Earthen Inner Sanctum

John emerged from the cloud layer and found himself already at the bottom of the mountain. Confused, he turned to look, and there was a layer of fog obscuring the foothills, mirroring the cloud cover at the peak.

Okay, cool. Not nearly as bad as it could have been. Freaky teleportation fog. Neat.

He continued to turn, taking in his surroundings as he spun in a slow circle. The terrain was mostly barren, but on one side of the path sparse vegetation began to grow. It seemed the further out he looked, the more vegetation grew. On the other side of the path, outcrops of obsidian jutted out of the landscape, becoming more and more common the further from the path they grew. The furthest ones in the distance began to ooze magma.

John began to make his way down the path, admiring the environment. After a few silent minutes of nearly rolled ankles as he traversed the uneven terrain, he began to hear the tell tale giggles of pixies flitting about. They appeared in blurs of movement between obsidian outcrops, in the swishing of branches, and dust devils across the path. The buzz of wings and the twinkle of laughter surrounded him as he continued onward, the silhouette of a small hill shimmering into existence with every step he took. The mirage effect on the structure before him shifted its features back and forth between a mound of earth with a yawning opening held up by wooden support struts and a concrete bunker with a steel door half sunk into the ground.

He stood right at the threshold of the structure as it shifted back and forth.

This is gonna give me vertigo just staring at it…

On a whim, he reached out and touched it as it was phasing into the concrete bunker. It solidified under his hand, and stabilized in that form.

I get the feeling I just made an irreversible choice… But bunkers are cool I guess.

His hand still placed firmly against the steel door, he pushed, and the door swung open silently. A single bulb flickered on, revealing a small set of steps leading to a cargo elevator. John swallowed his uncertainty and made his way in. The elevator doors slid open smoothly for him as he hit the foot of the stairs, and he stepped in. There were rows of buttons lining the side, but all were blank and unlit except for the first one, labelled “B1”. John pressed the button, the doors slid shut with a hydraulic hiss, and the elevator hummed quietly as it began its descent. After a few seconds of travel, the elevator buzzed and the doors slid open again. John stepped out, and industrial lights Ker-chunk-ed to life one by one, illuminating a plain concrete hallway that stretched for a long while before the lights stopped for a noticeable beat and continued much further in the distance.

With only one way to go, John followed the lights. Every few feet he noticed shallow alcoves shaped like doorways on both sides of the corridor, and every few sets of alcoves actually became hallways, though the lights in them weren’t lit, and wouldn’t light even as he tried to take a few steps down them. Deciding to explore more later, John continued down the lit path. After a few minutes of uneventfully plodding along, he found himself at a sort of crossroads in the corridors. The hall he was in opened out into a cavern, sort of shaped like a thoroughfare, and continued across it as a narrow bridge, since the massive boulevard extended both upwards and downwards into obscurity. The yawning chasm was as wide as a four lane divided highway, and had balconies on either edge where corridors like the one John emerged from opened out into. His corridor had released him on one of the endpoints of the boulevard, where an immense window overlooked shadowy depths that reached out as if to continue the hall in darkness. The other end was difficult to make out, but it was brightly lit by glowing stones set into the wall.

Deciding not to tempt fate by staring into the abyss, John instead turned towards the lit up end of the hall and began walking towards it. As he drew nearer, he began to hear the voices of his pixies as they bickered and bantered. He took a good look around as he finally made it to the end, and realized it was some sort of throne room. The wall was inlaid with massive gems of every kind, softly glowing with a pulse of mana like a heartbeat, and in the center sat a regal throne carved of simple stone. It looked incredibly uncomfortable, all right angles and sharp edges. Elora sat on the armrest, her tiny legs dangling off the edge, and the rest of the pixies mingled at the foot of the throne. As John opened his mouth to speak, Elora stood and called out.

“Pixies! Stand at attention and welcome our Commander in Chief!”

The pixies immediately scrambled into a neat grid, holding stiff salutes for a speechless John.

“At ease,” Elora commanded, and the pixies snapped to a more relaxed posture. “John… Welcome to the Earthen Inner Sanctum. Here is where all of your Earth-aligned summons live within your soul. Here you will feel your closest affinity to our element, and here you will lead us to glory. Sit upon the Stone, and feel its responsibility. Sit upon the Stone, and take command of your destiny!”

What am I signing up for here? John thought, trying his best not to get swept up in the ceremony. He stepped forward, and the pixies parted to either side of him. Am I really just going to do as I’m told without asking exactly what it is I’m doing? He stood directly in front of the throne, and turned, gazing out into the gargantuan empty hall. I can’t do this, I can’t-
A warm glow descended upon John, suffusing him in a golden feeling of belonging. He sat on the throne. The throne room became awash with his aura, lighting up the abyss above and below, revealing thousands upon thousands of pixies saluting him from the cavernous alcoves above the main hall, spectral and flickering. John cast his gaze to the abyss below and caught a mere glimpse of something large and scaly before the lights faded all at once and he was left alone with Elora and her corporeal squads.

ding!

A notification popped up in the bottom right of John’s field of view.

New Title: Commander in Chief

He cleared his throat. “So? It’s official, then?”

Elora subtly wiped the cuff of her suit across her eyes before looking at John with a radiant smile. “Yes, sir!”

“Can I ask what all that was about?”

“Of course! So, while in theory this should be just some barren wasteland with a bunch of dirt and some rocks floating around near your earth chakra… What's actually here is essentially a tether to the Elemental Plane of Earth that a very powerful earth summoner created a few centuries ago. You claimed it as yours. And it is rightfully yours, seeing as there aren’t any summoners or acolytes or inheritors skulking about.”

“And the light show? All the pixies in the rafters? The snake thing down there?”

“The light show was your claim taking effect… The pixies… They’re the sisters I had to… honorably discharge from my service, waiting for me to call upon them again. The stronger we become together, the more of them I can recover… As for the snake thing, that’s entirely you. No clue what it could be.”

“Wait, what? What do you mean ‘entirely me’?”

Elora shrugged. “There’s three possibilities when a new summoner claims a tether: old guardians awaken, latent potential in their current summons awakens, or latent potential in the summoner themself awakens. Seeing as it didn’t attack us, it’s not an old guardian, and I can guarantee pixies have nothing to do with snakes. So it’s all you, chief!”

“Oookayy. Well. That’s a problem for future me. Now how about you show me where you were reading up on our situation?”

“Yes, sir! Ladies, dismissed!”

The gathered pixies scattered down different hallways on the far side of the chasm as Elora climbed onto John’s shoulder and began leading him down several twists and turns back in the direction of the entrance. The halls that had been dark on his way in were now lit by orange glowing crystals that pulsed in time with his heartbeat. After a few entirely disorientating minutes of traversal, Elora and John arrived in a fairly large room dominated by large flat crystal formations cut into columns with smooth, flat faces. Elora leapt down from his shoulder onto a waist high column, activating some sort of mechanism and revealing the room to be full of computer screens made out of the mana crystals. They all blinked to life, foreign operating system logos flashing with various states of loading bars and circles. One by one they all booted up to reveal a bleak reality: their displays were in a language John couldn’t read.

“Elora, I can’t read this.”

“What? It’s English to me, chief.”

“I don’t recognize these shapes as Latin letters, or kanji or hangul for that matter. Not that I can read kanji or hanja but I can recognize their shapes. They look like they could maybe be Norse runes but honestly it’s definitely not English”

“Chief, are you okay? It’s English, look.” Elora began pointing at the runes one by one. “S. U. M. M again. O. N. E. R. apostrophe. S. Summoner’s, right? English? Summoner’s Guide to T̵̮̺͉͓̫̟͈̙̊̐̀͜͜͠ḧ̵̻̩̞̙͕̩̺̲̦͚̫̒̔́͆̕͠ę̶̡̡͍̥̗̳̩̣͙̺͓͍̇̉͒̂͑̕ ̴͖͉̫̰̰̻̦̤̫̹̖͉̪̣̦̒̃͂͑̅̅̍̓̆̓Ģ̴̧̣̠̼͚̫͔̲̜̭͗͊̈́̍̀͛̄̊͌͒̀͗͂͝͝a̵̰̗̜̱̳̙̩̞͌̈́̐͒̎̏̀̀͠i̴̢̛͂͌̉̃̿̈́̎͌ą̴̬̖̹͋̈́̓̾̔̃̈ ̶̨̛̭̝̩̘̑̽̿̋͗͌̀͗́̎̓̀͑͝P̶̧̢̛̝̞̗͇̜̦̱̮͇͕̘͕͈̈̿̈́̇̊̌̈́͛̀̊̄͘͝r̵̻̼̝̻̬̯̖͒́́̓̐̅̈́͘͘͝͝ͅͅơ̶̳̞͇̠̰̬̯͎̆̄̑̀̆͂̓͒́̚j̴͊̀̃͗́̈́̔̈́̚͜e̸͈̟̰͓͇̥͓̎̈́͂͑͝c̸̝̤̲̖͉̣̫̅̑̈̑͐̉̃́͝t̷̛̞̥̲̤̋̊̓͐͆̈́̏̉̀̕̚͝.”

-10 hp
A sharp pain stabbed John between the eyes.

“Ow, fuck. Okay, clearly this is something The Developer doesn’t want me to know. Should’ve seen that coming, honestly.” John took a deep breath as he rubbed his forehead. “It’s fine. As long as you know what you’re doing, I’m sure we’ll be good for now.”

Elora didn’t seem convinced, a grimace slowly forming on her face, but she swallowed her doubts and nodded. “If you’re sure, chief.”

“Yeah, I am. I’m gonna head back to the dorm and see about eating lunch before diving into a new dungeon crawl. Be ready for my call.”

“Yes, sir!”

Elora’s resolute salute was the last thing John saw before activating Summoner’s Temple and reappearing in the hallway of his dorm room. Ignis had been lounging on his bed, but immediately pounced on him as he turned. John squealed in the manliest tone of surprise as they both fell over. Ignis nuzzled into his neck and purred very loudly as they laid on the floor and John chuckled in amazement.

“Hey, Ignis. I wasn’t gone too long, was I?”

She only purred more aggressively and hugged him tighter in response.

“Alright, alright, we can cuddle for a bit but let’s take it to the bed instead of the floor.”

The purring stopped with a huff as Ignis practically dragged John over to his bed and threw him onto it before flopping on top of him. John laid his hand on her head tentatively, making small circles with his thumb. Ignis began purring again, much quieter now. Confident he was going in the right direction, John began rubbing her head in earnest and wrapped his other arm around her tightly. Ignis snuggled into his embrace as her purring reached a crescendo.

This is nice. As fucked up as this past week has been… this makes it worth it, John thought groggily. In no time at all, the pair were fast asleep.