“There are two girls here,” Tiarraluna told him. “Who were taken when their parents were killed on the road a day’s ride east of here a few days before you stormed this camp.”

His eyes went wide.

“And you wear on your finger the life stone that their father left behind when I released his soul.”

He hadn’t an answer for that. Not one he trusted his voice to convey.

“His name was Johannes,” she informed him. “And they would like to meet you. Formally, I suppose, as the eldest has already met you more than once.”

“Do they know?” his voice was tight.

“It was not for me to tell them,” she answered.

He drew in a deep breath. “Go get them, then, I suppose.”

She nodded and left, leaving him to stare down at the ring, wondering how much to tell them.

Tiarraluna was back after only a short time, with two girls in tow. The first of them was the familiar black haired girl who’d fed him, and seemed so enamored of FoeSmite. The other might have been nine or ten, with the same black hair, although hers was done up in pigtails.

Meynardo was there as well, as he had become Jack’s defacto translator.

The older girl stopped well clear and curtsied. Then she fed a gentle elbow to her little sister, who jumped, looked up at her, and then copied the motion.

“I’m Millie,” the older girl pronounced. “And this here’s my little sister, Juniper. We calls her Berry sometimes.”

The little girl scrunched up her nose at her sister and turned to Jack. “Juniper,” she stated positively. “I don’t like Berry, much.”

Jack nodded to each of them in turn. “Jackson Grenell,” he provided, although he figured they already knew, given the length of time they’d all been here.

They all stood there staring at one another uncomfortably for awhile, before Millie curtsied again and said, “we wanted to thank you, Mister Grenell,” she said awkwardly. “Fer saving us and all, y’know?” she looked to her sister and nudged her again.

“Thank you, sir,” Juniper curtsied in her turn. “We thought sure we was goners ‘til you showed up.”

“Yes,” Jack stumbled. “Well... you’re welcome. I’m happy I made it in time.”

He looked beseechingly at Tiarraluna, but she held silent. “We... uh... found your parents,” he said at last, drawing gasps from both girls.

“We consigned them to Jehsha,” Tiarraluna finally came to his aid. “And saved such of their belongings as we could,” and now she nodded to Jack.

“He fought them,” Jack told the girls.

Millie snorted, tears seeping from the corners of her eyes. “I saw,” she said softly. “To protect Mama. Fat lot o’ good it did him.”

“He saved us all,” Jack told her seriously.

Both girls gasped. “How can you say that?” Millie demanded. “I watched that horrible man chop him up out there on the road!”

Jack held up his left hand, turning it so that they could see the amber stone. Millie reached out a hand, palm open, as though she could feel it radiating something.

“He fought them,” Jack repeated. “And he drew blood. And probably because of that, he dropped this life stone when Tiarraluna released his soul.”

Now Juniper was reaching for the ring, tears flowing. “Papa?” she sniffled. “That’s papa?”

“His life stone,” Jack confirmed. “And because he dropped it, my friends were able to create this ring for me. To focus my magic. And because of this ring, I was not only able to kill your captors, but survive the process. Only because of this ring.”

The girls came forward and laid hands on the ring. “She...” Millie struggled to speak. “She told me... I didn’t really believe... it is Papa,” she smiled. “I can feel him in there.”

Jack turned to Tiarraluna, raising an eyebrow as the girls held his hand and let out their sorrow. She shrugged. She hadn’t told them anything like that.

“This stone is rightly yours,” Jack told them gently after they’d cried themselves out.

“No,” Millie sniffled, looking into his eyes. “You keep it. Papa would want you to. H-He was a good man. He was always helping people. Let him help you help folks.”

“Was that true?” Tiarraluna asked some time later, after the girls had left. “Or were you only telling a story to make them feel better.”

He took the ring off and handed it to her. “You tell me,” he told her. “See what your appraisal skill says.”

She drew in a breath when she examined the ring and saw its properties. “This is...” she faltered. “Ten percent is a substantial bonus, Jack san. And my appraisal calls it a unique item. How can that be? ”

He placed the ring back on his finger, and pointed to his pouch on the cabinet beside the bed. “Could you hand me my belt pouch please?” he asked.

He withdrew his guild token and brought forth his stat field, somewhat to her surprise. “I still can’t read it,” he admitted. “But tell me what you see.”

“Your...” she straightened in her seat. “You have ranked up! How did you—?”

“Now look at my health and mana,” he prompted. “And then go down through my skills and find something called Cold Rage.”

She did so, with some prompting for him to move between screens, her eyes growing wide. “It is a unique skill, Jack san,” she breathed. "How have you managed two uniques in the span of two days?”

“Now,” he nudged, still not answering her questions. “Tell me what would have happened if I’d fallen under the effects of Cold Rage without that ring on my finger.” He’d already been through all this with Luciandro and knew what she’d find.

Her breath caught.

“No,” he answered her, then. “I wasn’t lying. I told that girl the truth. Without that shard of amber, I’d have dropped dead in the middle of my fight with the bandit leader, and nothing you or your grandmother or anybody else could have done would have saved me. As it was, I nearly did anyway, or so I’m told.”

The fact that, for all intents and purposes, he had died, she kept to herself. Certainly nothing she or the mice had done had kept him from crossing over in those first hours after her arrival.

* * *

“You saw her that time, didn’t you, Berry?” Millie demanded of her little sister outside in the yard.

Juniper gave her a look and squared on her, putting her hands on her hips, eyes still wet and red. “Saw who, Millie?” She demanded. “There wasn’t nobody in there but the mage lady and the hero. You’re seein’ things again.”

“Am not!” Millie insisted. “And anyway, remember when I told you what she said about Papa? And now we know it fer true, don’t we? Straight from the hero’s mouth! Where’d I hear it then, if not from the green lady?”

“I dunno,” Juniper was unrelenting. “All I know is that there ain’t no green lady livin’ in that crazy stick. Listen to yourself, Millie. Cain’t nobody else see no green lady. Just you. Don’t you think if she was real, some one o’ those powerful gifted folks mighta seen her at least once?

“Just you don’t touch it again, er you’ll get in all kinds o’ trouble! I heard the mouse folk say that it’s all kinds o’ dangerous, and that it breaks anything it touches.”

Millie seemed to not even be paying attention anymore, gazing instead in the direction of the stationkeeper’s cabin. “She won’t hurt me," she whispered after a bit. “She likes me. ‘Sides, she’s lonely. She misses her friends. She’s happy to have somebody to talk to.”

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

“Ain’t no she!” Juniper throttled a yell. “It’s a stick! Didn’t Papa and Mama always warn you about alla this talk o’ spirits and haunts? Too much imagination, Papa said, didn’t he? What if these folk find out you see things ain’t there, Millie? What’ll happen to you then, huh? What’ll happen to me?”

Millie turned back to her and clucked her tongue before heading for the shack where the other three girls were staying until somebody from town could fetch them all back. Illie, the girl who’d been here longest, wasn’t doing so well, and needed constant looking after.

The little mouse wizard was doing his best, but he didn’t hold out much hope. He’d about fixed her body, but her mind was broke, and might not ever mend.

Juniper belatedly followed, still frustrated and sad, and wanting to take it out on someone. “If you’re so sure there’s a green lady,” she demanded, “why not tell the hero? It’s his stick.”

Millie didn’t even turn. “She’s powerful mad at him fer some reason,” she said without hesitation, like she didn’t even need to think up a reply. “Says she hates him, but I don’t think she really does. Why save him if she hates him so?

“Says he killed her, but then says he saved her, and that he’s tied her to him somehow, some way she don’t really understand. And she can’t even talk to him because of how weak she still is, ‘cept when he’s all riled up, and then he don’t listen.”

“What about the mage lady, then?”

Now Millie did turn, but just her head. “She don’t like her even more’n she’s mad at him,” she giggled. “Calls her ‘Little Miss Fancy Frock’, almost like she’s jealous.”

Juniper followed quietly for a few paces, and then popped up with, “So how’s about Mister Luciandro?” she demanded. “She mad at him, is she? Er jealous? Hmm?”

Millie sighed as they reached the shack and she lifted the curtain. Truth was, she was more than tired, in body and mind. Juniper wasn’t but half wrong, she thought. And she knew that the little mouse wizard wouldn’t, probably, be able to see the green lady any more than any of the rest of them. Truth was, she was afraid.

They didn’t none of them understand. The green lady wasn’t the only spirit she’d ever seen. Not by a long ways. Nor was she the only one she’d talked to. Or who’d talked back. Or who she'd had fun with.

Ever since she was a little girl, she’d been able to see things nobody else could. Fairies and forest spirits and the like. And nobody’d ever believed her. Not once. Papa had even taken her to the city once, to have a mage look to her. To see was she maybe gifted after all. The mage had laughed, and shook his head, and Papa had taken her home.

She’d about convinced herself, eventually, that they were, the all of them, right, and that she was just crazy. So she’d started in pretending to not see them, like Mama had always wanted. Neither she nor Papa had wanted word to get out that maybe Johannes and Sellia’s little girl was touched in the head.

And then she’d seen the hero fight the bandits who’d murdered both Papa and Mama, and she’d seen the green lady helping him do it, flashing from place to place, changing the course of what was left to her of her tree, returning it to him when he called. She, Millie knew, was real. She had to be. She was moving things about. And so she’d started to believe again.

Then, at the end, she’d lain beside him in the mud, the green lady had, holding onto his hand, to keep him from passing over while the others worked on him. When Millie herself had worked on him. And she’d thanked her, in her ethereal voice that sounded of a breeze wafting through the leaves of the forest.

Didn’t matter what any of them thought anymore. Didn’t matter if they thought she was touched. Not even the hero would keep her from her new friend.

* * *

Jack and Tiarraluna, meanwhile, were still pouring over his guild stone’s field. The revelation of his having somehow ranked up already had surprised her, along with some of the skills and attributes he possessed.

This was the first time she’d had an opportunity to really examine the totality of what Jehsha’s window had seen in him, and she was having some difficulty crediting it.

“Sure,” he complained after they’d gone through the lot, including what Luciandro had skipped over back at the shattered village. “Big Jack Grenell, the scary sentinel. The great, all powerful HEEro.” he let out a half-raspberry. “So how come I keep getting my ever loving ass kicked every time I fight? I thought heroes were supposed to be, like, super strong and able to defeat armies and sh— stuff.”

She tilted her head and looked at him strangely, quite taken aback. “You keep getting your... how did you put it? Ever loving... behind kicked, Jack san.” She told him with a lilt in her voice. “Because you are an idiot.”

“Beg pardon?” his eyes narrowed and his face drew in.

“Jack san,” she ventured. “What is it, exactly, that you believe the ranking system is used for? How do you imagine it is applied?”

He narrowed his eyes further. Condescending tone, fake question, precise enunciation. All the earmarks of a trap. Still, “Keeps track of your progress as you learn things and gain experience, right?” he ventured.

Her expression didn’t change. “In part,” she allowed. “But why would such a thing be needed?”

He wasn’t up to playing this game. He was tired and in pain, and whatever she’d done to him earlier to take the edge off had long since worn off. “You tell me,” short and flat.

“Say,” she ventured in that same lilting voice, “as an example, you have two fighters who want to fight. One of them, in white, is rank ten, and the other, in black, is rank three. Who would win?”

Ah. He saw where this was going. “Probably the ten,” he said.

She nodded. “In all likelihood. Suppose then, they were both rank tens? One in black, the other in white. Who would win?”

“Alright, alright,” he relented.

But she wasn’t through with him yet. “And now,” her voice grew sharp. “Let us suppose that a magnificent idiot of rank nine, wearing mismatched and lower rank armor picked a fight with NINETY-SEVEN RANKS of hardened villains,” her volume rose. “Each and every one of them equipped with high ranking gear and weapons, and all of them waiting for him?” she leaned in, face angry. “Which side of this battle do you imagine would emerge victorious, my magnificent idiot? Hmm?

“This is why the boards at the guild hall are arranged as they are,” she pressed. “This is why we are encouraged not to engage foes many times our own ranks unless we have no other option.

He wanted to defend himself. He’d been doing okay, all things considered. Up to when he faced that rank eighteen, anyway. But Tiarraluna was on a roll, and she wasn’t ready to stop.

“Which is why I say you are an idiot.” she accused. “Jack san, do you not understand? Each and every one of those you have fought since we started out from the town, given the rank disparities, should have killed you with little problem, even did you face them one at a time.

“Those teufel-things on our way to town did kill you,” she waggled a finger. “Make no mistake. Were I not there with you, even did you somehow have FoeSmite already, you would certainly have died from the poison.

“Where we found the girls’ parents, any one of the bandits outranked you by significant margin, and all possessed better equipment, save only for FoeSmite. One on one, any of them should have bested you with relative ease. And yet you felt completely comfortable fighting them all at once!

“Charging into this camp?” her voice continued to rise. “They should have squashed you like a bug! Even with your amazing band of mice,” her voice gained stridence. “A bug, Jack san! That Mauler person was double your rank! Double! And, according to your friends, you simply walked up to him and allowed him the first strike! With his minions all around you! Idiot? Idiot is much too feeble a word—!”

“Okay!” he raised his good arm between them as if to fend her off. “Okay! I surrender. I’m an idiot.”

She struggled to calm herself, but her eyes were still blazing when she spoke again. “Were you an ordinary man,” she whispered hoarsely, “you would be dead two dozen times over. Do not attempt to feel sorry for yourself because you are not heroic enough.”

Three days later, Jack was awakened by a commotion in the yard outside. He rolled painfully out of bed and grabbed the makeshift crutch.

The yard was filled with activity and horses. One of the riders, a boy of fourteen or fifteen, wearing brown brigandine and a conical helm with a gold filigreed nasal, brought his horse to the porch. “You’d be the sentinel, then?” he asked. Jack just about understood him and nodded.

“Name’s Tiglund,” the boy announced. "Master Jonkins set me to fetch the lot of you back to Mokkelton. These others are here to help pack up your booty and fetch it back, along with the rescued captives. We’ve even brought a sprung carriage, for Cable has let us know you were sore injured in the fight."

Jack nodded again. The majority of that had gone right by him. “Tiarraluna,” he said slowly. “Party leader. Tell her.”

Tiglund laughed and turned away to search for the young advanced novice mage.

There was some consternation when the mice appeared, but Tiarraluna put a stop to it before any accidents happened.

The stripping of the ferry station took the rest of the day. The townsmen stayed in one of the open shacks that night. The one the girls weren’t using. The following morning, the lot of them harnessed the wagons, gathered up the livestock, and set out on the west road for town.

It would be a trek of several days, as they were in normal wagons or riding normal horses, rather than a swift magical engine, but at least they’d seen the last of the ex bandit camp.

* * *

And they’re well gone? Rosaluna inquired from her position atop the city’s east wall.

Well gone, Lady Luna, the gray, humanoid figure with the pale, glowing eyes confirmed from the treeline outside of Mokkelton. Five of us will remain near, following. They have left the province and are continuing westward for the empty lands.

Whatever the newly arrived human told them seems to have convinced them, somehow, to flee, even to abandoning many of their belongings in their former encampment. Some of us have gathered it up and are conveying it to the old storehouse.

Good, she nodded to herself. And those other things?

The figure turned to survey the carnage behind it. The five crystalless corpses lay broken and still in the stained grass. The figure’s companions ranged around them, silent. Some of the companions had been damaged, but none had fallen.

They have been eliminated, Lady Luna, it sent.

Excellent, she allowed her smile to widen. Convey the bodies to my cottage and await me there. Preserve them. I shall return within the week.

The gray figure nodded and bowed towards the town, although it knew not whether its mistress could see it.

Turning, it relayed her orders to its companions. The corpses were loaded onto the backs of some of the multi-legged variants and the lot of them turned away from the town. They would travel straight through, for such as they needed no rest.

Atop the wall, Rosaluna Galbradia heaved a great sigh and turned away, her mood lighter than it had been in months. There was that problem solved. At least for the time being.

She would now have additional time to fashion more of her servants. Enough, in all likelihood. The next time the creatures of the fallen demon lord decided it might be a good idea to invade, she would be ready for them, and there would be no need to trouble Mohrdrand, Jonkins, or that weasel of a hero king squatting off to the west in his glorious, hollow capitol.

He wanted to abandon the east? Fine. She would protect it. And he’d better steer clear in the future.

And best of all, her secret yet remained hers alone.