Newly Laid Plans

"Germina lox academy." In a smooth motion, Lanus drew her wand from her coat and tossed it towards the centre of the room. The wand shot towards the tracking crystal with unnatural speed, weaving between furniture and staff members. It abruptly stopped just before it would have contacted the massive gemstone's facets, and a burst of magic leapt from the crystal and into the length of enchanted wood. The wand then shot away again, returning towards Lanus' outstretched hand.

With an impatient gesture, the arch wizard combined the two spells together, adding a series of diagrams over the miniature model of the academy. "Just a few minutes ago, one of the building sensor crystals detected some sort of magical presence in an out-of-bounds area. On the rooftop of that building here."

Mason looked closer at the miniature. "That's... the Department of Sorcery building."

"Indeed! Mason, that's your home department. Please tell me you people haven't let a demon loose again." Lanus passed the miniature model of the academy to Mason, tossing the magical construct like a ball.

Whereas many magicians liked to use wands or staffs, Mason was a purist who used only his hands to direct his power. He clenched and unclenched his fists to shake off the winter cold, then he spun the miniature model around to examine it closely. "We shouldn't have any active projects running overnight. Hmm. Yes, it looks like there was a magical presence detected on the roof, but none of the summoning circles inside the building seem to have been breached."

"Is it possible for a demon to have broken out of a summoning circle in such a way that the alarm enchantments aren't set off? Aren't our defences supposed to be better than that?" Lanus asked.

"It's possible, yes, but very unusual. Our summoning circles are top-of-the-line. No, this isn't really what we'd expect to see if a demon escaped, especially a powerful one." Mason rotated the model and modified the spell so that only the one building was present. "Do we have any other abnormalities detected after the first one?"

"No. I've been bouncing searching spells of the shields, but there's no sign of anything out of the ordinary. The sensors on all the other buildings also report nothing. If there's a demon or monster that got loose from inside the sorcery department, it must have come to the roof, then fled back inside after tripping the spells."

Mason was quiet for a moment as he pondered the possibilities. "Looking at the data we have, I'd say the most likely explanation is a false alarm. Maybe snow buildup from the blizzard is messing up one of the boundary sensors."

"Are you sure? And what if reality doesn't follow the 'most likely explanation'? What if there really is a powerful demon roaming around inside the Department of Sorcery?" Lanus countered.

Mason closed his fist, dispelling the magical model of the academy. "Then we go in and search the place. I'm a sorcerer, and this is sorcery. If a demon has really broken out, it's my job to handle the banishment."

Lanus clapped her hands, applauding in the especially encouraging way she usually reserved for young magicians first learning to use their power. "Splendid suggestion! I was about to order you two to do exactly that, but it's much better when you volunteer."

"Wait, me too? I'm not a sorcerer. Neither demon summoning nor banishing is my field," Timothy said, sounding reluctant.

"You're still a master magician. You can handle it." Moving to the side of the room, Lanus picked up a short sword out of a collection of weapons laid out on a table. "Do you both have telanium-silver on you?" She unsheathed the sword to check its blade, then attached it to her belt.

Mason nodded. As any magician knew, telanium-silver was a special alloy with a variety of uses related to magic—most notably, contact with the metal would instantly banish demonic entities, sending them back to the otherworld plane from which they originated from. And as one of the academy's master sorcerers, Mason had many a dramatic experience with junior sorcerers not quite making their summoning circles up to specification. Reaching into his satchel bag, Mason drew out a telescopic baton made from telanium-silver and flicked it open.

Timothy took out his own wand, which was a different design from Lanus' and was made of telanium-silver alloy instead of enchanted wood. "Is that... Is this dangerous? This is just a false alarm, right? There isn't really a powerful demon in there, right?"

Mason made a few waves with his baton, getting used to the solid weight of the weapon. "Don't worry. It's probably nothing to worry about, and there's probably nothing unusual there at all," he said, and he even believed it himself.

* * * * *

The Department of Sorcery had stone golems surrounding every entrance, barricading the building with their blocky bodies. Besides the academy's security force, Mason also found the three students he'd been having a discussion with earlier. "I told you three to return to the hostel!"

"Yes sir, but you also told us to report if we found anything abnormal, and all the security golems are clustering here!" replied Samuel, gesturing to the building with his staff.

"Students of yours?" Lanus asked.

"Senior apprentices who were working on their theses," Mason explained.

"I see. You three wait outside while we search the building." Lanus said to the students. She then turned to speak with one of the other staff members who had followed them over. "If we're not back out here in half an hour, contact the Magician's Guild and have them dispatch a response team."

Lanus strode forward into the Department of Sorcery, and golems, staff, and students alike stepped aside to let the arch wizard pass. Mason followed after her, along with a rather more hesitant Timothy, whose gaze lingered on the golems as if wishing that his creations could accompany them in. "Why don't we just send in the golems instead of risking our own skins?" he suggested.

"Because golems can be commandeered. If there is an escaped demon, we are not running the chance that it can acquire a few golem minions," Arch Wizard Lanus replied.

"What? No... Golems are hard to reprogram, even for master magicians and especially for some demon! They have lots of security layers written into their runes," Timothy said, but he didn't press the matter further.

Mason tried to reassure his colleague. "It's probably a false alarm. There's probably nothing at all here."

"I will believe that when we've finished searching this building. Let's check the summoning circles first," Lanus ordered.

The Department of Sorcery building was one of the oldest buildings in the Royal Academy of Magic, and it's architecture lacked some of the flair which came with more modern designs—tall, pointy wizard's towers were in fashion, but this building was just a large, pragmatic, two-storied brick cuboid covered in white and black paint tones.

Entering the building, Mason turned aside and spun a series of wall mounted knobs which would control the internal lighting. Small enclosed oil lamps hung from the ceiling, all fuelled by a central pipeline. By turning the knobs, Mason increased the flow of oil until the lamps were casting a steady illumination to light up the corridors. He kicked some snow off his boots, though he kept his winter coat on. This lighting system could also provide heat, but the air was still very chilly because unlike the library and the bell tower, this building hadn't been occupied so late at night.

The corridors were easily familiar to him. Mason was one of the few master sorcerers working in the academy, and this was the Department of Sorcery after all. During term time, he would spend many hours every day teaching and training students in these very classrooms. Leading the way forwards, he began the search.

Opening the first classroom, Mason looked around and raised his hand. Tendrils of magical power flowed down his arm and into his palm as he murmured a spell. "Germina lox!" Light flashed from his hand, along with an invisible pulse of magic. The searching spell bounced around the walls of the darkened classroom, but there was nothing to be found. "Nothing here."

As they moved through the first level, each of the three master magicians would cast a searching spell to check every room they passed by. One by one they checked all the classrooms, but each held nothing but chairs, tables, document cabinets, and other uninteresting furniture.

It was a different matter when they reached the summoning circle rooms. There were twelve separate rooms containing plenty of open space, and right in the middle of each room was a large summoning circle for magicians to use for sorcery.

Each summoning circle resembled a series of concentric rings on the ground, with each ring containing dozens of intricate runes to store and focus magical energy. These were the cornerstones of sorcery, through which demons could be summoned—be that by students summoning basic entities to learn the craft, or by more experienced sorcerers working on projects which required more powerful demons bound with contracts.

A searching spell would be pointless because of how much magical power was already contained in the summoning circles. Out of the twelve summoning circles, nine were inactive and dark, whereas the remaining three were powered up and had defensive enchantments active.

Mason grabbed a clipboard which hung from the wall and flipped through the documentation for the summoning circles. Then he began meticulously inspecting each individual circle, looking for any damage or defect in the circular, runic enchantments. First he inspected the inactive circles, but they were cold and quiet as expected. If something had escaped from the otherworldly plane, it would have been through the active circles instead.

Each of the active circles was protected by an opaque dome of magic rising up from the runes on the ground, resembling swirling dark clouds of smoke which formed a flat barrier. These were a clear indication of the security enchantments which prevented anything unwanted from escaping the otherworldly plane—they were rather similar to those shielding enchantments which had now put the whole academy on lockdown, albeit at a different scale entirely.

Mason placed his hand on the dome of the first active circle and murmured a spell to turn the dome clear, but this merely revealed that the summoning circle was empty. "Venatare. No, it's empty."

The second active circle was also empty when he checked it. However, Mason felt a distinct tingle when he touched the last circle—there was something inside, even if he couldn't yet see into the summoning circle—and that made him hesitate.

Timothy was right behind him, holding onto his wand with a tight grip. "What's wrong? Is... is something wrong?" asked the older professor.

Mason shrugged casually. "There's something in here. Venatare!"

The black swirling smoke which represented the summoning circle's security enchantments faded away and the circle instantly lost its opacity, revealing a small, twisted creature inside.

"Ahh!" Timothy exclaimed, jumping backwards in surprise.

Unlike his colleague, Mason was undisturbed. He peered closer at the circle, looking in at the demonic entity—it resembled a ball of wriggling tentacles which squirmed and trembled unnaturally, moving quickly around the inner limits of the summoning circle. "It's just an imp. Harmless."

"I know, I know. I was just startled. This whole situation is giving me the creeps," Timothy replied.

Mason stared at the imp, knowing that the summoning circle's security enchantments were still effective even if they'd gone invisible. Imps were the most common sort of demonic entity, and they were harmless except in extreme numbers. They could be considered the rats of the otherworld plane, and were generally used either as practice summoning by junior apprentices, or as a minor source of demonic magic for experiments. Whichever the case had been, there was nothing unusual about finding an imp in a summoning circle.

Crouching down, Mason placed his palm on the edge of the summoning circle. "Exaliant mosi nox," he murmured, and the circle's runes all glowed as he charged it with a small burst of magical power. The imp vanished in a flash of light, banished from the summoning circle at Mason's command. The circle went dark again as Mason stood up. "No. Nothing here. All summoning circles are intact and undamaged."

Lanus was one step behind him, double-checking every circle with her own magic. She swung the short sword she was holding, and the blade was forcefully repelled by the summoning circle's boundary spells. "So no escaped demons then," concluded the arch wizard.

Timothy visibly relaxed on hearing this statement. "Oh, marvellous! Marvellous. What a relief. There's nothing to be worried about, then. It was just a false alarm." He broke into a relieved smile, but the other two master magicians remained more stoic.

"Not until we've checked the whole building," Lanus said.

"Let's check the upper level then," Mason said. He led them towards the stairwell, though he increasingly suspected that it was definitely a false alarm after all.

Whereas the first level had held classrooms and summoning circles, the second level of the building was filled by more classrooms as well as staff offices. There was a large open area filled by cubicle desks, with individual private offices running down the sides.

"Germina lox." Raising his hand, Mason threw a searching spell across all the cubicles. Echoes of magical power bounced back to him from numerous things—spell tomes, minor enchanted objects, even the miniscule tinge of living energy from a potted plant, but there was nothing more than that. Certainly not the much larger trace of magic associated with a demon or another magician. "Nothing," he declared.

"Spread out. Check all the offices. Open the locks if you have to," Lanus ordered.

Mason went to the far end of the open area, taking the offices on the opposing side while his two fellow master magicians worked on the closer offices. In succession, Mason opened each office door and used a searching spell on each room. When he came across a door which was locked, it took him about half a minute of using a breaching spell to pick the lock. The locks were simple mechanical devices easily bypassed by magic, but many also had security enchantments which would detect his forced entry and send an alert to the academy's operations room. But the staff there would know that they were checking the building already, of course, and know not to be concerned.

Already Mason knew what he would find—nothing. Summoning circles were how sorcerers interacted with the otherworldly plane, and the department's summoning circles being undamaged meant that there was no escaped demon. Even if somehow a demonic entity or some monstrous beast had genuinely been detected by that alert earlier, it wouldn't have picked a lock to hide itself in an office. Demons were otherworldly creatures—if they escaped, they would not steal or hide away, but go on deadly, destructive rampages. Nevertheless it paid to be sure, so he continued checking, as did the other two magicians.

Halfway through checking the offices, there came a door which was a bit more rigorously locked than the others. Instead of using that same lock-picking spell as before, Mason switched his baton from one hand to the other, and then he reached into his coat and took out a key. This wasn't just any office, this was his office.

On opening the door, Mason was greeted by a familiar sight. Inside this darkened room, the furniture, the plaques on the walls, even the stacks of paperwork covering his desk—all of it was familiar. When not teaching classes or tutoring students, Mason spent much of his work time in this office, reviewing demonic contracts created by students or other sorcerers.

Tendrils of wispy, glowing power surrounded his arm as Mason prepared to use his searching spell once again. "Germina lox." Even as he spoke the words, Mason immediately visualized exactly what he would sense. There would be minor echoes of power from all the various magical objects he kept here—including the bookshelf filled with spell tomes, a small amulet in his drawer, and the half dozen enchanted crystals he kept in a safe under his desk.

Instead his searching spell gave a very different response. His office was faintly lit only by light from the corridor, but somewhere in that darkness was a clear source of active magic which reflected back his spell. As echoes continued bouncing back, Mason deduced the location of this magic to be something approximately human-sized, hiding behind his paperwork-covered desk.

Mason remained motionless for a few seconds as he pondered this unexpected development. Then he used his foot to push the office door shut, making sure he was quiet enough that he wouldn't alert the two other master magicians searching outside. With his baton held ready and magic still wreathing his fingers, Mason reached over to the room's light controls and spun the knob mounted in the wall. Initially the ceiling lights had been incredibly dim, with tiny pilot flames barely visible inside the oil lamps, but they flared to life as Mason spun the control knob and increased the oil flow.

This new illumination revealed an odd sight. Sitting behind Mason's desk was a dragon, with scales of reddish-brown similar in colour to the oak which made up the desk. The dragon had been resting her head on the table, though she jerked upright and squinted as the lights brightened.

Dragon and sorcerer stared at each other, and for a movement neither spoke. The dragon was the one who finally broke the silence. "Hi. So... I've got some explaining to do."

Mason let the magic dissipate from his hand, then he collapsed his baton and slipped it back into his satchel bag. "Mm. I suppose you do," he said to Izagor, his wife.

* * * * *

Izagor shivered slightly as she stood up on all fours. Though she could breathe fire, that had been no help against the winter blizzard she'd just flown through.

But when Mason had come through the door, dressed in the elegant coat of a magician and with magical power at his very fingertips, that sight of him had warmed her soul and her body in a way which nothing else had over the past week or so. Her crest fin perked up, and she shuddered in a way which had nothing to do with the cold.

"What are you doing back here? Shouldn't you be halfway across the empire by now?" Mason asked.

Before Mason could say anything else, Izagor bounded over the desk and charged him. A dragon was proportioned very differently than a human—quadrupedal not bipedal, longer yet skinnier too, with wings and tail and more—but overall not too different in size. Izagor pressed her head against Mason's chest, delighting in his very presence. She'd missed his voice, his calm words, his intelligence, the touch of his hands, and just everything about him.

"Mason... mmrrr..." A deep, rumbling sound of pleasure found its way out of her chest, sounding rather like a deeper version of a cat's purr. Sweeping a wing open, Izagor tried to hug Mason. Though she sat back on her haunches, this was still a bit of an awkward motion, but she hardly cared.

Izagor could feel Mason's hands against her scales as he returned her hug. He made a confused, slightly amused noise. "Hah. Ok! Yes, Izzy, I missed you too. But could you please explain what you're doing in my office? What happened to visiting your family?" Mason pulled away slightly, and he gestured over her body. "And why are you like that?"