Moving house, as Maria has discovered, is very nearly as stressful as seeing off an alien invasion. Even now, after months of living across from Sarah Jane Smith and fighting or helping aliens in her spare time, she's still digging out some of her stuff from the seemingly endless piles of stuff. With a sigh, she hoists yet another cardboard box onto her bed and tears the flap open.
She places her Discworld books on the shelf one by one, before frowning.
She picks up a small paperback and holds it up to the weak English sunlight. She knows every book in her collection, and this one does not look familiar.
So You Want To Be A Wizard, the title proclaims. Frowning, Maria sits back on her bed, flipping it open. It speaks about magic-not cheap conjuring tricks or little glamours, but actual magic, real magic, the power of the Speech which describes everything. About the job of the wizards who wielded it to slow down entropy and its ultimate expression, death. About the Wizard's Oath, which every wizard must take before beginning their path. Maria Jackson takes a deep breath and reads aloud.
"In Life's name and for Life's sake, I say that I will use the Art for nothing but the service of that Life. I will guard growth and ease pain. I will fight to preserve what grows and lives well in its own way; and I will change no object or creature unless its growth and life, or that of the system of which it is part, are threatened. To these ends, in the practice of my Art, I will put aside fear for courage, and death for life, when it is right to do so — till Universe's end."
Shortly after, Sarah Jane disappears from reality, but when Maria tries a spell to bring her back, it's blocked by some greater force. When she meets the being known by some as the Trickster in the space between worlds, she knows exactly what to call him.
"Fairest and fallen," she says boldly, ignoring Sarah Jane's quick inhale to step in front of her and stare the newest personification of the Lone Power in the face (or lack thereof), "Greeting and defiance."
Before, she had been a hero.
Now, she is a wizard.
And her adventures are just beginning.