Kaia sat up with a low groan, rubbing gingerly at the back or her head. She wasn’t bleeding, and she didn’t feel dizzy or nauseous, so she probably wasn’t that badly concussed. It still hurt like hell, though. Looking around, she saw four people looking down on her. They all seemed quite young, ranging from their mid teens to early twenties, and they were all wearing ridiculous colour-coded silk getups that would probably have been downright offensive to her father’s sensibilities as a tailor. They also each wore a golden badge with a beautifully carved gemstone set into its centre. The one dressed in blue, a girl who looked about her own age, was the first to speak. She had curly, dark-brown hair and skin that looked like it would probably have been a lot darker if she ever got any sun, but Kaia’s eyes were immediately drawn to the ornate longsword sheathed at her side. “Did you say your dad? You’re the Godslayer’s daughter?” “If by ‘The Godslayer’ you mean Adam Wilson, then yes.” “I guess he really was surpassed as magus, then.” Said the oldest of the four. He was an odd-looking man, with dark brown skin and stormy grey eyes, but blonde hair so light it was almost white. He carried himself with an air of seriousness and authority that, in Kaia’s opinion, kind of clashed with his bright yellow silk outfit and the ostentatiously ornate mirror clipped to his belt. “Let’s not jump to conclusions, Kio.” The youngest girl said chidingly. “Excuse me, miss Wilson, do you recall exactly how you came to be here?” Kaia frowned and thought back, working hard to banish the fog that surrounded her memories of the entire event. “There was… A light? I was on my way home from school, but I spotted a strange light in the park and went to investigate. There was sort of a… A doorway made of light, and it was moving very slowly. I reached out to touch it and… And then I woke up here, I think.” “I see. And was this doorway moving towards you?” “I… Don’t think so? It seemed like it was moving in the direction of my house, actually.” “Oh. Oh shoot!” The other girl… Well, ‘swore’ was a strong word for it. Even cussed was a bit of a stretch. But she sure sounded upset. “What’s the matter?” The green-clad girl asked worriedly. Her skin was pretty pale, although it was almost hard to tell beneath the sheer mass of freckles. Her clothing probably looked the least ridiculous of the four, the green silk rather complementing her blue eyes and red hair. It was just a shame that the peculiar bracers she wore clashed so heavily with the silken finery. “I know what went wrong! The portal is meant to only interact with the magic of the magus, but if she’s sufficiently well attuned with that magic she would have been able to see the portal despite not having surpassed her father. When she touched the portal, it must have reacted to her magic and sent her here!” “Well, that’s inconvenient.” The yellow-clad man said with a frown. “Is there any way we can just send her back and try again?” “Not really. Even in ideal circumstances, the portal device needs to vent all excess elemental energies before it can be used to transport a magus of the same element again. And since we used elemental magic to power it this time, that could easily take months.” “We might not have months! If the twilight…” “Hold up just a minute!” Kaia shouted. “Are you saying you can’t send me back for MONTHS? I can’t just up and vanish for months! My parents will be worried sick!” “Oh, no, you don’t need to worry about that!” The blue-clad girl assured her. “Time works differently in this world. A few months in this world should only be several hours in yours. Half a day at most, I’d say.” Kaia practically felt it when various pieces of information all clicked into place inside her still aching head. “That’s what happened to dad! The day he came home late with a weird tan and seemed all different! That’s because he was here!” “Almost certainly yes. This would have been a few years ago, your time?” “Something like six years, yeah.” “Oh, wonderful! My calculations were even closer than I thought!” “Awa, focus!” The man with the mirror snapped. “Right, right. Got the wrong person, very serious, get excited about maths later…” “What did my dad do while he was here anyway?” “He killed two goddesses.” The boy dressed in red said in a cheerful, casual tone of voice. He had a tan complexion and silky black hair, and his voice and demeanour seemed very open and friendly, but there was something not quite right about the gleam in his golden brown eyes. “Oh, and he was instrumental in toppling two ancient monarchies and founding the twin republic.” Kaia just kind of stared at him. “I wouldn’t have put it exactly like that…” Awa said. “But he is essentially correct. Your father was the leader of the four starlit magi who ushered in the era of the republic, although they were called princes and princesses at the time, since, you know, there was still a monarchy back then…” “You keep saying ‘magi’ and ‘magus’. What does that even mean?” “Oh, right, well there are four elements of magic, water, air, earth and fire…” “Oh, I know about those. We call them ‘the classical elements’ on our world, but to us it’s just an ancient philosophy thing most people don’t take seriously any more.” “Really? That’s fascinating! We really need to have a chat and compare notes on…” “Awa!” “Right, right… Anyway, both our worlds possess a single bloodline that ‘matches’ each element better than any other. Back in the day they were considered royal lines, but since the republics were founded they don’t have any ruling authority any more. But the one person from each line who’s best attuned to their element is given the title of magus, and are able to wield the artefact of their line. They’re generally tasked with using their magic to aid in the protection and development of the republics.” “You mentioned artefacts?” “Right, each line has a magical artefact, like my sword, Eternal Rain. Your father wielded its twin, First River.” “This one.” The red-clothed boy said cheerfully, idly tossing the huge longsword towards Kaia, who yelped and only barely managed to snatch it out of the air before it hit her in the nose. “Hey! Careful!” “Sorry.” The boy replied, not looking or sounding the least bit sorry. Kaia frowned and tried to pull the blade form its ornate sheath, only to find that she couldn’t. “I can’t draw it. How does it work?” “Well, water is the element of purity, and the blade can only be wielded by the pure of heart.” Awa explained. “That’s what he’s been teaching me! Wow, OK, a lot of things just suddenly makes way more sense to me. So, my father is the magus of water, then?” “I mean, technically you are, since you’re the best attuned mage of your line on this world. But if he were here, then yes, he would be the starlit magus of water.” “Starlit?” “Ah, that’s because the magi of the lines from your world serve the Starlit Republic, you see. The four of us are the sunlit magi. Although honestly it’s mostly a formality at this point. The republics do everything together these days. There’s a vote every ten years about whether the republics should unite into a single nation, but so far the ‘no’ side just barely wins every time.” “So the other magi from my world are still here?” “Well, not the original ones, obviously, but their descendants. Adam was the only one of the heroes from your world who chose to return home. In fact, the current starlit magi are just downstairs in the… Oh! We should go tell them what happened!” The man in yellow sighed. “Might as well, maybe they’ll have some idea of what to do about this mess.” Without further warning, Kaia found herself pulled to her feet and hustled out of the room. The stairs down from the room where she arrived had been surprisingly long. Long enough to make Awa a bit winded, which made Kaia frown a little. Anyone who got winded walking down a set of stairs, even quite a long one, was, in Kaia’s opinion, in desperate need of a proper exercise regimen. The room she was led into looked as though it had once been a throne room, but the wide stone dais that would have held the throne or thrones instead held a long, thin table, behind which three people in silk outfits similar to those of sunlit magi were seated. There was a fourth chair at the table, which was very conspicuously left empty. Kaia simply stood behind the sunlit magi as they explained their problem, trying to get her bearings. She didn’t learn a lot from their discussion, but she did manage to snap up the names of the seven magi. She already knew the names of Kio and Awa, and the green-clad girl and red-clothed boy turned out to be Mora and Jarak respectively. Of the starlit magi, there was Miriam, a pale woman with brown hair dressed in red who had a similar gleam in her dark eyes as Jarak, Albert, a severe-looking bald, tanned man in his fifties dressed in green, and Willow, a very androgynous-looking guy with a friendly smile, long blonde hair and a ruddy complexion dressed in yellow. Having finally managed to put names to faces, Kaia sighed quietly and once again focused on just what they were saying. “So the gist of it…” Albert said dourly. “Is that your spell failed and the hero Adam cannot come to our aid.” “I’m afraid so. It would take months before we could send this girl back, and longer still before we could try to summon her father again.” “We don’t have time to wait for months! The twilight is growing faster than we can hope to sustainably contain, and instead of a great hero to aid us, all we have is a slip of a girl not even schooled in the ways of magic.” “She’s no younger than me, you know.” Awa said defensively. “But where you are one of the most brilliant students of magical theory of our time, she is just some girl with no training and no understanding of what we are facing!” “It’s not all for naught.” Awa argued. “At least with her here, it should solve the issue of the imbalance.” “A small blessing, I suppose, but we need more than that, Awa!” Kaia’s eye twitched as the magi talked over and around her, like she wasn’t even there. If there was one thing Kaia couldn’t stand, it was being dismissed or ignored. With a low growl, she grabbed the hilt of her sword. Don’t bother about true clarity of purpose. That’s what her father taught her. Focus on the moment. Put your entire mind and body to the task of achieving the one thing you wanted right now. As Kaia forged her confusion and irritation into a single, piercing desire, she felt the moisture in the air around her grow still and accumulate into little droplets, hanging in the air like rain trapped in a frozen moment in time. Effortlessly, she slid the sword from it’s sheath, the soft sound of the blade being pulled seeming to echo around the stone chamber. As the other magi grew silent, Kaia locked eyes with the clearly surprised Albert. “I am Kaia Wilson.” She said, each syllable clipped and precise. “Daughter of the Godslayer Adam and magus of water. And I demand that you tell me what’s going on here!”