Six’s Summoning of Bael

Six’s Summoning of Bael is the comic event in which Six calls Bael-Sharoth from Hell for the apparently trivial purpose of opening a tightly sealed marinara jar. What begins as an attempted demonic summoning becomes a negotiation between an exhausted, centuries-old demon and a child who treats the supernatural as household assistance. Its decisive consequence is not the sauce itself, but the first clear pattern of exchange between Six and Bael-Sharoth: she summons him, he performs an errand, and payment takes the form of a book that sends him back to Hell curious about a strange title.

Causes and Background

Bael-Sharoth is introduced at the end of an exhausting day, in a condition far removed from the vigorous demon he once was. A weapon he could formerly swing one-handed and with deadly speed has become nearly impossible for him to lift. He reflects that only centuries earlier he would have spent his evenings raising havoc on the Abyssal plains, arriving at work red-eyed and hungover before repeating the routine the next night. Now he is an old, tired figure who can barely make tea and finish his book.

His domestic setting reinforces that diminished condition. Bael-Sharoth settles into a human recliner he has come to love, surrounded by cramped, worn possessions coated in soot from the fire pits. He thumbs through a grimoire to the place where he stopped reading, seeking the quiet of a familiar routine. The interruption therefore arrives not during a grand infernal crisis but at the most ordinary possible moment: he is trying to read in his living room.

A dull chant begins echoing through the stone chamber. It stops, resumes more loudly when Bael-Sharoth returns his eyes to the page, and makes clear that someone is attempting to establish a two-way summoning link. Bael-Sharoth initially refuses to cooperate, telling the unknown summoner to go away because he has had a long day and does not feel like coming up for whatever is wanted. The refusal only delays the encounter. After the summoner speaks, Bael-Sharoth reacts with shock and disbelief, deciding that the claim is so unlikely that he must leave his home and verify it himself.

What Happens

Back in the world of the living, Bael-Sharoth appears in a familiar stone room surrounded by eleven golden statues. The summoning circle is not merely ceremonial: when he tries to step outside it, a violent barrier strikes him with what feels like half a billion volts of arcane energy. His hair smokes, his body convulses, and he recognizes the strength of the barrier as something he has not encountered since the Dark Ages. The circle is therefore a beautifully constructed prison, with painstakingly replicated runes arranged around a mechanically precise protective boundary.

The person responsible is Six, a little girl who cannot have been more than a decade old. Bael-Sharoth recognizes her from the ritual, and she identifies herself directly as Six. The contrast between the elaborate containment spell and her youth makes the scene especially disorienting: a child has successfully summoned a demon powerful enough to require an imprisoning circle, yet the summoned captive is addressed less like a cosmic threat than like an inconvenient adult who has arrived to solve a practical problem.

Six’s request is that Bael-Sharoth open a jar whose lid is stuck tightly. Bael-Sharoth asks what the vessel contains, cautiously considering whether it might be a magical trap designed to capture and hold a demon forever. His suspicion is undercut by the jar’s conspicuous appearance: it is bright red and white and bears a picture of a tomato. Six explains that it contains marinara. She is hungry, wants spaghetti, cannot open the jar herself, and cannot ask the neighbors for help because they are not home.

Bael-Sharoth’s disbelief gives way to bargaining. Once he understands that Six is serious, he asks what she will offer in return. The question briefly stumps him because there is no obvious infernal price for opening a jar. He eventually says that he likes books and asks whether she has any. Six agrees to provide one of her favorite books if he opens the jar, presenting the exchange with solemnity despite the absurdly small task.

The jar proves resistant even to Bael-Sharoth. After accepting it and the promised book, he makes several unsuccessful attempts and admits that the lid is unusually tight. He asks Six to bring him a spoon. Six immediately mirrors his bargaining language, asking what he will offer her in return for that task. Bael-Sharoth responds with exasperated disbelief and insists that the point is whether she wants her spaghetti sauce. The exchange turns the summoning into a miniature parody of demonic contracts: both participants understand the logic of payment, and Six demonstrates that she can use it against the demon who came to help her.

Bargain and Exchange

The event establishes that Six’s summoning is effective but not ceremonially grand. She does not call Bael-Sharoth to demand power, knowledge, revenge, or service in a world-shaping conflict. She needs an inaccessible household object opened, and the entire supernatural apparatus is placed at the service of hunger and dinner. The scene’s humor depends on the collision between scale and purpose: a carefully engineered circle capable of imprisoning a demon is deployed so that a child can obtain marinara.

The bargain also reveals a reciprocal structure in the relationship. Six is the summoner, but she is not simply subordinate to Bael-Sharoth. She names the task, offers the compensation, and then turns his own language of exchange back on him when he requests a spoon. Bael-Sharoth retains supernatural power, yet he is confined by the circle and socially disarmed by the ordinary nature of the request. Six, meanwhile, behaves with practical confidence rather than awe. Their interaction is therefore less a master-servant arrangement than an improvised negotiation in which each tests the other’s assumptions.

Books provide the unexpected bridge between them. Bael-Sharoth’s request is shaped by his tired, bookish domestic life, while Six’s payment is not random: she gives him a volume she considers fantastic and one of her favorites. The promised object transforms an errand into a continuing connection. Bael-Sharoth does not receive the kind of reward a demon might conventionally seek; he receives a personal recommendation from a child who has recognized, or at least indulged, his interest in reading.

Consequences and Aftermath

Once the jar is opened, Bael-Sharoth returns to his home in Hell. The mundane aftermath is deliberately anticlimactic. He hangs up his coat and settles back into his chair, only to find that his tea has gone cold. Even the fires of Hell cannot prevent an unattended cup of tea from becoming cold, a domestic law that punctures the grandeur of the setting as completely as the marinara request punctured the summoning ritual.

Bael-Sharoth then examines the slim paperback Six gave him. She has called it magical but has not explained what kind of magic its yellowed and creased pages contain. Her description is vague, limited to the assurance that he will enjoy reading it. The book’s physical wear suggests that it is a cherished object rather than an impersonal payment, while Bael-Sharoth’s curiosity shows that the exchange has succeeded beyond the immediate service.

The volume is titled “The Princess Bride,” a title Bael-Sharoth finds strange enough to require consideration. With his tea cold and time abundant, he decides to read it. The final movement of the event therefore shifts from Six’s need to Bael-Sharoth’s curiosity. The jar is opened, the child gets the ingredient for her spaghetti, and the demon carries away an object whose significance remains unknown to him but whose promise of a story gives the encounter a durable afterlife.

Narrative Significance

Six’s Summoning of Bael functions as an introduction through inversion. A demon appears in response to ritual chanting, survives a barrier powerful enough to immobilize him, and is then asked to perform a task ordinarily assigned to a neighbor or kitchen utensil. The scene makes Bael-Sharoth’s age, fatigue, and love of books more vivid than a formal biography would: his first meaningful action after being summoned is not conquest but struggling with a jar and negotiating for literature.

For Six, the event establishes initiative, composure, and a mischievous command of social rules. She is young, but she has prepared an effective circle, knows what she wants, takes Bael-Sharoth’s identity in stride, and understands that services require payment. Her response to the spoon request is especially revealing because it shows her learning the terms of the encounter quickly enough to reverse them.

The event also sets a tonal principle for the larger story. Hell, arcane energy, demonic imprisonment, childhood hunger, marinara, cold tea, and a battered paperback occupy the same narrative plane. The result is not a denial of supernatural danger but a comic reframing of it: cosmic beings can be exhausted, rituals can be domestic, and an encounter that begins as a possible trap can end with a demon reading a human fantasy novel. Six’s Summoning of Bael is consequently both a complete comic episode and the foundation of an unexpectedly personal bond between Six and Bael-Sharoth.