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Year 513 of the Age of the New Day
3,628 years after The Age of the Dragon
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“The science of map-making has progressed to such a degree that, on modern maps, any blank space marked as ‘here be dragons’ can be said with sufficient certainty to have a fifty-percent chance of containing actual dragons.”
- Atlas of the Greater Continent, Circa N.D. 500, collector’s edition.
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Chapter 1:
There be Dragons
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#1.1 – Friday, the 6th day of the 9th month…
Scarlet Jusenkyou’s eyes followed a dragon as it glided through the sky high overhead. Caught on a thermal, it soared above the timeless cliffs hemming in the valley city of New Arindell*. The thirteen-year-old girl’s imagination set alight at the majesty of the creature. Her gaze then dwelt upon the cliffs; those ancient, reaching bastions of defense which had held off all but the single worst siege. In some long forgotten epoch, a piece of those cliffs, a bit of andesite all riddled through with quartz, broke free and tumbled down into the valley.
Today, that fragment flew through the air and impacted the side of Scarlet’s head.
“Owe!” she screamed.
Scarlet fell to her knees and dropped the enormous armload of books she’d been carrying. They fell out in disarray across the grass as blood trickled down from her shiny new head wound.
“Oops! So-rr-y!”
Scarlet followed the direction of the mocking cry and caught sight of several boys from her school. They were sniggering and running away behind a building, content to pretend they didn’t aim right at her.
She cursed herself, how could she be so stupid as to cut through the rec center† on a Friday afternoon? She needed to get home, she couldn’t be late; and the mistake cost her.
Just like it always did.
An ordinary thirteen year old would have no business in the part of the Library where Scarlet’s books came from. Her hands passed rapidly over the faded, cracked covers. The Great Library of Arindell+ housed some of the oldest, rarest tomes on the continent.
The boys were coming back, now. She didn’t dare confront them. She leaned forward to gather up the books. Blood from her cut dripped across the open pages of History of the Greater Continent, First Edition. The breath froze in Scarlet’s lungs as she watched the drops tumble. Throat shut, she tried to brush the blood away, but succeeded only in smearing it around.
This problem would have to wait.
Scarlet slammed History shut and grabbed the many volumes. Despite herself, she paused to re-arrange them. She pulled herself to her feet, snatched up her school bag, and started to fast-walk in the direction of the street. Closer to the prying eyes of neighbors and passers-by, the bullies wouldn’t be so bold.
Pausing beside a tree, Scarlet dug through her schoolbag for something to stop the bleeding. Her temple was still dripping where the rock struck her. She found only a late, half-finished math assignment crumbled in the bottom, filthy from riding around in her bag since the last school year. She used it to staunch the cut anyway, then continued on towards home.
Her house sat a little lower than the rest, with walls made of stained wood instead of stucco, and funny little carved tiles across the roof. Scarlet headed straight inside, ignoring the full mailbox down by the street(even though the act would net her much ire at some later date).
“Scarlet, is that you?” her mother, Ann, called from the kitchen. “Did you bring the mail in? What time is Emmerich picking you up? I think you’re late!”
The Jusenkyou home always seemed a little dim inside. Probably because of all the dark stain on the intricate woodwork. Today, this made Scarlet feel like she could skulk about.
“Just a minute, mom!” she called back.
Scarlet cut through the back hallway of the house, cleverly skirting her mother and reaching the sanctity of her small bedroom. Every square inch of the walls here were lined with shelf after shelf of books, of the same archaic and thick type she carried in her arms. Scarlet dropped the latest stack on her desk and stepped into her bathroom where the visage of her own reflection confronted her in the mirror.
She wasn’t much to look at. Her dark sienna hair and mundane complexion framed her nasty cut, which made her look especially like the last survivor in a horror movie. Blood all down one side of her face and splattered across her black tank top.
Scarlet muttered an archaic swear word and began ripping toilet paper off the role. The very last thing she needed right now was a lecture from her mom about not getting blood on the nice bath towels. Briefly, Scarlet wondered just how much blood a person had to loose before it impacted their mental functions.
Scarlet’s mother entered her bedroom and swung around to the adjacent bathroom door. “There you are, little bird. Aren’t you late for—Scarlet! What happened?!”
Scarlet jumped when her mother spoke, and banged one knee painfully into the cabinet under the sink. “I hit a door, it’s nothing!”
Not wanting to be left out, Scarlet’s pet cat raced into the bathroom between her mother’s ankles and animatedly started to bat at the hanging line of bloody toilet tissue in Scarlet’s hand. “Jayce!” Scarlet scolded the cat. “Jayce, no! Not now!” She desperately daubed at the side of her head while fending off the cat. The paper did nothing to staunch the flow and only turned into a crimson mush.
Scarlet’s mother grabbed a lavender washcloth and ran it under the facet, then pushed Scarlet’s hands aside and pressed it to her temple. “Oh, child, we need to get you to a mage-healer. This is bad.”
So much for not getting the towels dirty, Scarlet thought to herself, but said “NO! I have to get ready! I can’t miss tonight! It’s more important to me than anything!”
Her mother glanced questioningly at the new stack of books on Scarlet’s desk. “Really?”
Scarlet felt the tears well up instantly in her eyes and stream down her cheeks. If she had to go see a healer, it would mean being at least an hour before she could get to the Keep. She’d miss the introductions entirely.
She looked up and saw her mother’s gaze soften.
“All right,” Ann said. “We’ll make due.” She wetted the cloth again, rinsing out a torrent of red, then set about thoroughly cleaning the injury.
Rummaging through the medicine cabinet, she found some long-expired first aid supplies, sighed at the dubious quality, then retrieved a bottle of isopropyl alcohol. “I wonder, sometimes; maybe you’d be a little more careful if we didn’t always take you to the healers for every bump and bruise.”
Scarlet shrank into her shoulders. Healing by magicSS was a luxury, but one her family could afford. Every time she smashed a finger in the car door or sprained an ankle, she appreciated getting patched up right away. But when it was her fault for being stupid and unlikable, she didn’t think it was fair to make her parents pay.
Ann coated the washcloth in alcohol and used it to sterilize the wound, warning Scarlet first and then holding her close while the girl cried in pain. “We’ll be able to cover it up some if you wear your hair down. It’s lucky we didn’t get it cut short this summer like I suggested.”
“I get mistaken for a boy enough as it is,” Scarlet felt her ears turning red. Tears were pouring down her cheeks, but thanks to the cut, her mother didn’t have to know why Scarlet was really crying.
After painstakingly cleaning up all the blood she could find, Ann used a few thin adhesive bandages to close up the nasty gash, then taped a piece of gauze over it. She took a fresh towel and gently dried Scarlet’s eyes. “All right, little mouse, go put on your dress and let’s see what we can do with that hair.”
With her mother safely shooed out, Scarlet closed her bedroom door and went for the closet. She even had a book case for a closet door, built on an ingenious track it slid out of the way to reveal her clothes. In her minds eye she tried to summon a vision of how she would like to look this evening: elegant, sophisticated.
Scarlet drew a breath in through her nose and put her hand on the clothes hanger. She turned towards the mirror on the back of her door, then dragged the garment out and held it against her wiry frame, all without exhaling.
The gown was crimson and black.
The colors evoked feelings of bigness that gave Scarlet confidence. At four foot ten and generally stick-like in build, she needed all the help she could get. Crimson and black were the colors of her ancestorP, the great hero of the age. Tonight, she would see an exhibition of relics related to that ancestor. No one outside her own head could understand it, but in her thirteen short years of life this would be the most important evening.
The gown looked lovely, but to Scarlet it just didn’t pair well with the rest of her. Her frizzy and unruly hair; her too-narrow shoulders. The rest of her features were plain.
Indistinct.
Except for the eyes.
The eyes betrayed her lineage, that piercing shade of jade green that marked her as a Jusenkyou. In eras long past, her ancestors had been mighty warriors, heroes. They’ve saved the world and so much more. A little anticlimactic, then, that her father became an accountant. Somewhere along the way, the family line moved out to the suburbs. They became ordinary, indistinct, no different from anyone else.
Just like Scarlet.
Through a crack in the bathroom door, she eyed the stack of books while pulling the dress on. It felt like she’d had to wait for the change of an Age to get back in the annex. The last rare books librarian, the one who knew her face, finally moved on. This best explained Scarlet’s lateness for her auspicious evening: once she found out she could get at the really important books again, she could not wait another day.
With the dress donned, Scarlet added a shawl of delicate nightshade and examined herself again. The bandaged cut looked very noticeable. Feeling more like a child’s drawing of a woman than even a pretend elegant socialite; Scarlet grabbed her shoes and headed into the front room. Hopefully, the feeling would subside once she started leeching off of her dearest friend and mentor. Emmerich Thomason, at ninety-three, would require a slow pace. And Scarlet, with her first time in heels, would thank him for that.
Her close friend and mentor, her surrogate grandpa, the venerable Emmerich Thompson. He had won at a charity auction an invitation to view an exhibition of Slayer Dragon# relics at Valley Gale Keep##. Instead of family or older friends, he asked Scarlet to escort him. For a girl obsessed with the past, her own and others, this gave Scarlet the chance to walk into history. And she wouldn’t miss it for anything.
Scarlet found Emmerich waiting for her in the front hall.
“There’s my little book-wurm of the bōchōrd!” his voice boomed across the tile entryway. “You look lovely, but what have you gone and done to your head?”
“Its—its nothing,” Scarlet twisted her jaw. “S-sorry I’m late. Does this look ok?”
“The colors of your ancestors,” Emmerich said. “I couldn’t have picked it better myself!” He turned to Ann and showed her his embroidered nightshade pocket square.
“Did you plan that?” Ann asked.
“Of course, darling,” Emmerich smiled under his thick white moustache and gestured at Scarlet’s shawl. “It’s the colors of the Light Bearer. And a chaperone must always make an effort to match his charge.”
Scarlet plastered a smile on her face and did her best to look dignified. “We need to go, we’re going to miss the introductions!”
Emmerich straightened his large Antiquarian** medallion and settled his matching gold heraldry sword on his hip. “Yes, quite right.” Scarlet wished more than anything to carry such a sword of her own, but it ‘wasn’t fashionable’ for ladies. Middle school girls were right out.
“Scarlet, make sure to get some pictures of yourself with the artifacts, ok?” Ann fussed with Scarlet’s unruly mop of hair, trying her best to obscure the large wad of gauze now slowly staining crimson. She turned to Emmerich. “Otherwise she’ll come back with forty pictures of one sword, and no proof our daughter was even there.”
“Ah, they don’t allow photography around the relics,” Emmerich sighed as he walked Scarlet to his car. Like a perfect gentlemen, he opened the door for her. She stumbled and he caught her arm.
“S-sorry, first time in heels,” Scarlet said.
“Think nothing of it,” Emmerich helped her into the car. “Those were all the rage for young men when I was your age. I recall being quite the master at it.”
After hurriedly waving goodbye to her mother, they set out for the city center.
“Now, my young friend, you best tell me what really happened,” Emmerich informed her as soon as the car got moving. “If you’re going to be a great Antiquarian some day, you can’t go about censoring history. Even your own.”
“The kids from school… you know,” Scarlet said lamely.
“You’re a Jusenkyou, lass,” Emmerich reminded her. “You, more than anyone, know what that means. You’re not some chosen one, none of you ever were. But you were the ones who chose to act. You have the blood of dragons flowing in your veins. And all over your head, for that matter. Come along, let’s stop and get that mended—”
“I don’t want to be late!” Scarlet squeaked, her voice breaking a bit. “Please? It’s such a privilege—”
“Heh, I understand you’re enthusiasm,” Emmerich admitted. “In all my ninety-three years, this is the first time I’ve ever been invited to meet our mighty Slayer Dragons. I no doubt should have brought my daughter tonight. Or even my own granddaughter. But I dare say none of them would be half as excited as you.”
Scarlet settled back in her seat and blushed. She wanted to be just like Emmerich. Except for the “very old” and “a guy” parts. Behind his calm demeanor, she could see that he, too, was excited.
“What if I’m not cut out for this?” Scarlet said.
Emmerich turned and raised a graying eyebrow at her. “Not cut out for what? Aside from some shiny relics this is little more than a fancy cocktail party.”
“Yeah, what if I spill something on myself, or say something dumb to an important person?” Scarlet could never shake the feeling that everyone watched everything she did. She wore muted colors and hid behind her hair, stacked books all around her like a fortress. But those searching eyes always haunted her.
“You remember the last Symposium?” Emmerich asked. “You talked circles around Dr. Kent, and she’s widely considered an expert.”
Scarlet blushed again, this time with a bit more pride. “Yeah, but when I do that at school, everyone calls me a weirdo.”
“The academic world is made up of former school-yard ‘weirdos’,” Emmerich’s mustache bristled as he stifled a laugh. “It is an elite few who can care so much about finding truth as to compete in our halls. And you do so with candor.”
Scarlet’s mouth stretched into a thin lipped smile and she started blinking rapidly. School was not a happy place for her at the best of times. Though she wanted more than anything to be a researcher, the knowledge that it would take many, many more years of schooling in order to get there sometimes made her heart race.
So far, Scarlet had only attended a week of eighth grade, and she already wanted to go live on top of a mountain like a hermit. The long-awaited visit to the Keep was the only thing keeping her sane.
The Keep’s Enclave†† hosted just ten of these receptions a year, with a hundred invites each time. Fifty went to tourists, the others were distributed by lottery across a careful cross section of Arindell’s population. Officially, it was ‘merely’ a chance to meet with a few Slayer Dragons and see artifacts from the Order’s long history. But the unofficial prize meant a chance to rest eyes on Echbaldam, the Sword of Righteousness.
The car made it off the main roads and headed into the heart of the city. The dark stones were invisible against the night sky, but the lights on the flying buttresses of the great castle-fortress loomed above them as they drove beneath the outer battlements.
Made to withstand a siege that never came, it was more museum now than military. Scarlet had been many times, but only to the lower reaches. The public sections, the guided tours. Money could not buy access to the Enclave.
They arrived in a subterranean parking structure, the remnants of an ancient cistern repurposed to hold cars. Through the tinted sunroof, Scarlet got a look at the fluted marble columns and high vaulted ceilings, and for a moment she felt as though she could fall right into the past.
But Emmerich’s car did not need to park. It pulled up beside a lighted archway and a man in a guard’s uniform shouldered a halberd and opened Scarlet’s door. A red carpet waited for her.
No one else thought she was special, but it didn’t matter. Scarlet had arrived at Valley Gale Keep.
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* ref. New Arindell
† ref. Rec Center Network
+ ref. Great Library of Arindell
SS ref. Arindell Healer’s Guild of
P ref. Hunter Jusenkyou, last true Pendragon++ of Slayer Dragons
# ref. The Slayer Dragons
## ref. Valley Gale Keep
†† ref. The Enclave
** ref. New Stormwind Antiquarian Society
++ ref. Pendragon
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End:
Chapter One
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