D.E.M.O.N.S: Getting Summoned Weekly isn't so Bad

— Lily —

Lily found herself cackling as she looked at Kat, stuck in place as she was. “You do realise I can break out of this if I really try right?” said Kat. Lily just ignored her and kept laughing. “Seriously the only reason I stopped is that the wood started to grown,” Lily kept chuckling though they were dying down.

“I can also probably…” Kat summoned up a bit of demonic fire and suddenly the shadows binding her limbs froze over and snapped. “Huh…”

Lily pouted at the sight of her spell being destroyed so ‘easily’. At least when Kat was trying to physically escape she had to actually try, but a small application of demonic fire and it was already freezing over? Perhaps the shadows had become a bit to physical. “Really?”

“Lily, this spell, while interesting yes, is not as strong as you were making it out to be. It took half of your mana, looked extremely obvious and as such fails as a trap, and it took slightly over half of your mana to cast. I don’t know how it took so much mana with it just being a Rank 2 spell, but perhaps that’s just something I’m misunderstanding.

It is strong yes, but strong for a Rank 2 spell and nothing more,” said Kat slowly.

Lily continued to pout at this of course, even as she grumbled, “But it worked! It worked really well!”

Kat sighed and pulled Lily into a hug. “I know you’re very proud of your first, truly workable spell,” said Kat let her fingers run through Lily’s hair while her tail kept them both bound together. “And I won’t deny that it’s quite useful… but for the amount of mana it costs? It’s pretty inefficient and I saw you stumbling when you cast it, so it’s not something you can cast in the middle of fights.

“Which means it’s a trap… but the shadows you cast it on look so weird. They seem to move and look a bit more like a puddle of ink. They’ve got an odd, oily shine to them and if they’re close to other shadows? I’d say that just makes them stand out more if anything. So, while I admit it’s very cool you got something workable, you need to calm down, at least a little bit,”

Lily pouted further but leaned into Kat’s hug and let herself be calmed down. Kat was right, she was perhaps… a bit overzealous. After her string of failures and the break Kat provided with the fish, Lily had dived right back into her spells with more mixed results this time.

Sadly that mix seemed to range from ‘nothing’ to ‘actively bad for Lily’ instead of anything good… right up until this last spell.

Her failures included, doing nothing, draining mana for seemingly no effect, turning the shadows she’d touched white… for some reason. That last one was also the second most expensive effect outside of her one ‘successful’ spell. It didn’t even do anything fancy like making the shadows harder to move, or change their colour to anything other than white.

Even the short test they did by bringing out the tent revealed that despite being bright white it didn’t release any light. It was at least noticeable in a dark room, but the effect was strange there.

As for this most recent spell? As Kat had said, it was a trap spell that drastically changed the look of a square of shadows, and once any amount of force was applied to it the shadows exploded outward in a sort of oily looking gunk that made it hard to escape. Kat had needed to put forth actual effort to break free, but the effect was limited by the size of the shadow.

Sadly the size difference didn’t help much with the energy cost. Actually, if anything it was more annoying. There seemed to be standard size the spell deemed ‘acceptable’ and using it on anything smaller or larger increased the cost quite quickly.

Once Kat and Lily separated Lily took out her notebook and tapped it a few times with her pen. “Do you think I should work on this spell a bit more?” asked Lily.

“If you want? It seems useful enough and it’s not like you have too many projects at the moment. I’m sure you can work out a use for it eventually,” said Kat.

“Yeah but I didn’t want it to be ‘eventually’ I wanted it to be ‘now’ or ‘soon’ at the latest. Maybe I’m just looking to chase after the first scrap of success I’ve found, and I’ll admit there’s a large element of that… but it just feels like I’m not getting anywhere with the shadow merge idea. Sure it’d make me a lot safer… or at least I think It could make me a lot safer…

“I’m just not sure I can do it. I mean… it was super ambitious to think I’d make meaningful progress in a single day I get that. And really, a lot of what I’m doing is slapping together things from the books I’ve checked out with a hope they’ll work. So I guess now I’m wondering if I should instead fiddle around with that spell.

“Sure it binds someone in place… but I can see a lot of potential in it. A few changes and maybe I’d get a ‘shadow armour’ spell that could help protect me somewhat… or maybe it wouldn’t block any damage at all.

“Or if I wanted to work on it from another direction I could see perhaps working on the fact that it’s horrible on my mana. Maybe find a good way to scale the spell up and use it to help trap the dragon? I don’t expect it to work well or last long… but if it can hold the dragon in place for a second?

I could see that being enough to win you and Hunter the fight… and like I’m trying to be useful AND safe…

“But I’m not too sure I’m either. Oh I have nice spells but against a drake? I can’t imagine my paper swarm will work all that well, and I imagine it can just walk through my paper barriers. My shadow darts do barely any damage and honestly? The best attack I have right now? Probably manipulating my shadow directly.

“I think I could do some real damage with it… potentially. Of course, only if I got up close and personal with it… and while I wouldn’t be against taking a risk like that if I thought it was necessary, especially to save a whole world… it’s a huge risk for what would probably by a nasty cut. Nothing immediately deadly.

“So I’d want a good support spell. Which might be in my books… but I don’t have them. Just my notes. And supporting spells weren’t really what I was looking into because I wanted to be useful on my own. A combatant in my own right…

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“And I’m thinking that perhaps that was a poor decision. Utility spells can always be useful and if I tied down my opponent with efficient defensive and utility spells I can then attack them with my shadow.

“Um… sorry I guess I’m just rambling here. I don’t really know what I’m doing… and I think I’ve proven that a few times over now,” finished Lily with a sigh.

“Look, I’m not entirely sure I agree with that… but it also seems like you’ve spotted a path forward. Maybe you can’t do anything against this dragon, maybe your help is instrumental and you need this spell to do it. I can’t see the future… but I DO trust you to figure things out. You’ve always been good at thinking things through and I’m sure you’ll come to a satisfying answer,” said Kat gently.

“Thanks Kat,” mumbled Lily into Kat’s shoulder. “I think… I think I WILL keep working on this. I don’t have the notes to work on anything better right now and I’ve seen some success. It’s a pain to test because of the mana requirement but I can split my attention between tweaking the spell and testing it. It’ll probably be my project until we find the drake,”

“If that’s what you want to do I’ll support your efforts,” said Kat with a grin.

Lily sighed as she pressed herself further into Kat’s embrace, letter her sensitive nose pick up on Kat’s unique sent while her ears simply took in Kat’s heartbeat. It was a steady thing, rarely changing even when Kat was in more extreme situations. Perhaps it was a demon thing, or perhaps it was just Kat.

To Lily it was a comforting sound and with Kat’s scent enveloping her Lily could do nothing but smile.

“Thanks Kat,” said Lily as she rubbed her cheek against Kat. “As long as you promise to keep helping me test my spells, probably in the evening or something, then I’m sure I’ll have something come the drake fight. It may not be perfect, it may not be the best spell ever… but maybe it can hold back a dragon for a second,”