Protecting Your Mind From Demonic Influence 101

It was time for Amber's demonology lesson.

Usually, they didn't actually do any summoning - and given the risks involved in summoning, Chloe would think herself a horrible parent if she did. Normally she just taught Amber about the demonic hierarchies, who was who, and how things worked down there. She sometimes told Amber stories about the ones she'd personally summoned or talked to.

Today they would be leaving the books and lectures behind for her first hands-on experiences. When Amber brought Chloe home, she took her to her study. She grabbed a deck of playing cards from her desk.

"We're going to do something different today, Amber. We're going to play a game." She grinned, and held the deck towards Amber, spread out. "Pick a card. But, don't let me find out what it is. I'll do the same."

Once they had both picked their cards, Chloe would set the deck back down.

"Make sure you memorize it."

@Pallas

"So... the basic idea is, I'm gonna try to read your mind to figure out what card you have. And you're gonna try to stop me. Then you'll get to try doing the same to me. Because if you're going to do any kind of dark magic, but especially summoning, you should know how to defend your mind."

She smiled, and moved to pull a small felt bag out of a drawer.

"Of course, I normally can't read your mind, and you normally can't read mine. So, we're going to have to do something a little complicated. And... I put this together for you."

She gave Amber the bag. Inside was a necklace with a shiny steel locket. The key wasn't included.

"This is your key to... a place that I'm calling my inner sanctum. That's where all my portals lead to. I would only ever give this to someone who I love, and care about, and trust a lot, and you're about to figure out why."

"Don't try to open it, by the way," she would mention at some point. "If it opens it'll probably break."

"Yep! We'll be able to read each other's minds in there. Now, let me show you how to use the key."

Chloe would then lead her to something she had hanging on the wall. It was a piece of canvas, the size of the door they just came in through, with intricate drawings and sigils all over it.

She was a little nervous. Amber would be the first person to see the inside of this realm, other than Chloe. Even if Chloe understood how this worked, and all the principles at play - it was scary. She was using dark magic with her daughter. That was a good reason to be nervous.

"This is actually the portal we'll be taking. To open it, you just have to touch the necklace I gave you against it and say the password. For this one, you have to say praesent scientiam."

When Amber did, this, the surface of the canvas would seem to ripple and become turbulent, like a still pond disturbed by thrown rocks.The black ink changed, and grew looking less like ink and more like a growing reality, with a dimly lit cave on the other side.

It all happened in less than a second, and the piece of canvas had become a doorway. The dark space beyond it had very little inside of it. What it did have included a bookshelf with various things on it. It had books, of course, and her laptop, and some other things she usually pulled out of her magic purse. But it also had two guns - a revolver and a shotgun - on the top shelf where Amber might barely be able to see them.

"It worked!" Chloe would grin. "You just opened your first portal to hell."

Chloe chuckled. "I guess it is kind of like that, isn't it? The passphrase I chose sounds a little like a Harry Potter spell." She was glad she decided to go with Latin for that one, now.

"And I guess that makes me kinda like Snape, trying to teach you Occlumency to protect you. But I'll try to be a lot nicer than him."

Chloe would walk in first, and invite Amber in. As soon as Amber's head made its way through she would start to hear a voice in her head. Almost like her mother's. At first it was faint.

'--what Gabriel did to me. I'm a better parent than him. I won't...'

Chloe would would tense up a little bit, and the voice would trail off. Smiling, she'd look down at Amber. The voice would be a lot clearer this time, easier to catch. 'Hey, can you hear me now?'

Aside from the apparent hole in reality sitting in the middle of this space, Chloe's inner sanctum was pretty spartan. To call it a cave would be too generous, it was more like an empty space hollowed out inside of a giant rock. The air was cool and stale; it smelled heavily of air freshener and very faintly of sulfur. It was dimly and evenly lit, but there was no discernible light source.

Chloe started tapping into her daughter's thoughts. Amber would hear some muttering, something about a two-way connection. Chloe could only start hearing them just as Amber stopped trying.

'Not yet, but I think it should start working about now.

Amber pointed out that her sanctum was pretty barren. Well... I don't really have it set up for visitors. Or spend time in here. But I do want to make it pretty for you someday. If Amber was paying attention, she might notice a mental image of a forest, fairy-tale like castles on floating islands, maybe even a few words about what Chloe's father could show her on the other side when he wanted it to look nice.

If it weren't a direct line to her thoughts, Chloe would have avoided admitting that she wanted to show off for Amber the way Chloe's dad had showed off for Chloe.

Anyway, feel free to start trying to figure out what my card is whenever you want. To start, Chloe wasn't even going to look. she would just mention that they were looking for each other's cards, and see if she could skim its identity off Amber's surface thoughts. That would be a decent first lesson - masking surface thoughts. Like how Chloe kind of could.