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Kyle has always had a low opinion of his dormmates’ intelligence and self-preservation skills, but Kyle is now beginning to believe that they’re actively suicidal.
“You…want me to help you summon a demon.” Kyle says flatly.
Ryan nods and waves the book around. “Yeah.”
“That is the stupidest thing that has ever come out of your mouth. Ever.”
“Aw, c’mon!” Ian says, quickly mirrored by Jared, Juan and Caleb. “C’mon! C’mon! C’mon!”
Kyle sighs. “Fine. Can I see the book?”
“Yeah, of course!” Ryan holds the grimoire out. Kyle barely refrains from swearing when he realizes that they’ve somehow obtained a summoning ritual that actually works.
Kyle sighs. “Ugh, fine.” Hopefully, he can sabotage the ingredients.
He does not manage to sabotage the ingredients- unfortunately, the sacrifice is just “a small animal”, and the science lab has way too many spare lab rats. (He’s pretty sure someone is eating them and trying to hide it by buying more.)
White chalk was also pretty easy to get, and though black candles took a little more searching, there’s dozens of candle stores across the city. The ritual knife was harder to get, and Kyle managed to lead them on a wild goose chase for a few hours before they decided to just use a kitchen knife.
The end result is ten minutes of setup before utter disaster. Kyle ends up drawing the runic circle simply to make sure the binding runes work despite his dormmates’ drunkenness and the grimoire’s incompleteness, which is the only thing that ends up saving the idiots.
At the culmination of the ritual, a spray of sparks coalesces into an anthropomorphic goat with ink-black fur and metal hooves, garbed in a robe made out of stitched and scorched leather.
“What…what are you?!” Ian babbles. “This wasn’t supposed to happen!”
Caleb holds out the ritual knife in a frankly terrible grip.“Stay back!”
Juan and Jared are frozen in complete terror, mouths hanging open.
Ryan is hyperventilating and sweating heavily in the back.
“Seriously?!” Kyle throws his hands in the air. “Weren’t you trying to summon a demon?!”
“I-it was a j-joke!” Ryan shrieks. “A-and n-now it’s going to k-kill us all!”
“It’s contained. It can’t leave the circle.” Kyle explains slowly. “As long as the deal you make doesn’t involve it leaving the circle, it can’t.” The rest of the boys still look utterly terrified.
The demon finishes scanning the room and chuckles lowly. Everyone except Kyle flinches.
“Pathetic.” they sneer. “Humans are such ignorant and foolish creatures. Why did you summon me if you were going to cower in fear from my mere presence?”
Their left ear twitches and they turn to stare directly at Kyle. “Ah, I see. You failed to inform your servitors of the truth of the magic they were to manifest.”
Kyle sighs at the blatant slander. “No, I tried to stop them, <caprine-demon-of-pride-respected-equal>.”
“How do you know its name?! How did you pronounce that?!” Kyle ignores Ian’s hysterical questions.
“You are not my equal. You are a foolish child relying on runework to hold me.” the demon snarls. “I do not know why you thought this would be a wise course of action when you are this incompetent in training your minions.”
“They’re not my minions.” Kyle says. “I just didn’t want them summoning you without me here to make sure the runes worked and nobody did anything stupid.”
“You are willing to obey the demands of humans?!”
“You’re still bound, by the way.”
“Then name your service.”
Kyle thinks for a second, then grabs the grimoire. “Deliver this book to the residence of the sorcerer known as Zatara, without communicating with anyone, revealing your presence to anyone or anything or making any detours, then return directly to this circle as soon as you are finished and stand still for ten seconds.”
The demon sighs. “That is all you are going to ask of me? I can bring you power. Wealth. Love. Anything you would ever desire.”
“No thanks. I can get all of those without screwing myself over.” Power and wealth are easy if you know how to get it and Kyle already has a perfectly good family if he wants love.
Kyle holds out the grimoire, and the demon takes it and teleports away in a puff of smoke.
The demon returns seconds later, and obediently stands still. Kyle shifts his nails into claws and grabs them by the throat in a lightning-quick maneuver(boosted by the limited superspeed he has- it’s still just above human limits rather than reality-breaking like Barry or Wally, but still enough for what he’s trying to do.)
“Well played.” they admit. “Not many would have thought to work around a lack of banishment runes that wa- ahhhck!”
Kyle ignores them and digs his claws deeper, before twisting sharply and breaking the demon’s spine. Thick black blood drips down his hand and arm, though he’s careful to not let any fall on the ground.
The demon’s body dissipates into sparks and smoke- discorporated by the minor antimagic properties of dragon claws. If he wanted, he could probably have killed it for good, but that would require entirely too much effort and possibly piss off other demons.
Kyle licks the blood off and shifts back to being entirely human. It’s perfectly safe for him to ingest demon blood since he’s a dragon, and it’s also the most convenient method for disposing of small amounts of demon blood. The magic replenishment is just a bonus, even if pride demon blood tastes really bitter.
“Did you just kill a fucking demon?!” Juan yells.
“Yep.” God, this is going to be a mess. They’re going to be asking questions for hours.
“Where’d the blood go?” Caleb asks.
“Drank it.”
“What the fuck?!”
“Hey, I didn’t want demon magic corrupting someone or something.”
“If it’s some kind of supernatural mutagen, then why’d you drink it?!” Ian shrieks.
Kyle sighs. He’s going to tell them as little as he can get away with. “Well, it won’t corrupt me unless I have enough in my system to kill a normal human several times over, and there really wasn’t a better way to get rid of it since it was on my hand.” It probably wouldn’t be very harmful even to a normal human in quantities this small, but he wants to impress on these suicidal idiots that they shouldn’t mess with magic.
“Why are you safe and not us?” Ryan asks.
“That’s actually very complicated, but the short form is that I already have enough magic in my blood that the demon magic will get mixed into what’s already there without hurting me.” Kyle shrugs.
“…this is some kind of TV thriller bullshit isn’t it?” Juan mutters.
“Okay yeah, ‘College art student by day, demon hunter with magic blood by night’ is definitely the kind of character concept that would make it into a cheesy thriller series.” Kyle paused. “However, what TV thriller series don’t talk about is the fact that you have to clean up the ritual circle afterwards if you don’t want to get caught. Did any of you think to bring cleaning supplies?”
Everyone glances nervously around. “...No.” Ryan admits.
“Well, let’s find some.”