Chapter 1: The Invitation
Connor Craith was having a decidedly crummy day. And though he would never dare to even think it, his daughter certainly wasn't making it any easier.
"No!" She shrieked, gripping tightly to his leg. His hands were held tightly on the knob of his front door, while the next door neighbor's daughter who had graciously agreed to babysit for a crisp fifty bucks tried to pull the girl off of her father.
The trio were locked in a strange sort of tug-o-war, though Connor was unsure who exactly was meant to symbolize the rope.
His leg, maybe? It definitely felt like it would snap if his daughter held onto it any tighter.
"Nina, please! Daddy has to go to work!" He pleaded, trying to shake his leg loose. But the girl gripped him even tighter than before, if that was even possible.
"No!" Nina raged, while Jennifer the babysitter tried to adjust her grip on her legs. Unfortunately, her palms were just a little too sweaty, which caused her hand to slip from one of the girl's legs. Nina immediately used the moment to hook it around Connor's leg.
He briefly wondered if maybe he should sign his daughter up for Brazilian jiu jitsu. The girl was a natural.
"It's not fair!" She wailed. "Daddy promised. Daddy promised that today was our day!"
Deciding that use of force was useless, Connor decided to pivot to diplomacy instead. And he did feel a pang of guilt. He had indeed promised his daughter that today would be their day, but…
His second job had called, and he was always happy for the hours. He couldn't afford to turn away any money that was thrown their way. He wasn't exactly a billionaire.
Sighing, he nodded to Jennifer, and she nodded back. He slowly lowered his leg to the floor, while Jennifer did the same. When the babysitter gently let go of Nina's leg, that too immediately hooked around Connor's, while she defiantly glared up at her father.
Looking down at his daughter, Connor sighed again, deeply. With her thick, curly brown hair and large green eyes, she looked like every photo he had ever seen of her mother as a kid. Not that he'd seen many.
Her family had decidedly severed whatever connection to the two of them they'd had before any kind of real bond could be formed. Except for the check that came in every month for the child support that he had spent years trying to claw out of them, with the stipulation that he never contacted them or their daughter.
Connor gently patted his daughter's head, his voice soft and warm as he spoke. "I know that daddy going to work on our day makes you sad, baby girl. But daddy has to. Please be a good girl and understand that." He murmured, and Nina's eyes immediately welled with tears.
"But today was… was…" She warbled, and Connor nodded.
"I know. But do you know what daddy going to work on our day means?" He asked patiently, and the hiccups stopped, the tears slowing while a glitter slowly entered his daughter's eyes.
"Ice cream?" She gasped, and Connor smiled.
"That's right. For breakfast." He declared with a wink. Jennifer seemed about to say something, the furrowing of her eyebrow clear in its expression of disapproval, but Connor silenced her with a glare. If breakfast ice cream was what got his daughter to stop crying, then by god was he going to get her that ice cream.
She finally unlatched from his leg, and he slid it out while Jennifer pulled Nina up to stand. She was all smiles now, and even had the gumption to wave goodbye at him. Connor's eyes twitched as he realized that 'waving' looked an awful lot like shooing.
Shaking his head, he turned to look at Jennifer. "I'll be back at 8 tomorrow. I know it's not a school night, but you don't have to spend it here. Once she's asleep, you can take off." He said, and the young girl nodded. She then gave him a double thumbs up when he slapped seventy dollars into her hand. "Your pay, and an extra twenty for pizza or Chinese food. Or whatever you can get delivered, I guess."
"Bye Mr. Craith!" She called as he turned, followed by a very enthusiastic 'bye daddy' from his daughter. Connor closed the door behind him, and heard Jen lock it behind him.
Looking around at the faded, but classily undamaged, carpet and paint of his building's hallway, Connor did mental math as he headed to the stairwell, taking the steps two at a time.
"Two fifty pay today." He muttered, clearing the fourth landing and heading to the third. "Minus seventy for Jennifer. Minus forty for tax. One forty. One forty covers electric, and twenty dollars of- damn, forgot the ice cream. Minus two dollars for ice cream."
As he reached the second floor of his building, he paused as he smelled cigarette smoke curling up from below. Glancing over the railing, he sighed as he saw Michael squatting behind the stair case, half hidden by a small mound of card board boxes.
He clomped his way down the stairs, and pulled away one of the boxes to reveal the disheveled teenager with bags under his brown eyes that told him he had been staying up too late playing games.
"Hey Mr. Craith." The teenager said sheepishly, half hiding his still glowing cigarette behind his knee. Connor grunted and held out a hand. The boy sighed, reluctantly handing it over.
Connor stubbed out the cigarette against the sole of his boots, and flicked it back to Michael's chest. "You're gonna start a fire down here kid." He warned, pointing at the boxes. "And also, Mr. Nguyen installed cameras in the hallway to find who was smoking. I don't think he's figured out how to turn them on yet, but you should start smoking outside before he does. Or better, quit."
Michael pursed his lips, before sniffing and rubbing his nose. "Yes sir…" he mumbled. Connor nodded severely, then pulled out a stick of gum and handed it to him. Michael smiled slightly, popping it into his mouth as Connor turned away.
"Minus seven cents for the gum." He muttered, pressing a security button and pushing open the door to the building once it buzzed. The air was crisp in the way only an autumn evening could be in Chicago, fresh in his lungs despite the blaring city around him.
In the fading light of the setting sun, there were still a considerable amount of people carrying on with the remainders of their day that Connor could fade into in his commute to work. He was grateful that this job was only a few blocks away.
The price to use the train was two dollars and fifty cents, after all.
He arrived at the job after a brisk seven minute walk, a yet unfinished construction site that loomed in the growing darkness like bones of a long dead behemoth. Though Connor was never one for poetry or art, he still studied it for a few moments and allowed the imagination of such a beast to play in his mind. Then, lifting his sleeve to see the time, he walked over to the security office. At precisely five minutes prior to his shift, he gave the door a knock.
The door swung open to reveal an older, heavy set man with more grey in his bushy moustache than brown. His hair though was dark. Connor knew that he dyed it every two weeks, but politely pretended the man was simply aging gracefully.
"Connor." George McClain said warmly, stepping back and letting the young man enter. He went to his locker and grabbed his security vest and gun holster, while George waddled over to the security desk and grabbed the log sheet.
"Workers left at around five thirty today. A couple kids came in around six to try and tag the building, but they ran off when I beeped the security alarm." He said, and Connor nodded as he finished strapping the holster around his leg.
"I'll keep an eye for them, in case they come back." He said, and George nodded. "So why the call? Bruno couldn't make it?"
George sighed, lightly scratching his moustache. "Bruno called in sick." He answered, and Connor chuckled. Knowing the man, he had probably had a couple beers too many after his shift. "The company was actually debating on just leaving the site alone tonight, but the construction team left some tools here. Sorry, I know it was your day off with the little one. I take it she didn't like you coming in."
Connor shook his head, taking the log sheet from George and sitting down at his chair. "No, but we can always use the money. I promised her ice cream after." He answered, and George nodded, unstrapping his vest and his holster before closing his own locker.
"Good man. And smart fella you are. Always keep the little missus happy." George said with a wink, and Connor smiled back at him.
"I've got it from here. Consider changeover complete. Don't drink too much like Bruno." He said, and George laughed at that.
"I wasn't planning on it. I'm teaching Mandy how to drive tomorrow morning, and I need to be fully awake in case she tries to kill us." He answered, leaving the office key on a ring by the door before opening. "Have a good shift. Oh yeah, I downloaded Fight or Flight on the computer, so you can finally give that a watch. Like I've been telling you to do for two weeks now."
Connor waved him off, rolling up to the desk while George left the office. He quickly scanned the security monitors, before crossing his arms and sitting back in the chair.
The first two hours passed in mind numbing fashion, just the way Connor liked it. At about nine o'clock, he saw two people in hoodies and carrying a duffle cautiously walking up to the site. Rolling his eyes, he beeped the security alarm as soon as they crossed the private property line, and watched them scurry away.
After another couple of hours, Connor finally clicked on the movie player on the computer, a small library of them downloaded between the five security guards that worked the site who would give recommendations to each other. He decided to finally give George's movie a chance, and pressed play on Fight or Flight.
It was a simple action movie, the kind that men of George's age seemed to adore no matter how bad they were. The movie followed a kung fu master who discovered that his flight was being hijacked by seven terrorists, one of whom was one of his old disciples who had turned evil after being banished from the temple.
It was a decidedly okay movie, and he was just about fifteen minutes away from the movie's ending when he happened to see someone else approaching the site. Sighing, he beeped the security alarm at them once they crossed the line, then frowned as they continued in undeterred.
He beeped the alarm at them a second time, but the man continued inward, climbing a set of partially completed stairs to the second floor. Connor shook his head, standing and placing his hand on his pistol.
As he left the security office, locking the door behind him, he missed the man waving a finger in the air, and a golden light blooming just in front of him, which immediately caused the security cameras to distort before crackling and cutting out. And as he walked down the steps, he also missed the second man approaching on camera before they went dark.
Connor popped in a stick of gum to his mouth, mentally marking down another seven cents from the day's pay as he approached the site. He frowned as he noticed a golden glow coming from it, his pace hastening slightly until he reached the first floor of one of the sections of the building that he had seen the man enter.
He paused at the steps when he heard voices, drawing his gun and creeping up them. Halfway up, he was close enough to make out what they were saying.
"...really think that opening up the Gate here in the real would stop someone from taking it?" He heard one of the voices say, in the hard tone that carried a weight to it that Connnor recognized certain men had in his youth, when he had been mixed up in the wrong kind of crowd. The kind of men who were used to taking what they wanted. However they needed to.
He immediately grew more cautious, now taking the steps as quietly as he could.
"It doesn't have to be like this Vigo. Just walk away. Maybe you'll live long enough to open your own Gate that way." A second voice said, this one softer but still carrying the same edge to it that the first man had. Connor finally crested the edge of the stairs, peeking at the owners of the two voices from behind a support column, flicking the safety to his gun off.
He saw two men standing there, one of them wearing dark pants and a dark leather jacket, the other wearing lighter loose clothing that hid most of his body. He then blinked hard when he saw a golden orb of light hovering between them. Shaking his head, he looked again just to confirm he wasn't imagining it. But no, there it was, as bright as a miniature sun. His mouth hung open, then snapped closed when the first man laughed bitterly.
"You think you, someone who's only been in the Second Stage for a year, have the right to use that Gate?" He snarled, and Connor's grip tightened as he saw the man pull out two daggers from his leather jacket.
The second man sighed, before leaning back, a sneer painted on his face. "And you really think that you, trash who has been stuck in the Second Stage for almost a decade, can take it from me?" He said, raising his right hand. Connor's breath nearly stopped as he saw his hand beginning to glow with purple light.
Is this some kind of dream? He thought to himself dumbly, shaking his head. The first man, Vigo, laughed again.
"You can bluff all you want, but I know you're a Summoner class. Bit out of your depth in a one on one match with me. And since you've only been in the Second Stage for a year, I know you don't have as many Stat Points as I do. Maybe if you were an Evoker. Maybe." He said, and the second man only shook his head.
"We'll see." He said, and sensing that things were taking a darker turn, Connor took a deep breath. Ignoring the strangeness of the situation, he stepped out from behind the column, gun raised.
"Both of you stop. You're trespassing on private property." He commanded, his voice deep and his finger on the trigger. Both men paused, turning to look at him.
Vigo sneered, while the second man frowned. "Why did an NPC wander into this?" Vigo muttered, before shaking his head. The second man also frowned.
"There wasn't supposed to be anyone here." He grumbled, before looking at Connor strangely. "Wait… you're…"
Connor stepped forward, eyeing the man with the daggers. He decidedly put the strangeness of the floating orb and the glowing hands aside, leveling his gun at the man with the visible weapons. "I'll give you both one chance. Leave the premises." He commanded, and Vigo laughed.
"Sure, sure." He said, lowering his daggers slowly. The second man snapped his head towards the man.
"Vigo, don't-" He began, but it was too late.
Faster than Connor could react, Vigo's hand blurred. In less than a fraction of a second, Connor felt a thump against his chest. He dumbly looked down, the pain not even registering until he saw the handle of a dagger sticking out from his chest.
And then it hit him.
He had been stabbed. And by the location of the hilt, through the heart.
His arms went weak, his gun clattering to the floor as his grip slid from it. Then went his legs, his brain only processing the agony that blossomed from his chest for a second before he hit the ground.
Vigo smirked, then turned back to the second man. "Now, where were w-" He froze, as he noticed the rage on the second man's face. Lips drawn back into a snarl, he clapped his hands together, fingers splaying open as a runic circle bloomed in the air, swirling and glowing with purple light.
"In the name of the Lightning Father, the Storm Lord, the Sky Breaker!" He shouted, and Vigo cursed lowly as he dashed forward, drawing another dagger from his jacket and throwing it at the Summoner. The blade was only a glint in the light of the summoning circle, flashing forward almost as swiftly as a bullet. However, to his shock the man simply sidestepped it, staring at him coolly. "By my right as the First Son of Heaven, I call upon you! Venerable Sky Beast, Monarch of Thunder! Come to me, Daughter of Indastra!"
Vigo was upon the Summoner in a mere moment, but a moment was all the man needed. In that split second between Vigo's blade sinking into flesh and the flash of light of a successful Summon, a thunderous roar shook the unfinished skeleton of the to-be building.
Vigo coughed up blood, before leaping backwards as a set of jaws snapped shut over where he was just a moment previous. The air hummed with electrical energy between them, and he drew another dagger. Gone was the look of smug confidence, grim determination now on his features as a small flood dragon, nearly nine feet long, swam into the air between the two of them.
The dragon curled protectively around the Summoner, staring at Vigo. "Thou dares trespass against mine master?" It snarled, the area around it vibrating with kinetic energy.
Vigo's eyes widened, shock clear on his features. "A talking Summon!?" He gasped, his eyes darting between them. The hairs on the back of his neck raised, a sense of danger electrifying his nerves. "But you're not in the Third Stage yet! Which means…"
The thought had just finished in his mind when he immediately turned to run. Champion! He thought in blind panic. He's a Champion!
The Summoner glanced at the dragon, who nodded before its whiskers curled up into the air. Vigo had only enough time to regret his decision to attempt to steal the Gate from this man, before the air around him crackled with lightning.
"Wait, I won't tell anyon-" He shrieked, before a flash of light enveloped him. The smell of charred flesh filled the air, before he was vaporized, ashes swirling into the breeze.
The dragon turned to look at the Summoner. The man nodded to it, and it popped into a puff of smoke.
When the smoke cleared, what remained was a young girl, who appeared to be in the years of an early teenager. Small horns protruded from her forehead, her hair and eyes both a deep shade of purple and her pupils constricted to slits. She hovered in the air, looking around for a few moments before her eyes fell on the still form of Connor.
In truth, between the moment of his fall and the time of the battle, no more than ten seconds had passed. The Summoner walked up to him, kneeling next to the man.
Connor was gasping on the floor, his eyes rolled upwards in his head. He had not seen any of what had transpired. His only thoughts were of pain… and of his daughter.
I wish I had not come tonight. He thought. I wish I had had enough money to not need to come tonight. I wish… I could have given you a better life, than what I had.
In the haze of pain and regret, Connor blindly reached for his wallet. He managed to fumble it from his pocket, weakly lifting it. However, his hands fell before he could open it.
The Summoner watched this with his mouth set into a grim line, before he gently lifted the wallet and opened it. He held it in front of Connor, who gave a weak smile as a tear slipped from his eye.
"N… Nin…" He whispered, as his eyes closed. The Summoner stared down at him for a few moments, before gently placing the wallet on his chest.
In those seconds, Connor's last thought was… how sorry he was that he wasn't able to give his daughter a better, richer life.
The girl hovered over them, studying her master's face. "Dost thou know him?" She asked quietly, as Connor's last breath rattled from his lips. The Summoner nodded.
"Once." He whispered. "He was a friend of mine. A good man. A strong one."
The girl nodded, and laid a hand on his back. "Most unfortunate for thee, then." She said solemnly, and the Summoner pursed his lips, his brows furrowing. Finally, he reached into the air, before pulling out a small, golden disc. The girl's eyes widened. "Thou cannot mean to-" She began, before he placed the disc over Connor's chest.
"This has never happened before." He said quietly. "So perhaps, it is fate. Perhaps, this will change things."
Her mouth gaped open in shock, as he pulled the dagger free. Immediately the wound in Connor's chest closed, the flesh bubbling as it stitched itself together. Her eyes glowed as she studied the man, and then she shook her head at a loss. "This man's total stats dost not even reach five and twenty!" She protested, and the Summoner shrugged.
"Neither did mine." He reasoned, before placing a hand over Connor's chest. "By my right as Champion of Indastra, I formally invite you to join me in the World of Kalgira. Contract stipulation void. No requirements for fulfillment, should you complete the First Gate. No affiliation with Lord Indastra necessary."
Connor's body began to glow in the same golden manner that the disc had, and his body began to grow feverish with a heat that flowed through his body, before flooding his very soul. The Summoner stood, kissing his fingers.
"May you succeed in your Trial, fellow Traveller."