Summons Prompt

Prompt: You were summoned to another world to be its Hero. You attained amazing abilities and powers. Traveled to distant, fantastic lands and exotic cultures. Met and fought alongside incredible allies to stop the unspeakable Evil. Lost friends along the way. But now you’ve returned to your own world.

I stare up at my apartment building. It is snowing, but the snow doesn’t bother me. The cold hasn’t bothered me since – since a long time ago. The light is on, and a stranger lives inside. A castle fit for storming, the voice whispers in the back of my head. It’s not really mine. It was never mine at all. But is has followed me from the High Kingdoms when nothing else came with me. I can judge at least six ways inside, be in the apartment in under a minute and... and what, then?

I don’t even know. I’m not sure to this. To not knowing. To walking out of step with the world. My car was impounded and sold two years ago. My parents kept everything I owned in storage. Until they couldn’t afford the fees. It was more important to pay for fliers, investigators, to look for answers that way. My entire life vanished. They kept a few things, but their court-appointed psychologist told them it was dangerous to hang on.

I haven’t asked for the name of the psychologist.

Cell phones weren’t like this. Three, three years? It was three years. I don’t forget things. That is not a gift that I was given. I punch in a number, listen to it ring.

“Mike? It’s me. Christina” Chris doesn’t fit me anymore. “I need a place to crash.”

He says yes, and is at his front door when I arrive at the house his parents left him in their will. He looks nervous. I can’t do anything about that. We were never an item, but I think he had a crush on me before he figured himself out. I’m not above using that.

“I heard about your dad.” That’s a new Mike. A Michael, one I don’t quite know. Strong enough to speak the truth. “He said he won’t be pressing charges.”

I didn’t touch him. “I didn’t touch him,” I say aloud, in the human way.

“He ran through a screen door from the look you gave him.” Mike pushes his glasses up on his nose. “Why?”

“He asked about what happened. He wouldn’t stop asking,” I say.

Mike stares at me, reminding me almost of Griegor somehow. As though he, too, can see beyond what others can. Then he just opens the door and lets me in. Griegor never did that. Everyone else trusted me; Griegor trusted only Griegor.

I like to imagine he survived. But they didn’t call it the Final Battle in their prophecies for nothing. The Undying King doesn’t die; it was in the name. But even so: six seasons of training, the gathering of the Six Shards. Learning how to speak to mountains and command them. Calling on the wind that blew between the stars. Learning how to break the cold bonds of matter. There were other things, but it was a war and only power matters in a war.

Mike asks how the job hunt is going. I say it’s not, and he laughs as thought I made a joke.

I’m not sure when anyone laughed at me before. It’s been a long time.

He offers me a drink. I take it. A trap, the voice whispers, and it is only right in this. I change the drink even as I swallow it, and change it again after. He pours another glass, fingers shaking only a little.

“What did Griegor tell you?” I ask.

“Chris?”

“The stranger. The one with the eyes.” I do not move; Mike cannot, not under my gaze.

“Greg. He said his name was Greg. He says they need you to return, Chris. That there will be others. Traps. Dangers. I’m not the only one.”

“Of course you aren’t.” I stand, pouring myself another glass of the wine meant to poison me. “What else?”

He says nothing. He doesn’t have to. I turn as his cat leaps. Cookie the cat, fur the colour of a warg, eyes burning with the fires of Olnesh.

“Heh.” This time it is me, and the voice within as one. I step aside, pull the fires out and snuff the power with a thought. The poison shifts inside me with the use of power. Clever, clverr Griegor. The world spins. I chuckle as it stops spinning.

“Cycles. That’s what they never understood.”

“Chris?” Mike’s voice is cracking, eyes as wild as soldiers at the Final Battle.

“Oh, no. You don’t get to escape. Not like that.” I touch his forehead, pull him back and he collapses onto his couch. Cookie is on the floor, barely moving. “Griegor will come back, expecting me. Tell him that I was wrong.”

“I don’t understand?”

“I thought he hated me for breaking the prophecy. They expected a man. Prophecies always do. But I came, and won. The battle of Ulsdown, the fall of the Siloon Citadels. The Final Battle. The Undying King can’t die. But I killed him. You can tell Griegor that, Mike. Tell him that Christalia – Christina – Chris, use all those, so he knows: tell him I killed the Undying King.

“But the Undying King can’t die. So there will be an Undying Qeen. If I return: you tell him I am staying here. Not because I want to. Even the air smells off here, now. But I have to. Because if I don’t, the cycle might never end.”

“Chris, you –.”

I smile, and the smile is also the voice within me. I feel nothing as Mike screams in terror. I stop him from dying; it is so easy to do that, now. “You will tell him that the Undying Queen is not to be disturbed. And he will understand that. Or I will make him, and I am not certain our world would survive that.”

I empty the cash from Mike’s wallet, and accept the keys to his care. It will be hours before Griegor can force a passage to this world. Hours before Mike tells him everything. Enough time to cross at least two state lines. Enough time to vanish from the world a little more. I wonder why Griegor is following me, wonder how much he knew: did he wish to be the next Undying King? I have no idea. I have no desire to find out.

This is my world again. Because I have no choice.

I get into the car, turn off the GPS and just drive toward the city limits. And the voice that is Undying laughs very softly in my head, at some joke only it can understand.