“Ah, well, in that case,” he said. “Come right this way. I have just the thing, you know, just the thing.”

I had already been looking around the room, trying to decide which pile of junk held the most appropriate weapon. Dimitri beckoned us over.

“What about that?” I asked, pointing at a large halberd displayed on the wall. It was taller than I was, and looked tremendously intimidating. It also seemed to glow with a faint orange light, so I assumed it was enchanted in some way. I was once again extremely grateful to have played a couple of RPGs in my time, though I wished I had played more. I never thought I would ever think back and wish I had spent more time playing video games, but there I was.

Nothing in this world made any sense, basically, but I shuddered to think of how much less sense things could make if I hadn’t been exposed to some basic fantasy ideas.

Actually, since this dimension exists, and travel between dimensions is possible - but just wasn’t invented until now - have all fantasy writers been writing sci-fi this whole time? Or historical fiction, maybe? Maybe even nonfiction. Is it possible that someone has come into this dimension before, and written about it, and we just thought it was fiction? The technology is new, but the Romans had a steam engine, so I suppose it’s not impossible. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if the government had invented something like this years ago, and kept it under wraps.

No, that can’t be right. If the government knew about this, they’d have stripped this world for resources by now. Isn’t that kind of what Dimen-X sent me here to do?

Anyway, if I understood what Cadoc had told me, the enchantment should make it harder for a guard - or other enemy - to simply crush the weapon and disarm me from a distance. Cadoc had also warned me about the cost of enchanted items, but I could always make more money. If you’re going to buy self-defense, why not make it count? It was worth asking about the cost, at the very least.

Dimitri shook his head. “That, kind sir? You are interested in that? You should never argue with a paying customer, that’s what I say, and yet, you are a friend of Cadoc’s, and, therefore, a friend of mine, and so I must reveal some small secrets. Susanna? Would you please demonstrate to our young sir why he ought to reconsider?”

The woman rolled her eyes, and, with no haste, meandered over to the spot on the wall where the weapon hung. She had to do a little jump to reach it, and did so easily enough that it almost looked graceful, rather than goofy. Almost.

Halberd held in both hands, she vaulted over the counter and walked towards us. We had to back up, ceding to her the pocket of empty floor space in the middle of the room. We stood watching, with our backs against the wall.

She widened her stance, the tip of the weapon at a slight upward angle, pointed out at us. Then she raised it above her head, whipping it around in a motion that caught my attention immediately. It was just like the motion you make swinging a steel mace around.

I don’t know what they are trying to prove, I thought in that moment. But this is perfect.

She continued the swing, and when she brought the head down again, she made a chopping motion that looked like it would hew a rift in a man’s skull. At the end of the movement, however, the head of the polearm detached from the shaft, and flew across the room. It soared inches from Cadoc’s face, before implanting itself into the wooden wall behind him, splintering the wood.

“Watch what you are doing, Susanna! I am so sorry, you are not injured, yes? Susanna, apologize!”

She did not.

“Well, *ahem*, anyway, you can see why I cannot allow you to purchase such a weapon.”

I looked around again. “Are all the weapons here junk?”

Susanna laughed at that.

“Junk?” Dimitri repeated. “No sir, not junk at all, I would never sell junk to a customer. They are only… budget options, you see. For a man with greater need for show of force than force itself, you understand. I keep the real stuff in the back. Come, come.”

Susanna tossed the disarmed shaft to one side, and hopped back over the counter. She quickly took up her post again, polishing another bladed weapon and stealing occasional glances at Cadoc.

Cadoc, who had been quieter than I had ever seen him before. The two had some sort of history, clearly.

“He always does this,” Cadoc whispered to me as we approached. “To every customer he thinks may have some real money on them. It’s a show, it makes you seem special. Alas, it would have been pointless for me to try to stop him. Bear with his dramatics, friend. His weapons are the best we’ll likely find, else I would not have come.”

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“Susanna!” Dimitri called again, yelling despite standing just beside her. “Bring me our newest additions.”

Susanna disappeared into a room behind the counter.

“Why do the guards allow you to keep weapons?” I asked. “Isn’t the town supposed to be disarmed?”

“Ah, your friend is a foreigner, Cadoc. I knew it. And yet, he is quick to see, isn’t that so? Miles, my young sir, the guards allow me to do business because they see the benefit that a touch of merchantry has on a locale.”

“He bribes them,” Cadoc said. “They take a cut of every sale.”

“Oh you wound me, Cadoc, you wound me! I would not call it a bribe. It is only, say, an unofficial tax.”

“But does that mean there are a bunch of weapons floating around the town?” I asked.

“Almost certainly,” Dimitri replied. “But not my weapons. I sell only to outsiders, who will be leaving Dross. Travelers on the road to Eraztun, you see. Or on the road from Eraztun to wherever they may be going. Besides, no one in this town could afford my weapons, not if they saved for a lifetime.”

“Business is not exactly booming for him,” Cadoc cut in again.

“I wish it were otherwise, but yes, Cadoc speaks the truth. I am surrounded by poverty, which sometimes even scares off the paying customers. If they can find me at all, that is. I do most business from word of mouth, you see. Like young Cadoc here, bringing you to me.”

“You ever going to get out of this rat’s nest?” Cadoc asked.

“If you bring me more business, Cadoc, then perhaps I can dare to hope. But we have been stuck here for so long, I fear I have gotten used to it all. Even the smell, if you can believe it.”

“You ought to let your daughter leave,” Cadoc said. “She could enter Eraztun, live a better life than you had.”

“I am not dead yet, Cadoc, and I do not wish to hear you talk about me as if I were. I need Susanna, and do not wish to have this conversation with you again.”

Susanna returned then, carrying a cloth-wrapped bundle. She tossed it onto the counter with a clang, and walked away.

A thought hit me then, one that had been growing unnoticed in a back corner of my brain. A distant shout. These people aren’t real. They can’t be.

They were, of course. But it was difficult to keep that fact in clear view. Even Cadoc still seemed like a character in a game. Or a LARPer, which was another category of people I could not take seriously.

It was probably because of the difficulty in deciding who had a spark or not, in a completely new environment. My brain tended to assume they were all NPCs, when it was lacking information. And where else do you find nothing but NPCs, but in a video game? I’d probably have the same problems if I had moved to a particularly foreign country on Earth.

Also, the fantasy stuff didn’t help. I had to keep reminding myself that this was all real, that magic was real, monsters were real, and that these weapons would be useful, not just toys. I was going to be choosing a weapon, and I needed to take that seriously.

“Now then,” Dimitri said, opening up the cloth. “Let me show you what we have to offer. You will like these, young sirs, you will. You have discerning eyes.”

Dimitri proceeded to lay out four different weapons. I eyed them all, set on weighing the pros and cons of each. A couple caught my eye immediately. Dimitri began to explain what we were looking at.

“This,” he said, pointing to the first, “Is another halberd. Much better produced than the other, won’t have the head falling off, no sir. It doesn’t glow, but I can assure you it has a minor strengthening enchantment all the same. All four of these weapons do. It won’t help against the highest level of opponents, but it will keep you from being disarmed by children, hmm? And the halberd keeps your enemies at a distance, where they belong.”

I examined the weapon. It looked almost identical to the junk halberd I had just seen, which made me wary to buy it, even if Dimitri was telling me it was a higher quality. I’d just met Dimitri, so I wasn’t keen on taking his word for it. I’d want to test it before buying, if that’’s what I decided.

But it was still a perfect-looking weapon. It was taller than I was, but the weight distribution would be similar to my steel mace back on Earth. A little more top heavy - probably a little heavier in general, honestly - but Dimitri made a good point about keeping enemies at a distance.

“Too big,” Cadoc said, and I turned to see him shaking his head. “You think we’re only going to find enemies in open fields, Dimitri? Try swinging that thing around indoors.”

“I believe you’ll find, dear Cadoc, that my daughter just did that.”

“By some miracle, she did. But if I was fighting beside her…” he trailed off.

After a moment, Susanna piped in from across the room. “I’d have chopped your head off,” she said. “By accident,” she added.

That was a fair point.

“Well,” Dimitri said, “Be that as it may, it is a versatile weapon all the same. Stab, slash, chop, block, it can do it all. Consider it.

“But if you really aren’t interested, we’ll move on. I can’t imagine you finding a problem with this one.”

Now Dimitri motioned towards the first sword.

“Yoskonian steel,” he said. “You won’t find many blades like this, in towns like these, that I can say with certainty. Sturdy, dependable, straight and true. The sword is the symbol of violence, and this sword is the symbol of the sword. Hey, that sounded pretty good, huh?”

Cadoc picked it up, turning it over in his hand.

It was a straight sword, about the length of his arm. The hilt was capped with what looked like a miniature helmet, and the cross-guard was a lighter color than the blade itself. The blade was four fingers thick at its base, and two fingers thick near the tip. The metal had swirls in it that looked, at first, like engravings.

Cadoc pointed at the blade. “This is only half steel, Yoskonian or not. You don’t need to be a smith to see that.”

“Half steel, half iron,” Dimitri said. “I am not trying to fool you. The technique is cheaper, I will admit this readily, but it is still a resilient blade. Besides, it creates a very distinctive style, wouldn’t you say?”

Cadoc held on to the blade for awhile, slashing it around, testing its weight. Meanwhile, Dimitri showed me the other two weapons.

Next was another sword, it seemed. I almost had Dimitri skip over it, to see the last, very interesting looking weapon. But he began to talk before I could.

“This one is special, my dear Miles, very special. You are eyeing it already, I see, because you have good taste. I could tell that the moment you walked in. This looks like a sword, yes? But look closely.”

It did, indeed, look like a sword. A narrow sword, with a narrow, circular handle, capped on either sided by what could have been lugnuts. The grip was lined with thread, and a couple of strands hung from the base, which I assumed was a little bit of decoration.

But looking closely at the blade - well, it wasn’t a blade at all.

“A fake sword?” I asked. “I thought you were done showing us the junk.”

“Junk! This? This is no fake sword. This is a - well, the word they use in Oswar is “antisword.” Or sometimes, if they are feeling particularly clever, they call it a Drows. Backwards, you see? Not the most literary people in Oswar, but they make the most interesting weapons, I find. I call it a sword-mace, myself.”

I looked at it again, picking it up. Instead of a blade, there was a rod, with four flat sides. It tapered at the very end like a pyramid, to a point that had been sharpened, as I could feel, running my finger along it.

It was surprisingly heavy - even though it wasn’t quite as long as the sword, and a little less than two fingers thick.

“You use it like a mace, or like a sword, you see,” Dimitri hadn’t stopped talking. “No slashing, of course, but it’ll cave a skull in if you use it right. You can pierce with the end, as well, but the real utility is defensive. That weapon is designed to break swords. Hit one just right - or defend just right - and it will shatter.”

It was a tougher choice than I thought it would be. It would be much easier to use in closer quarters, was still fairly versatile, and the idea of breaking someone’s sword was obviously appealing. It had a very different feel from my steel mace at home, but was very similar in weight and feel to an Indian Club - which I often used instead of the mace in my workouts, and is actually what I started with first. It felt nearly as comfortable in my hands as a mace did, and I could even use it one-handed. But…

I looked back to the counter.

“The last weapon,” Dimitri said. “Is a mace.”