Chapter 4: Chapter 3: Recovery and Discovery

Days had passed, and he had no more of a clue than he’d had when he’d asked the question. He was still the guest of the former magical girl, of whom he’d learned precious little beyond her quiet misery.

She hadn’t conversed with him since the first day. Well, the first day he’d been awake, as it would seem she’d kept him sleeping during the initial stages of his healing. For how long she'd done so was another mystery.

Much of each day, she spent in quiet study or contemplation. The rest on works he assumed must be magical in nature, as he could understand none of it.

The only time she seemed aware he was even there was during those periods she was actively working her healing magics on him, which, granted, were lengthy. Or when she was disciplining him for some error or other he’d managed to perpetrate through carelessness or lack of local knowledge.

For his own part, Jack was left to work things out on his own. It wasn’t going well. He had no idea where he might be, where he might need to go, or how he might get there. His injuries were by no means healed, and his mobility thus hampered. There was also a considerable amount of residual pain, though he’d grown used to that long before leaving Earth.

And, of course, no meds, which were all back home in his medicine cabinet. Somehow, though, even without them, he wasn’t unraveling. Not much, at least. Not anything he couldn’t endure with a bit of effort. He was even sleeping, although he had to wonder how much of that had to do with the old woman’s intervention.

His local surroundings gave him only marginal information. He was on the edge of a deciduous forest, and well off of any road. Gravity seemed pretty earth normal, so he wasn’t doing John Carter on Mars. The horse was just a horse. An old piebald mare well beyond her better years. No fangs or claws, and she hadn’t talked to him. Air tasted clean.

Only the one sun. Two moons, though. One large, one small, or maybe farther out. With different rotation speeds. He became neither stronger nor weaker with either or both in the sky.

Long story short, his physical attributes probably weren’t going to give him any advantages, even should the magical girl... woman... whatever, eventually be able to put him completely back together.

He had no weapons, not even those he could have sworn he’d had on him when the bus had come calling. Nor any real idea if he’d need any, given that the most recent hero had apparently already disposed of the greatest evil of the land.

Of course, setting merrily off on his way unarmed and finding an immediate need for weapons midway to anywhere was probably not a sound plan. The greater evil may well have been dealt with, but what of lesser evils? Better to have and not need, right?

Weapons, however, were a thing he could not find anywhere obvious within Rosaluna’s small domain. At least no weapons he could recognize or use. That ornate cane she leaned on looked more than a little overbuilt merely to support her weight. Nor could he get a good, close look at it without seeming rude, which he wasn’t about to do, for a multitude of reasons.

Not that he’d be able to use any of the weapons he might be likely to find in such a place anyway. Always assuming that this was the fantasy world it appeared to be. Sure, he’d done some fencing in college. Community college and sport fencing. He’d messed around with rattan weapons and armor in the park a good bit with those anachronist guys during the same time.

Okay, he had some solid HEMA training under a couple of decent masters from when he’d been stationed in Europe in the army after his last combat tour, and during the year he’d taken off after his release from the hospital.

Granted, an abnormal lot of sword slinging for a modern man, but none of it worth a damn here against people who did it for real. If the desert had taught him anything, it was that using a weapon in combat wasn’t anything like playing in the park.

Theoretically, he knew how to build a bow. He’d never actually done it, of course, but he’d watched a lot of videos. There was an internet channel he subscribed to that was devoted to making bows out of all manner of goofy materials. Of course, almost all of his actual archery over the past ten years had been with compound bows. Which were, while he still theoretically knew how to build them, even less likely to be within his skill range to construct.

Then, too, even were he to be able to successfully cobble together a meaningful bow, somehow the subject of crafting arrows had never intersected his search track. He knew what the finished products should be, he could swap out heads, he could repair fletching. But making them? No idea. All of the primitive arrow making videos seemed to start out, ‘buy some dowels from the home improvement store,’ and he was pretty sure the nearest one of those was too far away to walk to.

So here he sat, many days into his impossible adventure —she was remarkably cagey about letting him know just how long that might be— scraping the bark off of a small ash tree he’d chopped down and split lengthways with an axe he’d found leaning against the hut.

The old woman had given him merry hell over it, too, laying into him about the callous destruction of things about which he knew nothing. He still wasn’t sure what she’d been on about. Spirits and magic and stuff that she couldn’t or wouldn’t clarify. In the end, she’d stormed off, but only after securing his solemn vow never again to touch the axe or venture into the wood without her prior permission.

By the time he got it shaved and shaped, he figured he might end up with a decent quarterstaff. He was still only marginally sure he could use it, of course. He’d trained with staves with the HEMA guys, but it had been awhile ago. Most of his recent pole arm work had been with the SCA, and they were way more strict in the way they fought.

Counter-intuitively, sparring with quarterstaves was more dangerous than using rattan swords. They built momentum too quickly and broke people. In the mock skirmishes he’d engaged in, fighters weren’t allowed to use staves at all, and the pole arms had all required heavy padding. Even then, it hadn’t been permitted to rotate them more than ninety degrees at speed, lest they injure opponents.

His problem now was that, were he to use the thing here, injuring the opponent would be the whole point. His brain would be telling his arms to swing, but his muscle memory would be geared to less than full speed. Maybe, though.... Maybe he could fix that. Overwrite the old memories with more practical ones.

But not right away. It was too soon, he was told. He was on a strict regimen of therapy, both magical and otherwise, which did not include stressful exercise. Apparently, his internal injuries had been far more severe than even he’d first imagined, and repairing the damage likewise more involved.

It was some time well into the second month, as near as he could figure, before he was permitted to begin anything like real physical therapy. Or what he called physical therapy in his head. It may have been longer, of course, since she kept putting him to sleep for various procedures without regard to his wishes. But he thought two months.

His phone would know, even without being able to check in, but he hadn’t seen it since awakening. Not that it would do him much good after all this time, he supposed. He hadn’t seen anyplace he’d be able to plug a USB cable since he’d woke up, and didn’t think he was going to any time soon.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

His watch would still be running, but he hadn’t seen it either. Nor any other of his possessions beyond his heavy leather belt, his Leatherman, and its pouch. It was like she was deliberately trying to divorce him from the passage of time.

Anyway, two months and change, he thought, and she’d begun to allow him some measure of autonomy in his physical exercise. Stretching, moving, plodding across the yard clinging to the increasingly ornate quarterstaff. A rehash of what they’d had him do at the military hospitals during his recovery after the IED. It surprised him how vividly he could recall the programs.

As time progressed and his recovery grew more complete, he became more active. His sessions grew longer, his movements broader. The pain diminished.

They’d settled into a sort of rhythm, the two of them, during this period. He’d awaken with the dawn to find Rosaluna already up and about. She’d examine him intently, as though she could see into his very bones. She’d engage in various antics to ensure his continued recovery, taking anywhere from a few minutes to a really long time before turning away and ignoring him for the rest of the morning.

For his part, once he’d been seen to, Jack would be free to take care of his morning necessities, after which he’d be free to either do the chores he’d taken up doing or work on his physical conditioning and training.

Whenever he wasn’t doing either of those, he worked on the staff with the blade of his Leatherman, carving various decorations into both it and his fingers. he still wasn't altogether steady, and there were slips. Chiefly, the carving involved knotwork, but there were stretches where he experimented with floral or other designs, to see if he could manage them.

He added a sling hook to one end against the possibility that he might someday try to use it as a sling staff. He’d never tried one before, but he’d seen videos and knew the theory.

Unsurprisingly, she had neither TV nor internet, nor could he make heads or tails of any of her books. This severely narrowed the variety of pastimes available, and carving on the staff gave him time to think without having to work at it.

At some point, he began carving a waster from the other quarter of the same tree. A basic cruciform with a long, narrow blade. Not for any particular reason beyond boredom. Maybe the vague notion that he might someday find a real sword he could wield, even here, and so he may as well get in some practice.

Once the waster was done, he’d started on a long knife. At which point the old woman had confronted him, seizing the remainder of the felled tree and stalking out into the forest with the pieces clutched under an arm. He watched her progress, dumbfounded, the Leatherman held in his hand poised over the rough outline of the dagger blade he’d already carved out of the wood. So much for a bow.

Thereafter, his whittling was restricted to finishing and decorating those pieces he’d already started. She didn’t seem willing to take them away, although she made her displeasure known whenever she caught him at it. He tried to ask once or twice, but she wouldn’t have it, turning away the moment she understood the topic was being broached.

She didn’t seem to mind his whittling on random firewood, but somehow, any attempts to create any sort of timeline, regardless of how he hid the marks, resulted in the fire claiming his work. He didn’t try anything tricky with his ash projects, fearing their fate should he be caught. But he was chafing at the treatment, regardless of his confidence in her intentions.

Somewhere into month three, near as he could figure, and he was out behind the hut with his finished quarterstaff in hand, training as he’d taken to doing as his strength returned.

He’d wrapped the bole of an old tree with straw from beside the stable and some burlap scraps he’d found inside. Nearby, he’d hung a knotted rope from one of the branches. Off to the side was a crude pell with several rough arms protruding at varying heights.

He’d visualize the movements and recite them quietly to himself as he executed them, as though he were both instructor and student. He was still more than a little amazed at how clearly the memories of those lessons came to him. Just like those of his physical therapy. Clearer every day, it seemed. As though they’d been mere hours back rather than several years. Like his mind was becoming sharper.

Somehow, though, even beneath the amazement, it didn’t occur to him to connect this with his new circumstances. If anything, he put it down to the old woman's healing skill.

Mornings, he did the whole routine slowly, concentrating more on the movements than on force, working on getting every motion exactly correct. Slow was smooth, smooth was fast as the old saying went. First with the staff, then the sword and dagger.

This was his afternoon session, though. He’d already done a full hour with the blades, and was now on the staff, alternating between whacking on the tree using the full speed and force of his muscles along with the full range of motion the staff allowed, and practicing precision strikes and counters with the hanging rope.

He’d been at it awhile and sweat was running down his back and chest when he became aware of his audience. “How long have you been watching?” he asked without either turning or slowing.

Not so long, she sent. This time at any rate. What are you doing?

Now he did stop, leaning on the staff and taking a moment to catch his breath. Wipe sweat from his eyes. He turned to her, standing there in the sun, leaning on her white cane. “Nothing here is familiar to me,” he said as evenly as he could. “And I don’t have any idea why I’ve been brought to this place... this world. You certainly won’t tell me anything.”

He waited, not expecting an answer and not receiving one.

“I’m kind of expecting to have to defend myself at some point,” he continued after he felt he’d waited long enough. “And since you have no actual recognizable weapons laying about, this was the best I could come up with.”

So you intended this from the very beginning to be a weapon? she seemed both confused and irritated. How do you expect to gain expertise with such a thing? You don’t have a life crystal.

You can flail away at that poor oak from now until you’re old and grey without earning a single modifier. Without a crystal, you are no more than an ordinary ungifted, despite where I found you. Destined to rank zero for life. The first gifted or monster of any significant rank you confront will simply smash you out of hand regardless of any effort you can make.

Your toy sword, she nodded towards the wasters laying near his crude pell, I could somewhat understand. You seem at least competent with it. Should you find a true blade before you’re slaughtered, you may survive a low level encounter or two. But this? No, young man, forget this folly. Perhaps you should better practice running.

Those were more words than she’d thrown at him at once since he’d first awakened. It was a shame they weren’t making much sense. “Life crystal?” he asked. “Modifiers?”

Life crystal, she repeated, motioning to the air above her head. Such as mine, do you see?

He looked. He squinted. He peered. “Not really, no.”

I beg your pardon? She asked, alarmed. You cannot see my crystal? At all?

He took a few steps closer, twisting his head this way and that. Nothing. “What is it I’m supposed to be seeing?” he asked.

She blinked, frowning. A glowing blue crystal, perhaps a hand’s length, palm to fingertip tall, spinning slowly about a hand’s width above the crown of my head. You truly don’t see it?

“I’m afraid not,” he admitted. “Perhaps it’s because I’m from ano—”

Kenji saw it instantly, she insisted. Nor did any of the others have the slightest difficulty. What’s more, each of them had crystals of their own, bright and clear. And yet you have none. And now you say you cannot even see them? How is that? Am I to believe that you truly are no more than an ungifted peasant after all?

Ah. He remembered the abortive thread of conversation from his initial awakening, when she’d observed that he wasn’t like the others. It must have been his lack of one of these crystals.

“Any idea where I might acquire one?” he wondered rather than answering. “Or am I doomed?”

Her initial thought was doomed, but she didn’t say it. The answer she did give was awhile in coming. I do not know, she admitted. I will have to give the matter some study. It is not something that I’ve ever encountered before, you see. People are either gifted, or they are not. I have never so much as heard of anyone who was both.

She turned back for the hut without ceremony or word, leaving him to his apparently pointless practice. She hadn’t addressed the subject of modifiers, but he supposed he’d seen enough anime and played enough video games to guess. She’d been talking about a leveling system of some sort. A system that he was locked out of due to his lack of this life crystal thing.

He stood there for a few minutes, giving it thought. Such a system meant that he’d be encountering things stronger than normal humans, be they monsters or people. Probably a whole lot stronger. Pretty much anything with one of those crystals would be tougher, stronger, and faster than he was, if he had it right.

If he was really to be encountering enemies at all, of course. There was nothing to say he would with their demon lord gone. The question now was, did he continue to train, or say screw it and get used to the idea of being weak.

As though that were a question. Shrugging, he turned back to the tree. Absence of modifiers meant that he’d need his baseline to be higher. And there was only one way to do that.