Alderaus von Mysthen, Lord of Legoria. He sat in the royal study in his family home. He pondered the state of the world. There had been a curse that had been plaguing this world for millennia, something that threatened the very bedrock of reality. Magic was fading.

At this time on this night, it would be four hours shy of five years since an order of mages approached him in secret. They claimed they could bring forth a solution to this problem. Their world had been tainted already, that much was clear. But perhaps in another world that wasn’t the case. Their theory was that the plague that threatened their world was unique to them and that no other world would be foolish enough to emulate it. In other worlds it was almost assured that they were pure. However it was only with the king’s support that they could afford to test if this was true.

Alderaus was an old man, having ruled his land for the majority of his life. He approached the closing years of his rule, a fact he was all too aware of with the loss of his wife a year prior. He knew that time would come for him soon. He knew that this might be his last chance to do good for the world. If he sponsored these mages in their efforts he might be the catalyst for changing the world. He might be remembered as a hero, saving it from an age-old illness.

Alderaus was not an ignorant man. He thought about the potential consequences of his actions every night in his nightmares. If they failed then he will have wasted his twilight years chasing a dream instead of aiding his country. In the worst case they could bring a new blight upon the world. Then he would be remembered as one of history's greatest monsters. If the gods truly looked down on his sin, he might even be the usher of the end times.

Even knowing what was at risk, he accepted, and for almost five years they have received unlimited funding to pursue their work. The king would not let anything stop this from working. Only time or fate.

Tonight, they were going to play god, and he opened the door.

-----

The room cluttered with the voices of dozens of men and women, mage and mundane royalty alike. Excited to be witness to history in the making.

All were hushed when their king entered the room. An imposing figure even in his advanced age. He stood half a head taller than the next tallest man and seemed to radiate his approach through will alone. His presence was enough to draw the breath from those who might speak. A man stepped away from the crowd, this man was the speaker of the group. One who called himself Ordan.

“My most esteemed lord.” Orden said with a bow The king looked down at him with a stare that could piece stone and said nothing.

“My lord?” Orden said, head still bowed in fear that he had offended the king somehow.

“I care nothing for pleasantries. Your task is at hand and I am here for nothing more. Take my presence as enough.” Alderaus said.

“Of course, my lord. At once!” Orden said. He snapped and the crowd separated.

In the center of the grand hall allotted to this project was an intricately carved runic pattern carved into dozens of pure marble plates.

The king was long lived, and though he was gifted with the use of magic he never spent the time to learn to perform it. He was not trained but he still knew much from his studies. This was a summoning pattern of incredible complexity. A single functional pattern could take hours to complete, and days to perfect. This one was of such incredible quality and size that to think only dozens of men and women took only 5 years to complete it was unthinkable.

But they were hired for their work, and they have yet to deliver. So he reserved his impression for their ritual.

“Before you lay our greatest feat of Runic Summoning. We draw not from our world, or even another realm, but from a different reality all together. Reaching across the fabric of time and space to bring new blood so that we may save the world.” The head mage said. The crowd clapped excitedly at the announcement as the mages from.

Runic summoning was one among countless schools of magic. Many would see their rise and fall from ancient times to now, but only one school of magic can claim to have grown without fail. The one that unraveled the basic laws of magic at their very core. Less a form of magic, and more a kind of plague. That plague is what brought them here today.

Alderaus watched a dozen mages soared through the air wreathed in mystical light of every color, chanting in languages he could barely parse, and imbuing the monumental runic circle with unfathomable amounts of Mana..

Mana was a substance of life, the energy controlled to create great works of mysticism were in reality the excess life energy released by those who lived in the world. As they live their bodies create more life energy then they can store. The name “Mana” derived from an archaic term used before modern times. it was a relic from a time when man thought they alone were magic makers. Man-a.

The air shook with violent turbulence as they spoke, every word seeming to conjure forces and energies the king could only fathom. Every line and design of the rune glowed and fumed with light. The room's lights dimmed as the candle flames in them seemed to fade rather than extinguish. Like the light was being stolen from them.

The mana in the air started to quaver and retract, as if it was being torn from its desired place in the world. The magic sensitive in the room started to grow faint and a few even had to be escorted to nearby seating.

Hours passed, eventually all but the king had retreated to a better place. He was intent on being there through it all. It was his burden above all else and he would be the first to suffer should anything go wrong.

Finally, At the stroke of midnight. A loud bell from outside the royal estate chimed with magnitude that shook the world around it.

This marked when the ritual would finally execute, the peak of the moon in the sky. The runes of light lifted off the marble patterns and formed into strings of light and color in the air. Rapidly flying around the room like a violent hurricane of energy and sound.

In the center of the cacophonous maelstrom formed a small white orb. Its sheer presence in the room caused reality around it to shudder and twist. Light itself was not safe from its effects and distorted near it. The orb grew in size until it nearly touched the walls of the hall.

Then it began to crack, some in the back crowd gasped in fear, but were assured that this was intended. The king remained unmoved and continued to stand at the edge of the ritual site.

Finally, an explosion of light that dwarfed any living being bore witness to in all time and history erupted. It drowned the world for hundreds of miles in all directions. Panic would grip the hearts of all as they thought some catastrophe of epic proportions had overtaken them. It would be recorded that on that night even creatures deep under the earth would be blinded by its magnitude. Let alone those near it.

Once the light receded, a hollow thump that sounded like something hitting the ground resounded throughout the room. As their vision returned to them the crowd witnessed that someone new had appeared. A young woman laid on the ground unconscious.

And her hair was red.

She was lifted from the ground and suspended in the air on a loose cloud of blue light, then shuttled through the doors out the back of the great hall. The crowd mumbled in surprise and the king stood still. Both waiting for a proper explanation of what had happened.

The few mages that remained hurried to inspect every inch of the runic assembly, while their representative turned towards the crowd.

“Apologies for the delay, your Majesty, my lords and ladies. We succeeded in the execution of the ritual, but it was not perfect. Several small flaws in our formulas caused the traveler to arrive in suboptimal condition. The trip across the stretch of time and space was likely very hard on her body and she will require rest. We are sure that she will be ready for introductions before long.” Orden said to the crowd. There was mumbling of discontent, but no one was willing to raise an objection before the king.

Orden stepped toward the king and spoke to him in confidence.

“If Your Majesty desired, I could take you to the visitor directly. I am sure we could force her awake. For your safety however, I advise against close contact. She may have some sort of infection or sickness we are unaware of. She hails from another world, after all.” The mage said.

“There is no need for that. Notify me directly as soon as there are any changes. That will be all.” The King said.

“By your will, my lord.” The mage said, and bowed deeply.

With the conversation now over, the king turned around and left without another word. The crowds followed quickly after him with rushed, silent steps, hoping to glean some information about what just happened.

Once the last of the guests and nobles leftin a rustle of silk and velvets, Orden sighed and felt fatigue rack his body. If he didn’t know any better he’d swore his life had been in mortal danger, standing near the king like that. He turned around and called to the team inspecting the runes.

“Status!” Orden said. Everyone went into this project knowing that delivering a flawless result would be impossible. They had tried their best, isolating and fixing any issues they could before this night. Countless revisions, dozens of meticulous examinations. But when a rune is made of thousands of channels, it would be impossible to account for them all.

“We found three burnt strokes so far. Only in the stabilizing ring. If we find any more we might need to re-craft the outer ring.” A woman’s voice called out.

The runework was assembled in a uniquely designed 5 tier layout. Usually rituals of this size would use only three with several orbiting rings for stability. However, they had designed this construct to be as stable as possible.

Orden activated levitation and lifted himself above the rune to avoid damaging it further. He moved to the area with the largest damage and motioned for the man who was already looking into it to move on. This specific defect was in the fourth ring, so indeed only the stability-focused protections had suffered any damage. In brief, the two outer rings where the fault was located were designed as extremely over-engineered safeguards.

Each of the five rings had its own purpose, and was designed millimetrically to perform its function as intended. The innermost ring was the “Focus”. It designated what they wanted, where they wanted it, when it should appear, how it should be treated on arrival, and what considerations were needed to make it happen. The last point was traditionally applied in case you tried to summon, say, a fish, and had no water in its gills to breathe on arrival. For their specific use tonight they didn’t need that particular function, so that segment was retrofitted for further stability as well.

The second ring was designed to give finer adjustment to the demands of the first ring. If you wanted any fish for example, one ring would be enough. But a specific fish would require two. This ring also served as the first layer of stability to the whole design. It was fully redundant with the first ring, to assure that if any failures happened in the first ring, then the whole ritual wouldn’t collapse. Failure in this case might mean the destruction of the local area due to the sheer force of the energy involved.

The third ring was where they really put in the most time and energy. With the first two rings acting as the focus and lens, this ring would be the dials and lines you use to hone in on your target. Usually, with a summoning ring you would make all the channels and energy flow there. Any stability measures would be approached through extraneous rings. The issue with unconnected rings however was that the formations had no input on what kind of feedback or backlash they might encounter during the ritual. They were shooting completely in the dark, after all, doing something unprecedented. A five ring design, with stability measures directly integrated into the construct, ensured that the only way anything could break was if it was made incorrectly.

The pioneer process they came up with specifically for this project was adding a third dimension to the summoning. Normally, summoning would only work on the same plane as yourself. With some tweaking and extra work you could summon things from another realm, but doing that was extremely complex.

With those parts in place the only limiting factor to summoning was being able to find the desired object. You were limited to things you knew you could find, or at the very least things you knew you could find in theory. But if the subject you wanted just didn’t exist then you were out of luck. That is exactly what this design intended to improve.

Usually, a summoning construct could only grab things that already existed in some form. That much was understandable, you can’t just reach your hand out into nothingness and expect to grab something.

This project intended to tackle this problem. If you instead chose to operate on the idea that things that “didn’t exist”, actually did, you might make some progress.

This wasn’t just crazy conjecture. The theory coincided on the idea that alternate realities did technically exist, but they exist elsewhere. If you treat them like they do exist here, the resulting paradox, filtered through the summoning ritual, causes a vacuum of reality that nature tries very hard to resolve. By isolating the entire world from the vacuum you can force nature to pull from another reality. The only alternative would be for nature to break its own rules, which it loathes to do.

This was the third dimension they achieved. Reality was no longer a strict guide to their work. As long as something “could” exist in theory, they could possibly summon it. With this ritual they could “summon” any fantastical being or object they desired.

The paradoxical analogy of trying to grab things that didn’t exist was the reason why two dedicated safety rings were designed and integrated into the base ritual. The two dedicated safety rings were like wearing a chain mail glove while reaching for an invisible knife, whereas unincorporated rings would be like wearing a wool glove. It's protecting you from a danger, but not from the right danger.

The same idea applied here: They had no idea what forces might interact with their rune on the other side. For all they knew they could be reaching into a world of infinite chaos. If that were the case, then more than just the local area would be destroyed in case of failure. It wouldn't be out of the question to assume the continent might be destroyed. All the more reason to be infinitely careful.

The two rings were their chain mail gloves to protect against such things. They were lucky that the universe they reached into seemed to be very similar to theirs. If it had been more different then the few imperfections present in the outer rings might have spread further. The burns found in the outer rings were the wounds from the hypothetical invisible knife, after all.

By all metrics the fact that the visitor only appeared a few feet off the ground and unconscious was a remarkable success. The alternative was a fair bit more apocolyptic.

“Someone get in touch with Lander, tell him we need a few more marble before morning.” Orden yelled. The rest of the mages nodded and went about their assigned tasks.

Orden wiped his face with his sleeve to get the sleep out of his eyes. He had a strong feeling that he wasn’t going to get much sleep in the near future. Then he floated towards the door at the back of the hall.

-----

No one but the mages involved in the project were allowed into this wing of the estate. Not strictly because of dark secrets or hidden truths, few those still were. It was more that the entire area was a mess and everyone was faintly embarrassed about how out of control it got. Every wall was stacked with journals and papers, every table was covered in spreadsheets and blueprints. One wayward step and you might knock over an entire pile of books and cut off the walking path.

Orden had gotten used to the increasing treacherous path and navigated toward the safe room. It was the room designated for setting down either very important or very dangerous things. Which in practice tended to be the same thing with this crowd. He was surprised when he rounded the corner to see a pair of scowling red eyes staring back at him.

“Why are you here?” Orden said. Displeased that their one request to the king since they started five years ago was being ignored yet again.

The woman in front of him was almost inhuman looking. Piercing red eyes, stark white hair, and skin that was as white as driven snow. She was a part of the plague that he and his team were trying to cure. Their bloodlines were cursed to never use magic again, while they claim their ability to heal was a valid replacement.

“I never have, and never will need your permission to be anywhere. I work at the king’s behest.” The woman said.

“You didn’t answer my question.” Orden said, not putting up with any grief from this person.

“If you must know, I was informed by a little bird that there was an injured visitor to the estate. It is my duty to look after any and all who may need help.” She answered. Orden nearly laughed because he could almost see her head swelling from her own self importance. But his oncoming headache put any thoughts of humor to bed.

This woman was the Royal Medea. Valotia.

Despite his connections with The Magi and his own mystical blood, The King wanted to remain in good graces with the church. So he took on one of their members as a retainer. Her official responsibilities were to provide aid to the staff and royal family, including spiritual aid. But in reality that came down to her finding things around the estate to professionally turn her nose up at.

“Did you find anything important, or are you just looking for some poor soul to demean?” Orden asked.

“I inspected the girl but haven’t found anything obviously wrong with her. Though your blasphemous experiment probably did something horrific to the poor girl, I'm sure. If anything further comes up with her, you are to consult with me.” Valotia said.

“Over my dead body.” Orden said.

“That can be arranged.” Valotia responded. She then walked around him and left through the way he came. After she left, another woman ran up to him with a frown.

“Stop antagonizing the church mouse, she always files a complaint with the king when you instigate with her.” The woman said.

“Eliza, I could honestly care less.” Orden said.

“Couldn’t, saying “could” means you still care a bit.” Eliza said.

“Piss off, did you come here to give me grammar lessons?” Orden snapped back. Eliza could tell Orden was at the end of a long day already and eased off.

“I was coming to find you. The Church Mouse said that the girl is stable and will likely way up in the morning. I’m honestly surprised how seriously she takes her job when she has a reason to.” Eliza said.

“It’s literally the only reason she is here, I’d be annoyed if she didn’t put a little effort in.” Orden said.

The two of them walked down the hall, everyone was busy at the moment so it was strangely empty, usually there would be someone passing one way or the other at all hours of the night. But having just performed the ritual they all worked on together for years it was understandable that they were all over the place. Some might even have run off already, content with what they got from the king.

The pair rounded another corner into another hall. At the end on the left side was the safe room. Even from the far end Orden and Eliza could feel the incredible force coming from the wards place around the hall. Nothing would enter or exit without their express permission. The exception being unwanted Medea.

Orden waved his hand to lessen the wards so they could pass. They entered the room and Orden snapped. Returning the wards to their previous state. The visitor was laying on a bed in the corner of the room. One of the mages who carried her in here stood up from the chair next to the girl’s bed and walked over to them.

“Report.” Orden said.

“We ran several tests, there is nothing to suggest that she is infected with any illnesses, or that she might have any injuries from the ritual. Notably, she seems to be almost exactly the same species as we are.” The mage said.

“Almost?” Orden questioned.

“Yes…” The mage said. She motioned the two over and handed them a clipboard with medical results.

“She has no Reflant?” Eliza said, having read over Orden’s shoulder.

“How is that possible?” Orden asked.

“We don’t know, from what we could tell she seems to function just fine without it. The rest of her anatomy seems adjusted for it. But without cutting her open we can’t confirm how.” The mage said.

The reflant was an internal organ. An important one at that. It served a similar purpose to the liver. Filtering out toxins and other various functions, though it only filters out physical toxins. The reflant does the same job but with aphysical toxins. It was more accurate to say the reflant was the liver of the soul.

In this case, the visitor seemed to be from a world where people of her species didn’t have the reflant. As a result her liver was much larger than normal and stretched the whole length of space where the reflant would be. From the apparent age of the visitor and the fact that she wasn’t dead, that meant that she lived perfectly normally with this mutation, as likely did everyone from her home world. Calling it a mutation might even be unfair considering that this might be normal in her world.

Results of this could be substantial. The enlarged liver means that resistance to natural toxins like poison would be much higher. Alcohol would also have a lessened effect on her body. Pretty much every function of the liver would be increased drastically.

This would mean that any mana that passes through her body would be unfiltered before she used it. Which could lead to a myriad of issues. Mana poisoning being the most extreme, as she literally had nothing stopping her body from overloading on mana. There is no telling what could happen if she were to be immersed in a large concentration of mana. She could possibly die.

“Keep me informed on the condition of the visitor. If Valotia comes back around, tell her nothing important.” Orden said.

“Yes sir.” The mage said. With a small bow the mage returned to their seat and resumed their investigation.

“We need to talk.” Eliza said.

“Yes, we do.” Orden said.

They left the room and walked down to the far side of the hall to another room. They shut the door behind them and Orden locked it magically. Nothing short of tearing the door off its hinges would let it open. Eliza sat down in one of the chairs surrounding a large conference table and stared down between her hands for a second. She was silent for a few moments before she started panicking and shaking in her seat.

“Oh god, we’re ruined! We're gonna die!” Eliza said.

“Eliza, calm down.” Orden said. He couldn’t help but agree with her sentiment, but he knew panicking wasn’t going to help.

“No! Orden... No, I won't calm down! We just spent 5 years bringing a mutant across the fold of reality and she doesn’t even have a Reflant. She could die the moment she leaves that room! How am I supposed to be calm?!” Eliza said.

“How do you think having a breakdown is going to help?” Orden said, hoping to plead to her rational side.

“IT SURE IS MAKING ME FEEL BETTER!” Eliza screamed at the top of her lungs. Bursting from her seat and staring frantically at Orden. Then she realized what she had just done and sunk back down in her seat.

“We need to stay calm. If we aren’t careful then we might get everyone in the project killed.” Orden said.

“Y-You’re right… We need to worry about our escape. What’s our first step?” Eliza said. She was in a state of lucidity and was thinking entirely practically. But the panic still had her mind frazzled.

“First, we need to identify if the girl is safe to leave that room. If she can’t then we start planning. There is still a chance this might work out.” Orden said.

“Right…” Eliza said.

Knowing what they must do next, they began to plan.