The voice purred in the young man's ears, "New? There's so much for you to learn, young one..." The large eye of whatever creature could be glimpsed at in the runic circle settled slightly, hunching down as if the whole of the beast had laid upon the ground. "Pledge your life to me and I shall instruct you in every arcane discipline I know, which [b]is[/b] considerable."

Even the densest of students would know this to be an unfair bargain. A lifetime of service in exchange for a finite amount of knowledge, no matter how fast, was not a favorable deal, but at least the summon was willing to start negotiations. Raven would simply have to haggle things down to acceptable terms.