1.1 Val
Val wakes to the cold and dark.
Her slow drift to consciousness reminds her a bit of waking from a too-long nap. Lethargy is hanging heavy over her body and confusion is thick in her mind. She can't remember falling asleep, or how she's found herself here. Wherever 'here' is.
Perception of her surroundings begin to filter into her mind without needing to open her eyes. She's in a boring, medium sized room with a stone floor. It's cold, and dark, and Val makes the educated guess she's in some kind of basement.
Boxes and random items litter the walls on shelves and bookcases, and everything has been shoved to the side to make space for what's on the ground. The floor is covered in intricate white markings, looping and swirling to form greater patterns. Even in a half-disabled state, she can recognize that they make up a summoning circle.
She lets out a groan and rolls over onto her back, head spinning.
She's hardly in an ideal condition to be dealing with the hassle of a summons, but she knows that practicalities must be dealt with, sooner or later. No point in lying on the ground feeling sorry for herself.
Swinging her torso to an upright sitting position, Val fights down a burst of vertigo and struggles her way to her feet. The mage that has called her here is on her knees a few feet from the edge of the circle, staring at Val with no small amount of wariness. She seems taken aback, surprised by something.
Ignoring the girl, and with a stretch of limbs and a rolling of shoulders to loosen out sore muscles, Val goes about inspecting the ritual markings. She walks around the boundaries of her cage, head still thumping, and examines them – drawn in white chalk – and finds herself baffled. Her first words come almost accidentally, a long-standing bad habit of hers.
"This has to be, hands down, the most poorly made summoning circle I've ever seen. How did you even manage to pull me here? This thing should have fallen apart the moment you invoked it, and it certainly shouldn't have worked."
Val doesn't wait for a response, wanting to demonstrate her point. She raps her knuckles against the invisible boundary she knows is there. Shockingly, the barrier holds, blue energy spreading in waves from the center of impact like ripples on a smooth pond. She genuinely thought the barrier would fail on any contact, at all. She wasn't lying, the workmanship of the summoning circle is worse than amateur. It's comprised of choppy, hesitant lines that scream total beginner.
Annoyed, Val steadies herself, leans her weight into her back foot, and plants a solid kick into the barrier, fully expecting it to shatter like thin glass. Somehow, somehow, the barrier holds, not even a fracture appearing.
Embarrassed at her previous statements, and holding new, if confused, respect, Val glances back to the mage that hasn't spoken or moved since her arrival. It's a young woman with long, curly black hair. Val reappraises the situation that she's found herself in. The blanket that has been laying heavy over her mind since her awakening has been lifting slowly, but there's still a noticeable sluggishness to her thoughts. Being dragged through dimensions usually leaves a killer headache.
"Okay, pretty terribly made, but it – somehow – holds up just fine. Weird, but whatever. Let's get on to the pleasantries then? You can call me Val. Why have I been called here?"
The words take some of the wariness from the girl's face and replace it with confusion. Val is clearly not what she was expecting. Val thinks, a bit smugly, that she rarely is.
The mage takes a moment to consider her words.
"I'll be honest, I was expecting something less… human, I guess, but I suppose it doesn't matter. My name is Taylor. I'm looking to Contract you as a familiar."
Ah. So that's what this is. A Contracting.
With the presence of her splitting headache, Val has been running mostly on auto pilot. Her circumstances prior to this summoning are beginning to refocus. She remembers… ash, and a moonless sky. She thinks: Purgatory. But knows better.
A prison?
Either way, the newly returned memories are giving Val a dawning appreciation for the situation she's lucked her way into.
Val doesn't remember much, but she remembers that escape from that place should have been impossible. She's ready to agree to almost any Contract to avoid the one way trip back.
Understanding the situation a bit better, Val opens her magical perception and quests out to read the offered Terms. The Terms of the Contract are always embedded into the foundation of the summoning circle, easily available for perusal by the summoned party. Negotiation isn't an option – but you aren't required to accept.
The offered terms are bare-bones and painfully simple, Compulsion and two-way time insensitive dismissal.
The Compulsion is standard to basically any Contract – Not many people are stupid enough to pull something across worlds and not have some measure of control over them. The Compulsion isn't absolute, but it's pretty damn strong. It depends on the willpower of both parties. Val's pretty hard headed, but even she would have to be ordered to do something pretty morally repulsive to break through a Compulsion. And morally repulsive starts a bit later for Val than most people.
The two-way time insensitive dismissal just means that either party can void the Contract, and therefore Val's anchor to this world, at any moment. This is also pretty standard for any summoning. The summoned party would have to be pretty irresponsible to accept Compulsion without a means of voiding their Contract, and similarly, the summoner would be equally dumb to not have a way to dismiss their summons.
Val finds herself relieved at the simplicity of the Terms, but she's still going to need to get a feel for the girl and her motivations. Not that there's any way she'd refuse the Contract in her current situation, but it's smart to do her due diligence. There's something much more important to handle first, though.
"Okay, don't be mad, but it needs to be asked. What's with the summoning circle? It's mechanically perfect, but it looks like a dog drew it."
The girl, Taylor, looks embarrassed and a bit offended. She lets out a huff.
"Hey, I did my best, okay? This is my first time summoning something. It's not like there's a guidebook."
Val stares blankly at the girl's claim. She's managed to summon something like Val on her first try? Val can't even begin to describe the stupidity of attempting such a thing. And it worked. Is this one of those idiot savants she's been hearing about?
The second statement also comes as a surprise, since most of her summoners loved being neck deep in their crusty old tomes. Was this girl some hand-taught prodigal apprentice? Her master didn't believe in the new-fangled technology of books? But then where was the old bastard? So many things could go wrong in an advanced summoning. One of the throw-them-to-the-wolves types? And she's pretty sure she's in a residential basement, not a magical workshop.
What is happening here?
Mentally shaking her head, Val refocuses. She needs to figure out the girl's motivations and plans for her.
"Alright, I'm listening. What's your nefarious plans? Take over the world? What kind of tasks are you going to have for me?"
Val hopes desperately the summoner isn't a whack-job, but she's taken some pretty, uh, 'less-than-ethical" Contracts before. She likes to think of herself as a knife and tells herself that a tool can't be evil. Only those who wield it. She knows it's a paper-thin justification, but she'd rather be a knife than nothing at all.
"Nefarious?" The girl seems offended, and relief sinks into Val, "I'm not doing anything nefarious. I just needed some protection for some of my future goals. Which is mostly just to clean out the bad guys. My city's in a pretty bad state right now. Initially, I was just planning on protection and some firepower, but I had no idea I'd be getting something intelligent. More complex tasks would certainly be useful. I could ask you to help with research, planning, organization, maybe complex labor. It's hard to say."
So, Val's probably not going to have to get her hands dirtier than she normally prefers. That's great news.
She still has no idea how she's even here in the first place, though.
"How'd you even manage to reach me, though? It should have been impossible." It doesn't make sense.
Taylor just seems confused. "I don't know, I just followed what my power told me to do. I really have no idea how all this works."
Power?
"You intuited your way through an advanced summoning."
The room is silent for a few seconds. Taylor hedges, "Yes?"
Val absorbs this in silence. She decides to move on.
"What do you mean when you say your 'power' told you what to do?"
Taylor takes a second to think. "Um, it's hard to explain. It's like a voice in the back of my head, but not literally. It's more of a guiding-hand kind of thing. Sometimes explanations come with the instructions, but not always."
Okay, something weird was going on here, but Val just wants to get out of this summoning circle and have the more active bits to her magic unlocked again. While she doesn't have a clue what's going on, it's not like any reason has been provided to not take the Contract. Might as well start moving things forwards.
"Whatever," Val says with a hand wave, an expert at ignoring things she doesn't understand, "we can figure that stuff out later. I accept the Terms of the Contract."
The words aren't technically necessary, but Val likes to say them anyways. The Compulsion settles over her mind like heavy chains. It's uncomfortable, as always, but she knows it will fade to background noise over time.
Val waits patiently on the summoner.
