by Billy Wong
Ogres aren't known to be good at resisting interrogation, he said suspiciously, though it could just be that it didn't speak our tongue. Have you actually seen these beasts?
"I've seen ogres before, but not in recent times. Maybe I'm just having some uncharacteristically good luck."
Maybe they're scared of you, Finn joked. You could try asking people to get a better look at them. They could be a different type than the usual.
"Or members of an especially disciplined clan. It might be hard to tell any physical differences, considering few of us are ogre experts."
Maybe we could look for literature on ogres, and use that to spot oddities in these creatures.
His suggestion would have been a good one, except... "I haven't been able to find any such literature, that was any good at least. I suppose nobody wanted to bother doing an in-depth study of their race."
Great. He gave a reptilian grin. Let's not worry about it for now then, but just enjoy each other's company like we meant to, okay? Our further adventures can wait.
She smiled happily at him. "Yes, let's have some fun." The woman and dragon pleasured each other as they had learned to do anew since his transformation, defying the world with their love. But it didn't comfort her as much as she'd hoped, and she knew things would never be the same while he remained trapped in this awkward form.
#
Derrick looked outside with exasperation at the protesters still shouting their anti-magic slogans as he tried to read. It'd begun over a week ago, when the dirty-looking men came to stand outside the center and yell all day. Rose had tried to drive them away, but nothing short of violence was going to get them to leave, and the gentle warrior hadn't been willing to go that far to stop the peaceful if annoying protest. So they'd put up with the disruption since, but Derrick's aggravation steadily grew. He had tried to talk to the group to see what exactly they wanted and figure out how to resolve the issue, but the men brushed him off, some of them with simple aggression, other more civil members with the excuse their leader wasn't here.
To the young scholar's relief, he saw a newcomer he hoped to be the leader, a handsome, brown-robed man with delicate features and long blond hair whose arrival seemed to inspire the others to grow even louder. Stopping by his room to quickly comb his hair and straighten his clothes, Derrick hurried outside. Opening the door, he saw the man was not as tall as he'd first thought, but had only seemed that way due to his slender build, being in reality about Rose's height of six feet. However, his confident presence made him seem larger.
Derrick couldn't help a nervous quiver of his mouth as he said, "Hello, I'm the um, leader of this center." Teacher, administrator, publicist—pretty much everything nowadays, when his friends weren't around. "You can call me Professor Gale, or Derrick if you prefer. What should I call you?"
"Graham, druid of the Earth Mother," the man replied in a surprisingly soft voice. "Now Derrick, I assume you want to talk to me about what we want?"
Derrick nodded. "Yes, come inside." Graham followed him into the tower, and Derrick invited his guest to sit down with him in an empty meeting room. To his chagrin, Graham had brought all his companions inside with him, and the men chattered loudly among themselves, providing a less than ideal environment for negotiation. "So, why have you taken up protesting our center?"
The druid's lips moved to speak, but one of his companions answered for him, "Your magic is hurting the earth! You need to stop it, right now!"
"Hurting the earth?" Derrick asked dubiously. "We're all still weak beginning mages here, especially compared to the ancients who once flourished on the same world. So how could we be doing any significant harm to the earth, when we've barely even used spells outside this city?"
Graham motioned his overly enthusiastic companion back and said, "The way my friend put it was a bit misleading. It's true what you've done so far has little effect on anything. But what we fear is that in the future, when the use of magic becomes widespread, the overuse of spellcasting will begin to disrupt the elemental balance of the world. Did you know that the elements manipulated by what you call magic are not generated from nothing, but drawn from elsewhere in the world?"
That was a fundamental rule of magic. "Yes, and the language of magic speaks to those elements and calls them to the spellcaster in the way they are desired. What of it? The air around you might get a little colder when you use a fire spell, for example, but it soon returns to its natural state."
"You understand the principle of it, and yes, in limited amounts the use of magic is relatively harmless. But imagine that a war was fought with magic, with hundreds of powerful mages on each side, as has occurred in ancient times. Where do you think all that heat would come from? No, it would not all be drawn merely from the surrounding area, though altering the climate of the region drastically could be bad enough. Rather, it would come from a larger area due to magic's tendency to diffuse its side effects, and probably go unnoticed by most. Over time, such minute changes could accumulate to cause massive disruptions in the balance of energies all over the continent, or even the world. We believe that such catastrophes might have been least part of the reason for the downfall of the Old World, and do not wish to see such occur again."
Derrick grew scared, as he knew Graham wanted him to be, at the idea of his work someday leading to disaster. He was also surprised by the druid's understanding of magic, for he himself had never considered its effects on climate. "All right, I see your point. We'll warn everyone of these possible risks, and strive to use our newfound powers as responsibly as we can."
Graham shook his head then. "You may try with all your will to act responsibly, but how do you know that others, or people in later generations, will approach magic with the same caution? Simple, you do not. So we feel that it would be best you shut this center down now, and destroy the written knowledge of magic you have before it leads the world into another breakdown."
That idea seemed rather impulsive. "You can't destroy knowledge just because it might lead to trouble. It could also lead to great progress, if we use it properly. Just because you don't trust other people to act responsibly, doesn't mean you can deny them a chance. I'd never let anyone study here who I didn't think was a well-meaning person, and always try to instill in everyone the same selectiveness in sharing their knowledge. Yes, a few bad eggs are bound to crop up over time, but those who understand how dangerous the abuse of magic is wouldn't stand by and let them do as they please. We'd have to stop them, one way or another. As for future generations, it's up to previous ones to teach them right and set them on a good path."
Saying that, he thought of the way Rose left her children in his care every time she felt like going on an adventure and sighed. As good a person and hero Rose was, she was no model mom, ever eager to leave home to quest in the name of good. He wondered if she'd drag her kids along with her on her dangerous travels, as she did with Derrick's love Julie, once they got older. Then Graham spoke, and turned Derrick's attention back towards him.
"You're right about the responsibility of the good to preserve the world from wickedness. But if not with magic, what would you use to fight those who would abuse it? It's a difficult dilemma, isn't it? I'm sure many of the mages of Old thought they fought for right as well when they contributed to that world's ultimate downfall."
"That's all just a theory of yours, which hasn't been proven. You want us to stop this pursuit of knowledge for that? It wouldn't be rational. And you're wrong—there are ways of dealing with magic which don't require magic. Though it's a powerful force, people with enough strength and courage can stand against it." He recalled with a smile all the powerful—overwhelmingly so, in fact—magical beings Rose had defeated, with little help and no magic of her own, in her relatively short life. Whatever else she was, his restless friend was indeed a phenomenal warrior. "Besides, if we ever do resort to using magic in battle, we can always make laws to govern and restrict its use." Which their enemies surely wouldn't fol
low, Derrick admitted to himself.
The handsome druid stood. "It's clear my words won't sway you from your destructive path. But I feel our talk has helped nonetheless, that you will at least consider greater caution in your work. Thank you for listening to me, and I hope you can indeed control its ramifications. Farewell." Graham's companions seemed unsatisfied, and continued to yell demands to close down the center. But their leader motioned for them to follow him out and they slowly did so. Then they were gone, and with them the sounds of protest outside, leaving Derrick to ponder the druid's words alone. That is, until Julie came into the room.
"Derrick, what happened?" the once-chubby redhead, who'd lost weight in her time as Rose's student, asked. He told her everything Graham had said, and she frowned. "I agree with you. We shouldn't give up on something just because it could be dangerous to us in the future. I'm sure Rose and Finn would agree too."
Derrick wondered about that, if the couple never regretted their rediscovery of magic after all the emotional anguish they'd gone through as a result. Still, he was sure neither of them would admit now to such regrets. "No, they'd want us to go on, if more carefully than they did in the early days." He paused realizing he'd said "the early days." Had it really been that long? Well, two years had passed since Finn rediscovered the art of spellcasting—not so long, really, but so much had happened since then... "But what will they do? Their leader seemed a peaceful man, but his followers—I'm a bit wary of violence on their part. I heard one of them threw a stone at a researcher, didn't he?"
"Yes, and if Rose had been here, she'd have found him and scared the violence out of him!"
"Yeah, but if Finn were here, he'd have beaten them all up! I really miss traveling with those two."
"Weren't the things they used to do with you much more dangerous than Rose's little adventures with me nowadays?"
He laughed. "Yes, we went to war together and all, but still! In their cheerful company, nothing was really that bad."
"You really think so, or is your nostalgia warping your memories?"
"Probably the latter. Still, I'm getting bored just being here teaching and studying magic. Yes, I'm learning more every day, but it's just not the same as going out there and finding knowledge with your own hands, instead of just reading it in a book in your library. What I miss is the thrill of the chase, I guess."
"You're not jealous of me, are you?" Julie jokingly asked.
"Maybe a little. So where are you going next?"
She looked confused for a moment, then slowly grinned. "You know Rose doesn't usually plan her trips in advance! Trying to trick me?"
"No, I wanted to see if it's someplace I'd want to go."
Julie blinked. "The center? The kids?"
"Special holiday and full-time hired babysitter."
"Would Rose mind?"
Derrick thought about it. "I'm not sure, actually. She trusts me to use a babysitter for part of the time, but I still take care of her kids when I'm not busy. Still, I doubt she'd mind too much. She's not exactly a demanding person."
"No, she's great. So Derrick, we'll finally have an adventure together, hmm?"
He looked at her curiously, remembering the trip down south they'd taken with Rose and Finn just after the killing of the Spelldrinker. "Our 'vacation' wasn't enough of an adventure for you?"
"Hey, nobody expected that giant lobster. So it doesn't count, right?"
"There's way too much Rose rubbing off on you," Derrick said, amused.
"I'd say the technicalities are more of a Finn thing."
"But you've hardly seen him."
"Then it's my own little quirk. I guess I'm just eager to go see more of the world, monsters or not."
"Then I'm glad I'll be there to protect you."
Julie furrowed her brow. "Protect me? You barely beat me in sparring nowadays anyway, Derrick!"
He smiled, but secretly began to worry for her again. Sparring wasn't combat, and Julie would do well to remember that.
#
"That's definitely the worst one yet, by far," Derrick agreed after Julie read him the letter from Count Brandon shortly following the meeting with Graham. He frowned. "But aren't we not supposed to open other people's mail like this?"
She laughed. "It's Rose, she's one of our best friends! Besides, I always read the mail to her when she's busy."
"Well, she's not busy, she isn't here. Besides, she never wanted me looking through her stuff."
"Sorry."
Derrick smiled. "You don't need to apologize to me, it's not even my mail. How much you want to bet that when she sees this, she goes right to help Brandon out?"
"I'm not betting against it. We'll be there with her, won't we?"
Again Derrick grew afraid for his girl. The letter informed them that Count Brandon, along with thirty of his soldiers, had been driven into flight by a larger force of ogres. Certainly, Julie wasn't ready for such fearful battle. "Are you sure you still want to go?"
She looked scared too, but answered, "I'll never learn more if I don't experience more. Besides, you'll be there to protect me, remember?"
He didn't think he could do much of a job protecting her against a rush of ogres. "If you have to go, please be careful. Stay by my side while we shoot at the ogres with bows, okay? We're not up to fighting huge monsters in melee like Rose."
"Of course—that's what I've been doing."
Though he still worried, her words alleviated his anxiety a little, and they prepared for the coming fight. Finally Rose returned, seeming less happy than he would have expected after a week in her dragon husband's claws, and Derrick declared a center holiday until further notice. They were all glad that at least they would be fighting monsters this time. Killing human opponents always carried a greater emotional burden. Nonetheless, Derrick felt as afraid going into this battle as he ever had.
Chapter 2
After all the vicious battles they'd been through together, Rose thought of Derrick as a seasoned warrior. But she still worried about the young man's ability to stand up to a massed group of creatures like ogres, which she knew could be frightening even for stout fighters. Of course, she worried even more for Julie, who had only been in one real battle where she'd been less than useless at that. So Rose made it clear the couple was to stay as far away as possible from the thick of the action, joking that there, they could sit back and enjoy her handiwork.
She had to admit she felt a bit jealous of the two in spite of their own minor troubles—at least they were free to enjoy each other's company as they pleased, unlike her and Finn who could only indulge in their love outside the sight of other people. Having been dropped off by Finn nearby while he protested about being treated as mere transportation (Rose thought him too scary to bring to town unless things got really bad), the trio now approached Brandon's home.
"So you think Count Brandon's a good ruler?" Julie asked.
He wasn't, Rose knew. In fact he was viewed with contempt by many nobles for shirking his duties, generally allowing his subordinates to govern while he had his own adventures. But this didn't lessen Rose's opinion of the man much; she'd found him a fine talker, and good opponent as well, at the last Royal Gentlemen's Tournament. "He's a good leader in battle, I'm sure. He lets other people do the rest of it for him."
"I just hope he keeps his house nice. I'd like to finally see what a real nobleman's home looks like."
"There's all different kinds of homes, for different kinds of noblemen. In other lands, I've seen palaces which make anything in our country pale by comparison, and yet I've seen a royal dwelling fit to be a border fort. But I'm sure you'll like Brandon's house, with all the things from his travels he must keep there."
They arrived in Resnick, a large and prosperous county in the center of western Kayland just south of the Brushknoll. Rose found it an attractive place at the moment, the summer grass and trees a vibrant green that conveyed the strength of life. Locating Count Brandon's house in the town of Trumil, they
were welcomed by chain-armored guards and directed to wait in the lobby. Julie nodded approvingly when she entered, confirming that she considered this to be a proper noble's home, luxuriously decorated if darkly lit.
Rose noticed Derrick staring with recognition at a handsome long-haired blond man relaxing in another chair across the room. "You know that guy?" she whispered.
"Yes, I told you about him before. That's Graham, the leader of those men who were protesting outside the center. What do you think he's doing here?"
"How should I know? You even know him better than me."
Surprising them with his acute hearing, the druid said, "I came here to help Count Brandon stop those ogres. Those creatures are even worse than humans in terms of destroying nature. They'll think nothing of cutting down an entire forest for more wood than they need, and not even farm it afterwards. They'll hunt a type of animal to extinction in their area if they find it tasty. And they kill people besides. It's not in anyone's interest to let them run amok."
"That's true," Rose agreed. "Can you fight?"
A booming voice interrupted them. "The Meatball! You're here! Very happy to see you've volunteered your services!" She looked up and saw their host at the top of the central staircase, the huge Count Brandon with his slick, well-groomed black beard. He hardly looked like he'd recently been on the losing end of a battle against ogres.
Meatball was a nickname he had given her inspired by her newfound hefty figure. "You knew I would when you sent that letter."
He studied her face. "You're not mad, are you?"
She was worried for her friends, but not unhappy about being here herself. "No, just making sure you know I'm smarter than you might think."
"I know you're smart. Smart enough to use this as a training opportunity for your students, I see."
Derrick frowned. "That isn't what this is." After a pause, he added, "For me, anyway."
"I'm sure Rose still has plenty to teach you," Julie said, and Derrick's frown deepened.
