One thing was for sure: Telgar wasn’t about to risk his life on an empty stomach. He hurried back to the apartment with the meals in hand, cursing Uncle Yaroff silently.

  The rain had stopped, for now. He let out a quiet breath and allowed himself to enjoy the tints of crimson and purple behind the cityscape, and the twinkle of a few brave stars no longer obscured by the clouds. Gleaming gss and magicite dominated the buildings, and arcane nterns began to ignite across the city as it grew darker. If he managed to pull this off, seeing the dawn might be the greatest sight of all.

  He unlocked the door as before, and sensed nothing to indicate his uncle had returned. A ck of the stink of spirits was his clue.

  And no mud tracks on the floor. His uncle never cleaned his shoes before he came in.

  “Hey, Annie! I’m back!” he called out. She was already at the small kitchen table, reading a book borrowed from school, squinting at the text before she lit up and came over to grab the food.

  “How’d you manage?” she asked, cupping the stew like it was the world’s best prize.

  He shrugged softly. “Used my arcane threading. Barin just thinks I’m a whiz at understanding the circuits. He also gave me a few coppers.”

  “Hide it from Uncle, or it’ll be gone by tomorrow,” she warned. He didn’t need to be told that twice. Or once, even.

  A few minutes ter, the filling stew hit the spot, and he let out a contented sigh. “You know, I will say that Barin’s cook makes a good stew. It’s so savory. I don’t know how he gets this quality in!”

  “He wheels and deals, like me, or maybe I learned from him?” Telgar proposed. “Anyway, this is super savory. And the veggies aren’t mush, they still have some bite to them.”

  Annie had finished her stew, but her thin body indicated she probably could use more than one portion. He was all set and handed her the rest of his bowl–about a third. “Thanks, Telgar. It’s really good. I like the way the potatoes absorb the fvors.”

  “Yeah. It could use a touch more spice, though.” he leaned back and rexed for the first time today. Without Uncle here…it was the kind of quiet he could sink into, apart from the dull footsteps from the other apartment, and a low sound of music as someone pyed a stringed instrument. But he couldn’t rex just yet. “Hey Annie, uh, we have to head to Albert’s pce. Tonight. Like, right now.”

  She sucked in her breath through her teeth. “What happened this time? I would bme our uncle, because that’s usually how a lot of our problems start.”

  “He uh…did something dumb. So he had better be scarce for a while. I have to do a job for Derek that will, in all likelihood, get me killed.” Her eyes widened in response, and she balled her fists.

  “Okay, what the hell, Telgar. Why are we on the hook for this?” she demanded.

  “Because it’s Derek, and he’s an utter dick,” Telgar replied, letting his frustration simmer over just a little. “You know that thing I suggested? We’re going to Albert’s, and we’re doing it, then and there.”

  She let out a sound of confusion–then started shouting. “You’re nuts! I have already said this is a bad idea!”

  “Our options are limited. I do this thing for Derek, which has ‘trouble’ written all over it, or we run and have to start all over again.Or I don’t do this, and Derek will likely break our bodies in half. And Uncle’s, but he’ll probably be st in line for that.” Telgar rubbed the bridge of his nose. “So, that leaves this option. With a summon, we might have some protection.”

  “And if you summon a slime, dumbass, that doesn’t really help us!” she snapped.

  “Look, I think we’d know if we were reted to slimes, Annie. Uncle has yet to melt into the floor,” he added wryly. She tapped her foot impatiently, and gave him a deathly gre. “Just give it time, booze will do the work eventually.”

  “Nice time to joke when our lives are on the line.” She gritted her teeth before exhaling loudly, and grabbed her backpack. “Okay, as long as Albert is there, I suppose this is one step above ‘death by stupidity’. What do we need for this?”

  “I have most of what I need already. Barin gave me a few ingredients for the binding circle,” he expined. “My arcane threading is the only way this works. I don’t have nearly the raw power I need to pull a summon directly. This is more like uh…coating myself in honey, and walking into bear country. Except with summons. And the bears are even more dangerous.”

  She stared at him bnkly. “Your analogies need some work, Telgar. You are not filling me with confidence.”

  “I’ll expin when we get there.” He grabbed his book on the summoning crafts, along with the instructionals he and Albert had noted, and stuffed everything into his bag. “We’re on a time limit, we need to be at Derek’s by ten. This might take a bit of time. Are you with me?”

  “If I wasn’t confident that you had a chance to pull this off, I’d say no.” She pressed her lips together, and huffed softly. “Alright. Better I’m there than to let you do this on your own.”

  They wasted no time, and hurried out of the apartment, to the flickering of the arcane lights illuminating the streets. Telgar directed them toward a less shabby, less cracked brickwork road, and moved to the sidewalk to avoid a horse driven carriage trotting along the road at a decent rate. He talked as they walked. “So, you know how a summon works, right?”

  “No. Pretend I didn’t read all of this crap before you started gabbing about it nonstop,” she replied with a mood that bordered on contentious. He navigated past the citizens working their way home for the evening, or headed out to the local taverns for a drink. Men and women of humanoid forms walked by, not paying them any attention–alien looking elves with slender, long ears, walking with an unnatural grace. Dwarven who were as broad as they were tall with heavy-set footfalls, and catfolk with bright eyes and sleek fur chatted at an outdoor cafe.

  Telgar waved Annie over. “Okay, so, basic premise, summons are people who went into the byrinth, and never made it out. Or they stayed in there long enough to change into something…else. That’s the theory. No one knows how long the byrinths have been buried in the world. Or how deep they go.”

  “So, If I stayed on the first floor of the byrinth for a long enough time, I might become…something else?” she asked.

  “No, not at the upper yers. The effect isn’t strong enough, but deeper down, it gets way stronger. It’s also not exactly fast, this takes weeks, even years. Or it passes on through when adventurers have kids. Our souls have some kind of…uh…what’s the word Albert used? Resistance.”

  “Like magical resistance? Isn’t that make a dwarf shrug off a magical bolt like it’s a tickle?” she proposed.

  “Good analogy, but not quite. This is more like an inocution, and the change is an infection.” He motioned past a small group of young women giggling and talking to each other, taking up half the sidewalk. “You know, the fact that some of the info is wishy-washy, makes me wonder if we have out of date information here. The academy should have better records and theories.”

  “Okay, cool. I know what summons are. Part monster, part people,” She concluded. Telgar crossed the street to the row of less shabby buildings where a few storefronts were open. “So why can we yank them out of the byrinth?”

  “Ask the mages. I think it has to do with our connection to them.” He would go into detail about the weave of souls, wavelinked arcane energy, and a few other theories, but that might be a snoozefest. “But people have been doing it for hundreds of years. Maybe thousands!”

  “Great progress we’re making with incredible magic,” she grumbled, and waved to the shabby buildings down the road, where they came from. “So how did you and Albert find this?”

  “He got a book on loan from a friend in Hightown, it was very old. He asked the guy for an arcane transcript to preserve it. Albert does that, to preserve documents sometimes, and record old arcane circuit designs. Magic designs change as we get better at it. Were you paying any attention in school?” he asked.

  “No, Telgar, I was busy skinning dead animals. They cut the csses you got in that two year span.” The disgust was all too apparent in her voice.

  “Oh, right. Sorry.” He waved her over to a shop that had the lights still on. The copper and steel colored sign swayed in the light breeze, and read ‘Albert’s Arcane Wonders’. Telgar saw motion inside–Albert hadn’t closed up yet, they were in luck!

  He pushed the door open and was greeted to a small bell chime, and the smell of incense and a feel of static on his skin. Inside there were a few wooden counters and dispy cases, low-end items sitting on metal and wooden shelving, with items tucked away in gss cases.

  A middle aged man with long grey hair and gold-trimmed gsses looked up from his bookwork, and smiled politely. “Telgar, you’re back? You already worked your shift, I was just doing some number crunching for the day.” He squinted and peered at Annie. “Hello dear, I’m surprised to see you here, too.”

  “Hi Albert, we were breezing through the area,” Telgar answered quickly. Albert knew something was up, and closed up his record book, and put the pen back into a small recess on the spine.

  “Young man, I recognize when trouble is following you. I’ve seen it often enough to recognize it by your tone,” he said, and walked around the counter, still dressed in his vest and tie, with dark scks and a white undershirt. “Alright, let me hazard a guess. Uncle Yaroff did something, did he?”

  “Was it that obvious?” Telgar responded, and looked skywards. If there was anything that protected Yaroff from his own messes, it was the gods on above. Or, maybe below. He was still fuzzy on if there were actual gods, or just mages powerful enough to pass as one. “Let’s just say that I’m on a deadline. Or I could be dead, in a line.”

  Annie groaned and put a hand to her face. “If this stupid idea doesn’t kill you, I might. Telgar, take it away, quickly.”

  Albert turned around the ‘open’ sign, and locked up the store before motioning them to the back room. It wasn’t as brightly lit as the storefront, and the mps with the arcane lights seemed to flicker from time to time. The room was a collection of storage cases, lockers storing tools and equipment, and a repair bench Telgar had used frequently. A few beat-up chairs completed the sparse decor, along with an even rougher desk that Albert took a seat at, looking at both of them with concern.

  “Alright, describe this trouble. I have a feeling I know what you’re going to ask, though.” Albert was sharp as they came, and despite his age, showed no signs of slowing down, as an elf, with his ears tucked behind his longer hair.

  Telgar ran through the events, and Albert listened intently. He didn’t ask any, he merely steepled his fingers together, rocking in his desk chair gently, and made small hmm sounds every now and then, as his only reaction.

  “So, in short, we’re screwed,” Annie summarized. “Yaroff has finally gone and done something so stupid, that his backed-up dey of fate is coming crashing down on all of us. And Telgar has a brilliant pn of short circuiting a dangerous process to bring in something more dangerous, a summon! Please talk him out of this one, because I sure hells can’t.”

  Albert gazed at Telgar with grey-green eyes, and nodded quietly. “You realize this is theoretical. We’ve pieced together what might happen. We don’t know what will happen, you understand, yes? And even on my best day, I would say this is risky.”

  “We don’t have a choice. If I don’t do this, Derek will likely take out his anger on us, and we’ll be two more orphans found floating in the canal,” Telgar answered, gritting his teeth. “Will you help us? We have the ingredients we need, and we have my abilities.”

  Albert grumbled something under his breath. It sounded like ‘reckless youth’ if he had to hazard a guess. But the arcanist leaned in, stern faced and his motions slow and deliberate. “Telgar, I need your statistics for Source. Everything. All the basic abilities you have. And the ones you likely haven’t told me about.”

  Telgar sighed. He had told Albert about two of his abilities. His arcane thread, a utility ability that could repair, modify, or bypass magical circuits. He also had his force bst, a small offensive spell that did little damage but could be used to push and pull objects, or people. It was even lower tier than his thread.

  But he had a third, unknown skill he hadn’t figured out yet. And he’d been reluctant to tell Albert about this one, because it was the one that showed up first, on that fateful night.

  Freence Summoner.