Chapter 3: Summoning the summoner

A strange voice echoed through the endless void, neither male nor female, old as creation and emotionless as mathematics.

“Scanning narrative compatibility.”

Red and black symbols spun around Gene like gears in a celestial machine.

“Subject: Gene Gingerline.”

“Origin world: Earth.”

“Primary aptitude: Creative synthesis.”

“Secondary aptitude: Unique Genre specifiization —horror.”

The final word reverberated like a bell tolling in a cathedral.

“Horror.”

Gene would have laughed if he’d still had lungs.

“Well,” he thought, “at least I’m being recognized for something.”

The voice continued.

“Compatibility exceeds accepted parameters.”

“Anomaly detected.”

“Late Bloom designation approved.”

Gene frowned—or would have, if he’d possessed a face.

Late Bloom?

That sounded suspiciously like one of those special protagonist titles from the light novels he used to binge at two in the morning.

“Please tell me I don’t have to defeat a demon king.”

No answer.

The void beneath him split open like a page being torn in two.

Brilliant white light erupted upward.

Gene finally felt the sensation of  his body falling.

⸻

He hit stone hard enough to drive the breath from his lungs.

Air rushed into him with a ragged gasp. Pain blossomed across his shoulders and back. For one panicked moment, he thought Elias Crowe had somehow followed him and stabbed him again.

Gene bolted upright.

No knife.

No blood.

No apartment.

He sat in the center of a circular chamber large enough to swallow his entire apartment building.

The room was carved from a pale gray stone veined with glowing blue crystal. 

Massive columns spiraled towards a domed ceiling lost somewhere in the shadow above. 

Ancient symbols shimmered across the floor in concentric circles, their lines continuously pulsing with a soft silver light.

At the far end of the chamber, he fathomed a colossal machine.

Gene stared in awe.

The device looked as if someone had asked a wizard to design a supercomputer.

The massive bronze framework the size of a two-story house supported rotating rings of crystal and silver. 

Hundreds of floating glass panels drifted through the air around it, each etched with lines of a strange complex luminous text. 

Thick cables coiled around the device and ran through the ground. 

The coils resembled roots as they sporadically broke out of the floor; they ran everywhere within the room.

In the center, suspended between the rotating rings, hung a polished slab of stone that reflected no light.

It was not the color black, it was as if it were a chunk of reality missing.

The machine hummed with restrained power.

Gene’s writer brain immediately supplied a name.

Chronicle Forge.

“Okay,” he whispered.

His voice echoed through the chamber as he stretched his back.

“Either I’m dead, or I’ve won the weirdest lottery in history.”

“You are alive.”

Gene spun to look at the speaker.

A woman stood near the chamber entrance.

She appeared to be in her early twenties, with bronze skin and sharp amber eyes that seemed to miss nothing. Her dark hair was tied into a practical braid that reached the middle of her back. She wore a fitted navy coat over silver-lined robes, with leather gloves and high boots. At her waist hung a thin crystal wand and a dagger whose blade glimmered with faint blue light.

She carried herself with the confidence of someone accustomed to danger.

And judging by the way she studied Gene, she was trying to decide whether he was dangerous too.

Gene raised his hand in what he hoped was still perceived as a friendly gesture in this world.

“Hi. I’m Gene. Recently murdered. Super confused.”

One eyebrow arched.

“That explains the complete lack of composure.”

“Rude, but fair.”

The woman approached, boots clicking softly against the stone.

“My name is Moira Valecourt. Apprentice Archivist of the Seventh Tower. I will be your liaison. Welcome to the Seventh Tower.”

She glanced toward the Chronicle Forge.

“And unless the Summoner Forge has suddenly developed a sense of humor, you happen to be this cycle’s summoned candidate.”

Gene got to his feet, wobbling slightly.

Almost got the name right he thought.

“Candidate for what?”

Moira gave him a look that suggested he had just asked what water was.

“To become a Summoner of course.”