He, however, didn't clam up when Dion didn't agree to join his cult, coven, or whatever. If anything, Rick seemed to get more desperate in the following days. And the more desperate he got, it seemed, the more talkative he became. By the fourth day, Dion had started to fear that he'd gotten a stalker as Rick would try and find him whenever he left home to go to school or school to go home. Any time Dion was out and about, Rick seemed to be somewhere close by. By the sixth day, Dion was starting to get scared that Rick would do something to coerce him if he didn't acquiesce to his repeated attempts to get him to join his cult. After the seventh day, however, Dion had never heard from Rick again.
Strange as he was, however, the man had kindled a new curiosity in Dion. And so, for the past three weeks, Dion had been walking to the library at the edge of District twelve to get as much information as he possibly could on the subject of demons. Given his ignorance on the subject, Dion couldn't tell what was real and what wasn't. He, however, was almost certain that ninety percent of the information he found was bullshit. Despite this, his interest didn't wane. Some deep instinct was telling him that he was onto something and wouldn't allow him to let go.
Three days ago, he'd come across a black leather-bound book in the section of the library he usually took books from. By then, Dion had grown pretty familiar with his section of the library and so he was almost certain that the book hadn't been there before. Someone had left it there. That much was certain. Whether it was for him or someone else, Dion didn't know. The one thing he did know, was that, soon as he caught hold of the book, Dion had been certain that he'd caught hold of a genuine article.
Before finding the book, Dion hadn't even known that there were tiers to demons. The book spoke of seven levels to the demons. Starting from a single king of hell, more popularly known as the devil. Below him, were the seven princes of hell, each representing the seven deadly sins. Under the princes, were demon lords who numbered in the thousands. Under the demon lords were principalities, followed by thrones, followed by powers. At the bottom of the demon power ranks, were the imps, who, apparently, numbered in the tens of billions. More than even the human population.
The middle of the book dealt with the different kinds of soul contracts that can be made between humans and demons. There were servant soul contracts in which one became a servant to the demon they summoned until their natural deaths. There was the slave contract that was much more stringent than the servant contract. In this one, everything about the summoner, from the way they live to even their death is left at the demon's discretion. But in exchange, they got to ask a major request of the demon to whom they pledged their lives. The last and most dangerous of the contracts was the kind that required human sacrifice.
This last kind was the only way to summon any demon from the principality level or higher. If successful, then one would have a very powerful demon in their corner. There was even speculation in the book that those who succeeded in summoning such powerful beings could obtain superhuman abilities. The conditions on most of the summoning styles, however, made it almost impossible for one person to summon a powerful demon. The strongest demon that a single individual could hope to summon on their own was one at the thrones level of power. Even outside the fact of the sacrifice needed for the high-tier summons, it is very draining of one's soul energy to summon the stronger demons. And if one fully expended their soul energy, the best they could hope to become is a vegetable.
The book also spoke of monsters of various kinds that can result from either a failed summoning or dabbling in the dark arts or being made by willing participants in the process. Dion didn't pay much attention to this section. He wasn't interested in creating monsters. There were already too many of those around, to begin with. Instead, his attention and interest were caught by something else. Towards the end of the book, there had been a description of a summoning ritual of a demon at the Powers level of the demon hierarchy called Lisia. That is what he'd been studying for the past two days.
But while Dion had developed a new interest, the rest of his life continued the same as always. Keith and his gang had continued to hound Dion and he had continued to try and fail to stand up for himself. For reasons that Dion couldn't understand, Keith and his gang became even more brutal the more that Dion stood up for himself. It was almost as if they resented him for the fact that Dion wasn't willing to give in and accept their torment. Something that, for the life of him, Dion couldn't understand. They could just as easily leave him be and he would never mess with them, and yet they chose to make his life miserable for no reason whatsoever. And then somehow, in their twisted minds, they would get even angrier at him that he wouldn't just lie there and take it.
Despite his unwillingness to be their punching bag, there was a vast chasm between having spirit and actually winning fights. Dion was in the worst state he'd ever been from a fight. Part of him had feared that he would be beaten to death. And with the rampant crime in district thirteen, chances were that his murder wouldn't have even caused any ripples. No one would have cared. Not his druggie parents, not the whore of a sister who blamed him for everything that went wrong in her life. And most certainly not the society to whom he was already invisible.
Dion wasn't even sure what he was doing would work. He, however, was at the end of his rope. If this didn't work, then he'd have to start thinking about killing Keith and the rest before they got him. In fact, the only reason why he hadn't already started planning how he'd go about eliminating Keith and the rest was because he wanted to put to rest the nagging feeling that kept pushing him in this direction. Once this failed, as it most likely would, Dion had every intention of planning out the murder of Keith and the rest of his groupies.
But while hatred gave Dion the willpower to push through his pain it didn't heal his eyes one of which was already swollen shut and the other barely open. As such, Dion didn't notice the fact that in many specific points, his drawing was different from the one on the page of the book he was holding. His shaking hand also added to the variations in the elaborate patterns he'd drawn on the floor of his room. His hatred also didn't fix the fact of his missing tooth, his split lip, and the swollen tongue that left him barely able to string two words together. The resulting distortion to his speech left him calling out the name of the demon Lisia with a 'th' sound instead of the 's' that should have been at the middle of the statement.
***
Lythia had expected to emerge in some temple erected in her honor. She was a demon Lord after all. Her position in the demon hierarchy made it so that she couldn't be summoned without a human sacrifice and the combined soul energy of several humans well versed in the occult. Only a sizable coven with sufficient resources at its command would dare to try to summon a demon Lord, not to mention, going up against the wishes of a prince of hell by summoning his enemy.
As such, Lythia found herself experiencing a hefty amount of confusion when she found herself standing in Dion's bedroom looking at a badly beaten teen who was lying on the floor looking like he was barely clinging to life. Any experienced summoner would have known not to stand anywhere near the summoning circle. The circle itself was what protected the summoner while he was still negotiating the contract with the demon. If negotiations failed, then the circle was what would allow the summoner to send the demon back to hell safely.
Looking at the way the boy lay on the floor, only his head was outside of the circle which clearly relayed that he had been standing in the summoning circle when he called out to her. Lythia dropped down on one knee and wrapping her hand around the boy's ankle, she pulled him fully into the summoning circle before allowing her powers to invade his mind. For a demon of her age, going through the memories of a teen like the one before her took barely a second. In an instant, Dion's life was laid out for the demon to review. An ugly expression crossed Lythia's face as she looked around at the shoddy summoning circle all around them. "A mistaken summon," she whispered as her mind figured out how exactly the boy had ended up in the state he was in.
Half a million years ago, when she had been at the height of her power, she would have tortured the boy before killing him for subjecting her to the humiliation of calling her through a mistaken summon. And much worse, a summon meant for a demon at the Powers level! The boy would have been lucky if she stopped tormenting his soul in hell after a thousand years. What Dion had accidentally done was the equivalent of spitting in her face, and calling her barely any better than an imp. This was why summoning high-level demons was dangerous business, whole covens had been wiped from the earth for making small mistakes in the summoning process. What Dion had done by accident would have gotten any coven wiped out. It just so happened that Lythia herself was in a very precarious position. Having a prince of hell as your enemy when you are a demon lord was no small matter. If she didn't do anything about it, sooner rather than later, she would end up at his mercy.
The boy had been aiming to summon a demon at the Powers level which wouldn't have drawn a dangerous amount of his soul energy. He, however, had singlehandedly summoned a demon at the Demon lord level using his soul energy alone. A feat that should have been impossible and had left him with barely any soul energy to speak of. If Lythia left him as he was, the boy would most likely die in a few minutes. If that happened, Lythia would be sent back to her castle in the fifth circle of hell where she would probably never be summoned again. It was a fate that she had no intention of accepting, as such she was forced to do something no demon ever would. Placing her hand over where the boy's heart was, Lythia poured some of her own soul energy into the boy...
