Its contents were clear.

[[ Name: Wade Calhoun

Age: 14 Years (14)

Class: Non-Applicable (Unassigned) ]]

As soon as I focused on it and felt I might have a blood vessel pop from frustration, it disappeared.

That was my name, but I was a full-grown adult- a parent in my world. Even if this was real and not a hallucination, this was unacceptable. I was not a child.

The old woman smirked after clearly reading his expression. "Did you think I was simply pulling a prank on you, my boy? I will begin one more time."

She slammed her staff on the polished stone slabs that made up the flooring of the chapel we seemed to be in.

"Hello, I am Archpriestess Marlie Lowbridge of the Church of the Octahedron. Welcome to our world, Hekatondrona. It is a world of magic, adventure, and monster partners that facilitate it."

It was upon my noticing the movement of what she held that I realized it was not simply a staff with a medical symbol. As it swayed like a cobra to a snake charmer, there was no missing it as something real. What I had first mistaken for a Cadeus was plainly visible as a creature with two serpentine bodies, connected at the upper torso and at its flattened grass snake like head. Where arms would have been on a lizard, the snake had a pair of wide, delicate feathered wings. I won't admit that I jumped back, but I found myself suddenly with my behind and hands on the ground a good foot away from where I had been standing before.

"W-w-uh? That's not a staff?"

She shrugged. "A Cadecoatl. They are great partners for doctors, healers, and clerics."

She then went back to the task at hand, serious and moving almost as if on a script or as I reconsidered as I watched her and tried not to stare at the Cadecoatl what I took in as not a script but as if she was following a ritual.

“Are you sure that thing is under your control?” I asked.

She gave a nod. "Of course! These monsters need humans as much as we need them; and we help them grow and evolve, which is what they get out of it. Now are you ready to begin?"

I took a deep breath and stood back up. My mixed emotions were still there and before I spoke up the Cadecoatl rushed forward and encircled me, washing me in an eerie blue glow and bringing an eerie relaxation and calm into my very core.

I was a train wreck before and now I was calm, staring as the flying snake-like creature let out something like a chirp or hiss at me. It was also calming, almost as if it was saying you are welcome before it flew back to Marlie and took a rest upon her staff.

Instantly, an information window popped up, relaying, “You are under the status effect blessed. Your luck is higher. Additionally, you are one hundred percent health.”

What? I didn’t even have the time to take it in clearly before another information window popped up, telling me, "You are under the status effect: Spiritually Calmed. With this emotional healing active, you receive an additional ten percent boost to your experience gains."

Experience gains? Luck? Could this be any more unreal? Even if it could, I needed to focus. If it was real and not some hallucination or really good special effects, then I had important things to worry about. My family.

"Thanks to your Cadecoatl, I am calm but not ready. I need more information than just the blurb. Firstly, how, when, and why am I here?" I didn't allow any room for interrupting me, even if I was somehow in a teenage version of my body. "As importantly, where is my family? My wife and kids were with me last I remembered."

She inclined her head before giving a nod.

"Most outworlders just jump into excitement at the new opportunities, but then again, you were brought here at the appointed age. It makes sense. Firstly, know that your exact arrival here is thanks to the Lord of Tidewarren requesting it. There is a ritual that he requested that summoned an Outworlder - you - to the town of Stone Bridge, which is both his seat and my hometown. Why? Outworlders easily provide important resources to the World of Hekatondrona. Willpower and creativity which are the two things that are the fundamental source of all human magic. As the local lord, it is his duty to sponsor and adopt at least a few outworlders per decade to promote the health of the magical constitution of the world."

"Hm?" I grunted, and as I pieced together what was said, I was overwhelmed with the thought that it was that bastard's fault. Whoever he was. There wasn’t an intellectual reason for it, it just happened to be the truth on an instinctual level. I wanted to get angry about it and him separating me from my family and my home, but thanks to the effect, I couldn't.

This was good. Because while in my adulthood I had mostly mastered self-control and through that mastered my anger and pride, I seemed to have regressed emotionally in some of the same ways that I had bodily. Grief and worry should have been at the top of my emotions as a father, anger over circumstances and my failings weren’t fitting. They were obstacles, like spilling water across a floor on which you planned to walk.

I just felt cold rage, and it pushed me to calculate. So I embraced the numb feeling and tried to make my brain work on the problems at hand. It was all a quick assertion on my part though, because it was then that Marlie continued.

"Him?" Because she continued with her explanation. "Lord Charles Darville of Tidewarren is his name. As your sponsor in this endeavor, he will function largely as an adoptive parent and his family as if they were a full-fledged member of it."

It didn’t matter if I was angry or not, and it didn’t matter how flowery and friendly those words were. The fact remained he had summoned me - and hopefully not just me - as a source of some sort of easy resource. The specifics of the reasoning didn’t matter, though.

She could have told me that the hills were made of cheeseburgers and everyone had a perfect metabolism, that I was the emperor of all the world, and those weren’t the words I wanted to hear. “That’s nice to know, but I don’t need assurances about my so-called sponsor and this adoptive family provided by what amounts to an abductor. Where is my wife? Where are my kids? I don’t see them anywhere.”

I couldn’t stop thinking about that fact either. The feeling of their absence was weighing upon me as I slowly chose the words with which I would follow.

“Listen, I’m not some lonely person who doesn’t care about his connections back home. I have people who need me and who I need, and even if I was excited about being in a new world with magic and mystical creatures? It doesn’t mean I’d be happy about this or trusting. Even if it was something I was asking for, we are in a situation where you all are asking me to swim but not telling me what through. It might be water, but it might be snow, mud, or gasoline. You might be asking me to swim through snow or gasoline, so you’re going to have to tell me more, show me more. On top of that, why in the world do I look like I’m in my body as it was when I was a fourteen-year-old?”

Even with my attempt at self-control and careful word choice, the things that I said were spoken with passion and urgency, cutting through the spiel. They also must've done something because despite the Cadecoatl's Spiritual Calm status effect, I felt my emotions bubbling again. I could feel a sensation of energy throughout my body as the faces of my family flashed before my eyes. As soon as they had passed, another eerie green prompt window appeared.

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

***

It flashed excitedly, and I let the flashes take my focus for a moment, reading the window’s contents.

[[ Gained trait: Inquisitive - You have a keen curiosity and the braveness to feed that curiosity with knowledge. You receive a permanent boost of ten percent to XP and one point to your Knack, Mind, and Charisma Stats.]]

Stats? Experience? Before I could focus on those things or even ask, she quickly answered my questions.

"You are an Outworlder, but it is rare to have outworlders come here like you are. Normally, they arrive in what would be considered closer to reincarnation - they are born to parents and just are aware of their previous lives. Few arrive as infants at the age of one. The number of outworlders arriving at higher ages shrinks in progression with one's age- virtually none arrive as fourteen-year-olds, one of the holy numbers."

That didn't help me much, but she didn't slow either. Old or not, she was powerful and adroit with words.

"As to your questions regarding your family? Your family would have all been transported here by the spell - they were in the same regional space as you upon your home world. So they are here, or rather they will be here, eventually. I say eventually, because we are in a different world with different physical and magical rules, some laws of being are fundamental, Mr. Calhoun. Time bends for no man, monster, or god.”

She summoned up a window of her own, and this wasn’t from a movement of the Cadecoatl, but she summoned it with a movement of her left thumb, pointer, and middle fingers. It was tinged with that same early handheld electronic green tinge. Immediately, an hourglass was shown. On it were names and times, many of which I couldn’t comprehend. However, I could see my name, Melody’s, and the names of our children together. I could see ‘home world’ on the top bubble, where our names had started, and ‘Hekadrona’ in the bottom bubble. As this image appeared and sand started moving below the grains with our names - taking those grains and our own from ‘Homeworld’ to ‘Hekadrona’, the grandmotherly arch-priestess continued to explain to me.

“Your wife will arrive in the world at the same age she was corresponding to your own- if she is younger she will arrive later. If she is older she will have arrived correspondingly before you. Your children will not appear until the comparative time they were born in your timeline in your original world and life. As to being held here against your will? You can return home at any time. You just have to simply do it and go through a series of prompts in your interface. The gods would not allow the circumventing of a human's will- but the same decision you make your family members must make, separately from you. As to where they are? The spell is too costly for any one township by itself and there are rules of distribution that even I don’t know all the secrets to - so they could have ended up anywhere in Hekatondrona."

I felt my mouth twitch, throat tighten, and hands clench and unclench as words washed through my mind and I tried to come up with some sort of cohesive and convincing argument to utilize to get out of this situation. I tried to find something, anything to get an escape clause for all of my family. Several minutes passed by and no words would come forth however as I processed the situation and the words she had said for a second time. Even as an arch-priestess she probably didn’t have the power to undo this.

As much as I naturally wanted to go home, I realized the only way I could save my family was by going along with this. If the time and thus the association of things in the timeline were respected, my wife was already here. For all I knew, depending on what year of her age she was summoned at, she might even have been here for several years.

As to my kids? They would be a good long while, and as much as I believed in my kids I couldn’t trust them to end up summoned into a part of the world where they would be given the honest truth. Heck, it was possible that I wasn’t even getting the whole and honest truth. because while Marlie was being very helpful I had no way to measure what she was saying against the truth. It might not even be another world, I might be stuck in some VR simulation like in one of those ‘OP main character goes after a harem in a virtual other world’ anime.

So for their sake, for the sake of Melody, and for my own well-being. I had to learn how this new world worked, had to master its rules and get as much knowledge as I had to. If they might end up summoned to another settlement and noble lord, that meant I also had to get strong, so that I could rescue them. Even if it meant breaking all the rules and having to carve my own road to victory. If I could master the situation and grow strong in a fast enough time, I could reunite with my family and go home.

There was no time to waste on more questions or lamenting of the situation.

"So who hands me my first Monster Partner?" I questioned. It felt like I should have had an automatic starter partner provided- that was standard fare no matter what monster collector game you played and if this was a world that ran by those rules in part I could infer.

The total change in posture from myself and my physical and mental focus on the question must have been taken in by her because when she responded moments later it was with a compliment of sorts.

"You act more mature than your age, I must admit young Wade. However, to answer you, if you didn’t guess - and you are asking so you must not have. The provider of your first monster partner is Lord Darville, your adoptive father. You must just wait for him until he arrives. In the meantime, I can tell you more about Tidewarren and the Town of Stonebridge. "

I shook my head, "No way. You’ve been very nice and all Marlie, but I was taught that seeing is believing and to trust but verify. So I need to do exactly that while I wait for Lord Darville. I’ll be back as soon as I can, okay?"

Impulsive? Yes. But I could tell a tutorial area when I saw it and the fact of the matter was I knew thanks to what she said, that there was not going to be a convenient fast-forwarding of time as we waited for the next character to show up.

I didn’t even give time for her to argue as I turned and made a run for it. Even if my family was tentatively okay and I had a goal, I couldn’t trust the situation to knowledge that I had only received second hand.

So, while I was being impulsive, I was also being pragmatic. I had to see for myself. For all I knew, this adoptive father figure I was supposed to be waiting for, Lord Darville, was some sort of feudal tyrant. I wasn’t going to blindly allow myself to be indebted to someone and listen to their framing of things without finding things out if they bending the truth like a toothpick. Yes, he might have been a great guy, but I had to see the condition of his town and people before I’d trust this guy as well. It had been my upbringing that caused me to do so.

So I moved as fast as my legs would take me and was soon out of the chapel and the white-washed walls of the halls that surrounded it. As the arch-priestess shouted after me to wait and slow down, I slammed the outer door with all my momentum and as I came out past the heavy dark brown wood of the outer door; I saw that this wasn't a prank.

The horizon was wrong. There were two moons visible, and it was probably close to noon. The courtyard outside of the church only extended a few dozen feet and was rung by a stone wall that was chest height for now. The spray of salt water permeated the air so thoroughly that it was like a cooling mist was holding the heat of the sun away. The calls of gulls and something closer to what an old movie might make for a pterodactyl permeated the air in front of me, even if I couldn't tell where it flew.

If it was all real, all the more reason to find out more on my own and to take some time where I wasn’t being monitored, as I suspected I was with Marlie. Nowhere in town would do, likely. I needed to get out of here, find a place to regroup and learn on my own, and then reassess the situation.

Part of my internal thought second-guessed my actions and said I should have at least met the Lord before prejudging him as capable of the worse, and that I should have gotten more information before making a rash decision. That proverbial voice in my head was probably right, too. Especially if I aimed to reunite with my family, getting a monster partner from a noble would likely speed up by a considerable margin my necessary goal of getting stronger.

It would be, after all, easy to just sit down and relax, drink something, and wait for the Lord of Tidewarren to show up and move on to the next step.

However, a larger part of my being, apparently driven by youth, doubts, and a body that I had not yet mastered when it came to controlling my emotions, wouldn’t simply allow me to follow the easy and more efficient path, though. Was this what so many young men in fiction I had consumed as a youth had felt that was driving them?

Probably not, though. There was some rationality in my actions. I had been in more than enough tabletop roleplaying games in my life back on Earth to know when I might be being railroaded. So I stopped second-guessing myself.

With that resolve, I began to run away from the chapel and down the nearby staircase, leading me to the settlement below and the outside. As I turned the corner of the stairs and saw the homely-looking chapel with its whitewash and red stylized number eight on the front. I saw a much larger and menacing building further up the hillside. An honest to god castle.

I sped up my pace. I needed to get the knowledge to make the next step confidently and without stepping into a trap. Because I knew Melody could handle herself, my wife had always been a tough woman - however, I, or she and I, had to be ready by the time my kids would be incarnated into this world. That meant being sure of my steps and not making the wrong ones. I had to be sure about the Lord of Tidewarren, and the situation before beginning.

Yes, not getting debt to the local lord and a starting monster partner from him would slow my progress somewhat, but it would not stop me. I had spent decades of the real world playing monster collector games and I was confident even if I ended up with a giant caterpillar or a monster mouse, I would make them a worthy partner and make them and myself stronger.