[ One Shot immediately following Life's But A Walking Shadow with Ravin Tracey ]

The look of the man who had stumbled into her greenhouse begging for rest had plagued Temperance. After Ravin Tracey had gotten his sleep and disappeared once more into the world, Temperance had done her fair share of personal research. She'd gone to the nearest library and checked out everything she could on summonings, magical mistakes, and entities from the dark realm, essentially any and everything she thought might be relevant to his problem.

But time after time her search came up short. It wasn't entirely surprising that such things had not been recorded. If it had happened in the past, it was likely that the victim and anyone else involved never lived to tell the tale. It was also possible that all accounts had been scrubbed from history in order to keep Witches from knowing that it might be possible. Whatever the case, none of it was helpful. There was one last source she had to go to, just to be sure. The Elder Witch of the Summoning Coven.

She really hated to speak to anyone about this. Ravin had clearly been worried about exposing any vital information and letting anyone know what had happened - what was happening - to him. But this was dire. He wouldn't survive for long with the creature inside of him. It was take him over. Kill him. And if it could find a way to stay, it would continue looking for the woman who Ravin seemed so hellbent on protecting.

So into the house of the Summoning coven she went. Temperance knew the older woman inside, but she'd never had to come to her for something like this. Even in trying to keep the questions as general as possible, the older woman attempted to pry. Temperance was careful in keeping Ravin's secrecy, but even when the woman finally agreed to answer her questions, little came of it. She had never heard of a summoning that could latch on to a person and hide inside of them, or one that would seek out a specific Witch. When posed with the hypothetical, she came to the same conclusion that Temperance had come to. The thing must be re-summoned, properly, and then cast back into the dark realm. But the issue was always this: in doing so, what would happen to Ravin Tracey?

Leaving the house of the summoning coven with no more answers than she had questions was disheartening. While the man was not intended to be some kind of test subject, all they could do in the meantime was trial and error and if that didn't work, maybe she could convince Ravin to tell her who it was that Malsumis wanted to serve, so that they could finally get the opinion of the woman that Ravin so desperately wanted to protect.

None of these ideas mattered, though, because she couldn't find him. She searched all around, but Ravin seemed to have disappeared.

Sitting at her desk in her greenhouse, Temperance stared at the picture that Ravin had drawn that night. Malsumis was a large creature...massive, as far as she could tell. It would take a great sacrifice to summon him, and she wasn't even sure she had anything she was willing to sacrifice for a man she barely knew.

Folding up the picture, she tucked it away in her journal. She would continue to do research, and speak of it to no one but Melody. She hoped that Malsumis hadn't killed him already, that maybe Ravin had found a way to escape him...but that seemed unlikely. Pale, thin, and already losing his grasp on his own mind, the sleep-deprived man wouldn't have long.