Six Warriors

Reencounter - (Jack)

Jack's team arrived in the great metropolis, the capital of the Kingdom of Argia, Lightland. So there they were, Kaia, Jeremy, Thea and Jack, who was simply blown away by everything he was seeing for the first time. He and his team had appeared in a place destined to have magic circles of portals. The other town had been in a very distant place, a medium-sized town called 'Ippan', which although it was bigger than the Tayô village, didn't even come close to the splendor of Lightland.

"Yoshi! This place is awesome! Man, I'm so excited, so what are we going to see first? Man, there must be a lot of cool stuff around here!"

There were numerous beautiful houses in the city, built of wood in a medieval style, richly painted in green, blue, red, and various other colors. There were also stone buildings, as beautiful as the others, and also countless buildings, shops, temples, and thousands of other fantastic things. It was also quite busy. Elves, humans, gnomes, dwarves and even minotaurs walked the cobbled streets of the city.

"Easy there, newbie, don't make it so obvious that you're just a newbie." Jeremy said with a shrug, "despite what we've done in Tayo village, the news we're going to break isn't very good, you know? We know a strange guy took the scroll and that's bad. Another thing, we still don't know what happened at our crossing to have gone wrong like that, so something must be wrong."

"Whatever it is, let's figure it out, alright?"

"Don't be so excited Jack, the news might not be so good," Thea spoke.

"This problem at the Perennial Gate could have happened to the other teams as well, you understand? That means that your friends and our teammates may have suffered something bad... or maybe we could fear the worst and that would be a catastrophe." Said Jeremy.

"Stop that kind of negative thinking!" Jack growled, "the guys…they're idiots but they're tough. I bet they're fine and we'll meet here as we agreed."

"Jack" then Jeremy sighed, "one day you'll learn not to be so naive and prepare for the worst. But yeah, I hope you're right."

They arrived at a place where there was a small square with several trees and paved with white stone. They were there to enter a tavern called "The Drunken Guardian", but according to Jeremy, that place was formerly called "The Piss of the Gods Tavern". Jack wondered who would drink at a place called "Piss of the Gods." It was a clean and well-organized tavern, in contrast to the old name.

"Kaia, Jeremy!" Yelled the tavernkeeper from behind the counter, a heavily muscled man with auburn hair and beard, with the front of his hair already bald. Jack and the others walked over to him. "So, my friends, who is the boy with the cookie face?" the tavern keeper asked Kaia.

"Well he is..."

"Don't talk here, let's go in," Jeremy opened the door to the tavern balcony and Jack followed. He was surprised and wanted to laugh that the tavernkeeper was on top of a small crate; he was a dwarf. "What's funny, cookie face? Yes, I'm a dwarf, but I would still beat you in a fight."

"Calm down Drorn, he's one of us now" Jeremy said with a smile, "I saw the newbie in action and he's not bad, you know?"

"Appearances are really deceiving, my friend."

Drorn took them to an underground place in the tavern while he left a waitress to take care of the place. Jack believed they had gone to the cellar, but they actually went to a sort of secret room, like a vip-only tavern. Only they were there. Thea said that the tavern had been used for some time as a sort of meeting place for the Guardians, hence the name it took. Kaia and Jeremy told the story to Drorn, who listened attentively. Meanwhile, Jack interrupted the story from time to time to tell his parts of the adventure. He seemed very excited, but Drorn did not share this feeling and blamed Jack for the interruptions. Jack was then silent and in a bad mood, saving his anxiety for when his friends showed up again and told him their fantastic stories, Jack wondered what their adventures had been like.

Miguel arrived there the same day, along with Stanis, Victoria and that little girl named Yumi. Jack was soon excited to see them there and greeted them warmly.

"So? How was your adventure?" Jack asked anxiously.

"Hey Jack, stop treating this like it's a simple video game, okay?" That's what Miguel replied with a sigh.

"Oh but come on, I bet you guys have a good story to share, right?"

"You look well rested", Victoria sighed too.

"In a way, I learned a few things about this world," Miguel told Jack as they sat down, at the same time Yumi was talking to Drorn and the other Guardians, "I thought this world was in a more or less medieval age, despite the magic, but what I realized is that although there are many visible medieval elements, this place is not exactly in a Middle Ages."

"What do you mean?"

"It's hard to draw a technological parallel between this world and ours, but let's say in our world, at least most of it, our calendar is in 2011 AC, here the most accepted calendar says we're in 881 of the Tenth Age. So here, I would say that we are in a mix of Middle Ages, Renaissance, Belle Époque and contemporaneity, because the technology here comes almost completely from magic, it is strange and fascinating at the same time."

"Have you had time to learn all this in that short amount of time?"

"You didn't want to know anything about this world? Didn't you try to read anything?"

Jack was silent and Miguel sighed.

"Well, I wouldn't say I'm surprised."

After Miguel, who appeared there was Sam, he came with some people Jack didn't know, he knew that one of them was the Polo that was part of the Third Class. Jack was looking forward to Sam, as he was somewhat more fun than the human encyclopedia, Miguel.

"My adventures?" Sam smiled when Jack asked, "yeah, I've had a lot of adventures, I feel stronger now."

"That's it man, I totally understand the feeling!"

"But tell me something Jack" Sam looked from side to side, as if he was worried about something, "Fenrir hasn't arrived yet, has he?"

"Fenrir? Well no, why?" Jack grimaced in confusion. Sam glanced quickly at the girl he was with, a honey-skinned girl with almost amber eyes.

"Well, it's nothing, come on, you tell me your adventures and I'll tell you mine, but I'll let you know, mine were much better."

"Oh yeah? That's what we'll see!" Jack smiled.

That day was spent with Sam, Miguel and Jack exchanging experiences between them and among the other guardians as well, Jack discovered that that girl who was with Sam was his cousin and was called Katrina, was the Second Class of the guardians who were candidates to receive the crystals and also manipulated fire.

That day there was no sign of Arthur, Fenrir or Ethan.