After a quick lunch spent flipping through the spell guide for the holy healing spell, I headed out to Conjuration One. Looking around this course, there didn't seem to be anyone missing at all. A coincidence, since this was always my smallest class to begin with? Or was professor Toadweather's choice to only allow those who came to the class because they actually wanted to learn – regardless of if they were annoying or not – pre-selecting for success?

Professor Toadweather burst in, seconds before the class began, riding atop her giant toad familiar. I wasn't sure why she was riding it like I would ride a horse, considering that she was more than capable of flight through her wings or through magic, but she was laughing wildly. Once she was in the center of the room, she dismounted and dusted off her pants, then waved to us.

"Hello everyone, and welcome back! Back? Forwards? Yes indeed, welcome forwards, forwards to third circle spellcasting."

She giggled and waved her hand, conjuring a blackboard from seemingly nowhere. As she did, she seemed to calm down, taking long, slow breaths, then her eyes opened.

"I shouldn't joke. Conjuration is serious business. Serious. Serious. Serious."

She put on a face like an angry soldier, looking over us one at a time before turning to the board and snapping her fingers. The chalk levitated, and even when she drew her attention back to us, she did actually look marginally more serious than she had before. A spell was starting to draw itself out on the board behind her.

"With no humor, conjuration magic is serious, and third circle magic is where it begins to move from simple to… complex. You begin to delve into the arts of binding magic, the arts of calling upon grand forces, and the summoning of more powerful beings. It's where danger lies, though both less, and more, than most think."

She gestured to the third circle spell that the chalk had just finished. The spell rippled, as if it were about to leap off of the board.

"This spell, Conjure Lesser Storm, is a battle spell. It calls power from an elemental plane of storms, conjuring up a rather large storm cloud. It's about eleven hundred square feet, and you can call small bits of lightning down from the cloud to any point between the cloud and the earth. The cloud grows in power during the ambient ether surges caused by natural thunderstorms. While not nearly as potent as a true lightning strike, it's still almost certain to kill someone who isn't protected through spell, song, or a life enforced body."

The image on the blackboard resolved itself into an illusion of a man standing in a narrow pass. He had a staff in hand, and was rumbling out the low, long chant of the spell, as a horde of enemies approached on the horizon. An aegis glowed around him, protecting him from the strikes of arrows that rained down from their archers. When he finished the spell, a cloud materialized at least a few hundred feet overhead, crackling with blue sparks.

As the first wave of riders approached, funneling into the pass, the mage spun his staff, calling down an arc of power on them. It split the sky, and most of the armored men and horses were fried alive. Another bolt rained down, and then another, and another. Before long, the bodies had piled up to block the ravine's pass, and the mage was able to turn and run. Professor Toadweather laughed, high and clear, and all too genuine. It was like she'd seen a comedic play, rather than a battle.

"As you can see, even a lone mage wielding this spell can take out many people under the right circumstances!" she announced. "What's more, as you grow, you'll be able to cover more territory! More lightning! Stronger lightning!"

She cackled like a mad old witch from a faerie story for a moment as the illusion vanished, and the chalk started writing out a second spell.

"Summon wadjetktt!" she announced proudly. "Now, I could tell you what a wadjetktt is, but isn't it so much more fun to show you?"

She waved her wand, and there was a slight rippling in the air. A moment later, a large serpent with the wings of a red tailed hawk appeared in the air. The serpent was easily seven feet long from tail to snout, and it had to have a wingspan about the same length. Its scales were a shimmering golden color, and the serpent's head was flared, like a cobra. The frills were streaked with blue and silver, accenting against the gold.

It smelled of toxin, but in a very different way than Yushin had when using her bloodline. Hers was… low. Dark. Like the things that crawled deep beneath the earth, demonic beasts that feared the light of day.

This was bright and sharp, and the smell was almost noble. It was a venom created out of sunlight, of the stars of creation, and it was both power and protection. It was the burning fire of justice, and the last thing that an assassin would see before being struck down by a guard.

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I'd never smelled a poison of its ilk before, but it gave a strong impression. The wadjetktt was a warrior and guardian, and proud of it. The pride was there, even in its eyes, and it examined us, hissing out in the bloodline tongue of the celestials. His voice was masculine and strong, surprisingly so for a serpent.

"Hail, faerie summoner Toadweather. For what bidding have you called me to this low-ether plane to perform?"

"Greetings, Meryre of the sun. I have summoned you before my students to demonstrate this spell, much as I did this same time last year," she stated, speaking in the same celestial bloodline tongue. The cobra inclined his head, and curled into a coil in the air, floating without flapping his wings, held aloft by bloodline power. Professor Toadweather turned back to us.

"This lovely angelus is known as a wadjetktt. Strong guardians who were once frequently summoned by the nobility. Their brightvenom is an excellent tool, and they can spit it at foes. They are mostly found in light-aligned planes, the realms of the so called 'good' divinites, gods of light, protection, and so forth," she explained, placing her hand on the serpent's coils. "Not all are as powerful as Meryre here, but I've known him for a very long time, and put a lot more ether into my spells than you should. Most of the ones you'll be summoning are about two feet long. But they're still powerful and useful allies."

She turned to look at all of us, one at a time, her face dangerously stony.

"They're also the first fully sapient beings that you'll be learning to summon in this course. Remember well my words about treating your summons well. If you fail to do as much, then do not be surprised if they come to dislike you, and seek to turn your magic against you, or ask a future summoner to end you. If you wish to seek out and do dark deeds, evil deeds, then do not summon a wadjetktt."

The girl who thought she had dragon blood hesitantly raised her hand, and professor Toadweather nodded to her. I tensed, preparing for her to ask how someone had managed to summon an amphiptere, a lesser dragon that looked rather similar to these wadjetktt, only with more draconic, bat-like wings.

"What if we don't speak the angelus' bloodline language?" she asked. "I speak a lot of languages. But I don't know that one."

I immediately retracted my statement, and felt a bit bad for judging her so immediately.

"Learning to speak it would be quite advisable. Or, if you'd like, you could seek out a spell tome that contains the true tongue spell. It allows you to speak and understand all mortal and bloodline languages, though it's no good with the language of Magyk."

I noted the spell down as one of potential interest.

"Until then, be very careful to show respect to any angelus you summon, and I would recommend only summoning one when someone who does speak the language – such as myself – is around. If you must summon one alone, tell them you are working on a way to communicate. Many, though not all, speak some smattering of other languages, such as flametongue or Oyish. Try, at the very least."

The woman nodded and jotted things down in her notes, while professor Toadweather dismissed Meryre the wadjetktt and wrote a new spell out on the board. It resembled several elements of the summon wadjetktt spell, and I thought that might explain professor Toadweather's rather relaxed attitude towards calling demonic deities the same as the ones most mortals followed.

"This is summon chrysaor," professor Toadweather announced cheerily. "We've changed which side of the divine coin we are on, and are now summoning from the hells, rather than the heavens!"

The large treefolk I was sitting next to rustled and spoke up.

"Professor, should we be summoning a demon? Though it's not a war in the same sense as a war between nations, we are still effectively at war with the demons. The demon lands are filled with aberrant summoned demons. What's more, why would we summon a demon? It seems like a good way to get a demon after our head."

"A very reasonable question," professor Toadweather responded, nodding rapidly. "Setting aside the fact this is a binding summoning, where they agree to work for you in exchange for power, and you can dismiss them easily? When it comes to proper contract magic, you often don't want a demon. Some are beings of violence, others of chaos, or hate, or a hundred other things that we mostly consider to be dark and nasty."

"So why–"

"I'm getting there! While there are many reasons not to summon a demon, there are a few very real reasons to. All demons follow rules, bound into their very blood from the realm that birthed them. If you understand the realm you are summoning from, you can tailor your needs to your summoning. The realm of Saznanje, for example, is ruled by knowledge. It might be a dark realm, whose inhabitants are willing to slaughter for information, but summoning the inhabitants can be quite useful. If you summon one that is seeking information you have, then you can negotiate a good bit of service from them in exchange."

"I… suppose. But there are other ways to get knowledge."

"Not always. But let us take the realm of Ubojni. It is an incredibly massive realm of battle, whose inhabitants seek nothing but the thrill of the fight, of killing their enemies. Quite often, demons from this realm wind up summoned by aberrants to do their dark deeds in our world. Despite this, they're also one of the beings that are most commonly contracted, and not just by lawless vagabonds. Why would anyone summon a demon from Ubojni?"

There was a moment of silence, until I spoke up.

"The wall. They're driven by battle, right? Well, I don't know the details of planar contract, but I have to imagine that they would be fairly easy to convince to go hunt and kill other demons. They do it all the time in their home realm. Getting warriors that can stand on equal footing would make absolute sense for Cendel."

"Exactly!" professor Toadweather shouted, pointing at me. "Hundreds of demons from Ubojni, maybe thousands, are contracted to go out into the demon wastes and kill any aberrants or aberrant summoned demons they come across."

"Where are criosaurus from, then?" the girl behind me asked.

"Chrysaor," professor Toadweather corrected. "They're a species that can be found across a huge number of planes. Ubojni is one of them. They tend to be found in planes related to gluttony or violence, as those are what drive them most of all."

She clapped and lifted her wand.

"Now, enough talk. Time to demonstrate! Hah. Demon-strate."

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