Robed, white men surrounded me on all sides.

My throat went dry and all of me shook; thoughts simultaneously slowed to a crawl — allowing me to fixate on individual details — and ran so quickly they picked up everything: eight people in all, white and wizened, dressed in black robes dotted with white specks. They stood in formation, arms spread apart, eyes closed, and expressions scrunched in concentration as mouths muttered low words I couldn’t understand. The air folded and unfolded before and between them, bending light so everything was warped, shrunken or stretched.

Options rose and fell until the only true path remained: Run.

At once I was on my feet and bolting towards one of the openings between them. They didn’t notice, too enraptured by their ritual. I leapt over the effect and landed with a stumble; my arms went out to catch myself, but on instinct my body righted itself.

On even footing there was time to look at the rest of the room around me. My stomach fell.

South Africa had been under colonial rule for a long time and many cities still held onto the names of English nobility. Even so, I didn’t think we had castles. The sight before me held all the hallmarks of a grand hall – a long room framed by pillars of marble, large windows of stained glass at either side; there were people beyond, men dressed in burnished armour carrying swords, all of them were on alert, standing in a rough half circle; and behind them were a large set of doors, dark and imposing, etched with lines and shapes that formed a magical diagram.

The doors were firmly shut.

“Apprehend him!” a voice rang out.

I looked back.

There was more of the hall behind me, with steps that led to a higher platform at the centre of which were seven chairs, the centremost being the largest. Before the chairs — thrones my mind provided — were four people, two dressed in clothes that brought thoughts of royalty, and the others dressed in large and cumbersome armour, one carrying oversized sword lazily over their shoulder.

The clang of metal against stone pulled my attention back to the soldiers, then the sound of swords as they were pulled free. There were ten people at the very least, all standing so I wouldn’t be able to get through.

No. No. No.

My head whipped around, searching for anything that might be a way out or past, but there was only one and it was barred.

Through the window, a part of me thought, but that would cut at skin and there was no saying how far up I was.

Not able to fight and unable to run, my legs gave out and I fell to the floor.

For the first time I was able to think, What the fuck is going on?

The first of the armoured men reached me and a gauntleted hand closed too tightly against bare arms; without a word he tugged me with more force than was necessary and pulled me to my feet. He faced me towards the king, queen and the robed, old men. Around me, more guards settled, cinching the noose tighter.

“What is the meaning of this?” the king said, with an accent that might have been English, but strange in a way I couldn’t put my finger on. He was a tall and broad man, square jawed with pale brown hair upon which sat a crown; his queen stood to his right, dressed in clothes embroidered with jewellery; and at either side of them were their guards. “You were to bring me a Champion and instead you brought me this?”

I swallowed, my heart still hammering against my chest. My head wanted to bow, my eyes burned with tears and disgust swirled in my stomach. There were too many things happening all at once, and between the twitches running through my body, my brain still trying to parse everything, and a deep resignation that I was going to be killed by some racist Cosplayers, I wasn’t sure what to do or how to react.

“Your Majesty,” one of the robed men said — tall and rail thin, the man had long grey hair and a beard he’d tied together with rings of metal. He took a few steps forward and bowed before he continued, “This spell was unknown, as our Order has explained. The writings have yet to be entirely deciphered, we—”

“Excuses,” the king interrupted and the man quieted. “By the day Rowan’s forces grow and he takes more of my lands. This was supposed to be a victory for us – this you and your Order ensured – and yet here you stand, giving me excuses.”

The old man turned towards me, grey eyes calculating before he turned back to the king. “Your Majesty,” he said, and again he bowed, “I would beg us to converse in private. This…” he looked back at me again, “man is guest to us, is he not? And he has been pulled from a far-off land. He will need to be acclimated.”

The king stepped past his guards and the old man bowed low. “You have the gall to think to command me, mage?” he said, expression twisted in barely restrained anger. “Perhaps we have given your Order too many liberties.”

“I beg your forgiveness, my king,” the man said gravely, before, as quick as a flash, he came up, pointed and ran his finger in a circular motion. As if the air was water and a rock had been dropped within, the centre of the king rippled; the man’s eyes widened and he took a step back, almost as if he could escape the effect but it got bigger to match him until finally, with a large sigh that came from nowhere and everywhere, the king vanished.

Silence fell and the few expressions I could see were of shock.

“No!” the queen shouted, breaking the spell.

Her guards acted. One coming to stand before the queen while the other, his sword unsheathed, dashed forward. He moved faster than I could track and appeared before the old man, the tip of his sword against the mage’s neck.

“Careful,” the man in giant armour said, his voice of tightly restrained anger. “I see one ripple and you’ll lose a host of brothers.”

“There will be no need, good knight,” the mage said, his voice coming out strangled. “Neither I nor any of my brothers will run. This is all in service of our kingdom.”

The knight snorted but kept his blade pressed against the man’s neck.

“How—Where have you sent my husband?” the queen asked from behind her guard. “Tell me. Tell me now. I command it.”

“Forgiveness, Queen Eleanor, but I will not tell you until our guest has been given a measure of comfort,” the man said. “Until he has been told why he has been called this day. He is to be our Champion, my queen, and it is important that he is imparted with our language and it is impressed upon him why he is needed now more than ever.”

My brain still felt wonky, but even as rattled as it was, it picked up on the man’s words. They thought I couldn’t understand them and maybe that was why they spoke so freely. I kept my head bent as I listened, hoping that there might be something I could hear that might help get me out of here.

Even though all of this doesn’t make sense, a part of me thought.

In seconds I’d gone from thinking they were larpers to having no goddamn idea what was going on. The robed man had made someone disappear, and the knight had moved so fast it looked like he had superpowers. Things that didn’t make sense with the rules of the world as I understood them.

“All this my husband can do,” said Queen Eleanor. “Return him to me.”

“For—” the man stopped as the knight pushed his sword forward, tip pressing into his neck and producing blood. The mage recoiled and stepped back but the knight matched him with ease. Doing his best to get away from the stab, the old man leaned too far back and fell, hitting the ground hard.

“I do not fear death,” the mage said, the words laced with pain.

“Death is not the only thing you should fear, mage,” the knight said.

“Nor pain,” the mage continued, sounding weaker, voice trembling. “It is nothing against the protection of our people. Kill me if you will. Torture me, but I will yield no information.”

“Then your brothers might,” said the knight. “If we make the lesson one so harsh they are unlikely to ignore it.”

“We will yield nothing,” said another of the men, standing taller but shaking like a leaf.

“Though we know nothing,” another put in, shorter and rounder. “Not of his location.”

“You have all committed this treason, then?” said Queen Eleanor. She waited for an answer and none came. “You should all be executed and your school burnt to cinders.”

“At the risk of never finding King Orpheus?” said the mage on the ground, voice trembling. “At risk of all lines of travel ceased and compacts with our neighbours rendered null? It would be as times of old, when trains delivered food to Altheer and more than half the supplies were lost to wild beasts. And all of it for quite a simple request. Is this stubbornness worth the suffering of the entire kingdom, my queen?”

The woman swallowed, her eyes shining of uncertainty as they took in the room. Seven of the eight mages stood surrounded by over a dozen armed soldiers. They were old, but they’d been called mages a few times, and — at least from stories — wizards were tricky and not to be underestimated.

I hoped the queen would listen, because then I wouldn’t die. There’d be more time to think and probably an opening to escape. More than anything I wanted some time to calm down, to figure out what the hell was going on and get a feel of if I’d lost my mind.

“Very well,” said the queen. “Guards. Take him to the Mourning Tower. Ensure him guest right, but he is not to leave the tower until my husband gives you the word. If you do not receive such a word by the day, he is to be executed.” My stomach dropped and I almost looked up. I swallowed, breathing a little quicker. “Sirs Alfred and Eleus watch the mages keenly. They have committed treason this day, if any of them attempt escape have off with their heads, consequences be damned.”

The knight with the large sword moved it and a few of the mages took a step back. Other than him, most of everyone else was rooted on the spot.

“Go about your duties,” Queen Eleanor commanded.

There were bows and without any word to me, I was pulled and pushed along out of the grand hall and towards my new home.

***

There was only one door into the Mourning Tower and it came after climbing a cramped stairwell that hugged the wall. The space wasn’t lit by any torches or bulbs, instead glowing rocks lined the slanted ceiling. It was the same thing within the tower: there were no windows but differently coloured, glowing rocks, cut in shapes so they formed the image of a tree; the space was larger than my room, with a wide bed that dominated most of it; there was a desk at one end, topped with books which were in an English whose parts I could understand, but had odd spelling and sometimes weird looking letters; an easel with an old paintbrush sat at one end; a copper tub sat a little away from the bed; and a wooden bucket whose bottom was made of speckled rock near the tub.

I didn’t have a watch to track the time and I honestly didn’t care because my mind was consumed with trying to figure things out. The last thing I remembered was lying in bed, phone in hand with the radio serving as static in the background. I wasn’t a smoker or much of a drinker, which meant it couldn’t have been that. The last few days had been filled with stress because in three days Matric results were supposed to be out and even though I thought I’d passed, there were still nuggets of doubt.

Is this a mental breakdown?

I didn’t know a lot about them but I didn’t think they could do this.

I’d been in a few fandoms and read their fanfiction, there was a genre of story called an Isekai where someone from the real world was pulled into a fictional reality or another dimension. My situation felt a lot like that, but…things like that didn’t happen in the real world; magic wasn’t real and technology hadn’t advanced to the point where things like that could be done.

My thoughts went in a loop as I considered everything I’d seen. The old men who’d made the air ripple like water; the fact that the king had been made to disappear; and the knight who’d dashed forward with superspeed. They didn’t make sense in a world that wasn’t scientifically advanced, or one that maybe had magic.

A little of me was exhilarated and excited — if magic existed then there was the possibility I might become a wizard, which was an opportunity I wasn’t going to waste; but most of me was aware that all the people I’d seen so far were white and that I was black — a dark-skinned black guy at that, which was often worse in the spectrum of how these things went — things weren’t going to be simple or easy for me.

I started to pace, looking around for anything that might be a way out or a semblance of sanity. The bed was first. I swept off the blankets and the pillows, then the mattress which was placed over slabs of wood; then went to the books and peeked through them, they were stories and looked handwritten, there wasn’t anything odd with them. The bucket next, though I didn’t grab it or touch it because I knew what it was — there was something odd on the stone at the base, inscription and carvings all bound in a double bordered circle with script within them.

The tub was largely ordinary, but there were thin plates of rock stuck in the metal. There was a dark, almost navy, blue rock where taps usually were, five orange rocks in a line at the bottom, and two thin, black rocks on opposite sides at the base of the tub in an awkward position. Each had inscriptions, though they were different from the piss-bucket and different from each other; they were connected by a network of lines and circles that I couldn’t understand, though they seemed reminiscent of a circuit-board.

I pressed my fingers on the navy-blue rock and jumped back as water fell out of the very rock itself. As the tub started to fill, the rocks at the bottom glowed brighter. I spent too long watching the process — water continued to fall until it reached a line that surrounded the tub; at a touch the water was tepid and getting warmer with each passing second.

The blue rock let out water and the stones at the bottom heated it, but what did the black stones do? I touched one and nothing happened; the other, and again nothing happened; then both at the same time. The water rippled and with a soft sigh, it disappeared.

Magic.

A shuddering breath left me as I let myself sit on the floor.

As unlikely as it was, it looked like I was in another world, one that worked differently from my own and with a war hanging in the distance. Mages had pulled me here, old men who no doubt had spent most of their lives learning their craft; with the information I’d already learned, I didn’t think I’d be able to get home through my own power.

Another breath left me, long and shuddering, hitching around the end. My eyes burned and my stomach churned with mixes of hunger and anxiety.

How the fuck am I going to survive this?

I spent a few moments trying to push my emotions into a ball but that didn’t work. Every time I thought I’d achieved calm, the effect broke at the slightest thought which left me feeling more panicked than before. Sitting didn’t feel right and so I stood, went to the door and tested it — locked — then upturned the bed, moved the piss-bucket, tried to dislodged the rocks in the tub, and finally flipped through the books once more for something — anything — that might be help.

There was nothing.

No way out.

No clear direction on a way forward.

With it being the only option open to me, I waited.

Then quickly grew antsy because I didn’t have my phone and there was nothing in the way of a distraction. I started to read the first of the books but quickly ran into words I didn’t understand, slowly adding up so much of the context was lost. It was English, I was sure, and there were modern words within though some were garbled in spelling or used wrong.

Frustrated, I threw it aside and went to the tub, then started to play with the magic stones, peering closely at the carvings on each, getting a sense of the spread of the lines to see if I could get an idea how it worked. The process wasn’t intuitive and some of the carvings were so small they might have needed a lens to read.

I pressed the water stone then moved the piss-bucket into the tub. The moment water started to spill into it, the bottom rippled and the water within the bucket disappeared. It wasn’t trawling the internet or watching a good show, but the spectacle of it was enough to tide me over and the long sigh that filled the air was better than silence.

What felt like three hours later I heard a noise from beyond the door. I stood and moved back, getting as much distance as I could.

The door opened and one of the knights in large armour stepped in. The man was without a helmet, his face thin and narrow, deep brown eyes daring me to make a move. Behind him were two more people, one the king who’d changed into different clothes and the other a mage, different from the one who’d made the king disappear.

“With your leave, Your Majesty,” the mage said with a bow.

“Do as you will,” King Orpheus said stiffly.

The mage nodded and stepped forward. He was short, his face round and pink, dressed in the same black robes with speckled marks on them; he reached into his pocket and pulled out a sphere that looked like it was made out of glass, within it swirling a white vapour. He held it up for me to see, then put it into his mouth, running it around before he spat it out again. Slowly, he walked forward. He halted as I stepped back. The mage bent and put the sphere on the desk then took a few steps back.

I looked from the sphere to the three men and didn’t move.

“I can force it in him, Your Majesty,” the knight drawled, his accent much worse than either the king or the mage. Some of the words almost lost to me. The armour, large in a way that was impractical, was studded with pale blue and purple-pink rocks; it was engraved with so many lines and shapes it looked like magical diagrams had been superimposed onto the armour.

My heart picked up and I pressed myself against the wall.

“No need, dear knight,” said the mage. “He is a child lost. We should be kind and gentle to him. He is to be our Champion, after all.”

“If one such as he can be a Champion,” the king muttered.

The mage smiled but it didn’t reach his eyes. “All will be well, Your Majesty,” he said, his tone too cheerful. Probably for my benefit because he was turned my way. “I beg of you to trust me and my Order. The spell this day was done at great risk, let it be of worth.”

“The treason of your brothers was committed at a much greater risk,” said the king before he went silent.

“And yet all has turned out well, has it not?” the mage said with a grin.

The king said nothing.

The mage gestured for the sphere, then to me, then his mouth and his ears. As terrified and unsure as I was, I had to do what he wanted me to do before it was forced on me. The knight didn’t look like he would be gentle.

I stepped forward, keeping my eyes on the three of them. I picked up the sphere and, after brushing it off, put it on my tongue and swirled it around. A pressure bloomed in my head and I spat the sphere out in surprise. It was the wrong thing to do because eyes widened; the knight, in the blink of an eye, dashed forward and caught the sphere before it could hit the ground.

I scrambled back as far as I could, distracted as I did. The pressure was still there and it was moving, like something alive, it was unfolding and reaching out, points of it touching or moving things within my head.

“Is it damaged?” the king asked, his voice strangled. He sounded strange, almost like his accent had been smoothed over.

“No,” said the knight, with a similar effect, his more noticeable because now I could understand him with ease.

King Orpheus let out a relieved breath. “Can he understand us?”

“You should be able to,” the mage said to me. “Are you able to understand our language?”

“Ja, yeah, yes,” I said, uncertainty in the words. The pressure in my head had eased and I still wasn’t sure what it was, but if they expected me to understand them now, it was my best bet to go along with it. “I can,” I said, sticking to English.

“Very good,” said the mage. For a moment his expression was of concern before it turned into a smile. “Very good indeed. You must be very confused at your circumstances, dear boy.”

I nodded. “Where am I? How did I get here?”

“Calm,” he said. “I am the Grand Mage, Cicero, and before you stands the Great King of Althor, Orpheus Mandaron, with his loyal knight and holder of the Great Clank, Sir Alfred Barnaby. What are you called, young one?”

“Jordan,” I said, my mouth moving before I’d given the lie thought. There was magic in this world and in some books names were important. If they were the same here, then I didn’t want to be giving them out.

Cicero smiled. “Well met, Jordan,” he said.

“Sho,” I said with a shrug.

“When last did you eat?” the mage asked.

At the reminder my stomach twisted and groaned, the sound must have been loud because the man smiled genially. He raised a finger and I took a step back. I wasn’t the only one, Sir Alfred stood straighter, one hand going to the hilt sword. The mage moved his finger in a circular motion and the air before us rippled, a dark shape appeared and quickly resolved into a small table topped with food, two chairs set around it.

My mouth watered but I didn’t move. It could be poisoned.

“Sir Alfred could fell you quite easily with a stroke of his sword,” said Cicero. “The food is not poisoned.”

“Can you read my mind?” I asked, tearing my eyes away from the food.

The mere thought made me shiver.

He shook his head. “The art is thought possible, yes, but it is not one that has as of yet been successfully studied nor would it fall within my mage-craft. I and mine deal with matters of travel,” he picked up a spoon and put it on one hand, “taking an object here and putting it elsewhere.”

At that the spoon disappeared from his left hand and appeared on his right.

“I mean, you could do that with thoughts too, can’t you? Take them out of a person’s mind and put them into yours? And what was that thing about?” I said gesturing at the sphere in the knight’s hand. “I felt it in my head and now I can understand you.”

“A Memory Sphere,” said the mage. “One of the oddities of the world. You hunger, Jordan, I can hear it. Dine with me so that we might speak in higher spirits.”

“I think I’m okay where I am,” he said.

Cicero shrugged. “Very well,” he said. “Forgive me, but I hunger. Great rituals can be quite draining, tapping into the powers of the earth and bending them to one’s will. I require nourishment to return to my full faculties.”

And with that he started to eat.

The food was still hot and looked good, with a lot of vegetables that had been cooked in ways I’d never seen before, in the middle of which was a bird that looked like a small chicken, its flesh perfectly browned. As Cicero disturbed it, the smells rose and hit me like a truck, making my mouth water and my stomach twist.

The food could be drenched in a magical potion even if it isn’t poisoned, I thought.

My last meal had been the evening prior, but I’d stayed up late enough to get hungry again, the procrastinating because I was too lazy to make myself a snack; that and Grandma didn’t like it when people ate food during the night, not when they were going to be using all that energy to sleep instead of working.

Grandma. How would she react to me suddenly disappearing?

A lot of my family had come back home for the holidays and maybe I’d get lost in the thrum for a few hours, but it was only a matter of time before she noticed and what then? What would happen if I stayed here so long that the holidays were over and everyone returned to their own homes leaving Grandma alone?

What would happen if I stayed here so long that the people at university thought I didn’t want to attend and they gave my spot to someone else? What about the semblance of a plan I’d had for the future?

I pushed the thoughts and emotions into a ball and focused on the present, with a distraction in front of me it was easy to do. Cicero was still eating, taking bread and dunking it into a gravy bowl, making a show of enjoying himself; Alfred’s eyes flickered between me and the mage, taking us in while his hand rested on his sword; and King Orpheus scowled at me.

With a sigh I stepped forward, sat on a chair and started to eat.

It probably didn’t make a difference anyway. I couldn’t avoid eating forever.

“You are no doubt confused to have found yourself here, yes?”

“Ja,” I said. “Things like this don’t happen.”

Cicero nodded. “It is a momentous occasion when a Champion is invited into the realm,” he said. “One worthy of celebration.”

King Orpheus shifted, his scowl turning away from me and onto the mage.

He doesn’t seem to think so.

A part of me wanted to put some attention on that, but it didn’t seem very smart. They didn’t know that I knew about the nuances of what had happened in the great hall, which coloured what I thought about them, and it didn’t make sense to broadcast it. If they wanted to think I was an idiot, then all the better because it might lead to some sort of opening.

But what then? What if there is an opening, what happens after you run?

I cast the thought away. One thing at a time.

“What is a Champion?” I asked. “What does that mean?”

“They are instruments of good,” said Cicero. “Since time immemorial the people of our world have called Champions when darkness befalls them. They have often been great warriors, engineers and inventors, or mages of such talent that they have been able to slay the darkness and bring light once more unto the realm.”

“They’re heroes,” I said and Cicero smiled, nodding.

“Great heroes,” he said. “Men of myth and legend, still spoken of to this very day.” His smile disappeared and his expression became grave. “A great darkness has once more befallen Althor and after a great commune with the king, my Order was called to bring forth a Champion who would help us in this dire time.”

I swallowed and nodded, chewing mechanically on my food.

Lies, I thought. Maybe not all of it, but enough that I couldn’t trust Cicero.

“I…I’m not a hero, though,” I said. “I’m just a person. I don’t have all these skills or whatever. You have the wrong person. I think you should just call someone else, send me home because I’m not going to be useful in stopping whoever you want stopped.”

“But how can you say that with such certainty?” said Cicero. “Is it not true that once you were a boy, but are now a man?”

“Okay, but—”

“And so here the same can be done. Heroes, knights, true Champions, do not sprout fully formed into the world, instead they work to gain such strengths.”

“But—”

“At any rate it would be impossible for you to be sent home,” he said, sitting back. “Not for another thirty years at the very least.” My stomach sunk and my eyes widened. “Or…”

I swallowed. “Or?”

Cicero sat straighter. “You were summoned in this castle because it lies at a point where three celestial rivers converge,” he said. “This allows for great magical feats to be accomplished and one such feat was the invitation which was thrown out into the void to call you this day. These rivers have been sapped, and over time they will replenish themselves, but there are other such intersections which we might use to return you to your home.”

“And these intersections are in enemy territory?” I asked, the sinking feeling getting worse.

“Unfortunately it is so,” he said. “This is the way of the Fates, those great gods who chart the path which we are set to walk. In their subtle ways, they compel us towards certain actions. It seems, in order to return home, you will have to fell the darkness and save us from our plight.”