There was a brilliance to Fivepeaks at dawn, an interplay of light and fading shadow that was, as far as Abigail was aware, unique to the city.

The royal palace had its great clock, the dials lit from behind by a thousand glass tubes filled with Aether. It was the first thing to catch the sun’s light as it slipped over the horizon, like a beacon announcing that morning had arrived and it was time to start moving or else start plotting excuses for why one was tardy to work.

Then, as the sun rose, the lamp men would move across the city, the vanguard of the working class, each one shutting off the street lights with a touch to their circles. They always started near the Parliament building on the second peak and worked their way down, lights flicking off like twinkling stars just ahead of the wash of morning sunlight.

Across Fivepeaks, on one of the tallest hills, the Academy would open its gates and the twin braziers on either side of the school would burst to life. They were bright beams of eldritch light that turned the mundane stone building into something ethereal, something that was beyond the normal sort of magic everyone and their mother used every day. Statues would come to life, paintings would begin to move, and the school prepared to receive a thousand inquisitive minds.

As the sun finally crested the horizon for good and lit up the fields that were once forests, the other mounts would awaken. The Conclave of the Inquisition remained dark, the entire complex hidden from the light by a towering mound of stone, but the Merchant’s Hill, where Abigail worked from sunrise to sunset, didn’t shy from the light. Red lamps sputtered out with sparks of wasted Aether and neon lights fizzed to life with a press of a thumb and a bit of focus.

There was a strange sort of quiet in the early morning hours. The streets outside were busy with the hubbub of morning crowds and the grinding of rune carts across the cobbles, but those noises were distant, easily forgotten save for the occasional rattle of glass jars when a cart rushed by.

The city was lively, magic circles flashing to life and leaving the air smelling of ozone and lightning, the Familiars of a thousand mages rushing ahead of their masters to the Academy on the hill, and gossiping shopkeeps walking in tight knit groups to their stores.

All that energy and life was locked behind a thick wooden door.

Two girls stood around a circle painted onto the floor, lit only by lamp light. “It stinks,” Abigail said, her nose scrunching up as she inspected her handiwork.

Her friend shrugged one shoulder, an unladylike gesture that would have been inappropriate in any other circumstance. “It’ll work,” she said. “I don’t think you made any mistakes.”

“Yeah,” Abigail said as she traced the circle with a discerning eye one more time. Each reagent was in its place. The sulphur in a non-reactive glass dish, the alum flower in a neat pile, the lime and lunar caustic in their positions. There were other ingredients of course, more than she had ever seen in a single circle before.

Then, in the middle of it all, on a slightly raised pedestal, was a smaller circle, connected to the first by lines of salt and magnesia. That’s where the more esoteric ingredients rested. Five points, each with a smaller circle. One had a drop of her blood, another the hair of a ****** maiden (easy to obtain, that), then a dollop of aged ent sap. There was a bit of gold in the form of a medallion she had found and which she hoped wouldn’t be lost in the casting, and finally a single unicorn cock, freshly butchered.

“Are you sure?” she asked again, eyes looking up from the intricate spell and to her friend. “Daphne, I’ve never cast anything this strong before,” she whined.

Her friend smiled, just a twitch of the lips and a folding in the corner of her eyes. “Don’t worry Abi, I’m here for you. And I’m sure it’ll be fine. The spell’s a bit old, but it’s usable, if non-standard.”

“That’s not helping,” Abigail said. She shifted on the spot a little, weight going from side to side as she hesitated even more. It was, of course, too late to back out. The ingredients were laid out already, some would be lost if she tried to store them now.

Daphne stepped closer and wrapped Abigail in a tight hug, only having to bend down a little to do it. “It’ll be fine. There’s always a bit of leeway with these things. My summoning went super well. You love Archie. Do this right and you’ll have an Archie of your own, then it’ll be super easy to get into the Academy.”

“Archie was summoned with a proper circle,” Abigail said. “And you had supervision.”

Dahne snorted, an indelicate gesture that had her nose scrunching up. “I’m supervising you.”

“By a professional,” Abigail shot back.

“Ouch. Abi, you’re being mean,” Daphne said. She let go of the hug to poke Abigail in the ribs. “Now push some Aether into that thing and let’s watch the sparks fly.”

Abigail nodded, took a deep breath, and hesitated just a little more.

Then, when she heard Daphne sighing from her place near the wall, she fell onto her knees next to the circle, reached in, and pushed her bare hand onto the cold ground. Eyes closing, she pushed with all of her will. Her hopes, her dreams, all depended on that one moment.

And then she summoned you.

***

You float in the Void. In the Darkness where Light doesn’t dwell and where only the things that are In Between lie.

Meaning is a concept that is as transient here as spring gales. Causality is optional. Willpower dictates the flow of the space between spaces.

There is a tug, a pull, a calling from across what Mortals and Organics would only understand as a great, unfathomable distance.

It awakens you.

You are vast, larger than any mere mortal could hope to conceive of, and yet the one calling you, your summoner, wants you to squeeze into a form so small as to be insignificant. The little mortal asks for the impossible with a sort of blind faith that, at its base, amuses you.

A twist, a turn, and mass, insofar as you have mass, is compressed. Space is transitory, it does as you wish. With a scream, physics reels from your irreverence to its laws. It batters at what you are doing but that is as easy to ignore as a faint stench.

Between one blink and the next you are an entity of the void no longer.

***

The ceiling has wooden beams, some of them marred by smoke stains and soot. You know this, because you are on your back on the floor, which affords you an excellent view.

You wrinkle your nose at the smell of burning sulfur and something sickly sweet, then you wrinkle your nose again just because you can. You have a nose now. This is rather novel.

Of course, that’s all perfectly normal. You are a being made flesh now. You have bits that are squishy over hard parts. It’s all quite disgusting and probably unsanitary. It’s no wonder that mortals are so mortal. One small impact is all it would take to rend this sack of meat you are calling home apart.

There’s a noise. You know this because you have ears.

You wiggle your limbs and, after a moment of not really moving, decide that your patience for mortal flesh limbs has already reached its end. You reach into the space between spaces for more of yourself and pull a fraction of a fraction of your essence into the mortal coil. There’s a tearing sound, and a splash.

Warmth runs across your back and you see inky black blood pooling out around you.

That’s probably bad. But at least now you are no longer limited to a mere four limbs. Your new limbs sprout out of your back like the wings of an Angel. Though unlike those weaklings your wings are black, and wiggly, and a little bit slimy with your blood. They are also boneless and featherless.

They’re tentacles.

Tentacle wings.

Angels don’t have anything on you.

Now equipped properly, you let yourself go limp as your tentacles spear into the floor and raise you up to your feet.

There are two meaty fleshbags in the room. They are small, with delicate little bones covered in mostly beige flesh. One has long brown fur atop her head and the other black. Perhaps the fur means somethings. You will have to look into it and make sure any fur you have tells the mortals that you are not to be trifled with.

One of the girls steps forwards, the shorter of the two and the one you suspect is your summoner. She opens the hole in her face and noises come out.

You blink at the strange, guttural sounds. This is a problem. But of course, you have a simple solution. You just need to tear the knowledge out of your summoner’s head. Everything these mortals know is stored in the meaty organ in their head. A terribly inefficient way of going about things but they’re primitive mortals, so what can one expect?

Bringing one of your tentacles back, you prepare yourself to spear through your summoner’s skull to get to the juicy brain matter within when you pause. Would going through the skull break the summoner?

Best to merely apply pressure atop the summoner’s head and extract the knowledge of their meat flapping language that way. It is not nearly as efficient, but it will work.

You step forward, then the world shifts and you brand new nose twinges as it meets the floor with a meaty smack.

Curse physics! It is attempting to foil your amusement by dragging your squishy meat body to the ground.

Walking cannot be difficult if the mortals are doing it, but the only two you see are standing still and not assisting you by presenting the art of waking in an easy to digest fashion. Very well, you don’t need their assistance anyway. Your tentacles bring you back to your feet.

Raising one arm up, you reach for your summoner’s head.

You feel the muscles on your face drawing your brows together as you reach harder. Perhaps you cannot touch your summoner’s head because you are not standing at your full height? That must be it, you decide.

You stand to your full height.

...

You stand to your full height.

You blink your fleshy meat eyes, then look down.

The ground is very near. You look back up. Your summoner is taller than you are. A whole two heads taller.

This is a problem.

But all problems have solutions. And the best solutions always involve tentacles. You wrap your fleshy tentacles around the beams of the ceiling, then push off the ground with others until you are suspended in the middle of the room. Your summoner cowers away from your form which is unacceptable. You wrap a tentacle around her waist in a fleshy cuddle of muscle and drag her close.

You are now taller than your summoner, the perfect height to reach out and...

Hand meets head. Tendrils that are only partially in this realm and in this time scour through your summoner’s mind, skipping past boring things until the parts that dictate speech and the knowledge of how to move the flaps on your face to communicate are found.

Ah, you were supposed to use your tongue. That is what the small, inefficient tentacle in your face is for.

Disappointing.

You clear your throat as you remove your hand from your summoner’s head then gently and reluctantly lower her back to the ground. The moment she’s out of your grasp, you feel a lack, as it you had accidentally bumped into a black hole and lost a bit of yourself.

You will have to see if wrapping your summoner in even more tentacles will fix the issue, but that is a problem (which can, again, be fixed with a liberal application of tentacle) for another time. You are nothing if not a paragon of self-control.

"Hello," you say.

"Ah," the girl says in return. Truly, your summoner is lacking in many things. It would be best if you kept her safe, cocooned in a whole pile of your flesh-- you shake your meat head and refocus. She is about to continue. "Hi there," she says. "My name’s Abigail."

A name.

Yes. You will need one of those. And then you’ll need to discover why this mortal called upon you.

Abigail. You taste the name, your new knowledge of the mortal tongue telling you nothing of great importance about it. Perhaps the mortals just name themselves after whatever sound they like most.

Your summoner is a small thing, a human tadpole or whatever they call their young, with brown fur... hair tied in a bun over her head. She has spectacles, big round bits of glass perched on the very end of a tiny nose. They make her eyes look wider than they are as she gazes right back at you.

"Daphne," she says, and for a moment you are confused, but then the other mortal, the one you had nearly forgotten about, moves away from the wall with cautious steps. "Daph, I think it worked?"

"Yeah," the Daphne girl agrees. "But what did you summon?"

That is a foolish question. You are you, that much is obvious. But perhaps these mortals don’t know as much. They are terribly short-lived after all.

Abigail turns back to you and her mouth twitches up,the corners of her eyes creasing up in a strange way. "Ah, my name’s Abigail, like I said. Do you have a name? W-what are you?"

Giving her a name is the least you could do, of course. You take a deep breath, filling the sacks in your chest until they’re about to burst, then you let it all out in one long wail. Your vocal chords aren’t made for the kinds of twists and turns and variations that would be proper in speaking your Name, but you try your best with the faulty equipment you have.

Abigail and Daphne slap their hands over their ears and wince back until you run out of air. You take another deep breath, ready to continue where you left off. That wasn’t even the start of your True Name, merely the precursor titles.

"I’m sorry!" Abigail wails. "I didn’t mean to hurt you, you don’t need to cry," she says before walking right up to you where you still hang off the floor. She reaches out to you with her arms like grasping, bony tentacles and pulls you against her chest.

You are insulted. Infuriated! How dare this, this mortal tentacle-grab you as if... actually it’s rather pleasant. Nice and warm. You can feel your summoner’s breathing, her little heart thumping away in her chest.

Of course, it wouldn’t do not to return the favour before you start in on the questions. It’s just proper etiquette when a creature wraps you in its tentacles to wrap them back.

You aren’t doing it because it makes you feel nice to cuddle your summoner. Of course not. You have more self control than that.

Abigail squeaks as you wrap her up in layers and layers of tentacular glory. It is probably a squeak of happiness, her teeth are certainly bared as you lift her off the ground. "Your cuddle was appreciated," you say. "I shall return the favour tenfold."

"Um," Daphne says. "I don’t think that’s a good idea." You disagree, but you do leave Abigail's head uncovered. It’s not a prober cuddle this way, but at least she can still breathe, which is important for living and talking, two things you wish for her to continue doing.

"Foolish mortal," you reprimand. "Cuddles are always appropriate recompense for services rendered. Now, if you do not appreciate my true name, then I shall translate it into your meat flapping language." You feel the muscles in your brow contracting as you concentrate. "I am That Which Dreams Eternal Between Space and Time."

Daphne closes her eyes slowly. "I think we’ll call you Dream, it’s a pretty enough name," she says.

You don’t particularly care what they call you. "Summoner Abigail, why did you call upon me? Why did you dare awaken me from my Eternal Slumber?"

You realize after a moment’s silence that maybe your summoner’s face shouldn’t be that red and that maybe you’re cuddling her too hard. You let go, and she lands with a gasp on the hard packed ground a moment before Daphne moves over to her to help her up. It is obvious that she too, has difficulty with the whole walking thing.

"Some sort of mimic, maybe?" Daphne mutters. "It’s obviously magical, so you lucked out there."

Abigail makes a snorting noise that you can’t translate and hugs her friend closer. "But we did it!" she says, the red fading to be replaced by an expression that shows off all of her teeth. She turns shining eyes onto you. "I summoned you because I need a Familiar, someone to help me, and who I can cherish and love and care for until we’re both really old."

You see Daphne rolling her eyes behind Abigail. "She needs a Familiar to enter the Academy. It’s part of the entrance requirements."

"That too," Abigail says. "But I want a friend first. So, can we be friends, Dreamer?"

You are quite speechless. This tadpole has summoned you to be friends? Cuddle buddies? Tentacle pals? How foolish!