The Spirit summoning ritual was personalized, a combination of Dharmic technique, Qi energy, and symbolism. Each cultivator would use items that served as an analogy for what they were looking for and runes. The ritual was performed within the safety of their inner ocean to create a summoning circle that resonated within themselves. I had formed a partition inside my inner sea, a space within my mind’s eye separate from the whole to work in.

Once this new area was firmly established, I had scribed the summoning circle. I imbued it with the runes Astrid had taught me. Then added the trappings of symbolism that resonated with me. A room a spiritualist from Earth would use for a seance, complete with the trimmings one might find when visiting a person to have their future read. A room was fashioned to include a crystal ball.

The stage was set, only waiting for a medium to enter and speak to the dead or scam the desperate out of their hard-earned money with trickery and deceit.

The room and paraphernalia were meaningful to me. I had visited a medium for years after the death of my mother. The crystal ball sat on a table draped with fabric embroidered with astrological symbols, the only light source the glowing reflection of swirling pools of fog that moved within the crystal ball. Tarot cards were at hand, ready to be shuffled and read.

Astrid had suggested I also choose items that would serve as a focus. I had etched a pentagram within the array to give weight and position to those items. Things that would resonate with the Spirit I was attempting to summon. I had placed my Tessen and my Bow in two of the cardinal positions to represent my cultivation and martial techniques.

An alembic was selected to represent my skills in alchemy, and the token I had received elevating me to Baroness and allowing me to claim Fief Myche were placed in the two of the positions of the pentagram.

The final item I had chosen was a feather from Storm. She was sister to my soul, a bonded companion that I knew without reservation would never betray or abandon me. She was as much a part of me as my own cultivation.

I glanced at the summoning circle and paraphernalia, checking to ensure everything was in place before I instituted this next part. The most important aspect of a summoning circle was powering it. There was some redundancy in the script I’d been taught, some room for error. If I’d made a mistake, there would be a burst of information, a feedback loop that would highlight the area that needed to be adjusted without harm.

The summoning circle I was casting was suitable for a cultivator at the Qi Gathering Realm. There were rituals and runic arrays much more potent, even processes that allowed a cultivator to summon Daemon and Devils.

I preferred to stay far away from those. There were too many cautionary tales of Daemons gaining complete control over a cultivator.

Daemon cults and cultivation were banned in Cai’Li for a reason. The last time a Daemonic cult had been allowed to ferment, it had resulted in an Empire-wide war that had seen some of the most talented cultivators of that generation dead.

Even worse, Daemon cultivators used techniques that enslaved or destroyed the soul. People had been sacrificed to empower their rituals and summon Daemons to increase their cultivation realm. Indifferent to the consequences, they bargained with Daemons to grow in power until they were inevitably found out, and the cultivator and Cult were finally destroyed.

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To make things easier and to connect more fully with the symbology I had used, I moved my Dharmic body to sit in the chair reserved for the fortune-teller. Once seated, I began forming signs, hand gestures, and seals that Astrid had demonstrated, my advanced mental abilities allowing me to memorize them, with Astrid correcting my mistakes as I practiced.

Hand gestures and seals activated the circle I had created. My Dharmic direction focused my Dharmic energies to connect the five items I had placed into empowering the pentagram with the crystal ball at the center.

The crystal ball did brighten, but that and the summoning circle activating was the only change I noticed. It took some time, five minutes or more, for the Dharmic energy I was supplying to fill the circle and the pentagram I had scribed completely. I watched carefully as each item was incorporated to ensure they were not harmed. I had formed this ritual using items that were irreplaceable.

Once the energy had engulfed everything, a mist formed, and the circle began to exude spiritual fog, ectoplasm that could be shaped by an entity to create a host body that would serve as Spirit guide and partner.

The shapes were varied, as more than one Spirit answered the summons and manipulated the ectoplasm that had formed. Some of them were wondrous- figures from fantasy- winged Elves and Drow. Some bestial in nature- Pegasus and Yeti. Most a version of the snow Elf that Astrid and the other Spirit teachers were once a member of.

The spirits didn’t appear to fight with each other, but something was happening. A contest of will perhaps, or one for resources. Each phantom that manifested needed to retain control over the amount of spirit fog they claimed. Those that failed faded as the ectoplasm they had gathered escaped and was redistributed.

The cacophony of phantasms continued to fade until only two possibilities remained. A snow Elf and Drow. They had positioned themselves across from each other, each claiming part of the summoning circle as their own.

The spiritual fog that my Dharmic connection had formed had been attenuated, the few wisps remaining morphing into wisps of energy that braided together to create and serve as an astral cord.

The cord moved into position, each manifested spirit claiming a section. The thread began pulsing, a network of electrical synaptic connections similar in seeming and function to the synaptic function of the brain.

I wasn’t sure if the spirits were communicating with each other or fighting for dominance. The pulses of synaptic activity gave no clues as they seemed to favor first one side and then the other. But eventually, the equilibrium that had been first formed between the entities ended.

The synapses favored the snow Elf more and more until a steady and continuous loop was created, and the Drow began to fade. That process continued until the section of the pentagram the Drow had claimed broke free, the ectoplasm flailing without anchor within the confines of the summoning circle.

The crystal ball that had been softly glowing until this point blazed with energy, a beacon of light that the snow Elf focused on. The spirit reached toward that light, directing the astral cord that had formed to follow its will and move with purpose.

The Spirit created order out of chaos. The astral cord moved to its command until a stroke of luck or skill allowed the astral cord and crystal ball to connect. The connection created a bridge that served to establish a firmament of reality that would allow the Spirit to anchor with me. That anchor started forming the contract between the two of us.

The Spirit wasn’t Astrid. She had warned me the chances of that were slim. But I succeeded in forming a contract on my first attempt. And the knowledge of how to create summoning circles was now mine to share and disperse in a manner that would give my House and Fief an advantage.

At least, I hoped so. This technique might have been discovered and mastered by other cultivators who lucked into a chance to enter the Mystic Realm.