A few hours earlier.

Elise woke up. She was excited. Together with one of her teachers here at the Royal School of Magic in the Kingdom of Theron will she summon a familiar, with the help of an old spell she discovered in the library of the school. While familiar summoning is not a restricted magic at all, the spells needed are often the secrets of noble households.

The spell she found was a lengthy and powerful ritual spell, as her general magic teacher Mage Lukas Fizzlewood explained to her. He also volunteered to help her at the attempt.

Elise hopes that she will get something good, at least an intelligent animal like a dog or a cat. Nobles, with their powerful, over generations improved, spells might get a magic animal, like a talking animal or a monster. Rarely will they get a mystic animal, a type of highly intelligent monster, able to talk. She does not even dare to dream that she will have such luck.

Today is a free day for the pupils and teachers, in celebration of the birthday of his Royal Highness King Eduard III of Theron. The entirety of the morning will be needed to prepare the ritual, which is arguably a bit over what she can do. But she does have large natural mana reserves, and Mage Fizzlewood will help her, so she sees no real problem.

After she brushed her teeth and clothed herself in the robes of a pupil of the Royal School of Magic, she went to the ritual chamber of Mage Fizzlewood. With her, she brought her spell book in which she copied the ritual, as well as some needed accessories.

As she entered the windowless chamber, she saw that Mage Fizzlewood was already there. The room was lit with mage lights, small lightballs that do not need much mana to keep active. Torches were in their positions, unlit. The reason for this is that any other magic being actively used could harm the ritual.

Fizzlewood greeted her warmly and showed her a small table with breakfast ingredients on it. Both sat down before it on a thick carpet that covered the area the table stood on. After eating they began preparing the ritual. They drew lines on the ground, preplaced components, put candles in the right positions. After they were finished they put the table in an adjourning room, as well as the carpet and other things they did not need anymore.

After this, they lighted the torches and Mage Fizzlewood did away with the mage lights. Then everything was ready.

Elise began chanting the words, which were a help in building the spell, in calling up the mana and beginning to shape it. The ritual itself, the lines they drew shaped the mana further and parts of it changed the aspects of it.

Then something happened. A point of white light formed in the air, in the middle of the ritual. The light, while difficult to see, was dim enough to make out a shape. A shape without a defined form, growing into a three-dimensional shape with elliptic contours. Then, suddenly the light ended and a humanoid figure, which staggered, was seen.

The figure had its backside to Elise and Fizzlewood. Both could see a big, black backpack, made out of an unknown material on its back. Elise was in shock. To summon a humanoid being was not unprecedented, but extremely rare.

While it was not unlikely that a powerful summon might be later able to take such form, this as a natural form meant that this was a powerful familiar. The nobles might scream foul play and try to take her familiar away and she had nobody, not really, who could and would defend her.

But Fizzlewood did not seem fazed of her thoughts, even after she told him this. Then he told her something she did not realize until then, the familiar bond of the ritual was not breakable at all, at least not without banishing the familiar into the void.

Then the familiar turned. It was not an it, it was an older human teenage boy. He wore strange clothes.

Suddenly the boy began screaming. Fizzlewood reacted instantly, stopping the beginning of a fall. He carefully lowered the boy unto the ground while the unknown boy was screaming.

While Elise’s panic was increasing, the boy fell unconscious and stopped screaming. Fizzlewood stood up and told her that the pain, in which the boy obviously had been, came from adapting to this world and will be over now. He asked her to take the carpet out of the adjourning room and put the boy on it.

He will search for the headmaster of the school and bring him here. While he spoke he recast the mage lights and let them stay in the room while he left.

While Lukas Fizzlewood was away, Elise did as she was told, during this time she put the backpack he had on him to the side. A while after she was finished, no more than twenty minutes as the humans of Jonathan’s world measured time, Archmage Heinrich Tablos, the headmaster of the school, entered the ritual chamber.

He looked at the boy, lying on the carpet and mumbled a few spells, which Elise identified as analysis spells, as well as one other she could only identify as harmless.

Then he confirmed the conclusions of Fizzlewood that his pain came from adapting to this world. He also told them both that the boy will wake up soon. Elise asked him afterwards if the bond was really as unbreakable as Mage Lukas Fizzlewood had told her, and Tablos answered with a resounding yes. The familiar could not be traded in any form, it might not be entirely possible to even banish him back into the void or wherever he came from.

Elise wanted to ask him what the last spell did, but then suddenly, the boy woke up with a scream.