The eyes of the three snapped to Jack at the same time, the smallest of the three hiding further behind the other's robes as the largest stepped forward, walking through the smoking crater towards him, her sword arm extended to her side at the ready.

Jack kept waving and calling out for several more seconds until the largest woman got close enough for Jack to get a better look at her. Her skin was definitely as red up close as it was at a distance. Her face was turned up into a bit of a snarl, but was still very feminine and well-proportioned, with large yellow eyes, a slight nose, and high cheekbones. In spite of her grim appear and strange skin tone, he immediately found her insanely attractive. And even in spite of her armor, it wasn't hard for him to spot the presence of a very shapely body. Once she got close enough he felt he could bother trying to talk to her, he smiled and waved up.

"Hi! Hello! I'm glad you're here! I was sure they were going to carry me off and eat me!", he said.

"Shut up", the woman said bluntly as she drew up in front of him and looked down at him. Compared to his tiny miniaturized form, she was absolutely massive. She pointed the blade of her sword down at him. "Who are you?"

"I'm, uhh, I'm Jack. Nice to meet you...?" He said, smiling awkwardly up at her as he found his will to keep talking vanish.

"You're human. Why are you so tiny?" She asked.

"Bit of an accident, really... I tried to make myself larger, and apparently said the wrong spell word or something", Jack said, sheepishly. "I'm still trying to figure out this whole magic thing. Frumpkin didn't really explain how it works."

Before he could say any more, the red skinned woman turned and whistled in the direction of the other two, and called out to them as she waved them over. "Eleanor, Madeleine, I found him. He's just managed to shrink himself. Come on over and give me a hand."

She turned towards him and sheathed her sword, and extended her hand out to him palm up, as if signalling for him to climb up into it.

"Sorry about that. We were told a great human warrior was coming and that we were supposed to meet him on the path. I just didn't expect that warrior to be a tiny goblin hostage."

"Wait, Frumpkin told you I was coming...?" Jack said, looking up at her with confusion.

She looked back at him, equally confused, and pulled her hand back slightly.

"Of course he did. He's God. That's what he does."

Jack was about to reply with even more confusion when the other two walked up, still in the same configuration they had been standing in earlier.

The blue skinned girl, who appeared to him to be in her late teens or early twenties had a rounder, heart-shaped face that seemed to sit in some sort of soft, natural smile. He could see now that she had small nub like horns protruding outwards from the sides of her forehead, and apparently also a thin tail, which he could see flicking gently back and forth behind her robes. She was a little thicker than the red-skinned woman, but in the best possible way. Jack tried not to stare at her blatantly visible, and definitely not minimal, cleavage.

"Oooh, he's so tiny! How cute!" She said, giggling a little behind her hand.

"He used a Minimize spell by accident, and doesn't know how to undo it," The red-skinned woman said.

"Oh, I'll fix that!" The blue skinned one beamed. She traced a few shapes in the air with her left hand, leaving faint sparkling trails that remained suspended in the air. She then reached into a pouch on her side, pulled out a couple buttons and a feather, and tossed them into the floating symbol with a flourish and more words in the hair-raising language.

Without a moment's delay, and a popping sound that reminded him of a champagne cork, Jack was back to his normal size.

"Hey! Thanks!", he said.

"Don't mention it," the red-skinned one said, reaching out her hand to help him up. "Now, let's get you on your feet."

Jack extended his hand, and grabbed on to the red woman's hand.

He immediately jerked his hand back with a yelp, and waved it around as he sucked air through his teeth. He looked down at his palm to see it was bright red, and could already identify the presence of several small white blisters forming on the pad of his palm. The red skinned woman looked at him with confusion for a split second, before a look of realization crossed her face.

"Oh, did you get burned? I figured you'd be immune to heat, considering." She said, withdrawing her hand and looking at him with a mixture of concern and masked amusement.

Jack looked at her, still nursing his scorched hand.

"Considering what?"

"Well, Frumpkin told us you specifically requested a quote...'harem of really hot women'. It's considered a great honor to be selected as a romantic companion of a hero by God, but no one ever requests Ifrits, Fire Tieflings, or Ember Sprites because of our intense body heat. So we were overjoyed when he came to us and told us you were coming and that we were to be your companions. But, I didn't expect to be requested by someone who is so sensitive to temperature", The red woman explained.

"Wait, you're my 'harem of super hot women'?", Jack asked, feeling a sinking sensation in his gut.

The blue skinned girl spoke up with a warm smile.

"Yup, that's us! I'm Eleanor the Fire Tiefling, the small one behind me is Madeleine the Ember Sprite, and the one you've been talking to is Rose the Ifrit. It's a pleasure to meet you, mister hero!"

"Are you kidding me?", Jack asked. "Is this some kind of joke? Am I being pranked?"

"Pranked?", Rose asked, tilting her head in confusion.

Jack hung his head, and buried his face in his hands. It would be just his luck that Frumpkin would take his description of "hot women" literally. Here he was, face to face with beautiful women whose sole purpose for existence now was meeting his every desire, and he couldn't so much as give them a pat on the back without needing skin grafts. Perfect. Just perfect.

["So, what do you think, kid? Are they hot enough for ya?"] Frumpkin's voice popped in his head, along with another sound that sounded very similar to a hair dryer. ["Do I know how to nail a wish or what?"]

"You made them literally hot! That's not what I meant at all!" Jack yelled in his head. He mentally visualized strangling Frumpkin with his own beard as he did so.

["Whoa, hey! I did exactly what you asked for. I did tell you the wishes would be open to my interpretation. Not my fault you used language that apparently has mutiple meanings."] Frumpkin said, after a clicking sound shut off the hair dryer sound. Maybe it actually was a hair dryer.

"Can't you fix it?" Jack thought.

["Sorry kid. No refunds. You get what you wish for. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a perm to finish blow-drying."] Frumpkin said, and with a click the blowdryer sound resumed, much louder than before.

"Hey! I'm not done talking to you!" Jack called in his head after him.

["WHAT? I CAN'T HEAR YOU!"] Frumpkin yelled back. Somehow, the hair dryer sound got even louder.

"...So, are you okay...?"

Jack snapped back to reality to see Rose looking intensely at him with a look that not so subtly implied he was acting crazy.

"Huh? Oh, yeah. I'm fine. Why?" He said.

"You've just been standing there staring off into space for the past three minutes." Rose said, raising an eyebrow.

"Sorry about that." Jack said sheepishly.

"Oookay...." Rose said, casting a sideways glance towards Eleanor, who shrugged. "So, are you ready to go, Jack?"

Jack nodded, finding a small bit of excitement return after his immense disappointment. He was, after all, still the hero of this new world. Maybe he'd figure out a way to keep himself from getting burned along the way.

"Sure thing! Lead the way!" He said, gesturing with his hand down the direction he had been heading.

Before departing down the path, Rose and Eleanor searched the goblins for anything of value that wasn't destroyed by the fire, and stuffed it into a small bag that Madeleine had on her back. There seemed to be no possible way that all of the things they gathered could possibly fit in a bag so small, but everything fit without the slightest bit of resistance, which told him that the bag was probably magically larger on the inside. They also located his magic axe amidst the goblins' items, laying unblemished amidst the charred bodies of several of the small humanoids. Jack hadn't even at first realized it was missing, but felt a profound sense of relief upon seeing it again. He didn't need to have two of his three wishes ruined in a single hour.

It took the better part of an hour to make it out of the woods after they set off, with the trailing up and down several more sets of hills and ravines, and across a pair of small streams. By the time they reached the forest's edge, it was nearly sundown, and the trees were teeming with life as the day creatures began to wind down, and the creatures of the night began to awaken and begin their evening of living.

The trio led him to a small farm adjacent to another stream, this one a bit larger than the others, with a wooden clapboard farmhouse, a small barn, and a mill with a water wheel lazily dipping and spinning in the stream's flow. Rose led the group up to the door of the farmhouse, and gently rapped her knuckles against a small metal plate nailed to the door's face. It took a second for Jack to realize this was probably to keep the girls from burning a hole into the door's surface.

"Awright, awright, 'old on jest a mowment..." An older man's voice called out from inside the house.

Several heavy thudding footsteps approached the door, and with the sliding sound of a wooden bar being removed, and the clack of a metal doorlatch, the heavy wooden house door creaked open to reveal a very large, hunched old man with ruddy brown skin and wild white hair matched in wildness by equally wild eyebrows and an equally wild white beard. He beamed when he saw the four of them standing on his doorstep.

"Oh good, garls! You found 'em! Well dun!" He said, stepping out of the doorway to allow the four of them in.

The four of them entered a house that Jack immediately saw was covered on nearly every surface by non-flammable or otherwise heat resistant materials. The floor was made of smooth river stones held together by some form of cement, and the walls, while wooden on the outside were lined on the inside by a combination of metal plates, stone, plaster, and mud all mixed haphazardly together in no real semblance of order. The table appeared to be carved out of a solid piece of rock, and the chairs were all either stone or metal.

As soon as he stepped inside, Jack gasped for air. The heat inside was absolutely unbearable. It was easily well over a hundred degrees inside, and he could feel his shirt and boxers immediately stick to his skin and begin to soak through with sweat.

The large man shut the heavy door behind them, and extended his hand out to Jack with a broad, toothy grin.

"Welcome t'our 'umble abode! I'm Simon!"

"I'm Jack. Nice to meet you, Simon!" He said, taking the man's hand.

When the searing heat reached his brain, he howled and jerked his hand away, hopping around and hurling obscenities.

Twice in one day. He really honestly should have known better.

He couldn't help but get the creeping sensation Frumpkin was laughing his ass off at him.

As if on cue to his thoughts, a deafening fanfare of trumpets exploded in his head, causing him to scream and jump flailing several feet into the air and causing Rose, Eleanor, and Madeleine to look at him with befuddled, weirded out looks.

["Congratulations kid! You completed your first heroic task!"] Frumpkin's voice said with what sounded like a mouthful of food. There was the crunch of what sounded suspiciously like someone taking a bite out of an apple, and Frumpkin's voice continued, loudly chewing between words.

["So, you feeling more heroic now, mister hero man? You finally feel like you've earned that reward I tried to give you earlier now?"]

"Dude, I almost got gang-murdered by a bunch of log-chucking goblins!" Jack thought.

["Well, you were the one who was all 'unnnh, it's not cool to get free stuff unless I'm being all powerful and really earning it' or whatever."] Frumpkin took another chomp out of whatever he was eating, and continued, the sound of his food smacking in Jack's ear loud enough make him want to punch a kitten.

["So, do you feel like you earned it enough now, or do I need to throw you a dragon covered in flaming chainsaws first?"]

The mental image of such a thing flickered into his mind, but he immediately squashed it. No matter how cool he thought it would be to face down something like that, his recent experiences told him he'd last about .8 seconds before being completely annihilated out of existence. And for the love of god he did not want to give Frumpkin any ideas.

"...yes. Thank you, Frumpkin." Jack thought with a mental sigh.

["Excellent! Now, let's see... for a prize, would you like a companion, a skill, or an item?"]

Jack thought about it for a moment, and asked, "Can you make me immune to heat and fire?"

["What, and ruin your ability to enjoy your harem of 'super hot' women? Why would I go and do something like that?"]

Before Jack could get a single word out in protest, Frumpkin's voice continued. ["You don't get to pick what specific thing I give you. You just get to pick the category. Helps keep things interesting!"]

"But, you offered me specifics the first ti-"

["No, no I did not. You're imagining things. I would never do something like that. Now, moving on... what's it going to be, kid?"]

Jack thought about things for a moment. He now had several companions, so that was pretty much out of the running. And unless Frumpkin gave him a set of magical armor, he didn't really need any new items at the moment. So, a new skill seemed the best way to go.

["Alright, new skill it is. I'll go ahead and put in the order. Just give it a moment or two to kick in. You'll know when it does. Now, go enjoy some romantic time with your gorgeous new hot women! I promise not to watch. Ta ta!"]

And with that, Frumpkin's voice disappeared again, leaving behind a phone dial tone that droned in Jack's head just long enough to tell him Frumpkin was definitely doing it intentionally. He returned focus to see the four others staring at him with wide eyed baffled looks and furrowed brows.

"...what?", he asked.

"See what I mean, dad? He just blanks out for minutes at a time out of nowhere." Rose said, pointing in Jack's direction without looking at him. "It's so weird!"

"Um hello? I'm right here!" Jack said, waving his arms at the two of them.

"Per'aps 'e is touched in th' head or sumthin'." The man responded to her, completely ignoring Jack.

Then suddenly, out of nowhere, Jack heard the blast of a paper party favor horn, and a popping sound, and saw and felt brightly colored paper confetti falling down on his head. He looked up above his head, and saw a flashing marquee sign floating above his head.

Rose and the man immediately stopped talking, and looked up at the sign. The man squinted at the sign, seeming to follow each word with his eyes as he read it.

And then, out of nowhere, he started laughing uncontrollably.