Chapter 6: Settling In

The next morning, Jack woke to find himself alone in the tent. The sounds of conversation and a fire crackling told him he was the last one up. He shuffled out of the tent to find the three girls seated around the fire, eating something steaming out of a large pot. Eleanor noticed him first.

“Good morning, sleepyhead! We were starting to worry you had died.” She said, smirking.

“Sorry about that.” Jack said, yawning.

“You had a tough day yesterday. There’s no reason to apologize for sleeping later than the rest of us.” Rose said.

Madeleine pointed to the pot.

“I caught a couple squirrels and cooked them in porridge with some mushrooms and roots I collected. Come eat.” She said, holding out a bowl.

Jack took it and sat beside Eleanor. The contents were a sloppy brownish mush that looked a little less than appetizing, but lacking another option, he scooped up a small spoonful and gingerly placed it in his mouth. To his surprise, it was pretty tasty. Savory and earthy, with a hint of something spicy. Different from the soup the night before, but equally as good. He cleaned the bowl, and grabbed another serving. Once breakfast was finished, the four of them set about disassembling the camp. Once everything was stowed away back in the bottomless pack, Eleanor dispelled the wards around the clearing, and with a few more words extinguished the fire and dissolved the ashes. Within moments, there was no indication that anyone had ever been there.

Once out of the clearing, they returned to the path they’d been walking the night before. The sun flickered through the thick canopy overhead, dappling the ground around them. The trail they followed climbed up and down several more hills and valleys and across a pair of small streams. The level of animal life in the forest absolutely shocked Jack. Birds were everywhere, singing a myriad of melodies as they flew from tree to tree. Rodents of all types ran to and fro across the forest floor, disappearing into burrows or up into the boughs of trees, seldom paying the four of them any mind. It felt like something out of a storybook.

By the time they reached the forest’s edge, it was well past midday, heading towards evening. They stepped out into a field of high grass, broken only by the thin brown trail winding through and around the various rises until it disappeared over a particularly large hill not far in the distance.

“How much farther?” Jack asked, leaning on the handle of his axe.

“Not far now. Home’s just on the other side of that rise.” Rose said.

At the top of the large hill, the land sloped gently down into a sort of valley, cut down the middle by a large stream that wound rather lazily off into the distance in either direction. There, adjacent to the stream, was a wooden clapboard house, two stories tall. In the field closer to them stood a small barn, and a couple fenced paddocks which Jack could see contained several different kinds of animals. There was also another building a bit further down the stream from the house that had a large water wheel built into its side that rotated steadily in the water flow. Beside that was a worn stone and wood bridge, which the path led to and away from until it climbed another hill in the distance and disappeared out of sight again.

“There we are.” Rose said. “Home sweet home.”

Eleanor closed her eyes and sniffed the air gently.

“Papa’s making something. It smells like some kind of roast meat.” She said.

Rose smiled.

“Just in time for lunch, too.”

The four of them followed the path down into the valley, and within a minute or two stood in front of the house. 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. Simon looked at his hand, then over to Jack in confusion.

“You alrigh’?” He asked.

“Jack’s… not really heat-resistant. Seems there was a mixup with a wish.” Rose said, dropping the pack by the door.

Simon rubbed the back of his head sheepishly.

“Deepest apologies, m’boy. I figgered you’d be-” He started.

Jack waved him away, chuckling grimly to himself.

“It’s my fault. I should’ve known better.”

“Well, b’at as it may, I do still feel mos’ embarrassed by ‘aving ‘urt ya.” The big man said.

Jack laughed.

“Seriously, it’s fine.”

Suddenly, out of nowhere 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 he 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 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.

["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 Jack’s 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, an ability, 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 ability seemed the best way to go.

["Alright, new ability 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 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 Simon immediately stopped talking, and looked up at the sign. Simon squinted at it, seeming to follow each word with his eyes as he read it. And then, out of nowhere, he started laughing uncontrollably.

Jack walked out from underneath the floating marquee sign, and turned to look at it and see what it said. In giant, bold black letters, the flashing placard read "IMMUNITY TO COLD AND ICE". For the second time in two minutes, Jack could not shake the overwhelming impression that Frumpkin was rolling on the floor with laughter at his expense.

"Well, 'at's sumthin', innit?" Simon said, his laughter calming as he wiped a tear from his eye. "Tho's I can't say it'll do ye much good roun' these parts now, willit?"

Jack could feel his ears turning red, but before he could get too embarrassed or angry, Eleanor chimed in.

“Oh don’t be so hard on him. He’s had a tough time since he’s been here.” She chided, nudging her father as she walked past. She grabbed a pitcher off the stone counter on the other side of the house. “When we found him, he’d been beaten half to death and taken captive by the Blackfoot clan for charging in to save Maddy.”

“Oh, I’m meanin’ no offense if’n oi’m givin’ any, young master. Jus’ enjoyin’ the irony is all. As my way of thankin’ you for your ‘eroics, why don’ you come ‘ave a seat at me table and be my gues’ for lunch. I’ve made some roast mutt’n for the occasion!” Simon said, gesturing towards the stone table behind him with his large brown hand.

Jack picked a seat facing the door and rested his hands on the stone tabletop, which was mercifully cooler than the rest of the hotbox atmosphere he occupied. By this point, every single piece of clothing he wore was soaked through with sweat. His socks felt like wet sponges, and made a faint squish every time he lifted or lowered his foot. The worst part, however, was very distinctly feeling sweat rolling in and out of every fold of fat on his body. He’d have to do something about his physique, and sooner rather than later. Simon, Rose, and Eleanor joined him, with the girls sitting to either side, and Simon across. Madeleine, rather than joining them at the table, excused herself and walked outside, taking a large chunk of mutton with her.After the door shut behind her, Jack looked at the others. Sensing the question he wanted to ask, Rose shrugged.

“It’s not you. Maddy doesn’t really like eating indoors. It’s something to do with when she was a child in Hawkport.” She said.

Jack looked at her curiously.

“Wait, Madeleine’s not a child?”

Rose seemed amused by the question. Before she could reply, however, Simon spoke up.

“It’s ‘em Ember Sprites. ‘Ey don’t age th’same way most races do, with us gettin’ all bigger and older lookin’. ‘Ey jest stay the same size an’ appearance once ‘em’s fully grown after five or six years. By Ember Sprite standards, she’s prolly older ‘an I am!” Simon said, laughing.

“She’s twenty-two years old. Which makes her the oldest of the three of us sisters by a couple of years, actually. At least as far as year count is concerned. Though relatively speaking, she’s probably a lot older.” Rose said.

The thought that the tiny girl he’d seen was actually two years older than he was threw Jack for a loop. Then again, given that so many anime and fantasy stories had characters that looked like young girls but were actually far older, it really shouldn’t have. Remembering that fact made him almost start to wonder if this world Frumpkin has thrown him into was created from the content of Jack’s own mind. He wasn’t sure if it would matter that it was, but it was an interesting thought to entertain at some point.

“So is Maddy’s the oldest, who’s the youngest then?” He asked, glancing from Rose to Eleanor.

Eleanor smiled and raised her hand.

“Me. I’m seventeen. Rose is twenty.” She said.

“She may be the youngest, but she’s th’most cleverest out of the four o’ us. Gradua’ed from Col’riss Academy three years early, ‘at one. Couldn’t be more proud o’ her.” Simon beamed. “‘Ey say she was the’youngest wizard what cleared the Wand’rin’ Halls in a generation!”

“Papa, stop! You’re embarrassing me!” Ellie said, her cheeks flushed what would have been beet red, had she been human. Instead they turned a bright plum color, which Jack found incredibly cute.

“Wow.” He said, honestly impressed. “Do you think you could maybe teach me how to use my magic a little better? I have literally no idea what I am doing, and I’m honestly afraid I’m going to blow myself up in the process of trying to figure it out.”

Eleanor’s eyes lit up, and she clapped her hands excitedly. “Oh, I’d love to! I haven’t gotten to practice with anyone who’s Gifted since I left the Academy!”

“Gifted?” Jack asked.

“She means someone who has the natural ability to use magic. Most people don’t have the Gift, and as a result can’t cast arcane spells.” Rose explained.

“Huh. I honestly figured in a world where magic exists, anyone could learn how to use it. That’s how it is with science where I come from.”

Eleanor shook her head.

“Nope. It’s a special thing that only appears in certain people. It’s more common in certain races, and less common in others. Elves and Gnomes tend to have a lot of Gifted families, while Dwarves and Orcs tend to have far fewer. Humans and most other races and species are somewhere in the middle.”

“And where do Fire Tieflings fall on that scale?” Jack asked.

“Oh, all of us are born Gifted.” Eleanor said, seemingly surprised by the question.

“Really?”

“Yeah. Having demonic ancestry tends to do that to you.” Ellie said flatly. “It’s one of the very few perks of being a half-breed.”

Ellie put a sardonic twist on the last word, and the way Rose and Simon both seemed to instinctively flinch at it gave him the sense she’d just said something less than polite about herself. Before a moment had passed, the dark cloud that had crossed her face vanished, and she smiled again.

“To better answer your first question, yes. We can start tomorrow after chores, if you’d like.” She said.

“And once you’re done with her, we should spar. Much like Ellie, I don’t really have anyone to practice with unless I travel to Hawkport and train with one of the guilds, or go goblin hunting. I’d love to see how a hero fights.” Rose chimed in.

“Not really sure goblin hunting counts as practice for you anymore, Rosie. It’s more like ‘creative body disassembly’ at this point.” Ellie giggled, taking a large bite out of the meat in her hand.

Rose laughed.

“Yeah, you’re probably right.”

She turned her attention back to Jack.

“You up for it?”

Jack nodded hesitantly.

“...yes, although I should warn you I’m only marginally better with my axe than I am with casting spells, it seems. A half dozen goblins were more than enough to almost kill me.” He admitted.

“Have you ever fought goblins before?” Rose asked.

“Honestly, I’ve never actually fought anything to the death before. Last fight I was in was on the schoolyard when I was like nine. Being a ‘hero’ is a pretty new thing for me. As in, like, this is technically my second day.”

Rose waved him away.

“Maddy said you killed a couple of the snotlings before they ganked you. That’s more than I was able to do the first time I faced them, and I wasn’t ambushed in the middle of it.” She said. “So forget about that.”

“Alright then. I’ll give it a shot.” Jack said, feeling marginally better.

Jack didn’t say much for the rest of dinner, choosing to spend much of his time watching the interactions between Simon and the two girls instead. Eleanor did the most talking of the three of them, flitting excitedly from one topic to the next often with little segue or provocation. Rose, for her part, seemed most content to listen, adding something in only when directly prompted to in some way. Simon seemed to take a huge interest in everything the girls were saying, and took every possible opportunity to praise and dote on the two of them. He asked them to recount every detail of the rescue, down to the littlest things, and listened in rapt attention as Rose told him everything. Most everything she said Jack already knew or had assumed, based on what the girls had said. The only thing that seemed to surprise him was the seeming flippantness with which the girls seemed to treat dealing with the goblins. They talked about them with the same general level of disregard that someone from his world might talk about a wasp building a nest on their front porch, as if a horde of the little green monsters were equally as unthreatening or easily dealt with. He wondered if one day he’d look at seemingly deadly problems with the same level of nonchalance.

Once the food was finished and the dishes cleared away, Simon shooed Jack and the girls outside, insisting on taking care of the cleanup with Jack was given a tour of the rest of the farm and given a chance to settle in. They found Madeleine sitting just outside the doorstep, sitting cross-legged amidst the grass and staring quietly off at the rolling hills in the distance as the sun set behind them. When she heard the door open, she glanced back over her shoulder at the three of them.

“Need help with cleanup?” She asked.

“Papa insisted on doing it. He wanted us to show Jack around and get him settled in in the meantime.” Eleanor said, jumping lightly down the couple steps into the grass, her long dress fluttering as she did so. “You wanna come, Mads?”

Madeleine looked at the three of them for a long moment.

“Alright then.” She said, rising.

The four of them walked the farm grounds, including the barn and the animal pens. Inside, starting to bed down for the night, were perhaps a dozen or more sheep, as well as chickens. Rose bent down to pet one of the sheep, and Jack went to stop her. To his surprise, however, the animal didn’t seem to notice the Ifrit’s body heat. Then, as he thought about it, it made sense. Wool was an excellent temperature insulator. Looking around, he didn’t see any cows or pigs, which told him they were probably absent for the same reason the sheep were present. The chickens made sense too as they didn’t need to be handled unless they were about to be killed. When Jack asked how they handled the eggs without cooking them in their hands, Madeleine indicated to a pair of thick, wool-lined gloves. Once they were finished with the barn and the pens, their last stop was the watermill. It was getting pretty dark outside, and Eleanor conjured a quartet of floating spheres of light that danced along in the air beside each of them as they entered it. Inside, a large wooden cog mechanism twisted a pair of massive metal-bound wooden wheels together, the entire thing creaking methodically as it did so. As Jack watched, a steady stream of grain kernels ran from a wooden chute and poured slowly through the wheels, which ground them into a fine powder which poured into a large clay container on the far side. There was some sort of makeshift scale underneath the large pot, and as he watched, the pot seemed to finally grow heavy enough to trigger the mechanism attached to it. When it did, there was a low grinding beneath his feet, and the pot shifted. It lowered down through a previously invisible hatch, a matching clay lid dropping on top of it as it disappeared beneath the floorboards and an identical empty pot was lifted by another unseen mechanism to replace it.

“Whoa, who designed this? It’s super cool.” Jack asked.

“Maddy and I built it, after we got tired of sitting here for hours watching the thing fill and waiting to swap pots by hand.” Rose said, seeming proud of herself.

“How does it work?”

“I’ll show you sometime. I promise.” Rose said.

It was now fully night when they left the watermill, and Jack found himself once again feeling incredibly tired. Is this how normal people felt after a full day of being active? Then again, he hadn’t been chugging caffeine and playing games all day, so his body probably wasn’t used to all of this exertion, even with his increased fitness. When he finally asked where he’d be sleeping, Madeleine just pointed to the farmhouse. Jack paled. There was no way in hell he would ever be able to sleep in an environment like that. His clothes were only just now mostly dry of sweat. A full night in that house trying to sleep would probably just kill him.

Seeing his reaction, Eleanor scrunched her face up.

“Yeah, that’d be pretty uncomfortable for you, wouldn’t it?”

Jack nodded.

“Yeah, just the little time I was in there was stifling for me, honestly.” He admitted.

“Well, you’re welcome to sleep up in the barn loft. Madeleine sometimes sleeps up there rather than staying in the house. It’s not super comfortable, even with a bedroll, but it’ll be a lot cooler.” Rose offered.

“Alright, I guess I will give that a shot.” He replied. Anything had to be better than trying to sleep in a sauna. They led him back to the barn. There was a ladder in the corner that he hadn’t noticed previously, and it led to a large hay loft suspended above the main barn enclosure on one side, a bit like a balcony. It was devoid of hay or nearly anything else of note, but it did have a shuttered window in the wall that looked out towards the house. The air up here smelled a bit like dust and farm animals, but was about the same as the outside temperature-wise. It wouldn’t be ideal, but he could get used to it. Eleanor brought him a bedroll, along with a couple pillows and an oil lantern while the other two girls bade him goodnight and retired to the house.

“Do you need anything else?” Eleanor asked, setting everything down.

“A way back home.” Jack said with a snort.

Eleanor sighed and rolled her eyes.

“Go to bed, Mister Gloomy. You’ll feel better once you get some sleep. I promise.” She said.

And without another word, she gave him a smile and leapt off the loft. She tumbled in the air and drifted to the ground light as a feather, the air filled with faint glowing magic glyphs that faded as soon as she touched down. And like that, she was gone, leaving Jack alone with his thoughts.