Convergence

Sallustia walked briskly through the corridors of Arx Noctis.

She was headed to the hall where the ritual’s magic circle had been prepared. A few magi followed her, the chains hanging from their masks weaving a metallic veil, tinkling with every step.

With both hands, she threw open the double doors leading to the ritual chamber. Arcanists in black robes — so long they hid their feet clad in sandals — were scattered throughout the hall, taking measurements on thaumaturgicae detection crystals or operating delicate silver instruments and mercury vials on the mezzanines above. Gradually, they were feeding the runic circle at the center of the room with threads of Aether.

There was a council member watching the calculated movements of the magi, their stern demeanor accentuated by the expressionless steel mask that hid their faces, broken only by narrow slits for the eyes. Most of them looked nervous and watchful.

From the new council, Sallustia reminded herself. The prince had dissolved the old leadership, full of dissenters and opposition. I'm lucky to have fallen into his favor, even if he couldn’t offer me a seat on the Council.

But this wasn’t the time for political thoughts.

Lord Juncuso leaned against one of the massive pillars supporting the hall. Under the stained-glass of one of the great windows in the dome — whose multicolored glass depicted Imperator Vibius Finiusin during the Siege of Castra Devana, the event that ushered in the Age of Steam.

Sallustia found it unusually cynical, given the organization’s current state. She held no particular ill feelings toward the man. Even if she wasn’t a magus, but merely a slave paladin.

“How is it going?” she asked Juncuso, noting how different he looked from the other conjurers in the hall, with their rounded helms and robe sleeves adorned with silver circles.

“The ritual seems to be in order,” replied the Lord Cohortes, “but the magic feels far too unstable.”

Of course it’s unstable. She rolled her eyes but didn’t let the thought escape.

From what she had heard, they weren’t summoning a creature from another plane or materializing the essence of a being trapped in an object. They were tearing a hole in reality itself. Hoping to pull something from who-knows-where on the other side.

A hero, the prince had said. But do I trust him?

Sallustia swallowed hard, merely nodding in agreement, evaluating Lord Juncuso’s stance.

He shifted between quiet nobility and a staggering frailty. His height accentuated his slender frame and long limbs, which gave his lean figure a touch of graceful disproportion.

Short, neatly kept black hair framed a sharply defined face and kind blue eyes whose calm carried a hypnotic ache. He wore a gray senatorial toga, simple yet elegant in its own way, and a monocle with a silver frame and chain.

But Sallustia soon stepped away from him when the magi began chanting. The magic was reaching its limit.

Lord Juncuso began to chant with the others to help stabilize the spell. It was a difficult task, even for an army of ordinary mages like the one gathered in the hall. But according to what she had heard, the man bearing the title Custos Arcana had more than simple tricks up his sleeve — such as the addition of somatic components and shortened incantations — for dealing with the thaumaturgicae arts.

He was a master of the secrets of Ancient Knowledge.

A portal opened. The dazzling tangle of vibrant colors stirred a gust of wind that made everyone’s garments billow.

“Oh, unfathomable forces that transcend the veil,” Juncuso’s voice rose to clearly define the image of the opening between Ordinem Finis and the reality they sought to reach, while the others continued chanting. “Hear the call of one who seeks a bridge between worlds; by my will and under oath, tear the barrier that separates us!”

The portal stabilized, and the wind ceased.

First came a pebble, and then the magic flared with a blinding light, with lightning bolts leaping from the Aether weave the magi had used to compose the portal, and then…

The spell coalesced into a human boy.

He had black hair falling straight to his shoulders, a slim build, and average height.

The conjurers backed away, but Juncuso cautiously approached him, with Sallustia at his heels, fulfilling the bodyguard duty to which she had been assigned.

***

“Boy,” a low voice reached Daniel at the edge of consciousness. “Young man!”

The second call was a shout that woke him. Grace pushed himself up with his arms against the stone floor, forcing his body to turn, and faced two figures.

One was tall and thin, wearing a monocle and dressed like a Roman aristocrat out of a history book. The other was a woman with long black hair and violet eyes under long lashes, her symmetrical face marked by a slightly upturned nose and thin lips. Her body was sculpted in curves that caught the eye, but she dressed in a strangely simple manner: a long, plain black dress, and her arms were marked with pale scars from heavy shackles, whose rings of black iron dug into her flesh as if they were natural extensions of her body. The chains nearly scraped the floor, making a metallic lament, coiling around her wrists and elbows like serpents.

“Who are you?!”

“My name is Spublius Vitriano Juncuso, Lord Cohortes and Custos Arcana of the Convergence Council,” the man answered — and it was a relief to hear him speak in a language Daniel could understand. Or did it only sound like his language, while in truth they spoke the tongue of this place? “And this is Sallustia, the slave paladin assigned to my protection.”

A lord? Should I bow?

Daniel nodded slowly but didn’t move. He recognized none of those names. Could it be… he was really in another world?

“Hero,” Lord Juncuso called again. “You are in Arx Noctis, a citadel of the Convergence, in the Empire of Ordinem Finis.”

There was definitely no region by that name where Grace had come from.

“Why do you call me hero?”

The pair shifted uncomfortably.

“Forgive our ignorance,” the woman, Sallustia, bowed in an exaggerated gesture. Their fear of being disrespectful startled him. “We have no idea what title you bear in your world. Hero? Warlord? King of Combatants? Or God-Emperor? We apologize if any of those fall short of your deeds.”

“Deeds? I’m just a student.”

He immediately regretted saying that. Perhaps he should’ve kept the ruse and gone along with what they were assuming, but… God-Emperor? What if they sent him to a battlefield with the hope he’d end a war or slay an ancient demon? Daniel couldn’t live up to their expectations. The world he had just arrived in might be doomed because he wasn’t who they thought he was.

And from Sallustia’s expression, her heart seemed to skip a beat. Her mind clearly invaded by the same thought.

***

The slave paladin turned to Lord Juncuso.

“Is it possible that after all our preparations, we summoned the wrong person?” she asked the magus. “That this young man came by mistake?”

The Lord Cohortes smiled, making her go pale.

“Gentlemen,” he called to the assistant magi, “please show our guest to his accommodations. The prince will want to have a word with… the student.”

Two men helped the boy to his feet, not without some kindness. Horrified, Sallustia stared at Spublius Juncuso’s smile, finally struck by the truth: there was no hero.

“So… this is yet another of the prince’s schemes.”