“You did WHAT!?” Michael Derrick’s roar was clearly heard across half the house, despite how large the house was. He lowered his voice and, looking at the white sheet clad body on the floor in front of him, added, in a deadly soft voice, “I want an explanation for Faronar`s death. Now.” It wasn`t a request.

The two men standing across from him, who both worked for him, nodded, glanced at each other for a moment silently deciding who would have to speak, then one took a breath and started, “We raised a demon, sir. But it escaped. Under Faronar`s orders as head scientist, we were studying ancient texts and what those texts said about demons, which you knew we were doing, and in fact had suggested. It was Faronar’s idea to try and summon or raise a demon, rather than just research, and then put questions to the demon to see what we could learn, since the texts weren`t helping all that much. The demons currently living in the underground society here either don`t know the answers to our questions, or are choosing not to answer. Someone finally hit on the question of how demons existed in the first place, and one told us that they were not originally from this `plane of existence` at all, though currently most were born here, or summoned into existence here. It seems, however, that long ago, demons were also summoned from the other plane to here, and that was what Faronar was truly interested in, seeing as they have their own lives and rules there that don`t exist here.” He paused and nodded slightly to the body before continuing. “Faronar also proposed the theory that when summoned, a demon would have to answer any questions we gave it, which is why we made the attempt.”

The other scientist spoke up then. “We learned all this about a month ago. But every time we drew the inscription circles we had found depicted in ancient texts, nothing happened. At first we thought it was due to the fact that no one has heard of a summoned demon in recent years…perhaps it was no longer possible. But we kept trying, and then, last week, we found a new ancient text. That is, an ancient text that we had not yet read, and had not known existed till then. This one had yet another inscription circle, but it was such an odd inscription, and it required a few obscure components, so we didn’t try to raise the demon until last night. It worked! It really worked... proving, you realize, that demons are not native to our plane of existence, whether or not they`re native to Earth. And that we could still perform a summoning seems to suggest that rather than summoning not working at all, it merely requires the correct inscription…” Seeing Michael`s expression, he coughed a little and continued. “Anyway, right in the middle of the inscription we`d drawn, a demon came into being. We took pictures, of course, but are waiting for them to be developed….though you understand that the chances of any photographs actually coming out properly are extremely low, because there has never been a photographic record of a summoning, probably for a reason. Oddly though, the demon was like a ghost, so any measures that we took to capture it were in vain, and only made it…angry. Unlike what Faronar had thought, the demon wouldn`t listen to us at all.”

“I’d rather face Mikah Derrick.” The other man muttered “He, at least, doesn’t have supernatural powers.” The first man glanced at his companion, nodded slightly in agreement, then continued. “Being insubstantial did not seem to hinder the demon in any way, despite the fact that we`ve never even heard rumors of an insubstantial demon before, and do not know what that means or why it happened. He managed to kill Faronar just fine....” The man paused and gulped a little, remembering. A glance around showed Michael the bloodstains splashed onto the walls, and just from that, and the state of the body, he could imagine how gory the killing had been. The man continued after a long moment. “We tried to follow, but it did something to block us…the block seemed to disappear once he was gone, so we don`t know what it was, exactly…” The man paused, trying to remember, or figure it out, and one of the others added “The demon didn’t seem to understand what we were saying...”