The Great Hero is a Schoolteacher

The whole place was left in an eerie state, between relief that it was over and fear that the dragon might come back. While firefighters put out the flames, I walked across the castle yard, looking for someone who knew the little boy I’d rescued.

After a while, a woman recognized him and called him Velm. She was dark-skinned and lavender-haired, she wore a light blue laced shirt over dark brown pants, and she told me she was a neighbor.

“It is true?” I asked the child.

He nodded in silence.

“I’ll bring him home safely,” promised the woman.

“He’s looking for his mother. Could she be one of the victims lying in the old moat?”

She shook her head.

“I don’t think so, and even if something happened to her, Velm has other relatives in our district. I’ll leave him with them. Can we go now?”

Nothing in her body language suggested she was lying or had bad intentions, so I let her carry the boy out of the castle yard.

As the place slowly emptied, all noble guests ventured outside of the chapel, including the king.

“Did you run out of attack spells?” I asked the Senior Magi.

Sir Pernel narrowed his eyes.

“What are you talking about?”

“Well, I thought you could cast a limited number of each spell every day, and…”

“Nonsense! Is it how magic works in your world?”

I bit my lips. It’s how it works in D&D.

King Esthar interrupted the awkward dialogue by asking us to report to him, one by one. He heard the sorcerers, me, and a few other people who’d stayed outside during the attack and could testify.

When my turn came, he was no longer wearing his heavy crown, but he certainly didn’t need it to look regal.

I told him what I’d seen and done, and he looked at the moat with a deeply pensive face.

“It was a bold move, inviting commoners inside the castle yard without my permission.”

There we go. Nobles and commoners. The former looking down on the latter, when they wouldn’t survive one day without them.

When he turned back to me, I didn’t bow or look down. Not this time.

“I acted according to my conscience, Your Majesty. Too many lives were at stake. I couldn’t just stand by while the crowd was panicking.”

The king closed his eyes for a second.

“Is it what being our Great Hero means to you?”

“It is, Your Majesty. Saving lives and improving what I can.”

Only then did I bow to show respect. King Esthar could certainly understand my stance.

He nodded, sighed, and took a long painful look at his scorched garden.

“I do not understand why Kossi, a Gold Dragon, would betray our pact and join Demon Lord Faur’s evil legions, but I must accept that it happened, and it casts a great danger upon the Brealian kingdom.”

He took a step, then another, with his hands in his back.

“There should have been a banquet tonight. Given the circumstances, it will be canceled, and the food will be redistributed to the citizens.”

“It sounds wise. But there’s something I don’t understand, Your Majesty. May I ask you a question?”

“Speak.”

I scratched my nape.

“When I learned about Demon Lord Faur, I thought this kingdom was at war. But it’s not, is it?”

The king sighed.

“Not yet, indeed, but I will tell you more in the morning. You should rest, now, Great Hero Al. I have matters to attend to. We will speak again tomorrow.”

He dismissed me, gathered an escort and left the palace in a white carriage.

The afternoon was coming to an end and the sky had taken rosy hues above the wounded city. Two young female servants brought me to my apartments on the second floor of the west wing. The place consisted of a bedroom, private bathroom, and an antechamber.

There was wallpaper with dark red floral motifs on a light blue background. The large wardrobe overflowed with clothes, someone had left a fruit basket on the round table, the wooden floor smelled of oil, and the thick blue curtains looked brand new. I sat down on the wide bed, which was also very soft, and I realized how tired I was.

The girls offered to help me wash, but I raised a hand to stop them.

“This is very nice, thank you, but I can do it myself. I wasn’t born in a noble family and I’m not used to having people do things for me.”

They looked shocked, as if I’d rejected them.

“Don’t you want us to heat your bath?”

“Yes, yes of course, you can heat the water, and then you can go to the antechamber, eat a fruit or two, and pretend I had you rub my back and I was a hassle.”

I winked at them, and they put to work with a giggle.

“By the way, what are your names?”

They were Olga and Vera. I swore to myself I’d never need to ask them again.

The soap smelled of lavender and the water was pleasantly hot. After washing and resting a little in the bath, I put on clothes that I thought were both stylish and comfortable: a white shirt, a teal bodice with orange brocade cuffs, flowing pants gathered in my boots, and a belt with an ornate buckle that looked a bit like a Celtic knot. I gathered my brown hair in a loose bun.

The person in the mirror looked exactly like the Alicia Lebel who’d taught four-year-olds. I’d been dead and reborn, yet I had nothing to show for it, except I was in a palace, treated like a distinguished guest by a king who’d summoned me by mistake.

Had Alberto been in my place, what would he think? What would he do? Would he have fought the dragon today?

Maybe this was all a dream. Maybe I’d wake up in my own bedroom, in the house I hadn’t finished paying off, and laugh at my own distress.

“Great Hero Al?”

I wiped my tears and turned to the door. Vera was waiting for me.

“Princess Nigella wants to talk to you. Are you ready? I can take you to her apartments.”

I’d never be ready, but I accepted nevertheless. Vera led me to another wing of the palace, with wooden coffering on the ceilings and painted flower patterns on the walls. The crown princess’s antechamber looked a lot like mine, only with more ornaments and paintings.

Princess Nigella, too, had changed into other clothes: in her case, a simpler dress in shades of white and blue. No tiara, no complex bun, only a light blond plait behind her back. In the dim light, she just looked like a fragile, sad and tired teenager.

“Thank you for coming, Great Hero Al. With the banquet being canceled, I ordered a light supper. Would you like to share it with me?”

“Please just call me Al, Princess. It’d be an honor.”

“Be my guest, then, Al.”

We sat down to a light green soup that smelled like peas, with mushroom slices in it. I tried a spoonful. The soup could have used more seasoning. Nigella looked at me as I tasted, and then gave me a sad smile.

“Do you think this soup is bland? It is meant to be. This is food for a wake.”

“I understand.”

As ritual foods go, I’m pretty sure there’s worse out there.

We sipped our soup in silence, thinking of the lives lost in the attack.

When our bowls were empty, Nigella looked out of the window, where we could make out the night lights of Carastra.

“I wish your first day among us could have been better,” she sighed.

“It’s all right. You couldn’t foresee such an attack.”

She shook her head.

“The more I think of it, the less I understand it. Kossi was around since before I was born, so why would he join forces with our enemies? This is so unlike him!”

“How well do you know Kossi, Princess?”

Better than I thought. He wasn’t just some distant ally, as I’d assumed. He was present at official ceremonies, he often paid unplanned visits, he was more like a friend of the family. Nigella told me how he’d take her shopping in Potions’ Corner when she was a child.

I raised a hand to ask a question.

“How can a huge dragon like him go shopping?”

She chuckled.

“Gold dragons have a human form, Al.”

How is it possible when he’s so large and majestic? What about conservation of mass? Oh, whatever. It’s a fantasy world.

I nodded. Nigella had a dreamy smile.

“Hardly anyone in Carastra knows him in his human form, and I was easy to disguise back then, so we could buy sweets and walk around. It was a getaway for me, and for him as well, I suppose.”

“What was he to you? Some kind of uncle?”

“I suppose so, but it all stopped after the accident.”

She put her chin on her hand. Her eyes lost focus as she relived the memory.

“Kossi showed up at the vigil, after my mother and brother died. He stayed for the funeral, but it was the last we saw of him. That was one year ago. Nobody reported seeing him since, neither in Carastra nor anywhere in the Brealian kingdom.”

I nodded. There could be a million reasons for him to stay away from humans for a while, so I could understand why nobody thought of a betrayal.

And yet, there’s this girl overwhelmed by sorrow, who could have used a loving uncle by her side.

“Are you alone, Princess?” I asked. “Last of your line?”

“No, Al. Did you meet the Duke of Sottarn?”

“I think I did. He’s your uncle, isn’t he? King Esthar’s brother. He lives in another city… I can’t remember, starts with a Z.”

“Zerta. The main sea port of the kingdom, at the mouth of the river Rekario.”

Nigella looked out of the window again.

“I have two younger sisters, Adalyn and Zinnia, but they live in Zerta with my uncle Irmel. Our father wants to keep them away from all the hustle and bustle of Carastra.”

“It means you have no siblings around, and maybe no one close enough to understand what you were going through when you became crown princess. A friend of the family like Kossi should have stood by you.”

She sighed.

“What matters today is not his absence, but his attack. Without the magic that protects the dome of the chapel, we would probably be dead. Thank the Almighty for keeping us safe.”

I nodded.

“Unlike you, I didn’t know Kossi before, but I was outside today, and something was off with his behavior. At first, he only attacked the garden. The dome, too, but someone close to your family must know that it’s protected, so at this point, he probably wasn’t trying to kill anyone. Then he seemed to fight against something invisible, and when he did turn his fire against the people, it looked like he was coerced into it.”

Nigella looked at her empty bowl, then at me.

“Coerced? By a spell, for example?”

“Possibly. But are there spells strong enough to subdue a Gold Dragon?”

“Kossi is quite young, fifty or sixty years old. He is powerful, but not as much as ancient dragons, so such a feat, though difficult, is probably possible.”

She put her hands over her face.

“This is a nightmare, Al. I lost my mother and older brother, I became crown princess while half the aristocracy of this country deemed me too weak for the task, the dragon who could help me through this ordeal vanished, and when he finally came back, he attacked my capital city!”

I expected her to cry, but she didn’t.

“You’re probably stronger than you think,” I said softly. “I’m a teacher, you know, and what I see in you is a clever young person who needs to find confidence and grow into her responsibilities.”

And learn to delegate them to competent people, as being born into a royal family doesn’t necessarily make you able to rule everything.

“Is this why you were summoned?” she asked. “To teach us wisdom from your world?”

I laughed.

“I wouldn’t count on my world’s wisdom if I were you! To be honest, I still need to figure out what I can bring you and your kingdom, but now that I’m here, I’m not letting you down. You have my word, Princess Nigella.”

“Will you find out what happened to Kossi?”

At this point, I remembered I had a question to spend. I only had one a day, and it was time to use it up. I wiped the corners of my mouth with a white linen napkin.

Now, how does this work? How do I call Cherub? Do I just close my eyes and think hard?

“Hello there! Cherub, I have a question! Did the dragon Kossi really turn up against Brealia, or did he attack against his will?”

The answer popped into my head, along with the certainty that I could get no more information on that day: “Against his will.”

I opened my eyes and smiled at Nigella.

“Kossi’s controlled by someone else. I think he’s still your friend, Princess. And I’ll do my best to understand what’s going on.”