Jonathan

Jonathan woke up in an unfamiliar bed, in an unfamiliar room.

He wondered where he was, and how he came to be there. But after a short time, he remembered.

“So, it was not a dream.” This he thought to himself.

He sighed and did his morning routine, as far as he was able to do. He brushed his teeth with the toothbrush as well as toothpaste, which he had from his camping supplies, which were still in his backpack. After he was finished cleaning himself, he did not know what to do now.

So he began to check what he had. The first thing, which he was happy to discover that the solar charging station for his iPhone and Kindle E-Reader was still there. This would mean that the knowledge saved on those gadgets was still readable for him, at least for the foreseeable future.

It was not a permanent solution, but it was the beginning of one. He also had a book on mushrooms with him, which was not necessarily wrong, but most likely not completely right either. The reason that some information in it could be correct was pretty simple. Humans, while with magical abilities were here, so that meant that other things from his world could be in this world as well.

He also had a bottle of water in his backpack as well as other assorted things.

In his pockets, which contents lied on the table, was among other things his purse. This thing was now more or less worthless, at least if one assumed that the civilization he was in did not use paper money. It could hold a few coins, but not enough to really matter.

Also, his ID as well as other plastic cards a modern human has in his purse were worthless, while his money likely had only material worth, even if maybe a collector might be interested in it.

He wore a T-Shirt as well as a Jeans when he was summoned, both things were still on him. His shoes were near the bed.

He had a change of clothing in his backpack, now he was really beginning to wonder how he could have missed that this was not his schoolbag, but it was good for him, so he was happy. Of course, there were his materials for school, his books, his folder, as well as his pencil case with everything that went with it. He also had his compasses with him.

A shampoo, as well as shaving utensils, were in his possession as well, but they were only short-term viable.

He also found his food supplies as well as some seeds he bought while on the tour or shortly before getting home because he and his father wanted to grow a few things. While some of those seeds were meant to be grown in earnest, some of them he had mostly bought for the fun of it, and because he wanted to try them out.

He would need help to grow them, but he would have a series of crops of his world. They might have problems growing in this world because of magic, but maybe they had also been changed by the summoning and were hopefully still edible.

He arranged his things on the table or in one of the cabinets, in relation to what made sense, at least to him.

After that, he waited, and after a short period of time passed, his door opened.

This Archmage Heinrich Tablos came through. Jonathan used this to make a few observations. Firstly Archmage seemed to be a title, not a part of his name. He saw it as likely that Heinrich was the Archmage’s first name and Tablos was some kind of either surname or Family name. This might be similar, but not exactly identical. A surname was a method to distinguish between multiple Heinrich’s, a Family name was a way to show that one was part of a specific faction, mostly controlled by one group of relatives.

Tablos cleared his throat and asked: “I hope you slept well this night, Johnathan?”

Johnathan answered visibly enraged: “I have been ported into another world away from my family and you idiot want to ask me if I slept well?! I have no goddam idea what the future will bring to me and I have no idea how I will fit into a society that is likely completely different from my own and you idiot wants to know if I have slept well, of course not!”

But after a short period of time, during which Tablos said nothing, Johnathan relented and told the Archmage that he had slept soundly, but restricted this admission with adding that he was too tired to do anything else than to sleep.

After this Tablos asked Jonathan: “Are you finished now?”

At which Jonathan answered that, for now, he was finished. Not happy, mind you, but he could stop being vocal about it.

Then Heinrich Tablos began to speak: “We need to decide how we will go on from here. Fact is that I am unable to send you back. The good news is that while you are bound to Elise, you can operate independently of her, at least in some ways. Most familiars can only move about 1818.5 yards.”

While Tablos paused, Jonathan did some quick calculations in his head. With the historic yard being generally between 50 and 60 cm this would be on the lower end a bit more than 900 to at the other end 1000 odd meters.

He decided to begin understanding the system of measurement that they used. He went to his pencil case, opened it and picked his triangle ruler up.

Then he asked the most important question of them all: “Do you have a standardized set of measurements? And if yes, how far is their reach for certain, how exactly are they, and how far away are they generally similar?”

The Archmage pondered the question. Then he answered: “The Kingdom per se has no standardized measurements. But the Royal School of Magic has some. And sometimes nobles, like the king, buy large amounts of measurements from us, the mages that create them. Then they put those on central places in a village and decree that all trading is done in this city shall use this set of measurements. Of course, this is not perfect, but that makes these measurements pretty similar to each other, which does facilitate trade. The measurements produced here are pretty much identical, variations are as thin as the width of a human hair.”

At this point, Jonathan steps in and asks which colour of hair. After this, the Archmage wonders why and answers the hair of the mage that produces the measurement. Jonathan answered to this that blond hair is thinner than for example black hair. Tablos did not know this, but accepted it as true for now, even as he silently wondered what for society would measure things like this.

Then he asked what the thing in Jonathan's hand was and why he asked about these standards of measurement.

Jonathan answered to this: “This is a so-called triangular ruler. It is a pretty exact type of measuring device, if not perfect, but it is good enough to get a comparison between your set of measurements and mine going. Look, here, do you see these shapes beneath the lines, here? These are numbers. We use a measurement called metre. The space between two of those lines is one-hundredth of one metre, a so-called centimetre. The distance between two lines on this side is called a millimetre, which is a one-thousandths of a metre or a one-tenth of a centimetre. So you can bring whatever you are using to measure distances and we can find out how the metric system generally measures up against your system. Also, I do not know which other measurements you are using, but it might be a good idea to change to the metric system or a similar one. But this is a discussion for the future.”

After a while, they had measured the yard out and got: That the length of the thing was a bit less than 55 centimetres.

After this Jonathan remembered what they had spoken about, before he interrupted Tablos, and they restarted their conversation. Tablos continued were he had left off: “You remember how I said that normal familiars can only move about one of your kilometres, with less than 100 metres off variation, away from their master? Now, you can move about 40000 times as far as that from your summoner.”

Jonathan broke into Tablos monologue at that point: “Are you certain that I can move about 40000 km from Elise? If this world is somewhat like my own, this could be a pretty specific and important number especially if familiar bonds must go around large bodies of matter, like a mountain.”

“How did you know that this might be a problem of the familiar bond?” asked the astonished Archmage.

The answer of Jonathan was simple: “Because, if this world is somewhat similar to my world, it is a sphere. The circumference of my world is around 40000 km long. So after knowing this fact, it could make sense this way. But I could also have been wrong and still can be. Right now I assume that this world is extremely similar to mine, but it might operate due to a series of completely different laws and so it could be completely different. It might not even be a world, as I think of the concept behind this word. But right now we go into speculation I cannot prove or disprove in an acceptable period of time. Or has anyone circumnavigated the world until now?”

Tablos laughed at Jonathan's question and told him that something like this was inconceivable. While scholars knew that this world was a globe, everybody knew that such a voyage could not be survived, due to simple distance. This was because mages cannot spawn food or water. They could, of course, help catch fish, and some could extract the salt out of the water, but this makes the water poisonous out of some reason.

The reason for this was known to Jonathan and he described it to the Archmage. Without any salt, the water will get to much water in locations where it should not be. While too much salt caused the places where water should be loose the water.

“Of course”, Jonathan added: “This is a dumbed down explanation of something I do not understand completely, and which is part of a much more complex topic.”

Then he laughed and continued: “And we have gotten sidetracked again already. So please continue with where we have left off.”

Tablos followed the summons’s wish: “There are a few things you should know. First of all, there are political implications in your existence. Those are pretty complex, but there are a few ambiguous laws, which are used by some nobles to argument a few things, like every familiar of a commoner is rightly the familiar of a noble, based on a few rules. The good thing is that this problem is not really relevant. It is there and it must be addressed, but because your bond cannot be broken or traded they can do nothing at all. One of the reasons why this might be important despite this is the rarity of humanoid familiars generally and human familiars specifically, this makes you incredibly valuable. But enough of this, let’s continue with other topics. Familiars have multiple roles and not all familiars have the same ability to fulfil every role. One of the main roles for a familiar is to serve as a mana reservoir. Mana is what you use to cast spells if you did not know that. They also can help to channel magic. To understand this better, you need more knowledge about magic.”

At this point, Jonathan interrupted the Archmage: “You know what, I am hungry. Is there any chance that we can continue our dialogue over breakfast? I also have a few things I want to ask you after we have found a solution to my situation.”

Tablos agreed that this might be a sensible idea and lead Jonathan out of the room, over several hallways and stairs to a relatively small room, where between three and five people could sit on a table and eat. Then a maid came and took orders from the Archmage.