Chapter Text
The best time of the year is all grapes. Those perfect weeks right around the fall equinox when the sky is cloudless blue like grape hyacinth and harvest is in full swing. Back home all the villagers would be out in the fields, hauling baskets full of grapes to the communal wine presses. On grape-days like that I can still smell the sticky grape must when I close my eyes—grape must at the beginning of fermentation is the best smell in the world, so sweet and yeasty and warm as a hug—and feel it in the breeze that’s never too cool. I can sense it anywhere in the world and know grapes are growing nearby.
And boy, am I glad that harvest is someone else’s problem! Farming sucks. I left home for a reason.
Anyway, it was one of those dreamy grape-days when Gourry and I were stopped on our way out of Telmoord, which is just an overgrown village with some nice houses. There’s no reason to even be out that way unless you’re too tired to go on or you really care about, like, columns and stuff. It’s so quiet that when a courier approached us I was mostly surprised they had somebody for the job. Places like that usually send and receive messages at the closest big town.
“Lina Inverse?” the courier said. That’s my name, by the way. Don’t forget it!
“Who wants to know?” I asked.
But the courier just handed over a sealed letter and left. Fine, lady, I don’t care about you either. I opened it up and read in a messy but confident scrawl:
Lina! You should come to Atlas City! I’m gonna kill your best friend.
No date. No signature. Not even initials. Bizarre.
“Who do you think that’s from?” asked Gourry, leaning over my shoulder. Gourry is so tall he can drop his whole forearm on my head, but he doesn’t do that unless I’m being annoying. Gourry has blond hair and a lantern jaw and grape hyacinth eyes. Like a prince from a kids’ picture book with the vocabulary to match.
“Weird wording for a threat, huh?”
“Yeah.” I turned the letter over in search of a clue. No dice. “Who thinks they know me well enough to know who my best friend is?”
“Who is your best friend, anyway?”
I hesitated. That’s…a pretty good question, honestly. “I don’t think like that. My grandma used to say that there were three kinds of friends in the world: friends for a reason, friends for a season, and friends for a lifetime. Everybody’s just one of those, I guess.”
“Which one am I?”
“You’re Gourry,” I told him, to his satisfaction. Gourry’s not my best friend. Gourry is Gourry. Don’t get it? Too bad. I don’t owe you an explanation. “The way we travel I’ve always figured the people we pick up along the way are friends for a season, right? Travel companions that come and go,” I shrugged. “You wanna swing by Atlas City? It’s close enough and it’s not like we have plans.”
“Plus it’d be a shame if your best friend got killed.”
“Oh, yeah. Let’s look for a textile wagon. I’m not riding all that way with a bunch of sheep.”
Atlas City and I go way back. Even before Gourry, actually. That’s a crazy thought. When we finally got there Gourry was thinking it too.
“The first time you and I were here together…”
“Eight years ago.”
“Wow,” he said, with a whistle.
“Yeah. Feels more like eight minutes.”
“Underwater,” Gourry added, and you’d better believe I kicked him straight into an open sewer drain.
Funny thing about time: it feels like nothing and forever at once. Walking around with Gourry I really could believe that it had been eight years ago, but a second later all those days feel like a story I read. Was it really us who cleared out that horrible mess with the sorcerers’ guild and stopped the mazoku incursion? (Yes.) Did they really have to rebuild the whole eastern half of the city just because of one itty-bitty incident involving me and Amelia’s big sister? (Also yes.)
Whatever. By the time we got there it was late afternoon, which in autumn means sunset is coming fast. The docks were lively and the taverns were full, and the shops in the business district had a fresh coat of paint. It was even nice enough now to host some kinda fancy shindig, if all the big blue banners everywhere were any indication. And it’s all thanks to me! I deserve a statue.
“It’s busy here, huh?” Gourry asked, once he’d dragged himself out of the sewer. I didn’t help him out, but I did wait up. I’ve matured.
“Well, it’s a nice day,” I said, but now that he mentioned it there were lots of flowers and ribbons everywhere. Then I looked closer at one of the banners strung up between rooftops over the street:
THE EMPIRE OF LYZEILLE CELEBRATES THE NEW REPUBLIC
“Gourry. Check it out.”
He squinted up at the banner. “Which republic is that?”
“The old Alliance, dummy! Don’t you remember…” I stopped myself. Asking Gourry “don’t you remember” is like asking if I wanna skip dessert: it’s way too stupid to entertain. “The last time we ran into Wizer he told us Ruvinagald was becoming a republic. The other kingdoms started following along. They were mostly tiny fiefdoms anyways, villages with a castle they couldn’t afford to defend. Or like Taforashia, where most survivors of durum sickness died of post-plague syndrome a couple years later.”
Wait, that’s a sad story. This isn’t a sad story. Let’s keep it moving!
“…the point is the Alliance is a republic now. I dunno why they’d celebrate that in Atlas City, though.”
“Eh, any excuse for a party. Isn't harvest coming up, too?”
“Yeah, but…”
Speaking of sad stories, that was right around the time I noticed a melancholy guitar tune drifting somewhere above our heads. It was one of those sorrowful song that guys play when they want to seem deep, not at all the kind of thing you’d play at a celebration. Still, Gourry and I followed it all the way to a slanted rooftop where—
“No way!” I cried.
The melody stopped, and so did the player. Just like that a shrouded figure leapt from the rooftop and landed with the whoosh of a cape. They stood facing us, holding the guitar down and to the side like a sword.
“Hey!” Gourry said, waving.
Zelgadis has been with us on and off ever since Gourry and I first met, which is to say that by now I could probably write a fifty-pound book just about his facial expressions. Zel himself is way harder to describe. See, the problem is that I could tell you anything and the opposite would also somehow be true. He’s modest, intellectual, and polite, unless he’s being rough like the thugs who raised him. He’s got unwavering self-discipline except when he loses control and goes nuts. He’s a total asshole and the most sentimental squish you’ve ever met. Guy’s got multitudes in his multitudes, ya dig?
Anyway, Multitude Man over here had a cape and cowl as part of an all-white getup that I’m pretty sure is supposed to be some kind of atonement metaphor. He’s been wearing white duds since we met, back when he wouldn’t even go to Atlas City because he was afraid of his reputation following him. He was a bandit (and worse) back then. Now he’s a knight of the Seyruun crown. Eight years really is a long time.
Wait! Wait! One more teensy detail. Zel’s a chimera, a magical fusion of a human with a blow demon and a golem. How could I forget THAT, you ask? I dunno. I don’t think of him as a chimera. To me he’s just…Zel.
“Good to see you,” Gourry said warmly.
Zel lowered his cowl. “Likewise,” he said, in his typical arch way that makes everything he says sound aloof and sophisticated even when it’s kind of dumb. “That’s a new sword, isn’t it?”
“Oh, yeah! Check it out. It’s built around corundum ore, triple-reinforced…” Gourry held out his latest longsword. The center of the blade shimmered gold and red like it had just been enchanted with Astral Vine. “Handles just like a rapier, you’d never believe it was so durable. You gotta give it a go.”
“I just might. You know, I was hoping to run into you. It could be the last time you see me this way.”
I blinked. He couldn’t possibly mean…
“Whoa, Zel. For real?”
But Zel just brushed his cape over his shoulder and headed down a side street. That’s another thing Zel likes to do: leave. Blow demons like the kind Zel’s made from aren’t actual demons, just reptile-type goblins that like to run and hide. That must be why he’s always going away. He once left our party in the middle of a snowstorm for three whole weeks and then came back with no explanation other than he “needed to get out.”
“Is this for real?” I said again, rushing to keep up with Zel. “Like…a cure for your body? You’re gonna be human?”
“It’s likely.”
You have to understand that’s a huge deal. A HUGE deal! Zel’s been trying to fix his body for a whole decade and only ever been disappointed. The most I’d ever heard him say before now was that something might be “somewhat promising.” For him to say a potential cure was “likely” was, well, unbelievable.
“What’s with the guitar?” asked Gourry.
Zel shoved it under his cloak, embarrassed. “It’s nothing. He’s here for the summit, but once it’s finished we’ll return to the laboratory.”
“Who’s ‘he’? And ‘we’?”
And right then the second-most annoying voice I’ve ever heard came soaring through the skies: “Yo! Gourry! Lina!”
Okay. There’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just gonna come right out with it. That voice belonged to Pokota, a boy genius stuck in the body of an ugly stuffed animal puppet that’s got hands on its ears and can also fly. Yeah. Somehow not the stupidest thing we’ve ever come across, but it’s up there.
The boy genius thing is real, though. Pokota invents tanks and flying machines and spells that can rival my Dragon Slave. The problem is the “boy” part. I can be kinda crass here and there, life on the road and all that, but Pokota is gross. A total pervert and way too creative about it, like teenage boys are.
Pokota also is—was—the crown prince of Taforashia, back when it was a kingdom and not, well, mostly dead people. I don’t know what that makes him now, other than one of many people I know who were dealt a real crap hand in the game of life. At least he was still playing.
“Nice to see ya!” Pokota hovered over us until he came in to land on Gourry’s head. “Can’t stay long, I’m still on the clock. And,” he pushed down on Gourry’s head to look at me, “what’s up with you, bologna rack? You got my letter?”
I’d missed Pokota so much I needed both middle fingers to show it. “Wait, that letter was from you? So that means…”
I looked at Zel, then back at Pokota. Zel again. Pokota again.
“I don’t get it. What’s going on?”
But Pokota had already spotted something more interesting down toward the harbor. “Izzat the deputy chancellor of Ralteague? Hold on, I’ll be back!” he said, and went flying off again before I could beat his ass for calling me “bologna rack.” Still, I yelled “I’ll turn you into a bologna rack, you sidekick reject!” at him as he left.
“Why did Pokota write you a letter?” Zel asked.
I handed over the letter, which Zel read with his standard stony (ha! Get it?) expression. After a minute he handed it back.
“I guess you were just driving him crazy,” I said, unable to hide my disappointment. Sure, it’s good that nobody was in danger, but now what were we supposed to do? “Did you tell him we were best friends? You big softie!”
“Don’t say stupid things.”
Zel kept walking with the speedy resolve that meant we were supposed to leave him alone and let him get back to his mopey guitar music, so of course we didn’t. We tagged along all the way to a white-walled inn not far from the harbor, the kind of place we couldn’t usually afford. This place had a tavern downstairs and tall trees outside, plus a nice view of the forests outside the city. Gourry was so impressed that he went to go see about available rooms while Zel and I shot the shit.
“Tell me about this cure of yours.” I snagged us a table and snapped my fingers for a carafe of their house whatever.
Zel sat down opposite me and set his guitar aside. “Rezo was right about at least one thing. Regaining my original human body is impossible. The body that I had, the person that hadn’t experienced this, no longer exists.”
“Something something metaphors, yeah?”
“I suppose. Regardless, for a while I stopped looking entirely. There was work to do, and delegations out of Seyruun, and…” The carafe arrived and Zel poured himself a cup without so much as bothering to smell it or pour me some. If you tried that in Zephilia you’d be picking up your own teeth. “Pokota reached out to me about Rezo’s other chimeras. There are dozens of them, possibly hundreds, some made from ten monsters or more. Many are looking for cures.”
“You keep in touch with Pokota?” That was the most shocking part to me. Pokota was tricked and transformed by Rezo just like Zel was, which means he and Zel have just enough in common to have a hard time getting along. And Zel’s way too uptight to tolerate Pokota’s gutter mouth. Them working together was the best sign that this cure was the real deal.
“We can cooperate,” Zel replied stiffly. “Anyway, we spent months gathering research on fusion magic from Rezo’s laboratories, libraries, and the Outer World. Filia tipped us off to an ancient anthology that included techniques for both fusion and regenerative magic. Some of those techniques were attributed to a source identified only as ‘Claire.’ ”
“No way,” I grinned. The Claire Bible had been Zel’s best bet for years and always out of reach.“So how’s it work?”
“The fundamental principle is that human beings are a spectrum, not a binary. There’s humans like you, and then there are elves, fairies, trolls, beastmen, all the way down to creatures that are human in consciousness only, like Pokota.”
I lifted my cup to toast his brilliance. That’s right, I am the pinnacle of evolution!
“…and it’s possible to progress along that spectrum. Your grandmother could be a full elf while you might only be one-quarter.”
“But that’s different people. How can someone go from one to another?”
“Because people are formed from fluid combinations. You have material from your parents, and their parents, and so on. The combinations determine what you are.” He straightened in his chair. “Bone marrow is one of the most important sources of that material. Certain sources of it can be used to generate new tissue. Even new flesh.”
“New flesh? Like copies?”
“No, just individual parts. But they can be fused into the whole organism, we’ve proven it. Or rather, they helped us prove it,” he said. “Some of Rezo’s other chimeras were in so much agony that they were willing to risk death rather than go on in their current forms. They harvested marrow from cows and corpses, they tried spells even Pokota wouldn’t dare. A few sacrificed themselves so we could perfect this process. To help the chimeras Rezo made.”
I could just feel the mood plummeting, which happens a lot with Zel. Chimera nothing: this guy is one hundred percent buzzkill.
“I didn’t want to do it at first. I’ve never wanted a human body that wasn’t wholly my own. But then I realized…”
He hesitated, then looked away. This was private.
“Golems don’t have marrow, obviously. And blow demons aren’t mammals, which means they don’t have marrow either. The bone marrow that I have is…entirely human. It’s still mine.”
“So you’ll give it a try?”
“Multiple tries. If the first iteration succeeds I should be two-thirds human afterward, then five-sixths after the second round, and so on. We may stop at that point depending on what remains, then try Pokota.”
“But Pokota’s not human at all, so where’s that bone marrow coming from?”
Zel glanced at me from over his wine. “I don’t ask how many calories you eat at lunch.”
Fair enough. I wasn’t actually worried because in that respect Zel is like me. He’s got a solid sense of right and wrong, he just doesn’t care about silly made-up things like “prohibited” or “offensive” or “super-duper illegal.”
“So it’s…just mixing your parts with human parts over and over? Like breeding chimeras?”
“You can’t breed chimeras,” Zel said flatly, in a voice I hear most often when he talks to Gourry. “They’re sterile. But the process remedies that aspect too. We’ve confirmed it.”
“Chimeras are sterile? Huh, I don’t think I knew that.”
“You don’t know lots of things, dummy!” announced Pokota as he flew in and landed right on our table. He sat crosslegged next to the salt shaker, which is a thing you can do when you’re the size of a flower pot. “What didn’t you know?”
“Chimeras are sterile.”
“Ooh, yeah. We shoot blanks.”
I put down my wine with a thunk. “Never say anything like that ever again.”
“Hey, don’t hate on the seedless grape gang! We may not be best friends but we gotta have each other’s backs.” Pokota offered a nudge of solidarity to Zel, who had clearly never wanted anything less. “What’s your problem with chimera sperm, anyway?”
“My problem is you saying the words ‘chimera sperm’, you little sicko!”
“You’re the one who was talking about it!”
“I was not!”
Gourry, now with a set of room keys in hand, sat down beside us. “What aren’t we talking about?”
“Chimera sperm,” Pokota explained.
“Oh,” said Gourry, unbothered. Then he turned to me. “It’s sterile, you know.”
I clawed at my scalp as if I could dig the entire stupid conversation out of my brain. “What—? You can’t even count to ten without an abacus and headache medicine, but you remember that? How often are you talking about chimera sperm, huh?!”
“Hmm, well,” Gourry put a thumb and forefinger to his chin, oblivious to Zel across the table attempting some kind of elaborate astral murder-suicide, “I mean, on occasion—”
“Right, I’m leaving forever,” I said, slamming both hands on the table so hard that it rattled the glassware. Then I stood and stomped out of the inn. I needed to be as far away from them as possible, so I took off down some side streets and headed west until I reached the harbor.
Atlas City is on the west coast, so that close to sunset everything was that fiery color like a treasure chest full of gold and rubies. There were a lot of fancy sailboats and fancier people hanging around, nobles making snooty conversation while their servants unloaded trunks. That made me feel a little better about this trip. Rich people are easy money! They’ll overpay to avoid any inconvenience to themselves. It’s not like they got rich by working hard.
Just as I was thinking about how to snag some extra cash for myself I saw two people who were almost good as gold. One was an elegant and sophisticated young woman, and the other was a princess of Seyruun.
“Sylphiel! Amelia!”
Amelia turned around and her eyes lit up like firecrackers. “Lina-san!” she cried, racing to meet me.
Sylphiel is the last white magic priestess of old Sairaag, helpful and gentle in the way I thought older sisters were supposed to be. Too sweet for her own good, but also a hell of a lot tougher than you’d expect from somebody so delicately pretty. Amelia on the other hand is about as delicate as a cannonball. She’s so strong she can kick a mazoku and kill it, and no, nobody knows how that works. When we met she was even shorter than me but now we’re around the same height (Gourry thinks I’m taller, Zel insists she is). She did the rest of her growing out instead of up. Like, way out. Like her big sister. You wanna talk about cannonballs? Anyway.
“Lina-san!”
Amelia wore one of her favorite pink puffy dresses with ribbons and pearls and a tiara to match. She flung herself into my arms and I squeezed her tight with a crunch of fabric.
“Lina-san! You promised we’d hike the Kataart Mountains next spring, you know! Don’t tell me you forgot!”
“No, of course not,” I mumbled into her cheek. “Let’s go alone. You and me! Forget the guys.”
“What?”
“Men are a mistake. I’ve never been gladder to see you guys in my entire life.”
Sylphiel looked puzzled. “Not even in Flagoon, when…”
“Nope. Not even close,” I assured her, and let Amelia go. No hugs for Sylphiel. We’re not really hugging friends for…reasons. “What’s got you guys in Atlas City? Is it that republic celebration? Bureaucrat business?”
“Yes, very serious business,” Amelia said earnestly. “Now that the coastal states are a unified republic, they’re voting on which kingdoms will become major cities and renegotiating all their international agreements, from weapons sales to shipping lanes. This could change the balance of power on the whole continent!”
“I know it doesn’t sound interesting but it’s vital for us,” added Sylphiel. “If this new republic changes their tax agreements with Lyzeille it’ll affect our ability to rebuild Sairaag.”
“You’re right, it doesn’t sound interesting,” I agreed. “If this is about the coastal states, why is it happening in Atlas City?”
Amelia shook a finger at me. “Lina-san! Neutral ground is essential for good diplomacy! And by hosting it here in Atlas City, Duke Rithahn is reminding the new republic that Lyzeille is a powerful ally.”
I had tuned her out by then, as I do when Amelia gets on a roll. But she got my attention again when she jumped up on a post along the docks. Apparently that wasn’t high enough to match her enthusiasm because a second later she leapt to a nearby flagpole and started climbing her way up, frilly skirts and all.
“The old Alliance stands on the precipice of a brilliant future! But it could also collapse into infighting and civil war,” Amelia declared, pointing her finger. “Do you know how we prevent the evil of tyranny? Do you know what stops political villains in their tracks?”
“Swo—uh, pure hearts?” I asked, remembering just in time that Amelia wasn’t gonna appreciate assassination jokes.
“Strong multilateral institutions!” She pronounced it like power words at the end of a spell. “If this new republic is to succeed, we need muscular intergovernmental cooperatives to help them and hold their villains accountable. We need diplomats! Regulators! Civil servants committed to international justice!”
A thing about Amelia. When you meet her you’d think she’s got scrambled eggs for brains, but then you learn about her family and realize she’s amazingly well-adjusted, all things considered. She’s leaps and bounds ahead of her older sister, for one. Who I’m not gonna talk about anymore. I mean it. I’m done. Starting now.
“Hey, Sylphiel! And Amelia too!” said Gourry, who must not have believed me about the ‘leaving forever’ part. Zelgadis was several steps behind, cowl up again. Pokota hovered around my eye level like an ugly deflating balloon.
“Sorry for being shitty,” he muttered, and I could just tell how Gourry had nudged him into it. Gourry’s really good with kids of all ages. That’s a statement in isolation, by the way! Nothing else to it!
“Yeah, well, I’m sorry I have to put up with you,” I told him.
“Stupid. I’m sorry you exist.”
I reached out to give him a scratch behind the ear and Pokota settled down on top of my head. The head-sitting thing is weirdly soothing, like a heavy blanket for your skull.
“…and a comprehensive tax regime!” Amelia continued, full-on blazing now, just totally swept away by the power of interwhatsits and stuff. “To outlaw the hoarding of wealth and resources that would threaten sovereign authority! And—oh, Gourry-san! It’s so good to see you!” She stopped long enough for a big wave. “And Zelgadis-san. Now, our responsibility as leaders is to…”
Wha? “Gourry-san” was pronounced with Amelia’s effortless sunshine and smiles, while “Zelgadis-san” was like somebody sweeping up crumbs at the dinner table. For his part Zel stood with his arms folded, staring at some fixed point on the horizon.
“Dang,” said Pokota, and for once I agreed.
A gasp went up in the crowd. Not far from the docks three enormous shapes breached the surface, shooting up like Icicle Lances. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it sure wasn’t three full-grown sea dragons roaring with fury and brandishing ivory fangs the size of my leg. They glowed like ancient ocean gods in the sunset.
I broke into a sprint before I could even think about what to cast. Pokota was off my head and soaring toward the docks, ginning up some magic of his own, while Zel was two steps ahead of me with his sword drawn. And Gourry was right at my side. He’s not much good in a fight like this, but that’s never kept him from getting out on the front lines.
“Flare Lance!” rang out from overhead, because Amelia does handsprings straight into peril. The arrow she cast was a bolt-action pillar of pure flame that went right between the dragon’s eyes. It bellowed in pain, but less pain than I expected for taking it head-on. The dragon rallied fast and charged straight at Amelia, who lost her balance and went sailing down in a cloud of pink chiffon.
“Oop!“
“Levitation!”
Amelia floated in place, though one of her heels plummeted to the ground. “Thank you, Pokota-san!” Amelia said, steadying herself in midair.
“No prob.” Pokota gave her a thumbs-up with one of his ear-hands and lobbed a Fireball at the dragon behind her.
“Be careful, Amelia!” said another man, whose voice was brash as brass knuckles and deep as the ocean floor.
Oh no. That’s Amelia’s father, Prince, sorry, now King Philionel. Can you picture the kind of guy who would raise his daughter to break huge boulders with her fists? The kind of guy who approves of his daughter beating up monsters in a ballgown? Now add ten times as much hair and you’re picturing Phil. Trust me, you are.
“We got this, Phil!” I promised.
Once I was in a good position to launch an offense I kicked off with a big ol’ Bram Gush that could bust through solid walls or thick monster hide, as the case may be. I got one of the dragons real good and tore a hole straight through its throat! Just when I was feeling confident the dragon started flailing, spraying blood, scales, and saltwater everywhere. Sylphiel protected the crowds with a barrier spell but the rest of us weren’t so lucky.
“Good job,” Zel muttered.
“Whaddya got, huh?” I shot back.
Zel would rather show than tell, so I wasn’t surprised that his next move was to Levitate to the top of the flagpole. But I was surprised when Amelia tried to do the same thing at the exact same time. She slammed into his shoulder and went sailing down the coast. Zel didn’t seem to notice. He leapt into another Levitation and landed on one of the dragons’ snouts, grabbing onto a nostril with one hand to anchor himself. He let go just as fast and channeled the spell down the length of his blade.
“Dig—”
Risky move in an ocean. I guess he was going for style points.
“—Volt!”
The whole sky flashed crackling yellow as three unlucky monsters fried in their own skins. It made a smell so gruesome I could somehow sense it in the back of my mouth. When the lightning cleared you’d think they were three giant pieces of squid yakitori complete with grill marks.
Zel landed back on top of the flagpole, cape billowing. He was too busy being the guy-too-cool-to-look-back to realize that the dragons weren’t collapsing dramatically into the sea behind him, but instead taking off to the south.
“What gives?!” Pokota shouted. “Get back here! Flare Arrow!”
Now Zel looked back, and he was even more confused than I was. By all rights an ocean-supercharged Dig Volt should have polished off the dragon I’d already injured and seriously wounded the other two. How could they still be up and going?
We chased them down the docks, Levitating around ships and sails. I found a good vantage point on top of a building to line up a clear shot. At this distance I figured another Bram Gush was in order, at least until I knew what was going on.
Kablam! You shoulda seen it. I blew a hole straight through its side like Jillas artillery. This time when it started spewing we were ready to Windy Shield ourselves from the aftermath. But the dragons still didn’t strike back. They didn’t even care that we were going after them. In fact, the only thing that seemed to catch their interest was flying toward them with a single jeweled slipper.
“Visfarank!”
Amelia hurtled through the air, right leg out, ready to kick a dragon across the Demon Sea. Visfarank is a spell Amelia invented to amp up her battle power to the point where she can straight-up smash a mazoku into space dust with her hands and feet. I’m twenty-three, I’ve seen a lot of shit, but not much compares to Amelia using her bare fists against a demon king. Come to think of it, when it comes down to the list of wildest and ballsiest stuff I’ve ever seen in battle, Amelia and Sylphiel are right on top. Maybe men really are a mistake.
Amelia’s kick went halfway through that sucker’s skull, drenching her dress in blood and burned scales. The dragon tried to snap her up in its muscular jaws, but a nifty Bam Rod from Pokota kept it out of the way. Amelia dropped down to a nearby ship and landed roughly on her feet in the crow’s nest.
“There’s an astral presence there!” she shouted. “A strong one!”
“In sea dragons?” Zel shouted back without so much as a glance in her direction.
“Yes! I’m sure!”
“I doubt it,” he retorted, and demonstrated it by casting Lybrim toward another dragon’s maw, filling it with a wedge of solid ice. It snorted pitifully through its flat nostrils and swung its head back and forth, but never lost sight of Amelia. It thrashed, it seethed, it tried to bash her with the huge block of ice in its mouth.
By now I had a theory of what might be happening. “Okay,” I called down to the only guy I’ve ever met who’s strong as a horse, steadfast as a horse, and almost as smart as a horse, “you got this, Gourry?”
“Huh? Got what?”
“Good enough for me! Bomb Di Wind!”
Since Gourry was on the ground, I had to cast it twice: one to get him up, and another to send him Brass Rackets-style straight at the dragons. It was a little hard to concentrate over all the screaming. Well, so what if I’m throwing him at a bunch of inexplicably immortal sea dragons? Is this guy my sworn protector or not? He could get sugar cubes later.
“Go for its mouth!” I yelled after him.
“The mouth?” Gourry went careening into one of the dragons and landed roughly on its head, at which point it started lurching around to try to throw him off. “Whoa!”
Staying on top of a bucking sea dragon is a tall order for a sorcerer, much less a human, so it’s a good thing Gourry’s really tall. He crouched to check out the target. These dragons had dozens of teeth and dripping fangs, and long prehensile tongues like wriggling pink pythons. When the dragon saw Gourry it shot its tongue out after him.
“Whoa!”
He defended himself with a single broad stroke, swiping his sword out and over his chest so fast I barely saw it.
What I did see was something strangely shiny flying off toward Amelia (“Chaos String!” she cried, and snapped it into her grip). I also saw the severed tongue as it went pinwheeling down toward the ocean, and then—
—then—
—it crept up again, slithering in midair—straight at Amelia!
Everybody made their own noise of being totally grossed out and then got right back to it.
“Levitation!” yelled Pokota, who remembered faster than I did that I’d kinda left Gourry hanging.
“Sorry, Gourry!” I gave him a wave as Pokota’s spell carefully lowered him to the ground. I wanted to confer with Zel, but he was busy chanting. He and Amelia let loose at the exact same instant, aiming straight at the disembodied tongue.
“Goz Vu Row!”
“Elmekia Lance!”
The inky spreading shadows of Zel’s spell collided straight with the holy light of Amelia’s, like buckets of ice and boiling water thrown together in midair. The magic collided and evaporated into bright astral mist, as useless as if they’d never cast anything at all.
“You got in my way!” Amelia cried.
“You got in mine.”
Huh. Zel and Amelia squabble a lot, but not like that. Sure, they kinda got off to a rocky (I kill me!) start, but after a day or so they combined their soul-powered astral magic to blow up a raving chicken demon in Rezo’s old laboratory—yes, my life is just that interesting—and they got along great after that. It’s like the old saying: if you want to make a real friend, psychically explode a chicken together.
Anyway, they got their astral magic aligned all those years ago and they’ve been smashing souls ever since. Poor Amelia was pretty sweet on Zel as a kid, much to his embarrassment, but then she got over it and got comfortable kicking his ass instead. That suits them a lot better. They spend so much time together that Zel started escorting Amelia on her diplomatic missions, which is how he became a knight of Seyruun. Once they even used these superpowered ancient relics that fused their magic powers and made their freaky astral-mind-soul-link even stronger. Nowadays their spirits are so wound around each other that he sneezes every time she cries and she told me they share hangovers fifty-fifty. Those psychic plane pals are about as close as two people can possibly be, so seeing them this out of sync was weird to say the least.
But that's enough! Who’s this story about, huh?
“Eek!”
That creepy pink tongue kept chasing after Amelia, flapping along after her like a ribbon. I wondered if it was going after the shiny thing Gourry had cut loose. Pokota and Zel alternated Fireballs and Elmekia Lances between the dragons and the disembodied tongue without much luck. The dragons couldn’t be stopped no matter how much they were mangled, and the tongue moved quicker than their spells could hit.
“Hey!” I shouted, jumping up and down. The clay roof I was standing on clattered under my boots. “I’m tired of this, aren’t you? How about we finish with a bang?”
“Lina-san, no!” Amelia cried. “This is an important summit!”
“If you don’t do it, I’m gonna,” Pokota volunteered. “After ten straight hours of meetings I was ready to Dragon Slave myself.”
I stood back and held both arms overhead. I’m so good at this spell that just by thinking about it I can gather magical energy out of the air. As soon I set my arms in the first position I could feel the heat of it growing, the sensation of a magic so intense it made me shiver. No matter how many times I cast it I always get that shiver. You would too if you could summon ten centuries of tradition through your veins.
“That’s one for and one against! You got twenty-six seconds to decide!” I said, and began to chant. Darkness beyond twilight…
“Please don’t, Lina-san!” said Sylphiel, from the docks where she was protecting the crowds from our sloppy carnage. “Amelia-san is right. This could distract from all our work!”
Beside her Gourry just scratched his head. “I dunno, it’s not that bad if it’s facing the ocean. As long as nobody’s being hurt and it solves the problem I think it’s okay.”
That left Zel as the tiebreaking vote. He Levitated over to the rooftop next to me with an exaggerated midair leap, landing one foot at a time. Then he stood.
“There are at least a hundred people down there,” he observed, looking down at the docks. “Kings, priests, noblemen, leaders of nations. Rulers of empires. The most powerful people in the world.”
Let all the fools who stand in our way be destroyed…
“Show them what happens when you threaten a princess of Seyruun.”
“Zelgadis-san!” Amelia cried, anguished. His only response was to remorselessly Bomb Di Wind her away from the line of fire.
The brilliance of Lei Magnus crackled through my fingertips as I wound up for the hit. I wish I could explain how it feels to cast that kind of black magic. It’s like…being happy, but better. It’s not just good emotions, but the absence of bad ones. For almost half a minute all your fears and insecurities go up in smoke because nothing, I mean nothing, in the entire world can hurt you. It’s the kind of thing people mean when they talk about power being seductive. It makes you feel immortal. Beautiful. Unstoppable. It’s how somebody as naturally flawless as me deserves to feel all the time!
“—Dragon Slave!”
The flame in my hands burst forth in a pillar of fire, then bloomed into an explosion that eclipsed the sunset over the sea. Everything went red as rage. The spell swallowed up every sound, leaving a horrible still silence like the end of time, then unleashed them all again in an ear-ripping earthquake. The whole ocean boiled and roiled with infernal heat, killing every creature in its depths for a thousand meters or more. But the best part is that stupid tongue and its dragon buddies got roasted to hell and back.
The day was saved! Or ruined, I guess, if you care about marine biology and the environment and stuff. But I don’t get down about that. It’s this crazy mixed-up world that needs fixing, not me.
Years ago Zel and Amelia introduced me to the post-Dragon Slave checklist. You have to make sure that nobody’s dead who you didn’t mean to be dead, and that nothing’s on fire that wasn’t supposed to be on fire, and nobody’s around to put you in jail. Obviously I don’t do any of that. Why would I, if they always take care of it?
I was on my way to the docks when an older guy approached me. He had white robes edged with gold trim and a lame attempt to cover a bald spot. He handed me an emblem I knew instantly and didn’t like.
“Pardon me,” he began. “If you’re available tomorrow morning, Duke Rithahn would like to see you. The local sorcerers’ guild is experiencing…circumstances that concern him.”
I had to laugh. “You really don’t know me, huh? I’ve been giving your guild trouble and cleaning up their messes since I was thirteen. I even put down a rebellion once. Pretty sure they all hate me.”
“We can pay three hundred gold per day.”
“I’ll be there at eight.”
He smiled and vanished into the crowd. I looked at the sigil in my palm, chewing my lip. I wasn’t sure what kind of “circumstances” I’d just signed myself up for, but they were paying me enough not to think too hard about it.
I found my friends at the water’s edge, watching the sun set through giant clouds of smoke and ashes. Amelia stood beside Phil, who dwarfed his daughter so completely she looked like an actual dwarf next to him. Gourry tried to reassure Sylphiel, while Zel was doing his best to seem content with not making conversation with anybody else. Pokota shook dust out of his fake fur. The stench of overcooked dragon meat was, I gotta admit, not great.
“You know what that was about?” I asked Amelia, who didn’t fall down thanking the person that had just saved her bacon. Rude!
“Lina-san! Look at this!” she exclaimed, showing off a strange pin. It looked almost like a bracelet for a giant, maybe. Or Phil. It had thick iron links and a stick pin smeared in dragon’s blood. On the sides were rough-cut pieces of blue quartz and clusters of runes. “Gourry-san cut it loose from the dragon’s mouth.”
“What the,” said Pokota, whose genius and skills didn’t extend to ancient artifacts.
“A control talisman,” I explained, because mine did. “It effectively turns anything afflicted with it into a golem. You don’t even need magic to wield it, just the proper words. But they’re very specific. This would only work on sea dragons, for instance. And good luck putting this on a dragon without some kind of magic, anyway.”
“Meaning what?” Zel asked.
“…well, there’s no way to make it sound like good news.”
We stood there for a while longer, too tired and sore to make sense of things. Sylphiel finally gave Amelia a gentle nudge. “Let’s rest, okay, Amelia-san? You had such a long day with your big announcement.”
“Hah! That’s right, Sylphiel-san! We should go,” said Phil, in the big thundering voice that rumbles in your feet like a Dill Brand. He dotes on Sylphiel because she’s the same age as Amelia’s big sister. That’s literally the only thing they have in common. At all. Period. Why are we even talking about her?
Anyway, the three of them went side-by-side back to wherever it was the important people were staying. Since hanging around the docks much longer would mean having to help with the cleanup, us scrubs skedaddled too. I waggled my eyebrows at Gourry in a way that meant he should go on without me. He waggled his back.
Gourry and I don’t walk apart if we can help it. We’ve had close calls where a few inches made all the difference. One of us might be a couple steps ahead, but we’re never too far to pass a flask of water or a map. I jerked a thumb at Zel, who was skulking along way behind us, and Gourry’s waggling brow went flat.
As I said, Zel and I are alike in a lot of ways. We’re a great team until we’re not, and that’s where things can get kinda hairy. For example, once we stayed up late drinking corn whiskey at this shitty inn in Kalmaart, and then we decided we could definitely steal a couple artifacts from the local shrine without anybody noticing, and blah blah blah the next morning Amelia had to get us out of the drunk tank. You know. Little stuff like that. But it’s only happened twice!
Gourry didn’t love it, but he went onward. I lagged back with Zel. He had a face like the looming smoke clouds, dull and ash-dark. I was gonna have to go first.
“What’s that big announcement Sylphiel mentioned?”
“Amelia’s sister has officially forfeited her claim to the throne and all her royal entitlements. That makes Amelia princess of the first rank…her son will be king instead of Gracia’s.”
What?! Amelia’s stupid older sister actually did something official? I could have exploded with a hundred questions, like whether she was in Seyruun, or here, or if she’d seen Amelia. But I didn’t, because who cares about that bimbo?
“Does that have anything to do with whatever happened back there?” I asked instead.
“I’m surprised she hasn’t told you.”
“You don’t really come up.”
We went on in silence, more stalking than walking. The wind picked up a sting.
“She was being selfish and I chose not to stand for it,” Zel said at last.
Huh? If he had said “annoying,” or “self-righteous,” or “unwaveringly committed to the worst idea ever,” I could see that. But “selfish” just isn’t something you’d say about Amelia. That’s a word you would use to describe…well, me. Or Zel, for that matter. “What?”
“She asked me to accompany her to a ball thrown in her honor by the crown prince of Selenias and a number of other nobles interested in courting her.”
“Uh-huh.”
I waited for the rest, but it didn’t come. After thirty seconds I figured he got stuck in one of his melodramatic internal monologues.
“…then what happened?”
“Were you listening?”
“I don’t get it. Isn’t escorting her your job?”
“My job is eliminating threats to the crown. That includes security. Protection. Vetting potential consorts. And even if I wasn’t…” He waved at his face, which was supposed to mean the most hideous monster in the history of existence and not honestly pretty hot if you’re into dudes with slim waists and high cheekbones. (I’m not, by the way. I like meat on my men!)
“…I can’t do that in front of the people I’m surveilling. I spent weeks preparing to gather information at that ball and she said she didn’t care about any of it.”
Okay, I kinda got it. Amelia thought she was inviting a friend to a party, but for a guy who takes notes on his notes and executes every plan with clockwork precision, it would have been a massive insult. And it wouldn’t be the first time she’d tried to be nice and accidentally exploded his ego instead.
“I bet she just wanted to dance with somebody who’s not trying to get up her skirt.”
“She knows I don’t dance.”
“So what did you do?”
“I left.”
“You left? You just let her fend for herself with a bunch of creeps?”
“If she doesn’t care about the suitability of her potential consorts I can’t make her,” Zel retorted, and I got this really silly mental image of Zel using a bunch of magnifying glasses to examine her suitors like a pawnbroker checking for fake gems. I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from snickering.
“…besides, the marquess of Prokiam was there.”
“That’s the one she likes, right?”
“You know about him?” Zel asked, stopping short.
“Umm, a little. They take trips to his estate in Femille, yeah? But he’s not from there. He’s a, um, he’s…”
“He’s a proxy for the king of Ralteague, who’s pushing hard for the match. The marquess himself is too trivial to be any concern.” Zel scoffed. In his stone body it made a sound like rattling gravel. “He’s a land speculator.”
“So? Maybe good business sense flips her flapjacks. Look, almost everyone she talks to is trying to use her for something. It’s a big deal for her to have somebody she can stand.” I thought of how mad Amelia had been about that Dragon Slave, how she still put her work first while being chased around by a bunch of sea monsters. How she was going to have more work than ever because her dumb stupid idiot sister couldn’t be bothered with any of it. Because Amelia’s sister is such a—
“I’m sure she thinks I’m trying to use her, too. Which I am, of course,” I added, since the first part didn’t sound as ironic and detached as I wanted it to for some reason. “One of these days I’m gonna filch that jade dinnerware they bring out for spring banquets. Betcha just one of those salad plates could pay a year’s expenses!”
“You know she sees you as a friend.”
“She sees you as a friend. So apologize, willya? I can’t afford to have you guys off your game with dragons around.”
Zel just scoffed again, like the real injured party here was his dozens of pages with cross-indexed references about Amelia’s suitors. I could tell this conversation wasn’t going anywhere. Exasperated, I threw up both hands and made a big show of leaving him behind, walking ahead where Pokota drifted listlessly in midair behind Gourry.
“No wonder you wanna kill him,” I said. “You have my blessing. And he’s not my best friend, by the way.”
“Good, because he’s a dick.”
“That’s why he and Amelia are a package deal. She’ll give you a migraine and he’ll make you depressed, but they balance each other out.” Except for right now, I thought.
“I guess it’s nice to have somebody.”
Of all the traveling companions I’ve ever had, Pokota had the hardest time fitting in. Part of this is because he’s so obnoxious you’d think he was the crown prince of giant pains in the ass. But Pokota also lost most of his kingdom to a plague and almost all the rest within a few years of their bodies being revived, and then the alliance abolished their kingdoms, which means he basically oversees a graveyard while he floats around in a stuffed puppet’s body. I dunno if it gets much lonelier than that.
“Hey, you can have lots of somebodies, too,” I said, with a good-natured yank on his tail. At least Pokota’s willing to own up to his dick behavior, unlike some people I know. “Aren't you having dinner with us? Can the new republic pick up our tab?”
Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap.
Those were my boots on the stone window ledge. This place had probably been a rich person’s mansion in the days before mazoku incursions. The ledge was big enough for me to sit with both legs up, though the stone was cold on my butt, and even with the shutters pulled tight I could feel a nasty thunderstorm brewing. (Pretty common post-Dragon Slave atmospheric effect. I taught a class about it for the sorcerers’ guild a while back.)
“What is it?” Gourry asked.
I held the talisman in both hands, staring at its inscriptions, the shape of its rusted links. “If that dragon was being forced to attack us, it should have stopped as soon as the charm was removed. But it didn’t. It just kept going after Amelia.”
“So?”
“So someone either enchanted the dragon to keep going or they had a backup plan. Artifacts or no, controlling three sea dragons is no joke. Whoever’s behind this has access to incredibly strong tools. They might be a powerful mage themselves, or have one working for them.”
“Okay?”
“No, not okay.” I tap-tap-tap-tap-tapped with both feet, trying to channel all my restless energy through my toes. Too many possibilities, too many implications. Too many bad endings. “A big summit bringing together leaders from across the continent is suddenly attacked by sea dragons? Sea dragons targeting Amelia, who’s just been announced as the first princess of Seyruun?”
“Is that a question?” Gourry asked. “Because it sounds like a comment?”
“I don’t think this was just an attack. I think this was a show.” I ran the talisman between my fingers like I might somehow feel an answer and not just time-worn iron with shallow carvings. “Someone was trying to say something, not just to us but everyone there. And I can’t figure out what.”
Gourry just sighed. “What time is it?”
I cracked open the shutters to peek. Rising clouds like black wool blocked out most of the sky, but I didn’t need the stars and planets to guess. Spend enough time in a city and you learn the routine. You know when things open and close, when virtue goes home for the night and when trouble goes out on the prowl. The gaggle of gals in purple robes along the avenue gave me a decent idea. “A half-hour or so before midnight.”
“Okay.”
“Okay what? What do you think about this?”
“What I think,” Gourry said slowly, “is that you should come to bed and leave this for Tomorrow-Lina.”
I looked at Gourry. Gourry looked back with bleary blue eyes. The guy sleeps like a log made of rocks and every rock’s got its own Sleeping spell on it. If I woke him up I must have been tapping a lot louder than I thought.
“Yeah, fine,” I said, hopping off the sill. I wasn’t really ready to sleep, but Gourry was right. At some point Tomorrow-Lina is a lot better at solving problems than I am.