There were a small number of houses just outside the town walls, but before long the narrow road passed through a series of small farms. The area looked peaceful, with farmers working out in their fields.

Richard and Jehan jogged north on the road out of town for about two miles before Richard had to slow down to a walk. I guess my endurance is starting to get better, but it's not a good look that after that jog I'm gasping for breath and the 56-year-old priest isn't even breathing hard.

They slowed to a walk, and Jehan started calmly telling Richard about the people they were going to visit.

“Harry Hatch moved into town about 15 years ago, and met his wife Kateryn, whose family owned this farm before her. He's well known in the area for being a skilled hunter...”

Richard noticed that even here, on a narrow grassy road with no other people around for miles, Jehan didn't mention Evelyn or that they were going to see her, so Richard didn't mention her either; still, it made him curious.

“Is there a reason you always seem to talk as if you're afraid people are listening in?”

Jehan nodded. “Yes, I suppose I do. There are a number of reasons. People who have a high Perception score can often listen in on you or read your lips from quite a good distance away, farther than you'd think. There are classes that are good at being stealthy who can follow you around without you ever noticing. And that's not to mention magical eavesdropping, which can be done in any number of ways. If you don't want people to overhear you say something, it's wise to just be in the habit of not saying it out loud.”

They walked for a few more miles. Farms became more spread out, with wooded patches between them, and some overgrown stretches where it looked like farms had been abandoned. Finally, after a few more miles, there was a well-maintained farm with a big farmhouse off on the left side of the road, and Jehan led them up to the door.

As they walked up the path towards the door, Richard saw that a large, strong-looking man was watching him through the window, holding a bow. As soon as the man saw them, he opened the door with a smile on his face.

“Hello, Jehan. And pardon me, are you Richard?”

Richard nodded. “It's nice to meet you.”

The man stuck out his hand, giving Richard a crushing handshake that bruised his hand. “You look just like Evelyn described you. I'm Harry. Evelyn was worried about you, wandering around in the woods, but it looks like you found your way here on your own.”

“He did more than that.” Jehan said. “This young man is going to be a real hero, I think.”

Harry smiled. “Is that so. Anyway, come in, come in. Bertrand is already here.”

Richard looked at Jehan questioningly, and Jehan responded. “Bertrand is an adventurer who was in the area, and a follower of Ikar. Once Evelyn told us about you being a champion of Ikar and being alone in the forest, Bertrand spent most of the next day searching for you. As soon as Alana in the inn let me know that you'd showed up there, I used a Sending spell to let Bertrand know that you had been found and that he could come back to the farmhouse.”

As soon as they were inside, Evelyn ran up and hugged Richard. “I'm glad you're ok.”

“I was worried about you too.” Richard said. “How did you escape from those dogs?”

“I'd like to hear the details of that too.” The man speaking was covered in pieces of mismatching armor, and had two swords, one on each hip, and Richard assumed this was Bertrand. “The forest around here is absolutely crawling with the Duke's soldiers, presumably looking for you, or maybe for both of you. I'm surprised either of you were able to get up to town without running into them.”

“Well, as soon as I thought I was a safe distance away from Richard...”

Talking, they moved to the table, and recounted their stories of the past few days. Evelyn told her story first of how she escaped the soldiers, and then Richard and Jehan told the story of their recent adventures.

When Richard got to the point of the story where his insight spell went out of control, Evelyn shook her head. “I was worried about something like this happening if you learned magic.”

“What do you mean?” Richard asked.

“If I remember correctly, you have a wisdom of less than 4, right?”

Richard nodded.

“Intelligence is what gives you your mana pool, what determines how much mana you have. A magic user who has more intelligence can throw around more powerful spells, bigger spells, flashier spells, and can cast more of them before running out of energy. Wisdom is important too, though. You probably have a really low rate of MP regeneration with your wisdom, so if you use all your MP it'll probably take you a long time to get it back, right?” Richard nodded. “Even more important, wisdom is what gives you control over your spells. With a wisdom that low, it's going to be very hard for you to shape spells properly, to control what the spell is going to be and how it's going to act, and there's a big risk of doing what you did and accidentally overloading a spell and maybe getting a backlash. The fact that you have such a large mana pool just makes your lack of control that much more dangerous. It's lucky you did that with just insight, instead of overloading and losing control of a fireball or something. That could have been...bad.”

Richard nodded slowly. “Ok, so what can I do to deal with this? Are there ways to get better at controlling a spell so it's safer for me to use?” No way in hell am I going to just give up on doing magic.

“There are things that can help, yes. As you practice more with a spell and get better with it, you have more control over that spell. There are skills you can learn that improve your control with spells.” She paused. “Neither of those are likely to be enough, though, not if you want magic to be reliable. There are a lot of different ways to do magic, but the two I know the best are the way a mage uses magic, and the way a wizard does. A wizard uses spells that are very detailed and precise, that lay out exactly what a spell is supposed to do in great detail and that leave no real room for error. The big disadvantage with that is that it takes a long time and a lot of focus to cast a wizard spell, often minutes, so wizards can't really use magic well while on the front lines of a battle. Mages can.”

“What a mage does is they become attuned to a specific element or type of magic, spend a lot of time becoming attuned to that one type of magic, and that allows them to cast spells related to that type of magic very quickly, with a spell you can cast in a few seconds. Mages are basically halfway between wizards and the pure elementalists who don't use spells at all. Most people who go to the MageLight Academy are encouraged to become fire mages, because that's what most militaries and militias want and that's what you see most often from adventuring magic users.”

She paused. “Mage spells still take a lot of wisdom to use well, though, unless you can become really, really well attuned with an element or type of magic. And getting there would probably be...dangerous.”

Richard nodded. “I understand. Can you help teach me?”

She pursed her lips “I have a few books you can look at, maybe you can start to learn some of the basics.” She chuckled. “I would have to be pretty hypocritical to warn you away from learning magic because it might be dangerous for you, but just try to be careful.”

They spent some more time talking about the rest of the events. This time, after Jehan launched into a description of how heroic Richard was in the inn, Richard cut him off and started to tell the story his own way. The two of them went back and forth.

“Is Alana ok?” Evelyn said quietly.

Richard felt a stab of guilt that he hadn’t even thought about that. How could I have forgotten that Evelyn had a friend who worked at the inn?

Fortunately, Jehan hadn't. “Don't worry, Evelyn. I checked on her. She was able to get out of the inn ok. Most of the patrons of the inn did; the abominations were spotted while they were slowly shambling down the street headed for the inn, and most people in the area fled.”

Richard paused. “You must have gone and asked around while I was at the temple, right?” Jehan nodded. “Were you able to find out anything about the summoner?”

Jehan shook his head. “Not really. He or she must have been only a block or so away from the inn when the abominations were summoned, though. Do you think we should try to investigate and find out who he is, Richard?”

Evelyn raised an eyebrow. “Investigate? Really? I would have expected you to want to get Richard away from danger at this point. Gods, I thought you'd want to bundle us both up and hide us somewhere for a year. I know he's the Champion of Ikar, and I know he's shown courage, but that doesn't mean he's ready to run off and confront a corrupted summoner. Richard doesn't even have a class yet!”

“You make good points, Evelyn, but I'm not going to second guess Richard. If he feels there's something he needs to do, then I'm going to help him do that. He is the Champion, and I am going to follow him wherever he leads. Even if it doesn't make sense. Maybe especially if it doesn't make sense.”

Richard laughed at that, and after a minute, so did Bertrand. “So, is this the start of one of those legends about the champions of Ikar?” Bertrand asked. “I agree with Jehan; if you're a champion of Ikar, even if you're young and not trained yet, I will be glad to join you in your adventures. Maybe I'll end up in one of those legends myself!”

“No. I am not...like them.” Richard shook his head. “I'm going to do what I can, and I've got some ideas, but you guys can't expect me to become one of those people I saw on those stained glass windows. Just treat me like a normal guy, ok?”

“You don't need to be like them, or like anyone, Richard. Champions of Ikar are always unique and are usually underestimated by their foes. But Ikar chose you for a reason, and I have faith in that.” Jehan said calmly.

“No. It wasn't like that. Choosing me was a mistake, from the start.”

Evelyn leaned forward. “How did you get chosen, Richard? You said you were summoned from another world, and you told me you actually met Ikar. What was that like?”

Richard sighed. “I didn't want to talk about this. I think if people find out the story it's likely to cause problems for me later on. But I think you guys deserve to know, if we're going to be in this together. I was on my own world, flying on what we call an airplane, which is a kind of non-magical flying device...”

Evelyn pulled her notebook back out and started writing down the story as he told it. Other than that, the rest of the room was quiet and listening intently. No one interrupted him until he was finished.

“So that's where you got that negative glory score. That's a relief, honestly; I was afraid you had done something terrible. But that wasn't your fault at all.” Evelyn said. The rest of them nodded.

“The point is that I was never supposed to be chosen. It was a mistake.”

“Perhaps Toran did make a mistake.” Jehan said, softly. “But Ikar knew that and chose you anyway. He could have chosen anyone in the world.”

Bertrand shook his head and snorted. “Maybe where you come from, people have conversations with gods all the time, but around here the story you told is already pretty fucking unusual. You said we should treat you like a normal guy, but normal guys don't usually have sit-down chats with their god. I think you'll end up being just as weird as any of those other champions of Ikar have been.”

Harry nodded. “Whatever you and Evelyn decide what you want to do, I'm going to help you any way I can.”

Kateryn, who'd been sitting there quietly through all of this, looked at Harry carefully. “You're going to go off and do something dangerous to try to get into history books, are you?”

“You know me better than that. I'm going to do what needs to be done.”

She leaned forward and kissed him. “I know. And I know you better then to try to stop you. Just...be careful.”

Jehan turned to Richard. “I think we're all behind you. And as far as I'm concerned, you're in charge of our little group.” He looked around the table, and everyone nodded. “So, what do you think we should do next?”

Richard looked around and could tell that everyone meant it. He took a deep breath and nodded. “Ok. I still don't know enough about this world to make many real decisions yet though. Anyone have any suggestions?”

Evelyn spoke up first. “Before I told them about you, Jehan was talking about sneaking me off to a temple of Ikar, to lay low until people stopped hunting for me, and Bertrand and Harry both said they would help get me there. We could both go there. I'm sure they would be glad to welcome the Champion of Ikar, and you could get any kind of training you need there.”

Bertrand shook his head. “Maybe in a week or two we could try to leave, but right now the Duke's soldiers are still searching the area around here. We should wait until they give up before we try to travel.”

Richard nodded. “Ok, then we'll stay here for a while. I do think we should try to investigate and find out who this summoner is that tried to kill us. Not that I want to fight him myself, I know better than that, but there's nothing stopping us from locating him and then sending the town guard or something there, right? They're going to spend all their time looking for Evelyn, so if we don't look into it they probably won't find the real summoner.” He paused. “And I'm going to need to train. I've been in this world for three days and I've ended up fighting monsters three times.”

Bertrand grinned. “I can help show you how to use that sword, if you like.”

Richard nodded. “So, before we go any farther into this; what exactly is a corrupted summoner?”

The room went quiet for a minute, then Evelyn answer. “Not long ago, there were a fair number of summoners. It was a common kind of magic user, and one that was very well respected. They could create portals to nearby worlds, and either travel back and forth themselves or call allies into our world to fight for them. The world of Eirae was supposed to be a beautiful and mostly wild world, with vast untamed forests and jungles, and summoners called forth all kinds of fantastic beasts from that world. The world of Kristalli on the other hand held a civilization more advanced than ours, billions of people living in massive cities, with wondrous forms of transportation. There were maybe a half dozen other worlds that summoners commonly summoned creatures from or traveled to. Even then, there were summoners who went bad, who forged pacts with demons or who pulled things from dark worlds, but they were rare."

“Over time, though, more and more of those worlds have become dangerous, or toxic, or dead, or wrong somehow. Things summoned from those worlds became darker, or twisted versions of themselves, and even the summoners themselves began to go...wrong. And that was happening in more and more worlds.”

“The last nearby world to go was Kristalli, about twenty years ago. On that world a strange kind of corruption seemed to be spreading. More and more often, when someone tried to summon a monster or open a portal from that world, they were twisted, and tainted. And with the fall of Kristalli, there weren't any worlds close enough for most summoners to reach that hadn't fallen in to darkness. Summoners either gave up and stopped summoning, or those who didn't or couldn’t eventually became corrupted themselves. They became insane, or evil, or monstrous.”

“Those abominations you fought...those used to be the people of Kristalli. As far as we can tell, all the major cities of that world are now so flooded with corruption that normal people slowly become corrupted and can eventually turn into the mindless monsters that you saw. Everything in that world has become tainted; plants, animals, the water, the air, the mana, the land.”

Richard shook his head. “So, if enough of those things were summoned to this world...”

“If that corruption ever gained a real foothold in this world and started to spread, we could be in a great deal of trouble.” Jehan said quietly. “Fear of that, or something equally bad, is one of the main reasons the laws against forbidden magics are so strictly enforced.”

After that, the room went silent for a few minutes.

“Ok. This evening, before it gets dark, maybe I can get in a few hours of training. Tomorrow, I'll go back into town with Jehan, and we'll try to quietly ask some questions. Maybe someone spotted something, and maybe we can get a hint as to who the summoner is and where they went. For all we know they may have already left town, but if not, maybe we can find something out.”