Nenna 1

Nenna sat tracing familiar symbols on the ground, her finger leaving trails in the glittering white dust. The glyphs came easily to her, perfect and precise, each linking smoothly into the next until they formed a complete circle. She stood, looking down at them with a familiar mix of pride and loathing.

“If anyone needs an example of the flameshield glyphs drawn correctly, you may check your work against Nenna’s.”

Lissa hadn't even bothered to check, remaining at her place at the front of the group. Her smile was purely obligatory and Nenna could practically feel the condescension pouring off her like heat waves.

Nenna wondered what would happen if one day she drew them all wrong, just to spite her former classmate. But she lowered her eyes, saying nothing, instead checking over her work critically.

Just this once, let it work.

While the remainder of the much younger class struggled to form their glyphs correctly, Nenna stood looking down at her circle in deep concentration. Technically, no one was supposed to start charging their spells until Lissa gave the go-ahead, but Nenna was something of an exception.

It took no effort to locate her inner spark. It flickered within her, sputtering like a dying ember. Barely strong enough to sustain her life, much less power a spell, yet she tried anyway.

She stared at the glyphs she’d drawn, her mind automatically translating them. Fire, glow, brightness, solidity, protection. Together, the fireshield spell.

“Activate,” she whispered, hand held over the circle of symbols, fingers spread at exact angles. Her inner spark flickered, but nothing happened.

She felt Lissa watching her, judging her, but the teacher didn’t say anything about her attempt to jump ahead in the lesson. After all, so long as Nenna continued to fail she hadn’t technically broken any rules.

“Activate!” she kept her voice low so as not to distract the other students, but was unable to control the note of desperation in her voice.

Nothing.

Again.

As usual.

Half an hour later, the last of the children finished their crude drawings of the spell and stood ready to cast.

“Good. Now, hold your hands like this. Fingers spread evenly, thumb pointed directly upward. Try it now. I’ll adjust your stance if necessary. Remember to keep your hand directly above your spell circle.”

Nenna had switched to using her right hand in case that made a difference. It hadn’t mattered before. It didn’t change anything now.

Lissa didn’t even glance at her as she worked her way around the room. They both knew Nenna’s form wasn’t the problem.

“Activate,” she whispered.

Nothing.

She sighed and withdrew her hand, stretching and relaxing her fingers to ease the strain of holding the stance for so long. Then she flicked through the followup gestures, mentally measuring to be sure they were all exact.

The last thing she needed was for the spell to finally activate, only to leave her unable to control it.

“Good," Lissa said. "Now, connect to your spark while keeping your mind focused on the spell you’ve drawn. Aeyess, lift your hand higher; remember, you need to have a clear view of your glyphs.”

Nenna returned to her left hand, holding it above her flameshield spell, and reached once again for her inner spark.

“Now, pull that power through the circle and into your hand.”

Faint firelight glows began to appear as one after another the students drew their power into reality. Power shimmered around them, their auras thinning out as their power stretched.

Nenna’s circle remained lifeless as ever. She strained to form the elusive connection between her inner spark and the spell she’d drawn so perfectly, but it worked exactly as well today as it had for the past twenty years. Not at all.

Then only her circle remained dark, and Lissa moved on smoothly without acknowledging her.

“Now, together with me, activate!”

“ACTIVATE!”

Circles flared in unison as the spell burst to life. Power spun around them in loops with various degrees of strength and clarity. Nenna’s heart leapt with the same thrill she always felt when watching magic that worked properly, even as envy burned at her throat.

Lissa guided the class through the final steps, expanding their thin loops into full shields. Most students failed before the end, their hands clumsy, minds untrained, and sparks fickle. Only two managed to maintain the spell the entire time. Nenna knew they would be remembered, given special attention, and fast-tracked to summon. After all, what wizard wouldn’t want a young prodigy for his spirit?

Nenna forlornly reached down to flatten the glittering white back over her glyph as the class ended and Lissa dismissed the students. Her former classmate didn’t so much as glance Nenna’s way as she set about restoring the learning grounds to their original state, gathering up the spent dulldust where each student had stood.

“Any news on open summons?” Nenna asked, breaking the silence.

Lissa didn’t look up from her tidying and her aura didn’t even flicker. “One hour.”

Nenna frowned. That didn’t leave much time to get over to the summoning grounds. “Are you not going?”

“Didn’t you know? I’m bound now. Tomorrow is my last class.”

“Oh. Congratulations.”

Lissa waved it off, still not looking at Nenna.

“I may not be here after tomorrow either,” Nenna said, projecting more confidence than she felt.

Lissa didn’t reply, the awkward attempt at camaraderie falling flat.

“We may meet in the mortal realm someday soon,” Nenna continued.

“We’ll meet right here tomorrow for water infusion.”

“Right. But I may not bother. I mean, I know all this already.”

“Attendance is required until a student is able to correctly perform the material,” Lissa said, in the exact same tone of forced patience she always used.

“I can form every spell just fine.”

“No. You can draw them. That’s not the same thing.”

I know that. You don’t have to be so cold about it. “Well, I’d better hurry if I want to be on time for the summoning. ‘Bye, Lissa.”

Nenna didn’t wait for Lissa’s cursory response, but sprinted away from the training grounds and toward the distant golden gleam of the summoning grounds.

The pale cream sky flickered with white streaks of lightning sizzling and chasing each other eternally across its endless dome. Nenna had heard stories of the mortal world, where the sky was blue and white, the ground covered with living things, but she couldn’t imagine it.

As she ran, the sparkling ground beneath her feet transitioned gradually from the pure white of the practice grounds, through the plain yellow of unusable dulldust, to the bright gold of overcharged summoning dust.

Nenna dragged her feet as she entered the golden patch, scuffing her shoes against the ground harshly enough that she felt the grating irritant of the dust slip inside, rubbing uncomfortably against her feet. She ignored the sensation and continued toward the wide circle where dozens of her fellow spirits waited for the summon to begin.

Nearly all of them were younger than Nenna. Lissa had been one of the last of her own peer group to form a summon-bond, and now she too would be moving on.

Then, surprised, Nenna noticed two much older spirits standing in the lineup. And ones she recognized.

Akhal, tall and thick-limbed, had been her favourite teacher in her youth. Rohiin. . . not so much. Shorter, with a perpetually cold aura, Rohiin seemed to notice nothing but the flaws in anything or anyone he encountered. She never understood what Akhal saw in the dour grump, and she’d been glad Rohiin only taught occasional advanced classes - she’d heard enough stories to know she wanted to have nothing to do with him, and was glad when he left in her second training year. At the time she’d still assumed she could overcome this crippling disability to use her spark and might eventually qualify for advanced training herself. Now she knew better.

“Akhal!” Nenna called, walking toward the duo. “Come back to visit?”

Akhal turned with a smile. “Nenna! Look at you, all grown up. What brings you here today?”

Nenna gestured at the massive circle drawn with intricate precision, and the spirits standing around it waiting. “Summon, yeah?”

Akhal’s smile brightened, purple light flickering threads of happiness through his aura. “Then you solved your instability problem! How? I feared it would be a permanent condition.”

Nenna grimaced. “I wouldn’t say solved.”

Rohiin glanced over at her, his eyes glowing white with his signature deepvision. Nenna flinched as his expression flattened.

“I think she’s actually gotten worse.” Rohiin turned to glower at her. “If you keep straining yourself you’ll end up extinguished. Why haven’t you given up on being a summon and taken over teaching yet? It’s the one thing you’d be good at.”

His words felt like a slap. Nenna’s barely-suppressed emotions flared up in an instant. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my existence watching everyone else do what I can’t! I’m going to the mortal realm, just like you.”

Rohiin scoffed. “If any wizard will have you. And I promise you, no one will. They look for power, first and foremost.”

“Then what are you doing back here?" Nenna retorted. "You with your extra special doublespark, aren’t you popular enough yet?”

“Our wizard was killed,” Akhal said without particular inflection, but sadness dimmed his aura with clouds of brown.

Nenna immediately regretted her outburst. “Oh,” she managed. She scuffed her feet deeper into the golden dust. “I’m sorry.”

“I told him not to mess with the infernal plane, but he ignored my warnings,” Rohiin spat. “We weren’t enough for him, he had to go summoning darkspirits, and see where it got him?”

Nenna shivered and glanced around warily. “They didn’t follow you, did they?”

“Don’t worry, we’re not so careless as that,” Akhal reassured her. “The darkspirits were bound and banished before we were recalled.”

Rohiin shook his head. “Barely. If not for—”

A brilliant cascade of light interrupted, drawing everyone's attention. Nenna hastily took a place by the edge of the now-glowing circle.

Blues and greens, so out of place in this world of fire and power and sand, flared up with an unreal vibrancy.

A wave of pressure flared out from the circle and pushed everyone backward. Nenna fought to keep her balance and several of the younger attendees were blown over entirely. This must be an unusually powerful wizard, if the link had this much force to it.

Nenna gathered herself, ready to spring forward the moment the initial pressure eased, but in the midst of the chaos Akhal and Rohiin stepped forward together, crossing the boundary of the circle as though the inexorable force pushing them away didn’t exist. Before anyone else had even recovered enough to stand steadily, the circle flared one final time then winked out, the duo gone.

“That was too fast,” someone commented.

“I never even got a chance,” complained another.

Nenna didn’t say anything. She should have realized the moment she saw those two that no one else stood a chance. She turned away from the now-white departure circle and set out in the opposite direction from the training area, across the dull plains, toward the distant marker that she’d claimed as her own.

The markers were the only thing that showed any variation in the endless flat landscape of glittering powerdust in its varied hues. This particular one marked a spot that had been abandoned eight years ago after they’d exhausted all the stored magical potential of the area’s powerdust.

No one else had a reason to venture into the powerless lands. But that only made the location more ideal for Nenna and her plan.

She sat down and carefully removed her shoes, pouring out the golden dust into her hands, then carried it to where she had her own circle. She paced around the outside, careful not to drop a single grain of the charged powerdust, inspecting the custom summon circle she’d been working on for over a decade.

Identical to the main circle in its interior, but different in its framing, her circle would perform something simultaneously similar and opposite to its traditional counterpart.

Where their circle allowed wizards to call spirits to them on the mortal plane, this circle should send her to the mortal plane without needing to wait for a wizard’s call.

In theory.

Nenna had done as much research as possible, understood every nuance of the glyphs she’d chosen, linked them together in the ideal order and with the utmost care, but it was still untested and unproven.

She adjusted a few lines, adding a little of her precious overcharged powerdust, then gave it one final inspection. Complete.

Well, all but one thing.

She traced out one more section with the last of her dust: a lead-in to the spell proper. Since she couldn’t activate spells herself, she’d found this workaround. It was slower and less controlled, but required nothing from her. It would channel ambient power from the surroundings, gathering and dispersing it through the circle.

Then she stepped back to watch and wait.

Unlike the near-instant activation of a smaller spell, the circle’s charge would take minutes even if activated directly. Relying on ambient magic, unable to coax even the slightest help from her faint inner spark. . .

Minutes dragged into hours. Nenna leaned against the marker stone as she waited, glancing back toward the settlement every few minutes in case anyone cared enough to follow her.

No one did. They were occupied with their own lives, their own plans.

Hours passed. The steady glow began to shift from the plain white-gold of unattuned power toward the blue-green of the mortal plane. Nenna leaned forward eagerly, but the waiting wasn’t over.

Gradually, the blue energy cycled through the entire complex circle from its origin point until it reached the center, then shifted to a greener hue as it spread back out. Nenna began to feel the outward pressure of the atmospheric differences between the planes, and eagerly stepped forward.

Each step proved harder than the last, but finally she crossed the edge of the vibrantly-glowing circle and the pressure inverted, shoving her forcefully into the circle’s exact center. She stood, expectant. Ready to finally see firsthand what the other side of the gate would be like.

Force continued to build around her. The glow shone out like a beacon. If anyone looked her way it would be obvious something was happening. But by the time anyone got here she planned to be long gone and any evidence of her circle faded back to dulldust.

Between the external pressure of the spell and her internal excitement, Nenna thought she might burst.

But it wasn’t she that exploded. Her circle did instead.

With a deafening CRACK-BOOM the circle somehow shattered. The sudden inversion of pressure threw Nenna into the air with enough force that she flew dozens of strides, then slammed to the ground. She lay on her back, dazed, staring up at the unchanged ivory sky.

Hissing and crackling sounds continued for several seconds, as the power seared itself together and splintered again and again. Then it stopped, a thick cloud of despair rising from the splintered ground.

No, it couldn’t be despair. It floated freely, not constrained to an aura, rising in dull grey wisps toward the sky.

Nenna shakily stood and looked down at the remains of years of work. The ground had been solidified, fused together into something clear and hard, then shattered into sharp fragments that now filled the entire former spell circle. But that wasn’t the real problem.

Someone lay coughing on the ground in the center of the shattered circle. Someone very obviously not a spirit.

She hadn’t managed to send herself to the mortal realm. She’d summoned something here instead.

San 1

San sat in the study, candle burning low, eyes open wide against the desire to sleep. His master’s spellbook lay open before him. Tiny cramped writing accompanied detailed diagrams, complete with angles and measurements.

All the instructions for his current task: draw a working summoning circle.

If Teleirv were a better teacher - if Teleirv cared about anything but himself - San might be able to actually use the circle. Or any magic. But his master was nearly as much of an incompetent as he was a drunkard.

A loud snore echoed through the house. San hardly even registered the sound.

He was nearly done, the basic layout drawn in and most of the details carved into the magically-joined flattened space Master Teleirv had designated as the project’s location.

San yawned, blinked several times, then took the book with him and stood to walk wearily around the room.

“Finish it by morning,” Master Teleirv had told him, before stumbling into the bedroom and passing out on the floor.

Never mind that it had taken San three weeks to come this close, having never been taught half the glyphs involved. Never mind that crafting a summoning circle was supposed to be done personally by the wizard to attune it to his own power for maximum strength. Never mind that Teleirv hadn’t taught San so much as a single spell in the three years he’d been his apprentice.

Nope. There’s the book, make it happen.

San crossed to the unfinished circle and sat down by the center. The outside was done, only a quarter cross-section of the final section remained to be done. He laid the book beside the glyph section, comparing each symbol with its written counterpart before pressing the inscription pen into the soft wood.

Twice he adjusted a line or angle where his initial drawing had been just a little off. His vision wavered, muscles aching with the need for sleep. But he couldn’t rest just yet. He had to do this right.

He closed his eyes just a moment, picturing the pleased surprise on his master’s face when he saw San’s perfect work. He might smile, might nod in approval, might even say ‘Good work, apprentice.’

Probably not. But maybe. If San worked hard enough, if he did it well enough.

He woke to dazzling sunlight assaulting him through the window. He sat up, sudden panic surging into complete wakefulness, and glanced around the room. No Master Teleirv. Maybe he wasn’t awake yet? If San hurried, he might still be able to finish before his master realized his failure.

He grabbed the book and started transcribing the symbols as fast as he could, heart racing, glancing back at the door between every stroke of the inscribing pen, listening intently for a footstep or a creak of a door. Then back at the circle, eight to go. Seven. Three.

He was just carving the final symbol when the door slammed open.

San yelped, the inscribing pen jerked across the circle in an uneven scrawl, and he knew with sinking heart that the entire piece was ruined. His master would have to buy a new platform, and San would have to start over, and his chance to get it right and impress Teleirv was gone forever.

“What’re ya doing, boy?” Teleirv demanded, hand raised against the sunlight. “Close th’ curtain and get over here.”

San jumped to his feet and took a step toward the window.

The world disappeared.

San felt suddenly empty and weightless; hollow and fragile. Like he was made of sun-crisped paper, dreading the wind.

He saw nothing, felt nothing, perceived nothing. His breath made no sound as it escaped his gaping mouth, replaced with—

Smoke. Dust. Sand.

San fell to his knees, coughing and choking, sensation returning in a rush. The air felt heavy, gritty as though he were trying to inhale salt. Light dazzled him, a flickering ever-shifting light that glinted off the broken glass surrounding him. He coughed again, inhaled smoke and dust, raised a hand from the ground and stared at the splinters of white crystal slowly tainted with red.

He couldn’t think. Nothing made sense. He stared at his hand, gasping for air in the thick atmosphere of smoke and dust. Blood trickled down his palm. He didn’t feel any pain.

Lightning flickered overhead, never striking, never ceasing, a network of constant motion. Rainbows of colour glinted through the glass beneath him.

A shadow stood over him, bright and solid at once.

“You’re not an infernal, are you?” whispered a female voice.

San looked up, saw a white-gleaming outline of a person, a solid ghost somehow not transparent while giving an impression of etherealness. He couldn’t reconcile how she was casting a shadow; she seemed made of pure light, but without the brightness.

He opened his mouth to speak, coughed, and stared at her extended hand.

“There’s glass,” he managed to say, holding out his own hand toward her. He still couldn’t think past that, everything else seemed so far away.

Lightning flickered across the sky.

Blood seeped into the broken crystal beneath him, welled up and ran down his arm.

The ghost woman glanced around nervously. “Where are you from?” she whispered, urgently.

The question didn’t parse. San stared blankly, blinked a couple times, then stared back down.

There was glass in his hand. He should do something about that.

He shifted so he could sit, then started pulling the shards out. He knew it ought to hurt.

She was pacing now, muttering something that San couldn’t make out.

Then she stopped, standing rigid and staring out at the distant sandy horizon.

“We have to go. If you’re not an infernal, then you have to come with me right now.”

She grabbed his wrist, with a surprisingly sharp static discharge, and pulled him to his feet. “Come on, we can’t stay here.”

San nodded and took a step, then the pain hit. Everything he’d been ignoring or just unaware of flooded in. He whimpered, hands shaking between the instinct to curl up and wanting to start tearing the shards of broken glass out of his hands and hang the consequences.

Maybe if Teleirv weren’t such a failure as a teacher, he’d know some healing spells.

But he didn’t. He stumbled, fell to his knees - thankfully in sand this time rather than broken glass - and passed out.

The next thing San knew, he woke to being dragged across the ground. Sand had worked its way under his robe, down his pants, into his hair, basically everywhere. His throat felt dry and itchy. He glanced at his hands, which were wrapped in a light gauzy fabric that had the same pure-light-but-no-brightness quality to them as the skin of the woman dragging him.

“Where are we? Who are you? What happened? Why—”

“Shhh! Can you walk? We need to get somewhere safe.”

San glanced around. He saw nothing but flat sand, unbroken by so much as a hill or valley, stretching all the way to the pale yellow horizon. Lightning flickered continuously overhead, silently twisting and reforming itself in a perpetual lightshow that made him simultaneously awed and terrified.

“What is this place?” he couldn’t stop himself asking, as he accepted her hand and got to his feet. This time he didn’t immediately faint, so that was a plus.

“Infernals call it Source, humans call it the Plane of Magic, and we call it Esh’mardren-tatheerok’naen.” She said the final word smoothly and without particular emphasis, but it sounded to San like complete nonsense.

“The Plane of Magic?” He looked around again, this time calling on his dormant magic sense, and froze. Everything sparked with power. The air was heavy with magic, the sand itself gleamed with a billion tiny stars, some brighter or dimmer, and the sky! The lightning visible to normal vision was nothing to the vibrant red-gold streams of power twisting and coiling against each other, snapping and crackling across the sky.

He saw more power in a single breath, a single handful of sand, than San had seen in one place his entire life.

He exhaled in awe, then stumbled as the not-glowing woman made of light pulled his arm impatiently. “We have to get out of sight!”

He followed, colours blurring and shifting between his physical vision and his magic sight as he continued to give his full attention to the fantastical landscape through which they traveled. Though seemingly formless, he could see now the ribbons and patterns in the sand beneath them. They walked through duller sparks of power toward brighter ones, further away from the brightest gleam on the horizon behind them.

“Who are you?” San asked, whispering this time out of respect for her paranoia.

“Nenna.”

Powerless, spiritless, worthless. But not quite useless.

Nenna wants desperately to be a wizard's spirit, to be summoned away from the realm of power and into the mortal world. But with her own magical spark barely present and far too unstable to support even the simplest spellcasting, what human would want her?

Tired of waiting, she takes matters into her own hands. She's going to do the impossible: reverse-summon herself to the mortal realm without waiting for a wizard's call.

And when the ritual is over and the smoke clears, she *has* done the impossible. Just not in the way she intended. She's still right where she started. But now she also has a very confused human apprentice wizard - and he's in no hurry to return home.