The heavy, velvet curtains hung fixed over the single small window looking out from the cloister, blocking out the dim twilight that would otherwise have been feebly streaming in through the warped glass pane. To hold them in place against the windowsill, Dextre had used a handful of small tacks borrowed from the art class hall. Tied up in a lumpy bunch at the bottom of the deep purple curtains were his pattens, wrapped and bound with the corded belt from his novice's robes; another weight to keep out any ambient light. The wooden door to the room was firmly latched and every crack and crevice was stuffed with spare rags, the threshold itself stuffed with the bulk of his bed linens. The only illumination in the small room came from the various rushlights set about the few flat surfaces in the room, atop the desk and the bedside table, and the tallow candle burning in the tarnished brass chamberstick held in Dextre's left hand.
He was peering intently at largest of the flagstones set into the floor as he paced the circumference of the magic circle there, lately inscribed in a waxy red chalk. The soft, slow padding of his bare footsteps took him around the whole of the inscription three times before, at last, he nodded to himself, seeming assured of its integrity and craft. Making quick work of the dimly glowing rushes he put them out in their turn and, last, cupping his hand just behind the flickering yellow flame, he blew out the candle.
By quick degrees the pinpoint orange ember at the wicktip died away and the room was plunged into the sort of absolute darkness typically found only in the deepest recesses of caves. The still air, filled now with the smell of the extinguished candle, carried no sound, all entrances sealed and muffled as they were. In the darkness there, Dextre closed his eyes, though it made no difference to the fullness of the darkness. Still, it aided his concentration, and he sat the chamberstick down on the bedside table next to the extinguished rushlight.
Holding his right arm outstretched before him, palm out and facing the circle on the floor. In his left hand he clutched the pendant that hung from the silver chain about his neck. He drew a deep breath, paused briefly, and then, shakily at first but growing in timbre and confidence, Dextre sang a musicless tone. It started low, rattling his chest with the deep resonance of the note, and it grew steadily in pitch until, at the exhausted end of his breath, it ended in a dying wail that shook the panes of glass in the blinkered window.
At the edge of hearing, softly at first but growing swiftly in intensity, something like a breaking wave crashing into the surf from a great height. It could have been called an echo, if distorted and inverted, running from the terminating wail to the low rumble of his cry. Then, as though having caught fire, the lines traced out so carefully on the floor flashed and began to glow, pink as a flesh wound, tracing the careful route of the inscription as he had drawn it. The light grew in its intensity and, even with his eyes firmly shut, Dextre was made to squint further. His outstretched hand became a shield before his face against the intensity of the rose-coloured radiance.
His lips parted in a wild smile, his teeth gleaming in the glow burning up from the floor, and just as he loosed a cry in triumph the light died, snuffed like the candle beside him. The room was somehow even darker than it had been before, and now tinged with a heavy musk, like some rutting beast, but in a way that, while causing him to take shallow breaths from the power of it, made him want to breathe more deeply still. Touching his eyes, and wincing when they proved open, Dextre fumbled blindly for the chamberwick, managing only to knock it to the floor where it clattered noisily. There was the sound of the candle itself coming lose from its shallow pricket and rolling slowly across the floor away from him. Swearing under his breath, Dextre dropped to his knees and fumbled blindly for the candle, his hands moving across the flagstones as he crawled forward. It wasn't until he bumped his head that he stopped, thinking he had been turned around in the pitch darkness and had run into the soft mattress atop his oaken bedframe. Rocking back on his heels he put his hands out to grasp at the bed and lift himself up, but his palms slapped against something firmer than down-stuffed cloth, and he froze, eyes wide for all the good it did him.
"Is that any way to greet a guest?" asked a voice from above him, its every syllable like a razor made from soft velvet dragged down his spine. "I suppose you're eager to get to it then, boy?"
Dextre, mouth agape and mute from shock, looked up with a start, seeing nothing, but feeling the soft yield of flesh against his hands. He could feel muscles shift as whoever had the voice adjusted their stance. Stammering, he made out, "S-Stolas?"
"That old bird?" The voice scoffed and spat, a streak of white fire cutting through the dark, allowing Dextre to see the briefest flash of red skin.
"Surely you can tell the difference between his crusty twigs and these fine, shapely thighs?" The flesh under him moved again and Dextre pushed back and away, falling backward to land squarely on his tailbone.
Wincing as he struck the hard floor, Dextre said, "I drew his circle. I sang his song."
"You certainly drew
a
circle and sang
a
song. But if I'm any judge of a daemoniac seal, you have a few errors over here. Oh, you can't see where I'm pointing can you?"
There was the snap of what Dextre presumed to be fingers clicking together, and the candle on the floor flashed into life, its flame burning black, but somehow bright enough to light the whole room with some sort of inverse of daylight.
Standing before him in the centre of the arcane glyph on the floor stood a woman of some two meters in height, even taller if you counted the prominent black horns that jutted from the sides of her head, not unlike those of a bull, nearly scraping the rafters above them. Her hair was, in sharp contrast, white as new-fallen snow, swept back from her face, a curtain down her back and over her shoulders. The skin showing, and there was so much showing, was the red of fresh blood and with just the same sheen. Dextre's eyes were locked on her own, a violet pair gleaming like those of a cat catching the gleam of lanternlight. Centred on her forehead was a third eye, burning pink and wide open and staring.
She pointed again, turning to look down and away, at the southernmost arc of the inscription. "See, there? You transposed two of the runes. It should read," and here she spoke words unutterable to any mouth equipped with a mortal tongue, "but what you've written says 'Lamia' and that," she said, turning to look back at him, the long, slender fingers of her right hand touching the space between her breasts, "means me."
"But...but I was so careful. I copied it down just as it was in the tome." He grunted as he got to his feet and moved the few steps back to his desk, lifting the heavy book. He squinted, peering at the image on the page, shaking his head lightly. "I don't understand. It's the same as there on the floor," he said, gesturing absently.
"Mind if I take a look?" Lamia asked, head cocked to the side. "I'm a dab hand at this sort of thing."
