<div style="margin-left: 20px"><div style="margin-left: 20px"><div style="margin-left: 20px"><div style="margin-left: 20px"><b><span style="font-size: 22px">⋯ <span class="fixed-color" style="color:#ffffff"><i>CLARA</i></span><span class="fixed-color" style="color:#ff0000">❜ </span></span></b>​</div></div></div>　　<span style="font-size: 22px">▆▆▆▆▆▆▆▆▆▆▆▆▆▆▆▆▆▆<br/>
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬</span>​</div>The room held the musty smell of age, impregnated not only in the bound books on the many shelves, but in the bricks of the walls themselves; it was a sharp smell that dug into your nose, whispering hints of old incense, burnt pages, and the faintest hints of ash and mold, creation and decay. The smell was something Clara had only had a chance to experience a couple times in her life, for the basement study had always been strictly off-limits, and feeling it attack her in full force for the first time in her life made her scrunch up her nose and exhale softly.<br/><br/>The room's ambience certainly lived up to the olfactory aesthetic, with old tomes that promised spells beyond her knowledge bound together with strong, locked belts that required either special keys or spells of their own to open. It was only in some spots the the old wall was even visible, for even behind the desk the bricks were plastered with notes and drawings. The only bit of light came from the single lamp on the desk, for the other oil lanterns, to be used during important spellcasting, were turned off.<br/><br/>Clara hadn't set foot in here since she was eight. She and her brother Andrew had always spent more time than needed fantasizing about grandma's 'magic room', until imagination machinations and her erratic behavior had led way to the ideation of several theories, including, but not limited to, the presence of secret monsters hidden inside the underground workshop. It was after coming to this conclusion that Clara had stuck her chin up at her brother and broken one of the most important rules of their childhood, to prove that she was unafraid to descend the stairs and face the monsters herself.<br/><br/>She honestly didn't remember much from her excursion, except for it having been pitch black and with a strong smell of sulfur and something metallic that she'd later learn to identify as blood. Her memories were messy, focusing mostly on the aftermath, months of chores, spankings, and even a switching from grandma-- so now that she was back in the same place of old childhood tales and mysteries, she couldn't be quite sure if her brother had changed any of the decor since their grandmother's passing, or if things had remained the same. The only difference she could tell was the lack of the smell of blood, which she supposed was a good sign. Glancing back at the trapdoor that she'd closed behind her, she quickly set down her bag, opening it and carefully taking out and setting apart all of the pieces the same way a mechanic might caringly organize all the parts to his new pet project's motor. She was running on limited time, and she ran over all the steps in her head like a litany, memorized and cherished and prepared.<br/><br/>The first thing she did was  unroll the large scroll, revealing a carefully drawn on charcoal circle, inscribed with various runes and symbols that she'd caringly  crafted in the last week after research on summoning. The proper way was to draw it directly on the ground in order to draw energy from the earth and any Ley Lines, but drawing would've taken her too much time and required her to clean up as well-- and she needed to be done before her brother came back. No longer a child, and in the position that she was, being found in such a place would warrant a much harsher punishment than a simple switch lashing, this time.<br/><br/>She pinned the scroll to the ground, smoothing it out to make sure it lay as flat against the wooden floor as possible, then took out the various candles (black, to recall the darkness from which demons came, the book had suggested), and set them around the room. Lighting a match, she let her gaze fall on the flame, transfixed by its movements despite the poor air quality of the workshop, then quickly lit each candle, making sure they were all set in place before turning the light switch off.<br/><br/>The atmosphere in the room seemed to change slightly along with the light, for the books that had before made her eager to open them and try to discover their secrets now seemed to lean off their shelves, casting shadows as long and as dark as the spells within them across her runic circle. She felt a shiver run down her spine, but simply shook it off and blew out the match before positioning herself in kneeling position in front of the circle. A kitchen knife sat next to her, and she breathed in and out a few times, going over the incantation inside her head.<br/><br/>She'd been practicing for this for weeks. The books she'd stolen from her brother's personal library, sneaking into his room and hastily copying down notes on her own paper in scraggly handwriting, reading over his shoulder while she brought him some tea to 'help with his late nights'... it all came down to this.<br/><br/>She would've been a fool to not be nervous, but even more a fool to not try it. Eurynome was a strong demon, strong enough for her to prove her worth as higher than what she had been relegated to, for even her brother had not yet summoned anything bigger than an imp in his year of being officiated into the Order-- and inside her, she knew, she could feel that she deserved this more than he did. She'd studied for this. She could do this.<br/><br/>She breathed in, breathed out, bringing the kitchen knife to her fingers as if inspecting how to best cut tonight's vegetables for dinner, and sliced cleanly through the flesh. Clara bit her lip, sucking in her cheeks from the pain as she shook her hand and squeezed the skin to try and get as much of her blood as possible in the center of the circle. The spell broke from her lips almost like instinct, and once it had started it began slipping out as easily as the lies she'd been telling her family, as smoothly as her pen had drawn the circles, as unstoppable as her force of will had always been.<br/><br/>The candles flickered, and her nose wrinkled, the smell in the room seemingly getting stronger and stronger until she wanted to pause to hold her breath, but the chant was coming out faster than she could stop them as if some force had grabbed on to the string of words and was pulling it out of her in sharp, painful tugs.<br/><br/>Then, suddenly she could breathe, and she sucked the air in greedily. Then, the candles all went out, and she found herself holding her breath instead.<br/><div style="margin-left: 20px"><div style="margin-left: 20px"><div style="margin-left: 20px"><div style="margin-left: 20px"><div style="margin-left: 20px"><div style="margin-left: 20px"><div style="text-align: right"><span style="font-size: 22px">▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬</span>​</div></div></div></div></div></div></div>