Jonathan

Jonathan woke up.

He thought about yesterday. After Tablos had left, he had considered how he really felt about his situation.

On one hand, this might be a great adventure. On the other hand, he has lost his family, likely forever. He misses his dog.

Also, even though here might be magic, illness could be a serious problem. Sanitation might not really exist in the wider world, he is really happy that there is a somewhat functional toilet here. Also, that there is a shower is a great sign for personal hygiene. But of course, there would always be the question of what they would be using for soap if anything.

But there is also the question of what happens in the wider world.

“Why is there a shower and is a shower a luxury item or a common one?” asked Jonathan himself.

So right now he was content with his lot in life, but this could change quite rapidly in the near future when he found out more about the living conditions of the population.

Not only might sanitation be a major problem, but also illness. Even with great sanitation, many illnesses are a big problem, and only modern medicine makes them controllable.

One of the greatest things to stop dangerous illnesses were vaccines. But if they were missing vaccines, the basics were simple, and some of the earliest and, admittedly, most dangerous ones, were easily replicated with his knowledge.

But sanitation and medical care were not the only advantages of living in modern society. Some of these were not readily seen by most people. A relatively stable government that could not work without approval or at least greater acceptance of the people is a norm.

Old monarchies were often not quite up to the stable part, but the other part they could do, and they were good at it. But this does not mean that the people lived in good conditions, even for the standards of the time. But the governments were always careful to prevent the conditions from going so bad that the people felt they had nothing to lose anymore.

This did not always work, and what is too bad of a condition to live in, changes over time.

The failure to adapt to this was one of the reasons for the age of revolutions, beginning with a mixture of the American War for Independence and the French Revolution and ending after world war one, at least in the western world.

But with magic, because which conditions were acceptable and which not, had always to do with the available force to the governing power, this could mean that the gross of the population lived in abhorrent conditions, in relation to how rare mages were.

If they were often, the living conditions might even be quite good, especially if mages did not need much training to destroy a castle or two, but if they were rare and needed the training to become dangerous, this changes to the worse.

While Jonathan thought about the implications of his new circumstances, he did his morning wash and prepared to receive Elise or Tablos.

While he waited, he checked his phone. While he had a fairly large power bank and the solar powered charger, there was no sun, and the light in his room was not useful for charging either. So he was stuck with his full power bank and the charge of the phone for the foreseeable future. Because of how little he had used it in the past two days, it was still at 60% charge.

He opened his notes app and began compiling a few facts he did not think he had in other, electronic form. He was, of course, happy that the phone worked, and no data seemed to be lost, the same on his reader, but if you thought about it, the only real danger for the devices was the transport.

The natural laws should be similar enough, if not he would have died before the change to his physiology happened. Also, he assumed that this change mostly adapted him to magic and maybe gave his immune system a few advantages so that the next cold would not kill him.

After maybe an hour of working on low brightness levels on his phone, sitting on his bed, Tablos opened the door and came in with Elise.

Jonathan motioned both to sit down, even if there were not many places to do so. Tablos sat on the bed, next to Jonathan, while Elise took the chair and changed its heading so that she looked at him. Tablos position was between them.

After a short but uncomfortable silence, Tablos raised to take the word.

He asked Elise to tell Jonathan how she thought about the situation, and Elise began talking: “I am not sure if I like it. On one hand, it gives me an advantage, you are a powerful summon, I can fell that, but on the other hand, you also bring many problems with you. There are the nobles that will want to have you, which is, thanks to the gods, impossible, but also the difficulties in working with you, because of how the spell worked, it is definitively a with you and not an against you. Also, there is this matter of you having feelings and being torn out of your home. I do not even know if your living conditions increased or decreased, even if I cannot imagine how they could have decreased, only the most powerful of archmages might have better-living conditions than this. But I also cannot imagine what this tool in your hand is, with the moving symbols on it, which right now is only black on the surface with the pictures on. I am also scared. I am scared that you hate me. That we might never manage to really work together. I cannot force you to do things, not really. I can force you to speak the truth for a short but unknown period of time per day, but I cannot force you to speak at all during this time period, so this is most interesting to check facts and nothing else. I can stop you from using magic, but I cannot tell you how to use your magic when I allow it to be used by you. You can even harm me, even if this should be a bad idea for you because of the danger it poses to you.”

Tablos interjected with saying that, should Elise be killed, Jonathan would most likely be banished to the void.

After this, Elise continued: “I do not think we can be friends immediately. But I do think we can and should respect each other. I think you should begin your studies and hopefully help me with magic if you are ready for it.”

Jonathan thought for a while. Elise was reasonable, and honestly, it was not like he had another choice. So he answered: “I also hope this. As far as I can see to this date, my living conditions went down a lot. I come from a society where there are things, I think are unbelievable to you two. I hope after I found out a few more things about your society that we can sit down and talk about them. Tablos, could you give me a book or an account about this pseudo elemental magic? I have a theory about it I want to test, but first I want to check if it is even viable.”

Tablos accepted this and said he would look into it. He also confirmed, unasked, that the translation spell also worked for the reading material, even if there might be greater understanding problems due to different writing systems used.

On that note, Elise and Tablos left Jonathan's room, and a few hours later a maid came in with food and a large book.