The Demon and the Boy

Smoke billows around the room, a pentagram drawn by a shaky, innocent hand stained the floor. At each of the 5 points of the pentagram was a thick candle filling the room with a pungent smell and multicolored smoke.

A timid voice called out into the room, “Vos advoco ad iusiurandum ad caelum.” Despite the tremor in the voice the words felt heavy as if they had some unseen power over this world and the next. As the voice called out the smoke swirled and changed colors constantly.

Every so often the smoke parted and one could catch a glimpse of another world as the tremorous voice repeated with a growing conviction, “Vos advoco ad iusiurandum ad caelum.”

The power in the room felt as if it was waiting for permission before reaching its climax. It waited for the Name that would breach the nether world. The voice, now firmer but still trembling grew louder and louder until finally it cut off leaving a sudden silence in the void. This silence lasted either a few seconds or a few eternity before the voice spoke out and said, “Come forth, Aamon.”

With this permission the growing energy coalesced in the center of the room and a shape formed within the smoke. A commanding voice boomed out. “Who dares summon me? The mighty Aamon, they who lead Beelzebub’s 40 infernal legions. Who are you to try to command me?”

The mighty Aamon looked down and saw a trembling boy with his arms held out in supplication arms marred with fresh scars from where he drew the pentagram and old scars from where he had been forced to draw many before.

“You summoned me?” Aamon asked incredulously.

Before the boy could answer, a man in a dark brown suit strode out of the corner of the room where he had previously gone unnoticed by Aamon. What didn’t go unnoticed was the visible flinch the boy gave as the man placed his hand on the boy’s shoulder.

The man began to speak, “Demon! I command thee---,”

“Ah ah ah, who are you?” the demon interrupted sneering.

“Uh... I, I’m the one who summoned you,” spluttered the man.

“Now, now,” the demon admonished. “I could have sworn the paperwork I received said that it was a young boy, and, I do hope you don’t mind me saying, you are a few decades older than a young boy. So based on what I know and what I have gleaned from your relationship with this boy is that he’s the one that summoned me because you used him as a proxy to prevent harm coming to yourself.”

The man shouted “No! No! That’s not what is happening at all! I summoned you! You must obey me! Heed my words de---”

With a wave of their hands Aamon stole the man’s breath leaving him gasping, “Silence, my master must have complete silence while he considers his first command.”

Aamon turned expectantly towards the cowering boy, who, having got a good whiff of the pungent demon, was now silently gagging in the corner. Realizing that something was expected of him he sat up and looked in shock over at his master who was now turning a neat shade of purple and gasping like a fish out of water.

The first words the boy said, since he had completed the ritual was, “Stop it!! You’re hurting him!”

Almost immediately air filled the boys’ master’s lungs.

“Do you not want him to suffer?” the demon inquired, “He put you in front of a very powerful demon, not to brag, as cannon fodder. Not to mention the way you flinched away at his touch. He doesn't seem like someone I would wish alive.”

“I do not want to see him suffer like that, he gave me a roof over my head and for that I am grateful,” said the boy.

“Ah, but just because someone provides basic necessities doesn’t mean that you owe them any debt.”

“I thank you Aamon but I do not wish to talk about it anymore. Anyways I should probably dismiss you. I must tend to my master, he will be angry that the summoning didn’t take.” sighed the boy, looking as if tending to his master was the last thing he ever wanted to do.

“Before you dismiss me, you should make a final request, and if it is within my power I will grant it to you, no strings attached.” Aamon said, looking shocked at themselves, Aamon had never thought that they would make a selfless offer like that.

The boy thought about this and said, “I guess I would wish that I could be happy, but I know you can’t do that so...” With this final request made he completed the dismissal ritual and the demon slid out of the human realm and back into their own.

The boy glanced around and realized that he was no longer in the summoning room. He was standing at the train station with a ticket in his hand, his luggage next to him, and an invitation to a prestigious boarding school.

After this encounter the boy would learn to overcome the trauma inflicted upon him by his master and eventually he was indeed happy.

The thing about demons is that they are tricky. They spin your words around and make the simplest command into something completely different. What Aamon did was to send the boy to where he had always wanted to go, school. And Aamon made sure that the boy’s ex-master would never torment the boy again. If the boy ever went back to his old master’s house he would find it burned to the ground. All presence of his old master completely eliminated. After all, the boy had only said he didn’t want to see his master suffer.