Chapter 33: Isla?

As another new morning dawns the party gather to plan their journey outside the wall to hunt down this crazy broker, they first head into the town to gather supplies as they plan for a long journey in case it takes them some time to locate the broker. Once that has been completed they gather up their gear and head out of the north gate of the city towards the location they were given at the end of yesterday. Like their last excursion beyond the walls the walk was eerily quiet as there seemed to be no sign or trace of anything actively hostile in the plains, this fact made the party wonder if something had happened before they ha arrived that drove all of the monsters off and if whatever caused it to happen was still roaming the plains waiting for them to discover it. But for now the party had a different goal in mind as they walked and that was to find the broker everyone within the city had called crazy for some reason. With the sun beginning to descend from its midday height a small building could be made out on the horizon, once the party noticed its existence they began to walk in that direction anticipating that this would be the building that the broker in the city who gave them the location of the person they are looking for was talking about. A deceptively long time later the party finally arrived at the building with the sun just now beginning to touch the horizon, Ilev knocks on the front door on the house then steps back waiting for an answer from the inside. The short moment between Ilev knocking and something happening seemed to just continue stretching out into the infinite, so Ilev stepped forward to knock on the door again.

“What are you all doing here? Have the city finally decided that I have to be put down?”

A voice came from behind the party, each member turned around to look at the source of the voice. Behind them stood an average human male, that matched the description given to them by the city broker.

“No not at all. We’re here to talk to you as we think you have some information that to those in the city sounds crazy but for us it might just be the exact information we need.”
“Well that certainly is an interesting twist. Come inside and tell me what it is you would like to know.”

The man shuffles past the party and unlocks the door and heads inside gesturing for the party to join him, the man heads straight for a large table off to the right of the room and takes a seat waiting for the party to do the same.

“So adventurer’s what can I do for you that you suspect the city brokers cannot?”
“We want some information on the past of Isla the Void Hunter. The people in the city told us something but we don’t really believe what they have to say is true and one of them mentioned you and that you seem to have some crazy theory about her.”
“Well crazy I would not say, but to them I suppose it would. What I will tell you is not common knowledge only high ranking mages and certain adventurers know of this information. That is that with the summoning magic that does exist it can be used in another way, and that other way is to summon people from other worlds. Those who have accomplished such feats generally don’t do it very well and instead of summoning people they instead get an animal of some kind, but there are four stages of otherworld summoning a failure which results in nothing being summoned or an animal of some kind being summoned, then there are two partial successes the more common of the two is a person being summoned but they do not know why and they have none of their memories anymore, and the other is when a person is summoned they have their previous memories but they also do not know why they are here. Then finally there is the successful summon which summons a person with both their memories and an ingrained idea of what their mission in this world is. I have proof that this person named Isla is a partial success summon but they do not have their memories from their previous world. I assume you will want to see my so called proof.”

The man does not wait for a response and instead places a journal and a photograph of Isla onto the table.

“When that girl first arrived so too did this journal and this unnatural portrait of herself, you are free to read the journal if you would like, I have never heard of any of the places that the journal mentions existing in this world.”

The party pass the picture around themselves each one recognising it as Isla and when they open the journal the handwriting inside matches up with the handwriting on the note she left for them way back in her forest home. Closing the book the party look again at the man.

“You are correct none of the places that she mentioned in this book exist in this world as they are all places from our world. Isla like ourselves is an otherworlder. Your explanation filled in a gap for us as we didn’t know why she had no memories, but we suspected that she wasn’t from this world because of the way she spoke. You mentioned that most people are summoned to this world to fulfil a purpose, even if the majority of the time they are unaware of what that purpose actually is. Do you know what her’s might be?”
“Well I say, this is a first somebody actually believing what I have to say. And not only that they want to know more of what I have to know, and they themselves are also here because of the secret effect of summoning magic. I will tell you more but first I suggest we have something to eat for I personally am famished and I suspect you are as well traveling all the way from the city in only a single day.”