into the witching academy was to summon a familiar because, well, summoning isn't a super popular skill and it could show me off well if I could do it properly, but…” The witchling, Jimin apparently, appeared to take a sudden interest in the room’s wooden architecture.
Once following in Jimin’s gaze, it became immediately apparent to Yoongi that he had been summoned into an attic of some type. A small window allowed for a bit of light to illuminate the old wooden desk in such a spacious room. Said desk remained covered in aforementioned herbs, books, and papers, with a spattering of candles and knickknacks in between. Off past the far end of the desk lay a large black cauldron bubbling over with… some sort of bizarre potion.
Yoongi never had much of a penchant for the physical magical arts, so he hadn't the slightest idea of what could be inside. It did, however, emit an odor so strongly pleasant that Yoongi found himself physically drawn to it, or at least he would have been had he the ability to leave Jimin’s chalk circle.
The little witchling cleared their throat once more, sheepishly pulling at the ever-so-lengthy sleeves of their cloak. “Um… well… I guess we should start with the binding now? I wanted to do something a bit more traditional. I’ve heard a lot about familiar cruelty from Namjoon and well… it doesn’t sit right with me, you know? Do you…” The witchling worried upon their plump bottom lip. “Um… do you have any preferences? Like… when you were summoned before? Was there a particular way it worked best for you?”
Upon being directly addressed, Yoongi paused for a moment to consider the ideal tactic to use. He could pretend to be experienced in the art of being summoned, but the blessed naïvety of the witchling before him had Yoongi considering otherwise. This human was far too trusting, really. He was incredibly fortunate to have failed at summoning more jaded members of Yoongi’s kin.
“I have never been summoned before.”
The words slipped from Yoongi’s lips before the weight of the truth fell upon his shoulders. He had so readily and easily given over what very well could have been his only hold over the young human. His eyes widened momentarily before he returned his form to a familiar blank gaze. If the little witchling noted this change in behavior, they neglected to remark upon in.
“Oh. Well… I suppose we should go for one of the traditional ones then.”
The human shuffled about to the desk, flipping through various papers until they found a particular scroll. The paper was unrolled, and the witchling gripped a quill in preparation for creating their bonding contract.
“So… what are you wanting from this deal? I always hear about demons wanting certain amounts of life force energy in exchange for their services, but Namjoon’s familiar just wanted access to an unlimited supply of books. That’s so like him, really. Figures Namjoon would summon the one demon that cares more about reading than devouring souls-”
“We do not devour them.” Yoongi interrupted the witch’s ramblings, temporarily disregarding human social customs in order to uphold the honor of his species.
“R-really…?” The little witch cocked their head to the side in a questioning manner.
“Really. We have no need to eat in our realm. Why would we work for a food source we do not require?”
The witchling paused for a moment, eyeing Yoongi with a gaze he couldn’t quite decipher from his limited interaction with the human race. A strange airy tension filled the air, not heavy enough to strangle but weighty enough to cause for deeper breaths.
“W-what… what do you do with them?” A manner of concern crossed the little witchling’s soft face, the creature no doubt envisioning far worse horrors than simply eating a soul.
A subtle laugh caught in Yoongi’s lips. “There is no need for such faces. We use them to make things… art, music, things of that nature.”
The witch’s brow furrowed as they attempted to understand how a soul could possibly be transformed into something tangible. Yoongi’s laugh slipped past his lips this time.
“Not all worlds are fundamentally the same, you know. What consists of certain matter here may not consist entirely of the same over there. Or anywhere else, honestly. That is the most basic fallacy of thought that humans impress upon themselves.”
The witchling nodded, eyebrows still furrowed in an attempt to understand a concept that was previously far beyond anything they could fathom to comprehend.
“So… d-do you want my soul too? To… make things with?” The human once again worried at their lip, the apparent weight of a demon deal suddenly weighing on their shoulders.
Yoongi paused. In truth he had little interest in taking a human’s energy for his own. Perhaps he would have out of pure spite if the human in question was particularly nasty, but the witch before him was anything but. The witchling was pure, naive, left untouched and uncorrupted by the darkness lying about the human world.
But if he didn’t take the little witch’s soul… would there come a time when they summoned another demon after Yoongi was long gone? Another demon that resented humanity and chose to sacrifice their summoner’s remaining life force to become fodder for creation?
Incomplete souls were, of course, nothing more than mere materials. A gift to the collective to create matter that would potentially permanently reside in their realm. Any other physical manifestations created from a demon’s own energy would follow them into any other world they traversed to, and some demons preferred to leave something behind. As they could not leave pieces of themselves behind, they could leave their creations instead.
Yoongi mirrored the witch as he worried upon his own bottom lip. If Yoongi were to take the human’s soul upon the their death and bring back the witch’s energy in it’s entirety, then the kind human would live on in a sense. Forever a thriving member of the collective, just as sentient as ever before.
Taking a human’s entire soul, however, would require Yoongi to dedicate an entire lifetime of servitude to the human before him. A human that was most likely in the prime of youth and had a great many years to come before exhausting. That was an incredibly long time to be separated from the collective, and an incredibly risky maneuver for a demon.
Should Yoongi be killed in the human world his soul would extinguish as humans’ souls do, and he would move on to wherever their souls did. If they moved anywhere at all.
Yoongi weighed his options as the brilliant eyes of the little witchling shined in both hesitance and excitement. Eyes the windowed to one of the most pure life forces Yoongi had ever come into contact with.
Once again, Yoongi found words sipping from his lips before he could fully compute the weight of his decision.
“Yes.”
The little witch trembled, nodding shakily as they began to draft their shared contract.
“But-” Yoongi interjected. “I do not just want to take away a few of your years. I want your soul in it’s entirety.”
The witchling, Jimin, gulped as they began to add in Yoongi’s demands to the parchment. An overwhelming sense of concern rested upon Yoongi’s shoulders. The human was complying far too easily. Far far too easily. With no argument, no bartering whatsoever, no whim to even begin to defend their self.
Yoongi carefully exhaled his worries, focusing on the apparent commitment in front of him. He would do it, despite his inclination to avoid human interaction entirely. He would put himself in lifelong servitude and endanger himself for said length of time in order to save this human. This witchling. This incredibly pure and trusting soul. A soul that deserved an eternity dancing amongst the collective.
“In exchange I offer my services for the remainder of your human life, until the final moments of when I will collect the debt owed to me per the agreement within this contract.”
The human froze, looking up to gaps in wonder at the demon before him. There was no doubt in Yoongi’s mind that the human knew the weight of such an offer. Though humans lacked knowledge of what would happen to their fully collected soul, there were precious few happenings of full servitude documented at all. This human in particular had probably heard of even less.
The witchling nodded, adding in the remaining pieces to the document and signing their name at the bottom. A gentle gust of wind from the witch’s lips sent the parchment dancing across the room and onto Yoongi’s own hands. Yoongi perused the contract, eyeing for any loopholes that could endanger either the human or himself. After a few moments and a contented hum, Yoongi signed the parchment.
Sparks of light and fire devoured the parchment, exploding into a swirling dance of light, heat, and sound. The heart in Yoongi’s human form thundered, jaw agape at such an incredible display.
Once the dust settled, a delicate heat pulsed against the skin of Yoongi’s collarbone. He looked up, gazing upon the witchling across from him. Subtly, a small series of runes in an intricate pattern began to peek out of the top of the witch’s oversized robes. The lettering was faint, only catching the light just so and giving the viewer the slightest glimpse of their bond inscription.
Yoongi smirked. He stepped outside of his chalk entrapment, no longer feeling the oppressive weight of the boundaries around him. Yoongi immediately sauntered over to the potion, inhaling the most delectable of scents at a range he was previously physically incapable of.
The witchling eyed him with an amused smile. “The soup should be ready soon. I thought our first meal together should be something good so we can have lots of energy for magic…” The blush that so frequently decorated Jimin’s cheeks returned.
An affectionate tenderness pulled at Yoongi’s very own soul. The witchling had even had the forethought to feed a demon like he would a houseguest. A brilliant grin stretched across the demon’s face.
Yes.
This human was definitely worth risking a lifetime on Earth for.