"I-- I don't understand! I followed everything it said --"
"Your first mistake was entrusting your work to the hallucination machine." It reached down to pinch the mixture, give it a sniff. "Potassium chloride? What ash is this?"
"Um." The disciple nudged a bucket with their boot.
"Tastes like ... maple. And potatoes. Blech." It wiped its fingertips clean on their robes. It paused, rubbing its tongues against the roof of its mouth. "Damnation, what did you anoint the candles with? Is that ... PAM?"
The disciple whimpered. "It wasn't specified."
"Pfft. Of course not." It sighed, and extended its tri-fingered hand. "Let me see that incantation." Shakily, the parchment was extended, and snatched with irritation. " 'Bene! Ecce incantatio initiorum ...' What the seven hells is this? You didn't even trim the auto response."
"Well, I don't speak Latin..."
The demon snorted. The parchment sailed over its shoulder to a candle and hovered there, alight, then disappeared in a puff of ash and smoke. "Right. Legally I could take at least a limb for this, but hey, you like your limbs, right? Pretty attached to them, you'd say?" The disciple desperately nodded. "Great. So here's what we're gonna do: you're going to write me an essay --"
"What?!" The disciple gasped, paled. "Wait, no, maybe an arm would be okay..."
"-- shut up. You're going to hand-write a 2,000 word essay -- listen, no -- and you're going to write it on the perils of sourcing research from generative AI. You are going to source this in MLA format -- yes the fuck you are --" tired of the protestations, the demon's hand loosely threatened the human's throat, and quickly made its point, "and you will do this and turn it in in two weeks' time, with a proper summoning ritual. And -- and this part is very important, mind you -- you are going to tell all your little demon-summoner buddies that if this ever happens again I will simply eat your fucking souls and be done with it. Do you understand me?"
The disciple nodded again, with wetter pants.
"Good. Fine." The demon roughly patted the student on the head and retreated back to the ruined glyph where it stood expectant, hands on what must have been its hips. "Alright. Banish me and call me up properly in two weeks. Don't make me come looking for you."
"I -- uh -- well, that is to say, I don't... um."
The demon's shoulders dropped. "You don't know how to banish."
"I don't know how to banish, no."
The demon let loose a series of deep, frustrated grumbles that had some resemblance to speech, enunciated with emphatic gestures, and gave the vague impression of a dinner getting cold. "Get a pen."
"G̸̨̙̠͎̯̯̟͕̜͍͌̓͋̍̂̏͌Ē̵̦̯̪̻̼̂͛T̷̨̺̜̠͖̻̮̪͎̖̗̱͇̄͒͑̐̈́̿̏̒̋̆̿͂̓́͘ ̸̧͍̻̗̽̓̃Ā̸͈̰̏̄̾̑́̾̑ ̴̪̰̆̏̐͗̐͝ P̴͔̗͇̯͈̣͊̅̀͒͂͘Ę̴̤̌̒̈́̈́͂̈̓̂͌͒̈́̚͝N̴̡̧̞̯̖͉̯̼͍͉̹̲͉͍̅̇̓̈́̓͗̽̈́̚͜.̸̹͕̠͎̘͆͊͒͋̓̒̈̅͗"
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