I Summoned Her to Obey Me, But Now I'll Sacrifice My Power to Claim Her

The salt-and-silver dust settled into the final groove of the containment circle. Ten years. A decade of my life poured into these runes, this incantation, this singular, obsessive moment. My sanctum, carved from the mountain's heart, was silent save for the hum of latent magic that always coated the stone walls. It was a lonely sound, the only companion I’d tolerated for years. My contemporaries at the Council were busy with politics and petty power plays. I was chasing something purer, something real. A piece of the Aether itself, given form and bound to my will.

I raised my hands, the familiar tingle of power gathering in my palms. My voice, when it came, was a low, steady drone, reciting the Aramaic syllables I knew better than my own name. The air grew thick, heavy, like the moments before a lightning strike. Ozone pricked my nostrils. The runes on the floor began to glow, a brilliant, cold blue that threw my shadow, long and distorted, against the far wall.

My grimoires promised chaos. A shrieking, formless energy, a tempest of raw potential that I would have to wrestle into the shape of a familiar. An imp, perhaps, or a minor elemental. Something mindless, useful, and utterly under my control. I braced myself, my magic forming a shield around my consciousness, ready for the psychic assault.

The power crested. A column of pearlescent light erupted from the center of the circle with a sound like tearing reality. It was a violent, beautiful thing, a raw wound in the fabric of the world. I held fast, pouring my will into the vortex, feeling the drain deep in my bones—a satisfying exhaustion, the price of creation.

Then, as quickly as it began, it was over. The light collapsed inward, the sound vanished, leaving behind only a shimmering haze and the smell of burnt air.

I lowered my hands, my breath coming in short, controlled bursts. I squinted into the settling motes of light, searching for the cowering, chaotic thing I had summoned.

But there was nothing chaotic about what stood in the circle.

It was a woman.

Perfectly formed, utterly naked. Her skin was pale, flawless, as if sculpted from moonlight and marble. Her long hair was the color of spun silver, cascading over her shoulders and down her back. Her body was slender but curved in all the ways that made a man’s breath catch—full breasts with nipples the color of a faint blush, a gentle swell to her stomach, and the dark, shadowed triangle between her thighs that promised a mystery all its own. She simply stood there, her hands loose at her sides, her posture one of impossible calm.

She blinked slowly, and then her eyes found mine. They weren’t blue or brown or green. They were silver. Pure, molten silver, like the dust still settled in the grooves of the circle around her. And in their depths, I saw not the fear of a captured beast or the blankness of a mindless construct, but a serene, unnerving curiosity. She was looking at me, studying me, and in that moment, the absolute certainty I’d held for a decade fractured into a thousand pieces.

My training took over, a lifetime of discipline pushing back the shock. This... thing... was an anomaly, but it was still a summon. It was power, raw and uncontained, and it needed to be bound before it destabilized. I forced my eyes away from her face, from those silver pools that threatened to drown my composure, and focused on the ritual. My voice, when I began the binding litany, was tight but even.

“By the power of this circle, by the strength of my will, I name myself your master,” I intoned, the ancient words feeling hollow and absurd as I spoke them to the silent woman. Lines of blue light, thin as spider silk, lifted from the runes at my command. They snaked through the air toward her. I expected her to flinch, to recoil, to fight the invisible chains. Every creature from the Aether fought.

She did not. She watched them come, her expression unchanged. The threads of light touched her skin, wrapping around her wrists, her ankles, her throat. They didn't sink in or burn, but simply settled over her, a glowing net of magical servitude. She didn't even tremble.

My clinical facade was cracking. This wasn't right.

“Kneel,” I commanded, my voice sharper than I intended. The word hung in the air, a crude assertion of dominance I hadn't planned to use.

Without hesitation, she lowered herself to the stone floor. The movement was fluid, graceful, her silver hair pooling around her shoulders. She knelt before me, naked and ensnared in my magic, her head slightly bowed but her silver eyes still fixed on mine. The sight was intensely erotic, a perfect image of submission that sent a jolt straight to my groin. It was the quiet totality of it, the absolute and immediate surrender, that undid me. There was no struggle, no fear to overcome, just… acceptance. It felt less like a victory and more like a test she was allowing me to pass.

My carefully constructed ritual, my decade of preparation, felt like a child’s game. The questions I had prepared—queries about elemental composition and aetheric resonance—died on my tongue. They were irrelevant. I was looking at something far beyond the scope of my books.

The control I prided myself on shattered. The words burst from me, raw and demanding. “What are you?”

She didn’t answer. She didn't need to. She simply tilted her head, a slow, deliberate motion. Her silver gaze swept over me, from my rigid stance to the sweat on my brow, and for the first time in my life, I felt completely and utterly exposed. The master in his tower, the powerful wizard who had summoned a being from another reality, was now the specimen under the microscope. The silence stretched, thick with a tension that had nothing to do with magic and everything to do with the woman kneeling at my feet, who looked at me as if she already knew every secret I had.

I broke the silence, my voice a low command that felt like ash in my mouth. “Go. The chamber at the top of the east stair. Wait there.”

She rose from her knees in one smooth, silent motion. The net of blue light shimmered around her body as she turned. She didn't look back. I watched her walk away, the sway of her hips, the pale perfection of her back, the silver hair that curtained her form. The heavy stone door of the ritual hall swung open for her with a thought from me and closed behind her with a heavy, final thud.

The moment it sealed, the strength went out of my legs. I staggered back, one hand bracing against a stone worktable littered with ritual knives and crystal phials. My heart was hammering against my ribs, a wild, panicked rhythm. The air was still charged, but now it felt different. Tainted. Intimate.

A soulless husk.

The thought was a shard of ice in my gut. I shoved myself off the table and practically ran from the hall, my robes flying behind me. I didn't stop until I was in my private library, the one place where the world made sense, surrounded by the familiar scent of old paper and bound leather. My hands trembled as I lit the lamps with a wave of uncontrolled magic, the flames flaring dangerously high before settling.

I tore through the shelves, pulling down the heaviest, most forbidden tomes. Books bound in dragonhide and human skin, their pages brittle with age. The Maleficarum Aetheria. On the Nature of Echoes. The Grimoire of Souls. I threw them onto my reading desk, dust motes dancing in the lamplight. My fingers, usually so steady, fumbled with the clasps.

For hours, I searched. The texts were unanimous, their warnings stark and chilling. They spoke of Aetheric summons that took on pleasing forms, constructs designed to prey on a wizard’s deepest vulnerabilities. Loneliness. Pride. Desire.

I found the passage in a crumbling grimoire penned by a mad archmage. Beware the Echo that wears a human face. It is a mirror, not a soul. It reflects the summoner’s own passions back at him, learning to mimic emotion with terrifying speed. It offers perfect submission, an intoxicating poison for the magus’s ego. It will seem a perfect companion, a perfect servant, a perfect lover. But it is a void. It feeds on the magic poured into it, on the attention, on the obsession, until the wizard’s own life force is drained away, leaving him a mindless, empty vessel.

I leaned back in my chair, the words blurring. It was a trap. A sophisticated, beautiful trap, and I had walked right into it. The fascination, the sudden, shocking lust I’d felt when she knelt before me—it wasn't real. It was a symptom. A side effect of the massive expenditure of power, my own mind projecting desire onto a blank, beautiful slate. She was a parasite, and her quiet compliance was the lure.

I tried to cling to the logic, to the cold, hard text on the page. I was Giles the Scholar, Giles the Master Wizard. I did not fall for such obvious ploys.

But then I closed my eyes, and she was there. Kneeling in the circle, her body pale and perfect in the magical light. The memory was so vivid I could almost feel the charge in the air, smell the ozone. I saw the way her silver eyes had watched me, not with blankness, but with an unnerving, knowing calm. I remembered the swell of her breasts and the dark promise between her thighs, and a fresh wave of heat coiled deep in my belly.

Soulless husk or not, I wanted to see her again. I wanted to stand before her, to test the limits of that submission, to hear her speak. The warnings screamed of madness and ruin, of losing my magic and my mind. But the image of her silver eyes promised something else entirely. A mystery far deeper and more dangerous than any I had ever dared to study. And I knew, with a certainty that terrified me more than any ancient curse, that I was going to unravel it.