They began to encounter junctions in the road by midmorning and started seeing traffic soon after. Not much, to be sure. Sparse hardly covered it. As the morning drew on, Jack began to feel uneasy. What people they saw looked frightened. Holding close to their wagons and carts, as if ready to bolt at the merest noise. Most carried knives or axes or long handled scythes, but nothing that might be considered a dedicated weapon. They saw not a single patrol, nor even solitary guardsman. Even Tiarraluna was frowning as they finally drew near the town.
Mokkel Town, it was named, she told him, although it was more commonly called Mokkelton. There was a wall and a gate, although the man guarding it looked no more than a tradesman, and bore no arms. What did he expect to do if he should encounter somebody or something that needed to be kept out? Jack wondered. Maybe the world was just that peaceful these days? No. The demeanor of those citizens he’d been seeing suggested otherwise. He cast a sidelong glance at Tiarraluna, but didn’t say anything. Something was going on here that he didn’t like, but this was neither the time nor place to discuss it.
Tiarraluna flashed a strange stone and paid two silver reals for their entry into the town with the horse and cart. Jack remained silent. While he could understand her end of the conversation perfectly, he had no idea what the local was saying. The guy seemed curious and uneasy. Whether because of the blanket Jack wore in place of a normal garment, or the sword hanging from his hip was unclear. Jack was willing to wager both.
Here, too, he got his first look at Tandrian cash. A stamped silver, or more likely, silver washed coin, given its large size and low purchasing power. It had a rough castle embossed on the side he could see. He didn’t get a look at the other before it vanished into a box standing on the ledge of the gatehouse window.
“Come, Jack san,” Tiarraluna ordered once the coin had been paid.
“No stamp or seal or anything?” he wondered.
“Would you like one?” she asked. “There are, it would seem, insufficient soldiers or guards to throw you in jail or eject you from the town, but if it would make you feel better...?”
Then why a wall? Were things so peaceful that they’d disbanded the guard? That made no sense at all. But he kept his yap shut. He could see that she was worried no less than he, despite her flippant tone, so he let it lie for the moment. But he meant to find answers at some point. The whole place offended his sense of order.
Also, if the desert had taught him one single thing, it was that you paid heed to hunches that were telling you something was off.
She led them into the depths of the town for several blocks before turning right at a wide square. Then several more blocks trending mostly southward, though the street twisted and turned more than a bit.
He was coming to realize Mokkelton was larger than he’d at first guessed. More a small city than a town. Which made the guard situation even stranger. What did they do about crime? Surely there were criminals here, even without a demon lord. There should be dozens of city guard, if not hundreds.
Tiarraluna brought the cart to a halt at an unmarked door on the left side of the otherwise featureless walled street, no different than two dozen others they’d passed since turning south. She knocked three times, then three again. Then they waited.
After a short while, the door clicked. Without waiting for it to move, Tiarraluna opened it and stuck her head in. “Uncle!” she called. “We are here with Grandmother’s toys!”
Another hundred count and there came another, louder click from a dozen or so feet down the roadway. Jack followed the noise to see a double door swinging slowly inward a few inches.
“That is the stable,” Tiarraluna informed him. “Bring the cart inside, please, and unhitch Jelia. There should be hay in the manger already, so she will be fine. Join me here once you are done.”
“Yes, Mu’um,” Jack couldn’t resist, bowing deeply. “As you say, Mu’um. Your will be done, Mu’um,” he finished with a flourishing genuflection as he backed toward the cart.
He ignored her scowl as he took Jelia’s halter and moved her to the small stable, chuckling to himself. That was a girl used to getting her own way.
There was no way that he could see to lock the stable door once he was done, nor any other way into the rest of the property. He settled for closing the double doors and walking over to the previous one, which, it turned out, remained ajar.
“Hello?” he called as he stuck his head into the dark room beyond.
“We are back here,” Tiarraluna’s voice drifted from deeper within.
The place turned out to be quite large. The front room consisted of some sort of shop, its shelves populated by all manner of odd shapes and colors. He found them two rooms in, seated in comfortable looking chairs fronting a cold hearth. Fragrant tobacco smoke filled the upper reaches of the room, emanating from the bowl of an ornate pipe clamped between the teeth of a strange old man whose long black beard sported a wide silver stripe down its center.
“Jackson Thomas Grenell,” Tiarraluna gestured to the old man. “My uncle, Mohrdrand Hollandria.” Then she leaned forward and whispered mock-conspiratorially, “he is not really my uncle, we just like to pretend.”
“Right.” he turned to the old man and bowed, resigned to go through the whole language rigamarole. “Ah... hajimemashite, Mohrdrand sama. Wa... uhm... watashi wa Grenell Jackson desu.”
The old man stifled a chuckle, and bowed in turn, not getting up. “And a pleasure to meet you as well, Jackson Grenell,” he said in what could be pure Oxford English.
Jack turned to Tiarraluna and gave her a scowl.
“Uncle Mohrdrand is a wizard, Jack san,” she giggled. “Quite a powerful one, and a good friend of Grandmother’s going back many decades.”
“He knew we were coming,” Jack said grumpily.
“He knew we were coming,” she confirmed. “And that you did not speak Tandrian.”
Turning back to the old wizard, he raised an eyebrow. The old man held up a hand bearing a familiar looking gold band.
“Have a seat, young Jackson,” the old man waved to a couple of unoccupied chairs. “Button tells—”
“Uncle!” she hissed. “I have asked you not to call me—!”
“Button?” Jack grinned, watching as her face turned red.
“Yes, Button,” she snarled. “It was a name my grandmother called me when I was a toddler, alright?” She turned to the old wizard. “But I am no longer a toddler, Uncle. I am a—”
“You will always be Button to me, I’m afraid,” the old man shook his head. “And look at you now, still cute as a flowered porcelain button.”
She growled at him.
“Well, Button,” Jack began.”
“You, I will burn with fire,” she warned him, eyes flashing.
He couldn’t hold the laughter back. Countless weeks, even months of confusion, pain, terror, and fatigue, and the fuming girl had overpowered it all. And the madder she got, the cuter she became. Like a true anime heroine. He almost expected her to go full chibi and start flying around the room shooting lightning bolts everywhere. And that image made him laugh even harder.
He missed the part where the old man made a couple of surreptitious gestures, locking down her staff to keep him from finding out how serious her threat had been.
Once the mirth had run its course and he could focus again, Jack rubbed the tears from his eyes and apologized. He couldn’t make it entirely serious, but he did his best.
“Button—” Mohrdrand flinched and corrected at her glare. “Tiarraluna,” he soothed. “Perhaps you might brew us up some tea?”
She glared for a moment longer before hurling herself to her feet and stomping wordlessly off deeper into the environs of the building, leaving her shepherd’s crook staff behind.
“And do try not to poison any of them,” the old man called after her back.
“I promise nothing!” her voice drifted back.
Returning his gaze to Jack, the old man chuckled. “You are indeed a brave one,” he remarked.
“Sorry,” Jack said again. “Couldn’t help myself. And she is cute as a—”
“What is it?” the old man asked, leaning forward as Jack choked to a stop. “Is something wrong?”
“Button,” Jack deliberately used her toddler’s name. “What is she, fifteen? Sixteen?”
“Ah,” the old man nodded. “Fifteen as of this past Summer’s Dawn.” he said. “In your land, this is significant?”
“This is prison time,” Jack husked. “Among other, less savory terms. In my world, she is a child.”
“I see,” the old wizard nodded solemnly. “And how old are you, Jackson Grenell? If I may ask?”
“Twenty-eight this past November,” Jack told him. “Three months or so ago.”
“When you left, then?” the old man asked. “In your world?”
What difference does that make? Jack wondered. Then he asked.
“Have you seen yourself since you arrived, Jackson Grenell?” the old man wondered. “Have you looked upon your own face?”
“Not really,” he said. “Not in anything more accurate than a water bucket. Why?”
“There is a mirror against that far wall,” the old man pointed forward towards a room immediately behind the shop. "Open the window for some light and have a good look. Let me know what you see.”
“Okay, that’s not ominous at all,” he muttered. But he followed the directions.
He found the window latch and the mirror. Then he just stared for awhile. Well, of course. He turned his face this way and that, pulling at his cheeks and chin. He’d been twenty-five before he could generate a decent beard or mustache, so, his body had been thrown back at least farther than that. Not too far into his teens, thankfully. He thought he’d have noticed his voice cracking or an explosion of pimples.
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Twenty or twenty-two, he thought. His mustache wasn’t second lieutenant wispy, but his beard was embarrassing enough to get rid of. Maybe there’s some sort of magical beard growing spell, the thought meandered through his mind as he turned away
He was subdued when he regained the chair. “What the hell?” he wondered aloud.
Inwardly, he was going through various storylines, fishing for averages. About thirty percent, he decided, particularly if you got grabbed young, you kept your original age and body. About thirty percent of the time, you got catapulted back to fifteen or sixteen, regardless of your real world age. Another fifteen or twenty percent, you went in as the character of a game you were good at, or had written, or managed. Again, regardless of your original age. Reincarnations of course, where you started over from scratch or woke up suddenly after five or six years of your new life comprised a big chunk. The remaining cases, where they turned you into a monster or an inanimate object, or a little girl or something, were outliers, he supposed.
The old man was regarding him bemusedly during this introspection. Finally, he broke in. “And does this allay your fears at all?” he asked.
Jack looked up. “Still twenty-eight in here,” he said, pointing at his head.
“You would be surprised to know how little that really matters,” Mohrdrand chuckled. “Particularly in a land where girls often marry at fourteen and boys at fifteen.”
Jack started to protest, but remembered that it hadn’t been all that long ago on earth for those ages to be apt. Well under two hundred years. Still. “Where I come from,” he told the old man. “She’s still jail bait.” he paused while the old man worked through the term.
“And in your world, Jackson Grenell,” the wizard wondered. “How many years must unwind from your skein before you are no longer a child?”
“Eighteen, for some things,” Jack mused. “Twenty-one for others. Various idiots in authority are trying to run that either up or down for various things in order to gain more power. Hell, there’s a sizeable portion of my country’s population that may as well still be children well into their thirties or forties. Even beyond.”
“You must indeed live in a sanguine land,” Mohrdrand rubbed at his whiskers, “for children to be allowed to be children for so long.
“Why, our new king,” he informed his guest. “Was barely twenty-one when he led his army to Storm the demon king’s obsidian fortress, hard upon several years of travail. Many of his soldiers did not live to see their sixteenth year.
Tiarraluna has been an adult for more than a year, and has been plying her trade in a not undangerous world.”
“Anyway,” Jack groused. “I said she was cute, I didn’t say I wanted to... to....”
“Oh, no,” the wizard shook his head broadly. “Obviously not.”
“She just escorted me to town,” Jack explained. “Just a chore for Granny, right?”
“Of a certainty,” the old wizard confirmed, leaning forward and steepling his hands, a wide grin on his face. “How could it be anything else?”
“Here I am in town,” Jack hurried on. “Job’s done, I’m on my way. Bam! Never see her again. Problem solved.”
“Problem?” Mohrdrand asked. “And what problem would that be?”
“Problem?” Jack asked, voice rising. “No problem. Done problem, see? Away I go. Done.”
The old wizard was openly chuckling now. “And what of Tiarraluna?” he asked merrily. “Has she no say in this?”
Jack was struggling to get a grip on himself, wondering what the hell was happening to him. Was there something in the smoke of the old man’s pipe? Was that it?
“I’ve known the girl less than a week,” he insisted. “Anyway, she’d rather burn me alive than spend another minute with me,” he lowered his voice with some effort. “Didn’t you see? Aren’t you the one who warned her not to poison me?”
“I could have been asking her not to poison me,” the wizard pointed out. “After all, It was me called her Button first.”
Jack closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths, gathering his wits. The old man was making sport of him and not even trying to be subtle. Everybody on this world thought themselves a jolly joker, it seemed.
When he opened his eyes, Tiarraluna was returning with a tray upon which rested cups, a pot, and several small jars. These she set on a small cart, which she wheeled to stand between the chairs. She was looking back and forth between the two men, an odd expression on her face. While she seemed to have gotten her temper under control, it was difficult to say how well.
“Now,” the old wizard began once she’d seated herself and they’d all acquired and fixed their tea. “Where were we again? Ah, yes. Your adventures along the road.”
He turned to Jack, his face going serious. “I am led to believe that, in spite of having no discernible sign of a gift, you fought and vanquished a significant number of higher rank monsters on your way here.”
Jack shrugged uncomfortably. “I suppose so.”
“Hmm,” the old man waited for further elaboration. Then, “Tiarraluna has told me that you had encountered these creatures before? Or at least their proxies?”
Jack nodded.
“And their ranks?”
“Ten to twenty,” Jack supplied. “I can’t say for sure, since I wasn’t able to see any stat bars or identifiers myself. Going by the way it was armed, the champion was probably a bit higher.”
“I see,” the old man stroked his beard. “And how do you suppose you managed this?” he asked.
Another shrug. “Partially,” Jack gestured to FoeSmite, leaning against the wall beside the door. “I’ve been advised that my staff isn’t quite normal. Partially, it was a case of my enemies not understanding either me or my weapon style. I surprised them. I think that if I hadn’t, I’d be seriously dead. I nearly was anyway.”
“I see,” the old man repeated. “If I may?” he indicated the staff.
“Be my guest,” Jack told him.
“Oh, no, no, no!” the wizard shook his head violently. “You misunderstand, Jackson Grenell. I would not touch that thing if you held it out to me and my only other option was falling from a tall cliff.”
Jack’s eyes narrowed, but he rose and retrieved the staff, holding it out when the old man requested.
Mohrdrand leaned in close, tching and clucking as he ran his gaze up and down the shaft, requesting Jack rotate it in his hands to provide a full, three hundred-sixty degrees of examination.
“This text here,” the old wizard indicated with an outstretched finger. “FoeSmite?”
“I was in a hurry,” Tiarraluna huffed. “It is not that bad, is it?”
The old wizard clucked his tongue. “Insufficient, more like,” he chided gently. “There is will here, child, in this object. A very powerful will.” He looked up from the staff, expression serious. “Bone cruncher seems more apt,” he postulated.
“Jackson Grenell,” he wondered. “What were you thinking? At the exact moment this weapon was enchanted, I mean? The moment it was named? You were holding it, yes?”
“I’m not sure,” Jack admitted. “I don’t exactly know when it happened.”
“As you were striking your first foe,” Tiarraluna provided. “I named it as you struck your first decisive blow.”
Ah, he thought. The tingling in my arms and back. “I was thinking, ‘break something’,” he told the old man. “It was more a prayer.”
“Indeed,” the old wizard muttered. “That would do it, I suppose. And you struck bone immediately after?”
“Clavicle, I think,” Jack nodded.
“Yes, yes,” the wizard muttered. “But not yet sufficient, I think, to explain all of this.”
He rose and hobbled off into the depths of the building, leaving his guests to wonder at his purpose. He returned a few moments later with a polished crystal lens clamped within a gold collar. He played the lens over the staff, clucking and tsking some more.
“There are strange forces at play within the enchantment you’ve laid upon this device,” he said finally, presumably to Tiarraluna. “I see your grandmother’s touch, and yours as well. But there is a third. With a strange feel to it. A strong aura of purpose and strength.” He looked to Jack. “By process of elimination,” he informed the man, “I’m going to say that was you.”
That he could sense faint traces of yet a fourth, he kept to himself for the now. It felt old... primal. He’d want more time to think before starting that conversation.
“And what’s that mean?” Jack wondered.
A broad shrug. “Who’s to say? The old man answered. “Tell me, you fashioned this staff yourself originally, yes?”
“I did,” Jack confirmed. “I felled a small tree close in to Rosaluna’s cottage, then trimmed and split it. One half I split again and then carved FoeSmite out of one of the quarters.”
“And this carving? The knotwork? The embellishments?”
Jack nodded.
"you didn't happen to feed it any of your blood during the process, I suppose?"
Jack narrowed one eye. “Feed it?” he asked uneasily. “No. I mean, I may have gotten some blood on it over the course of the process. There were times I wasn’t as steady as I’d have liked, and I did occasionally slip and draw blood, but I certainly didn't feed—”
“So,” the old man smiled. “You cut down a tree from a magical forest, fashioned the living wood with some care and with your own hands into a weapon. You infused it with your own blood. And then, while it still bore life, you helped to enchant and name it. Is that what you’re telling me?”
Jack looked to Tiarraluna and back to the old wizard. “I guess? I mean, if you look at it a certain way....”
“And what sort of training did you provide?”
“Training?”
“He spoke to it constantly,” Tiarraluna supplied. “I saw him at Grandmother’s when I first arrived.”
“What?” Jack turned on her.
“You were whacking on her old oak tree,” Tiarraluna told him. “And with each whack, you were speaking to the staff. I could not then tell what you were saying, but you were definitely speaking to FoeSmite.”
He tried to recall. He’d been speaking to himself, really, he supposed, but he’d been doing it out loud, as he was prone to do. Each strike, each technique. He’d recite them out loud as he ran through the drills. To sort of hone his concentration.
“What’s it all mean?” he wondered to the wizard.
Mohrdrand leaned back in his chair, not unhappy to have some distance from the uncomfortable feeling bar of wood. “You three have created something quite unique, it seems,” he informed his guests. “And something not entirely unalive."
“Unalive?” Jack questioned.
“Mohrdrand rolled his shoulders. “Your FoeSmite is not quite alive,” he stated evenly. “But neither is it quite not alive. It is, at this moment hovering somewhere in between, and I cannot tell you why.”
He gave the situation more thought. “Moreover, I cannot tell you for the moment whether this situation will remain as it is or whether it will slide in one direction or the other. I suppose that will have much to do with how you treat it going forward.”
“And what that means is...?” Jack pressed.
The old man shrugged. “As time passes,” he told the younger man. “It may revert to an inanimate object, retaining no more than the enchantments you’ve placed upon it.” He paused. “Or, it may take on a life of its own and become much, much more.”
“You mean self aware,” Jack posited.
“That,” the old wizard nodded. “Other things. Personality, drives... for all I know, it may even begin advancing in rank as though it were an adventurer in its own right. I really cannot fathom what form of change the influence of your alien mana may have infused into it, nor of your will.”
“Its ranking?” Tiarraluna asked timidly. “I cannot read it, nor its effects.”
“No,” the wizard smiled. “I don’t suppose you can. Not at rank ten in any case.”
“Well?” she asked with more force.
“Keep in mind, Button,” he cautioned, ignoring her quick glare. “That I’m only rank one- seventy-nine, myself.”
Only? Jack thought. I thought Rosaluna was the highest rank in the land at two hundred?
“I cannot read it either, I’m afraid.” Mohrdrand admitted, drawing a soft gasp from the girl. “It seems to follow the proper formulae, but there is something off about it. I suspect from the otherworldly mana.”
“So what can you see?” she asked.
“My appraisal skill tells me eighty-two,” he told them both. “But I’ve no doubt it’s higher than that. Possibly much higher. I just don’t know.”
“Would Grand—?” she began before stopping herself.
He chuckled and shrugged. “Perhaps? She does more enchanting than I do, so her appraisal skill is most certainly better. But I’m not certain that will help. As I told you, there is something off about the staff. I can clearly see a ranking and the effects it bears, even the name. But the rank is overlain with shadow. A shifting hint of another modifier, perhaps. Perhaps an entirely separate rank added to the one I can read. I cannot say for certain. Even the name seems to slide around a bit, as though it might not be complete.”
“But at least eighty-two?” Jack asked, looking down at the dark wood. “So how can I use it? If I’ve got the rules of this place straight, I shouldn’t even be able to lift it.”
“Simplicity itself,” the old wizard smiled. “You made it. You trained it. You infused it with a part of yourself. And, finally, you were holding it when it was named.
“I would wager,” he said mock confidentially. “That in all the world, only yourself, Button here, and perhaps Rosaluna are able to so much as touch it without injury, regardless of rank or class.
“Now,” he waved. “If you please? Being this close to it is not comfortable.”
Jack nodded and returned the staff to its former position against the wall, feeling the shaft warm as he released it. As though it were self-satisfied at the wizard’s distaste. He favored it with a frown.
“Adamant,” the old wizard told them. “And, of course, ironwood.”
He was less certain of the final effect, although he could describe its function. “Foe Shatter,” he finally decided, naming the enchantment on the spot. “It is the ability to sunder anything it strikes with sufficient force and will, regardless of composition. Of course, the harder the target, the harder the contact must be, and the stronger the will behind it. The concentration. Other enchantments notwithstanding.”
The old wizard examined the sword next. It was just a sword. A very fine sword, befitting a legendary drop from a higher ranking monster, and very different from the swords most local warriors wielded. But no more. The strangeness of it lay in how it came to be rather than its innate properties. He judged it to be around rank thirty-five, but would not guarantee that assessment. It could, he warned, be lesser or greater by some margin.
The rest of the afternoon was spent discussing the pair’s journey there, and Jack’s problem regarding his lack of a life crystal.