Summoned by Mistake

The summoning circle burned through my sneakers before I realized I wasn't in my apartment anymore.

I stumbled backward, smoke curling from the rubber soles, and my shoulder slammed into something solid. Not a wall. Warm. I spun around and found myself staring at polished steel—a breastplate, ornate enough to belong in a museum, stretched across a chest that suggested its owner didn't skip any meals.

"You will cease movement." The voice came from above the breastplate, female and sharp enough to cut glass.

I froze. Mostly because my brain was still trying to process the fact that I'd been microwaving leftover pad thai thirty seconds ago, and now I was standing in what looked like a cathedral designed by someone who'd never heard of OSHA regulations. Candles everywhere. Stone floor. Vaulted ceiling lost in shadows. And the circle I'd just stepped out of—still glowing with symbols that hurt to look at directly.

"This is incorrect." A different voice, male, coming from my left. I turned my head slowly, hands still raised in what I hoped was a universal gesture of 'please don't murder me.'

The speaker wore robes that probably cost more than my car. Midnight blue, embroidered with silver thread that seemed to move when I wasn't looking directly at it. His face was all sharp angles and disapproval, like a disappointed professor who'd just caught you cheating on the final.

"The ritual was precise," he continued, and I noticed he was talking to someone behind me, not to me. "We followed the Codex of Summonings to the letter. The components were exact. The incantations were—"

"Clearly not exact enough, Archmagus." The woman with the breastplate moved into my peripheral vision. Blonde hair pulled back so tight it had to hurt. Eyes the color of a winter sky, currently examining me the way you'd examine a bug that had crawled into your salad. "This is not the Hero of Prophecy."

"I'm not any kind of hero," I said, because apparently my mouth worked faster than my brain. "I'm a data analyst. Well, I was a data analyst until the company downsized last month, so technically I'm unemployed, but—"

"Silence." The blonde woman didn't raise her voice. Didn't need to. Something in her tone made my jaw snap shut.

The Archmagus—because apparently that was a real job title here—stepped closer. His robes whispered against the stone. "We must consider the possibility of interference. The Veil has been unstable. Perhaps the summoning pulled from an adjacent reality rather than—"

"Perhaps your ritual was flawed." A third voice, this one coming from the shadows near the far wall. I couldn't see the speaker, but the temperature in the room dropped about ten degrees. "Perhaps the great Archmagus Veldrin Kross is not as infallible as the Church would have us believe."

Kross's expression didn't change, but his hands tightened in his sleeves. "We do not question the will of the divine, Seris. We interpret it. If this summoning brought forth someone unexpected, then perhaps—"

"Perhaps you wasted three months of resources and the kingdom's last functional mana reservoir on a mistake." The shadow-voice moved, and I caught a glimpse of dark hair and darker clothing. "But please, continue explaining how this is all part of a greater plan."

My sneakers squeaked against the stone as I shifted my weight. All three of them looked at me. The blonde woman's hand dropped to the sword at her hip.

"I'm just gonna..." I gestured vaguely toward the door. Assuming there was a door. Assuming I could find it in this maze of candles and judgment. "I'll see myself out. This is obviously some kind of mistake, probably a shared hallucination from bad takeout, and I should really—"

"You will remain exactly where you are standing." The blonde woman's fingers wrapped around her sword hilt. Not drawing it. Not yet. But the threat was clear enough.

"Right. Okay. Staying put." I lowered my hands slowly. "Can someone maybe explain what's happening? Because one minute I was heating up noodles, and the next I'm in what looks like a fantasy novel convention gone wrong."

Kross exchanged a glance with the blonde woman. Something passed between them, some kind of silent communication that I wasn't privy to. Then he turned back to me, and his expression shifted into something that might have been sympathy if it wasn't so obviously calculated.

"Forgive us," he said, and the formal cadence of his speech made it sound like he was reading from a script. "You must understand, we have performed a sacred ritual. A summoning of great importance. The kingdom of Astoria stands on the precipice of destruction, and we sought to call forth a champion from beyond the Veil. A hero of legend who could turn the tide of the coming darkness."

"And instead you got me." I looked down at myself. Stained t-shirt with a faded logo from a tech conference I'd attended three years ago. Jeans with a hole in the left knee. The smoking sneakers. "Yeah, I can see how that would be disappointing."

"Disappointing does not begin to encompass—" the shadow-voice started, but Kross raised one hand.

"We must not be hasty. The summoning succeeded. The circle activated. The Veil parted. That this young man appeared suggests the ritual worked, merely not as we anticipated." He tilted his head, studying me with eyes that reminded me of a scientist examining a particularly interesting specimen. "Tell us your name."

"Jake. Jake Mercer." I rubbed the back of my neck. "Look, I don't know what you think I can do, but I'm really not hero material. I can barely keep a houseplant alive. Last week I got winded walking up three flights of stairs because the elevator was broken. And I'm pretty sure the most dangerous thing I've ever fought was a particularly aggressive spider in my bathroom."

The blonde woman made a sound that might have been a laugh if it had contained any humor. "You will submit to examination. We must determine if you possess any latent abilities that justify your presence."

"Examination?" I took a step back. My heel hit the edge of the summoning circle, and pain shot up my leg like I'd touched a live wire. I yelped and stumbled forward, directly into the blonde woman's personal space.

Her sword was out before I could blink. The point pressed against my throat, cold and sharp and extremely convincing.

"I said you will cease movement."

"Not moving. Definitely not moving." I could feel my pulse hammering against the blade. "The circle shocked me. I wasn't trying to—"

"The circle should be inert." Kross moved closer, his earlier composure cracking slightly. "The summoning is complete. There should be no residual energy."

"And yet." The shadow-voice—Seris—emerged fully from the darkness. She was younger than I'd expected, maybe mid-twenties, with sharp features and eyes that held the kind of intelligence that made you feel stupid just by proximity. She wore practical clothing, all blacks and grays, with leather bracers on her forearms covered in symbols I didn't recognize. "The circle is still active. Which means either your ritual is not complete, Archmagus, or something is very wrong."

The sword at my throat didn't waver, but the blonde woman's attention shifted slightly toward Kross. "Explain this."

"We cannot explain what we do not yet understand." Kross approached the circle, careful not to touch it. "The energy signature is... unusual. It should have dissipated upon successful summoning. Instead it appears to be drawing power from—" He stopped. Looked at me. "From him."

"From me?" My voice came out higher than I would have liked. "I don't have any power. I can't even get my phone to connect to Bluetooth half the time."

Seris crouched near the circle's edge, producing a small device from her belt. It looked like a compass had a baby with a mood ring, all spinning needles and shifting colors. She held it toward me, and the needles went crazy, spinning so fast they blurred.

"Fascinating." She didn't sound fascinated. She sounded angry. "He is generating a mana field. Substantial enough to sustain the circle's activation. Which should be impossible for someone with no training."

"I am not generating anything." I tried to keep my voice steady despite the sword still kissing my throat. "I don't even know what mana is. I thought that was a video game thing."

"Video game." The blonde woman repeated the words like they were in a foreign language. "You will clarify this term."

"It's—" I started, then stopped. How do you explain video games to someone who apparently lived in a world where magic was real and summoning circles were standard operating procedure? "It's entertainment. Stories you interact with. On a computer. Which is a machine that—you know what, never mind. Not important right now."

The sword pressed a fraction harder. "You will not determine what is important."

"Seraphine." Kross's voice carried a note of warning. "We must not damage him before we understand what we are dealing with."

Seraphine. So that was the blonde woman's name. She held my gaze for another three seconds, then withdrew the sword in one smooth motion. I exhaled and resisted the urge to touch my throat to check for blood.

"Your readings, Seris?" Kross extended his hand toward the younger woman.

She stood, tucking the device back into her belt. "Unstable. The mana field fluctuates wildly. No pattern I can identify. It is as if he is generating power without any control or awareness." Her eyes narrowed. "Or he is feigning ignorance very convincingly."

"I'm not feigning anything!" The words came out louder than I intended. "I don't know what you want from me, but I can't help you. I'm nobody. I work—worked—in a cubicle. I eat cereal for dinner. My most exciting Friday night involves binge-watching shows I've already seen three times. I am the least magical person you could possibly summon."

"And yet the circle responds to you." Kross moved around me in a slow circle, maintaining his distance. "The Veil opened for you. You crossed between worlds. These are not the actions of someone with no power."

"Maybe your ritual just grabbed the wrong person." I turned to keep him in view, which meant turning my back on Seris. Bad idea. I could feel her watching me, calculating. "Maybe there's a hero standing in his apartment right now wondering where his pad thai went, and we just got swapped by accident."

"The summoning does not make mistakes." Kross stopped in front of me. "It calls to those with the potential to answer. If you are here, it is because some part of you responded to that call."

"The only thing I respond to is my alarm clock, and even that's hit or miss."

Seraphine made that humorless sound again. "You will cease your attempts at levity. This is not—"

The summoning circle flared. Bright enough that I had to close my eyes against the glare. Heat washed over me, and I heard Seris swear—actual swearing, creative and multilingual—as something crashed to the floor.

When I opened my eyes, the circle was dark. Completely inert. The symbols that had been glowing moments ago were just scratches in the stone now, lifeless and cold.

And I felt different. Not better. Not worse. Just... aware. Like I'd been walking around with earplugs in and someone had just removed them. The world was suddenly louder, brighter, more present.

"What did you do?" Seraphine's sword was out again, but this time she wasn't pointing it at me. She was scanning the room, looking for threats.

"Nothing! I didn't do anything!" I held up my hands. "It just—"

"The circle has collapsed." Seris was back on her feet, her device out again. The needles weren't spinning anymore. They were pointing. At me. All of them. "The energy did not dissipate. It transferred. Into him."

Kross's face had gone pale. "That should not be possible. The summoning energy is meant to facilitate the crossing, not to—" He stopped. Stared at me. "You absorbed it."

"I didn't absorb anything." But even as I said it, I could feel something moving under my skin. Not painful. Not exactly. But present. Like a second heartbeat, out of sync with the first.

"We must contain this." Kross turned to Seraphine. "Take him to the holding cells. We cannot risk—"

"You will not imprison him without understanding what has occurred." Seris stepped between us, her hand on a knife I hadn't noticed before. "If he has absorbed the summoning energy, then forcing him into a warded cell could trigger a catastrophic release. Or did you forget what happened the last time someone tried to contain raw mana in a confined space?"

Seraphine's face hardened. "The Archmagus gives the orders here."

"The Archmagus nearly killed us all with his ritual." Seris didn't raise her voice, but the words landed like punches. "I will not stand by while he makes another mistake."

"Seris." Kross's tone carried a warning. "You overstep."

"I speak truth." She didn't look away from Seraphine. "You summoned something you do not understand. You brought him here without his consent. And now you want to lock him away because your ritual had consequences you did not anticipate. How very typical."

The tension in the room ratcheted up about six notches. Seraphine's hand tightened on her sword. Kross's expression shifted from disapproving professor to something colder, more dangerous.

And I was standing in the middle of it, feeling that strange second heartbeat getting stronger, faster, like it was responding to the conflict around me.

"Maybe everyone could just calm down for a second." I tried to inject some reason into the situation. "We're all stressed. This didn't go how anyone planned. But fighting about it isn't going to—"

The heartbeat under my skin spiked. Pain lanced through my chest, sharp enough to drive me to my knees. I heard someone shout—Seris, maybe—and then hands were on my shoulders, steadying me.

"Breathe." Seraphine's voice, closer than I expected. "You will breathe slowly. In through your nose. Out through your mouth."

I tried to follow the instructions, but the pain was spreading. Down my arms. Into my legs. Like my blood had turned to fire and was burning its way through every vein.

"The energy is destabilizing." Kross's voice, distant and clinical. "We must suppress it before—"

"Before what?" Seris demanded. "Before he explodes? Before he tears a hole in reality? Be specific, Archmagus."

"Before he dies." Kross's hands moved in complex patterns, and I felt something cool wash over me. The pain didn't stop, but it dulled slightly. Became manageable. "The human body is not meant to contain this much raw mana. Without training, without control, it will consume him from the inside."

"Then teach him control." Seraphine's hands were still on my shoulders, holding me upright. "You are the Archmagus. You have trained dozens of mages. Teach him."

"In the time we have? Impossible. It takes years to learn proper mana manipulation. He has minutes at best before—"

The pain spiked again, and this time I couldn't hold back the scream. It tore out of my throat, raw and animal, and the candles around the room exploded. Not went out. Exploded. Glass and wax flying in every direction.

Darkness swallowed the cathedral. Complete and absolute. I couldn't see my own hands in front of my face.

And in that darkness, I felt something shift. The pain was still there, but it was changing. Becoming something else. Something that felt almost like...

"Jake Mercer." A new voice. Female. Coming from everywhere and nowhere. "You have been called. You have answered. And now you must choose."

"Choose what?" I managed to gasp out the words between waves of pain.

"Whether to burn." The voice was closer now. I could feel breath on my face, cold and sharp. "Or to become the flame."

Light returned in a rush. Not from candles. From me. My skin was glowing, soft blue-white, bright enough to cast shadows on the walls.

Seraphine had stumbled back, her sword raised. Kross was chanting something, his hands moving faster. Seris stood frozen, her device hanging forgotten at her side, staring at me with an expression I couldn't read.

And standing directly in front of me, close enough to touch, was a woman who definitely hadn't been there before.

She was tall. Taller than Seraphine. Dressed in armor that looked like it had been forged from starlight and bad decisions. Her hair floated around her head like she was underwater, silver-white and moving with a wind I couldn't feel.

Her eyes were the worst part. They were empty. Not blind. Empty. Like looking into a void that looked back.

"Hello, Jake Mercer." Her lips didn't move when she spoke. "I have been waiting for you."