From within the tower a light shone, and passersby could hear the distinct mumbling of a mage.

Vividren Woodscales, Magister of the mage tower and most powerful plant mage in all of Cretoria, was standing in his study, chanting incantations to activate his unique magic formation.

He had come upon an old text mentioning that every 2376 years, his world and another would come incredibly close, allowing mages to interact with the other world. At the time, he thought nothing of it, as he was ordered to come up with a plan to find more potential mages, and had no time to waste on other matters, no matter how intriguing. But then a brilliant idea flashed through his mind!

If there is no potential to be found in Cretoria, look elsewhere! Elsewhere of course being the other world, as recruitment outside of his region was not a choice. Making enemies of another mage tower would be incredibly stupid and downright suicidal.

As he was none of these things, Vividren scoured the library for more relevant information and started to throw together a formation. While simply summoning people would be easy and not a particular drain on his resources – if the records were to be believed – kidnapping people with high potential from their world with no definite method of bringing them back, was not only morally apprehensible but also a surefire way to earn resentment.

Being the smart drake he was, he found an optimal, if somewhat costly solution to his problem. He would summon the souls of recently deceased potential mages, and guide the souls into the inner part of the formation. Those souls will be shoved into the prepared biological materials, and will then start to form their bodies with the guidance of the formation.

The inner formation is based upon a special resurrection spell with a near perfect success rate, but was only usable on non-mages. Even for him, reworking such a complex spell into a formation was difficult, doubly so as it was a formation tied to another formation. Nonetheless, he succeeded at creating the entire spell formation.

Of course, the records he found could have been wrong or inaccurate, so he forwent making the formation more complicated to summon people with higher potential and instead decided to summon only three people with any potential at all. Waiting for someone with a high potential to die so he could summon them would have upped the cost of maintaining the formation exponentially. And investing too many resources into something that might not necessarily work would not impress his employer terribly.

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However, to avoid summoning some lunatic or mindless monster, he added summoning conditions; the summoned had to be naturally curious and willing to learn, open-minded and moderately kind, young and also sufficiently intelligent.

The last part of the formation was tricky, but of utmost importance! As the people of the other world undoubtedly spoke another language, he wove a knowledge imparting spell into the formation, which would impart all the words of the common language which the language of the summoned has an equivalent for onto them, and thus give them a good grasp on the language. Simply imparting the language completely could after all either be completely unhelpful or damage the summoned persons soul. Which would be rather unhelpful.

After a week of research, gathering resources, setting up the formation and initiating the ritual to start the summoning, it was finally time. Reality twisted and a small round gate formed. He could feel the dimensional tunnel building up, trying to connect to the other world. A sudden shift, and the tunnel opened on the other side. Unlike a gate spell within the world, this happened with practically no resistance. It was just like the records said, but still odd.

He put it out of his mind however, as the most crucial part of summoning was about to commence. For a few nerve-wracking moments, nothing happened and Vividren feared it was all for naught. Thankfully, he could feel the formation attracting souls, which promptly barreled through the open gate. After three souls passed, the gate snapped shut and he sighed in relief. The most expensive aspect of the formation was over, and still within estimated bounds.

As if to spite his relief, a complication he never expected arose; the souls were merging! Already, two of the souls became one, with the last having come into contact with the fusion. Aside from the total loss of identity on both sides of the fusion, a recently fused soul was also very fragile. A third soul would cause the fusion to collapse and make all his efforts void! And most likely kill him in a spectacular soul explosion, but that would not be his problem to deal with.

He pulled the last soul away from the fusion and pushed into the inner formation, where it was guided into the biological materials, with the fused soul following suit. The materials writhed and twisted, slowly taking on color and form.

The fused soul took the shape of a quadruped with wings, while the other soul formed a bipedal humanoid shape. It was quickly apparent that the biped was a human of large and stocky build, while the fused soul not even remotely looked like any intelligent species he knew of, which might have been due to being a fusion.

The being had a strange mix of feathers and fur, two imposing wings and one tail with a dangerously sharp tip. Its fur and feathers had a slight violet sheen to them, but appeared mostly black. Everything appeared remarkably stable, but the moment the summoned opened their eyes, he realized he did not completely prevent them two from fusing. Two pairs of identical black eyes were boring holes into him with their hazel irises and Vividren knew that this was not the expected result…