The walk home provided Cal the opportunity to mull over what he’d learnt from the villagers. For one, it was clear that they were not short on material about his dad whatsoever; although Cal wished these had been tall tales, the consistency between them made this little more than a hopeless sentiment.

Indeed, the same argument could be laid against Cal’s initial fancy that his dad, like him, had been possessed by a ghost; on review, it was plain to see that his dad’s behaviour was a stable, if eccentric, quality throughout the visions.

To boot, Cal had yet to have a single Aha! moment where he could point out a ghost taking over his dad, making it seem more a case of character flaws than possession problems.

But what if this was only because a ghost had been in control the whole time? While Penbrooke had left Cal’s body after a few hours, perhaps this was solely because his proficiency over Cal’s body was low – in the same way your skill with a tool increased with repeated use, perhaps these ghosts were able to control their victims for longer periods through repeated possession.

If a ghost had been controlling his dad the entire duration, that would also go to explaining why his dad was mute throughout, for how was a spectre of centuries bygone or lands afar supposed to know how to speak Felsian? Though for that matter, how was Penbrooke able to speak Felsian? The modern version, too, instead of an archaic form…

Cal sighed; as anticipated, attempting his hand at any questions to do with Penbrooke only unleashed further questions into the fold.

On arriving home, Cal forcibly shook his head to clear his mind of these matters and went about returning the items in his hands to their rightful locations, figuring there was little point in losing himself in a labyrinth of speculation when the answers to many of his questions lay directly ahead.

Shaking the mud from his boots and taking them off, he entered the house. “Mum, I’m home.”

There was no response.

He lumbered up the stairs towards her room and slid open the door to reveal her lying on her bed in her pyjamas, looking slovenly and snoring.

One leg hung off the bed while the other stood on the footboard, one arm akimbo against her cotton nightdress while the other angled in reverse and hid underneath the pillow. She had a broad face with a strong jaw and striking eyebrows, topped off by an unruly tangle of blonde curls in every which way; better described as husky and handsome than as a femme fatale.

Approaching her, he tapped her shoulder, “Mum.”

At his touch her eyes snapped open and bore into him, before closing again.

“Mum!” he screamed into her ear, shaking her shoulder. “Wake up!”

She gave an emphatic ugh and rolled away from him onto her side. “Can’t you see your fairy mother is getting her beauty sleep. Go bother someone else, Pennybrooke.”

Ignoring the rush of heat to his face, Cal continued. “No, listen. I got your fishing rod—”

“Ah, so you’re here for your reward.” She rolled back to face him and extended her arms to pull him in close, her lips jutting out. “One smoochy smooch for my big brave knight coming right up.”

“Ew, gross!” He dodged her vicious attack, and maintained his distance to discourage any further dastardly attempts on his sanctity; in fact, only with great difficulty did he manage to swallow down his desire to scream hag kiss, retch profusely, and flee.

“For fuck’s sake, listen, Mum. When I went through the village, people kept saying I was acting like dad. And so I asked about him.”

At this she finally paid attention to him, though her expression was inscrutable. “What did they say?”

“I went to Susie first, and she said he used to launch her into the air like a child, all the while ignoring her complaints to put her down.”

His mum chortled. “Right, I remember him telling me how she reminded him of his little sister.”

“Huh,” Cal said, caught off-guard by the surprisingly reasonable – wholesome, even – answer. “Alright. Well, I then spoke to Dave who told me how they used to exercise together.” Cal paused and widened his eyes for emphasis, “Exercise.”

She dismissed his concerns with a wave of her hand. “Yeah, yeah, he told me how Dave reminded him of the boulder he used to train with.”

“What, no! You can’t do that…” Cal closed his eyes and pressed thumb and finger against them. “You’re telling me he was treating Dave like a rock?! Did Dave know this?”

She rolled her eyes. “You’d think he’d realise after being rolled down a hill for the umpteenth time, wouldn’t you? Besides, what does it matter when both of them were happy to train like that?”

“I don’t know, maybe something about human dignity?!” he fired back, though to no effect as she merely scoffed. “Alright, well what about the Milliman and Millie? Did you know about what he did there?”

Her cast of indifference cracked as a faint frown lined her face. “Mm, if I didn’t have a better eye on him, he would have eaten up that temptress too.”

“Aha! So he was a hound.”

She nodded. “Oh, absolutely. He was a right old dog when it came to the ladies.”

“Then why did you—”

Interrupting him, his mum sat up and patted the space on the bed beside her for him to come take a seat; sensing the change in mood, he heeded her call warily. “I never did tell you how I met him, did I?”

Her eyes glazed over for a second as a smile bloomed on her face. “You see, it was love at first sight. I was passing through the Erudian Jungle, where his mercenary group also happened to be having taken on a mission to kill the daughter of the Gnoll Grand-Chieftain situated there.”

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Seeing the look of confusion on Cal’s face, his mum explained: “The kid was guiltless, really, but she was also said to be bestowed with mythical powers that’d make the gnolls a real pain in the arse to deal with once she matured in a few years. Since there were concerns that the gnolls were going to join the demons, it wasn’t a situation our Alliance could chance on. Anyway, what matters is that your dad’s mercenary group succeeded in taking out the brat, and as a result the rainforest became infested with the little buggers as they hunted down the assassins. To make it worse, gnoll sorcerers were aiding those search parties.”

Enraptured by the story, Cal stared at her wide-eyed and open-jawed. Of course, he’d already known of how she, bored of the quiet village life, had gone out into the world to adventure after she’d come of age – this was back when most of Teral was in turmoil due to the newly crowned Demon King’s ambitions of world conquest – but while he’d heard bits and pieces of her adventures, she tended not to talk about them on the whole.

This tale, in particular, was one he hadn’t heard of before.

“Your dad’s group had naturally anticipated this reaction from the gnolls, so they’d brought along a mage specialising in dark magic to mask their tracks and keep them cloaked. What they hadn’t anticipated, however, was for the mage to vanish overnight – which in itself was a rookie mistake from them given honestly what were they expecting to happen to her after she took heat from a cabal of sorcerers all night long – and this left them as bare as a newborn babe. Their only luck was that I was in the area and happened to hear their cries when they came under attack.”

She rubbed under her nose with a smug expression. “So naturally I swooped in to rescue them, and that was the moment your dad fell for me.”

“Really?” Cal asked.

His mum clicked her tongue and scowled at him. “What do you mean, really? Why can’t you just accept your mum being cool for once?” Her hand moved straight for his ear.

Thankfully, he’d been on the watch for it and was able to pull away before those dastardly digits could pinch his ear raw, convinced by her response that she’d embellished the story. I don’t buy the whole idea of her swooping in to rescue them.

To begin with, my dad seemed pretty damn powerful in those visions, and his group must have had serious skill to carry out a mission like that in the first place. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d already beaten most of the gnolls by the time Mum came into the picture; she’s definitely stealing credit from them to make herself look good.

Standing up to escape the handsy Ogress, Cal was about to flee when suddenly his footing slipped on spongy ground and he fell flat onto his face – though with no consequent pain or mud spatter.

Picking himself up in confusion, he only became more disorientated then when he was hit by a bouquet of wet scents from the surrounding plants and spoors of odorous animals; glancing about, he shockingly found himself to be in a canopied rainforest. Comprehension was slow to seep into his head that this was another vision.

Where on teral am I?

The scene around was coloured with various tones of shade and littered with thin, irregular waterfalls from the rainstorm marching on and trickling through the thick canopy above. In these dark, damp conditions, Cal almost failed to notice the figure crouched by foliage a few feet away, hooded and clad in impressive metallic armour that he struggled to even describe.

Whoever that is, they look menacing, and then some.

The person’s knife-like figure emanated an oppressive aura of danger he’d never experienced before, and he only summoned the courage to approach them out of knowledge he couldn’t be hurt within the vision.

It was on moving closer he noticed they were positioned at the edge of a cliff outcropping and were observing something far below them that had to be near a river given the roar of rapids coming from beneath.

Peering under their hood, Cal saw a face that was lean and fierce; several beats of squinting and wondering where he’d seen them before passed, before recognition arrived: oh, fuck, it’s Mum…

He followed her gaze to the side of the riverside path below, roughly two dozen strides away from the seething rapids, where there was a shaded recess naturally carved into a mass of stone. But that’s all it was: a patch of dry-ish land that was otherwise empty, with nothing there to stare intently at.

Does she want to get out of the rain’s way, is that it? Why doesn’t she just move, then?

Cal’s confusion was cleared moments later when the illusion broke and a band of mercenaries appeared out of nowhere in the empty recess: there were six of them seated around a bright campfire, drying the damp from their bones and engaged in casual conversation.

Seeing as they didn’t stand up in alarm, Cal surmised their illusion was still unbroken, and that he was only able to see in for some mysterious reason beyond his comprehension.

Impossible to miss amidst those mercenaries was a familiar redhead hunk he’d seen multiple times today. Dressed for combat, his dad looked fiercer than ever before, but what caught Cal’s eye was the raven-haired woman he shared a log-bench with.

His gestures were smooth and confident, his appearance catching, and the arm draped around her waist natural: this was a womaniser in his element. The lady’s susceptibility to his dad’s charms gave Cal the impression she hadn’t known him long, perhaps meeting him for the first time when they’d started this mission.

With all these novel sights playing for Cal’s attention – particularly those of familiar people in outlandish roles – he didn’t immediately register what was going on, but when finally he did clock on, he felt a ravenous pit open up in his stomach: there was Cal’s dad with some random lady in his arms, meanwhile here was Cal’s mum eyeing them up like some sort of predator.

Oh, Saviour, what’s—

His thought was left unfinished, however, as the vision changed scenes and now pulled him into proximity of the hidden mercenary camp. A few hours must have passed following the last scene as it was night now, the air alive with the sounds of the jungle since the rainfall was no more and the river no longer raging.

The campfire, reduced to a low flame, dimly illuminated the sleeping mercenaries nearby, as well as the single mercenary on watchduty whittling by the light.

A certain tall, knife-like figure entered the periphery of Cal’s vision and crossed into centre-view as his mum strode out from beside him towards the campfire.

She was unseen by the guard for she came from the mercenary’s flank, but it would only be a matter of time given her brazen approach; hearing the footfall, the guard snapped his head around and revealed a man’s face heavily scarred from combat.

Cal’s heart thundered in anticipation of the guard hollering the others awake, or otherwise drawing his weapon and charging down this insolent woman, but the man did neither; instead, the whittling knife and wooden gnoll statue fell out from his grip, and his mouth stretched more and more until he was left gaping like a fish, pale and stupefied.

Cal’s mum brought a finger to her lips and signalled him to hush.

Rattled, the mercenary whispered desperate questions her way which she calmly answered, speaking in tongues that to Cal’s ears sounded eerily similar to the nonsensical murmurings his dad had made in the earlier visions; this confirmed what Cal had suspected since first laying his eyes on the band of mercenaries.

So my dad hadn’t been controlled by a ghost after all – he was just a foreigner…

Although Cal couldn’t tell what his mum and the mercenary were saying, he used their tone and body language to figure out that his mum was first allaying the man’s fears, and then making commands of him. In response, the guard nodded helplessly.

Now that they were done talking, Cal expected the vision to whisk him off to the following scene or, if not, back home. What he explicitly didn’t expect was for his mum to go over to the raven-haired lady – who his dad was near but not sleeping with yet (at least not in an open campfire setting) – and deliver a savage hand-chop to her neck without a moment’s hesitation. His mum followed this up by hauling away her unconscious victim as naturally as one ties their shoes or buttons a shirt.

What do you mean the mage mysteriously disappeared?! Where did your conscience disappear off to, woman?

The only stop his mum made was when she paused amidst her abduction to glance back at the guard on watch, once more bringing a finger to her lips: the man zipped over his lips in response, a tremor in his hands.