Ramis

“Right,” I said.  It wasn’t until we were being dragged through the halls of the keep, bound and bruised, that I finally gave in and admitted it.  “Okay, Phia, you’re right; this is my fault.”

“Well,” he replied, “Your heart was in the right place, Elly.  I mean, you were right!  It was easier to get into the tomb before they sealed it up.”

“Okay, well, yeah, that part of the plan was brilliant!”

“But see,” he continued, stumbling a bit as our captors shoved him, “If I had been planning this—”

“Which you should have been, I admit,” I interjected.

“If I had been planning this,” Phia repeated, smiling, “I would have taken into consideration the fact that the tomb wasn’t sealed yet because, after all, the funeral hadn’t taken place.”

“He said it wasn’t going to take place until tomorrow!”

“Who did?”

“The guy’s son!  I talked it out of him at the tavern—”

Phia blinked and sent me a glare that shut me up instantly.  “Was he drunk?”

“Well… yeah…” I replied, rather reluctantly.

The guard at my left arm jostled me and I stumbled.  “Shut up, both of you.”

So we did.  After all, we had just violated their late king’s final resting place.  As I alluded to earlier, we’d gone in before it was sealed because, after all, we didn’t want to need to remove the seal.  As I also alluded to, my information about the date of the funeral was wrong, and the funeral procession brought in the body of King Keop the Ninth and found Phia and me busying ourselves with the task of carrying off several bags of his belongings (the kind that typically were buried with kings when they died).

So then, we were being dragged, basically, down the long hallways of the keep.  The guards swung open a wooden door, tossed us in, and slammed it shut.  Brushing myself off indignantly, I turned to Phia.  “Got a plan yet?”

“Working on it,” he replied, glancing around.  “Oh?  And what have we here?”  His back was to me as he faced something opposite of me.  I moved to the side so I could see around him.

“She’s sleeping, Phia.  I hope your plan doesn’t involve doing anything vulgar to the lass.”  Curled up against the wall was a young girl in heavy, painfully-bright, yellow robes.  She couldn’t have been more than thirteen.  “And she’s way too young for you.”

“Oh, shut up Elly.”  He glared at me over his shoulder.  "Spare me your wit for five minutes, would you?"

“Get thinking.  I’ve got a bad feeling about this place.”  I’ve always been a fan of terrible clichés.

“Me too.”  Nodding, Phia moved over near the girl and sat down next to her.  The floor, I had only noticed then, was soaking wet everywhere but a few feet around the girl.

The door suddenly opened, and tenth King Keop stepped into the cell (it was a cell, I realized).  “I thought I recognized you,” he said.

I scoffed.  “Well, we did meet at the bar yesterday, while you were slumming your pains away.”

“No, no, earlier.  And also:  shut up.  There’s been pictures of you two circulating around.  The famous dragon-slayers Elliopia Van Tran and Phia Drammick.”

Phia blinked, looking up at me.  “Your name’s Elliopia?”

I nodded.

“Wow—”

“Shut.  Up,” Keop hissed.

“I’m just saying, is all,” Phia muttered.  “I thought Elly was her real name.”

If looks could kill, the glare Keop was giving Phia would have caused his eyes to collapse and his head to explode.

“Right, shutting up,” Phia whispered, with a flagrant roll of his eyes.

“As I was saying,” newly-crowned King Keop continued, “That wasn’t the only place I’d seen you.  There’s been plenty of wanted posters floating around lately, too, declaring the two of you to be thieves.”

“Ah,” Phia piped up again, “That would be treasure-hunters.”

Keop snapped his fingers, and one of the guards who had accompanied him quickly moved over to Phia and punched him across the jaw.  Phia just turned back and faced the man, grinning; the man punched him again.  The second time, he went down.

The noise apparently woke up the girl in the bright robes.  “What’s all this then?” she muttered sleepily.

Both Keop’s and the guards’ eyes went wide.  “The—… the two of you are to be executed at dawn.”  With that, he quickly scooted out of the room, guards in tow.

I watched them go, frowning.

“Who the hell are you two wankers?” the girl said, somewhat less-sleepily.

Phia and I both eyed her warily as my companion stood up and moved to stand next to me.  “Feisty little thing, isn’t she?” I said.  And then I realized why the room was so wet.  Even before I had finished the sentence, a deluge of water came splashing down on me and Phia and the rest of the room—except for, naturally, the little girl.

“I saaaaiiiiid: ‘who the hell are you?’”

I groaned.  “A mageling. Great.”

Another wave of water hit us.  “Answer the goddamn question!”

Phia sputtered out the words:  “I-I’m Phia, this is Ell-ll-lly.”  The water was exceptionally cold and we were both now shivering.

“We-we’re treasure hunt-t-t-t-ters,” I added.

“Two more bloody thieves.  Great.”

Phia started to correct her: “T-t-treas—”

“Right-o, I’m Ramis.  Call me Ram.  They caught me stealing from that bastard’s store-room, like he needed any more fucking food than he already had.  Wasn’t even bloody king yet and already he was stealing from the poor!  Ass-hole.  And the way he treated his poor father?  Terrible.  So it was a moral revenge, not just thievery.  Bet he’s glad now that he’s killed his own father!”  Ramis continued on in such a manner for several minutes while Phia and I dried ourselves off, but neither of us were paying attention to her anymore.

“Isn’t Ramis a boy’s name?” I muttered.

“No, it’s actually a surname, or it has been the only times I’ve ever heard it,” my still-wet companion explained.

“You got a plan yet?”

“Actually, yeah.”

I nodded.  “Right, hit me.”

“It involves the girl,” he started.

“And then the bastard started taxing us!  Back when he was still a prince!  Bloody jackass!”  Ramis was still rambling to herself.  “So I thought I’d just—… what the hell are you two looking at me for?”

“You wanna get out of here?” I asked her.

“Course.”

“What kind of magic are you capable of?” Phia asked.

“Mostly water.  And light, I can do light, too.  And some low-level summoning spells.  Shit like that.”

“Right.  So,” Phia continued, turning to me, “We get the kid to summon up a dragon to attack Keop.  He’ll freak—he’s a coward, I know type—and come running to us.  We’re famous dragon-slayers, aren’t we?  We get out, saying we need the girl to help us because the dragon’s a little bigger than the ones we’ve killed.  So we just walk away!”

“Am I good, or am I fucking good?” we heard Ramis saying, and when we turned to face her she was waving her arms out the window.

And then there was a roar outside.

“Damn it,” I hissed, “Damn it!  Too soon, kid, too soo—” The door slammed open and interrupted me; Keop rushed into the room.

“You two!  Dragon-slayers!  There’s a dragon outside!”

Keop was exceptionally quick.  I smiled.  “And?”

“I need you to kill it!  Full pardon and all that, I swear!” he cried.

“Right,” I answered.  “We need the girl.”

“Fine, fine, whatever!  Just go!”

Doing our best not to laugh at the newly-crowned king, the three of us rushed outside to face the beast.  Ramis must have been paying attention, because the thing really was bigger than one we’d killed.

I’d killed.  While he was mostly asleep.  Caught it unawares.

I never actually said we were dragon-slayers, did I?

“Okay,” I said, turning to Ramis.  “Dispel it so we can get out of here.”

The girl blinked.  “What do you mean, ‘dispel it’?!”

“Make it bloody go away!” I shouted.  The edge in my voice came from the fact that the beast was rushing at us now.  “Can’t you do that?”

“Um… no?  Shit!  Why didn’t you ask about that?!”

I glared past her at Phia.  “Do you see what happens when I don’t have a chance to approve your plans?”

“This isn’t my fault,” he shouted at me.

“You said that she could just summon up a dragon!  This was your idea!”

“Would you two old farts just shut the fuck up so I can concentrate?!” Ramis screamed.  Phia and I hadn’t noticed, but she was waving her hands at the dragon.

Which was rushing right at us.  From the air.

And then, it vanished.  That’s not to say that it was gone, we just couldn’t see it.  I knew it was still there because right after it disappeared there was a rather confused-sounding roar and something very, very large went zooming over our heads and, from there, back upwards.

“Oh, great, you made it invisible!” I cried.  “How in the gods’ names is that supposed to help?”

“Terran’s….L—… Law…” she stammered out.  “Shut… shut up… concen… trating…”

I looked over the girl at Phia, completely confused.  “Terran’s Law,” he said quietly, reading my expression, “States that when a magical creature—unicorn, pixie, dragon, you name it—becomes invisible all of its magical defenses are removed.  No one knows why.”

I pressed a hand against my temple, trembling mostly from anger.  "That doesn't make any sense!"

“Shut… the… hell… up,” Ramis hissed.  She was waving her hands in the air at what we could only assume was the dragon.  It roared, wherever it was, and then the roar was interrupted by a sort of… I guess it was a gagging sound.  When something that large gags, it sounds a lot different than when someone like you or me does.

Ramis, between Phia and me, collapsed to the ground.  Neither of us tried to catch her or even noticed her fall.  We were too busy staring at the rapidly descending, very dead, very visible green dragon.

“Five crowns says it misses the throne-room,” Phia piped in.

“Ten says that not only does it crash through, but it’ll hit the throne, and Ramis meant for it to happen.”

The cadaverous dragon smashed into the keep.  There was a shriek (I assumed it was Keop), and several large crashes.  The shriek was cut off as suddenly as it had begun.

“She hit him!” Phia muttered.  “Kid’s got talent.  And that was a death-spell, too…”  He let out an impressed whistle.

“B—… Bitch.” I turned around to face the mageling as she struggled to rise.  I didn’t get a chance to move before her fist slammed into my gut.  Coughing, I fell to my knees.  "Bitch called me Ramis!  Did I not god-damn tell you that my name is Ram?! Ooo-ooohhh….” She groaned, and stumbled back away from me.  “Did I get him?”

“Which one?” I asked, eyes on Phia.

“Did the… god damned… dragon… hit Keop?”

“Shit,” Phia muttered, tossing me a sack of coins; I caught them lamely.  “Yeah, kid, you hit him.”

Ramis grinned, closing her eyes.