There was a mirror-room on the top level of the Edict Temple. Unlike the one at home, Caen had never seen the inside of it before. Even now, he and his father, Ergen, waited on the ground floor as Sh’leinu and a pair of priestesses tried contacting Sh’kteiro, Caen's uncle. The mirror-room possessed features that allowed for long-distance communication through some complex workings of Scripting and Divination.

Caen had retrieved his parents’ bags as well as Aunt Grena’s. They’d left them here yesterday in his mother’s storage room with the intention of bringing them home today. While he was loading them into a rickshaw, Aunt Grena showed up, flustered. She was leaving with the other city archivists, she explained before grabbing her luggage. She hugged Caen quickly, exchanged quiet words with her brother, and hurried away.

“You’re honoring the Odaton summons in a combat capacity, aren't you?” his father asked him.

Caen hadn't even needed to think it over. A large gathering of practicians versed in all sorts of magical disciplines. This summons was a stellar opportunity for him to refine Mimicry. The second phase of reclamation efforts after a Planar break usually involved heavy combat with hostile Planar creatures. Caen had honored summons before, but only as a healing auxiliary.

“I am,” Caen said simply.

His father nodded, as if in resignation, and twined his spirit around Caen's.

Caen put a comforting hand on his father’s shoulder, and his father placed a hand on his. They stood there in silence till Sh’leinu came down.

“I’ve talked to Sh’kteiro,” she said. “He’ll meet us there.” She looked at Caen, then glanced at her husband. Something seemed to pass between them. She sighed and wrapped Caen in a hug. “Parents can’t help but worry. It’s the only thing we’re good at. I know you’ll be safe.”

His parents entered the rickshaw and left for the pickup point.

The city around him was in an uproar. Caen sprinted to the train station and caught a train to Beslin by the skin of his teeth.

Back in Beslin, everyone seemed agitated. He hurried home, but stopped at Vensha’s cottage on his way to let her know that her siblings and his mother had left, but he found her hauling two large duffel bags and a bulky tarp-roll with weapons in it.

“I should have figured you’d be leaving as well,” Caen said.

“Whole party’s headed out right now,” she said, dumping her luggage by a corner. “When do you leave?”

“The first airship’s scheduled for tomorrow morning,” Caen said. He’d read the details on one of the posters slapped on the temple wall.

“Your parents didn’t happen to slip you any hints about what we’ll be handling down there, did they?”

“Large ants and trees, I think,” Caen said, recalling the nightmare he'd viewed earlier with Sh'leinu.

Vensha grunted. “Have you spoken with Zeris? She was looking for you.”

“I was heading home before I stopped here, actually.”

“Well, she’s leaving today, too,” Vensha said. “You might want to hurry back.” She shoved a small box at his chest and slapped the side of his arm. “Bullets. Go.”

Caen got back in time to see Zeris scribbling a note on the kitchen table. She wasn’t alone, though. Ladia, Zeris’s tutor in Spatial magic, sat with one leg crossed over the other, arms folded. She was a severe-looking woman with tight, brown braids and a large monocle on her right eye. An untouched cup of tea sat on the table in front of her.

“Oh, look, your brother is here,” the woman said drolly.

“I was going to leave you a note,” Zeris said in Code, as she took his arm and guided him towards the foot of the stairs, which offered no privacy whatsoever. “You heard about the summons?”

He told her what he knew.

She nodded. “Ladia is taking me there. It’ll be my first time observing a recently formed Aperture up close. And ancestors, the principles I could glean.”

New Apertures weren’t rare, but keeping track of them and knowing where to look required the attention of an entire field of magic. And still, many were found long after their formation.

“I left a bag of holding on your bed. It’s a small one, so don’t get too excited. And there’s —”

“Zeris,” Ladia said, “if I wanted to sit in a tiny and unnecessarily cold room while staring at a lukewarm cup of tea, I would have gone home.”

Zeris rolled her eyes.

“I’m coming with the airship tomorrow,” Caen said, giving her a quick hug. “I’ll see you then. Thanks for the bag.”

Zeris walked over to Ladia, and Caen immediately extended Soul-sense to the monocled woman, connecting to her in an instant. He’d seen Zeris teleport back from her lessons a few times, but he’d never watched a Spatial mage cast a teleportation spell before.

He noticed a thread cluster grow prominent in her soul.

The next second, Zeris and Ladia—along with the chair she was sitting on—vanished. There was no fanfare in the slightest.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Teleportation looked very unimpressive for something so incredible. He remembered how let down he’d felt the first time he saw Zeris just instantly materialize on the lawn when returning from one of her lessons with Ladia.

It was almost evening now. Caen took a breath.

Alright, let’s get to it.

He had a lot of preparing to do. He turned to go upstairs, then he heard the soft clatter of wood behind him. Whirling back, he found the chair Ladia had teleported away, trembling slightly.

* * *

Caen found the bag of holding. It was a cylindrical backpack that Zeris rarely carried around with her.

He got out his largest backpack and spent the next half hour filling it with necessities.

His favourite pair of boots, several changes of clothing, and his notes. Writing materials. That trashy novel he hadn’t finished yet. A whorl-gem.

His weapons went into a tarp roll. A sword, his collections of throwing knives and daggers, two of which were coated in a fast-acting paralytic, the box of bullets Vensha had just given him—to which he added his own stash of spare bullets—and then finally, his glaive. It was as tall as he was, so he was going to have to carry it strapped to his back. Both of his guns had been serviced and placed in holsters, which he strapped to the utility belt he would be wearing tomorrow. After a moment of consideration, he decided to leave behind his main grimoire. It held sentimental value to him, and he was afraid of taking it out of the house lest something happen to it. Besides, he already had a copy of it in Uncle Vai’s library. Still, he grabbed a much smaller grimoire that held a number of unpractised spells. He carried this one around with him often.

Then came the chore he’d been putting off for about a week now. Replacing his Chymical solutions and reagents. Caen had not been able to go into town to buy everything he needed. And even if he had the money now, it was already too late to start rushing down to the local Chymistry guild to restock. He made do with what he had, however.

Carrying all his crafting equipment to Aunt Vensha’s cottage, he got into her shed with a spare key and cleared out a table piled with knick-knacks. He often came here to make solutions. Chymistry was a discipline of magic that relied on a knowledge of arcane principles as much as raw magical affinity. Caen was still an utter beginner even after over six years of practicing it.

Chymistry combined modern brewing techniques with traditional alchemy and herbalism. A fair deal of Chymical techniques involved infusing mana with specific mixtures to properly bond them. It was dangerous and sometimes volatile work, which was why Caen never made potions at home. In fact, for the more dangerous solutions, he made use of the rented stalls at the Chymistry guild building.

After tying up his white hair into a bun, he put on a pair of goggles, heavy gloves, a thick leather apron, and wrapped a specialized mask around the lower part of his face to keep from inhaling fumes. He could still sense his soul structure overlaying his entire body. All day, he’d had Soul-sense active.

He got to work.

Caen wasn’t doing much brewing. Most of the materials he needed weren’t available, and some mixtures would take days to concoct. So he settled on things he could produce within a few hours. The sludge and reagent he’d used on Hez, for example. Powdered Roif-bark, which he combined with carefully measured lesser reactants. And a caustic solution that could eat through flesh when paired with water and another compound. All these he carefully transferred into airtight vials of varied durability. They were all enchanted and were perhaps the most expensive thing Caen had ever spent his own money on.

* * *

He walked down to the generalhouse, a three-story building at the center of the commune. There was a storage closet on the first floor that held a potency gauge: a device for measuring magical affinities.

An elder in the commune kept the key on a string around her neck at all times. The equipment was expensive and needed to be safely stowed away, but allowance was made for those who wanted to see if they'd made any meaningful improvements, affinity-wise. Caen used this device once every year, so he rarely bothered her. She handed him the key after warning him to be extremely careful when using the equipment.

The potency gauge was a cuboid vessel of smooth metal plating with a small glass dome atop it. This specific equipment could only test one's potency in eight disciplines of magic.

Caen put his fingers in a slot in the glass dome and began crystallizing his mana on his fingers. Doing so required a basic mana manipulation technique. Attuned mana could not be crystallized for any longer than a few seconds. It was inherently unstable, and only ambient mana was pure enough to form solid crystals. Nonetheless, the potency gauge was scripted to preserve attuned mana crystals.

Better models on Ser-gwu Island could read a person's affinity down to the fourth decimal. This one here at the commune, however, could not display fractions, so it always rounded down affinity ratings to whole numbers.

The device hummed softly for a few minutes before spooling out his results on its reader.

Zeros in all eight categories.

The results did not discourage him this time. Instead, they lit a fire under him. This was just another thing to work towards. And now he had the means to do that.

He rushed down to Uncle Vai’s house and left a message with Hshnol, explaining the reason for his departure.

It was night when he returned home. It’d only been him, Zeris, and Vensha living here for the past week, but somehow it felt almost abandoned.

Caen gathered his things and glanced at the house one last time before stepping out and locking it.

He hauled his bags to the tracks, and on the way there, he met his cousin, Ganul, younger brother to Malo. He was carrying a large duffel bag and had a sword strapped to his waist.

“Guess I’m not the only one honoring the summons,” Ganul said as they walked abreast. He was short but well-muscled with the beginnings of a black beard on his chin.

“Guess not. Where's Malo? Don't tell me he's at work.”

Ganul chuckled. “Yeah. He says he’s too old for this, even though some of our relatives his age are leaving tomorrow. Besides, he wants to stay back and keep training for the trials. I’d stay back too, but… it’s a summons.” He looked at Caen. “You don’t seem very excited.”

“Oh, I am. This is just my game face. On the inside, I look like this:” Caen flashed him a smile.

“You and me both,” Ganul said, laughing.

They boarded the train. It was emptier than he'd expected it to be. Caen didn't often have any reason to go out into Drenlin this late. He and Ganul chatted on their way there. Caen used the whorl-gem all the while.

“Hey, I’m lodging with some friends,” Ganul said as soon as they disembarked. “You could come stay with us. They’re all people our age and fun. No one from the commune.”

“Aww thank you, Ganul. That’s really nice of you, but I have other arrangements. See you at the airships tomorrow?”

“You bet!”

Caen went into the meditation chamber in the temple and spent the next four hours meditating on his soul structure.

Afterwards, he retrieved a blanket from his pack and placed it on the cool marble tile. First thing tomorrow morning, he’d be heading for the airship to Odaton.