2:089 on the 21st day of Summer 1198

"Do you see the moon in the sky, Theod?" asked mother. We were walking through one of Cinder's farms on a cloudless night. The stars were beautiful but there was no moon.

"No?" I asked.

"Don't ask. Be sure, then answer." she said.

"No, mother. It is a new moon tonight." I said confidently.

"Good, you remembered the term for it." she praised. "Now, can you tell me what it is called when the moon passes in front of the sun?"

We would play these quiz games sometimes. She was probably building toward something but asking about the point would be fruitless.

"A solar eclipse." I said.

"Ah but what is it called when the moon is between you and the sun, but you can't tell because it is night out?" she said with a sly grin.

"I don't think there is a term for that." I said.

She laughed.

"Well tonight will be an upside down solar eclipse." she said. "And now there is a term for it."

We reached the stairs down and started to descend into Cinder. We made our way to street level and then took a left and started walking. The streets weren't exactly crowded at this time of night but neither were they deserted. A few stores and restaurants still keep their bright-leaf signs lit to show they were open and their patrons walked this way and that.

Then we entered a large stone building and mother was quickly swept up. People greeted her and started talking of preparations. Their conversation quickly went over my head so I tried to look around to learn whatever I could. There were several people walking with us in the same mage robes as my mother wore. They looked extremely serious and spoke in hushed tones. Then we entered a large circular room filled with people. They were all taller than me so I couldn't see anything but I could tell that there were hundreds of people and all of them wore mage robes. When we entered, the waiting crowd grew quiet.

I knew that my older brother Welant was already here somewhere so I looked for him. After talking with some people, my mother came over to me.

"We are going to get ready." she said. "It will be a bit before the eclipse but when the time comes there will be a few loud gongs. You must stay absolutely quiet after the gongs. It will only be a few measures but it is imperative that you don't bother anyone during that time. Do you understand?"

"Yes, mother." I said. "Before you go, can I ask what ritual you are going to perform?"

"I didn't tell you?" she said rubbing her forehead. "Well, I don't have time now but I will tell you all about it after."

She rubbed a strand of black hair through her fingers. She always did that when thinking.

"Let's just say for now that tonight could help end the war with the demons." she said.

My eyes went wide at that and her face said that it was the reaction she had hoped for. I wanted to ask a dozen follow up questions but before I could she waved goodbye and strode into the crowd.

I made my way to a small group of non-mages in an alcove with chairs. There were a few other kids there but they were younger and with their minders. I withdrew a book on natural philosophy from my satchel and began to read. Before I knew it the gong was struck three times. I wasn't bothering anyone so I just kept reading. Then the gong was struck twice and I could tell everyone was extremely focused. I saved my spot and put my book away in time for the gong to be struck a single time. For a long moment you could have heard a mouse chewing. It was so quiet.

Then there was a deep cracking sound. The mages started murmuring but nobody could see what was going on. Then there was a crashing sound and somebody screamed. I could see large fragments of rock tumbling lazily through the air as if suspended by strings.

"It's lose!" someone yelled.

"What is it?!" someone else replied.

There was a surge and the mages in front of me started running for the doors. It was so crowded that they packed themselves together. I stood but I knew that I couldn't make it through that mess so I looked around for my mother. As the crowd cleared I saw it. A drake two stories tall at the shoulder thrashed about in the center of the room. It looked like it was made of frosted blades of ice and white clouds were billowing off of it. I couldn't move. It let out an ear splitting roar and my feet were rooted in place. I couldn't even breathe.

From across the intervening space I could see the drake turn its massive head and to look straight at me. It's thrashing stilled for one heartbeat before it lunged toward me, trampling several of the mages that it had been fighting. I couldn't move, I couldn't breathe, my heart felt like it was going to stop. It moved in a blur, covering the ground between us in less than a blink. Then my mother was there. She threw herself between the monster and I, cutting it across the face with a blade of spinning water.

"Run." I said, but it came out as a gasp. "Run away."

But no one could hear me.

Mother and the drake fought on. Her arm was bleeding but the monster's right eye was gone. in the next exchange it got a deep cut in its neck that bled a fine white dust. My heart raced at seeing the mortal wound. Maybe she would win.

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Then it curled up into a sharp ball of spikes and the whole room suddenly dropped in temperature. Ice crystals started forming on every surface. At first, my mother didn't seem to know what to do. Then it looked like she saw something that made her panic. She gathered all the water she could into a thick shield in front of the two of us.

"I'm sorry Theod." she said.

The drake exploded. Shards of frosted ice tore through my mother's shield, her body, and then me. I felt a large knife of the cold crystal embed itself just above my left ear. Then I knew no more.

***

2:103 on the 61st day of Winter 1208

I stood in front of the doors of Agis manor rubbing my left ear in phantom pain. I shivered. Ten years and I can't think about that night without feeling cold. But I'm not going to get answers standing out here. I pull the door open and walk in. I make my way upstairs and find the door to Welant's rooms. My knock sounded overly loud in the quiet hallway. It's late but not that late so he should still be awake. The door opened to reveal Welant in a night robe with ink stained fingers.

"Theod, what do you need?" he said.

"Can we talk?" I said.

He simply nodded beckoning me in. He moved to a desk where he started sorting letters. I closed the door and sat on one of the large couches in the room. After sorting his work and wiping his hands on a rag he sat down across from me.

"What is this about?" he said with a look of concern. I had been trying to think of a subtle way to ask about what I needed to know but after the walk back from the library my patience was wearing thin.

"The day mom died." I said. "You were there too, right?"

His eyes opened in shock for a second before returning to their normal calm.

"Yes, I was there alright." he said. "That night was horrible and I will never forget it."

Before he could go on I interjected.

"What were you trying to summon?" I said.

He didn't answer at first. He stood up and made his way to a side table that held a bottle of spirits and several glasses.

"That isn't really something we talk about much in the wake of Mom's death." he said as he poured. "If anyone else asked me, I would probably tell them we were trying to summon a dragon or something."

He paused as he handed me a glass and returned to his seat.

"It was what is referred to as a secret summons, where no one but a core group knows the whole picture of what they are going for." he said. "I myself didn't know at the time, only being given the task to focus on its knowledge of magic. It took me several years to piece it together from what I could get her peers to tell me."

He took a long drink and seemed to be thinking back.

"We were trying to summon a hero from another world." he said. "A hero with everything they would need to end the war with the demons."

I wasn't surprised. I knew that this was coming since Husina had brought me the book but it still struck me like a brick to the face. My eyes teared up again.

"You already knew?" he said.

"Not until today." I said. "I found her book on the topic at the library and … well it just made sense."

He nodded at that.

"She was well known in certain circles but not for that work." he said.

The book was an analysis of past events referred to as hero summonings and speculation about the methods employed. Basically, several times over the past few hundred years, one country or another had some great crisis and then someone emerged who seemed tailor made to fix the problem. One country with no tradition of fire magic faced invasion by trolls only to have an unparalleled fire mage come out of nowhere to wipe them out. Another faced a volcano only to have an powerful earth mage carve a massive tunnel to the sea that diverted its power. In each case, it came out later that the country's mages had performed a grand summoning in their desperation. They had structured the summoning to try and address the needs of the moment with spell instructions like "bring forth the knowledge, skill, and power to repel the trolls" for example. Or "bring us a hero with powerful lightning magic to destroy our enemies."

In most cases the spell summoned a person with all the skills and abilities called for in the spell. They tended to have memories of other worlds that prepared them to face the current crisis. However, there were many hero summonings that went horribly wrong. Heroes without any reason to fight for a country that was not their own. Heroes that were hungry for power and ended up going on a bloody war of conquest after solving whatever problem they were summoned for. Heroes with everything going for them that died unceremoniously before accomplishing anything.

In other cases the spell would have a less direct effect. In multiple accounts the spell seemed to fail at first. The spell to repel trolls, for example, summoned a tree of living fire that burned endlessly. Then something unexpected happened. A young mage sat in front of the tree and meditated on the way it burned. He practiced his fledgling fire magic with the tree as his teacher and before long he was able to command firestorms that reduced the troll armies to ash. In the city that faced a volcanic eruption, it summoned a cut and faceted gem the size of a cart. When word got out, the world's greatest earth mage at the time traveled to the city and offered his services to save it in exchange for the gem. Mother's book argued that the indirect path was by far more reliable. She presented something very close to chaos theory, where tiny changes like a butterfly flapping its wing could build into much larger impacts over time.

I was no closer to understanding how summoning actually worked but at least I understood better why my mother had died. The drake was the result of a spell meant to summon the butterfly whose wings would end the war. That brought me to an unpleasant thought. My memories of Earth started surfacing after healing from injuries the drake caused. It was too much of a coincidence to ignore. I was the hero she summoned. I had to sit with that for a minute. Welant was just waiting for me to sort through my feelings.

Eventually I would have to grapple with the idea that I might play a role in stopping the war. I suppose it is possible, even likely that the drake impacted the world in other ways than to bring me into it. But the development of memories of Earth is too specific, too specialized to just be one possible road to peace. Something about my skills and capabilities could be like a fire mage to an army of trolls or an earth mage to a volcano. But of course charging headlong into fixing things would be more likely to get me killed than to end the war. Better to stay low profile. Maybe I am the person who could end the war in thirty years but trying now would only lead to death. Maybe the spell only gives me the capacity to end the war and my opportunity has either already passed or will never occur. Also, ending the war could mean anything from brokering a lasting peace to defeating the demons to wiping out all humans. Loss is still an end after all.

This was too much. I already had too many problems to spend time second guessing myself over some twisted form of fate or destiny. That was bull shit anyway. There was no way to predict what would happen in the future. For every hero success story in mom's book there were probably ten dead idiots that never had their stories told. I had to get my notes and artificial core back from the cave. I had to sign up for light mage training and maybe tell my old decade commander to shove it. I had to see if Arin is able to make it on to a combat team.

I thanked Welant for his time and patience and bid him goodnight. In the morning I would finish my plans to go back to the cave. It was about time I stopped dragging my feet and got my stuff back.