"Andras? Andras open this door!"

A loud pounding came at the door of the new recruit known as Andras Zsolstas following the perturbed bellow of the rather gruff looking human soldier. Nobody had seen the Shadowborne since he had arrived in the Silver Leaves all of a few days ago, almost disappearing from view among his cohorts within the first few hours of his coming to Egralia. It had taken them fairly long to ascertain his location, finding out from the Zali priest that Andras had 'borrowed' a small shack near the Zali shrine ouurside the compound. There was no response originally for the soldier, who angrily pounded on the door once more after a brief silence, once again hollering for Andras to show his face.

"Damn it, man, answer this door!"

"Hm? Oh, come in!" Said a voice on the other side, polite and earnest in its response, as if the man had not even been at his door for the past three minutes. "The door is open!"

The soldier did not hesitate on the suggestion, nearly bursting the door off of its hinges as he barged into the room, an annoyed scowl on his face. To his further his disappointment, he saw the Shadowborne simply at his desk, scribbling away on some parchment, with his back turned from the door. The room was barely lit by a single candle, all the windows shut tightly, leaving most of his room enshrouded by the dark.

"Andras, you were supposed to report for training three hour ago, what are you doing that is so--" The soldier began, marching towards him in a brisk stride.

"Ah, ah, ah, I would not take another step if I were you." Andras replied as he raised a hand to stop the soldier, his gaze never leaving the parchment he was working on. "Lest you scuff up the circle I worked so hard on."

Surprisingly, the soldier indeed stopped in his tracks, glancing down to indeed make out a very defined magic circle, painted on the floor in what looked like black ink. The soldier now took the time to glance around Andras' room, the light from the doorway beginning to illuminate much of what had transpired to make up Andras' absence. The wall was lined with parchment, much like the one he was scribbling on, filled with drawings, runes, glyph, notations, and all sorts of other information penned by Andras himself. The floor near the wall looked to be riddled with books, piling around the small desk Andras was continuing to work on.

"What...what exactly have you been doing in here?" The soldier asked, his ire turned to perplexion as he eyed the many drawings.

Almost immediately regarding the question, Andras whirled around in his chair, an enthusiastic grin plastered on his face. "I'm glad you asked, good sir!" He sprung from his chair, darting from his seat to plaster the parchment he was writing on to his wall. "You see, I've been making extensive use of the Silver Leaves' libraries, along with resources from the Church of Zali outside, you guys have a much larger collection of books and tomes than my own village possessed, makes my work much easier, I've made leaps and bounds since I got here in my research!"

"A...and what does your research entail, exactly?" The soldier asked, scratching his facial hair as he continued to leer at the spellwork. "Are you calling some spirit from the grave?"

Andras' brow raised, darting by the man with a loud scoff and a wave of his hand to dismiss the insinuation. "Oh good heavens, no! I work with darkness, not the dead, I'm not some Summoner after all." His speech seemed to be more in enthusiastic rambling than solid answers, as if he was simply trying to keep the man occupied while he continued to work, "Though the idea of Summoning is quite fascinating, have you seen some of the things that can be accomplished with it? Simply astounding, why I read in one book--"

"Then what is it, Andras?" The soldier proclaimed, stopping the young man's rambling before he got completely off topic. "And it better be good to skip morning drills."

"Hm? Oh! The spearwork?" Andras replied, grabbing his own spear that was leaning in the corner. "I reviewed a bit of the work in the library on the subject, I figured practicing on my own would be sufficient. That way I could continue to work on this without having to bother any of the trainers here."

"That's...that's not how things work here, Andras. You cannot just shirk duties because of personal affairs."

"Oh? My apologies then, I suppose I have things to learn about actually part of a group, don't I?." Andras made a quick shrug, his red and black eyes making a once-over of his work, making sure there were no imperfections in his incantations. 

"This is...a lot of work for the few days you've been here." The soldier stood to the side of Andras, looking over his work as well. "Have you slept at all since you got here?"

"Yes! Well...sort of--no, not really." Andras scratched his chin, pulling what looked like a small satchel from his belt, he loosened the leather cord to reveal some kind of sparkling dust was contained inside, "I figured that sleep was unimportant in the face of progress."

At this point, the soldier had buried his face in his own palm, sighing in the knowledge of this recruit's complete lack of common sense. "You cannot just avoid sleep, boy, you will exhaust yourself before you ever hit another battlefield."

"Alright, alright, point taken, I understand." Andras replied in a flat tone, pardoning off the scolding as if it was a mere slap on the wrist and not a direct talking to from a superior. "Nevertheless, to answer your earlier question, this is not a summoning circle, but an invocation circle."

"And...I hate to ask, but how is that different?"

"Well, summoning takes something already alive and brings it from its home dimension and brings it here." As he spoke, Andras began lighting candles surrounding the circle, though suspiciously, each candle's light was blocked from shining on the circle, as if trying to keep just the circle in the dark. As soon as that was done, Andras took the powder he was holding and sprinkled a small bit of it into the middle. "Whereas this invocation is going to take something that already exists in this domain, the shadows, and try to create something out of them."

"And what are you trying to create."

With that question, Andras whirled around with another enthusiastic grin and gestured to the circle.

"I'm trying to create life, my friend!"

"W...what?"

"Well, alright, alright, it will not be one hundred percent real life, but its close. In the magic of my people, shadow constructs are common, I daresay easy. Some children in my home village could create a small stick out of the shadows to play with, but I'm going to trump those creations by making the first ever sentient shadow!"

"Sentient...shadow?"

"Yes! If my theory is correct, I will be able to create a shadow construct with a basic set of orders, a simple purpose, much like one would create a golem. It would be able to think on its own, fight on its own, problem solve to accomplish set goals without further instruction! Imagine the uses something like that could have! They could perform menial tasks, power unmanned suits of armor, it would be a true boon for society!" Andras dropped into a cross-legged position, holding his spear before him at the point of balance before him. "Now to see if my experiment is a success!"

"Wait a minut--"

The soldier was cut off by the beginnings of a Shadowborne chant. Andras' words came as a strange, reverberating whisper as the chant went on, a clearly ancient dialect filling the room. As he spoke the words of power, the candles in the room flickered and waned, a clear sense of powerful magic flared through the room. All of a sudden, the shadows in the room began to convulse and contract, retreating from the corners of the room, being concentrated into the center of the circle, the airless lack of light beginning to bunch into something of mass, the powder sprinkled on the floor rising into the coming darkness, seeming to fill the empty spaces. The soldier moved back to the door with hand dropping to the sword on his hip, wary of what was transpiring before him. As soon as the shadows were concentrated, Andras laid a hand on the circle, and at his touch, the circle burst with a bright, vibrant flash of light, but only for a moment. The shut windows sprang open, and the room was enveloped in a momentary fog.

The soldier lowered his hand, and what he saw was nothing more than Andras and a single, solitary shadow staring back at one another.

"Hah! It worked! It worked!" Andras screamed enthusiastically. "I've done it! I've created the sentient--"

The poor man did not even get to finish his sentence before the entity melted into the floor and dispersed back into darkness, filling the room once more with shadows.

"O...oh." His momentary shriek of glee followed up with a series of scrunched features, he stumbled back over to his notes to look them over. "The invocation circle was perfect, the candles were all aligned, the shadows were concentrated...did I do the chant wrong?" His finger ran down a bunch of words, his hand scratching his chin as he did so. "Perhaps it was...no that couldn't be...but what did..."

"Enough, Andras." The soldier, now fed up with the Shadowborne's antics, marched over and grabbed him by the back of his tunic. "If you signed up with the Silver Leaves, you did not to it to stay locked up in some shack and ignore it. You're going to the mess hall, and then you are going to perform your duties as a mercenary here!"

"Ack! Wait, hold on!" Andras began, though his protests fell on deaf ears at this point. Before he could even come up with another argument, he was being dragged back to the castle and off to the Mess Hall.

"Go on, get in there!" The soldier ordered, pushing him through the doorway. "Then you should actually look for some work, Shadowborne!"

"Now wait just a--" Again, his words had fallen on deaf ears, and the soldier had hurried off to complete whatever other task he was assigned, leaving Andras stranded on the edge of the large Mess Hall. He sighed, momentarily dejected at being dragged away from his failed experiment, but the feeling did not last once Andras realized he was standing in a room filled with races he had never seen up in the mountains. His scrunched features suddenly beamed with excitement as his eyes scanned the room, he could see Dwarves, Humans, Tindra, Wild-elves, and was there even a few Luni-Hari here? He had never even seen Luni before! With renewed vigor, he darted over to the nearest table to him, grabbing a plate of food somewhere along the way, he found himself sitting among a small group. There was a human woman with a rather hardened visage, two stout, able-bodied dwarves, an exotic and wiry Tindra with a Wild-elf, a human rogue seemingly boasting about his current achievements, and sitting right next to him was a rather stern-looking Luni-Har, and judging by her posture and features was a very refined Luni-Har at that.

Wasting no time, the Shadowborne quickly attempted to join the conversation as well, offering a. "You don't mind if I join you folks to eat, do you?"