Mr Well-Connected

[WP] You are a wizard that specializes in summoning magic. Unlike other summoners that forcefully bind otherworldly creatures to do their bidding, you are the eldritch equivalent of "I know a guy".

*****

Magic was balance and balance was the most ruthless of negotiators. What one took, one had to give in an equivalent quantity. A simple rule all wizards and sorcerers knew and respected. This was a rational thing, for many had perished when their thirst for power surpassed what they could pay.

All wizards except for one. They called him Bezir, which in the old tongues translated to crimson mercenary. He was a summoner whose might had razed entire kingdoms in a matter of minutes, and so a simple mention of his name set souls teetering with terror.

To Bezir, magic didn't have rules, or so the tales told, for he could summon creatures so vile and grotesque history and time themselves had forgotten about them, and the price for even attempting to perform such a feat was beyond all riches known to man and so only his life should've been taken each and every time, but each and every time he was left unscathed. In a way, it was as though he was magic's preferred client.

But tales are tales and in them, the truth seldom hides. Only a scribe who went by the name of Erosien knew Bezir's secrets. But the world was cruel to the scribe, for all ears deemed his stories a vile lie, and so his words were often lost in breezes and gales. Contrary to what one may believe, the reactions he got from his listeners were elicited. There was a bard in every corner that claimed to know Bezir, and so fraudsters were commonplace, but besides all things, Bezir's story was, for lack of a better word, absurd.

It was in the midst of a forest where the oaks were old and the grass snow-white that Erosien met Bezir. From afar, the fabled summoner seemed far from special. He stood before a summoning circle drawn on charred grass and stared at the horizon, where Ayantar, the capital of the kingdom of Tiritar, stood tall between mountain peaks.

Erosien stared from afar. Interrupting a wizard mid-summoning was a dangerous game he didn't wish to play. In hindsight, perhaps he should've interrupted, for, in the space of a breath, cascades of liquid black poured out of the depths of the summoning circle at a violent and relentless pace, surging forth like rolling waves, destroying what oak and bird stood in its way, growing larger by the second until the dark liquid became a flood, and that flood became a roiling ocean that devoured Ayantar whole.

The scribe was frozen in place. His chest pressed against his heart. It had been no more than five minutes, and an entire city had been erased from existence. His eyes strayed back to the young wizard and to the summoning circle. The charred diagram turned white and the liquid faded in the blink of an eye, leaving nothing but a massacre behind. At that point, Erosien expected the wizard to die. He had to pay the price of summoning a monster as powerful and as vast as an ocean.

But the wizard simply stretched and turned to him. As if nothing had happened, the summoner lifted a hand saluting the scribe, and prepared to leave.

"Wait," the scribe said and ran toward the wizard. "How? Why? How are you alive?"

Bezir met Erosien's eyes and shrugged. "I know a guy."

A frown distorted Erosien's expression. "What does that mean?"

"What you just heard. I know a guy who handles all of that equivalency stuff for me. I do the summoning, he takes care of the rest." Bezir glanced at the scribe from top to bottom. "I see pen paper and ink. Will you write about how I destroyed the capital?"

The question threw Erosien off. "What? Yes--perhaps. That's not important now. That's not how magic works. You can't have a guy handling that for you."

Bezir shrugged and made a sweeping gesture across where moments ago was a bright and beautiful forest. "It seems like I can."

"Explain it to me, then. Who is this guy?"

The summoner grew pensive. He scratched his head and looked at the sky, squinting ever-so-slightly. "An eldritch lawyer." He nodded to himself. "Yes, that's the best way to describe him."

"What? Surely you comprehend that doesn't make much sense."

"It does to me. When I summon and the entity in charge of handling the payment thing comes and tries to make me pay, my eldritch lawyer takes them to the eldritch court, claiming their prices are outrageous and that it causes me mental distress, which I then justify by committing morally-dubious actions. He always wins. He's a good lawyer. Some say he knows a guy or two."

The scribe studied the wizard's expression. It was serious, almost stoic. There was not a hint of a lie hidden in there, nor in the tone of his voice. Still, it made little sense for his words to be true. "Can I contact him?"

"He's an eldritch being. You can summon him, yes, but he's quite costly. He will take your sanity, empty your brain, and turn you into a creature devoid of any thought, like a parasite controlling the corpse of a dead wasp. I can teach you how to summon him."

Erosien studied the summoner once more. That stone-cold expression, that monotone voice, that unbreakable calm despite having murdered hundreds of thousands if not millions. It all made sense. He had explained it. He was that wasp. He was the vessel of the eldritch being. A mere willless puppet. He was not talking to a human, but to a creature older than time manifested in flesh.

"Nothing of the sort," Bezir said. "I'm me. The eldritch being is my lawyer. We are separate entities. I didn't have to pay with my sanity when I summoned him. He was out of a job, so I offered to pay him back with a job. And he agreed. The job is, well, what I mentioned, to represent me in court and win. But now that that's fulfilled, he will go after your sanity." He paused and picked up his things. "Either way, I have to go. Tiritar won't be destroyed on its own. I recommend you stay in this forest until I'm done. I know a guy who can give you shelter. Walk straight northward and you will find it. Tell him Bezir sent you."

"Did--did you read my mind?"

"Perhaps." With that, the summoner was gone.

The scribe remained in the same spot until nightfall. He pondered over many things, but only found a concrete conclusion: he had not been lied to, and that terrified him. Bezir was a monster capable of destroying all things and that only meant Bezir was akin to a god, for he held the fate of the world in his palm.

He sighed and walked northward. What else could he do? He was a mere scribe.

That night, despite finding a free bed as Bezir had promised, he didn't sleep, and neither did he sleep the following night or the next.

He had not paid the price of summoning the eldritch's lawyer, and yet madness, it seemed, was slowly knocking at his door one way or another.

*****

THE END