It was as though a light switch had been flicked. One moment Trevor was floating in that strange psychedelic area, having decided that he had a headache before arriving, and the next he was in a large room made from gray stone bricks.

The air around him felt cool, and natural light poured in from an open wall nearby. The railing was about the right height for what he expected, neither too short or too tall, and overlooked a vast green forest. In the distance, he could hear the hustle and bustle of people at work, the clanging of metal on metal, and creatures that sounded remarkably similar to horses.

Realizing that he had forgotten to breathe, Trevor took in a great breath. The smell of fresh, unpolluted air entered his lungs. It was remarkably sweet, and the breeze carried the scent of baked bread, cooked meats, and pine trees. Having lived in a city, it was rare for Trevor not to be constantly assailed by the smell of traffic, nearby factories, and overpowering cleaning supplies.

“You’re doing very well,” the voice of an old man came from nearby. “There aren’t many Summoned who react as calmly as you.”

Trevor turned, looking around the room for the source of the voice. Despite being open to the air, the place he found himself had several bookshelves lining the other three walls. Tomes both thick and thin lined every section, and some were even laid sideways in front of the others. Not all were bound, either; a good few were just loose collections of thick parchment. And then there was the elf.

The man who stood there waved at Trevor, and the human had to do a double take. Sure enough, the elf in front of him was, in fact, an elf. He wore a green, lightweight robe and had long ears. His face was wrinkled, but sharp and angular. Despite that, the smile he wielded was warm and comforting. The ears that grew out of the side of his head tapered to a point, and accentuated his blond, shoulder-length hair.

“Ears,” Trevor managed to get out. He tore his eyes away from the elf’s ears to look at the man’s dark green eyes. They were full of understanding, and Trevor was horrified that his first word in this world was to point out somebody’s differences.

“Ah, still processing, I see,” the elf said, nodding apologetically. “You may still scream if you want to. It’s understandable. I’ll wait.”

A part of him did want to scream, but probably not for the reason the elf seemed to think. “As kind as the offer is,” Trevor said slowly, “I think I’ll hold off for now. I prefer to have my freak outs in the break room. I mean, in private. If it’s all the same to you.”

“If that is your preference, then feel free.” The elf’s grandfatherly smile remained and he offered a slight bow. “Please, allow me to introduce myself. I am Jackson, and I am the mayor of Tosa, the town you now find yourself in. Many, many years ago I was summoned here, and now I am the one who does the summoning.”

“It’s nice meeting you, too, Mr. Jackson,” Trevor said before awkwardly emulating the elf’s bow. “I’m sorry, I know you just said that we're here in Tosa, but where exactly is here?”

Jackson began walking towards the open wall, and gestured for Trevor to do the same. The young man obliged, but stopped after a few steps to look down at his leg.

Several years ago, a short tussle with Mrs. Goodchild involving an absence of Thanksgiving yams on the shelves had left Trevor with recurring pain in his knee. The elderly lady may have had a cane with tennis balls on the bottom, but that was not the part she used to whack his leg. She had proven surprisingly tenacious, and caused more damage than he would have admitted.

Of course, what she caused wasn’t lasting damage; that was Trevor’s own fault. He had iced his knee for a few minutes before getting back to work like nothing had ever happened. The pain he felt afterwards was dull, but constant. It didn’t bother him as often these days, but always got worse when the temperature started to drop.

Those few steps made him realize that the pain was no longer ailing him. He still had his practiced limp from years of suffering, but despite the cool air everything felt fine. Trevor was elated to discover that his tooth was no longer hurting, as well, and his knuckles, wrists, and elbows no longer cracked with the voracity of a room full of people rolling dice.

At the balcony, Jackson waited patiently.

Once Trevor realized this, he quickly hurried while trying to stand up straight and correct his limp. It felt weird, but good at the same time. Once he reached the balcony, he looked over the town.

It was quaint, but lively. A river bisected the settlement with three stone bridges crossing it at various points. Several logs were floating down stream, and from such a high vantage point Trevor could see where the logging operations were taking place.

At the base of the tower were homes and businesses with shingled roofs and booths with colorful fabric coverings. People came and went in a flurry of activity, exchanging coins and goods. Wagons were pulled through the wider streets by large, scaled creatures that had a similar shape to horses, but obviously weren’t. They seemed friendly enough, however, and Trevor could hear their equine-esque whinnies from here.

“This is the town of Tosa,” Jackson explained. “In a few years time, we’ll have grown to somewhere around two thousand individuals. It is a peaceful, idyllic place that I have cultivated from the ground up for hundreds of years. Three hundred, to be exact. I wanted to make a home for people where they wouldn’t have to worry about surviving day to day. There are a few troublemakers, but you will not find a more wonderful place. It’s my pride and joy.”

Trevor found himself nodding as the elf spoke. He could hear Jackson’s sincerity and passion, though not everything made sense.

“Wait, if everything is peaceful, then why did I get summoned here?” he asked, scratching his hair. Feeling how long it was, he realized he regretted putting off getting it cut. “Was there a problem you needed me for? Like an army of demons, or…?”

“No, dear Trevor,” Jackson said with a laugh. “We signed a peace treaty with the demons two hundred years ago. Tensions were tight for the first hundred, hundred fifty years, I’ll admit, but neither demons nor humans are long-lived races and a lot of that has died down.”

“Oh, well that’s nice. I guess I’m just confused, is all, sorry.”

“There is no need to apologize, young man. Your confusion is understandable, and like many questions this one has many answers. First, I’d like to tell you what my goals are, if you don’t mind letting me ramble for a bit.”

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Please, go ahead,” Trevor said, waving his hand.

“Thank you,” Jackson replied with a gracious bow of his head. “My reasoning for creating Tosa comes from both a selfless and a selfish place. It is selfless in that I really do enjoy helping people. Taxes are low, and those in need receive help as soon as I’m made aware they require it. I am quite rich from my days adventuring, and was a notorious hoarder not unlike a dragon, and I’m using that to fund the town. It’s gotten to the point where I’m almost no longer needed, which brings me no small amount of joy. But, tell me Trevor, does your Earth know the concept of karma? There are many, and I want to make sure.”

Trevor nodded. “If you do good things, good things happen to you. If you do bad things, bad things happen to you.”

“Exactly, and that’s where I’m being selfish,” Jackson said with a self-deprecating smirk, looking back down at the town. “I’m retiring from my position soon. Not sure when, exactly, but soon. Don’t tell anyone, though; it’s a secret.”

“Yeah, I’ve got you. Uh, sir.”

Jackson chuckled and gestured towards the ground. “All of this is my effort to accumulate as much good karma as I can for what comes next. As I said in my introduction, I’m a Summoned just like you. Fourth world, to be exact, but I’m not ready to be done just yet. I’ve found a ritual that requires me to have five other Summoned in order to send me off to my next destination. Perfectly safe for everyone involved, of course. As the subject, I cannot take part in it, and before you arrived there were only four in town.”

“Oh, so I was summoned to help out,” Trevor said before laughing nervously. “There’s a trope in our world - or my Earth, I guess, as you put it - where people get summoned to other worlds in order to slay monsters, or defeat something powerful, and the like. It’s a popular genre, and I was really nervous about that.”

“Nothing so dangerous, though we do have dangerous beasts around that adventurers are needed to deal with. Three of the four Summoned here participate in that, though two of them are more proactive about it than the last.” Jackson looked away from the town to Trevor. “I would like you to know that you can make it back to your world, should you choose to. It’s part of the ritual I performed to bring you here.”

“Oh, well that’s a relief. All my stuff is there, so I’m kind of attached to it. It’s nice to know I can go back.”

“Eventually, though I have to say you can’t right away,” Jackson said apologetically. “This last ritual was one that reached out to someone who was in dire need of something different. It didn’t have to be you; the multiverse is vast, and people are undergoing accidents all the time. This one, however, seeks out the person who needs it the most.”

Trevor tilted his head. “I’m sorry, I’m not sure I get it.”

“Young man, you were summoned here because, deep down, you need a break. As you were being brought here, I watched some of your life play out.” When Trevor opened his mouth, Jackson held up a hand and continued. “Nothing that would embarrass you, I promise. But I saw how you acted, how you were treated. I saw how you carried yourself, and how you spent your time. Before today I had no inkling that you even existed, but I’m glad you’re here.”

The words were not spoken from a place of malice, but they stung Trevor regardless. Even so, he could not refute them; he knew exactly what Jackson was talking about. After a few moments, he nodded.

“This is that thing where it’s both selfless and selfish, then?” he asked. “Selfish because you summoned me out of nowhere for your own gain, and selfless in that it was a ritual prepared with good intentions?”

“Somewhat,” Jackson said with a slight bow of his head. “Whether I performed the ritual or not, you still would have stepped off of that ladder, stepped on that boy’s truck, and fallen into the shelving on the other side of the aisle. You were pelted by cans of beans-“

“Okay, that’s probably enough,” Trevor quickly interrupted.

“Are you sure? I could go over the incident in full detail if you like.”

“I don’t think I’d like that,” he replied with a nervous laugh. A thought occurred to him, and he jolted upright. “Wait, that sounds really dangerous. You said I could go back, so I didn’t die, right?”

Jackson waved his hand. “You didn’t. You are knocked out, and will be for a while,” the elf informed. “A coma, unfortunately, but one that you will come back from. The ritual reassured me of this. In fact, it’s entirely possible that the magic saved your life.”

Trevor blinked as he processed this information. “Oh, okay,” he said smartly after a few moments.

The elf just gave him that same grandfatherly smile. “It’s a little terrifying, I know, but the moment the top tattoo on your arm disappears, you will be able to return home if you so choose.”

“Tattoo?” Trevor asked, bemused.

He lifted his arm and rolled up his sleeve to see that he had, in fact, received tattoos. Two of them. One was around his wrist and traveled up his arm to the elbow. The other covered his arm around his bicep. Both had patterns that didn’t make sense to him, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a reason for it.

Two thoughts occurred to the young man.

The first was that his skin had been marred, and whether or not he would be able to find a new job like this. His big boss, Devlin, was a staunch opponent of tattoos. Trevor didn’t really care, personally, and was ambivalent on the topic. Still, he had his future to consider.

The second was, oh man, I’ve never been this buff before. He flexed his arm, and his bicep swelled in a way that years of retail work had never allowed. When Jackson looked away, an amused smile on his face, he touched his abdomen and noticed that the inklings of a six pack were there. Not sculpted and well defined, but it certainly didn’t feel like all he did in his off time was sit on the couch playing games and eating shredded cheese straight from the bag.

Not that he had ever done that, of course. It was just an example.

“Yes, tattoo,” Jackson said, gazing over Tosa. “A week in this world is only an hour there, so you have plenty of time to explore, rest, whatever you’d like to do so long as you don’t disturb the people of the town. It’s a mark of the Summoned, and manifests in different places on everyone. Once the tattoo around your bicep disappears, then you'll know it will be safe to return to your body.”

“That seems very handy,” Trevor said with a nod. “Do we know how long that’ll be?”

“At least as long as it takes to tell a story.”

“What?”

“Nothing, just making a joke,” Jackson said, chuckling. Trevor didn’t understand, but said nothing. “It will depend on the doctors of your Earth. A month or so here, knowing your world’s doctors. A couple of weeks, maybe.”

“That sounds like a really long time,” Trevor stated quietly. “What am I supposed to do for that long?”

Jackson’s grandfatherly smile turned into a grin as he walked over to a table next to where Trevor had been summoned. On the table was a sack, and he pulled a jar out of it. It was made of clay, and the lid had been sealed with some clear glue. After inspecting it, he returned to the confused young man.

“Please, can you get these pickles out for me,” Jackson requested, handing it to Trevor. “And we’ll talk all about quests. After all, you may not want to be an adventurer, but there are other ways to fill your time, yes?”

Still confused, Trevor took the jar. The moment he did, a text box appeared in front of him.

[[New Quest! This strange old, old, old man has asked you to release the pickles from this sealed jar!

You may be asking yourself why he decided to do this, but let’s face it, elves are strange creatures. Jackson, doubly so. However, you already have it, so you might as well give it a shot. Why not try your Power?]]

“I’m sorry, what?” was all Trevor could ask as he looked at the screen in confusion.