trade my soul for a wish [Steel] | Glowfic Constellation

He is outside, on a flat stone platform at the top of a dry-looking hill. A tall woman is glancing between some markings on the edge of the circle and a page of notes, facing away from him.

The circle, drawn in charcoal, is covered inside and out with scribbled notes describing colors and shapes.

(She knows two languages, neither of which are at all related to English)

from_scratch

...Nor to any other languages Cam knows.

And the colors and shapes are doing squat to bind and gag him.

"Uh," he says in the one he judges to be her native language. "Summoner?"

She spins around, abruptly moving backwards five feet as she does. Her hand goes to a dagger on her belt, but doesn't draw it. "Okay. So did Kell or Durant send you, and how'd you manage to sneak up on me?"

from_scratch

"...There seems to be some sort of. Anomaly or misunderstanding or something. I don't know who Kell or Durant are, you summoned me, I'm assuming it was an accident, I appeared in this circle."

"I summoned you? I... wasn't aware that was a thing. I was just diagramming a new spell, I haven't even shaped out the stream for it yet. I'm sorry?"

from_scratch

"Oh, it's... no trouble. Looks like you did it by accident. Ah, where are we?"

"Three miles off a trail six miles off a side road ten miles off of the Opri-Nel mainway. I didn't want anyone spying on my experiment."

from_scratch

"I need to know where we are in slightly broader terms than that."

"Well, this is the wilderness of the east-southish part of Central Telra. Prefecture 9, sometimes called the copper lands. We're not currently in the jurisdiction of any specific cities. Any ideas on how I can undo - whatever I did to summon you?"

The word for 'cities' implies city-states, and not just collections of people.

from_scratch

"I was more hoping for planet and calendar year. And I have a very good idea, but this situation is as far as I know unprecedented and it might not work, plus I'm not sure I want to go home yet."

"Planet? Why would the planet have a name? Year - 6893 or 1201 depending on who you ask. Telra tried to reset the yearcount, but it didn't catch on in most of the rest of the world."

from_scratch

"I see." Pause. "So, I'm a demon. Demons make things. Do any things need making around here?"

"...We could use a lot of things made in a lot of places. Preferably spread wide enough that no one person or small group controls them, because that would be likely to result in unpleasant political and social consequences. In the short term, I would like you to make proof."

from_scratch

Cam has part of a grilled cheese sandwich left. He holds up his other hand and makes a paper cup of tomato soup. Dip. Bite.

"That is sufficient proof. Do you have access to the bluestream? If you don't, roads and buildings and water pumps and elevators are still physical things, we can just go straight to installing magic instead of needing to build them."

from_scratch

"I don't know what the bluestream is. Perhaps you could tell me."

"It's... The framework of magic. If you are a shaper, which I assumed you are because usually only shapers can safely withstand any significant body modification, you can see the layer of magic over the world, and change it from useless fog into structures of sorts, and then use those structures to do magic. Magic powers most of the economy. People fly heavy loads on roads, artificial light and heat grows our crops, and so on."

"Oh, magic costs. Making structures weakens your strength and coordination temporarily, on the order of a couple of hours only. Viewing - or listening to - the stream takes away your physical senses for a proportionate time. Actually using magic dampens the emotions, or hurts if you do too much. Does any of that sound familiar?"

from_scratch

"Demons can casually add almost anything we want to our bodies. Subtracting's a little harder. None of this bluestream stuff sounds remotely familiar; my magic's costless."

"You're a demon? Either my mythology's wrong or you're awfully benign for one or you're running some sort of con. Any which way you'd terrify Durant, he's a scheming, monopolizing hawk taking advantage of tariffs and market scarcity. Oh, shapers can be made. At least from humans. You sit in one of the stone circles and if you're lucky, you get sensory deprivation and then magic. If you're unlucky, you get intense pain."

from_scratch

"Your mythology is wrong - well, I'm assuming, since you didn't realize I was one or know we could be summoned or that we make things - and I'm pretty benign for a summoned demon."

"My mythology says that demons are empathy-less creatures capable of disguising themselves as anything, who eat magic, enjoy watching suffering, and cannot be killed. And I appreciate it. What kinds of things can you make?"

from_scratch

"I may or may not be able to make anything that is inherently magical - I can't normally do it but it might be that I could if I were copying something. I need surprisingly little but still some information about what I'm trying to make. It can't appear more than about five or six times as far away from me as the sun, can't appear in motion, and must be matter, not energy or antimatter."

"...The Senate likes to ban books. Useful books, even. Can I have a copy of Yero Green's The Art of Healing and Transmuted Medicines?"

from_scratch

"I could conjure it from that description, but I don't know what's in it, so I would have no way to know if you just asked me for a misleadingly titled book on how to make high-yield explosives or something unless I hung onto it and read it first," Cam points out.