If I had to imagine Ms. Jun’s reaction, she probably would have squawked some combination of surprise and outrage. But if so, I was completely unaware of that. The moment I touched the portal, it was like the world blinked out around me. I found myself in a featureless black place. It felt wrong to even call it a void, because a void evokes image of space and stars and there was nothing. Just black as far as the eye could see, as far as the skin could feel. I wasn’t sure how I was seeing anything, even myself. It wasn’t like there was a light source anywhere that I could discern. It was as if the space just was, and I was in it.
After a beat, I realized it wasn’t entirely featureless. Around me, floating in seemingly random placements, orientations and even at varying heights were a table, a teapot and three dolls. The table looked nice enough but the rest looked absolutely hideous. I had a feeling that Ms. Jun had not thrown her favorite dolls or teapots into the portal but had, perhaps, done some housekeeping.
Shortly after I noticed them, there was a sense of movement. I don’t know if I headed towards them or if they came towards me, but emerging from the black there were now seven columns of light that stretched as high and as low as I could perceive. I felt like the lights were looking at me.
“YOU WERE NOT THE ONE SUMMONED.” The voice echoed in the space around me. It boomed at a volume that felt like it should have hurt my ears, but I couldn’t feel any pain. It was more like the voice had just simply appeared in my head. It was overwhelming and I grabbed my head out of reflex thinking that something should hurt. “HOW HAVE YOU COME?”
“I … touched the portal? Now I’m here. I don’t know what happened.” I looked at the seven bands of light.
One of the bands, third from the right, condensed and slimmed down until it collapsed and a humanoid figure only a little larger than me stepped forward. Her dress looked like nothing I’d seen in life or fantasy, a high starched color and a stiff heavy fabric that looked like it could stop a weapon and covered everything but her head and hands. Any illusion of humanity, though, was lost by the fact that the entirety of the figure, including clothes and skin, was monochromatic - the same rich blue as the column of light had been.
When she spoke, her voice sounded a lot like the louder version – like a general giving orders - just a more tolerable volume. She also sounded confused. “You were not the one Summoned. It has been years since that Summoning. Others were successfully completed between then and now. What went wrong?”
“Years? Ms. Jun said it had only been a week!”
“Your sense of time is immaterial to my question. We must identify the flaw in this Summoning to make sure it is not repeated.”
“Who are you? What is going on?
“Your confusion is also immaterial to my question. Answer my question.” The woman-thing’s tone of voice sounded somehow even more commanding.
“I don’t know what you were expecting, so I can’t say fully. My neighbor, Ms. Jun, said that the portal showed up in her living room a week ago. I just got back in town today and saw it when I was there to help her. When I heard about what happened to people who went through them, I decided that I wanted to experience that. So I touched the portal.”
“Unacceptable. You were not the one Summoned. You should not have entered the portal.”
“ENOUGH.” A new voice joined as the third from the left bar of light, this one an amber color, started to shrink. It solidified into what looked like a young man wearing an open vest and laced up leather pants over bare feet, all in the same amber of his column of light. Where the woman had seemed glide forward, he sauntered. His voice sounded less like a general, and more like a cheerful friend, albeit a very loud one. “He may not have been the original target of the Summoning, sister, but it binds him all the same. The spell has taken and we should follow the protocols.”
The other columns of light collapsed into humanoid figures. There were two more men, both in loose, enshrouding robes, almost twins except that one was golden and the other silver. A green column collapsed into a woman clothed in what appeared to be a dress made of swirling water with hair of emerald fire. A pink column collapsed into a third woman, although she didn’t look up at the assembly, remaining bent over a giant book that had materialized with her. The final column, an iridescent light that shimmered with a cascade of all the colors, did not assume a humanoid form but rather remained as a vaguely column shaped, just on the same scale as the others.
The first woman threw up her hands in disgust and walked away. It was the amber man who picked up the conversation. “You will have to forgive my sister. The Summoning which brought you here was made with a pact that used her power, and since you have taken up that side rather than the intended recipient, you have essentially made the Goddess of Honor break her word.” He smiled with apparent mirth, although it was hard to read a face that looked to be carved from solid amber. “Not something she enjoys doing.”
A goddess … and it’s his sister … I’d never really been much of a faithful man. Not exactly irreligious, just not super bothered. I went to church for the big holidays, but to be talking to what, by their words, were gods and goddesses (at least, if they were telling the truth, but it was hard to disbelieve with everything else going on). “I’m … uh … sorry? I don’t think anybody on my world really knows what’s going on with the portals. They just open and people go through them.”
I could see the green goddess step up and pull the blue one away for a quick conversation. The blue one nodded and then walked off into the distance, fading from sight quicker than was natural – although what that meant in a black void was probably a little meaningless. I think I might be going a little insane.
The man … god … in front of me frowned. “We should probably hurry this along. This space is not good for mortal wellbeing.” He looked around at the others and his shoulders seemed to slump a little as he noticed the blue one wasn’t there. “Very well, I guess I’ll do the honors. You won’t get the full speech, I’m afraid I’ve never paid attention to what my sister said when she dealt with the others. The short version: you are currently being brought to another Realm, summoned by its people by use of a holy ritual. They do this because they believe that you will be able to solve the problem that they set for you, which will be revealed to you on your arrival. We gods inserted ourselves into the process to make it so that you would actually be useful when you got there.
“This is a world where the powerful wield powers which your world does not possess. Without our intervention, you would not be capable of rendering assistance to our people. Therefore, magical aptitude needs to be awoken in you. This aptitude is not ability, that will only come with training. But you need the seed planted.” He turned and made a come-here gesture and the column of color-shifting light floated over to them.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
It apparently did not feel the need to moderate its volume to a more human level. The voice sounded like an echo of a shout in a deep canyon. “MAGIC IS MY DIVINE SPARK WITHIN YOUR SOUL: WITH IT, YOU WILL BEND THE FORCES OF REALITY TO YOUR WILL, HOWEVER YOU WILL. BUT FIRST, IT WILL ILLUMINATE YOUR SOUL AND TAKE ON YOUR OWN ASPECT SO THAT YOU MAY USE IT.” Tendrils appeared from the column and then shot towards a space just below my belly button faster than my eyes could process their speed.
It felt like I had been struck by lightning, submerged in an ice bath and then put on a sun-burned rock along with other sensations that defied expression. It felt like life was being simultaneously pumped into me and drained away. After a moment, I felt a touch on my mind, although at a volume that felt more like a jackhammer.
“THE RAW FORCE OF MAGIC CONTAINS WITHIN IT ALL POTENTIAL. YOU ARE MORTAL, YOU CANNOT USE ALL OF IT. MAGIC WILL WORK BEST WHEN YOU ALIGN ITS PURPOSE AND DESIGN WITH THE PURPOSE AND DESIGN OF YOUR SOUL. IMPRINT ON THE MAGIC IN YOUR CORE THE NATURE OF YOUR SOUL. WHAT IS IMPORTANT TO YOU? WHO ARE YOU?”
I gathered that this was not a question that I needed to answer to the being currently doing something to my innards. It sounded like it was more prompted to make me think, to figure out what my soul’s imprint was. The only trouble was, it wasn’t really a question you asked yourself very often: who am I?
I mean … I’m Kyle Rodan, but that doesn’t feel like what is being asked here. I don’t know, I’m an analyst? I take information, mull it over and produce ideas based on it, figure out what’s going on. I’d like to think I’m helpful to people, I don’t get too riled up too easily. Although that brought to mind my aggravation with Ms. Jun, the neighbor who just needed help with her lightbulbs. OK, so I can get irritated, but it’s just a flash! It’s not like I’m a rage machine or anything. And I helped her with those damn lightbulbs! Although from the stories my parents told of me when I was younger, I may have been quite a bit wilder and angrier when I was younger But that’s what maturing was for after all. The forces roiling through me gave a second pulse.
“WHO ARE YOU?”
Umm … I like swimming? I like storms, they’re just so majestic. Computers are cool too, although you can’t take them out into storms … A painful shock ran through my body. OK … dating profile this is not, I guess it doesn’t care about hobbies. Of course, I don’t think most of the people on dating profiles care about hobbies either, just about who has the best abs or ass, depending on preferences. Nobody cares about the personal… Another shock.
“WHO ARE YOU?”
Alright, fine! Stupid magic, no distractions. I want something more out of my life! I want my life to mean something more than just some data crunched and tucked in a corner. I want my name to mean something to people. When they hear Kyle Rodan, I want their answer to be something other than ‘who’!
The shocking/boiling/burning/freezing sensation in my body faded until I could just feel what felt like a spark settle in my … something. It felt a little like when I was careless and my finger got between a plug and the socket and a small amount of electricity coursed through my body. Except it wasn’t in my finger but in the pit of my stomach.
“IT IS COMPLETE. THE MAGIC HAS IMPRINTED.” The column of light retracted its tentacles and drifted away.
The amber man turned back to me and frowned in consternation, finger tapping against his lower lip. “Well … that makes things a little more difficult. We can’t send you to the people who did the summoning. With those affinities, they’d kill you on sight. Heck, with that strong of a Mind Affinity, most places would kill you. My sister may be fine with that, but that’s what I get for being the compassionate one in the family.” He turned and called over his shoulder. “Hey bookkeeper, I could use some help.”
The pink goddess’s book shut with a thud that seemed to send a physical wave of force through the space around her as she looked up. Surprise covered her face and then, while I blinked, she covered the distance between the two of us and stood next to the amber man. Her voice sounded the next most unnatural after the column of magic. Like a pen scratching paper. “Hmm … a curious mix of affinities. You are correct to be concerned.”
“Um… Excuse me … uh … divinities? Sorry, I don’t know how to address you. But what do you mean, mix of affinities? What are affinities?”
The two laughed, one a soothing baritone and the other sounding like a pen scratching something out furiously. The goddess with the giant book continued. “Did you not examine who you were as the magic raged in your system? Give it a sense of yourself to imprint on? Affinities are the different types of magic, the way that it can impact the world. By allowing magic to imprint on you, some of those affinities are more prominent than others. These affinities will define the types of magic you are able to use, or at least which ways of using magic will come more easily to you than others.”
“And how do I know my affinities?”
“Who are you?”
“Huh?”
“When the magic imprinted on you, what image of yourself did you give it?”
“Oh … my internal monologue was something of a mess at the time. Do you want to hear all of it?” I looked at her sheepishly, I didn’t really want to go through repeating the whole ramble. Some of it had been delirious from the pain and the last bit had been quite angry.
“There is no need. I am the goddess of knowledge, I already know. But then so do you.” She smiled at me in a way which I think was supposed to be reassuring. But a smiling solid pink face seemed like something out of a cartoonish nightmare to me. She opened the book which had been hanging in front of her and turned it around to face me. There, written at the top of the page was my name and then a chart with a long list of words and a number written next to them.
Kyle Rodan
Mind
100
Storm*
92
Void
91
Water
81
Holy
77
Darkness
70
Light
63
Corrosion
52
Life
41
Nature
35
Sun
31
Earth
30
Soul
30
The list continued on for what felt like was further than it was physically possible for a book of that size to extend, the numbers getting smaller as the table descended. The last rows were a series of entries that just had a zero next to them. “Huh, what are all of these? Why bother showing them if they’re zero? I assume that means I don’t have any affinity?”
“The goddess of knowledge knows all the iterations of the information, even that which is irrelevant. These were unique affinities of heroes past and present which, since they are unique, you naturally do not possess.”
The amber man spoke up, retrieving control over the conversation. “Yes, but you present a difficulty. Your affinities are an odd combination and involve several that are taboo. The people who cast the summoning you hijacked are at war with void mages and most void mages would see a holy mage as an enemy. Then there is your Mind affinity …”
The goddess snapped in his face, irritation at his interruption clear. “Send him to Colvale, they will not care.”
“But that is far from his Summoning Quest, he will struggle to complete it.”
“So don’t. You are the one who cares if he lives. Colvale is the only place where I know he will survive.” The way she stressed the words ‘I know’ seemed to carry a deeper meaning. Which … makes sense from the Goddess of Knowledge, I suppose.
The amber colored god paced agitatedly. I ventured a comment. “If it helps, I don’t really care about the Summoning Quest. You said I wasn’t what they wanted anyway, so whoever summoned me wants isn’t super important to me.”
“But the Summoning requires a Quest, it was a condition for the power it represents: an end point. Your Summoning involves a Quest.”
The goddess interjected. “You are not the Goddess of Honor. Why do you care about the proper structure? The Quest exists…”
“WE HAVE WASTED ENOUGH TIME ON THIS ONE.” A new voice joined the others as the woman in the green dress came over. In this voice was the crashing of waves, the grinding of tectonic plates, a whirlwind and the roar of a wildfire. “ULENIA’S PROPOSAL IS SOUND, DITHERING CHANGES NOTHING. NOW WE MUST GIVE THIS HERO A DIVINE TOKEN TO IDENTIFY HIS QUEST, AND KIBIRI TOOK HER NORMAL ONE.” She waved an imperious hand and a copy of the page from Goddess of Knowledge’s book floated up into the air and over to my hands. It looked like the pink goddess may have wanted to object but she quailed at a look from the other goddess.
I looked down at it in astonishment. The giant table had been collapsed and now only contained the rows where the number was greater than 50. The other change was underneath my name, where there was now a single sentence.
Summons Quest: Complete the Heroic Task set by the Archduke of Dagva-Nor.
“NOW HERO, GO FORTH INTO THE WORLD. ANSWER THE PRAYERS OF OUR PEOPLE AND COMPLETE THEIR QUEST. ONLY WHEN IT IS COMPLETED WILL YOU BE RETURNED TO THE WORLD FROM WHICH YOU CAME.”
With another imperious wave of her hand, the green goddess sent me rocketing away from where the seven divinities had gathered. However, instead of falling into darkness once more, this time I fell into a pool of every brightening light until everything around me was white.