Unruly Summon Chapter 1: Summoning (Patreon)

The winner of the poll, with more than double the votes, was An Unruly Summon, so I'll give that the Friday slot for November. From December onwards, it'll be two chapters of Unruly Summon per week, at least until the end of the first volume (40-ish chapters) but probably further.

"Well, there's something you don't see every day," I commented, peering at the swirling purple vortex that was squatting over the middle of the road. The previous few hours had involved some rum, but not that much, surely?

"You say that as if seeing something you don't see every day is unusual," commented the personification of pedantry—also occasionally known as Simon—standing next to me. "The world is full of things we don't see every day. It's far more unusual for there to be anything that we do. I haven't seen a slice of toast all week, for example, but I wouldn't feel the need to comment on it if I went home and made some."

"From your flippancy, can I assume you can't see that?"

"See what?" asked Simon, staring unseeing in the direction of the vortex.

The vortex sparkled, and something very distant went ping.

"Like, a glittery purple whirlwind?"

"... How much rum did you drink?" he countered, peering at me with concern.

"Not enough to cause outbreaks of sparkly purple weather," I answered, covering one eye and then the other. They both agreed that the road contained rather more sparkly purple weather than was usual. In the interest of scientific research, I pulled my smartphone from my pocket and took a photo.

The photo showed an empty road, a couple more pedestrians on the opposite pavement looking at me with much the same concerned expression as Simon.

"Hmm..." I concluded. "Should I poke it?"

"I have no idea what 'it' is, and yet I can state with absolute certainty that the answer is 'no'. That's the sort of question that if you have to ask it, the answer is always no."

"I'm going to poke it."

Simon gave an exasperated sigh while I carefully checked both directions, then didn't step into the road.

Yes, I was fairly confident I hadn't drunk enough rum to see purple vortexes—assuming there was any amount of rum that could cause that—but I probably had drunk enough that poking said vortex seemed like a good idea. In this case, Simon was right. If I felt the need to ask the question, I should assume the answer was 'no', however loudly the rum insisted 'yes'.

"... Please... Help us..." whispered the vortex.

"Uh..." I answered, before turning back to Simon. "I assume you didn't hear that?"

"Hear what?"

"Someone calling for..." I started before the pavement peeled up, disintegrating into purple fog and leaving nothing but a void beneath. My phone vanished from my hand, puffing away into the same purple mist. I had just enough time to glance up into Simon's shocked eyes before the purple cloud engulfed me, hiding the street from view. I had the weirdest sensation of falling backwards, except that I kept on falling. Vertical and horizontal should be separated by a fixed ninety degrees, yet the sensation of toppling backward didn't end.

"Thomas!" came Simon's voice, but even his panicked shout was muffled, seemingly coming from a vast distance.

And then I finally hit the floor. As effective as it was, slamming back-first into a hard surface wasn't something I could recommend as a method of sobering up.

"Ouch..." I muttered, staring up at a ceiling. That was interesting; the great outdoors wasn't supposed to have ceilings, unless you got a bit poetic and started waxing lyrical about the starry sky. This one was a clean, sterile white, leading to the suspicion I was in hospital. A medical setting would make sense; healthy people didn't see glittery purple tornados.

Then my nose got in on the action and pointed out that medical settings generally had a rather distinctive smell. This place also had a rather distinctive smell, but that smell was manure. Medical settings—at least the ones I was used to—generally didn't involve manure.

"Well, that was an interesting experiment," came a voice from somewhere above me. "I can't say I was expecting the mana expenditure to increase exponentially. I look forward to writing the paper."

"How... how are you... still so... energetic..." came another voice, this one interspersed with panting and coming from a lot closer to floor level.

"Oh? Is it not a simple question of mana capacity?"

"Uh..." I interjected, sitting upright, and finding my face about two inches away from a girl's. "Eep," I added, shuffling backward to reacquire my personal space.

"Sorry..." panted the face. "Just... Just give me... a few seconds..."

I was happy to grant those seconds, spending them inspecting the young woman in front of me. She was on hands and knees, gasping, rivulets of sweat running down her face. She looked for all the world like she'd just run a marathon.

One does not recover from a marathon within a few seconds, and sure enough, once the few seconds she'd requested had expired, she was still panting, so I gave the rest of the room a more thorough inspection while I waited. I was on the floor of a circular chamber, the only source of light a large, curved, glassless window in one wall. The walls were made of grey stone blocks, neatly fitted together. The floor was made from wooden planks, decorated with a suspiciously runic-looking circular design in white. Through the window, given my sitting position, I could only see the sky. It was a bright blue, which normally wouldn't be a cause for concern, except that last I'd checked, it had been almost midnight. Not a time at which the sky should be brightly shining in any colour. A thin streak of cloud bisected the visible section of sky.

... Wait. The way the cloud was twisting, and the dark colouring. Was that smoke?

The panting girl wasn't the only occupant of the room. The first voice came from another young lady, looking at me with a proud, beaming expression, as if I'd just done some sort of party trick. She looked about twenty, dressed in an ink-stained sky-blue dress, a black cloak over the top, clasped at the front with a darker blue jewel. Her hair was an unnatural cyan, cut short, but it was obviously dyed; I could see the brown roots. Obviously a fan of blue.

Away from the circle, standing against a wall, another couple of young women waited. One looked a couple of years older than the blue lady, as well as being a head taller than her, with short black hair, wearing what was obviously armoured leather. Over the top of it, she had a metal breastplate, greaves and gauntlets. The metal parts of the armour were dented and scratched, but still shiny. She was eyeing me with suspicion, but refrained from saying anything, or, thankfully, from drawing the sword at her waist.

The girl next to her was both younger and shorter by comparison, looking more like eighteen. She had brown shoulder-length hair, and was wearing what was quite obviously a maid's uniform, with a long, black dress, white apron and frilly headpiece. She also had a thin band of metal around her neck. She was smiling and gave a polite nod when she caught me looking at her.

That much inspection was enough for the last of the room's occupants to drag herself back to her feet, even if she did still look like she could use a nap. She looked about eighteen, about the same age and height as the smiling girl, and was wearing an ornate white dress. Despite its rich appearance, it didn't seem to have been treated with much care, being creased and grubby. Some of the grubbiness could be explained by the way she'd just been crawling on the floor in it, but that didn't seem enough to explain the mismatch.

Likewise, her hair was long—waist length, by far the longest in the room—and such a light blond that 'silver' wouldn't be an inaccurate description, but was dirty and tangled. If she didn't want to take care of it, why let it grow so long?

She seemed to flinch a little at my staring, but took a deep breath as she tried to gather herself. "You're probably confused," she started. "Sorry. This must be very disconcerting. Will you let me explain?"

"Actually, I'm not," I answered, channelling Simon's award-winning pedantry as I pulled myself to my feet to join her. "I do not believe I am currently confused. Insane is a possibility I am giving all due consideration, but if, for the moment, I allow myself the assumption that I can trust my senses and my mind, then it's quite clear I've just been teleported at minimum to a fairly distant time-zone, but given your clothing, more likely another world entirely. Given the state of the floor, as well as your reactions, it's equally obvious that you're responsible, and that it was deliberate. So no, I'm not confused, but I do have very many questions."

I glanced out of the window again. Now that I was standing, I could see a town spread out below us. We were obviously somewhere high up, which was interesting, because the majority of the buildings I could see below didn't seem more than a couple of stories tall. Most were only one. Further away, I could see tall walls, dwarfing the interior structures. They were tall enough that there wasn't much I could see beyond them; only some rolling green hills in the distance.

That 'cloud' was definitely smoke, though, pouring up from behind one of the hills.

"Then we'll do our best to answer them," she replied, somewhat taken aback. "But first, I want to emphasise that you aren't a prisoner here. If at any point you want us to send you back, you only have to let us know. Well... that's what I want to say, but you'll need to give me some more time to recover first."

"Pfft," snorted the blue lady. "If it's just sending him back, I can do that much on my own. Don't wait for her, or you'll be here all day."

The tall lady relocated her gaze away from me, instead glaring at the blue one.

"First question," I requested, ignoring the sideshow. "Who are you? We need some introductions. I can't keep thinking of you as the blue one, the tall one, the panting one and the smiling one."

"Hah. The blue one. I like it. Succinct, but also wrong," laughed the blue one, correctly picking up on which moniker was hers. "My name's Wendy Windchild. Seventy-two seasons of age. Enchanter and researcher by trade, and as my family name attests, despite your opinion, it's green magic that runs through my veins."

"Christine Standler," said the tall one, before falling silent. I peered at her for a few seconds longer, but no further information seemed to be forthcoming.

"Mary," said the smiling one, still wearing the same gentle smile. "Sixty-three seasons old."

"And I'm Princess Stephanie Ricousian, the second princess of the Ricousian Kingdom," finished off the no-longer-panting one.

"Thomas Smith," I replied as I desperately multitasked, trying to introduce myself at the same time as working through the deluge of information I'd just received. "Nineteen years old, although how that translates to your 'seasons', I haven't got a clue. Second year university physics student. Not magical at all."

Magic was a thing, for a start. I hadn't felt confident making that assumption based purely on my summoning; it could have been divine in nature. Magic was categorised by colour, but Wendy had referred to her name, which contained 'wind', so perhaps each colour was associated with an element.

Age was measured in seasons, and unless these people matured a lot faster than I was used to, I couldn't just divide by four to get back to years. That was a rather interesting difference, given that they were either speaking English or had arranged magical translation somehow.

Also, Stephanie, in her dirty dress, with the unkempt hair and face stained by sweat, was apparently a princess. A second princess, admittedly, but still a princess. That was certainly unexpected... Was she disinherited? Was the 'kingdom' only this settlement, making 'princess' more of an honorary title? But regardless of her exact position, I still couldn't guess what she wanted with me. I'd heard 'help us' before being yoinked off Earth, so it seemed they wanted me for something, but what use could I be to a princess? The place looked rather medieval, so were they after modern knowledge? Even if so, there were better people to pick than me. Given the existence of magic, I wasn't sure how much of my knowledge would even apply.

Thankfully, they'd promised to answer my questions, so there was no reason to think too hard about it when I could just ask.

"Okay, my second question: what the hell?"

Stephanie peered at me, as if she was expecting some sort of elaboration. I didn't give any. As far as I was concerned, those three simple words were already more than sufficient.