"Truly great Summoners can survive in any terrain. They must have that ability; either brave the wild for powerful Summons, or remain… mediocre, at best."

- Headmaster Faderius Blask

Percy’s throat ran raw as he screamed. The fall was long, and as he fell, the air around him grew hotter. He stopped screaming because of the pain, and had the time to wonder why wherever he was falling was so hot. And why was the sky a blue circle surrounded by black?

That was before his body slammed into a hard black rock surface, a landing that should’ve hurt. A landing that probably should’ve cracked open his skull, and shattered all of his bones.

And yet, somehow, Percy was just fine. Aside from his being gagged and bound, anyway. And his sore throat. And his bruised dignity. But otherwise, somehow, he’d survived that fall without so much as a scratch.

After the shock of his near-death wore off, Percy shuffled himself to survey the area around him. The tears in his eyes had long since dried, so they wouldn’t blur his vision.

If only there had been something to see. Because where Percy was seemed to be completely cast in shadow. And yet, very hot. He was thankful the idiots had tied his wrists together in front of him, because it allowed him to crawl across the warm stone underneath him until he unfortunately discovered a sharp rock jutting from the ground.

Percy inhaled sharply as his palm was sliced open, then gritted his teeth and used the rock to cut off his bindings. Next, he removed the gag. He quickly reused it, though, to bandage his bleeding palm, an action that was made much more difficult by the parchment that still trapped his fingers together.

“I’m really getting sick of this paper,” he said, staring into the darkness and waiting for his eyes to adjust. Once they did, he could see vague outlines of the shapes around him. Looking up, he could see the sky far above—the same circle of blue he’d seen while falling, only smaller. Percy found himself once again asking the first question he had since waking up.

“Where the heck am I?”

A light glimmered in the corner of his vision, and he glanced down to see his gauntlet was blinking faintly. He shrugged. It was worth a shot.

“Hey gauntlet, where am I?”

The text formed above his hand once again, providing him an answer.

You are in Silvar Volcano.

“Ah. The volcano…” Percy realized. He frowned. “Wait! How the heck did they get me all the way here and then up the side of the volcano in only… well, it had to be four hours?”

That seemed like rather a long hike for the time. Not to mention that they’d carried him the whole way. Either those three were in tremendous physical condition… or something magical was afoot.

It was impossible to know.

“Well, I wish I had a light.” Percy commented. “That would be handy.”

And suddenly, he did. His faintly glowing gauntlet shined a bright ray from his palm like a spotlight.

“That’s taking my request for something handy a bit literally, but… thanks? I guess?”

His knuckle was still blinking, and Percy remembered what he’d done earlier to address it. He tapped the light with his wrapped right hand, and a new message appeared.

Your barrier has been destroyed by a hostile attack. You have been protected.

“I almost died,” the boy stated plainly.

At least the barrier had only shattered after Percy crashed into the volcano’s rocky interior, rather than before thanks to Ethan’s kick. For some reason, though, Percy couldn’t find it within himself to worry about what had been. Right now, his hand ached, and he needed to get out of this place before he actually died.

With a relaxed air, surprising even himself, Percy shined his hand around him, looking for any way out. “You know,” he realized, shaking his gauntleted fist. “It could be helpful if this thing did more than just light up. Fireball! Lightning Strike! Teleportation!”

But the gauntlet didn’t respond.

“Well, it was worth a shot,” he commented. Surveying the area again, Percy could see that he was surrounded by a sheer circle of dark rock. And upon closer inspection, he realized he was standing on a craggy obsidian island.

A craggy obsidian island surrounded by solid pahoehoe lava. It was molten rock that had furled over itself before solidifying. Percy remembered learning about it in his Earth Science class not too long ago. It generated a significant amount of radiant heat due to all of the magma flowing underneath, but if you broke the crust, the heat amplified incredibly.

He didn’t want to go walking all over it if there was any way to avoid it. At least the island was near one of the volcano’s interior walls, so it wasn’t like he had to walk from the exact middle of the hardened lake of lava.

“Okay… Best plan I can come up with is to get over to the wall somehow and then… climb it?” Percy had never been rock climbing before, so he’d have to figure it out as he went. Being an orphan didn’t afford many extracurricular activities, after all. In this single day, even including the fall he thought would end his miserable life, he’d had more fun than he could remember having in his entire life. He couldn’t suppress the chuckle as it turned into a full belly laugh. The ground rumbled underneath him.

---

Another crackling explosion in the air, and Percy knew it had already been about an hour since he’d landed at the bottom of the steep volcano. And he’d made no progress toward finding a way out. He’d kicked tiny little chips of obsidian off the island and discovered that the pahoehoe lava was not as solid as he’d hoped. In fact, a larger chunk of obsidian had broken a hole in the outer shell before sinking into the churning orange liquid within with a plop and a sizzle. And then the area nearby had gotten much hotter.

And Percy had walked all over the tiny black island, discovering nothing but more obsidian, and a few chunks of dirt that might’ve fallen down with him.

With a sigh, he sat on a ledge that jutted out at a perfect height for him. “Am I seriously stuck here? Well, maybe I’ll set the record for new life speedruns…”

As Percy laid back against the jagged rock—a truly uncomfortable sensation—he stared up at the sky, which hadn’t darkened at all since he’d arrived. It was the same clear blue sky. The only time it changed was when the occasional wispy cloud floated across, or when a firework exploded, signaling the passage of time.

He sighed into the silent hot air, closing his eyes. “I wonder if next time I wake up… will I still be in a world of magic?”

The volcano remained predictably silent, and Percy’s question was left unanswered as he dozed off. At least, it was… until a whisper floated into his ear.

“Find it.”

Percy’s eyes shot open at the sound of the scratchy voice, and his head snapped sideways to look at what had spoken. Gleaming yellow eyes peered out of the darkness, and Percy hastily directed his gauntlet at the creature.

The light washed over its body—a squat, green-scaled reptilian body covered only by a ragtag loincloth. Crooked teeth stuck from its mouth like shattered glass, and a silver goatee grew from its chin, an iridescent black bead bringing it to a fine point.

The creature’s pupils—horizontal like a sheep’s—instantly shrank, and it hissed. It jumped, waving its clawed hands while it kicked its hooved feet, spinning in a circle like it was dancing. Percy realized that the creature probably wasn’t a fan of light, and angled his gauntlet downwards. He didn’t want to scare this thing off… or did he?

Now that he thought of it, how had this creature gotten here? Percy had walked all over the small island earlier, and this guy certainly hadn’t been around then. He pulled out his buzzing tome, reading the name of the creature as soon as it appeared.

#132: Kobold Caretaker

A kobold? He wondered. Aren’t those the little guys with dog heads?

Percy didn’t know much about fantasy races besides elves, goblins, and dwarves. He’d read a nearly destroyed copy of The Hobbit that the orphanage kept around, which had several pages missing near the end, but that was the extent of his knowledge.

Either way, as Percy examined the growling kobold, he realized that it didn’t matter what he thought he knew about magic and fantasy. This new world could completely defy it all.

Another firework exploded overhead. The ground rumbled again, and the kobold’s head snapped around frantically.

“Find it!” it hissed. “Stop it!”

“Stop what?” Percy asked, looking around. “The fireworks?”

The creature recoiled as the boy spoke to it, its eyes wide, and head tilted in confusion and horror. “It speaks?”

“Well, yeah!” Percy replied indignantly. “And better than you do, obviously!”

The kobold growled again, then turned and jumped down the side of the black rock.

“Huh?” the boy remarked, baffled. Had the kobold just… jumped into the lava?

He looked over the edge, expecting a screaming lizard-thing to be sinking through the pahoehoe. Instead, the squat beast was just standing up after landing, a section of the lava it’d landed on outlined by golden light.

“I knew there was a way out!” Percy exclaimed, retreating from the edge and running around the sloping island until he reached the spot. The kobold was already creeping away in a zigzag pattern, somehow following the invisible line of solid rock.

Percy’s foot was out over the lava before he knew what happened, and he barely managed to pull it back as he thought better of it. He watched the kobold slip further away, and tried his best to remember how it had moved so far. Grabbing a few chunks of obsidian, Percy threw one into the section he’d seen the kobold land on. He didn’t know the specifics of the magic, after all.

The pebble skidded across the solid pahoehoe, and the edges glowed gold briefly before it slipped away, breaking the crust and slipping into the lava beneath.

“So some spots are safe…” Percy realized.

He was falling behind, though, the kobold already halfway across the volcano’s interior, and swiftly followed the path he could remember, throwing pebbles when he wasn’t sure, and picking them up if he could. He only had a limited amount, after all.

Soon, Percy was creeping up behind the muttering beast. It hadn’t checked behind it at all since jumping down, and the boy was thankful for it. If the kobold saw him stalking it, it might attack him instead of fleeing like before, and he didn’t want to be turned into Summoner stew.

The two entities—both very aware of their mortality in this moment—crept carefully toward the solid wall of the volcano, and the pursuer watched as his target scampered up onto the ring of stone that surrounded the lake.

Feeling extremely uncomfortable standing atop the lava he felt should collapse at any moment, Percy hastily followed, taking cover behind a boulder and watching as the kobold slapped its abnormally large hand into where a jagged rock jutted out, piercing its palm.

But the creature didn’t even react. It looked around, and Percy ducked behind the boulder. When he felt safe enough to peek back out, the creature was disappearing into a glowing arch, ringed by blood.