A young girl with bright blond hair walked down the bustling streets of New York City. She weaved in-between asshole drivers through crosswalk after crosswalk. The winter air stinging her eyes whenever it blew between the skyscrapers. As her pink gloves barely kept her hands from icing over, she walked forward determined. She had just turned thirteen, and was allowed to leave the house to go to her friend's apartment across the city just about two miles away.
She stamped forward, fighting through the snow and ice on the sidewalks. She was determined to hang out and read through some of the new manga her friend had just gotten for Christmas and wouldn’t shut up about. She looked around, pulling her purple cap down as she passed vagrants. She felt bad, but her dad called them wastes of space, so she knew even with how rich he was he would never help any.
She had been walking for over twenty minutes when suddenly, the cold disappeared. The sun basked her in its light, and suddenly a large blast of warmth covered her body. Her vision went white, and her body felt like it was being ripped apart. She remembered accidentally sticking something in a socket when she was younger, electricity ripping through her. That’s what it felt like, electricity flowing through her veins. She blacked out, falling to the ground.
“Yornocov… She is havlerna der nortos. Waking up der avork.” She opened her eyes, hearing a mix of english and gibberish. She sat up, realizing she was in a weird room. There were men and women surrounding her in a circle, wearing white cloaks, covering most of their faces. The ground was hard, the room was made of stone tile, pillars, and at the top was a sun-light. There was a woman wearing a dress made of purple and red frills. It stuck out quite far as well. She reached her hand down for the girl, and the girl began to panic a little.
‘I know what this is, I’ve been summoned to another world. Is this what I get for reading so much manga?’ “Halo der varqui navaha.” The well dressed woman spoke, and when the girl looked confused, she frowned. She turned and left, “Get rid of her… narva der splov.”
“Please, don’t go, what’s going on?” The words out of the girl's mouth were a jumbled mess of English and this weird language she didn’t know. She was picked up by two knights, and forcefully drug to a cell with an older woman with bright crimson eyes in it. The girl began to cry as she was thrown onto the cold stone floor. The older woman looked out the corner of her eye, “Vernol, kamas der verno. Poor summoned, nerto der viri.”
The girl kept sobbing, “I want to go home, please, I don’t want to be here.” The woman recoiled a little and nodded, realizing why this girl ended up here. She pointed to herself, “Mayleen, ver no Mayleen.” The girl wiped her eyes, nodding, “Ver no Kayla.” suddenly a surge of electricity worked its way through her brain. ‘I suddenly feel like I’ve always known how to say my name is Kayla.’
She spent her time rotting away in that cell, being fed once a day, the only source of knowing how long it had been. Each word she learned forging itself through her brain, and slowly, very slowly she began to learn the language. By the end of a week, she could hold very simple conversations, and could understand her general situation from the guard talk.
She was in a cell that held only those who were to be executed. She was there because, “If she can’t speak the language, there’s no way she could learn magic. What a dumb girl,” or something like that. They were to hold her there until after the summoning ceremony, a time when heroes are summoned from another world to fight for the country.
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Time slowly drifted onwards, her language skills improved quite a bit, but no matter how much she spoke, the guards disregarded her as a dullard. They deemed her dumb trash. She was frustrated, because no matter how much she could speak, it didn’t matter. She would never be let go, especially after being treated like this.
“How do magic?” she questioned the older woman. The woman sighed, showing her the cuffs, “These cuffs take my magic, I can’t do magic to show you.” The girl shook her head aggressively, “Don’t show, tell me!” She had a feeling that the weird electricity feeling through her brain and veins was a clue.
“Imagine tiny particles flowing through the air. By extending what you want, your will, outward, you can control them. The simplest thing you can do is to collect it together in the palm of your hand. By practicing this you can get a gauge on your magic potential as well as gaining the baseline for all other spells.”
The girl nodded and focused, feeling the mana in the air, and slowly willed it to her gloved hands. It pooled into her hand and a large sphere of pure white formed. She didn’t know what to do with it. It was way bigger than she imagined, panicked, and wanted it to get away from her. The ball flung out, breaking the cell, and the stone floor. “You need to run, now’s your chance!”
The girl sprinted out, going left, as the guards came from the right, and went forward. The sounds of footsteps began to echo out, and she ran and ran and ran. She was suddenly grabbed from the left, “Shhh, follow me.” A woman with dark brown hair, wearing armor walked through a secret door on the side.
The girl was caught, but she felt she had a better chance with this one girl and not the hoard of knights coming from the other way. “I’m sorry it took so long. We had to prepare everything, and we sure weren’t expecting you to do that.” The knight laughed, and they ran through a tight pathway.
“Why you helping?” The knight looked at her, “Someone wants you alive. I’ll just say that much.” Suddenly the woman used her right hand to swat at the air, and a hole in the wall a ways ahead appeared. They ran out, and the guard gave her one last instruction, “Run left in a straight line until you see a clothing shop, enter there and meet your new family.”
The girl nodded, and darted down the direction she was told, slowly stripping off her strange coloured clothing, especially since it was so damn hot out. She ran looking left and right for a shop that was obvious it sold clothes. She ran for what felt like a mile, looking around in a panic. She was about to give up, when she found what she thought she was looking for. She entered the shop that looked a bit old and decrepit. It had very uncomfortable looking clothing hanging around, and thrown on random wooden benches scattered through. She quickly shut the door behind her in a panic, and began to breath heavily. She sat down against the wall exhausted, until she heard someone speak.
A blond woman and man looked at her, their shimmering green eyes looking at her calmly, “Ahh our daughter is finally here, you must’ve gotten lost right?” The woman looked at her now in a serious fashion, she nodded. “Let’s get you some new clothes alright honey?” the older man spoke up now. “Yes Papa.” The man couldn’t help but smile.
They ushered her into a changing room and got her some new clothes. She heard the sounds of guards entering, in search for her, but her new guardians and the shopkeep stayed discreet. They informed them of their important daughter changing and if they went in there he would take “measures.” The guards panicked, apologizing, and left.
With that she gathered what little she now owned, and went with them on a carriage ride. She looked around in awe at the view of the city, something she thought she would not get to see before her death. “Thanks for helping. I speak bad, but I learning. Can magic some.”
The two looked at each other, then back at her, “It’s no problem, we know of your situation, and we and a close friend decided to help out. If you pretend to be our daughter you should be safe.” The girl nodded, “My name is Kayla, nice to meet you!” The man nodded, “We are Mr. and Mrs-”