Damien scurried to his room, clutching the book to his chest. He grabbed the pouch of chalk from his desk and returned to the dining room, slipping through the back door and making a beeline for the old shed in the back.

He darted inside and closed the door behind him as carefully as possible. The warm sunlight streaming in through the windows at the top of the barn was just barely enough to see the stone floor.

It had been years since the barn had been used for anything of worth. It smelled like mildew and stale water. The barn was completely empty, aside from some crates of old memorabilia and a wooden sword Damien had made for a school project.

Damien knelt on the floor. He pulled his rough shirt over his nose and brushed as much of the dust away as he could with the back of his hand. He immidiately started sneezing as it got all over his clothes and slipped through the small holes in the weaving of his shirt.

His sneezing fit lasted for several minutes before the dust finally decided he’d had enough and let him off the hook. The determined young man wiped his nose off on his sleeve. Then he picked up his bag of chalk.

He laid the Summoner’s Almanac out on the ground before him. Despite the thick binding, the book wasn’t particularly large. Damien opened it and started to flip through the pages.

It didn’t take long to find what he was looking for. It came right after about five pages of warnings and regulations – all of which Damien ignored. The page in question had a single circle drawn out on it.

The circle was made up of hundreds of runes – two hundred and fifty six, to be precise. Damien recognized about ten of them. Luckily, recognition wasn’t a requirement for casting the summoning ritual.

Damien scanned the book, his eyes flicking over the runes like two grasshoppers on acid. He only had a few hours to do this before his mother came home. There was no room for mistakes.

He sat there for just over an hour, inscribing the runes into his memory. None of them were particularly complex, so he didn’t have any doubts over his ability to draw them. That was all he’d done for the past few years anyways. How much harder could these ones be?

Damien reached inside his bag of chalk with a trembling hand. When it emerged, his fear was gone. All that remained was confidence. The type of confidence that could only come when one knew they only had one shot at something, and failure wasn’t an option.

He started to draw. He started at the bottom of the circle, sketching out each rune with a practiced hand. If he’d wanted to, he could have gone faster. He didn’t. Each line, every curve, and every dot was drawn with utter perfectionism in mind.

The young man fell into something of a trance. His hand made the slow trip in a circle around him. He didn’t change his pace once. Even when his fingers started to ache and his wrist burned, Damien continued onwards.

It took him nearly an hour to draw the circle. Damien knew his time was counting down, but he pushed the thought to the back of his mind. He rose and examined his work. Then a slight frown crossed his face.

Damien glanced from the book to his drawing. It looked the same, but the doubt still nipped at the back of his mind. He grimaced and picked the chalk back up. He moved to the edge of the circle and started to draw again.

This time, it only took him just over ten minutes to finish up with his work. He was familiar with the new circle he’d drawn around the summoning one, so he didn’t have to try quite as hard.

Damien stepped inside the two circles. He swallowed and picked up the book. Hilla could be home at any moment. He narrowed his eyes and forced himself to concentrate on the task at hand. At the bottom of the page was the Summoner’s Almanac’s final instruction to him: Earnestly Reach out with your heart and mind. Your call will echo throughout the planes of existance, and your summon shall respond.

And next came my favorite part. Damien drew in a deep breath, closed the book, and concentrated. Every fiber of his being craved for a summon. More than anything in the world, Damien wanted to be able to cast magic. There was only one way to do that, and it was to summon a companion.

And that’s exactly what Damien did. His desires funneled through his body, coursed through the invisible Ether that permeated the universe, and channeled into the first ring of runes around him.

The air hummed and crackled. Damien’s hair stood on end, but he didn’t relent. If anything, the young boy tried harder. His hands clenched at his sides as his very soul cried out.

That pure, longing note of innocent desire entered the summoning circle. The runes flared with energy and Damien’s voice was cast into the universe.

It hurtled through the Ether, tearing free of the Mortal Plane. It traveled through the Plane of Stars, ducked under the Plane of Immortals, and careened straight between the Planes of Fury and Light.

It reached the Plane of Darkness. Then it kept going. It slowed as it passed through the Plane of the Dead, which resided at the farthest reaches of the living universe, but it did not stop.

Damien’s plea went where no living mortal’s thought had ever been before. Then it kept going. It passed all semblance of what mortals could rationalize. It fell through the cracks in the universe. Then it slipped into the void.

The void answered.