Maziar Kreeth had a problem.

Actually, he had many problems, but when the summoning circle he knew he hadn’t made correctly actually activated, that flew to the top of his list.

“That’s right, Maziar,” Sorcerer Zerathon was saying with an unusually proud tone. “Nice and easy.”

Maziar grit his teeth and bit back a retort. Normally it might be nice to hear the man be positive for once, but in this case, he would have preferred to hear the teacher’s usual shower of scorn and disappointment.

On a normal day, Maziar hardly had enough magic to cast any spell, let alone complete one. But one that reached across the planes?

I’ll be in bed for a week if this goes wrong, he knew, but it was too late to cancel it now. The rebound might have been even more dangerous than the casting.

He wouldn’t have tried to cast it in the first place if he wasn’t tired of being threatened with expulsion.

Maziar already had a familiar: War—and the Tower certainly didn’t know about him. They didn’t need to know about him, and Maziar really didn’t want them to know about him.

His familiar was capable of wreaking enough havoc without having recognition. That ornery creature would have treated public acknowledgement as permission to do as he pleased.

Not many students—particularly inept students like Maziar—could reasonably make a contract with a creature like him, and Maziar didn’t need any more attention than he already attracted. He’d had enough of being a pawn in other people’s games, and he didn’t care much for the consequences, either.

Having a second familiar would only cause more trouble, and mana was too valuable for him to waste on a creature that would amount to nothing more than a leech.

I should have just asked for help. But Maziar didn’t like bothering anyone, and he had a plan. He was a clever boy. His plans generally worked out.

Generally.

Leave it to me to bet my life on arrogance and “generally.”

It was supposed to be simple.

First, he would carefully draw the circles incorrectly in a way he was sure Zerathon wouldn’t be looking closely enough to notice. Then, he would use someone else’s blood for the ink. Since summoning spells fell into one of the few classes of magic that required a hand-drawn circle with specific, biological ingredients to tie the spell to the individual caster, it would still be a functional circle if it were checked—it just wouldn’t be tied to Maziar.

So when the circle’s rings began to glow at his slightest touch, Maziar was both astonished and a little bit annoyed. It was a nostalgic feeling—warm and electric—but he hadn’t been able to cast so easily since he’d lost his magic.

What the hell is going on?

When he was a boy, magic was as easy as breathing. Techniques that took some casters years to perfect were like child’s play in his hands. Before he had turned ten, his reputation as a powerful magus had sent ripples through the social landscape of the Varsal Empire. His father would tell anyone and everyone who would listen:

Maziar Kreeth wasn’t simply exceptional. He was exceptional.

But that was before he had learned the price of both his power and his ignorance and had given it all up in exchange for a wish and a dream.

“Just a little more, now!” Zerathon said with more excitement than Maziar had ever seen from him.

There’s no way this thing will actually cast, thought Maziar hopefully. If it petered out and died, there wouldn’t be much of a rebound; he was already hardly putting any mana in at all, and what he was putting in felt like it was being pulled out.

But how?

Could it have been War? Maziar wondered. He’d used War’s blood in place of his own. Maziar sent a questioning feeling through their bond, but only got a similar feeling of curiosity back.

“Success!” Zerathon exclaimed as a burst of light filled the room. “But… What…?

“No way,” Maziar said, dumbfounded.

And just what could he summon with his miniscule amount of magic?

A girl, apparently.

With wild orange hair, a girl about his age appeared in the circle, dressed strangely and looking even more confused than he was.

And as Zerathon’s face practically turned purple, Maziar couldn’t help but laugh.

The girl, on the other hand, took one look at him and exclaimed: “What the f—!”

* * *

Ennette sat on the ground with eyes wide and mouth open.

“What in the—!” Some old red-robed man standing nearby started to spit and sputter as the young blonde man on the floor laughed heartily.

Ennette was not a stranger to colorful dreams, literally or figuratively. It wasn’t at all uncommon for her to dream of the things she read or the people that she liked, nor was it altogether uncommon that she had a certain amount of autonomy and awareness. Sights, sounds, even smells—she’d experienced it all at one point or another.

But this was… more. It was everything, all at once.

This was far more than she anticipated.

The young man was vacillating between trying to take things seriously to clearly thinking this was all a great joke, and Ennette resisted the temptation to laugh right along with him. Given the absurdity of her current situation, any person in their right mind would come to the same conclusion that she did at that moment:

Even if the setting was so realistic, she was still in a dream.

And since it’s a dream, once I get a better grasp of my situation, I’ll be able to assert my will over it, Ennette logically deduced. No matter how crazy this is, I can still gain control. Right?

But where, exactly, was she supposed to start?

She looked up from where she sat on the floor and into the handsome, laughing face her mind had conjured for her. Her eyes lingered on a jawline she’d only seen in cologne ads, then drifted up to his eyes. As if sensing her interest, his gaze met hers, and his laughter quelled into a bemused smirk. She was sure she’d never seen such eyes before.

Dark irises reflected his poorly-contained mirth and the braziers’ flickering lights as his smirk turned into a cheshire-cat grin.

Flustered by her blatant admiration of a stranger's face, Ennette stood and looked around the room. She needed to find something to distract herself from the literal dream man kneeling at her feet and to hide her embarrassment.

Wherever she was resembled someplace out of one of her history books, with tall columns and large stone brick walls, but when she peered closer everything seemed oddly pointed. From the mosaics on the wall to the room’s decor to the details in the high ceiling, it gave the impression they were in some kind of highly ornate, man-made cavern.

Other people off to the side were watching as she tried to find something for her to ground herself with. Most of them looked around the same age and were hooting and hollering, quietly giggling as they whispered among themselves.

None of their clothing looked normal, but if she had to place it, it felt vaguely medieval, yet strangely modern—almost futuristic—with patterns, fabrics, and accents that didn't match any specific period or even culture.

And then there was the magic circle she was standing on.

Am I… in danger? she wondered as an odd sense of discordance struck her. Am I about to be sacrificed to some demonic god because I watched too many horror movies and crime documentaries?

But the shock of the overwhelming transition began to wane, and Ennettereminded herself once again that this was all just a dream, and everything was fine.

If she was about to be sacrificed, then at least this very long and bizarre dream would be over.

“You there!” The man in the red robe exclaimed. He was a stately-looking man with his slicked-back hair graying at the sides and a pointed goatee—but the expression on his face was anything but. “Who are you? What—What—you!”

He looked as lost as Ennette felt and didn’t quite seem to know if he should be blaming her for whatever was happening or the young man on the floor, who was rubbing his chin with a delighted smile as he looked over the circle himself.

Dark-eyed with sandy blonde hair, the younger man then stood in a graceful, cat-like motion, and came over to inspect Ennette. He was quite tall, and loomed over her as he looked her over.

He has nice cheekbones, too, Ennette thought, feeling her face heat up. Luckily he stepped away and went back to examining his circle.

Kneeling, he touched the circle’s edge with an expression that was something between great curiosity and irritation.

Did the spell… fail? Ennette wondered, twisting around.

Given that this was all just an extension of her dream meeting with the Starlight Secretary, Ennette felt safe in assuming that she was in a world that was, at the very least, loosely based on The Lady of the Golden Star. While she obviously couldn’t tell what the circle was for, she remembered enough from the book to understand that the handsome, young man she’d first seen should have been the spell's caster.

Identifying the person at fault, Ennette flicked her hair over her shoulder and crossed her arms.

“W-Who are you?” Ennette demanded with far more courage than she felt.

In disbelief, he pointed at himself. “Me?”

“Isn’t this your stupid circle?” she asked. “Who else am I supposed to ask?”

“Fascinating,” he said.

“What is?”

“You.”

“Why?” she asked, frowning.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“Didn’t you bring me here?”

“I mean, apparently,” he said. “But my spell wasn’t supposed to work.”

Ennette tilted her head, but as she was about to ask him what that was supposed to mean, she noticed that the older man had turned the same color as his robes.

“Maziar…” the older man growled. Ennette blinked at the name, then paled.

Now that was a name she knew, but certainly not the one that she expected to hear.

Wasn’t this supposed to be a dream about Laria? Ennette’s brain spiraled as panic set in. If I was going to meet any characters from the book, shouldn’t Laria have been the one? Outside of the Starlight Secretary, of course—but why the villain of all people?! And why is he handsome?! Brain! Why did you make Maziar attractive?!

“What do you mean, ‘the spell wasn’t supposed to work?’” the older man asked.

“It’s not like I used complicated language.”

“You—You—! What have you done!”

Maziar shrugged and grinned. “Does it matter if I say I didn’t summon a girl on purpose?”