Damien's eyes bulged. He nearly glanced up in surprise but stopped himself at the last moment.
"How are you still here?" he stammered, the cold sweat on his back soaking into his shirt.
"Same reason you summoned me. Runes are quite a strict form of magic, aren't they?" Henry asked. "Even the tiniest change can have great consequences. Did you know the rune for 'banish' is only a small line away from the rune for 'offer to exit?'" Damien swallowed. If the creature noticed, it didn't show it.
"On top of that, you've slightly misdrawn the rune for 'Planes.' Normally, that wouldn't have made much of a difference," Henry said. "However, tonight happens to be the Winter Solstice. The stars are aligned just right for a measly little mortal to call out to the Void. That's amusing.
They haven't done that in a few hundred years. It's almost as if you meant to summon me."
Damien looked at the Summoner's Almanac. The pages flipped of their own accord, opening to the summoning circle. The image floated off the page, a single rune lighting up on it.
A single glance was all it took for Damien to confirm Henry's words. The rune he'd drawn on the floor was missing a miniscule line near the top. The pit in Damien's stomach grew heavier. Henry didn't have to show him his other mistake. At this point, there was no need to.
"What do you want with me?" he asked.
"I already told you. You called out for a summon. Here I am. As loath as I am to admit it, you only made two mistakes in your runes. I've been summoned, but it isn't my whole power. It's not even my whole being. The majority of my body is still floating in the Void. I want to explore the Mortal Plane, but I'm too weak to travel far from you.
You're my only link to this world, and I'll simply fade away if I leave."
Damien clenched his hands. He hadn't heard of any rules like that in his studies, but he had to admit that much of the summoning ritual was left to those who specialized in it. There was only so much he'd been able to discover himself from the school's libraries.
"What if we make a deal?" Henry offered. "I promise to never harm you if we make the contract. You will be safe from me in every way. We can both walk away happy, Damien. However, if you refuse, we can just say I'm not the forgiving type. Either we both get what we want, or neither of us do."
"I've got another question," Damien said, dodging the eldritch creature's offer. "Why do you talk like…well, a kid?
You don't sound like an ancient being."
"This is all to make things easier on you," Henry said in a soothing tone. "I have studied humans for millennia. You are speaking to a façade, a persona, if you will. If you attempted to speak to my true form, well, you know what happened when you saw me. The results of speaking to me would be even worse."
The young man swallowed. It struck him, somehow for the first time, that he'd made a big mistake. It was a big day for wise thoughts such as those, and all things come in groups. As such, Damien was blessed with a second, much more sobering, revelation.
His mother would be home soon. If she went looking for him and looked into the shed… Damien swallowed.
"I'll enter your body. Nobody will get their soul torn apart just by looking at me," Henry said. Damien wasn't sure how he could tell, but something told him Henry would have been smiling if the creature even had a mouth.
Damien's young mind churned as he desperately searched for a way out of his predicament. Unfortunately, he'd exceeded his revelation quota for the day. No ways of escape arose. There was only a single option left open.
"Deal," Damien said, his voice barely a whisper.
Henry didn't respond. A wall of force slammed into Damien. His skin burned, and his muscles screamed in protest as something forced itself into his body. The headache that had been present ever since he'd summoned Henry quadrupled in strength. What felt like an electric shock traveled through Damien's body, setting every single nerve alight with pain.
Then it was done. The pain vanished. Damien's eyes opened, and he drew in a deep breath.
"Well, that was something," Damien's mouth said. It was his voice, too, but it wasn't Damien speaking.
He tried to speak, but his mouth didn't respond. Panic set in when he realized his limbs no longer responded either.
"Don't you worry, Damien," Henry said with Damien's voice. "You're nice and safe. You won't be harmed."
It didn't take a genius to understand what Henry meant.
Damien screamed within his own mind, desperately trying to move, to blink. To do anything.
Nothing happened. He was a prisoner behind the bars of his own eyes, forced to sit by and watch as Henry forced Damien's body to stand. Henry-Damien stumbled, nearly falling over. Henry slowly wiggled each of his new limbs, getting accustomed to them.
After several minutes passed, he took a weak step out of the summoning circle. Then he took another. And another.
"The time has come," Henry proclaimed, a savage grin crawling across Damien's face. "I am free!"
He took another step forward and promptly walked face first into an invisible wall. A flicker of pain shot through Damien's head as something in his nose crunched, and more blood poured from it.
Henry, unused to piloting Damien's body, lost his balance and fell backward onto the hard ground. The wind was knocked out of his lungs as several more bruises were added to his growing collection.
"What was that?" Henry asked, his voice garbled by the blood in his nostrils. He made Damien rise to his feet and reach out. His hand stopped above the second circle of runes Damien had drawn.
Damien—the real one, not Henry—suddenly found himself in control of his mouth again. Unfortunately, the rest of his body was completely unresponsive.
"I drew an extra ring of runes around the summoning circle," Damien said, a note of pride leaking into his voice despite the situation he was in. "A companion's power is only equal to that of their partner. I made that ring myself. I can't break it from the inside so, now that you're bonded with me, neither can you."
"Clever," Henry said, taking over Damien's mouth once again. "But it gets you nowhere. With your amount of power, this circle won't hold more than a week. A good try, boy. Good, but pointless."
He handed back control of Damien's mouth to its original owner. For a moment, the boy wondered how he must have looked, talking to himself in different voices while covered in blood and trapped within his own ring of runes. He counted himself lucky nobody else was there to see him.
"You're right," Damien said. "But there's no food or water in this circle. I'll be dead before the week is up, and you'll be sent back to wherever you came from."
There was a pause. For the first time in millennia, Henry had escaped the Void. And, after a few short days of captivity in a musty old barn, he was about to be on a trip straight back to it.
"Shit," Henry said. Within his mind, Damien agreed with him.
"You're bluffing," Henry said. "I've watched this world from the Void for thousands of years. I know someone else is aware of your presence. They'll look for you when you go missing, and then I shall be freed."
"My mom will come," Damien agreed, "but she's going to be suspicious when she finds us locked inside my own runes. You won't be able to answer her questions, so she'll know I'm gone, one way or another."
"I can just read your mind," Henry said.
"No, you can't."
"What makes you think that?"
"You didn't know about the barrier I made. I was thinking about it while you were controlling my body."
Henry didn't say anything for a few moments. Then he rubbed his forehead in a remarkably human motion.
"You could survive, you know. If you told your mother everything was fine when she came, she'd let us out. I'd even spare her life, too. Two humans living is nothing in the grand scheme of things. Do you really want to die a slow, agonizing death from dehydration?"
It was Damien's turn to fall silent. As the blood trickled down his nose and dripped onto the floor, thoughts of what his life had been and what it could be flickered through his mind. He didn't want to die, which was a feature shared by the vast majority of mortals.
"I'd even let you have your body back every once and a while," Henry offered. "We could share."
As if to prove his point, Henry released control of Damien. He sank to his knees, his hands trembling. His mouth was parched, and his lips were dry. His nose ached terribly, and the blood made it difficult to breath. His eyes narrowed as he set his decision in stone.
"No. I-I won't let you make others pay for my mistake. I don't want to die, but neither does everyone else," Damien said. He sat and crossed his arms, forcing himself to ignore the terrified screaming that desperately longed to escape his lips. "You can have my body back. When my mom comes and realizes it's not me in this circle, she'll never trust anything I say. It'll be too late. Enjoy your time in the Mortal Plane. My mom is going to be back any minute."
Henry didn't take back over Damien's body, nor did he say anything.
"If my mom gets here and you aren't in control, I'm going to tell her what happened," Damien said, wiping some of the blood away from his lips.
"You stubborn little mortal," Henry spat, saying the last word like it was a curse. "Are you really this suicidal?"
Damien didn't respond.
"Damn it, boy. I'll arrive in the Mortal Plane, with or without you. You're just stalling me until the next fool. You don't get a second chance, you know. Mortals don't come back. You've done no great deeds, so you'll be sent to the Plane of the Dead. There's no coming back from that. If I'm in control, you'll live forever."
Damien said nothing. Several more minutes passed. If anything, the injuries that had accumulated on Damien's body grew more painful as the adrenaline faded into acceptance.
Henry yanked control of Damien's body and shuffled over to the Summoner's Almanac. He lifted it and tore through the pages, hunting for any method of release.
"There has to be a way to break the circle." Henry snarled. "I will not go back to the Void. I refuse!"
In his anger, his control over Damien's body slipped.
"That book only has summoning methods and contracts in it," Damien said with a weak laugh.
It was Henry's turn to ignore Damien. His eyes studied the pages at an impossible speed as he scanned the book desperately, searching for any possible way to avoid getting sent back to the Void once again.
Henry forced Damien's body to flip past several pages.
Then he paused. Slowly, with a pained grimace, he went back a page.
"This," Henry said, having Damien tap a page with a sore finger.
He was looking at the page, so Damien was able to see it as well. The page was near the back of the book. The word 'obsolete' had been written across the top of page in large, thick handwriting.
The pages contents were quite simple, even for Damien.
It described a binding method that involved binding the summoner and their companion together completely. They shared their lifeforce, thoughts, and possibly more, depending on the strength of the bond. In addition, anyone involved with the bond would trade a large portion of their soul with each other.
More than half the page was covered with warnings noting the numerous ways that the bond negatively affected the casters. When one of the two died, the other one would suffer severe backlash or, in the worst scenario, die as well. They were also unable to keep secrets from each other, as each had free access to the other's mind.
However, there were several benefits. The first was that the summoner would be able to better learn the magic their companion could use. Since the souls of the summoner and their companion would be partially fused, they would also be unable to intentionally harm each other or go completely against one another's wishes.
"Half of this page is covered with warnings about how bad of an idea it is to do this kind of bond," Damien said.
"This might actually be worse than dying. I don't want to become you."
"I promise it's not worse than a millennium of boredom," Henry said. "And trust me. I have absolutely no desire to become a worthless mortal. We won't become each other.
I'm strong enough to keep that from happening. But, look!
If we do this, we can both win. You get to live, and I get to experience the mortal world, even if I don't get to destroy it."
Whatever Henry's true intention was, the Void creature had succeeded in planting the seed of hope in Damien's heart. He picked the book up and scanned the page, searching for the loophole Henry was trying to take advantage of.
"Don't take too long!" Henry urged. "If your mother shows up, it's game over."
"I'm not going to make another deal with you until I've read what I'm getting into," Damien snapped. "We both know what happened the first time I trusted you."
"The circumstances are different!"
"Then you'll be happy to take my terms," Damien said.
The information in the book was sparse, but he couldn't find anything obviously wrong. That meant Henry was going to try to get him on the terms of the deal.
If Henry could have read Damien's mind, the incomprehensible monster would have winced.
Unfortunately, Henry had no such power. There were limits, even to his strength.
Damien scanned through the paper one more time. Then he nodded and picked up a piece of chalk with a blood-stained hand. He drew, moving as confidently and quickly as he dared without sacrificing accuracy.
"You missed a line," Henry said, taking over Damien's hand to draw a small tip on one of the runes.
He glanced at the page. Henry was right. Damien grunted and continued to draw. Between the two of them, they finished the rune circle within just a few minutes. It was simple enough, which was concerning.
"There aren't many runes," Damien said, trying not to concentrate on the pain radiating from his nose. "That means this spell is strong. The less runes it uses, the less energy is wasted controlling the effect."
"Cute," Henry said.
"I learned it in my homework a few days ago," Damien replied, scanning the circle one more time before stepping inside it. "You should be glad I did. It's the only reason I trust this to work."
"Whatever lets you sleep at night," Henry said. "Let's just do the contract."
"Not yet. We aren't just going to do the normal contract," Damien said, putting his finger on the page under a small block of text. "It says over here we can set custom terms, and that's what we're going to do. And if you refuse, well, I hope you enjoy the Void."
"You've gotten awful cocky," Henry said with Damien's voice. "Don't forget who you're dealing with, boy."
"I'm doing this exactly because I know what I'm dealing with," Damien said. "And no matter how much I want to live, I think you want to get out of the Void more. You're welcome to kill me if I'm wrong, though."
A low growl escaped Damien's throat. It was distinctly not human.
"What are your terms, mortal?"
"You will not harm any humans, intentionally or not, unless I say you can. By harm, I mean a mortal's definition, not yours. You will also do your best to be a good companion for me, and I will do my best to meet any of your requests I believe are reasonable. I also have the right to end this contract."
"That's hardly a fair contract," Henry scoffed. "More like slavery. You can just end the contract the moment you step outside. Then I get nothing."
"Fine. We have to agree to end the contract. Everything else is the same," Damien said. He cocked his head slightly.
"I think I hear my mom coming."
"Damn you." Henry snarled. Damien's body convulsed.
He felt like he was splitting in half. For a moment, he thought Henry had gone through with his threat to kill him.
Then a shadowy figure ripped itself free of him. It was vaguely humanoid, but all the features were wrong. Dozens of eyes watched him from all over the figure's body. They faded in and out, appearing in different locations faster than Damien could track them.
Teeth and gaping maws dispersed throughout Henry's body gnashed and growled, dripping purple saliva that sizzled against the ground.
"Very well, mortal," Henry spat. His voice had returned to cacophony of gibberish he'd first spoken in. "Start the spell. I will do my half."