Awaken, child of fire.
The words came to Karyn out of the blackness. Slowly, her mind stirred from oblivion. What happened?
The last thing she remembered was starting that game at the arcade. What was it called again? Her muddled brain struggled to recall details. Mist. No, Mystic. Mystic something. In any case, she had just finished creating a character, a mage type of some kind. And just for good measure, for her character's race, she had picked-
Child of fire, awaken. The summons jarred her from her contemplation.
In response, Karyn tried to move. It was then that she realized her eyes were closed. With some effort, as if doing it for the first time, she managed to force her eyelids open.
She spent the next few seconds trying to comprehend the scene that greeted her. By some mysterious means, she seemed to be suspended upright in mid-air, unable to move a muscle. A circular design on the ground below glowed with an arcane reddish light. Beyond that, the walls of a cavernous room rose upwards, almost vanishing into the gloom overhead.
"W-where am I?" Karyn asked. Forming each word felt like trudging through quicksand.
A shadow stepped into view. The light from the circle revealed it to be a young man in a plain brown robe. He seemed to be preoccupied with adjusting the design with his hand, etching in a line here, adjusting a glyph there. Then, producing an odd pen from his sleeve, he scribbled a few notes down on a small wooden tablet. Karyn almost repeated her question when the man finally answered. "Welcome to your home, child."
"Home?"
The man glanced at Karyn. "Indeed. This is where you were created, and this is where your purpose lies."
Karyn was not sure she liked the sound of that.
"What is this place?" Like a sore muscle being limbered up, speaking was becoming easier, words flowing more readily.
Her inquiries seemed to garner some interest from the man. Peering closely at her, he replied, "This is the Tower of Stars in Kaldan, where the best wizards are trained."
Before Karyn could ask for further clarification, another man entered through a door off to the side. "Markus, how are they coming along?"
The man in the robe, Markus apparently, handed him the tablet. "As well as could be expected. I was just finishing the last one now, though she's turning out to be quite the curious one. It's been nonstop questions since the initial awakening."
"Well, it's no matter. Just send her along with the others. The Elders will be expecting their hot water soon, and we need all the replacements we can get after last week's pipe burst."
Markus nodded. "Alright. Sending her to the boiler room now."
Bending down, he placed his hand on one of the runes, and the world flashed.
