Within moments of Eleanor falling asleep, Jack felt a sudden wave of intense exhaustion wash over him. He felt like someone had completely drained the life out of him.

Which, of course, someone had, apparently. Now that he was out of the moment of that happening, he felt completely freaked out. Some hot demon girl had literally just sucked his blood like a vampire, and he'd not only loved every second of it, but had happily agreed to let her do it again and again if she wanted to. What on earth was wrong with him?!

The mental images of Eleanor's bare, swaying breasts and grinding hips popped into his head. Well, I mean, those, at least, made his decision a little easier to justify. But he didn't have time to reflect on the situation. He passed out from exhaustion only moments later.

The next morning, Jack awoke feeling oddly refreshed and energized. The sun was streaming through the sole window in the loft, and the room felt warm and cozy. He looked around to the other bedrolls to see they were all empty and made up. He crawled out of bed and put on his shoes, and walked out of the barn.

Outside, there wasn't a cloud in the sky, although there was a decent breeze that felt nice in contrast to the strong sunshine. Rose was hanging out various garments to dry on a clothesline strung not far from the barn, and greeted him when he walked out. She pointedly glanced at his neck for a moment, before directing her attention to his face and giving him what looked like a knowing smile.

"Sleep well?" She asked, pinning up a pale yellow sundress.

"Yeah, slept great. Thank you." He said.

"Don't mention it." She said. She motioned with her head towards the house. "There's still some breakfast left, I'm sure. Feel free to help yourself to it. And if there's none left, I'm sure Eleanor would be happy to make you more."

"Oh, alright. Cool." He said. He walked on towards the house.

"Oh, and Jack?" Rose called out after him.

"Yes?"

"You might want to wash your neck before you go inside." She said, tapping on her throat in the same place Eleanor had bitten him the night before.

Jack's face flushed. "Uh yeah, got it." He said. He walked the hundred or so feet to the small stream next to the watermill and wet and wiped the spot on his neck until his hands kept coming back clean. He wasn't sure if he'd completely gotten all of the blood off, but it was the best he could do without a mirror.

In what he would describe as the house's front yard, Madeleine appeared to be chasing around a butterfly, which happened to be just high enough or just fast enough to keep avoiding her grasp. When Jack greeted her, she stop what she was doing, froze in place, and just stood there, looking at him. He smiled and waved, but she didn't give any reply, so he just gave up and walked in. The girl was just damn weird.

The house was even more stifling than he remembered yesterday, and he could barely keep his eyes open for more than a moment before they dried out. Simon wasn't in the house, though Eleanor was. She appeared to be scrubbing something in the wash basin on the opposite wall from the door. She turned, and when seeing him, lit up, and dropped the dish in the wash water. She ran over to him, and without a single word, made a couple gestures with her fingers, rushed over, and shoved him into the door, pressing her lips hard against his until his head began to swim.

Eleanor grinned wicked at him. "Good morning, sleepyhead! So, last night is our little secret, okay?" She said.

"Uh, yeah, whatever you say." He said, barely able to think straight.

"Good boy! Now, go have a seat at the table. I'll grab you some food." She turned and walked over to one of the shelves to the side of the wash basin and grabbed several food objects while Jack found a way to stumble himself to the table.

This was going to take a long time getting used to.

Over the next several weeks, Jack got to know his new living mates very well as he lived, slept, and trained with them and got his bearings in this new world.

Rose served as his sparring partner for his martial combat skills, and insisted they use their actual weapons, rather than training weapons or other practice implements, in order to maximize the effectiveness of their training. When Jack expressed concern about them cutting each other to pieces in the midst of practice, Rose beckoned Eleanor over, and the blue skinned Tiefling took each of their weapons, smeared the blades with molasses, and said a few words under her breath. There was a brief flash of golden energy, and she handed each of them back.

Jack looked at the edge of his axe, and nothing appeared different about it.

"Put your hand out and touch the edge." Eleanor said.

Jack did as instructed, and reached out for the axe's blade. Towards the end, where Eleanor had spread the syrup, there was now a soft, invisible barrier that prevented him from touching the sharp part of the edge. It felt kind of like a firm, invisible jelly pillow.

"Oh, cool!" He said.

"It'll keep you from killing each other, but it won't stop you two from bruising each other, breaking bones, or knocking each other unconscious, so still try to be careful." Eleanor said.

"Thanks, Ellie." Rose said. She walked a dozen or so paces down the front yard of the farm house, and turned to face Jack, grabbing her sword with both hands in a ready position. "Ready, Jack?"

"No. No I am not," Jack thought to himself, but instead said out loud as he raised his axe, "Yeah, I'm ready."

Before he even had a chance to react, Rose's blade slammed against his chest with such force it it knocked the wind out of him and sent him flying ass backwards half a dozen feet, where he landed flat on his back gasping for air. Rose walked over to him, and looked down at him with a look of confusion and amusement.

"I thought you said you were ready." She said as she offered him a hand and helped him to his feet.

"I thought... I... was..." Jack managed out between fits of hacking and coughing.

About this time, Frumpkin's voice popped into Jack's head.

["Ouch! That one hurt MY pride!"] He said.

"What do you want, Frumpkin?" Jack asked, making no effort to hide his frustration as tried to regain his breath and his bearings.

["Wow, touch-y! I was just popping in to let you know how to tap into your wished-for combat training, but if you don't want that help, I'll just see myself out.."] Frumpkin said.

"No no! I want to know that! How do I do it?" Jack asked, adopting a placating tone.

["Simple. You just believe you are good, and let your instinct do the work for you. Don't think about it."]

Jack, careful not to just stare off into space as he spoke with Frumpkin, set about limbering back up, and swinging his axe back and forth several times to get re-acclimated with its weight and heft.

"So, you're telling me that if I just think I'm good, I'm good? How does that make any sense?" Jack asked.

["Hey kid, them's the rules. I'm not the one who made them."] Frumpkin said.

"Yes you did! You're literally God!" Jack protested.

["La la la la! I can't hear you! Now, get out there and give it a try. I promise not to laugh too hard if you get it wrong."] Frumkpin replied.

"Gee thanks." Jack thought, assuming a combat stance. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and tried to focus on what Frumpkin told him. He just had to believe he was good. He just had to believe it. How hard could that be?

"Okay Rose, let's try this again." He said, nodding to her.

The second fight didn't go much better. Neither did the third. Or the twelfth. Or the twenty-seventh.

By fight twenty-eight, however, he had a breakthrough.

He had to literally think about nothing. Literally. His mind had to be a blank slate for his powers to work. As soon as he started thinking about what his body was doing, or what Rose was about to do, or attempted to plan any strategies, they immediately failed and he got his happy little ass beat like an incel piñata. He just had to learn to zen out, and let his body and its new magical abilities do all of the work and thinking for him. It felt strange and completely counter-intuitive, but, for better or worse, it was his only choice.

Once he realized this, things got better.

Granted, not MUCH better. But lasting longer than three seconds flat and actually getting a few good moves in felt like an absolute triumph by comparison to feeling like a human baseball.

By fight fifty, he finally managed to score a blow on Rose's body, and by fight seventy-seven, he'd disarmed her, knocked her to the ground, and swung for the killing blow before freaking out and stopping himself when he saw the look of actual fear in her eyes.

So, his instinctual fighting skills only understood combat to the death. That was something he was going to have to keep in mind.

He reached down and offered her his hand with a smile, and helped her to her feet.

After that fight, he never lost a match again, but was careful to passively monitor his actions as he fought to keep things from ever going as far as they did again. Rose, to her credit, never got easier as an opponent. Even when he won, with all of his wish-given prowess, the fights were still very close, and on more than one occasion he barely escaped getting caught off guard and trounced. The girl was insanely strong, skilled, and fast, and he had no doubt that she would be the death of nearly anyone who tried to go up against her.

Between bouts with Rose over the weeks, Jack also spent a lot of time with Eleanor, having her teach him how to command and control his magic skills. He was definitely a sorcerer, she confirmed, and she promised to do all she could to help him learn how to use his abilities, but warned him that there was only so much she could teach him due to the differences in their magic classes.

The key similarity, she said, lay in their shared use of vocal expression to cast magic. Every caster, regardless of type, had to speak to use their spells, though the words and languages they used varied wildly. She, for her part, cast her spells in Infernal.

The primary difference, however, was that wizards used material components and somatic gestures to cast their spells, and sorcerers used their imagination alone. Because they always used the same materials and gestures, wizards could always get predictable results and experienced no fatigue from their magic use, but were limited by what spells they knew and how long they took to cast. Sorcerers could do anything they set their mind to, provided they had a clear vision, and knew the right trigger word. Sorcerers she told him, however, couldn't always control the results of their magic, and drained their own life force to cast, meaning if he cast too much magic too soon, he would wear himself out or potentially even die, which was, naturally, not a reassuring thought.

As Jack began practicing, however, he began to get a sense of how his powers worked.

Imagining something provided the general framework for how the spell should in theory play out, but the spell trigger word he used is what determined the actual final result, regardless of what he was imagining. So if he imagined creating fire in the shape of a tornado, but used the variation of the trigger word that stood for "fireball", he would cast a fireball instead. Which explained why he shrank when he intended to get larger when dealing with the goblins. What was less clear to him was why the trigger word determined the type of spell cast, or why the wrong spell trigger word popped in his head in the first place.

Eleanor said that the best she could figure, his spell words probably worked very similar to a wizard's, where a spell trigger was actually a complex command that described the spell's magic school or elemental sphere, the manifestation of the spell's magic, the spell's target, duration, and so on.

Which meant, she speculated, imagining things would cause the spell trigger word components to appear in his mind, and by saying them aloud in the correct order, he would generate the desired result. But if he said the parts in the wrong order, or used a wrong component piece, he would generate different results from what he intended, such as using a different element, or, in his previous case, shrinking himself instead of growing giant as he had planned.

"But how on earth am I supposed to know which part of a spell trigger counts for each component of the spell?" Jack asked, perplexed.

"I guess you're just going to have to experiment with slightly different spells and see which component parts change to know what does what" Eleanor said, shrugging.

That sounded incredibly tedious, but Jack was willing to give it a shot if that's what it took. With Eleanor's help and occasional moment of "encouragement", he slowly began to map out the terminology of his magic, nailing down piece by tiny piece what each word fragment did, and learning how they affected each other when placed together.

After a few weeks, he had figured out enough parts to create elemental projections of all kinds, change his body shape, size, and appearance, grant himself increased physical attributes, fly, conjure basic objects, and change materials from one kind of thing to another.

As he progressed, he began experimenting further, but found the level of his ability to manipulate the world was limited in some ways. He could not transmute or create living matter, only move it from one place to another. He could not affect the flow of time, only slow down or speed up the rate others moved within it. He couldn't seem to affect the minds or free will of other beings, either, apparently. When he imagined trying to do these kinds of things, he was met with an immovable black wall in his brain that made imagining casting such spells in order to prompt a trigger word impossible, and the few times he tried to combine what component fragments he knew in order to hopefully generate these effects, either nothing happened, or, worse, something would backfire spectacularly.

On one particular occasion, Eleanor had to rescue him when he managed to unintentionally turn himself into a duck during one of these attempts. He didn't think any of the girls or Simon were ever going to stop laughing or let him live that one down. He knew for sure Frumpkin wouldn't, as he began referring to Jack as Duck Boy from that moment onwards.