Traveling Magic Shop (Patreon)

Myst closed the door on the mailbox then started walking back up the driveway as he sorted through the junkmail. 'Ads for shit I don't need and shit I don't want…" he trailed off when he saw a postcard, "Choose your own adventure! Magical Shopkeeper?"

He glanced at the back, wondering if it had a return address so he could return the favor to whichever friend had sent it as a prank. "Limited time offer, become the magical shopkeeper that you always wanted to be, sign up now and get Upgrade and Immortality as signing gifts? Yeah, that would be nice…" he trailed off as he suddenly found himself in a strange and cluttered shop filled with old fashioned furniture, glass cabinets, wooden shelves and smelling like an exotic garden.

"Excellent!" the old man behind the counter exclaimed as he tossed Myst a set of keys.

"What?" Myst sputtered as he reflexively caught the keys that had been tossed at his face, trying to figure out what the hell was going on, as regardless of how many isekai animes he’d watched or read the odds of it actually happening to him where on the far side of never with a side order of not a chance.

The shopkeeper gestured at the sign over his head. "Rules are simple, no shoplifting, no haggling, and no returns. You're now the new shopkeeper, have fun with that."

"Why are you quitting?" Myst asked as he glanced around the cluttered shop filled with a large collection of furniture that didn't match, looking like someone had hit a couple of estate sales or robbed a museum at some point, and hundreds of books bound in various materials of a random assortment of styles, along with glass cabinets filled with random knick-knacks and small items that caught the eye.

"No one said the place was cursed when I took the job, I can't stand the little brats that come with the palace, and the daycare service I dumped them in canceled my contract, something about one of the little shits catching things on fire and Rose not keeping her clothes on," the man complained as he walked around the cabinet and headed toward the door.

"Cursed?" Myst asked, wondering what he'd just gotten pulled into and trying not to freak out or laugh maniacally about getting teleported somewhere.

"It's on the card, same with your powers. Everyone gets different powers so I can't help you there," the man told Myst then grabbed a large sack that was stuffed almost to bursting and darted out the door, happy that he could finally escape the place now that the minimum time on his contract was up and he had a replacement.

"Great," Myst muttered as he looked at the post card, wondering how badly the curse was going to screw him over. "Powers: Upgrade, the ability to spend mana to improve items, qualities, objects or people. The power can't give knowledge but just about everything else can be upgraded with enough mana. Immortality: Conditional, as long as you're in the shop, you can't be killed, nor do you age and any damage regenerates with a night's rest. That's an impressive health package and a damn good reason to never leave the shop."

He glanced over the note about the supplies restocking. 'Common supplies restock in a day or two, rare after a month, and capstone items restock after a year and a day, provided I don't take the items for my personal use, that causes them to restock ten times slower. No rent or utilities and I have a place to crash, not sure what the guy was complaining about.'

Myst frowned slightly when he got to the part about the wards of the shop, wondering why they had names before realizing they didn’t mean magical wards… well they did, but not protective ones, but rather children he was expected to care for. 'Rose Lily Potter, Harry James Potter, age four? If Rose and Harry make it to Hogwarts, safe and mostly sound, you'll get a voucher for a free monster girl. Bonus objective: If the children know more magic before they enter Hogwarts at eleven than most students know when they graduate you'll receive a power that lets you create witches for sale. Bonus objective: If Rose remains a nudist until she reaches Hogwarts, you'll get an additional 30 percent merchandise for the shop.'

'Nothing says I have to sell them to someone that won't just set them free,' Myst mused as he read the rest of the postcard, curious about the curse and wanting to make sure there weren't any hidden clauses that would screw him over. He frowned when he saw the note about how the shop was a magnet for kids and teenagers. 'Could be worse, at least it doesn't say anything about them being compelled to cause trouble or break things.'

"Can…" the naked little red haired girl’s voice trailed off when she walked down the stairs behind the counter and saw Myst. "Who are you?"

Myst turned to look at the little girl with red hair, green eyes and a lightning bolt shaped scar on her forehead, instinctively knowing who she was. "I'm Myst, I'm the new shopkeeper."

"Good, old guy was always grumpy," Rose complained.

"Are you hungry?" Myst asked, not sure what else to ask.

"I had crackers," she assured him, not wanting to seem like a problem.

"I'm sure we can find something better than crackers," Myst assured her, hoping that the apartment above the shop had food like the card claimed.

"Okay," Rose agreed as she excitedly scampered back up the stairs to tell her brother that the grumpy old man was gone.

'If I last five years, I get to keep Upgrade. I survived working for a public school, I should be able to put up with a bunch of kids wandering around the shop,' he told himself as he stuck the keys to the shop in his pocket and headed for the stairs, figuring he'd start with checking out the apartment and making sure the kids had something to eat.

He wasn't particularly impressed by the studio apartment that looked like it had been ransacked, mostly because the cupboards were all open and most of the food that should have been there was gone. He glanced at the bunk beds that were pushed up against the wall next to a pair of dressers then over at the spot on the lime green carpet where a bed had been. 'At least he left the bunk beds,' he mused as he glanced at the four year old with black hair, green eyes and a lightning bolt scar that was wearing overalls and talking to his sister, cousin or dimensional alternate. 'Would it have killed the bastard to introduce us?'

"Hi," Myst offered, not sure what else he was supposed to say.

"Grumpy said that we'd get a new guardian," Harry replied as he studied the man with a wild beard.

"That's the plan," Myst replied as he headed over to the small kitchen, hoping that he could find some dishes since the old man had walked off with just about everything that wasn't nailed down. Thankfully, it wasn't too hard to find a couple of cans of tuna that he'd missed or left as well as a can of generic mushroom soup, a box of bowtie pasta and a dented pan that the old shopkeeper had left behind. "What do you like to do for fun?"

Rose glanced at her brother then looked at the new shopkeeper. "Paint."

"What about you Harry?" Myst asked as he worked on filling the pan with water from the sink, relieved that the water looked clear and didn't smell weird.

"Read," Harry replied.

"Always fun," Myst agreed as he turned the stove on, relieved that the old shopkeeper hadn't managed to walk off with the stove since he'd walked off with just about everything else. 'At least they're doing better than if they'd gotten stuck with the Dursleys,' he thought as he put the pan on the burner then went back to looking for something he could use for bowls and silverware while he waited for the water to boil.

0o0o0

"Did the shopkeeper have an inventory?" Myst asked as he looked through the collection of journals behind the counter.

Rose shook her head. "No."

"Price list," Harry said as he pointed at one of the journals.

Myst picked up the journal that Harry was pointing at and carefully opened it. He spent a couple of seconds staring at the words on the page trying to figure out what language it was in until he realized that the old shopkeeper just had horrible penmanship. "It looks like the shop sets the prices based on the local economy, but I can adjust them up or down."

"Grumpy always jacked the prices," Rose told him.

"Grumpy didn't like dealing with people," Harry offered, glad that the old shopkeeper was gone as he liked yelling at people to be quiet even when they weren’t really making any noise.

"Can I pull the lever?" Rose asked hopefully.

"Which lever?" Myst asked as he glanced around, not seeing a lever in the clutter.

"Back room," Harry offered as he pointed at the backroom.

"It makes the shop move!" Rose explained excitedly, wanting to pull the lever the old shopkeeper never let them touch.

"Maybe," Myst replied as he walked into the backroom that was filled with half-emptied boxes and broken merchandise the previous shopkeeper hadn't cleaned up. He glanced at the wall where he could see a map pinned to the wall next to a large lever sticking out of the wall at chest height. "My Hero Academia, France?"

"Grumpy liked France," Rose offered.

'Myst glanced at the framed list of the shop rules that was hanging on the wall and blinked when an overlay appeared, letting him know that touching the frame would let him change the shop rules and that they had to be somewhat reasonable for a shop. He glanced at the icon for his mana pool that was part of the overlay and sighed when he realized that he barely had any mana and that his mana regeneration was zero or close enough that he couldn't tell the difference. 'So much for hitting the ground running.'

He reached out and touched the frame of the list of rules, causing the list to go blank. "No shoplifting, no returns unless approved by the shopkeeper, and no harassing the staff," he stated, causing the words to appear on the parchment hanging in the frame.

"Isn't haggling bad?" Rose asked, thinking about the old man's complaints about it.

"I don't really care about the money and if people haggle, it should give me a better idea of the local prices," Myst explained as he walked over, grabbed a sturdy looking wooden chair and moved it over so that Rose could climb up and pull the lever, figuring most worlds were better than being stuck in My Hero Academia and especially in France, as it was sure to be filled with French people. "Go for it, I'm curious where we'll end up."

"Yes!" Rose squealed as she climbed up on the chair and grabbed the lever. "Zoom!" she squealed as she pulled the lever, causing the shop to lurch and sort of shudder for a couple of seconds before everything settled down and the map changed, showing a map of something labeled as the North. "Winterfell? Yeah, because that's not suspicious."

"Winter-fell?" Harry asked.

"Apparently," Myst replied as he held his arm out so that Rose could use it to jump down without getting hurt.

Rose grabbed Myst's arm and swung down. "Can we go see where we are?"

"You can look out the windows," Myst told them, unwilling to leave the shop before he had a chance to make sure it was safe since the map didn't list a year. "You can't leave the shop until we know it's safe."

"Okay!" Rose replied as she darted back into the main room, eager to look at a new world since the old shopkeeper didn't like jumping worlds.

'At least they're having fun,' Myst thought as Harry chased after his sister. He glanced at the crates filled with broken merchandise then followed the munchkins, deciding that making sure the munchkins didn't leave and get into trouble was more important than cleaning up the backroom. He'd barely walked out of the back room when the front door opened and a teenage girl wearing a blue dress darted inside and closed the door behind her, causing the bell above the door to ring.

"Is there anywhere I can hide?!" the girl exclaimed.

"Trouble?" Myst asked the teenage girl.

"Brothers," the girl replied as she glanced around the shop that she'd never seen before, something that shouldn't have been possible since she spent a bit of time in Winter Town and the shop was made from a black stone that didn't fit the local stone.

"Library," Harry suggested as he gestured toward the doorway that led to the library.

"Thank you," the girl replied then darted for the other room, her muddy boots leaving tracks on the hardwood floor.

'I can see why the old guy was a bit bitter,' Myst mused as he grabbed the broom leaning up against the wall by the doorway to the back room and went to work erasing her trail, always willing to help a girl with a bit of mischief.

Rose chased after her, wanting information about the town and figuring she was a good way to get it.

Myst had barely finished removing most of the evidence of the girl's arrival when the door opened and two young dark haired men walked into the shop, causing the bell over the door to ring.

Brandon glanced around the strange and entirely unfamiliar shop then focused on the man that was sweeping. "Have you seen a brown haired girl in a blue dress?"

"Pretty sure I'd remember that," Myst replied as he continued sweeping. "Feel free to look around."

"Thanks," Brandon replied as he glanced around, looking for places that his sister could have hidden herself. "What do you sell?"

"A bit of this, a bit of that," Myst replied with a shrug, wishing he had a list of everything in the shop so he'd know what was available.

"Swords?" Eddard asked thoughtfully.

"If you look hard enough you might find something decent, but I wouldn't get my hopes up," Myst warned him. "We mostly just sell furniture, books, games and plants but we also have some trinkets that you might be interested in."

Brandon pulled his attention away from the cabinet filled with strange devices that he didn't recognize. "What type of trinkets?"

"The type that makes camping easier," Myst replied as he walked over to the counter and picked up one of the metal lighters. He spun the stricker wheel and pushed down on the lever, causing the lighter to produce a flame.

"How does it work?" Eddard asked.

"The wheel strikes a plate which produces a spark which ignites the oil that the wick pulls up," Myst replied as he took his finger off the lever, causing the flame to die. "I'll sell one for two silver pieces."

"Deal," Brandon replied as he grabbed his coin purse, thinking of all the times he'd had to start a fire with flint and steel while the wind was blowing. "How many do you have?"

Myst glanced at the collection of lighters and quickly counted them. "Twenty."

"I'll take them all, assuming they work," Brandon said as he started counting silver stags out of his coin purse.

"They'll work until they run out of lamp oil, so they should last a long time," Myst assured him, not actually sure how long the lighter fluid would last with regular use. He spent a couple of minutes making sure the boys could use the lighters then collected the coins. "Best of luck with the lighters."

"These will make nice gifts," Brandon said as he stashed the lighters in his bag, looking forward to showing them off to his friends.

"What are the strange paper squares?" Eddard asked, having seen them behind the glass case.

Myst glanced at the rectangular trading cards that the younger teen was looking at, noticing that there were three different types of cards. 'Naughty Witches, Eldritch Beasts and Artifacts of Legend? Some type of Magic knock off? How do I sell this to people that have never heard of trading cards? Screw it, I've got twenty packages. Having one of them out of circulation for ten days isn't the worst thing, especially if it helps me sell the rest,' he mused as he grabbed one of the booster packs and carefully tore the wrapping paper off, figuring that seeing the cards would help explain things. "Not sure, I got them from a friend of mine, she figured they'd sell."

Brandon stared at the cards when the man flipped the first one over, revealing a red haired woman in a transparent red dress that looked better than any of the girls in the whorehouse the one time he'd snuck out for a visit.

"She's moving!" Eddard sputtered.

"Apparently," Myst said as he laid the cards on the counter, showing off a bunch of naked or nearly naked magic users, all of which were moving around or waving at them. He grabbed the miniature rulebook that came with the box of cards. "I found the rulebook, give me a minute."

"Rulebook?" Eddard asked.

"It's a game," Myst replied as he skimmed the introduction, trying to figure out how to explain the game to the boys. "You basically shuffle the cards in your deck, the witches generate magic which lets you store magic that you can use to cast spells or to summon beasts or artifacts to destroy your opponent's creatures."

"Use the magic base," Harry piped up.

"Magic bases?" Myst asked.

"The glass thing makes pictures," Harry explained, having seen a number of tournaments.

Myst pulled a glass rectangle out of the counter that slots for five cards and a golf ball sized marble set into the rectangle near the left side of the rectangle. "Do I need to be playing a game?"

"No, just put a card in it," Harry explained.

Myst set one of the witch cards in the first slot causing a six inch three dimensional image of the scantily clad witch to appear over the marble set into the base. "That's interesting."

"It's a good thing you're not in the South, the Church of the Seven hates magic," Brandon warned him.

"I'll keep that in mind," Myst replied as he went back to reading the rulebook.

"How much for the cards?" Brandon asked thoughtfully.

Eddard shook his head. "Mother will destroy them if she finds them."

Brandon grinned. "I'll just have to make sure she doesn't find them."

"No refunds for destroyed cards," Myst told the boys as he grabbed the box of booster packs and started adding things up, feeling slightly guilty about selling what amounted to cardboard crack but knowing he'd need supplies and the boys didn't seem to be hurting for money.

0o0o0

"Warning, the shop is not responsible for any harm that results from reading the books on this shelf?" Lyanna asked, not sure how a book was supposed to be dangerous.

"Magic books are dangerous," Rose explained, thinking about the old shopkeeper's rants about magic and how he'd been screwed over by a witch.

Lyanna glanced over the titles on the spines of the books. "Magic Made Easy, How to be a Warlock, Basics of Wizardry, Mysteries of the Oracles, Magical Contracts and Why You Should Never Sign Them?"

"Contracts can force you to do things you don't want to," Rose explained, thinking about the various times the old shopkeeper had threatened to get them to sign a contract.

"Like being faithful?" Lyanna asked thoughtfully, thinking of her brother's friend that she was betrothed to that had already gotten one girl with child that she knew about and didn't seem the type to stop just because he got married.

"Maybe?" Rose offered, not actually sure how they worked.

Lyanna grabbed the untitled book that was stacked on top of the contract book and opened it, curious about what it was about. "Choose your own adventure, Selena Wolfe's School of Naughty Magic?" She glanced at the three options that were written in silver letters below the title, "Student-"

Rose winced when the girl with brown hair vanished and the book dropped to the floor. She had just enough time to see the title page before the page flipped revealing a sketch of Lyanna in a marketplace with a bunch of students and half a page of text. "That wasn’t very smart of her."

Rose briefly considered picking the book up before her common sense kicked in and she realized that picking up the book that had already caused someone to vanish was a bad idea. She turned and bolted for the door to the main room, hoping that Myst would know what to do.