THE AEGIS BEARER

The Summoning

The library was quiet at 2 a.m., the way libraries only are when the rest of the world has given up and gone to sleep. Kaelan Vire sat hunched over a secondhand copy of a fantasy novel, the kind with a cracked spine and coffee rings on the cover, and thought about how much easier it would be to live in a story than to live his actual life.

He was twenty years old, unemployed in the way that comes from trying too hard rather than not hard enough, and mostly friendless in the way that comes from spending too many nights exactly like this one. He liked games. He liked books about heroes with swords and destinies, the kind where the ordinary kid turns out to matter, where the world reorganizes itself around the fact of him rather than around him being an afterthought in someone else's plans. He worked part-time shifts stocking shelves at a hardware store that never scheduled him enough hours to feel secure and never fired him outright either, which felt, some weeks, like its own particular cruelty. He had a mother two towns over who called on Sundays and a father he hadn't spoken to in three years. He did not expect, when the library's ceiling lights flickered and a circle of pale blue characters bloomed across the floor beneath his chair, that he was about to become the kind of person his books were written about.

There was no dramatic countdown. No warning, no voice from the heavens explaining the rules. Just light, and then not-light, and then Kaelan was standing barefoot on cold stone in a round chamber lit by torches that smelled faintly of tar and something like ozone. Three other people stood at three other points of a glowing sigil carved into the floor — a young man with the build of a soldier and a jaw set like he'd been expecting this his whole life, another who looked like he belonged on a magazine cover and seemed pleased that the chamber had an audience of guards to appreciate that fact, and a lean young man with sharp, watchful eyes who was already surveying the room's exits before anyone had said a word to him.

In front of them, an old man in ceremonial robes stood at a lectern, reciting from a scroll in a language Kaelan didn't recognize — and yet somehow understood every syllable of, the words arriving in his mind translated before his ears had even finished processing the sound.

"...the Four Bound Champions, summoned in the hour of need, bearers of the ancient weapons — the Spear, the Sword, the Bow, and the Shield — to save this world from the Waves of Calamity that have plagued the Kingdom of Veskara since the age of legends. Let it be known that this summoning was performed at great cost, and that the debt owed to these Champions by this kingdom is sacred and binding."

Kaelan looked down. In his hands, unbidden, sat a small round shield, unremarkable, scuffed at the edges like it had seen better centuries — a far cry from the gleaming spear the soldier-looking man had already summoned into his grip with an expression of grim satisfaction, or the longsword the handsome one held aloft, striking a pose like he'd been waiting his whole life for someone to look at him holding it.

"Baron Aldric of the Spear," announced a herald standing near the throne, and the soldier-looking man nodded once, sharply, like a man confirming an appointment rather than receiving a destiny.

"Corwin, Sword Bearer," said the handsome one, flashing a smile at absolutely no one who had asked for it, and several of the guards along the wall seemed to smile back despite themselves.

"Tobias," said the archer, simply, already turning the bow over in his hands with a frown of quiet calculation, like his name was a fact and nothing more, and the weapon in his hands was a puzzle to be solved rather than a gift to be admired.

The herald turned to Kaelan last, consulting a scroll with a slight furrow of confusion, as though checking a name he hadn't expected to need.

"And you — the Shield."

"Kaelan," he said. "Kaelan Vire."

There was a pause. He noticed it — the way the old man's eyes flicked, just briefly, toward the throne at the end of the chamber, where a king with a heavy grey beard and unreadable eyes sat watching the proceedings with the stillness of a man who had already decided something and was simply waiting for the room to catch up. He noticed, too, how the eyes of the soldiers lining the walls lingered a half-second longer on him than on the other three, and how none of that lingering felt like curiosity. It felt like judgment already passed, filed away before he'd done anything at all to earn it.

"You have been brought to this world," the old man continued, rolling the scroll closed, "to fight the Waves of Calamity alongside your fellow Champions. Each of you has been given one of the four legendary weapons, chosen by the weapons themselves according to the qualities they sense within you. You will be provided funds, escorts, lodging, and the aid of this kingdom in your quest, as is proper for those who risk everything on our behalf."

Kaelan raised a hand, feeling faintly ridiculous doing it, like a student interrupting a lecture. "Sorry — can we go home? After? Is that a thing that happens?"

The old man's expression didn't change, not even slightly. "That is not presently known."

That was, Kaelan would come to realize much later, the single most honest thing anyone in that castle would say to him for weeks.

They were given rooms in the castle for the first night — real beds, real food, a level of hospitality that felt like the honeymoon phase of a story before the actual plot started making demands of its characters. Kaelan didn't sleep much, despite the softness of the mattress and the warmth of the fire someone had lit in his hearth without being asked. He kept turning the shield over in the candlelight, watching faint runes ripple across its surface like something alive and half-awake, cataloguing skills and abilities he could half-sense but not yet name, the way you can feel the shape of a word on the tip of your tongue without being able to say it. It responded to him. It was, apparently, choosing to be his, in whatever way a weapon could choose anything.

At breakfast the next morning, the differences among the four of them already showed, laid out as plainly as the food on the table. Aldric had been given the finest guest suite in the east wing, according to a servant's careless mention, and ate with the brisk efficiency of a soldier who considered breakfast a logistical necessity rather than a pleasure. Corwin had already acquired an admirer among the palace staff, a lady-in-waiting who fluttered around him refilling his cup before he'd finished it, laughing at jokes that weren't especially funny. Tobias ate alone at the table's far end, methodically, watching everyone else with the flat attention of a man taking notes he had no intention of sharing.

Kaelan was seated at the opposite end from Tobias, near enough to the door that he half-wondered if it had been arranged that way on purpose. Not ignored, exactly. Just — positioned. Like a hem that had been left unstitched, present but clearly not finished.

It was the king's advisor, a narrow-faced man named Reeve, who informed them that afternoon of the mechanics of their new lives: each Champion would be assigned soldiers, a stipend, and the freedom to travel the kingdom to level their strength before the first Wave arrived in three weeks' time.

"The Shield Bearer," Reeve said, addressing the air somewhere to the left of Kaelan's actual face rather than meeting his eyes directly, "should know that the shield class cannot deal direct damage of any kind. You will need companions to fight alongside you, or you will find yourself entirely without recourse in genuine battle."

"Okay," Kaelan said, keeping his voice level despite the condescension threaded through the warning. "So I need to recruit people. That's fine. I can do that."

"Adventurers may be hired at the guild hall in the city," Reeve said. "Though I should warn you — the shield's reputation in old texts is not... favorable. Some regard it as the weapon of cowards. Others hold darker superstitions still, though I won't trouble you with those on your first full day."

Aldric snorted quietly from across the room, not quite looking up from the map he'd already unrolled to study likely Wave locations. Corwin didn't bother hiding his smirk, exchanging a glance with the lady-in-waiting still hovering at his elbow. Kaelan felt his ears go hot but said nothing, because he'd learned a long time ago, in a much smaller and much less magical world, that arguing with people who'd already decided what you were rarely accomplished anything beyond making you feel worse for having tried. This, at least, was a familiar shape of unfairness, even dressed up in unfamiliar robes and unfamiliar stone.

That evening, alone in his room, he opened the status menu that appeared when he willed it — a translucent panel of stats and skills, more real and more responsive than any interface he'd ever seen in a game, populated with numbers that meant something because his actual life now depended on them. His shield had abilities locked behind conditions he didn't understand yet, small greyed-out icons promising things his current level hadn't unlocked. His base defense was already respectable, notably higher than he'd expected from a level-one character. His attack, predictably and mockingly, sat at a flat zero, as though the game itself wanted to make sure he understood the joke.

He thought about home. About the library, the cracked-spine book, the particular quiet of 2 a.m. He thought about his mother's Sunday calls, which would go unanswered now, and felt a brief, sharp pang of guilt about that before reminding himself there was nothing he could currently do about it. He thought, too, about how strange it was to realize that the thing making this whole impossible situation bearable was how little he'd had to lose back home — no job worth grieving, no relationship anyone would notice the absence of, nothing anchoring him there so firmly that this couldn't, in its own terrifying way, feel like a door opening rather than only a door closing.

There was a knock at the door. It was Corwin, sword-shine still on him even indoors, leaning in the doorway with the easy confidence of someone who had never once doubted a room would like him.

"Hey. Shield guy," he said. "No hard feelings about the shield thing, yeah? Not your fault you got the worst weapon in the story."

"It's not a story," Kaelan said.

Corwin grinned like that was a very funny thing to say, the kind of grin that assumed its own charm would carry the moment regardless of what was actually said. "Sure it is. We're heroes. There's always a story." He rapped his knuckles twice on the doorframe, already turning to leave. "Anyway — good luck with the recruiting tomorrow. You'll need it, mate. No offense."

"Plenty taken," Kaelan muttered, but only after the door had already closed.

He lay back on the unfamiliar bed, staring at an unfamiliar ceiling in an unfamiliar world, and made himself a promise that had nothing noble in it and everything practical: I am going to survive this. Whatever else happens, I am going to survive this, on my own terms, with whatever this shield turns out to be worth.