Jasper stared down at the scout, a broad smile on his lips, but the man just gaped up at him, saying absolutely nothing. Jasper supposed he could understand. It would be a bit of a shock. Jasper had been here for months now and it was the first time he’d encountered someone else from home, and perhaps the scout hadn't even known that other summoned existed.
While he waited for the scout to snap out of his stupor, he subtly examined him. Erin was a bit shorter than he’d expected. Even if Jasper hadn’t been riding on Dapplegrim, he doubted the scout would have reached much higher than his chest. And since he actually was mounted, the man was pretty much at eye level with his feet.
The scout was a bit on the scrawny side too - perhaps wiry would have been a more charitable description - and his pale, milky skin and bright red hair looked out of place amongst the Djinn. Do they even have sunscreen here? He realized he didn’t know - his skin was thoroughly burn proof at this point - but somehow, he doubted the scout had the same perks. His skin was already looking a bit flushed.
“Ho-home?” Jasper stirred as the man finally spoke. “You’re from Earth?”
“West Coast, baby. San Diego, true home of the Chargers. Where are you from?”
The scout ignored him, repeating himself like a broken record. “You’re from Earth? How? You don’t even look human.”
Jasper winced. “Yeah, about that. It’s probably going to happen to you too. As Djinn level up, they tend to look less and less human. Few months ago, my skin didn’t look like a giant wine stain, and I hope to god I don’t start sprouting a pair of horns” - Jasper ignored Annatta’s indignant side-eye and hurried on - “but it’s got its perks, too. My skin is fireproof now, so that’s pretty dope.”
The man squinted his eyes. “Who’s the president of the US?”
“Randall Thorne.”
“What was your favorite Disney movie growing up?”
“Little Mermaid.”
“What’s a blackberry?”
“The food or the phone?”
The man’s eyes widened. “You really are from Earth.”
“That what’s I’ve been telling you,” Jasper agreed amiably. “Got dragged over here somehow when the sequel launched. Did the same thing happen to you?”
The scout nodded. “Yeah. I didn’t even want to play the stupid game, but my friend insisted and now,” he waved his hand helplessly, “I am stuck here. Forever, apparently.”
Should I tell him about the portal? Jasper discarded the idea quickly. He didn’t even know how to access the S̆addu’â’s portal, but he did know that it was incredibly expensive. There was no point in giving the dude false hope. Instead, he returned to his previous question. “So you never did answer me. Where are you from?”
The scout frowned, rubbing at the peeling skin on a nose that was already being fried to a crisp. “Nowhere really, but I guess you could say Baltimore. My mom and I kind of moved around a lot.”
“Oh? Was she in the army?”
Erin blushed. “I wish…” he muttered beneath his breath, before speaking up louder. “No, she was…well, she was the sort of woman who always had to have a man - you know what I mean? It was the same cycle over and over again; meet a man and move in way too quick. By the time I was eight, I’d lived in Maryland, New York, Virginia, Florida, and Arizona.”
The scout grimaced. “Her whole life would revolve around the dude for a few months but it never lasted. Usually within the year, the relationship would fall apart, and we’d be left scrambling for a place to live. Most of the time, we ended up back at my grandma’s place, in Baltimore. But then she’d find another man and it would happen all over again.” The scout paused, suddenly realizing he had overshared. “But she wasn’t that bad of a mom,” he added, scrunching his shoulders together defensively. “Just a little flighty.”
Jasper shrugged.“Eh, my mom had four kids and none of our dads were ever around, so, yeah, I know exactly what you mean.We did mostly stay in one place though.”
The tension in the scout’s shoulders relaxed a little.“Yeah, I guess you'd understand then.”
The conversation lapsed into an uncomfortable silence. In truth, Jasper had assumed that after months of being separated from his home, he’d feel some sort of instant connection with anyone else from Earth. He’d imagined it'd be a bit like a family reunion, but, instead, there seemed to be an unspoken wall between them. The man kept glancing up at him, clearly wanting to ask about something, but Jasper couldn’t tell what was bothering him.
“So…”. Jasper fumbled around, searching for something to fill the silence. “What made you sign up with the scouts?”
Erin scratched his head awkwardly, wincing as bits of burnt skin peeled away. “Well, to tell the truth, I kind of washed out of the Royal Guard.” He glanced up at Jasper, expecting to see judgment in his eyes, but the man just looked intrigued.
“How did you get connected with the Royal Guard in the first place? I thought their recruitment was pretty closed off?”
He shrugged. “When I first got here, that moon goddess gave me some sort of quest to join up with them, so they decided to give me a chance. I did okay with the physical training, but when it came to magic, I just couldn’t hack it. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t figure out how to actually use my essence.”
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“Really?” It was Jasper’s turn to be surprised. “I thought all of us summoned were supposed to be super magically gifted.”
The scout bobbed his head. “Yup, that’s what they say.” A touch of bitterness laced his voice. “To be fair, the priests assured me time and again that I actually had loads of essence. But in the end, having essence you can’t use is pretty much the same as not having it at all.”
“And they kicked you out of the guard for that? I didn’t think they required you to be a mage.” Jasper glanced at Annatta. Unless she had hidden it well from him, she was definitely not a mage.
“No, but you do have to have a real class.”
Jasper straightened up in his saddle, gawking incredulously. “You don’t have a class?” His brow wrinkled. “But you’re a soldier. Shouldn’t you be pretty much as weak as a baby if you can’t level up?”
Erin bobbled his head. “It’s complicated. The way the trainers in the guard explained it to me, because I have so much essence, the system won’t give me a warrior class, but because I can't use my essence, it also won’t give me a mage class. I guess the system knows something is wrong because I’ve been given a placeholder class - ‘undefined.’ I can level up and assign stats, but it doesn’t let me learn any skills or spells. And without either of those…” he shrugged.
Jasper understood then. Stats were nice, but it was skills like Spectral Wings that had saved his life time and time again. Unless that could be fixed, the scout was effectively handicapped. “Well that certainly sucks,” he agreed. “And there’s really nothing they could do for you?”
The scout shrugged. “Not that the guard could come up with. Believe me - I’d try anything. Truthfully, all I want to do is just go back home, but if I’m going to be stuck here, at least magic would make a hell of a consolation prize. Instead, I got the worst of both worlds.”
Jasper nodded sympathetically. “I can’t make any promises, but I can ask my uncle to look into it for you when we get back to the capital.”
Erin perked up. “There's someone else here from Earth?"
"Well..." Jasper hesitated. "Not exactly. Apparently, my mother was from this world originally, and somehow she went to Earth and had me, but she still had family here. It's all rather complicated, but the short of it is that my uncle is a pretty powerful noble. He might be able to help you."
The man's brows nearly rocketed off his face. "Wait, you're actually a noble? I thought you were just, like, knighted or something. And your uncle is a noble too? Is he like a real fat cat?”
Annatta, who had been riding silently beside them until then, gaped in outrage. “Fat cat? Lord S̆arrābi is not fat, and certainly is not one of those wandering Seraphs.”
With a laugh, Jasper shushed her. “It’s alright, Annatta. People on Earth aren’t quite so stuffy about these sorts of things. Though,” he cocked an eyebrow at the scout. “I’d advise you not to let anyone in the capital hear you call him that. He's actually rather well respected."
“But, no” Jasper grinned, “I don't think you could call him a ‘fat cat.’ He's more of a ‘well-fed tiger' sort of guy. I’ve seen my uncle fight, and while he definitely enjoys his silk robes and fabulous feast, he’s actually kind of a badass when the situation calls for it.”
“I, uh, didn’t mean any offense,” Erin hastily replied. He glanced nervously at Annatta who was still giving him the stink-eye, and babbled on. “I guess, to be fair, most of the nobles I met in the guard were surprisingly competent. Nothing like my bosses back home.”
“Well, back home, the only thing the rich needed to be good at was taking our money to line their pockets. Here, the nobles are the first line of defense between the people and whatever enemies or monsters are threatening them.” A smirk crossed Jasper's lips as an image of Zuckerberg, Musk, and Bezos squaring off against a horde of charging trolls flashed through his mind. “But when you’re regularly thrown into life-or-death situations, it tends to weed out the incompetent people pretty quickly,” he continued.
Erin’s face sombered “Life-or-death situation, huh?” He fell silent, looking off into the distance, before finally finding the courage to ask the question that had been bothering him since they’d left the prison. “How do you do it? The killing, I mean,” he quickly added.
Jasper was startled. “Pardon?”
“I saw you casting that spell on the guards,” the scout explained. “I saw two of them die. I’ve killed a few monsters since getting trapped here, but I haven’t had to kill, like, a person. I think I could do it in the heat of the battle, in a life-or-death situation, but that was just a straight-up execution. Why did you kill them?”
Jasper pondered his words for a few minutes before replying. “The spell only kills people that have done really bad things - or at least that's what its description claims. I mean, I figure I wouldn't have any qualms about killing someone like, I don't know, a serial killer or an SS soldier, so I try to tell myself that's what it's doing.”
“But honestly, I didn’t have many options. I hate using that spell, but the village chieftain was going to kill all of the guards as soon as I left. So the way I choose to see it, I didn’t kill four of the S̆addu'â - I saved thirty-one of them.”
Erin’s eyes widened. “The chieftain was really going to kill his own people? Why?”
“Because they weren’t his people.The guards were sired by that monster, the Ilābun. Apparently, once the creature appeared he pretty much enslaved the village and forced himself on the women. Evidently, he used those offspring as some sort of food source until we came along and killed him.”Jasper sighed and ran his fingers through his thick mop of hair.
“Honestly," he admitted, "I'm just hoping I didn’t make a mistake by letting them live.” He jerked his head toward the back of the group where Nēs̆u was riding. “Nēs̆u, by far the most experienced warrior in our group, thought we should kill them all, but..." his words trailed off. "I don't know. It just doesn't feel right to kill someone because of who they were born to, or what they might do.”
He met the scout’s eyes. “But this world is different, man. It’s full of cultists who will kill you to eat your soul, monsters who will happily settle for just chomping on your tenders, gods who will command you to kill in their holy name, and all sorts of other crap. Life is cheap here, and the world is a hell of a lot more violent than Earth. If you can’t find it in yourself to kill, you aren’t going to survive long.”
The scout swallowed visibly. “Guess we’ll find out if I have what it takes then.”
The story the little S̆addu'â boy had told him came to mind, and Jasper shook his head. "I don't think you need to worry about that. You know, I heard what you did back in Dūr-Ēkal - when you tried to save that woman."
Erin grimaced. "Lot of good that did. All I accomplished was getting me and everyone else in my squad captured. Some of them died because of me."
"You're not responsible for their deaths," Jasper disagreed. "The Ilābun is. You tried to do a good thing and unfortunately it didn't work out, but that doesn't make it your fault."
The scout nodded his head in agreement, but Jasper saw the disbelief mirrored in his eyes. I suppose he just needs time to process it. Letting the matter drop, he continued on. "Anyways, my point was that that wasn't the act of a coward. When the time comes, I think you'll find you're made of sterner stuff."