Work Text:
A circle of light raised him from the darkness.
A voice named him and bound him to its will.
"Drift."
He could see nothing beyond the wall of light. When he turned his gaze downward, he could see nothing of himself, only shadow. He raised a hand till it was silhouetted against the light, the shape clear but with no substance.
What was he?
Where was he?
Who was he?
"Drift.” The voice spoke again. "The mathematicians told me that, if you existed to be summoned, that would be your name. We shall see if they were correct. Drift: kneel."
His name tugged him downward, but Drift resisted, frame thrumming with fear. "Please," he said, unsure of what to beg. He did not sense they would grant him mercy, but he had to try. "What have you done to me?"
"Kneel."
It hurt. There was something in his chest and it hurt, burning too cold to touch, pain flaring in waves as his name drove him down onto his knees. When he hit the floor the pain and the compulsion ended, but he was left shaking.
"So it is Drift. You don't know, do you? I am, perhaps, the first to summon you."
"Please," Drift whispered, voice breaking.
"Your punishment was at the hands of Primus, not me. It is he who cast you out of the Afterspark and into my waiting arms. And for him to have done that...I assume your crimes must have been monstrous. No - your life and death are not my concern. Only your service."
"What am I?"
"Silence. Drift, I bind you to my word. You will move only under my command. You will speak to no one. You will not act against my person.You will not commune with spirits, slivers or other creatures unholy, so long as I live," they commanded. Drift's hands, which had been shaking against his frame, stilled as the cold washed over him again, locking him in place.
This couldn’t be right. It couldn’t be. But at this mech's injunction he couldn't even open his mouth to beg for information. And if they were lying, what was he? Drift's memories began here, with a circle of light in a dark room.
The lights died then, afterimage burned against his optics. He couldn't see the hand that took him by the chin, tilting his chin up to face his summoner. "I find it is best to break new slivers in right away," they said. "I hope you won’t disappoint me. Drift, go out to the street and find someone who will not be missed. Kill them. Bring me a token so I know you've accomplished your task."
Drift might not have known what he was, but he knew he wasn't a murderer. His spark churned sickeningly at the thought.
He would not kill for this monster. And if disobeying burned his spark out of his chest would that be such a loss if he was already damned? Drift focused with all his might on remaining on his knees, even as the weight of the command seemed to pull him upwards.
"I can break you the hard way," they said, tightening their grip on Drift's face. "But eventually you will follow my orders. It will be much less painful if you do so now."
Drift had been forbidden to speak, and the words he needed to say were stuck in his throat. He snarled wordlessly instead.
They squeezed their hand, forcing his mouth open. "You will bring me a trophy or I will take one," they said, reaching in with their other hand to grasp one of Drift's upper fangs. "I've always wondered how it is that all of the sliver is cast in darkness except for the teeth and the optics. Is it simply for dramatic effect?"
Drift jerked backwards, but couldn't force his jaw to close on their fingers. He snarled again. They laughed.
"I could order you to silence again, but I think I like this better. Scream if you want, demon." Holding Drift steady with one hand, they tore the fang free with the other.
Drift tried not to scream. He almost managed it, but they seemed to take that as a challenge. They goaded Drift to scream as they took the second and, when he did, took the other two anyway.
"Are you willing to obey me now?" they asked after, hand still in Drift's mouth, pushing at the torn flesh where his fang at been.
Drift focused on staying on his knees and trying not to choke on the burnt fuel filling his mouth.
"Oh, very well." They released Drift and stepped back, powering up the holding circle again with its blinding light. "Soon enough you'll be begging me to allow you to complete your task. If I'm feeling merciful, I will let you."
It wasn't awful, not at first. But it was hard to focus on stopping his body from hurling itself through the barrier when he was distracted by the pain sinking into his core, the fuel dripping from his lips, the questions churning in his brain. Eventually his control slipped and his traitor body threw itself at the barrier, trying to follow orders.
He rebounded with a deafening tintinnabulation and fell to the floor, plating steaming. Whatever the circle was made of wasn't simply impassable, it was antithetical to his very substance. Drift tried harder to hold out against the compulsion, to hold out hope that there was some other way this could end.
But focus is a finite resource and one hard to hold onto as your body beats itself tatterdemalion against self-destruction. Each time he slipped his frame and focus grew weaker and the next paroxysm followed faster.
When the summoner returned to release the circle, Drift could barely crawl. His thoughts had been swallowed by a mindless urgency of pain. Later, he'd try to use that to justify what he did, but he didn't really believe it.
They were small, a datastick alt. They were gold and green, plating poorly kept and optics dull with hunger. They were grey and pink. They were tiny, frame splayed at the summoner's feet.
The summoner smiled and Drift promised, he promised that he would see this mech dead for that smile. Two deaths for the price of one.
A circle of light raised him from the darkness.
A voice named him and bound him to its will.
This time Drift understood the rules of engagement. He had tried, for years, to break the hold of his first summoner. It couldn't be done. Resisting orders was similarly futile - the longer you resisted, the less control you had of the inevitable. From the moment of summoning, it was a battle of wits, of strategy, of attrition.
This summoner was a coward who wanted his enemies dead but didn't have the guts to follow through with the blade they thrust into Drift's hands. There were no holes in that order; Drift killed nine senators as they recharged that night.
Drift had been ordered to “travel quickly” and “return after the deed is done” but there was no indication made to the path by which he had to travel. Drift detoured through the apartment of a senator loyal allied with those he’d killed, who he knew kept several Slivers bound as sentries. He had no orders not to confess. Drift lost the knife in the scuffle as he escaped. A ceremonial knife, house lineage engraving, still pink with fuel.The summoner’s death released him back into the darkness before made it back to the circle.
A circle of light raised him from the darkness.
A voice named him and bound him to its will.
Time seemed to stand still between summonings, the satisfaction of the last summoner's death buoying him like it had been only moments ago. It had been moments ago, to him. These summoners were beginning to run together. The one who'd had him cull the newframes in the blacksmith's foundry. The one who'd wanted their conjunx murdered rather than deal with the consequences of their infidelity. There was one who'd wanted a pet and a general and didn't understand you could not have both at once. There'd been the Functionist envoy who'd wanted a spot on the council. Drift hated them all.
"Drift, I bring you here not out of selfishness, but out of faith," the summoner said. Through the wall of light, Drift could see them, the high cloak draped around their shoulders. The mech knelt on the other side of the circle. "Primus has chosen that you remain cast from his essence and from this reality. But your name has been derived and recorded and the weak of spark are tempted to defy that edict."
Drift snorted. "Yeah, I noticed."
The mech startled. "Silence. I will not be tempted, Sliver. It is wrong for those mechs to summon you but I am not ignorant to the evils you have wrought while bound to this planet. As a spectralist, I have a duty to prevent the pollution of evil. So here you will stay, where no one can summon you. Repent for your wickedness, creature, and may Primus someday remake you whole again."
The priest left him there, binding circle hemming him in. Drift had never had a summoner who didn't want him to do something, who didn't let him out of the circle. Drift curled up inside the circle and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
When the priest returned downstairs, he would sometimes pause for a few minutes to tell Drift about Primus or about Spectralism. Drift craved those interactions with a hunger he hadn't felt since he was first summoned out of emptiness. It was from him that Drift first learned who Primus was beyond a malediction and the power that had exiled him. Drift wanted to beg him to stay, to tell Drift more about this religion and of colors and wonders and magic. But the priest never relented on his ordered silence.
The moments where he would come and speak to Drift were vanishingly short, set between eternities in the basement with nothing but the cold floor and the execrable circle. Drift traced patterns on the floor, slowly wearing grooves and scraping the plating off his fingertips.
He wouldn't heal in the circle, that he had learned. He never healed until he found a shadowy spot to rest in. Some things - like the fangs he’d lost to his first summoner - took weeks to heal even in darkness. Within the lighted circle there was no darkness and there was no rest.
He couldn't deny the priest's assertion that this was keeping him from evil. He didn’t want to be evil but a Cybertronian could live a long time. If he were to believe the priest, a Cybertronian could live forever.
The time since the last visit stretched longer, and Drift began to worry that he had been forgotten. Did anyone else know this place existed?
The thought crew into a panic and, for the first time, Drift threw himself against the circle without orders. Battering himself finally exhausted the panic, but left him limp and hazy. He slipped into a stupor, only half-conscious until finally the lights, and the world, blinked out.
A circle of light raised him from the darkness.
Drift staggered and nearly fell, shocked to be alive and on his feet again. He looked around and found a circle but none of the other things he'd come to associate with summoners - blood sacrifices and candles and mirror shards hung in bunches around the room to ward off evil spirits. There was no broad shouldered mech with a cloak and staff to bind him
Drift realized with a start that he had not been bound at all. Summoned, yes. Trapped, most certainly. But the mech who'd done that hadn’t called his name to bind him.
The mech in question had to be the one perched on a nearby chair gripping a fire extinguisher in his hands. They got up, flicking a light out of their integrated kit - from the frame and the colors Drift was assuming “medic”. The mech swept the light across the circle, shining the damned thing in Drift's optic.
"Would you put that down," Drift said, angling his body to slide into invisibility. He didn’t know what to make of this summoner.
The mech jumped. They looked like a startled turbofox, plating flared up like Drift might pounce on them at any moment. It was cute.
Drift looked around. "Are you doing a summoning in your living room? Are you eating - are those energon crisps? I don't feel like you're taking this very seriously."
The mech glanced guiltily over their shoulder at the bowl of crisps on the side table. Then they walked right up to the edge of the circle, squinting skeptically. "Where are you?"
"Don't step on the - be careful!" Drift hissed and the mech paused before they stepped over the lighted edge. "If you break the circle I get to come out, do you know anything about summoning?"
They stepped back and crossed their arms. "Are you a demon, then?"
Drift laughed. This had to be a dream. "Is that what they're calling it these days? Last I heard I was called a Sliver. Equal and opposite to the Silvers. They get to be dappled light and ethereal grace, we get to be...this."
"So you're invisible?" they asked.
"Walk around the circle," Drift said. Really, this mech didn't know anything, did he? It was right in the damned name - a sliver was only visible from directly face-on and swallowed by invisibility in all other directions. Drift waited, enjoying the disconcerted look that flitted across they face as the mech passed by and then leaned back to see Drift properly.
Drift waved. "Hello there."
The mech crossed their arms again and scowled. "I'm pretty sure demons aren't supposed to say 'hello there'."
"I'm pretty sure you have no idea what you're doing," Drift said. And then he gambled: "You haven't even asked my name."
"What's your name?"
"What's yours?" Drift asked with a laugh. This mech, whoever they was, really had no idea what they were doing. They didn't know Drift's name.
"Ratchet."
Their name was Ratchet. Drift rolled the name around on his glossa and decided he liked it. "Ratchet, tell me, why did you decide to summon yourself a sliver? Do you have enemies that need dispatching? Scores to be settled? Do you wish for power and wealth?"
Ratchet gave a nonchalant shrug, though his optics were focused and intent on Drift. "I was trying to prove you don't exist. My roommate is obnoxiously credulous, I was getting sick of him blabbing on about magic and demons and Primus and healing crystals."
Drift squinted at Ratchet. "That sounds...just stupid enough to be true. So you have no idea what I am or what you could have me do?"
"I don't believe in the divine," Ratchet said. "I don't want you to do anything."
Drift had never heard anything so wonderful in all his existence. *Ratchet didn't want him to do anything.** Not believing in Primus was cute, especially faced with an actual manifestation of Primus's wrath, but the thought of being summoned by someone with no malice or intentions for him...Drift had never bothered to imagine the possibility. "Ratchet. Ratchet. I think I like you." Drift sat down and, with an excited flutter of his fingers, rested his chin on his hands. "Do you have any questions?" Drift asked.
"What's your name?" Ratchet asked again. "Or what can I call you?"
The priest had claimed that with enough study, a Spectralist could detect the color of auras, use them to read the intentions of the people around them. Drift couldn’t do that, not yet. But something was telling him to trust this mech.
"Drift," he said. "Call me Drift."