Chapter Text
The old legend starts the same as many other legends; with the implication that the described events had happened a long time ago somewhere far away. This method might have been used to distance the citizens from the happenings or, much more likely, to make sure people wouldn’t pay too much attention to the strange similarities between the legend and the reality. It is unknown whether the described events are the truth or have only been created in the attempt to explain the many unusual questions citizens of South Korea have about the even more unusual ruling family.
This is how it goes - Once upon a time in a land far away lived the demon king who fell in love with a mortal. At that time and place humans were considered lesser creatures, and wanting to be with one was strongly frowned upon, if not against everything the demon society stood for. It is why it was neither unexpected nor unaccounted for, that his subordinates rebelled, some even going as far as to try to kill the king and his human wife. They had underestimated his power and were mercilessly killed, their action fueling the demon king’s fury to such extend that he closed the rest of his subordinates in the Prison, the barren place in between worlds, and condemned them to serving his descendants for eternity.
THE FIRST SUMMONING
Jungkook’s eyes nervously travelled over the words written in the small notebook he was holding in his hands. He’d already reread the same ten sentences three times in a row now, and not because he was worried he was going to forget them - the repetition gave him a sense of security. It was a false one and he was perfectly aware of that, but it made him feel better nonetheless.
It was not a good idea. What he was about to do – it was certainly not a good idea. It was so dangerous that it could get him killed, and not clean and fast killed either. Level of crazy he achieved by actually planning to go through with it was almost definitely near the madness of the Wonderland’s inhabitants.
If Jimin knew what he was about to do, he would point out how necessarily Jungkook needed to sort out his priorities. And Jungkook would have no choice but to agree; his priorities without a doubt deserved to be marked as ‘messed up’. Most people would make a plan B, set out an extra goal in case they failed to achieve their main objective, think of something to keep them going even after the worst happened. But not Jungkook, no - he would rather risk his own life than fail.
He let out a small sigh, closing the notebook. He played with the idea of throwing it on the floor, only to end up reopening it on page 20 instead. He skimmed over the words, considering and analyzing all the possibilities he had written down a couple of hours ago. There were a lot of them – 102 to be exact – but none had a higher probability of success than the one he had settled on. Of course, some might work perfectly fine, but they were all tied to that one serious problem: the chances of getting caught were the same as the chances of success.
He let out another sigh, this time actually putting the notebook away. The small clock hanging on the wall, the one with the wooden case that was probably infested with woodworms, told him that he had exactly an hour until the sunrise. Which meant three hours until it was too late to turn this shitty situation he had somehow managed to cause around. It was time to stop wallowing in self-doubt and start working.
1. Step; lock the door. He carefully rolled off the bed, took the few steps to the door of his bedroom, and turned the small silver key, hearing a satisfying click. After he double checked that the room was actually locked, he proceeded to step two.
2. Step; hide everything that might give away who you are. He didn’t posses a lot of stuff and one didn’t need to do much else than take a quick look around his bedroom to confirm that. The walls were blank and there were no decorations or pictures on top of the light-brown furniture. The only things that could possibly give him away were the pieces of yellow paper scattered across the floor, the notebook on his bed, another one on the desk, and his laptop. He started to pick up the incriminating objects with rapid, calculated moves, cramming them into the biggest drawer on his desk. After he finished, his eyes quickly travelled across the room to make sure he didn’t forget anything. Luckily, it seemed that he managed to successfully dispose of all the evidence.
3. Step; change your appearance. This part was especially tricky, mainly because the goal was to look casual and not as someone who was clearly trying to mask his usual appearance. He had neither the means nor the skill to do a professional job, and that was the main reason this step only consisted of changing his usual black clothes to light jeans and a blue shirt, putting on a pair of glasses, removing his earrings and combing his dark hair in a different way than usual. When he was done, he took a quick glance at the mirror. He still looked very much like himself, but considering people often paid more attention to the really obvious things such as clothes, hair and accessories, his current looks should more than suffice. He just hoped that demons were equally superficial as humans.
4. Step; prepare the space and find the supplies. He approached the forth step by removing the white carpet off the floor, carefully placing it on the bed, before making a couple of steps to the left and kneeling in front of his desk. He reached behind his shirt, fingers gently wrapping around the small golden key hanging off a thin silver chain. He always carried it with him despite knowing that a locked drawer wouldn’t really stop anyone – it was something he did purely for the sake of making himself feel safer. He let out a sigh before he cautiously pushed the key into the bottom drawer’s lock, decisively turning it around. He pulled the drawer open as soon as he heard a quiet click, simultaneously releasing a strong smell of herbs into the room and revealing the drawer’s slightly unusual contents; the duffel bag, seven white candles and a small piece of chalk.
5. Step; prepare the pentagrams. Step five was the most complicated part of the preparations. Even the smallest, in any other situation completely unimportant mistakes, could easily cost him his life. Every single line had to be perfect and it was absolutely necessary that they met the other lines at a specific point. Spaces between them were equally crucial and had to be practically identical. Drawing the pentagrams was the toughest part of the summoning process, so it was not abnormal that it took more time than all other parts. Jungkook needed almost an hour to finish; he was forced to erase and redraw almost every single line before both pentagrams finally looked at least approximately the way they should; one bigger, one smaller, both consisting of a five-pointed star in a circle, covered with different and complex runes. After he double checked every detail of the drawings, he proceeded to place the candles – the biggest pentagram only, one at every point of the star – and lighted them. Lastly, he opened the duffel bag and carefully pulled out a not so fresh plant of sage, lavender and mint, placing them on the desk. The only importance they carried was their fragrance so it wasn’t necessary that they were inside the pentagram.
Before he stepped into the middle of the smaller pentagram, he took one last look at the room, making sure everything was as it should be. Then he took a deep breath, ignoring the furious beating of his heart and the sudden urge to bite off the tip of the only nail that somehow managed to grow to solid length. Saying that he was nervous would be a downright disgusting understatement.
He took another deep breath before he glued his eyes on the bigger of the two pentagrams and started reciting the incantation. His voice sounded week and shaky, but it was fine as long as he didn’t stumble over the words, the possibility of which luckily wasn’t high. The same litany had been stuck in his head for the past twelve years and he had been repeating it in his mind from the exact moment he had decided to go through with the terribly dangerous and terribly crazy idea. The only thing different this time around was the name in the end. Well, not a name exactly – a letter. The letter that marked the identity of the demon he was summoning.
He had distant memories of a tall figure in a grey uniform of the royal guard, though he was prepared to admit that the demon might have only seemed tall because Jungkook was six and therefore barely able to reach the surface of the table (which was something he was convinced would now turn out beneficial since he definitely didn’t want V to recognize him).
He closed his mouth after what seemed like eternity, his eyes glued on the bigger pentagram while his heart hammered in his chest and his mind raced with all the possibilities of this plan going terribly wrong. What if he remembered a word of the incantation wrong? What if he used the incorrect pronunciation? What if… He took a deep breath, ordering himself to calm down and stop worrying about something he could no longer change. He had to stay focused on the present for this to work.
Seconds went by excruciatingly slowly and by the time something finally began to happen, Jungkook bit off the tip of his left thumb’s nail, not even realizing what he was doing until the lines on the pentagram suddenly began to glow. The light they emitted was cold, blue, barely noticeable, and was soon followed by a large pillar of black smoke that seemed to have simply grown out of the floor. It disappeared quickly enough, and the only thing – or the only one – left behind was the demon.
The demon who was not at all what Jungkook had been expecting. Before the summoning he had been somehow convinced that he wouldn’t have much trouble separating a higher demon from a human - now however, he realized that conviction had been pretty naive. The man standing in front of him looked like a person Jungkook could easily run into on the subway or a café… or anywhere else in the city really. Ordinary - well, if he was completely honest he was a little more attractive than ordinary, but he was definitely not… well, demonic. He appeared to be around his age, even though he didn’t exactly dress the part. His dark pants combined with a white shirt, red jacket and a bow tie seemed slightly outdated.
Jungkook observed how he swept an imaginative speck of dust off his shoulder before he finally looked in his direction, his eyes nonchalantly travelling from Jungkook’s legs to his head. Jungkook suppressed a sudden wave of fear, which was not an easy task, considering the demon was staring at him in the same way a spider looked at the fly stupid enough to get caught in his web. It made Jungkook want to check whether the pentagrams were really drawn correctly for god knows which time in the last half an hour, and he only managed to suppress the urge because that would make it clear he was afraid and he couldn’t afford to have the demon knowing that.
For a couple of long minutes the human and the demon stared at each other, Jungkook nervously repeating the words he intended to say in his mind, mustering the courage to say them out loud. The one who eventually broke the silence however, was the demon. “Well…” he said in a voice that was filled with emotion strangely similar to amusement. “You are definitely not the king.” His eyes travelled from Jungkook’s feet to his head again, their intensity making Jungkook more than just a little uncomfortable. “And according to your bare wrist…” the demon scornfully motioned towards the mentioned part of Jungkook’s body “…not a magician either.”
Jungkook subconsciously took a quick glance at his exposed wrist, realizing – too late – that he should have covered them to hide the fact that he didn’t have the magician’s mark. It was not a serious problem, though he certainly couldn’t deny that it was pretty memorable and could therefore - if the demon decided to mention he had been called by a non-magician to the king when/if he was next summoned - attract an unwanted attention of the secret service. It was pretty unlikely the demon would bother, but… Jungkook suppressed the sudden urge to bump head-first into the nearest wall. What else escaped his line of thinking? What other mistakes had he made?
Based on the amused smile that was playing on the demon’s lips, he had a pretty good idea what Jungkook was thinking. “So, how does it feel to be one of worst criminals in the country?” he wondered mockingly, his head tilted a little to the left, his eyes fixed on Jungkook.
Jungkook took a deep breath, trying to decide what to do. He was supposed to recite his orders, quickly, without breathing in between words, not participate in a conversation with a demon whose intentions were probably as far from good as the North Pole was from the South Pole.
“Do they still use hanging as a punishment for breaking the Sacred Laws?” the demon continued his monologue, this time in a tone most people would use to inquire about the weather. “Tell you what kid…” he said, almost friendly, leaning a bit closer to where Jungkook stood in his pentagram. “If you dismiss me I won’t tell anyone that you’ve broken not only one but two of your ridiculous laws.”
Jungkook wasn’t really surprised that the demon knew the kingdom’s Sacred Laws. They had been the same for the past 300 years, and since the higher demons such as V were usually part of rulers’ personal guard, they’d surely overheard plenty of stuff with different levels of importance. The Sacred Laws the demon was referring to, were the one that forbade the non-magicians to summon demons and the one that forbade the non-rulers to summon higher demons.
“I will dismiss you after you complete what you’ve been summoned for.” finally said Jungkook, his voice slightly hoarse and much weaker than he would have liked.
The demon tilted his head, the expression on his face implying that he had been expecting this type of an answer. “And what does the master command me to do?” he asked mockingly.
Jungkook took a deep breath, quickly replaying the speech he had prepared in his mind before reciting it out-loud; “I summoned you because I had failed a test and I need your help to…”
“Wait, wait, wait.” interrupted the demon, his hands waving through the air in an exaggerated gesture of surprise. “You called me here because you failed a test?” he asked, less a question and more an incredulous statement. “A test?” The demon raised his eyebrows while slowly shaking his head. “You know…” he said “If this happened to another demon I would say it’s hilarious - but since it happened to me… Well, I’m slightly offended. And by slightly I - of course - mean a lot.” To emphasize his words, he flicked the fingers on his left hand, his palm suddenly engulfed in blue flames. Jungkook flinched, having to fight the urge to make a step – or rather ten - back.
The demon’s lips curled into a devilish grin. “Just dismiss me.” he suggested.
Jungkook had considered the possibility that the demon would refuse to follow his orders, but it became clearer with every second that he had failed to take the right kind of precautions. He pressed his lips into a thin line before taking a deep breath, moving a bit closer to where the demon was standing, careful not to step over any of the pentagram’s lines.
“Trying to scare me won’t work.” he said as firmly as he could, distractedly playing with the simple silver ring he wore on his right finger. “You are going to do exactly what I tell you to do.”
His eyes were stubbornly locked with the demon’s the entire time he spoke, even though he felt a very strong urge to close them. The intensity in V’s glare was constantly reminding him that the only thing preventing the demon from snapping his neck was a couple of simple lines drawn with a chalk. The thought was not very soothing.
The demon smiled and for a moment or two it seemed that he was going to say something, but then he just turned around, towards the only window in the room, peeking through the glass at the buildings that surrounded the one they were currently in. “Lerantham academy huh?” he said as he fixed his gaze back on Jungkook, the smile still playing on his lips.
Jungkook said nothing. He knew that it couldn’t be helped. He didn’t like it, but it was the fact that – at least if he wanted to go through with his plan – he couldn’t hide the place they were at. Especially since the Lerantham academy was one of the more well known universities in the country, educating the brightest young adults in the generation to one day become politicians and other higher officials. The ones that made it at least. The environment was so brutal that only around 5% of all who enrolled actually successfully graduated.
“Oh, you should be soooo ashamed of yourself.” said V, his voice revealing a fair amount of amusement. “One of the future ministers calling a higher demon behind the king’s back - and to cheat his way to the top, no less.” The demon tilted his head a little to the right, giving him a calculating look. “I like you.” he decided, his lips forming a devilish smile. “But if I find a chance, I’m still going to kill you.”
His words sent shivers down Jungkook’s spine. It wasn’t as if V told him anything new – he had already known that the demon was the enemy who would probably do everything in his power to destroy him, but him admitting it out-loud still managed to chill him to the bones. He tried his best to ignore it, but it wasn’t an easy task, especially not when the demon was staring at him as if he knew exactly what Jungkook was thinking.
“So…” said V softly, his eyes glued on Jungkook’s “…how exactly would you like me to take care of your ‘failed test’ problem?”
Jungkook took a deep breath before explaining his plan.