The Game of Spirit

The Calm Before Storm Part 1

21stDecember 2016.

The ticking of the clock. The only sound she could hear. People often said that when your eyes can't see, your ear make up for it. That's what the girl was thinking in the middle of a room beside a summoning circle.

There were a few lamp in the room, but all of them were turned off, making the circle the only source of light in the room. She closed her eyes and remember what her father told her, over and over again.

"Always start the summoning near midnight, that is the most optimal time.The time when barrier between worlds is the weakest."

"Use other sources of magic, the more magic you use, the higher the chances of attracting strong spirit. "

"And finally and most important, never lose your concentration during the summoning ritual."

She already prepared everything perfectly. It was almost midnight. She had prepared 10 magical jewel, each containing more magic than even a first class mage could contain within their body. She had placed it around the circle. The distance between each other was measured so that they were placed at the same distance as the other.

Her heart beating fast and sweat rolled down her forehead. 'There is no way i could mess this up' she tought. She took a deep breath and started the incantation of summoning ritual.

It began, the circle in front of her and the jewel around it started glowing red. They illuminated the dark room, revealing rows of desk and bookshelf, a sign that the ritual was underway. With her beautiful voice she spoke foreign words, words that only a select few in this world could recognize the meaning. She executed the ritual without even a single mistake, but she overlooked one simple mistake--- the clock.

The hour arm pointed at twelve causing the bell inside to rang. The sound was not that loud, but the sudden sound is enough to make her heart skipped a beat and broke her focus.

She starts panicking. She almost finished her incantation and she doesn't want to mess this up. She doesn't want to mess one of the most important moment in her life. The moment that she has been preparing for over 10 years. But she can't regain her focus because she was panicking, and she panicked because she can't regain her focus. A deadly cycle, which she knew all too well, yet she ignored it before, thinking that she couldn't possibly made that mistake.

She started to stutter, making the ritual unstable and making the glow from the circle to became strange. She wanted to finish the ritual, she has to, she can't afford to abort it midway like that.

She had only two choices, using all her magic to stabilize the ritual, making the summoned spirit weaker, or using all of her magic to complete the unstable ritual, allowing her to summon a strong spirit at the risk of failing.

She shifted all of her magic to complete the ritual and to summon her spirit, abandoning all effort on stabilizing. She thought that the reward was greater than the risk.

The room was filled with blinding red light, the ritual was completed.

She narrowed her eyes. Soon the light started to dissipate and she could see again. As she began to regain her vision she saw something standing in the middle of the room. Her heart beat faster, and she smiled. She knew that even though she messed up the last part of the ritual, she was perfect with the rest of it.

Despair filled her heart when she realized that the figure she saw was nothing but the product of her own imagination, of her own excitement. She stared blankly at the empty circle for a few moment. She shook her head,] and slapped her own cheek. Her father once told her that if she messed up the incantation, the spirit she summoned could be summoned to another place near.