(Wednesday, 5th of Marching Legion Moon, 2021)
Jack was on a hill somewhere in Vita Bergen with evergreen trees scattered around the snow white landscape, dressed warmly to help fight the cold weather. His outfit consisted of snow shoes, warm pants, a camouflage parka, and a beanie. Despite all this, Jack was still shivering from the cold. On the other hand, one of his teammates, Caroline appeared to be perfectly fine wearing just a red sweater, jeans, and sneakers. Meanwhile, Angelo was just wearing his usual outfit. Othelia was inside of her mech, so she wasn't affected by the cold. Jack's other teammates, Saorise and TJ, were shivering just as much as he was as the group trudged on through the snow.
"This is great weather." Simo looked up at the cloudy gray sky, letting snow fall onto his face. "I feel like I could shoot 15...no, 30 Russians in this weather."
"What the hell is a Russian?" Jack asked while Jojo rested on his chest, poking its head out from the hole above the zipper. "How much further do we have to walk?"
"Just a couple more meters." Othelia answered from her mech. "The place we'll be entering has an invisible dome around it, so we can't see it until we enter the dome."
"Then how the hell are we supposed to know when we enter the dome then?" Jack asked in a somewhat annoyed tone of voice.
"The employer said we'll know when we cross." TJ answered, and to Jack, that answer was absolutely unhelpful.
Before Jack could complain about it, the air suddenly became warm and welcoming, completely contradicting the cold and harsh wasteland everyone was just in. Jack focused on his surroundings and he saw that everyone was in a clear dome of magic, with warm and soft grass right below them and something like a sun at the top of the dome, giving everything warmth. The top of the dome extended straight up at least 30 meters up, and slowly curved down around the area, like a giant bowl. In the middle of this dome, there was a massive tree, and in this tree was a massive tree house.
"Well, looks like they were right." Saorise removed her hood and pulled her hair out of her jacket. "I think this is the place."
"Hey, the bark on that tree kind of looks like a person with antlers, doesn't it?" Simo pointed at the base of the tree, and Jack couldn't see that far.
"Sometimes, I wonder if your vision has been surgically enhanced in your previous life." Jack looked at the tree house as he walked towards it. "Lucky for us, this isn't a combat mission, so I don't think your marksmanship skills will be good for today."
"Hey, you never know when an ambush may occur." Simo responded while Angelo walked past the two of them. "Hey Angelo, you didn't say anything throughout the entire mission so far, you alright?"
"Let's just get this over with." Angelo scowled, and everyone else in the ground was thinking the same thing as Simo was.
"What a fun guy!"
With Angelo moving in front, the rest of the group was forced to follow him towards the tree, while Othelia was in the back thanks to her slow moving mech. Despite the fact that this wasn't a combat mission, Jack noticed TJ held one of his glocks, while Saorise had an MG42 machine gun with a box magazine. Caroline was undoing her jacket, revealing a gray t-shirt. Caroline held her jacket whilst brushing her hair back.
"Hey Caroline, how are you able to withstand the cold around here?" Jack asked the girl whilst taking off his jacket, since this environment was surprisingly warm despite being in the middle of Vita Bergen.
"Oh, Whirlwind Rondo allows me to control the weather, so I increased the temperature a bit around me." Caroline answered. "In fact, you have Golden Feast, so you can probably do something similar for yourself."
"So you did that for yourself but not for the rest of your teammates?" Jack asked the brown haired girl with a raised eyebrow, and the girl nervously chuckled.
"Yeah, sorry." Caroline apologized, and the group reached the base of the tree, so Caroline called up at the treehouse. "Hello?! We're the Guardians you hired!"
There wasn't a verbal response from someone up above, but a wooden hatch suddenly opened up from the treehouse, and from that hatch, a long wooden ladder protruded from the open hatch before its legs planted itself on the ground. Jack placed his hand on the latter and shook it slightly, checking its stability.
"This is suspicious as hell, but I'll go up first." Jack volunteered himself to go first while gesturing to his leg. "My leg is perfect for shock absorption, so I won't be hurt."
"I mean, I can fly, but if you're confident, be my guest." Caroline replied whilst gesturing to the ladder.
Jack gripped the ladder, and began to climb up the ladder, listening to its creaks and moans of the ladder below his feet. Despite the old feel of the wood, he didn't feel it wobbling even the slightest amount. As Jack climbed the ladder, he noticed something in the bark, a depiction of a man with horns meditating. Jack found this depiction pretty neat as he climbed into the tree house, taking a look around inside the building. Inside the large treehouse was what looked to be your run of the mill house, with a kitchen, living room, and some other rooms that were hidden behind doors. Jack looked around, and he saw that the living room/kitchen combo that he entered was empty, until Jack heard the sound of someone clearing their throat. He looked at the source of the noise, and saw a tiny, bearded man that was the size of a water bottle standing on the kitchen counter, holding a wooden spoon. His attire consisted of a chef's outfit and apron, while his brown hair was pulled back. Jack walked into the room to greet the man.
"Yo." The tiny man greeted Jack as Caroline popped her head into the building from the open hatch. "Name's Korot, and I am domovoy."
"Jack, Guardian in training." Jack recalled that most nonhuman races are from the enchanted forest, and he wondered if Korot is from there. "My teammates are Caroline, Angelo, TJ, Saorise, Simo, Jojo, and Othelia. So what do you need help with?"
"Well you see-" Korot was about to tell Jack what needed to be done, but then one of the doors opened up to reveal a bearded man, wait, Jack recognized the man...he was a criminal!
"Oi, Korot, where's breakfast? I'm starving." The man known as Vedmak was a notorious criminal, associated with robberies all over the globe. His balding, and bearded head poking out from one of the doors.
"Korot, get behind us, this man is a criminal, charged with robbery." Caroline summoned a Thunderbolt in her hands, and Korot spoke up.
"Hey, guys, y'all need to chill." Korot ordered whilst slapping his wooden spoon against a pan. "That's my boss, Vedmak, and while he is eccentric, he's not a bad guy."
"Eh? Korot, who the hell are these guys?" Vedmak stepped out of the room he was in, revealing his stained tank top and shorts that he was wearing. His body was rather...plump to put it nicely. He had a very noticeable beer belly, and his limbs were thick with fat. Not enough to impair his movement, however.
"Do you remember the unique condition with my brother, Anton?" Korot questioned the fat man. "I used the allowance you gave me to hire some guardians to help me with that."
"Oh, right...Anton." Vedmak appeared to be conflicted about the issue, but he simply shrugged. "Knock yourselves out, but don't damage the flowers in my garden."
After that, Vedmak went back into his room, and Jack decided to politely ignore him. With that odd introduction out of the way, the rest of the teammates climbed up the ladder with the exception being Othelia, who was going to keep guard. Meanwhile, Jack noticed an old woman peeping in through the window, and she was the perfect depiction of a witch. Long, pointed nose covered in warts. Her hair was long and messy, and she was the perfect depiction of a witch.
"Who is that?" Saorise aimed her gun at the unknown person who was peeking in the window.
"Oh her?" Korot pointed his spoon at the unknown woman. "That's Yaba. She's a weirdo, but also a good person. I think."
"That 'I think' at the end wasn't very reassuring." TJ commented before Korot jumped onto Jack's shoulder.
"Okay Jack, you see that sliding glass window at the far side of the living room?" Korot ordered Jack, whilst pointing at the doors in question. "Those lead to the garden, where you'll find my brother."
Jack followed Korot's orders and opened the sliding glass doors to be met with what can only be described as a domesticated jungle. There was a stone path leading to the middle of the garden, but everywhere else were a variety of plants. Jack saw that instead of soil, the owner of the garden was using the branches of the tree that he lived on to somehow grow more, albeit smaller, plants. There were apple trees, orange trees, lemon trees, and even some tropical fruit trees that were somehow growing out of the bark of the giant branches. However, there were now plants that grew in the ground here, like potatoes and carrots. Jack kept on walking down the path until his gaze was fixed onto a singular white gazebo with a stone statue in the middle of it. This statue was small, roughly the size of Korot, so the statue was on a white pedestal.
"Yep, that's my brother." Korot confirmed that his brother was the stone statue. And Jack looked at the statue curiously. It looked exactly like Korot. "I don't know how, but he was turned to some kind of weird stone one day while we were in the enchanted forest."
"Maybe it was a gorgon?" Jack suggested, since Gorgons do allegedly possess the power to turn people to stone with just a glance.
"No, gorgons usually turn people into regular rocks, my brother's been turned into an unknown kind of stone." Korot informed Jack as he set the domovoy down on the pedestal, allowing him to stand with his brother. "Lucky for me, Vedmak was nice enough to lend my brother and I a home."
"How do you know Vedmak wasn't the one who turned your brother to stone?" You questioned the domovoy.
"Because Vedmak almost died at the hands of the person who did this." Korot answered, and Jack began to wonder if the person who did this was one of those threats that Herakles kept mentioning. "It was eleven years ago when this happened, so I've been saving up the money I make from working for Vedmak to hire guardians who can undo this curse."
"Weird, I don't think I've seen anything like this." Caroline closely examined the rocks. "Maybe I should take a sample and give it to Medea."
"Only take a part of his beard, I don't want my brother getting hurt, ya hear?" Korot ordered, and the group had no choice but to oblige.
"Here, let me try." Jack turned his right hand into a raptor's claw. From the wrist down, his hand was scaly, long, strong, and sharp. He carefully plucked a piece of the stone beard off the statue, and handed it to Caroline using his raptor hand. "There you go."
"Cool, so how do we undo this spell in the first place...?" TJ watched as Jack turned his hand back to normal whilst looking at the statue.
Without so much as a word, Angelo stepped up and hovered his palm over the statue. Underneath the statue, an odd magic circle appeared. Unlike Medea's, Alice's, or even Jack's, it had no design. Medea's had a lavender design, Alice had a pentagram design, while Jack's depicted a t-rex fossil. Meanwhile, Angelo's was just a bitch black circle in reality. Darkness covered the entirety of the stone statue, and Jack could hear things crack underneath the darkness before the darkness sank back into the magic circle, revealing a Domovoy who looked exactly like Korot, but instead of a brown beard and hair, he had black hair and a beard.
"Brother Anton!" Korot suddenly hugged his newly freed brother, who just blinked in confusion. "It has been so long since I got to hug you like this!"
"Before we celebrate, has 'she' been defeated, yet?" Anton asked his brother, who only looked confused. "Given your reaction, I think it would be safe to say she hasn't been defeated yet. So we need to hide, now!"
"Brother, what on Earth is going on?" Korot asked his brother while Anton looked around, checking for some kind of threat the others weren't even aware of.
"Guardians, we need to move swiftly, so that I may explain what's happening to my brother." Anton jumped into Jack's hands, and the archeologist picked up Korot. "First, let's head back inside and speak to Vedmak."
"Brother, what's going on?" Korot asked while Saorise and TJ prepared their respective firearms.
"I kept this a secret from you Korot, but you and I are capable of turning into a Divine Weapon called Daybreak." Anton explained, and Jack was somewhat grateful they didn't turn into an artifact.
"Like how Rico and Nico are demonic weapons?" TJ asked while looking up at the sky, not able to see that much because of the leaves blocking his view.
"Similarly, yes, the only difference between demonic and divine weapons is that divine weapons need two people to form one weapon." Anton replied as Jack's group went back into the house, and the archeologist set both the Domovoys down on the kitchen counter. "You see, I asked Vedmak to cast an illusion on my brother to make it look like he was fighting a person who turned me into stone, when in reality, he turned me into stone."
"Why didn't either of you tell me that?!" Korot asked while Jack's group awkwardly stood beside the kitchen counter as the two brothers argued.
"Don't you guys find it weird how we never get paid in cash for our missions?" Jack asked Caroline. "Like I'm not complaining or anything, but our services cost money, so who's taking the money?"
"It's obviously the college, like they don't charge much for admission compared to other colleges on the continent." TJ guessed. "Plus, they feel bad for taking your money if they kick you out. They gotta keep themselves afloat somehow."
"Say, Korot, how much did our services cost yo-'' Before Jack could finish his sentence, Jack heard the window break, and both the domovoys were missing from the counter. Meanwhile, he heard a witches' laughter from outside. "AW SON OF A BITCH."
"WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?!" Vedmak swiftly came out of his room, and everyone could see purple smoke emerging from his room.
"Some witch bitch snatched the domvoy brothers." Simo answered whilst pointing his thumb at the broken window, and Vedmak scowled before summoning some kind of armor around himself and snapping his fingers. "Okay listen up you little shits, new mission, we're fighting a witch who's in possession of an artifact."
"Of fucken course she has one."
"Her weapon is Utgard, a set of armor that can increase one's magical power." Vedmak then opened the hatch to his house. "I reinforced the barrier, so now she can't leave."
"Cool, let's slay us a witch."