Chapter Text
The worksheet in front of her had nothing added to it besides a messily written “Cassie”. She had understood how all the angles related to each other earlier, when the teacher had explained it, but the combination of time passing and no sleep had caused any understanding that she’d had to evacuate from her buzzing head. This wouldn’t concern her too much, but she had a test tomorrow. Well, today technically, but as she hadn’t tried to sleep yet so it was still solidly yesterday in her mind. Not that she would be able to sleep right now, with her heart beating so loud and her head filled with so many thoughts that they just became white noise.
She had tried to read the thick printed textbook that she had been given, one of the three the class was regulated to have for special case students like herself, but the letters ran together into meaninglessness, and the numbers that had been so clear when her teacher had explained them on Friday seemed to stand alone now and had no relationship with each other. She needed verbal words to explain this, but her dad was not good at numbers, and he was at work anyway so she couldn’t even try using her dad's tablet because if she had an attack alone it could be really bad.
Maybe one of her mom’s old things could help? Her dad would never get rid of them, so they would all be in the crawlspace packed away, and she had been working in magic right? Maybe there were some artifacts in her stuff that could give her more time, or make her head able to understand the written numbers. It wasn’t like staring at this worksheet for any longer was going to fix anything.
As Cassie opened the chest of her mom’s old books it occurred to her that she wouldn’t know how to identify or use any artifacts she might find, which might be a minor flaw with her plan. However, there were a lot of books, and magic used a lot of math right? Maybe one of them would have a less dumb explanation than her book.
The one on the top was labeled “The Comprehensive Guide to Demons”. Didn’t mom say that people used to learn things from demons way back before the transcendence? Her mom had also definitely mentioned that demons were dangerous though, so she put the thought aside and resumed shifting things in the chest. There were a few other books on demons and demonology, and with each one a new thought ran through her head. A demon could talk and draw things out and explain. A demon wouldn’t set off an attack. A demon was probably super smart and would know all about angles. She tried to herd the thoughts off this probably foolish track, but there was a whole flock of them and they did make some good points. It couldn’t hurt to just look through the book at any rate, see what the options were.
After flipping through the first few entries she was less sure of this plan. The first few options all involved really complicated pictures and reading things that, quite frankly, did not seem possible to pronounce. She could do the Latin, she wasn’t fluent but she could pronounce most all of it, but how do you say something like Aa’gthgl’bdord? And the book was pretty adamant that mispronouncing the name of a demon was a good way to mess up the whole thing. She disappointingly flipped through the next few entries, until she got to one called “Alcor”. That seemed pretty simple to say. And the symbols were a lot simpler than many of the ones before it. The main one was two stars, one with wings, and none of the ones along the edge seemed that hard to draw. Yeah! The could work!
Grabbing the old book and heading back to her room she looked around for supplies. She had some sidewalk chalk under her bed which she could easily get, but the book also called for candles. There might be some leftover birthday candles in the kitchen, and with a chair she could easily reach the matches in the upper cabinet. This all seemed pretty manageable. But it also said you needed a sacrifice, but wasn’t super specific about what would work, outside of a large note stating that human sacrifice was never to be used on Alcor, which she obviously wasn’t going to do anyway. Well she could figure that out as she went.
She carefully drew the outer circle with green chalk along the wooden floor of her room. It wasn’t perfect but the book did say that intent was the most important thing as long as the symbols were recognizable. Crawling around her floor, occasionally moving some furniture she finished the circle and added the various symbols. It looked like a recognizable interpretation of what was in the book for sure. Anyone holding the book’s diagram who looked at what she had made would definitely squint, shrug a bit, and say ‘I guess’ when confronted on it. She stood her tiny candle upright by pushing them into bits of clay from back when she tried to get into sculpting, and made many thing that were recognizably interpretations of oddly shaped rocks. She carefully lite the candles and started reading the first chant listed in the book.
“Splendidum stella, te invoco. Te invoco ut facere voluntatem meam. Dico nomen tuum: Alcor!”
Nothing was happening. Something itched at the back of her mind something that she must have fo-. The sacrifice! Cassie totally forgot to come up with what she was going to use! Quickly looking around her room she noticed one of the omnipresent ants near the wall between her room and the kitchen. She snatched one into the palm of her hand and smashed it into the center of the circle.
As she retracted her stinging palm she noticed the room growing ever-so-slightly colder. Nothing else seemed to happen though, and just as she decided that this plan was probably a bust a dark clad figure quietly appeared in the center of the circle, hovering a few inches above the ground. The drawing in the book had shown a figure totally black with a glowing golden eye and streaks of light about his body and massive wings. The entity in front of her looked nothing like that, with coloration and characteristics well within what would be considered normal for a human outside of the blackness around his golden pupils and fairly small wings. His two almost normal eyes didn’t look terrifying so much as tired, and stared at her with a disturbing intensity.
The room was still and silent.
Cassie took a deep breath. She had actually done it. She actually had a one of her impulse idea that did something! Something that it was suppose to do!! This was practically unprecedented! That homework isn’t even going to know what hit it!
“Hi I’m Cassie and was wondering if you could help me with my math homework?” She blurted out.
“I - WHAT ?” The demon stared at her, complete confusion and disbelief not so much written all over his features as projected on them in bold flashing text.
“Would you mind being a bit quieter? The neighbors got really mad the last time I woke everyone up at 2am, even though all things considered that was a very quiet explosion of exceptional educational value and it wasn’t even supposed to explode but that’s a learning experience right? And I guess the bottle was really small but it was fine the fire totally took care of all the gas which was only hydrogen anyway and it was all over super quick.”
“I’m sorry, did you just summon a demon to get help with your geometry? And now you are concerned about said demons VOLUME CONTROL? Why would you - How could that possibly - What were you THINKING?? Do you have any idea how dangerous demons are? You didn’t even ward the circle do you realize how very dead you would be if you had summoned anyone else? How did you even find out about this ritual, hasn’t knowledge about summonings been completely banned for over ten years now?”
Cassie laughed. “You sound just like my dad.”
“You engage in dark magic enough that your dad frequently has to lecture you on it?”
“I mean this is a first time for dark magic. But he’s constantly yelling at me for whatever dumb shit I do.” Cassie sighed. “It’s not like I’m actively trying to do things I shouldn’t, it’s just that they seem like such genuinely good ideas at the time. Everything seems like a good idea when you haven’t slept in 2 days I guess. Or maybe I’m just a bad daughter and that's just an excuse? I don’t think I am doing it on purpose but you can internalize a lot of things, you know?”
“So…” Alcor injected into the rambling “you want to make a deal or something? What exactly did you decide was worth summoning a demon for? Please tell me it was for more than just an answer sheet.”
“Oh I don’t want the answers, I mean I do, but not just given to me. I want help learning the stuff. I have a test in the morning and would really like to actually understand the material. I would try to use more conventional methods but I can’t focus on the book cause my head’s all buzzy and the vids can set off a seizure so… demon I guess." She frowned. "It really isn’t fair that everyone else has so many more resources than I do, apparently the instructional AIs are really good at walking you through things but of course are all on screens. And demons used to be used to teach people right?”
“That was long before the Transcendence, when people didn’t actually know what a demon was. Those entities would modernly be classified as powerful spirits of some sort, and they still caused many deaths and were not to be called upon lightly!”
“Oh. I suppose that would make sense.” She paused and looked around the room. "Soooooo... since you’re here anyway and it’s almost 3, could you help me? I’m a good learner and I kinda understand how it works but could really use someone to go over the basics with me.” Cassie held up her worksheet. “I mean I figure demons must be really old and know all about all sorts of mathematics by now right? Should be pretty simple to instruct basic geometry right? Or are there like special math demons or spirits or whatever that I should try instead?”
Alcor pressed his fingers over the bridge of his nose for a moment. He hadn't been physically capable of getting a headache for over a century, but the memory of what this would have triggered was strong. “Okay, since you clearly have a death wish and will probably somehow manage to do something even more stupid than this if I leave, I guess I can help with your math.”
“Yessssss” Cassie said.
“There is a catch, though.”
“Nooooooo” she whined.
“I will only help you if you give me…” he paused, “That pint of chocolate ice cream in your freezer.”
***********
Two weeks later Alcor felt the tiny pull of a badly-put-together summon. He sighed as he put down the dream that he had been inspecting, returning her to the protective care of the rest of the flock. This better not be what he knew it was going to be.
Dark smoke billowed through the room. The small candles around the supposed circle flared brightly blue. A chilling voice filled the room.
“ W̶͖͉H̸̠̝͕͇̠̮͓̀O̧̟̳̩͍̠͎̱̘͍ ̶̧̖͢D̶̝̼͉̬͙̪̟́͜A͞҉̖̖̠͔̥̤̲R̸̲͖̹̠̜̰É͙͜S̻̟̝ͅ ͕̤S̫̺͚̕͢U̪̫͈͈̠̳͇̖͢M̢̭̙̤̘̫͓̙͢M̴̥̜̟͢O̧̞͇̼̠̻̜̟͈̻͢N͏͕͎̠͇̪̠ ҉͕̭̙͇̫͉͚͘ͅA̛̤̫̼̲͎̤͢Ĺ̶̙̞̮̼Ç̺̪̯̺͕͉͈͠Ó͚̰̀͡R̡̳͚̹̖̥͙̟ ̸̛͔̲T̡̡̗H͈͚̙̗͙̱̟̥͘E̷͏̻͖̪ ̶̴̩̣̰̲͡D͎͈̲͓̥̼̺̟̫͢R̤͎̗͕͖͓͘E̸͜҉̣̟͍̖̥̯̪̰A̷̯͙͕͝M̴̝̬̳̙͍͠ ̶̵̣͖͘B̷̢̡̜͎͉̺͇̯E͏͓̻͓̗́N̗̱͖̙̥̻̕͜͡D͉̳̗͡E̥̯̮̬̝R̰̫̱͙̬͡ ”
From outside the circle, Cassie started clapping.
“That was way cooler than last time! Really frightening, could feel it to my core.”
Alcor glared at the young girl, whose Aura showed an absolute vacuum of fear. He had been charged at by yappy small moronic dogs with more fear and sense then she had.
“You know, I am pretty sure I made myself clear that you were no̸t̵ tó ͠d͘o ͡ţh҉is̛ a̧g̀a̛in last time”
“Oh yeah. You were really clear.”
“On threat of death or worse if I recall”.
“I do have some short term memory problems but that sounds about right to me.”
“Then W̵̛̕H̨͠Y̛̕ ̵A͏̶͏M̨͞ ҉̡I̛ ̴H̛͝͞É̸RÉ? ”
“Oh it’s nothing big, but our tests were graded. And I passed! But I still did pretty poorly overall, and only some of the blame can be reasonably placed on sleep deprivation, so I was wondering if you would be willing to go over my mistakes with me? You are better at explaining things than any other teacher I’ve had.”
“Really? More schoolwork? No. Absolutely not. You are playing with dark and powerful forces and it is not reasonable to call upon them for something as trivial as math aid!” He paused for a moment before adding “and the very fact that I’m here again means I can’t be that good of a teacher anyway.”
“Oh well,” Cassie sighed dramatically, “I guess I’ll just have to eat this gallon of cookie dough ice cream all by myself…”
Alcor continued to glare.
“Fine but I get three quarters of it. Can’t have you getting sick in the middle of a lesson. And this is the last time you understand?”
**********
After another month Cassie noticed that she was getting much better at drawing circles. It was to the point that someone would probably know that what she had drawn was a circle without any prompting!
“What is it this time?” Alcor asked. “Oh is that intro trig? Fun stuff.”
“Yep,” she tossed him a pint of ice cream. I don’t quite get the whole sin/tan/cosin thing. Like if I have it written down I can do it, but we’re not allowed to have notes.”
“It’s just triangles. Triangles are easy.” He reclined in the air and floated around the room. “Is SohCahToa still taught standard? That’s how I learned it, and it seemed pretty simple them.”
“It doesn’t sound familiar. They were just giving us a bunch of definitions and I can’t really keep it all straight. I have the sheet here somewhere...”
After a few hours of going over the homework and getting into relevant and irrelevant tangents (as well as sines and cosines) Cassie yawned.
“Think I need to be done for now. Thanks for your help though, even if I don’t think most of it is actually going to be used.”
“Proofs will probably come up soon and I don’t think you’ll do to well with how you teacher instructs." He cracked his knuckles loudly. "I don’t suppose you will listen when I point out that that you really should never summon me again, demons are not your friends etcetera?”
“Oh yep no problem. I promise I will never do it again. Cross my heart etcetera.”
“Is rocky road still a thing? Next time gimme rocky road or whatever is currently sold that resembles it.”
“I’ll make sure to look. Night, Alcor.”