***

  That evening, I watched with bated breath as Calypso performed the shadow ritual for extracting excess dark energy from himself. For starters — he was performing it on himself.

  As he explained: he needed to test on himself whether the formula actually worked, what pitfalls might emerge in the process, so he could then refine the formula for me. And also so I could observe the process from the outside and see for myself that it didn’t pose any serious danger. My faith in its success was also important for the ritual to work properly, as Calypso explained.

  We settled in our living room, where by the light of numerous candles we sat on the rug near the burning fireplace, facing each other. Candles — because Calypso and I both loved “living” light. And preferably — dim. For both of us, twilight was our favorite time of day, and generally — everything ‘in-between’.

  I watched Calypso’s actions as he quietly recited long incantations (damn, how do you even memorize those?!) and carved specific runes onto his wrists one after another, directly into the skin with the sharp blade of a ritual knife. Calypso explained that each individually selected rune had to be activated with a chain of spells and specific emotions — fear, anger, sorrow, joy. When each rune was activated, it glowed bright red, and Calypso winced from the pain.

  “The only major downside is that when each rune is activated, a sharp energy flash occurs in the body, and it’s… quite painful,” Calypso sighed, having activated the third rune on himself.

  “And the pain increases progressively… I suspect the pain from activating the fourth rune could even make you pass out, so it’s better to have someone monitoring this ritual from the outside. You shouldn’t do it alone.”

  Each rune was linked to activating one of the basic human emotions. The last one was a very intricate rune that needed to be activated with joyful emotions.

  And Calypso struggled with this rune for a good half hour, trying to activate it on his own. But it only glowed faintly and wouldn’t flare up brighter — it turned out that summoning the right emotions for the final rune was very difficult for him. While Calypso had handled sorrow, anger, and fear with ease, summoning genuine joyful emotions proved to be quite a challenge.

  “Sorrow and joy are actually the hardest to genuinely summon,” Calypso sighed.

  “These are subtle emotions that don’t respond to artificial stimulation, if we’re talking about genuine emotions. It’s easy to fear something or hate something but try genuinely being happy about something… With sorrow, you can just sink into a melancholic mood through music, like I just did, but with joy I’m stuck… Music doesn’t help here…”

  “Well, let’s go through your happy memories together,” I smiled.

  “I think you’re just not recalling vivid enough feelings; you need to pick different ones. Remember out loud, go through everything you can remember. Start with childhood. That's usually where the brightest emotions are… Do you remember which birthday present in childhood made the biggest impression on you?”

  “The young experimenter kit for my seventh birthday,” Calypso smirked.

  “They gave me this huge box of all kinds of goodies, and I spent a couple of days straight with that box, barely coming up for air… What are you laughing at? I was in absolute pig-in-mud heaven from all that happiness, ooh!”

  The fourth rune on his wrist glowed with a reddish light, but it still wasn’t bright enough for full activation.

  So we went through various memories of Calypso’s, sometimes laughing until we cried remembering certain moments, but the rune on his wrist still wouldn’t flare up bright enough.

  “This is all wrong… I’m looking in the wrong place,” Calypso shook his head and turned to me.

  “Listen, what would you remember during a ritual like this?”

  “Well, that’s a no-brainer. I'd remember one of our very first kisses,” I snorted, then immediately got embarrassed and fell silent, realizing I’d confessed to something rather intimate.

  I looked away and nervously fixed my hair, trying my best to act like I hadn’t said anything special.

  “Kisses, you say…” Calypso mused thoughtfully.

  He took my chin between two fingers, turning my face toward him so I’d look into his eyes. The flickering candlelight was reflected in them now, and against the backdrop of the crimson curtains lit up by the fireplace, Calypso looked positively demonic. My own personal sinful demon, mmm…

  He leaned forward, covering my lips with a kiss — vivid, sensual, and extraordinarily exciting. I couldn’t resist — I ran my hand across Calypso’s chest, lightly scratching his skin with my nails, and he exhaled loudly through his nose.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that the fourth rune on the wrist of the hand stroking my cheek was beginning to glow brighter with each passing second, as if some invisible battery was charging.

  “You’re my greatest happiness right now,” he whispered against my lips.

  “And here I am, like an idiot, remembering random stuff from childhood…”

  My breath caught at the meaning of those words, and just from those words in general… My heart fluttered with excitement, the right words got stuck somewhere in my throat…

  Probably the most fitting words here would have been ‘I love you’, and they almost escaped my lips… But at that moment, Calypso suddenly bent over in pain, grabbed his head, and I touched his shoulder with concern. The fourth rune on his wrist blazed with bright light.

  “Cal? Are you okay?..”

  “I’m fine,” he gritted through his teeth, his face twisted in agony.

  “It just really hurts…”

  He lay back on the rug and pressed his temples hard; his head was clearly splitting from pain. All four activated runes were glowing bright red on his wrists, and the last one — the very one activated by joy — burned brightest of all and pulsed distinctly in the dim light.

  “Quite the sensation, mmm… You know, I think it’s probably comparable to your magic attacks. At least, from the description, it sounds very similar to what you’ve told me about yourself. Your insides twist with an energy spasm, then suddenly release… Phew…”

  He sat back up on the rug and shook his head. His face was still a bit pale, but overall he looked fine.

  “Well then… I think I did it,” Calypso said slowly, carefully examining his hands, where the carved runes were beginning to fade and disappear without a trace.

  “I don’t have as severe a magical imbalance problem as you do, so the effect might not be very clear to you from the outside. But I can definitely feel it in myself. My aura has become more stable, my magical Spark burns evenly, without imbalance. And I won’t need gloves anymore. I can forget about them,” he added, removing his short white gloves and tossing them onto the coffee table.

  “Other people’s magic shouldn’t affect me negatively anymore. I’ll test this over the next few days; I need to make sure of all the nuances before performing the ritual on you. The formula will need to be modified slightly for you, since your goal is the opposite not to harm others. But the meaning stays the same, the foundation of the formula is the same. There’s something interesting going on with my magical Spark… I think it will affect some magical ability of mine later in a good way, but I don’t know which one yet; I’ll have to observe. And also, if there’s excess magic interfering with that balance, something like… should appear. Ah, there it is.”

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  I didn’t immediately understand what Calypso was talking about, but then I realized he was looking at something hovering in the air, um… a black cloud? Something dark was emerging right out of the air… Or rather, not exactly — it seemed to me it was emerging directly from Calypso.

  As if some kind of black mist was rising barely visibly into the air from him; I just hadn’t noticed right away in the dim room. Rising and concentrating at one point, forming into something resembling… Hmm… A raven?

  And sure enough: a minute later, a raven emerged from the black mass — black as pitch, with eerie red eyes. It perched on the armrest of the chair beside us, glanced at us silently with its crimson eyes, and began busily preening its feathers. Pure concentrated shadow magic emanated from it.

  “Wow! What is that? Or rather, who is that?” I asked, moving closer to the raven.

  “A familiar?”

  “Not exactly,” Calypso shook his head, studying the raven with extreme interest while the raven stared back with equal curiosity.

  “You could call it a familiar, since this creature has a spiritual nature and was summoned from the flip side of the world. But that term wouldn’t be quite accurate, since ordinary familiars don’t perform this creature’s tasks. It’s more of an… advanced familiar with its own specialized purpose. I’d call it more of an… ilun.”

  “A collector of excess dark magic. A familiar summoned from the flip side of the world as a spiritual alter ego, as a conduit, as a collector of its master’s excess darkness. A collector that’s essentially infinite, because familiars, unlike us, have access to a direct channel to the flip side and can simply dump all the excess there. A sort of shadow conduit that’s always at hand. A unique personal helper. With one of these, you don’t have to worry about your magical Spark overheating at all, because the ilun completely prevents that overheating. A kind of, hmm… safety cushion.”

  “Is it dangerous to others?”

  “No, not at all. It’s essentially a familiar, and it’s bonded only to me. To everyone else, it’s just a useless flying spirit. It can't cause anyone any benefit or harm with its pure shadow magic.”

  “How fascinating,” I said in a whisper for some reason, nervously tucking a stray strand of hair behind my ear, quite inspired by what I’d heard.

  “And why a raven specifically?”

  “Well, apparently my alter ego corresponds to the energy of a raven,” Calypso smirked, thoughtfully rubbing his chin.

  “But I’ll study that aspect in detail, of course. There’s probably a connection to a totem animal. Honestly, I haven’t looked into my totem yet; it’s quite possible it’s a black raven.”

  “Can it talk?”

  “No idea. Let’s find out,” Calypso chuckled and addressed the raven.

  “Hey! Whatever your name is… Let’s get acquainted, shall we? I assume you already know my name…”

  “I know, I know,” the raven grumbled.

  “I know everrr-rything about you, bunny. Quit yourrr fussing.”

  “Oh, it talks!” I said happily, breaking into a wide smile.

  The raven’s voice was rumbling, drawling. It stretched the letter “r” in a very amusing way, sounding more like a purring cat than a cawing raven.

  The raven shot me a look with its red eyes and, it seemed to me, squinted slyly.

  “I know a lot about you too,” the raven rumbled.

  “Prrr-retty ilunarrr-ri, just my type. Apprrr-roved!.. If I werrre human, I’d lock you in a glass case like a butterrrfly so no one but me could touch you!..”

  I smiled, while Calypso snorted loudly.

  “Good thing you’re not human and you’re not in my place, or Lori would have it rough with such a greedy collector like you. So what’s your name? What should I call you?”

  “Beloved.”

  Calypso blinked in confusion.

  “What, sorry?..”

  “That’s my name – Beloved,” said the raven, returning to preening its feathers.

  “You’re kidding me,” Calypso sighed.

  “Why, I am serrr-riousness itself.”

  Calypso muttered something unintelligible and profane under his breath, shooting an indignant glance at me as I giggled.

  Meanwhile, the raven continued:

  “And if you need to summon me forrr something, you must call me with the apprrr-ropriate rrr-ritual phrrr-rase.”

  “And what phrase would that be?” Calypso asked warily.

  “Beloved, come forth!” the raven rumbled.

  “Wh-what?..”

  “Beloved, come forth!” the raven repeated.

  “Only after that phrrr-rase will I deign to appearrr. You must say it loud and clearrr.”

  “What?! What if there are people around?!”

  “Then you’ll have to call me even louderrr to drrr-rown out the din,” the raven said with an impassive air.

  “Call out in public?! Just like that Beloved, come to me?!!”

  “Not ‘come to me’, but ‘come forth’”, the raven corrected matter-of-factly.

  “Humans! Can’t rrr-remember a few worrr-rds? What’s with the sourrrr face?”

  I couldn’t hold back and burst out laughing, vividly picturing this phrase coming from Calypso’s mouth somewhere in the academy corridors.

  The expression on his face at that moment was priceless. He was looking at the raven as if dreaming of turning it into a kebab right now, or slicing the bird up for shawarma.

  “And the worst part is I don’t even have anyone to ask whether an ilun really needs to be summoned that way,” Calypso muttered.

  “Because there’s no one to ask for advice on how to properly interact with an ilun I have to figure it out myself. Listen, how exactly do you picture me saying a ritual phrase like that?”

  “With grrr-reat difficulty, but with extrrrr-raordinary interrrest,” the raven rumbled, and I snorted with laughter again, covering my mouth with my hand and looking guiltily at Calypso, who was indignant at my amusement.

  “Is there any way to change the phrase?” he asked hopefully.

  “Out of the question!”

  “I pass. I can’t do it.”

  “Well, since you’re so worrr-ried about it… Let’s rrr-rehearse,” the raven suggested matter-of-factly, flying onto Calypso’s shoulder.

  “Rehearse what?”

  “The rrr-ritual summoning of me, of courrrse!” the raven flapped its wings and carefully tapped Calypso’s forehead with its beak.

  “Come on, rrr-repeat:‘Beloved, come forth!’. Let’s worrr-rk on your volume and intonation so your voice sounds confident and I hear you rrr-right away.”

  “Maybe we don’t have to?” Calypso said almost plaintively.

  “We do, bunny, we do. What if you urrr-rgently need me and you can’t summon me prrr-roperly?”

  “Would a mental call work?”

  “I might not hearrr it thrrr-rough the shadow murrrk. So only aloud, only aloud!” the raven declared categorically.

  Calypso sighed heavily, was silent for a few seconds, and then very quietly began to murmur the required words, but the raven kept interrupting him with caws:

  “Louderrr, louderrr! Who summons their ilun like that?”

  “Hmm, no one?” Calypso said skeptically.

  “Because there’s no one else in the world yet who has a familiar with your functions?”

  The raven made a sound very much like cawing laughter, but continued demanding that Calypso ‘practice the ritual summoning’.

  And so it tormented Calypso for another half hour or so, forcing him to loudly and clearly call the familiar by name. The raven would sink into the shadow murk, quickly disappearing before our eyes, and would only appear after a clearly pronounced loud ritual phrase, while Calypso practically turned purple with anger, cursing about having a familiar with such a weird name.

  I was dying laughing, watching Calypso’s contorted face and how he said the damn ‘Beloved, come forth!’ through gritted teeth. Coming from him, it sounded so epic that I couldn’t calm down and was already hiccupping from laughter, wiping away the tears that had appeared.

  ‘Actually, my name is Aloharrr,’ I suddenly heard the raven’s voice in my head at some point. Aloharrr Knayderrr Sherrrirrmarr of Berrradorr. ‘Aloharrr’ in the language of the Ancients means ‘dearrr, close, beloved.’ But let’s not tell my masterrr this rrr-right away? I told you rrr-right away because I like you. You arrre his ilunarrri. You — may know. You can addrrress me mentally like that — I’ll hearrr.’

  ‘And why aren’t we telling him?’ I thought, mentally bursting with laughter.

  The raven apparently also possessed subtle mental abilities, like his master Calypso, because he not only sent me an individual mental message but somehow also heard my thoughts and responded to them:

  ‘Just because. It’s morrre fun for me this way. I love drrr-riving everyone crazy. And this bunny is going to be so fun to annoy…’

  You know, I think I already love this ilun.