Chương 1: Second Summons

For whatever reason, Sara Reece was nearly impossible to kill. Despite never asking to become a hero, Sara had outlasted all the members of the Hero's Party, her best friend, a narcissistic tyrant, and a sadistic, villainous bitch of a queen named Mary, whom she wished she could kill twice. Sara survived two different worlds, four wars, and hundreds of battles with beasts, kingdoms, and demons. And just ten minutes ago, to her complete astonishment, she survived her battle with Agronus, the demon king. Somehow.

Sara looked like she had suffered a botched back-alley surgery when it was over. Her vital organs were punctured and spilling out all over the place—but she was still breathing. There was a little hope she'd survive once Agronus died. Human forces could storm the castle. Perhaps a healer would be in the mix. Maybe she would survive. But probably not. Sorry, Kye, she thought. Seems we'll have to hold the wedding in the afterlife. She chuckled sardonically. Be nice to have some friends there, anyway.

Sara had lost every friend and acquaintance she had, including Tiber, her adoptive daughter, and perhaps her lover, Kyritus Senaco, who was still fighting in Angora: the demon capital. There wouldn't be many people to celebrate their wedding. Sara chuckled darkly over that as she slid her sword against the rocks in Agronus's courtyard, ignoring the scraping sound as she walked toward the gasping demon king. Despite her cutting, the magic circle—or array—that covered the castle's courtyard didn't move.

It just hovered there, white, glowing, and ethereal, spinning over flowers and ground cover and molten holes that the two had made during their castle-collapsing fight. Three hundred years ago, Telia Sayon, the greatest mage in history, fought Agronus to a standstill and used her blood to create a massive magical array to confine him to his castle. Sara imagined that this was the array. It was the most complex she had ever seen.

There were ten inner circles, meaning there were ten distinct magical processes developed from runic characters Sara couldn't read. The runic characters all fit within circles, triangles, or squares, all connected with a network of lines. It looked like something out of Leonardo da Vinci's notebook. Beautiful. Floating. Invincible. Sara was too tired to think too much about it, so she used the rest of her energy to lift her sword like Excalibur, prepared to plunge it into the demon king's chest.

"You…" Agronus said, laughing weakly.

"I'm not into monologues," she said and thrust the sword through his heart. That's when the terror began. The second Agronus died, a violent torrent of mana released from his body like a shockwave from a missile strike. It flung her backward into a bed of roses, leaving her temporarily stunned. When she opened her eyes, she saw the floating array moving skyward, now lit red. Sara felt a bad premonition that it was about to explode. So, she tried to crawl away, only for gravity to crash into her back.

Her mind blurred into a scribble of inverted colors, and she felt an aggressive flash of vertigo from a teleportation spell. Then she smashed into something soft, and vomited. Sara rolled and fell off whatever she landed on, coughing. She rolled onto her back, chest rising and falling in rhythmic thumps. She patted her chest and stomach to confirm she was whole; she was. Her stomach was smooth, and her arms lacked pain. She wasn't spilling out anywhere, but there was something wrong. Very wrong.

What the hell happened to my body? she cried within. In a moment of internal panic, Sara sat up and stared around her environment. It was… wrong indeed. A dream. Sara was in a modern room, nothing like the semi-feudalistic dwellings found throughout Veridia. It was white, clean—uniform. Four USTA tennis trophies adorned the walls. Large, un-leatherbound books lined a rolltop desk. A nearby closet held dresses, shirts, skirts, and an impressive collection of shoes. This was not Veridia.

This was California—her old home. Sara didn't believe her eyes, but as she sat still, eyes fixed forward but unseeing, she heard the distinctive hum of cars, and saw headlights flash through her blinds, painting the ceiling with zebra stripes before fading away. The analog watch she wore ticked on her desk. The red digital clock switched from 6: 17 to 6: 18. Sara didn't know how long she soaked in the sights, but a surge of adrenaline forced her fingers onto her face, probing it in a dreadful daze.

The more she probed, the more panicked she became. No… she thought. No, no, no, No! NO! At some point she started muttering the "no" aloud as she flew to her feet. She rushed to the body mirror hanging on the back of her door. For a moment, Sara stood silent, staring at herself. Then, she started chuckling, first quietly but then maddenly. The hideous scar on her cheekbone was gone, the weathered lines on her face replaced with smooth skin.

Her matted blonde hair was now sheened with modern remedies, and her teeth reflected moonlight like fallen snow. For a moment, Sara just stared and laughed. Then, her temper took over, and she screeched, smashing her fist into the mirror. The glass shattered like red fireworks, scarlet liquid spilling down it as Sara screamed, "God! Damn it!" as she held her hand. It was a smooth hand. Uncallused. Unrefined. There wasn't a single strand of mana saving her skin from the glass.

"What the hell's going on?" Sara screamed again, and a woman responded. The language sounded distinctly familiar but also distant, and her brain blurred as her old mind connected to her young, Earthian body. She could barely make out, "Sara! Sara! What's happening in there?" Footsteps danced across the hall, and the locked doorknob jiggled back and forth.

"Sara! What's going on?"

"Go away!" Sara barked back, wondering if she used the right words, wondering how she used those words at all.

"No! What's wrong? Talk to me!"

"I said, go away!" Sara ordered, grabbing a white T-shirt to pad down her wound.

"I'll pay for the damages!"

"Damages? Sara! What's going on!"

"I smashed a hole in a fucking mirror, and I'm bleeding out, that's what's going on! So unless you have some liquor and a mute mouth, go the hell away!" The woman screamed something loud and incoherent as Sara pulled glass out of her knuckles and searched for signs of an array that could unfuck her current situation. She found none, but she found the digital clock glowing by her bedside and saw English words she could never forget. 6: 23 May 12, 2026. May 12th: the day of the summoning. Around eight o'clock a. m.

, the summoning would begin, pulling in Jason—the chosen "Hero"—to another world. Everyone else in the room aside from her teacher would get pulled in with him. It hasn't happened yet, Sara thought. The summoning hasn't happened yet.

"Sara Leian Reece! Open this door!"

"I said!" Sara stopped, words caught in her throat like a swallowed peach pit. That name. Sara Leian Reece. That was her full name. And there was only one person in either world that used that name.

"Mom?" 2 Please maul me, Sara thought. She imagined a triska bear, twenty feet tall and sturdy as a skyscraper support beam, crashing into her, flinging her far, far away from the conversation she was about to have. Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. It wasn't that Sara didn't love her mother. It was that Susan Reece was dead. Gone. Just like everyone else she knew and loved from Earth. To the woman before her, "Sara Reece"—the current Sara Reece—didn't exist.

Sara was a ghost who had mourned her mother's disappearance, only to return a phantom of her younger self. It was hard to truly love someone that didn't recognize you. That's what she determined.

"Sara…" her mother pleaded, bleeding mascara running down her cheeks. It wasn't yet seven, and her mother was already dressed up, something she did to please Sara's unpleasable father, even when he was away on a "business trip." The look was a reminder that Susan Reece was a person—a living, bleeding human that existed in this world and not just some caricature of what Sara thought a mother might be.

"Speak to me," Susan whined. Sara opened her mouth, but there were no words to say. Neither then, nor ever. At least none that could explain what needed to be explained. Not only would Sara's words come out as a string of schizophrenic ramblings, but it would also be unforgiving. If a god existed in either world, the summoning would still activate around eight AM in a high school classroom.

And once Sara figured out how to get there, she would disappear, leaving the woman before her the daughterless version of a widow, whatever that word might be. God, she needed a drink. Her father stored liquor at his personal bar in the downstairs recreation area. If Sara could just get one of those bottles—"Sara…" Her mother pleaded, eyeing the knuckles Sara was casually picking glass from.

"Please." Sara sucked in a deep breath and said: "It was just a dream. A really long, and… brutal dream. Can I… tell you about it?"

"Of course," Susan said, and so Sara laid the truth bare. She wove a story of love and betrayal, a tale that took place in a world of swords and magic. She recounted how Jason (the man her father loved so much) seized the kingdom, executed her best friend, and hunted her to the ends of the world. Then she conveniently skipped the part where she killed Jason and his wife, Mary Jansen, and went straight to the hilariously ironic part where she became the "Hero."

"And that's not even the amazing part," Sara finished, shaking her head with glistening eyes.

"The amazing part was how I… somehow… found someone. Someone… A tavern owner. I called 'em Kye. And he… loved me. And now… he's gone. And even…" Sara laughed dejectedly.

"And even if I go back… he's not gonna remember me. And with how I am now? Fucking now? Oh, God. He'd run. He'd fucking—""Sara." Her mother's voice firmed up.

"It was just a dream."

"Ah… right. Just a dream." Susan could tell it wasn't a dream. Mothers know their daughters, and the Sara before her wasn't hers. Sara didn't speak, act, or interact like her daughter. Not only that, but the story she told was too vivid, too congruent, too big to be a simple dream. Susan Reece was staring at someone she didn't know, and was probably thinking about her personal pill collection, wondering if something would fix her daughter, fix her in a way that normal speech and discussion couldn't. Sara stood.

"I… should get ready. There's some things I'd appreciate collecting here. Things… I've taken for granted." Sara was talking about basic things: pads, makeup, a toothbrush (for other people, as she knew basic purification magic), certain dresses, and shoes. Practical things that she'd have King Escar's tailor and alchemists recreate for her. Sara had no reason to steal her father's Glock 45. Bullets meant nothing when she could rain blood spears down on an entire platoon.

Then again, it could be useful to put a bullet through Jason Newborn's skull before he was summoned. The thought quickly passed, though. It was just an intrusive thought she had as she dumped the books and laptop out of her backpack and began stuffing it with toiletries. Besides, if Jason was dead, she couldn't go home. He was, after all, the person who was getting summoned. Everyone else was just collateral damage.

"Honey, this needs to stop," Susan said as she watched the carnage playing out.

"You're not going anywhere." Sara sighed.

"Of course I'm not. But just in case… Look, I know how this sounds. But… Here: if it doesn't happen, you can take me to a hospital to get me checked out, okay?"

"And if it's real? Why would you go back?"

"Because it's my…" Home, she added in her thoughts.

"Fate," she said.

"Or something. Please."

"I'm not sure I should leave you alone." Susan pulled out her phone.

"Fine! Just… come with me, okay? Tell my teacher I'm having a psychotic episode and I might need to be taken to the hospital. If everything's a dream, you're free to take me there." Susan swallowed.

"And if I don't?"

"Then I won't go to the hospital." Susan burst into fresh tears, and Sara knew why. Susan believed Sara, if only a little, and she knew that if Sara was right, her daughter was about to disappear—deleted from this world—and there was nothing Sara could do or say that would change that. She could only think about how her homeroom teacher wasn't summoned despite being in the classroom. How good you'd look in a dress, Sara thought as she stood and hugged her mother. You'd make one hell of a noble. Susan would.

She would love to be showered with cleansing elixirs that would remove the fresh wrinkles creasing her face. Eternal youth. Riches. Beautiful dresses and servants. Most of all, she'd escape her alcoholic husband without financial consequences. It was a dream, and Sara would try to bring her, but she wasn't getting her hopes up.

"Come on, Mom," Sara said.

"Let's go." Susan nodded as Sara packed the rest of the knickknacks, clothing, and toiletries she wanted. Then, the two hit the garage door, opening the family's Tesla Model S to the California sun.

"Henry M Gunn High School," Susan said inside the cab.

"Navigating to Henry M Gunn High School, 780 Arastradero Road, Palo Alto, California," a female, robotic voice replied.

"How deathly convenient," Sara muttered, as the car's Autopilot feature kicked in.

"Can drink and drive and everything…"

"You sound like your father," Susan snipped.

"Yep. I'm sure I'll grow up just like him." Sara said that as a joke, but it wasn't funny. Mad Men alcoholic with a temper. Funny how you end up like the people you hate most. The car then left the driveway, heading west toward another world in the blazing California heat. 3 Jason Newborn Jason Newborn sat on his desk, talking to Mary Jansen before class began.

She was a total bitch, and he hated the way she cropped her black hair to look like some chick flick femme fatale, but he had to admit that whenever she slightly lifted her skirt to show her upper thigh, he was tempted. He wouldn't act on those temptations, of course. He had Sara, and he was faithful. Still, he liked knowing that he could sleep with her whenever he wanted. It was nice on the ego.

"Where's Sara?" Mary asked, playing with the bottom of her skirt. Jason smirked.

"Probably sleeping in. We had a… long night last night."

"Late? What were you two doing so late?"

"Well, we were—""Un-fucking-believable," Sara's voice suddenly said. He turned and saw her standing in the doorway, right beside her mother, bloody hand wrapped up in gauze and bandages. The whole bandaged-hand, late-night" comment seemed really inconvenient all of a sudden, and he started sweating. Jason hated that he got wrapped up in an ego trip and implied some lie for petty clout, only for it to look very bad. No one's perfect, he thought. God damn it.

"I suppose I was up late thinking about you," Sara said as she threw her bag on a desk.

"Thinking about how I hate your fucking guts and wish that I could throw you out of this classroom." Jason was floored. Sure, Jason was implying something. But it's not like he was cheating on her. And what the hell was with that tone? She sounded like she meant it. Jason wanted to snap at her. Put some things down on the record, considering she was throwing this hissy fit in their classroom, you know, surrounded by their goddamn peers. But he couldn't.

Sara was wearing her mother like a flak jacket, and he had to be very careful about what he said around her. After all, as far as Sara's father was concerned, the two were already married. But to her mother, they were not. This was not the time or place to speak boldly. He had to rein himself in. Be cool. Think.

"I…" Jason paused.

"Did I do something to… anger you?

'Cause I was just…" What was he just doing? Nothing Sara's mother wanted to hear. When in doubt, say nothing. So, he tried that, but he was blindsided by what she said next.

"Did you… do something to anger me?" Sara turned to Jason with a look so vivid it triggered some type of memory. He suddenly found himself in a… cave. He felt like he had just said something and she gave him that same look. But it wasn't her. She was wearing some type of armor, and she was kneeling over a woman's body. That woman. She kinda looked like—"Sara!" Sara's mother snapped, bringing Jason back to reality, blinking rapidly to regain his bearings.

"Whatever," Sara said, looping her backpack over her right shoulder and leaning against a desk.

"Just… listen, Mom. I don't want our last…" She stopped herself.

"Listen, go talk to the teacher. Okay? Mention my accident or something." Ms. Shouts walked into the room at that very moment.

"Speak of a saint," Sara said distantly.

"And she shall come."

"Ms. Reece?" Ms. Shouts muttered.

"What are you…?" She saw Sara's wrapped knuckles.

"Oh no… will she be out for Friday's game?" Ms. Shouts was an assistant coach of the tennis team, so it made sense for her to care. Hell, why wasn't he caring? Jason only then processed that Sara's hand was bandaged up like something out of a war movie, and he was worried about how it looked to have her injured—not caring about the fact that she was injured. What an asshole! It was bad enough he knew he was an asshole, but everyone else? They were probably thinking the same thing.

It was like he was getting punished twice.

"Wait," he said hurriedly.

"Sara. What—" He never got to finish his sentence. Right at that moment, the entire classroom's floor lit up in a blaze of blue light. It created a pattern. Some satanic shit full of lines and circles and strange characters. Mary screamed, "What's happening?" and then a freight train of gravity smashed into him, and he blacked out.