It began with a summoning, an elegant dance of faith and deterministic preparation, hopeful magic channeled into the precisely designed summoning sigil on the floor of the Great Hall.

Those who did not whisper the close-kept words of the spell held their breath, eager to meet the five heroes who will bolster the kingdom’s might.

Those who did not hold their breath were waiting for this egotistic ritual to be over with so they could clean the oil crayon off the formerly pristine marble floors.

The King-Consort held all power in the Queen’s absence – he was keen to remind the castle court and staff of this – so it was his throne-held right to summon heroes in this great time of need. His great time of need, really.

Who would pick off wolves from their city’s borders? Who would shoo the wyverns back westward? And what of the fetch quests? If the town herbalist did not get his shipment of vetta root, who would attend to minor scrapes and bruises of the nobility?

Those who cleaned the floors could see this was the King-Consort spreading his wings in Her Majesty’s absence. Skirmishes occurred at crossings on occasion, but they were hardly the great wars that warrant summoning heroes.

Amnasín was perfectly protected by nature, leading to the presence of the kingdom’s heraldic animal, the unicorn. The unicorn territory was left untouched by dragons and other large beasts, as the enigmatic herbivores were known to be dangerously magical and entirely intolerant of other creatures’ horseshit. It made an excellent home for humans, however, as the unicorns simply avoided contact with outsiders.

To the west of Amnasín lay the Qhai Republic and the patchy desert barrier that helped maintain the nations’ friendship. There was stretch of impassable mountains to the north – the Staargraven. Next, an avalanche zone in the east with a small berth of navigable land touching the next country. The open ocean lined the southern shore, full of trade routes and travelers.

All in all, Amnasín had an excellent political and physical position in the world. One that hardly required heroes, outlanders, for help.

Yet the cleaners did not speak against the King-Consort, no. Their problems were within the keep’s walls, not outside it.

If there were floors to clean with five new pairs of muddied feet, or chores to do in the new heroes’ wake, then they would get their wages, and that was the most important thing.

The King-Consort could be as unbridled as he pleased, if the pay continued, and if most heads remained firmly affixed to necks and shoulders.

The sigil of marble-staining oil crayon lit up with a magical glow at the completion of the spell, ancient workings burning away all the doubts of the mages present.

On the points of the star, each hero was summoned.

One, a lanky blonde man. A painter’s muse and, with training, the storybook version of a knight in shining armor. He wore the same as the others now, a basic shirt and trousers provided by the magical system to preserve the heroes’ modesty.

Two, a scruffy, dark-haired man with warm-toned skin. He said something loudly as he arrived, swearing in a language this world could not process. The onlookers heard the shape of words but no discernible syllables. The blessing would fix this; their faith did not fix the scruffy man’s ire.

Three, a sharp angled woman whose vaguely effeminate features were only detectable because of the clothing worn. In darker colors, more elegant clothes, she could be anything, anyone.

Four, a brown-haired woman. She squinted immediately, her eyesight poor, and her hands grasped at her shirt as if to seek out comfort.

Five, nothing.

The floor glowed violently at the fifth and final point of the star, as if trying to will the magic into place, but no hero emerged.

When the light of the sigil fully faded out, the room fell silent. The heroes were overwhelmed, stunned, confused. One moment they were… elsewhere and now? What was this?

A mage was the first to shout, pointing at a scuffed spot on the sigil design. Havoc broke loose, names were called, and the King-Consort raged as if a head were about to roll.

His fury was well timed. Lightning cracked overhead; the room shuddered.

Somewhere in the forest on the outskirts of a city, a stranger was being soaked by the rain.

It was a dream. They couldn’t ever remember dreaming of rain before, so it felt novel, new, almost real. Maybe a lake, like the one from summer camp, but never rain or lightning.

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Maybe it was raining outside. The lightning could be real, only outside of their dream, the sound leaking inward. That happened sometimes. Like when you had to pee, and you dreamed of water. Was it raining when they fell asleep?

They… They hadn’t fallen asleep.

There was a test that they failed. A letter from a lawyer in those cheap university mailboxes with their impossible locks. A text from their mother, saying to just sign the stupid papers and stop prolonging things.

Their mother? Her mother.

That was the right word, but it felt wrong now. What a strange dream.

No, wait. The test. They failed the test, and they were headed home and… there was a bus at the right time and the right place.

Headlights at eye level, blinding them. Blinding her?

Maybe there wasn’t lightning after all.

The rain fell hard, the wind forcing it sideways under the shelter of the tree above. The canopy of the forest shielded the stranger from some of the elements. She—they weren’t supposed to be under trees during lightning. That was dangerous or something.

It was hard for them to remember anything. They were in school, in a university. But what school? What state? Even their country name evaded them. That should have been obvious.

She was 25. She was… she was getting a masters. Doctorate? Maybe she was just thinking about the doctorate. Biology. Ecology. So much time spent doing fieldwork in wetlands, for a week straight in an isolated swamp, sleeping in a tent. The rain almost didn’t phase her. Them?

Even before—even as a girl, they were never accused of having dainty features. She was hardy, healthy when people were being polite. But still… their hands were bigger now. No nail polish. She wore nail polish to her classes for good luck.

In the storm, they couldn’t see much, but they could make out a lack of dark brown arm hair. Her mom always told her to shave it, so she kept it out of spite. Now it was lighter.

Still convinced of the dream state, the stranger kept poking around, looking for clues as to who or what they were supposed to be. The dream would surely end before they tried out their new “equipment” but there was a weary chuckle at the lack of certain parts. At least dream-her finally had her uterus removed albeit in a very transformative way.

Another lightning crack. The dream was telling them to get a move on.

They begrudgingly turned around, peering through the falling rain. The storm made the world so dark that it had to be nighttime, but there were lights in the near distance. Windows, it looked like.

Oh, yay. No dream glasses either.

They began to resent the premises of this dream as their walk became muddy, rivulets of rain running through their toes, bare feet flinching on the edges of hidden rocks. The uneven cobblestone of a street was a welcome reprieve from the pebbles and slippery mud; they’d tried acupuncture slippers exactly once and anything was better than that.

A few houses decorated the street as the stranger approached a tall stone wall, the cutout of a gate evident even in the rain. A guard peered out from the sheltered underpass. It was like a little arched room with a gate in the middle, open for passage.

The guard said something but the stranger stared at him blankly.

The words weren’t words. Well, obviously they were words, but it was like the sound had no shape. Even a baby’s babble was discernable and dissectible into syllables. Googoo gaga, whatever. This guard made sound without language.

He said it again.

Dream logic be damned. The stranger pointed inward, toward the city.

The guard spoke a couple more times before approaching, poking at the stranger and lifting the back of their shirt. No shoes, no weapons, no bags, nary a coin purse on this person.

The guard wasn’t paid enough to deny a beggar shelter. He grunted and waved the stranger through. Kindness during a squall was the least he could do.

This dream felt extensive. Fleshed-out. Though, the stranger could remember having a dream once where they were sure they had written an entire dissertation, with sources, so guards and gates didn’t seem that out of the ordinary. They were metaphorical.

That bright light wasn’t… the light, right? At the end of the tunnel? The stranger was suddenly very nervous about having gained easy passage through that gate, thinking it was a Charon and river Styx situation.

They trodded along regardless, presuming that they would wake up eventually once the dream had relayed its message. This wasn’t their idea of a wet dream. A sodden dream, more like. And what message was here? Was there something to write in their journal in the morning? Don’t go outside in thunderstorms. Yeah, that would do.

The building-lined streets opened into a park or something. There were little boxes lining the street, covered in cloth or tarps. Oh, a market. That was cool, the stranger thought. They liked markets with their trinkets and such to sell. An expensive dream mug for dream coffee sounded fun. It seemed closed, which was a pity.

The stranger walked around the circle, but the only interesting thing was a gazebo on one side, overlooking a large pond. A river? It was night now, and although a few lanterns dotted the streets and bridge in the distance, it wasn’t enough light to make out where they were or how good fishing was at this spot.

The gazebo offered some shelter from the rain, which had begun to feel cold over time. At first, it was a background feeling of being damp, overshadowed by sheer confusion and mental fog. Now, it was a frustrating chill that soaked down to their underwear.

Without an onlooker, the stranger stripped off their shirt and wrung it out, doing the same for their other garments before replacing them. It helped, some.

Maybe the moral of this dream was preparedness in the face of storms. It was a Boy Scout level of pedantic, but since the stranger was unwilling to consider that this was not a dream, they would have to accept wilderness training from their unconscious. Freud would have opinions on this. Probably.

They stretched out in the middle of the gazebo and closed their eyes, listening to the rain. They fell asleep reluctantly, stirring with the occasional thoughts of a spinning top and that blockbuster with Elliot Page. If the next dream level was more rain, they would be so done.

In the keep of the castle, an apprentice mage was being yelled at, the stain of oil crayon found on the toe of their boot. The fifth hero was never summoned because of a smudged locator rune, or that was the assumption.

Yet the stranger snored quietly in the distance, their existence entirely unknown to the kingdom.