Albion had everything he needed pilled on the floor in front of him.

  He sat in the office, the floor was wide and empty here, the perfect place to test. Albion could barely hold back his excitement, he could finally take some time to really experiment.

  {No.}

  The journal closed itself and whacked him upside the head.

  “Ow! What was that for.”

  {No experimenting in the office.}

  “Where do I do it then?! I’m not experimenting in Joan’s house I don’t know what’s going to happen. This is the most open space I have.”

  {Follow.}

  The book floated over to the desk of the front office, there was a small magical tool there. It was a cube, it was crystalline in look, almost like a prana crystal that had been shaped to look like a cube. Maybe that’s what it was.

  {Use key.}

  Albion put his ring against the cube, he assumed that was what the Journal had meant by key.

  The ring had only just touched the surface of the cube when Albion felt his world spin. It was a nauseating feeling. A familiar nauseating feeling. He wasn’t expecting to be teleported, and he wasn’t sure why but the bad feeling teleporting gave him was multiplied on this occasion. He crumpled and fought to hold his breakfast down.

  It was a while before he was able to lift his head and examine the room. Nausea still hadn’t subsided, but at least he could look around. The room was empty, and it was massive…there was no end in sight. He couldn’t see a ceiling either, there was just endless darkness around him, the only light came from a fixture high in the sky that looked almost like a sun.

  “Where…am I?”

  {This is where you will conduct your experiments. Not the Office. Ruining the Library is not allowed.}

  “Alright. How big is this room?”

  {Meet the conditions and you will find out.}

  “Yeah, yeah. Get out of here.”

  Albion swatted at the Journal until it went away, disappearing back inside of him, and he was finally left alone. Finally able to experiment. He had a good amount of materials. He carried them down with him in one of the boxes left over from using all the paper. He had stacks of these boxes. All the notes he had taken while learning the language. All the practicing he had done. He killed a whole forest on his own, at least. He might as well get use out of the boxes as well.

  He took out the clay, the chalk, the herbs, a basin filled with water, and the Prana crystals. They were all ingredients that were fairly easy to obtain. Prana crystals could be very expensive, especially the more concentrated the Prana they held became. The unconcentrated crystals, though, like the ones Albion had pilled next to him, could be found in just about any market.

  He was excited to try summoning a Faye. He wanted to start easy. There were so many ways to summon a Faye, but they all had their differences in approach and they all had their pros and cons.

  Creating his own Faye was out of the question, the book stated clearly that that was for people who had mastered the other summoning methods. Creating a gateway was only possible if you found a space with high Prana concentration naturally. For some reason concentrating the mana yourself would not facilitate the arrival of Faye through a gateway. It was not known why.

  Summoning through a circle and creating a model for the Faye were all that was left…the problem was, the book didn’t dive into depth on either of these. It was educational. Made to teach summoning to someone who had already encountered Faye, someone who knew the language and the creatures, it probably wasn’t meant for an absolute beginner.

  It described some of the Faye, and it showed some of the magic circles in segments as well. The specifics were what was missing.

  So he had to experiment.

  He was going to dedicate half of his resources to models and the other half to summoning circles. That seemed fair.

  He mixed the ground up the chalk, the prana crystals, and the herbs using a mortar and pestle. He dumped the finely ground concoction into a large bowl and mixed it with equal parts water and clay until it was thoroughly mixed and there was enough to separate into two batches.

  He kept one hunk of clay to the side and started work using the other.

  It was time to try out the magic circles. He could only attempt a few tries before the material ran out so he had to be smart. He was going to try to make the circle that was best described in the text. It was the circle for Pudgling. They were described as a docile Faye that didn’t like to engage in combat and preferred to instead spend their time lazing about and eating food.

  Albion felt for the little guy, it was a creature of his own heart.

  He was going to bring him to life.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  The circle had three rings, the first and third were described perfectly. But the second one was a bit vague. He needed to write something to do with ‘summoning the creature from prana itself,’ and ‘asking prana for its aid.’

  He didn’t understand.

  He tried writing that exactly but it didn’t work.

  He tried writing it a few other ways as well but each time he failed. He had to lay the clay down pretty thick on the ground or the circle wouldn’t work, he didn’t realize how much clay he was using until he was completely out of materials for the circles.

  It was a bust, magic circles were not the way to go it seemed.

  It was time to try the models instead.

  It was simple. He just had to make a model.

  The problem was, again, the book was far too vague. The best-described creature was, again, the Pudgling.

  ‘A small creature with six limbs protruding from its torso. A creature known for its malleability.’

  “At least it’s better than no information.”

  Albion made a couple of models. Six legs made him think of an insect of some kind, he made a few models shaped like worms and gave them long limbs to move with. They looked a bit horrifying. He wasn’t sure if the creature was supposed to be standing or on all six legs. It didn’t describe if the limbs were different from each other either. Maybe the creature wasn’t an insect. Maybe it was some sort of mammal with four legs and two arms. Maybe it even had hands. He didn’t have enough to go on. So he gave up.

  ‘Actually, wait…could I…?”

  Albion looked back in the book, it had said something about the Pudglings being a little cowardly. They weren’t born to fight, they could be trained but a newly created one was like a scared child.

  ‘Pudglings will often curl up into a ball when tired of frightened, shutting the world out.’

  It couldn’t be that easy…could it.

  Albion took the rest of the clay and the herbs and rolled them up into a ball, he tried his best to make it as perfect as possible. When he had finished he looked at the small ball of clay that sat before him, it was about a foot in diameter.

  “I’ll be a bit upset if this actually works.”

  Albion spoke the words necessary to summon in Welfth, they were unintelligible. The book even stated that the origin of the phrase was unknown, no one had ever figured out how it came to be. Those who knew Welfth had learned it from the generations before and passed it down. No one even knew what it meant.

  As each word of the phrase left his mouth the clay ball began to turn darker and darker until the ball had become an inky, murky black. Every rough patch, every indent in the ball, every imperfection was smoothed out and when the final word escaped Albion’s lips, the ball began to unfurl.

  Albion wasn’t ready for what he saw.

  It was a creature out of nightmares, its body was long and wide, and a spiny tail whipped out from the end of its body. Its skin was smooth and glossy, it looked wet like it was born from tar. It had a neck, long and slender, that lulled to the side, touching the ground as it dragged its head along the floor and brought it up above its shoulders. Its mouth, lined with jagged teeth, opened like a lotus blooming and it whipped its tongue, tipped with a sharp spike, around in the air.

  All of this was ghastly enough, but none of it bothered him as much as those disgusting legs. They were bent and mangled, twisted in strange directions like the legs of a spider, but that was not the worst part. No.

  ‘By the Gods…why does it have human feet.’

  The feet were perfectly human. He could see the shape of the bones, the arch of the foot, and the veins that ran through the foot itself.

  ‘What the hell are the Faye if this is what something called a fucking Pudgling looks like. I thought it was going to be fucking cute!’

  The creature twisted its neck around completely to look at him, it clicked and chittered.

  SCREEEEEEEE

  “WHAT THE FUCK!”

  The beast started to run towards him. It started so fast, and so suddenly, that Albion didn’t even get a chance to react. He couldn’t understand what he had just summoned. Were the Faye demons? No creature he knew looked anything like that.

  Before he could ponder his creation, it was already upon him.

  Leaping at the one who summoned it with viciousness. Albion went to look the creature in the eye. To see what the creature was thinking as it pounced upon him, but there were no eyes on its flawlessly smooth head. Just its mouth, filled to the brim with teeth jagged and barbed like miniature harpoons.

  Albion threw his arms out in an effort to keep the monstrosity away, all of a sudden though. There were no teeth, no elongated neck, no sharp spiked tongue, no human feet, and no horrid tail.

  It hit his chest with barely any strength and landed neatly in his arms.

  It was no longer…whatever the hell that thing was.

  Now it was just a little pill-shaped blob, with six nubbly little legs, and a smaller version of its mouth that opened and closed as it licked his hands with its tiny little tongue.

  Albion was shocked, still a bit shook, and definitely relieved.

  ‘Now this is what I had expected it to look like.’

  The little guy was adorable. He wasn’t sure why it had come out looking like a monster at first.

  ’…is that its attack form or something, doesn’t matter…as long as that thing never attacks me I’ll live a happy life.’

  Now he just sat on the ground, petting his new friend on the head, staring off into space with a blank expression.

  He was getting over the shock of the situation, and trying to recollect himself. He was getting lightheaded as the adrenalin left his system and his body finally started to relax.

  He was pretty sure his heart skipped a couple of beats during that whole situation.

  Albion looked down at the creature that sat in his lap, happily excepted pets, vibrating with joy whenever Albion stroked his hand across its head. Albion couldn’t help but smile. It was really cute like this. He just had to not think about how disgusting it is in its other form and instead think about how cute it is right now.

  Just a pudgy little guy.

  That’s what he would name him.

  Pudgy.

  ‘Yeahhh, no one will expect a little creature named Pudgy to turn into that.’

  Albion thought sadistically about letting that thing loose on a couple of wild beasts. Or even another student, he laughed just thinking about sparing in a combat class and watching the student’s faces twist in horror as Pudgy transformed into that abomination.

  “Hehehe. No one is going to expect it Pudgy…No one.”

  It only took one summoning of a horrible abomination and Albion had already turned his tastes towards scaring his future classmates for life.

  If only there was someone to warn them.

  Unfortunately, the only one’s in the vast and empty space were Albion, and the creature that would bring terror to the students of Aberelt. The creature currently sleeping comfortably in Albion's arms.

  Pudgy.