Elnore

There weren’t always Dragons in the Valley. The countryside used to be spotted with farms and livestock, but the farmers have long since fled and farmed newer, less blackened ground. Still, there is a serenity to the valley despite the lingering stench of sulfur and smoke from the small brush fires that dot the greenery. The Dragons make an impressive scourge. They can be found almost anywhere in Vacqik but they were drawn to this valley, probably for the same reasons people are. The river that runs through the town is the very same river that runs through this basin. I would not swim or drink downstream from the river knowing what the townsfolk have been doing to it, but the dragons crawl indiscriminately up to the stream and drink gluttonously at the water’s edge. I love coming out here to watch them despite our typical, adversarial relationship. I put my sword beside me and lie back into the soft grass I had been sitting in and close my eyes. I take in the warmth of the sun and the cacophony of smells in the abandoned valley. This is my place. This is where I have purpose.

While listening to the buzzing and chirping of the fauna in the valley, I hear a hurried, struggled shuffle through the tall grass, heading in my direction. I jolt up to see a tall, red-haired girl clumsily making her way up the hill. She couldn’t have made more noise during her walk if she tried. She has in her hands a bouquet of wildflowers pressed against an oversized stack of papers and books. It is incredible how she can be so clumsy and dexterous at the same time. I can’t help but smile and sigh at the familiar sight. I sit up partially, still leaning back against my good arm.

“Well Greetings, Miraime,” I say, waving at her the best I can manage with a partially prosthetic hand.

“I’d say only my mother calls me that but implying that my mother calls me anything would be entirely misleading.” She shouts back, pressing desperate breaths past her lips. Despite her thin and wiry appearance, she is not accustomed to strenuous physical activity. Academia takes up most of her time and I take up the rest of it, so the most exercise she regularly gets is carrying that stack of books around.

“I don’t know, I kind of like it. It’s formal.” I retort.

“Oh, are we being formal with each other now? In that case, let me start over.” She, now only a few feet away from me, freezes, and clears her throat. “Good tidings, your highness.”

“Call me by my name, Mimi, or I’ll make you regret it.”

“Oh, my apologies, Elnore Daughter of Elphram, Heir to the throne of Vacqik.” She jovially pokes.

I stand up and brush off my legs with a knowing smile.

“I warned you, Miraimie. You disrespected a daughter of El. You may choose silence or punishment.”

She excitedly sets her books down and throws her arms around my neck. “Oh? Tell me more about this punishment thing.” She smiles slyly.

I sigh expectantly. “Alright, I changed my mind. I’m choosing for you.”

“Aww no fair…”

I pull her into me and kiss her, wrapping one of my arms around her waist and pressing the other against her back. We kiss for about a minute before I pull away. I look at her dazed face and a small laugh escapes my lungs. “See, silence.” I grab her hand and lead her to the patch of grass I was sitting in, pulling her down to lay with me by my side.

She plops down beside me and we both lean back into the lush greenery. I look over at her and take her in. Mimi has always been impressive to me. She is one of the smartest people I know as well as a talented mage. Most people have the ability to do magic, but very few have learned as many disciplines as she has. Magic has four primary energetic cornerstones on which it is based: Will, Passion, History, and Instinct. When you learn how to channel one of the four energies, there is an endless array of possibilities for the user. The hardest of the energies to use is History because it requires the user to learn everything they can about the world, its people, and its creatures. But the hardest part of it is that in order to properly use it, you have to learn an entire language, Runegalic. Some people ignore Historical magic altogether, saying it isn’t worth the effort when many can meet their magical needs innately, but Historical Magic has something the others don’t: staying power. Will Magic lasts only as long as concentration does. Passion is only as powerful as the emotion behind it. Instinct is largely uncontrollable and undependable. But when you create a Rune, that Rune and its effects are there to stay.

“So, what do you want Mimi?” I say, closing my eyes in anticipation of where this conversation is going.

She chuckles nervously in response, “Haha, do I need an ulterior motive to come visit my best friend?”

I look at her with a sideways glance, “You can’t stop me from doing a cleansing today. You can be very distracting but you successfully distracted me the last time and now we are behind.”

She frowns, “You talk about them like you are clearing old grain from a silo. We don’t know anything about the dragons, so I’m just not sure why the immediate response is to kill them.”

“I don’t recall the dragons handing out surveys or anything before they killed and burned the people of this valley. They have taken a lot from the people here.” I instinctively rub the two prosthetic fingers on my right hand.

“But we don’t know why they came here; animals don’t just suddenly move in without a reason. We don’t even know where they came from,” She whines.

“Sometimes they don’t need a reason, Mimi. They are invasive and reproduce very quickly. They probably just outgrew where they lived before.”

I feel a tinge of guilt sink in my stomach as she looks over at me with her downturned expression. She does have a point; we don’t know much about the dragons. We don’t know where they came from or how they spread so quickly. I can see how she so easily feels empathy for them. Aside from their destructive nature, they are very charming creatures. They come in a variety of different colors. During the daytime, you can typically see red, white, and gold dragons. There are also black dragons, but you can only spot those at night. Dragons typically range in size from about the size of your forearm to tall enough to reach above your knee. However, there is a den about two and a half miles from here that is home to a dragon that is around 50 feet long from head to tail. Thankfully, the larger ones seem to rarely stray from their dens. Many of the serpents sport a prominent nose ridge as well as three-fingered claws. Their middle claws on their front legs are comedically long. I’ve noticed they use the long appendage to pick for insects underneath their scales and to dig holes into the soft mud along the riverbank. Their scales are reflective and almost metallic in hardness, which makes them very difficult to kill unless you can get them to expose their softer underbellies. They can fly astonishingly fast as well, though it does seem their accuracy decreases some with speed. They typically keep their wings neatly folded up, almost flatly, against their backs. They do also have very sharp teeth and a fatal bite. Their jaw strength is impressive. I’ve seen them gnaw through stone walls with little issue. They do not tend to be directly aggressive, but they heavily impact and alter the landscape around them, often by setting fires in the brush that spread quickly in the grass. If those fires ever spread to the forest at the valley’s edge, there is no telling how far it would spread. It could even reach Elris, the capital of Vacqik, my home. Even though a majority of the damage they do is unintentional, if you give them a reason, they will attack.

I sigh in defeat, “Okay Mimi, I do have to do a cleansing today because the population is already getting out of hand over here. I mean look…” I wave my hand towards the direction of the valley we are looking down upon, “There are somehow more than twice the amount of dragons here than last week. However, I do agree we need to learn more about them in general. How about after I do a cleansing today, we can take a sample of the dragons back to Torkoris for you to autopsy.”

Torkoris, School of Information and Magical Arts is the pride of Elris. It is also the school Miraimie attends. She has attended Torkoris since she was a little girl, and she was allowed to live on campus from an early age on account of her being an orphan. Many people at her skill level have long since graduated but she has opted to study Historical Magic, which requires her to learn as much about the world and the way it works as she can, especially when it involves information that hasn’t been discovered yet. I also suspect she hasn’t graduated because of how fond she is of the institution.

Her previously saddened expression lightens at my suggestion, “I suppose I can settle for that, but first I need you to help me with my Runegalic homework again. If you can agree to that, we can call it a deal.”

I roll over and kiss her, “Sounds like a good deal to me. I’ll do my best to keep them intact today.” I sit upright and clap my hands together, “Well pull out that homework Mimi, our daylight is burning away and we still have dragons to slay and a long walk back to town to make.”

She stands and fetches her stack of books and flowers before making her way back next to me. She orients herself and opens one of the large tomes, laying it out flat in front of her. She pats the ground beside her and white light bounces off the ground and radiates out between her fingers. She lifts her hand quickly and a mortar and pestle appear in the spot where she had previously created the light burst. She picks up one of the wildflowers she collected and pulls out the black seed-filled center, putting it into the mortar. She begins grinding the seeds into a powder. She smiles at me while crushing the black seeds, “I picked the rest of those flowers for my favorite Runegalic tutor you know.”

Her comment makes me blush madly, a rare sight even for her. I lift the bouquet to my face and breathe in its fragrance. The flowers smell soft and almost citrusy, a much welcome change to the stinking smell of this valley. The entire valley used to smell like this in the springtime. The scent reminds me of when my mother used to take me out to walk by the river and visit with the farmers of this land. The people that lived out here were very welcoming to us. They knew we were royalty, but they would happily sit and candidly chat with my mother and father about political goings-on as if they were one of them. That was a welcomed change from how we are typically treated in Elris.

I lovingly lay the flowers on my lap, “Thank you for the flowers, Mimi. They are almost as lovely as you.”

She, now blushing as well, looks down at her work. The seeds were now ground into a fine powder. She flicks her hand, and white drops fling from her fingertips and form themselves into water droplets in her mortar. She mixes the concoction with her finger. The water turns the powder into an inky black paste.

I tilt my head curiously at her actions, “That’s new, I haven’t seen you make ink like that before.”

She perks back up at my observation, “Oh, Professor Artywyn has been encouraging me to begin making my own components. I was picking flowers for you and noticed a few Ebie flowers amongst them. The seeds are often used to make a salve for burns but it’s also known to stain clothing, so I thought it’d function well as ink.”

“That’s interesting." I look down at the intact Ebie flower in my bouquet, “I don’t remember seeing these flowers here when I was a kid.”

She stops for a moment to process what I had said, but after several seconds she finishes setting up for her Runegalic practice.

I scoot closer to her and look at the open pages of her book. The book has a word written at the top of each page with a large blank space underneath where the caster is supposed to write the Rune. Writing these Runes would normally be very dangerous, but the front cover has a cancellation Rune engraved in it which renders the Runes within its pages magically sterile.

I point to the word on the first page, “Abundance, this one will be similar to the Wealth Rune we did last time. So, the shape should be the same. Do you remember that one?”

She dips her fingers into the seed mixture and thinks for a moment, before drawing a large, rigid shape on the page. The shape itself is relatively simple, being just three straight lines that meet at their bottoms.

“Very good”, I nod in approval, “Now, show me where you think the Breath Strokes go.”

For several minutes, she uses her fingers to create a variety of markings on the shape. They swirl, turn, and intersect with the lines turning what was a simple shape into a very intricate character. I revel in the joy and curiosity that marks her expression as she works.

After a while, she finally breaks her staring contest with the page and looks up at me, “Alright, I am almost done but I am at a loss for what Breaths to add here,” she motions towards the bottom of the shape with her blackened fingers.

I smile in approval at her handiwork, “The rest of it looks great! All you need is an “Ah” at the bottom.”

She quickly moves her hand to make a final tapered curl at the bottom of the shape, and then looks back at me once again seeking my critique.

“There, now it’s perfect. How many more for today?” I say, feeling the hilt of my sword eager to finally clear some of the dragons out from the valley below.

“Oh, just one more for today, but the next one is really hard because it’s a trigger spell.”

A trigger spell is a Rune that becomes active under certain circumstances. They are just slightly more difficult to write out on account of the caster needing to specify those conditions. The top of this page says “Nomadic Shield”, “What the Hell is a nomadic shield?”

Mimi perks up at the question, “Oh, it’s actually a rune that Professor Artywyn created. It activates a shield or barrier whenever any observable attack is made against the barer. I think it’s a really neat concept.”

I bounce with excitement, “Do you think it would work on me?”

She hisses through her teeth, “I am sorry Elnore, we could try it but I’m not sure how that would work with your… condition.”

“Yeah, I suppose you are right.” I sink into myself. I should have known better than to even ask. I am a woman that is afflicted with many things but the biggest affront of all is I am one of the few people in the entire world that can’t do magic. The only other person I’ve met who can’t perform or use magic of any kind is my father, King Elphram. It does have its perks sometimes. Most magic can’t harm or affect us, but in a world where magic is so pervasive that people innately heal every wound that tears their skin, it’s a major disadvantage.

Mimi places her hand lovingly over my prosthetic one, “Hey Elnore, don’t worry. I’ll figure out some way for you to use the rune after I learn it. How am I supposed to be your Royal Mage if I can’t figure out some way to give my royal highness what they want?”

Her loving words help me manage a smile, “Well, this one should be pretty easy honestly. It will just take a bit more writing. We’ve done a few dozen protection spells at this point, do you remember the shape for those?”

She redips her fingers in the seed paste and quickly paints another shape. This shape is different than the other shape, it is a rectangle with the right edge missing and a line protruding outward from the center of the left edge.

I once again nod with approval, “There you go, now on the upper portion of the shape, set your conditions for the trigger. I’m not exactly sure what the spell looks like, so I can’t give you exact wording here, but I will check and make sure your conditions work before we move on to the latter portion of the Rune.”

She returns to the page once again, but this time her expression was flat and the joy for her work she was just displaying was now absent. “What’s wrong, Mimi?”

She lifts her fingers off the page and looks over at me, “Please, forgive me for prying Elnore. I’ve known you for years and never asked out of respect but this question has always nagged me. Why do you know Runegalic? You can’t do magic and it takes years to learn Runegalic for those of us that can. It just doesn’t make much sense to me. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, but with how close we’ve been getting, I’d like to know more about you if you’d let me.”

“It’s okay, I understand your curiosity, Mimi,” I say as I lift my hand to feel the softness of her face. “My Mother, who you’d know as Queen Elrisa, was from the Island of Tangal. After coming to Vacqik to heal my father of his condition, her people never permitted her to return home. She loved her people and her culture and knew they’d shut her out after they left. But when she heard the news of a beloved King dying from a disease she knew how to cure, she felt like her Oath as a healer bound her to go help him. So when I was born, that made me the only other Tangaleon she felt she could share her culture with. She used to tell me folk stories, sing songs, and cook me the food of her people. She also taught me Tangalic when I was a kid. We used to speak it to each other and write secret letters in it all the time. I suspect Tangalic is related to Runegalic somehow because the first time I saw a Rune I was able to read all the Breaths. So learning it was just a matter of learning the shapes and positioning for me.”

Mimi looks like she is about to burst out of her skin from interest, “That is amazing Elnore! What an amazing skill to have! It takes people years to learn Runegalic, and you were just able to pick it up like that? That’s impressive, even to me.”

I move my hand to wrap it around hers, “It means the world to me that you think that Mimi, but it’s kind of a useless skill. I’m glad I have that piece of my mother still around with me, but I can’t use magic and I can’t visit Tangal, so I am very possibly the only person that speaks it on the entire continent.”

She wipes her fingers off in the grass next to her, sits up on her knees, and places herself right in front of me, now placing her hand on the side of my face.

“There are no such things as useless skills, especially if those skills connect you to your ancestors. Elnore, you may not be able to do magic, but you are a fierce warrior, a skilled Hunter, strikingly beautiful, surprisingly smart, and deeply interesting. There isn’t a person in Vacqik, man or woman, who doesn’t want to be you. Stop worrying about what you can and can’t do and just be Elnore for once.” She leans in and kisses me again; my head now feels light from her warmth.

She slowly parts her lips from mine, blinking away the daze that presses on us both when we touch. She stands up and claps her hands together, a burst of white light rushes out from her palms when they meet, and at the sound of her clap the books, flowers, and the mortar and pestle disappear. She reaches her hand out to me, “That’s enough studying for now, lets's go kill some dragons.”

I can’t help but chuckle, “Wow, your sentiments with the dragons have shifted it seems.”

She rolls her eyes, “Well, things are different now. It’s no longer murder, it’s science.”

“Wow okay, remind me to be more careful around scientists from now on.” I take her hand and stand, then I turn to grab my sword and buckler. I fasten the buckler to the outside of my prosthetic hand and lift my sword with the other. I bounce the sword around in my palm, admiring how its weight feels in my hand. I look down onto the stinking, fertile valley below us, I can see several dragons greedily burying their trinkets into the riverbank. “Feel free to back me up as you see fit, but make sure to put out any fires you see and keep yourself safe.” I walk down the hill and zero in on my first target. As I’m scanning the river bank I spot a red dragon paused in the grass in a familiar freeze, he is about to spit fire into the reeds. I rush him, lifting the hilt of my sword upward as I approach. Some water from the river bank rushes out in a small wave in front of me, extinguishing the flame before it spreads. Then, right as I am only feet from him, the wet ground dries up around me. The dragon takes a defensive stance, baring his neat rows of teeth protruding out from his gaping jaw. He backs up slowly, hissing and gargling as I approach. I stretch out my hand, and using the hilt of my sword, bash his nose ridge. The impact causes the dragon to cry out in pain and collapse to the ground into a writhing, scaly mass. I take my opportunity for the kill and plunge my sword through his eye and into the mud. His struggle suddenly ceases as he succumbs to his quick death.

I pull my sword out of the dragon’s skull, and turn briefly to look at Miraime, “They will all come now after they smell his blood.” And before I can even turn around I hear the whistle of a dragon falling on me from the sky. I turn around and leap forward, placing me underneath the barreling dragon but out of his path of falling. When he is right above me, I lift the tip of my sword upward and catch his soft underbelly, dragging it along the dragon’s length. He plummets into the ground with all his weight, leaving a several-foot wide hole in the dirt. If he would have hit me, I would have been blown apart. I then hear the flapping of several pairs of wings in the distance. I turn to look, and three more dragons lift themselves into the sky to see who spilled their brother’s blood. They dart towards me, one of them plummeting at me while two remain flittering above the battlefield. The one barreling at me hurls a plume of flame at me, but when I lift my buckler to shield my face I see an opaque shield form in front of me. The fire spreads across the shield’s surface and dissipates, but the shield remains. The dragon barrels into the shield and falls prostrate onto the ground. The shield now dissipates, and I leap forward and plunge my sword directly into his chest. It writhes in pain and spits fire all around him, which Mimi steadfastly puts out. After a few seconds, his struggle ceases and he becomes quiet under my blade. I lift the blade from his chest and then my gaze meets the enraged serpents flittering above me. But to my surprise, they both charge Mimi. My heart sinks into my stomach, I turn around and jump upwards in a desperate attempt to do as I had done before and neatly slice open their stomach, but instead my sword catches one, making a small but deep wound in its lower stomach which causes it to fall right in front of me. I watch in horror as Mimi stands frozen as the other dragon barrels at her, aiming to crash into her. Right as it crashes into her, an opaque black armor covers every inch of her body. The dragon makes contact with her and she flies several feet and becomes motionless on the grass.

I howl in anger; I should never have let her come this close to the riverbank. Regret drives my body forward in an instinctual and uncontrollable fury. I drag my sword through the dirt and directly through the dragon I had just wounded, which would have sliced the creature completely in half if not for its tough exterior. I jump to the place where the dragon who crashed into Mimi was now standing, it runs at me and I reach my buckler out and jam it into its open mouth. Its teeth are longer than normal on account of the dragon's larger size. The beast manages to pierce my forearm in rows along both sides of it. But my adrenaline completely numbs the pain; I stare directly into the reptile’s eyes. For a moment, I recognize my rage’s reflection in them. But hot tears stream down my face as I stand only feet away from Mimi’s motionless body. The dragon strengthens its bite around my shield, and the metal against my arm starts to heat up and burn hot against my flesh.

I lift the hilt of my sword once more and bash the dragon’s nose ridge repeatedly until I manage to break its metallic scales and tough hyde. It finally relents its grip in a daze, and I pull my bleeding arm out of its mouth. Still looking into his eyes, I turn my sword sideways and slice its neck. It collapses to the ground and desperately tries to pull in the air. I quickly end its misery the same way as I had the first dragon, plunging the sword into its eyes and the mud. I leave the sword in its place as I go to Mimi. I drop to my knees and lift her from the mud, pulling her into me, sobbing. The armor disappears, I drop my head onto her chest and listen for her heartbeat. “Mimi, can you hear me? Should I run you into town?” I ask desperately.

She weakly opens her eyes, “No, my innate healing’s already kicked in. That just knocked me out for a moment there, sorry for worrying you, Elnore.”

I pull her into a hug, “I thought they got you for a second. I shouldn’t have let you get this close; this is on me.”

She chuckles, weakly lifting her hand to the side of my face, “You can’t keep me from trying to keep my eye on you, so just pin it on my insanity instead. I’ll be fine, though if you wouldn’t mind carrying me back to town I’d appreciate it.”

I tilt my head in confusion, “Can’t you teleport back home?”

“I could, but I like being carried.” She looks at me with an exaggerated helpless expression, outstretching her arms to me in her plea.

I sigh and lift her off the ground. I walk over to my sword and pull it from the dragon’s head while holding Mimi tight in one arm. Mimi waves her hand, and with a flash all the dragons on the ground suddenly vanish. She wraps her arms around my neck and settles into my grasp. I hold her firmly with both arms and begin our long walk back to town.