Chapter Text
It was a relatively ordinary day when everything changed, all things considered. But then one could suppose they often start that way.
Either way, when his master had sent him out for fresh reagents that dawn, Callen had simply put down the task he was already working on with intent to finish it later. Everette Lark wasn't someone to delay; if he had a goal in mind, it was an impossible thing to prevent him from it. And a dangerous thing to try. More than once in the early days of his apprenticeship, Callen had found that out the hard way, ending up being verbally torn to shreds for his ineptitude just for asking clarifying questions or daring to bring up a concern.
It's taken a lot of work to still hold this position, when there are hundreds of others ready and willing to take his place. Lark is explosive and mercurial and cruel, but he is also brilliant and effective. He'd invented an entirely new form of ritual casting, and had done so far younger than any mage of old might have dreamed. Anyone could learn something from him, no matter how vicious he might be in his explanation.
So Callen is lucky. And he knows that, even when he spends four hours shopping in the streets of the capital city for impossibly rare and expensive ingredients that he has been instructed to negotiate for much cheaper, all while trying to plan the rest of the hours of the day in the back of his mind to ensure he finishes the transcriptions to scrolls that Lark had ordered the day before. It's a lot of work, and a lot of focus.
The last merchant of the day, an infernal woman by the name of Auspicia with deep purple skin and horns that curl like a kudu, catches him just as he's packing up the silkie chicken bone dust she's traded him into his secured pouches. “Your master looking to reach the hells with that?”
Callen feels his face flush lightly. He has no idea what his master intends, so he carefully responds, “Not my place to question what Master Lark has planned. Why do you ask?”
Auspicia clicks her slit tongue. “Dust of a black feathered beast is the best way to open the infernal portals, boy. Jot that down in your little journals for later. This is clean ground bone, though, no filling, so you warn your master that whatever answers his call will be the powerful sort.”
That's undoubtedly what he's planned for, Callen thinks to himself, but is too polite to say. Beyond that, he'd never warn Lark of anything. That'd be the best way to be cast out as an apprentice. “I'll do just that, ma'am,” he lies.
She gives a bark of a laugh, more hyena than person for a moment. “Stay safe in that tower of his. Longest apprentice he's kept yet, for a polite little cretin. I'd hate to see something happen to you.”
Callen huffs a small laugh, himself. “I'll do that. Appreciate the kind thoughts, Auspicia.”
Her golden eyes glitter, and she waves him off, so off he goes.
Thankfully it was the last ingredient on the list, so Callen heads back to his master’s portal door at the Grand Crossing. It was one of the last down a long line of doorways within the inner sanctum of the Magi’s Academy walls meant to take anyone from one side of the realm to another. Lark lived in a mage’s tower out in the proper middle of nowhere, in the depths of the Hyleal Wood, where few would dare to travel. Easiest to pop in and out of portals for things like grocery lists such as this.
It’s rote enough for him to hop his way up to the steps of the Academy, traverse the many winding paths to the inner sanctum, and down the right hall to the door he needs. Once he reaches it, he pulls the signet ring he keeps on a leather thong around his throat out from his shit and brushes the outer set of gems along the runelines to the side of the door. When the sigils alight, he whispers, “Hyleal Hall,” and opens the door.
Being whisked through the portals feels a little like being gutted. He’s never liked it. Some mages find it easier, that feeling of stepping into nothingness only to be pulled bodily back into everything. Callen’s heard that it depends a lot on the basis of one’s elemental affinity -- an air mage is going to have a lot less trouble with the travel than an earth mage. Of course Callen’s natural affinity is just that. Why would it be any easier for him?
Lark’s is fire, so... Callen really has no clue what he feels when he steps through. Not worth pondering, though. He’s sure Lark is so used to it by now that it is hardly even an annoyance.
The moment he’s back within the tower’s walls, Lark knows it. Callen feels the echoes of arcana run over his arms and knows instantly that he’s going to be summoned, even before he hears the bark of his name from the spiralling staircase.
“Harley,” Lark orders, his tone sharp already. “To me. Library.”
Callen sucks in a steadying breath, and heads up the flight of steps all the way to where his master waits.
Despite the size of its exterior, it is a blessedly short climb from the portal room to the library. They are only two floors apart, in fact, which aids in delivering ancient tomes to their intended, secured spots when he’s been sent to haggle for those. Today, he’s somewhat surprised to be called there first thing, since some of the reagents he’s been tasked with requiring are the sort that need to be stored in specific manner to avoid contamination or threat of compromise. Unless he means to do the ritual immediately, which --
Seems to be... exactly the case, as Callen steps into the main hall of the massive library and finds that Lark has already drawn a large circle into the floor in blood mixed with chalkdust. The harsh scent of iron hits his nose fullforce, and Callen resists the urge to react physically. Lark himself stands above it, rubbing his fingers into a piece of cloth and pulling them away with a glitter of ground diamond shards stuck into the tacky drying mixture on his skin.
He’s dressed oddly fine today. Often he wears only a poet’s shirt and doeskin pants, but today he’s dressed himself in some of his more ceremonial robes, a beautifully dyed purple and golden cape hanging to his calves and fluttering lightly as he turns to face Callen. His eyes are the same brilliant lilac as always, shining with an intent sort of purpose as he takes stock of Callen stepping into the room He snaps his fingers and points to the table nearby, and Callen takes the command in stride and ducks forward to begin unloading the reagents onto it.
Lark’s hair is pulled back, too. Often the man wears his long dark locks freely, letting them fall where they may and damned be to the consequences, but when he is doing intense spellcraft or temperamental rituals, Callen has seen him braid his hair back. Today it is done almost shockingly well, the intricate twists pulled up into a half-up look that adds a sharpness to his already high cheekbones. All the gold of his clothing and jewelry makes the brown of his skin almost glow. It used to piss Callen off that Lark was so handsome, for such an asshole; now, he just thinks it seems obvious that he would be.
Still. Usually he doesn’t care much for his own appearance. Why today...?
Lark nabs the container of bone dust and swirls his fingers, still coated in shattered diamond bits, through it. As he does, he mutters a series of syllables in Runespeak that Callen only barely manages to pick up on. Something about an invitation, but not an open one -- something else about a gift, but one to be shared...
“Is there a summoning on the docket today, Master?” Callen asks, carefully, watching Lark draw a series of inner circles of the new mixture into the ground within the lines of blood.
Lark shoots him an unimpressed look, and Callen holds his tongue.
But he isn’t ordered to leave as Lark sorts through the other materials -- adolescent phoenix feathers, rare Adamantine lichen, some sort of spiced, crushed, and dried pepper that Callen had only been given the colloquial name of “Banshee” for -- and works them into the spell in various ways. Some of it ends up in small open-faced bowls placed into spheres within the greater circle, some of it is burnt and its ash scattered across the empty places, and others are seemingly just added to the greater mush that is the sigils themselves. Callen wants to take notes, but he knows that pulling out one of his journals would just piss Lark off, so instead he tries to just commit as much of the process to memory as he can.
Eventually, Lark takes a few steps back and admires his handiwork. “You would do well to step back,” he says bluntly, not waiting for Callen to follow the suggestion before he grabs an obsidian blade he’d put on the table and opens up a cut on his palm.
He lets several drops of bright red blood leak onto the floor in front of the circle before he twists his wrist and speaks another several words of Runespeak, this time older ones than before, words Callen has only read in old tomes rather than heard spoken aloud. He recognizes them vaguely, but not their meanings, and frantically takes a few steps back after all when a purple-hued ring of flames alights along the ritual area’s edges.
Callen lets his back rest against the door as Lark utters the last few words of the ritual, and then there is a great shifting beneath the floor. The rug under the circle starts to shift and stretch before tearing itself open as a pillar of flame erupts from it, smoke billowing into the room all at once. A creature carved of brick-red and bone-white slowly forms through a layer of ash, its body human-like in shape and orientation but clearly otherworldly and wrong. The being takes a step forward within the circle before finding its edge with one hand. It presses against an invisible wall of force, and gives a rumbling laugh like thunder rolling, and a smile wider than its face seems to split across its cheeks.
Just as abruptly as everything else, ash recoats the thing, swirling around it like a dust cloud and enveloping it entirely before dispersing. There, where the horrifying visage of a monster had been, stood the most handsome man he’d ever seen in all the world, wearing a robe made of translucent red fabric and golden chain.
Callen realized his heart was thudding wildly in his chest and that he’d stopped breathing only when he sucked in a sharp inhale, and a brilliant set of golden eyes locked onto him.
The creature smiled, and Callen’s heart jolted, and his stomach sunk.
“Well,” the creature nearly purred, its voice shockingly loud in his ears even from this far across the room as it looked back to Lark with an eyebrow raised. “What an honor, to be called from the pits of hell by the great mage Everette Lark. To what cause do I owe the pleasure?”
“I’ve a deal to make,” Lark replied, simply. “And one I think you will enjoy.”
The smile grew, and Callen felt, for the first time in a very long time, like perhaps it would have been better to be let go.