Eldrid had been walking to the grocery store, when he noticed a strange light in the sky. It was winter, and the sky had gotten dark already, but a light was spreading over the sky. It formed lines, and some sort of strange symbols. He looked at other people, but no one seemed to notice. He decided he must have simply gone insane. Maybe a hallucination? He continued walking to the grocery store.
As he pondered buying fish or chocolate, for his mental health, a lightning bolt struck at him. He jumped back just in time, and it missed him. Eldrid thought this was strange, he had almost never been almost hit by lightning, not at all as far as he could recall really. Until now. He looked around, people were reacting, panicking, running. At least he had hallucinated again, if he had at all. Relieved that he potentially wasn’t completely mad, he continued walking to the grocery store, carrying an empty sports bag for the groceries.
Unfortunately the lighting kept striking, seemingly at random, no longer getting very close to hitting him, but still closer than he’d have preferred. Eldrid was considering going back to his apartment by now, but he was already halfway to the grocery store, so he decided to press on. He thought it was strange though, the lightning storm, considering there were no clouds in the sky, and there wasn’t any rain either. Even stranger was the growing runic symbols in the sky? Or maybe they were getting closer.
Eldrid considered this for a moment, but decided he should continue moving with all this lightning, standing and pondering runic symbols in the sky seemed foolish as of now. He could consider it more deeply later. And he was out of apple cider.
As the chaos continued, cars began getting struck by lightning and careening out of control. Strangely, they all seemed to be going toward him, even as they spun out and flipped over. Even more strangely, there seemed to be a lot of trucks, large semi trucks really. He had to run now, and at this point he was thankful that it hadn’t been raining, though the grip on his shoes had been somewhat worn down, he still managed to evade the cars, trucks, lightning, and seemingly random explosions.
He wasn’t sure if the explosions were from the vehicles, or if perhaps they were explosives. There was the chance they were just fireworks for new years, but it was still quite a ways from new years, and he thought it’d be a strange place to set them off regardless. He decided he’d rather not get near enough to find out.
As he was running and dodging the vehicles and lightning and what have you, he finally came upon a large tree. He rested his hand upon the tree and tried catching his breath. He’d hoped the tree would stop a random vehicle flying in from nowhere. Unfortunately, the tree exploded.
Soon, he found himself standing in a wooden room, full of people in robes who had been staring at him. Strangely, he felt naked, and when he looked down he saw that he was. That perhaps explains why they were staring at him. He looked down yet again and realized he seemed to be completely unharmed. He thought perhaps the explosion only damaged his clothes. That seemed unlikely to him however, and it didn’t really explain why he was in this room.
Looking around yet again, he noticed most of the people had some sort of strange animals with him. He’d become a bit tired of standing here naked, being stared at by these strange people, so he decided to speak, breaking the awkward silence the room was in.
“Can I have some clothes? Or a towel maybe? Anything really.” A few people hurried out of the room, hopefully to get him something. At this point he noticed a woman standing near him. She was a bit taller than the average woman, maybe around six feet tall, only a bit shorter than him.This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
He’d also realized he was standing on something that seemed similar to the runes in the sky. He was starting to think maybe he’d been summoned. But that seemed a bit absurd. He thought perhaps it was a dream, perhaps he was in a coma after that tree explosion. But even that whole situation seemed a bit strange to him really.
Soon someone came running in with a large robe. It was black with a gold trim, it looked pretty nice really. When he put it on it was quite soft too. He thought of checking the thread count, but decided to do that later. For some reason the person who brought the robe had handed it to the woman near him, who then handed it to him in the circle.
The robe went down to his ankles, and it was fastened so that it was mostly secure. While he was getting dressed the people, whom he believed to be students, started talking to each other. The students seemed to be around their early twenties, most of them anyway. He thought he might be in some kind of college.
The tall girl walked to the front of the circle holding a strange book. She seemed to be trying to ask the old man something, though he had been busy talking to the other students.
Eldrid stepped forward, joining the girl. She finally said, in a voice almost loud enough to be the proper speaking volume for a library. “P-professor, I-.” Before she could finish that sentence, the professor turned around and started shouting. “Dear lord, did he step out of the summoning circle on his own? Girl” he said, as he grabbed her shoulders and started shaking her, looking up at her. “Did you tell him to leave the circle ?”
The girl looked surprised and said “N-no, I didn’t say anything, I just wanted to know if-” Before she could continue her sentence, the professor cut her off, and started shouting even louder than before as he let go and turned to the rest of the class.
“Dear God, the summon is too powerful to control! It’s broken out of the summoning circle. Everybody run!” The entire class of a couple dozen people ran out of the small doorway, including their pets. At least, they tried to do so.
“That’s right, push each other, trample over the others if you have to. It’s survival of the fittest. I’m going down with the ship, but you’re young, you don’t have to die here miserably, slaughtered like animals. You can still live if you run. Keep running and don’t look back!” The professor continued shouting, until just a few students remained, trampled at the doorway, unable to get up.
Eldrid approached the girl, who was only a few steps away now. She was standing there, seemingly shocked by what had happened. “Don’t worry.” Eldrid said “I’m not gonna kill you. I don’t even feel like killing people today.”
“Oh, d-don’t worry.” She said. “I didn’t think you were going to do anything, you seem nice.” Eldrid smiled. “Thanks, you seem nice too.”
The professor, hearing this after taking a few moments to breath after all of that shouting, turned around and took in the sight. The summoned beast, in the form of a man, and the young girl, unslaughtered, and even unharmed, with the man’s hand placed gently on her shoulder. It seems he was about to kill them all.
He turned back to what would have been the rest of the classroom a few minutes ago. “Nevermind, it seems that the summoned beast is friendly. No need to panic. Everyone please return to your seats.” Unfortunately none of the remaining students could walk.
The professor let out an audible sigh. “Well if my other students aren’t coming, I guess we’ll just start finishing things up with your summon. Normally you’d have to wait to set up an appointment, but if the other students can’t be bothered to come to their seats.”
He walked over to a door on the wall, on the side of the classroom and continued. “Then we don’t need to waste any time.” He opened the door to a small office. Eldrid and the somewhat tall woman followed the somewhat short old man into his office.
The woman and her mansummon each sat in unreasonably small chairs in front of the professor’s desk, while the professor himself sat down in an unreasonably oversized chair, more like an overly cushioned throne.
“Now.” said the professor. “Let’s get down to business.