Chapter 600: A Druid to Curse

She reached out and pushed the store’s door open as she spoke. A small bell above the frame gave a single clear note that hung in the air for a moment before fading into silence.

"Hm...?" Benjamin’s brow lifted. The single syllable came out slow and puzzled. "Who is a woman?"

Katana glanced back over her shoulder as she stepped inside and moved toward the long wall given over to the sword gallery.

The polished blades caught the light in clean parallel lines, each one waiting in its place like a soldier at attention.

Her expression remained openly maternal, the same gentle amusement that had been present throughout the walk.

"Benjamin, you have to learn to appreciate your gender," she said, voice even and kind, as though explaining something simple to someone who had somehow missed it. "It is a wonderful thing to be a woman. You do not have to feel ashamed of it, even if you are far more divine than a normal beautiful woman."

"No, you’re misunderstanding. I don’t... I mean, I am not..."

Benjamin tried to find the right shape for the correction.

The words tangled and refused to line up cleanly, caught somewhere between explanation and protest, between the desire to be understood and the sudden awareness that understanding might not be possible.

Katana only continued to smile at him with that same patient, maternal warmth, and the longer the smile remained the more complicated the moment became.

Any further protest risked sounding like argument, or worse, like denial of something she appeared to consider self-evident.

He let out a short breath that was closer to a sigh than a laugh.

"Let’s just get your new sword and wait for Eric."

***

The interior of the shop opened around them like a carefully ordered armory that had also decided to become a gallery.

Weapons covered nearly every surface. Long swords, short swords, and curved blades hung in ranked rows along the left wall, each piece suspended on iron pegs so that the full length of the steel could be seen without obstruction.

The metal ranged from pale, almost silver bright to deep, oil-dark greys; some edges carried the faint wavy pattern of folded steel, others the clean, severe line of a single hard quench.

Opposite them, heavier implements claimed the right wall and part of the floor: broad-headed axes with hafts of dark wood bound in leather, war hammers whose striking faces were etched with simple geometric wards, and a pair of massive two-handed mauls that looked capable of cracking stone.

Racks near the center held bundled arrows sorted by length and fletching color, alongside several crossbows of different draw weights, their stocks polished smooth by years of handling.

Further back, on shelves protected by a low glass screen, lay the quieter tools of other disciplines—slender wands of bone or pale wood, fist-sized magic crystals that glowed with soft internal colors, and a small collection of staffs whose tips were capped with metal or crystal settings.

The air smelled of oil, old leather, iron, and the dry scent of preserved wood.

Light came from high windows and from a handful of low-burning lamps that left the corners in gentle shadow.

Everything was clean, deliberate, and arranged so that a customer’s eye could travel from one piece to the next without confusion.

An old woman approached them from the deeper part of the shop.

She was short, her back slightly curved, and her face a dense map of wrinkles that deepened when she moved.

Her hair was thin and pure white, pulled back into a practical knot. She walked with small, sure steps.

"Good afternoon, Baba." Katana bowed with clear respect, her voice sounding with the warmth of long familiarity. "How is the business today?"

"Fine. Nothing stranger than the usual has happened." The old woman’s voice came with a soft, eerie cackle at the edges.

She opened eyes that were glassy and grey, the color of river stones under water, and turned them fully on Benjamin. "And she is?"

Benjamin felt the familiar spike of irritation.

The correction rose immediately to his tongue, the words forming and reforming in his mind, but he kept it there.

Something about the way ordinary mortals kept seeing him as a woman—while Amazons and the other spirit-adjacent races mostly recognized him as a man at a glance—had begun to feel less like simple mistake and more like a pattern he did not yet understand.

He stayed silent and let the moment pass.

"This is Benjamin Mark." Katana’s voice held open pride as she made the introduction, her hand rising to indicate him with a small, graceful gesture. "She joined our party a week ago. She is very powerful, I’ll have you know. And Benjamin, this is Baba. She is a druid."

A druid is a category of human that live far longer than the ordinary span and possessed deeper, and more continuous connections to nature and the spirit realm than any common mortal could normally sustain.

The old woman who stood before them could have been anywhere from four hundred to six hundred and fifty years old; the precise number was impossible to read in the dense map of wrinkles that covered her face.

But the weight of years sat in her posture and in the unhurried way she moved, in the slow blink of her glassy grey eyes, in the patient set of her thin shoulders.

"It is nice to make your acquaintance, Baba," Benjamin said, as he extended his hand in a clean, open gesture.

His palm turned slightly upward, the kind of greeting that offered no threat and asked for none in return.

She took it.

Her grip was dry and surprisingly firm for someone so small and bent, the fingers closing around his with a strength that seemed to come from somewhere other than the frail body that contained it.

"Ohoho! It is rare to find this cold Katana praising anyone." The old woman’s glassy grey eyes studied him with open interest, tracing the lines of his face, the set of his shoulders, the confidence that sat beneath his calm expression. "You must be one spectacular young lady."

Benjamin felt the familiar annoyance rise at once.

The internal curse formed almost automatically—something sharp about one-foot-in-the-grave grannies who could not tell a man from a woman, or something bitter about eyes that had seen decades and still could not see what was directly in front of them.

Then Baba winked. The single, deliberate closing of one eye was small and quick, but it held palpable knowledge.

She knew after all.

The realization settled over him in a cool wave, washing away the irritation and leaving something quieter in its place.

She knew the truth and had chosen the public form of address anyway. She had chosen to play along with whatever game the world was playing.

The wink also confirmed what he had begun to suspect with growing certainty: for reasons he still did not understand, ordinary mortals looked at him and saw a woman.