by Billy Wong
"Rose, you're the most considerate person I know. Why can't you work with children, then? They're just little people, you know."
"I don't know. Maybe it's because our kids are so young, they've barely begun to form minds. I can't really get how you understand them so well, when we don't even have a means of communication with them. It's probably just a natural talent... but with regard to the older kids, that might be due to how ugly I am." She hung her head. "Hell, maybe I'm so disgusting and unnatural our babies instinctively know it."
Finn sighed. "That's straight up nonsense. Newborns aren't going to reject their mom just because her face looks like ground meat. Stop being so insecure."
"I know I shouldn't be. But I'm a three hundred pound"—she'd gained a lot of weight during pregnancy, and tipped the scales at nearly that much now—"weakling without you supporting me."
"Okay, you want me to spend more time with you and help you raise the kids. Anything else?"
Hearing his tone, she wasn't sure he'd put much effort into easing her troubles, and furthermore didn't really know how she should put her next point, but Rose continued, "I want to go back to doing what I do best."
To her dismay, he sneered. "Complaining?"
She would have laughed if he'd said it a year ago, but the lack of humor in his tone put anger into her heart. She wouldn't try to soften her thoughts for him anymore. "I want to fight evil forces again and destroy them so they can't hurt anybody else. Maybe not right this moment, but when I hear a champion is needed, I want you to be ready."
"You're a mother now. Think what would happen if you got yourself killed."
"Where's your old understanding? Don't you still love me like you did?" she asked desperately. She'd already lost a man she loved once before; she didn't want to experience that incredible heartache ever again! Finn's body shuddered slightly as he nodded. Seeing that surely love remained in him though he didn't act like it, she put a hand on his shoulder with relief. She felt then something that shouldn't be there, something hard and thick and—she ripped his shirt open, and to her horror saw a patch of scales on his chest and shoulder.
Immediately she lost all control, and tears streamed from her eyes to run like twin rivers down her cheeks. Terror made her whole body shake like when she'd last been poisoned. "So that's why you haven't bedded me in so long," she whispered. "You've been trying to hide this. But how's it possible?! Didn't you say, decades of study?"
Finn looked apologetically at her. "When the man-dragon put the enchantment on me so that only I could learn its spells and learn them fast, it didn't intend for me to live. My best guess is that it wrote the spells in its book to only be used by dragonlike creatures, and did something to me so I could use them. In doing so, it might have inadvertently sped up this process."
"What am I going to do?! Why, you damn fool, didn't you stop studying your worthless magic when you saw yourself beginning to change as even I did months ago? Don't you love me enough that you'd stop your self-destruction at least for my sake, and that of our children?"
He put his face in his hands and exhaled slowly. "Of course I do. But we don't even know if the continued use of magic is what drives my transformation along. Maybe it just goes on by itself—I could have stopped using magic to see if it would help, but then you would've noticed. I realized something was wrong since before we fought Joghra and Wilner, you know. I just didn't tell you because I didn't want you to be distracted, and then later when you got pregnant, I couldn't bear to take away from your happiness... I thought maybe I could find a way to solve this problem myself and save you the worry. That's the real reason I pushed you away, too. I was trying to get you used to doing things without me, so you'd be more prepared in case I had to leave."
"So what about the time between the end of the war and when I learned about my pregnancy? Was I too busy then, or did you not trust me with your problem? Why didn't you tell Derrick at least? We could've helped you."
"I didn't tell you guys because you would've made me stop using magic, and I can't do that."
Rose gaped. "What?! So even now, you're still not willing to give up magic?"
He nodded slowly. "No, and I won't. This is my purpose now. I can't not pursue it."
"No? Explain it to me then. Make me understand."
Finn sighed. "Rose, I love you like no one else in the world. I can't imagine a better woman, or person, than you. So please don't take what I'm about to say the wrong way, because I know it's going to sound really, really bad. But you took my pride away. I know you didn't mean to, and I'm not saying you did anything wrong. But before I met you, I thought myself the strongest fighter in Kayland, and maybe the world. I know Wilner is a better warrior, but I'm talking about physical strength. You're as strong as me, and more formidable overall. So you made my unique status obsolete."
"Don't put that on me! Alicia is about as strong as me, and Egbert was as strong or stronger. Besides, you're still the strongest man in Kayland."
"I never met Alicia or Egbert and felt their strength, so I never thought about them as rivals. And that claim is a wee bit less prestigious when you share the title of strongest person with a woman, or two if what you say about Alicia is true."
"Maybe she's a little weaker than us," she said in a desperate attempt to reassure him.
"In any case, comparing myself to you as a warrior made me feel a little inadequate. But when I became the first new mage, I had a unique purpose again. I won't let myself lose that. Even if I do turn into a dragon, I figure I'll just be the modern world's first dragon too until I find a way to change back."
"Have you thought about what you just said? It sounds insane! What if you can't change back? Do you expect to be a father to our children as a big winged lizard? And I've never heard of a dragon changing back."
"And what 'if' you got killed going out to fight evil like you want to do? Don't you understand? This is my purpose, like the fight for good is yours. I know you love our children, but if there was a great threat to the world that you were needed to stop, but you knew you wouldn't be able to return if you went to fight it, what would you choose? To stay with your kids, or to go and fight your last battle?"
Rose saw a flaw in his hypothetical situation. "If it was a threat to the world, our kids wouldn't be too well off if it wasn't stopped. So I'd have to go, wouldn't I?"
"Okay, say it would only become a threat to the world after their lifetime, then what?"
Stubbornly, she answered, "I'd go, but I'd find a way to come back."
He pressed her further. "What if you couldn't? What if you were fated not to?"
Rose's jaw quivered a bit, but she forced out the determined words, "Then I'd change fate."
Finn hugged her then, as lovingly as ever, and breathed, "There's the heart I fell in love with. The heart that makes you the greatest warrior in the world."
"But it's not enough to hold on to you." Rose sniffed. "What good's all my strength, if it can't save what I love and need?"
"You'll have our kids."
She shook her head. "I can't care for them alone. I'd be hopeless without you."
Finn took her face in his hands. "You're the woman whose will kept you alive with multiple lethal doses of poison filling your body, and even fought and defeated the strongest warrior of all Sevria while so stricken—twice! You beat Prince Wilner with a sword through your chest, killed a dragon while it was biting down on you, and shrugged off the strongest magic of a godlike archmage." He paused then, before concluding, "You can handle a couple of kids."
"No I can't," Rose argued tearfully as her hope died. The void that lost hope left filled with boiling rage, and in her fury she begrudged him things she never had before. She stood, slapping Finn's hands away. "No more! You keep flattering me with compliments of how strong I am, because you're too weak to fight the damn curse of 'magic' that the pitiful man-dragon, which I killed without your help, put on your soft mind! You've always been weak, always failed where a bett
er man would have not!
"You once drove me away over your ideals of womanhood, and couldn't even save me when the path you set me on led to all but mortal anguish! I've saved you many a time from threats you couldn't handle, and when I needed help, where were you? Where were you every time I faced deadly Joghra? How much of my lifeblood's been shed for your wants? It's always been this way, that you saddle me with the hardest parts of the work we do together, and though my strength's been enough so far, this is a task I'm not up to! I too have my frailties and failings, and though I always help you overcome yours, when this once I'm the weaker of us, you... you... damn you! Hell, right now I'd rather Wilner or Joghra took your place in this room, so at least I'd know my dilemma and how to solve it. But you—you're unfathomable!"
Her voice was more pained than it'd ever been from physical injury, and the depth of her hurt brought Finn to tears of his own. "I know, I know, I'm sorry! You wouldn't know, but every time I couldn't protect you from harm, I lamented my own weakness, my failure. I suppose many might call my inability to turn away from my work for the sake of love another failing. In some ways, I'd agree. I love you and don't want to lose you. But I just feel a need to do something worthwhile, like you do. Is that so wrong?"
"It's different between you and I! I just want to help others by doing something I'm good at—you, you're not even good at reading books and yet cling to the study of magic out of foolish pride! This is unnatural for you—Finn the mage? It's like a big joke life played on us, and you're going along with it. Why'd you even marry me?! You knew, or at least suspected, what might be to come!"
"Yes," he admitted, "and I married you so our bond could be preserved at least in word and law, if not in life."
"You treacherous, deceitful man! To swear to a union you knew wouldn't last! You fiend!" Rose's violent hands longed in her anger to tear, rend, destroy, so now she pulled the ring from her finger and screamed, "This is what I think of your pretentious marriage!" She crushed the metal band between her thumb and index finger and threw it at his tear-streaked face. "I hope when you're done being a dragon, you go to hell and become the pitiful groveling imp you deserve to be!" Saying these last words, she stormed from the room, her furious footsteps shaking the stone floor of the tower.
#
She hadn't calmed down much when she reached Derrick's room, but at least was able to hold her shaking voice in check. "Take care of my kids when I'm gone. I'll be back eventually. I just can't stand to be near him right now."
Derrick saw the anger in her eyes, but asked, "Won't Finn take care of them?"
Rose explained. "In the best case scenario," she allowed herself to hope, "maybe in my absence he'll grow attached to them enough to reconsider his path."
"Don't you think it's a bit rash for you to run out on your own children like this? Maybe you shouldn't leave at all."
She heard his words, and knew there was merit to them. But her rage at Finn flared up again, and the images that popped into her head made her afraid of what she might do. "Some people think I'm a perfect person," she said tensely, shivering with barely suppressed fury, "that I'm so reasonable and kind and brave. No. I have the blood of thousands on these huge hands. Sometimes I feel like I'm going to explode. And anyone can explode. Do you remember Peter? He seemed so wise; he gave advice to me and calmed my heart. But when he thought he'd made a grave mistake, he stepped onto a path of self-destruction and couldn't turn back. I can't stay here with the thing that makes me want to explode. I have to take a step back."
"Hey, nobody thinks you're perfect. You're just the fat, whiny girl who happens to be the best fighter around. And your hands aren't huge. They're big for a woman, but only slightly above average overall."
Even now, Rose couldn't help a laugh at his response. "Thanks for that. I still have to go though, so take care." Grateful for the respite in turbulent emotions he had so briefly given her, she ran to kiss her kids goodbye, packed, and left.
#
Bladetooth Thomas smiled at the idyllic nunnery before him. Soon his bandit army would take their pleasure here, and fully satisfy that rarely sated need. He could already imagine taking the first pick, and wondered at what lovely young ones might reside within... The screams of his men pulled him harshly from his fantasy, and he turned to see a scene of butchery like—well, like what he was used to, only with his men on the receiving end this time. A lone, huge woman with dark hair waded through his troops like they were defenseless children, cutting them down in droves.
It was up to him then, to show why he led this rough bunch that could only be mastered through strength. The king of east Kayland's bandits, who believed his sword's weight and force unmatched, strode fearlessly to meet the female warrior only to realize her sword bigger than his. And that she was faster. And so much stronger—his last thought, as his sword broke unable to slow the descent of her sharpened metal hunk, and it continued on to cut him diagonally in twain. Soon after, Bladetooth Thomas' band of bandits, the largest and strongest in Kayland, was extinct for all time.
#
Rose looked at the carnage that surrounded her and frowned. She hadn't taken any pleasure in the slaughter, but during the fight, she'd briefly been able to forget her pain in the excitement of the moment. Though her heart had already become leaden in her chest again, she longed for another battle, and that short-lived escape from her despair. Taking in the corpses of the men she'd killed, she did not feel her usual guilt. They were trash, and their lives worth less than nothing. Robbers and killers, they'd been killed in kind like they deserved. Now they'd never make victims of the weak again. Though Rose could not take satisfaction in the respite she'd brought their victims—she could hardly find pleasure in anything right now—she needed the relief from her miserable thoughts, and might as well do some good in the process. So she sought more violence.
#
The mountain troll, twelve feet of muscle and nigh impenetrable hide, came into the village for the third time. Again the terrified citizens watched while it ambled towards some unlucky person's stable to take its meal for the day. They weren't about to try fighting the thing; they'd lost enough good men the first time to know better. It'd already begun reaching inside an open stall—no reason to close them only for it to tear them apart—when the woman jumped onto its back with the fearlessness of a pit bull. The villagers gasped at the suicidal act, for the whole town guard had been helpless against the creature's iron skin and brutal strength. But then the warrior plunged her sword into the base of the troll's neck, though it would have taken the strength of an ape to drive it through. She ripped sideways, nearly decapitating the huge beast. As she gazed down at the carcass on which she sat, she only looked disappointed.
#
City Marshall Jeb Filion wasn't sure what to make of the assassin's guild, cannibal gang, and dark cult that had all been demolished over the course of a night. Had it been the culmination of some huge underworld feud? Implausible as the theory seemed, it was the best he could come with. He decided to check out the dark cult's temple first for more insight. When he approached, the whole structure burst open and a reptilian monster the size of a house dragged itself into view. So overwhelming was the sense of dread and horror emanating from the being, no one in the vicinity could move a muscle. No one except the woman who ran out of the inn to begin slashing at it. The creature punched her and sent her flying back across the street, surely dead. But unbelievably she sprang right up, and darted back in front of it to hack several gashes in its belly. It punched her across the street again. This time she looked angry, and when she came back for a third round, gutted it with a stab and sideways tug. Jeb noticed then that she wore the jewelry of all the destroyed criminal organizations' leaders around her neck.
#
The wifebeater crawled backwards over the cobbles, having been flung one-handed out the tavern window courtesy of Rose. "N-no, please don't kill me," he begged. "I only slapped her once."
"Once? She had w
elts on both cheeks."
"Okay, okay, twice! Please don't kill me."
"I'm not going to kill you." She motioned for him to get up. "Punch me."
He stared. "What?"
"I said, punch me! You're used to hitting women. Do it or I'll hurt you worse." He threw a punch. She threw one of her own so that their fists met head on. A loud crack sounded. He screamed and staggered back in pain, clutching his hand. She walked away. "Now, don't let me hear about you hurting your wife again or I'll come back and break your other hand."
#
Rose took off a pearl necklace and approached the group of filthy kids playing in the alley, most of whom looked thin and hungry. Some saw her and made to run away in fear, but she stopped them with a shout of "Free candy!" She broke apart the necklace and handed a pearl to each child, warning them, "This is not actual candy, but if you give it to your parents they should be able to buy some nice sweets for you." After she finished giving them out and the children thanked her, some still with fear in their eyes, she regarded the other heavy jewelry hanging off her and sighed. Finding real charities to give to would take time she'd rather spend in other pursuits.
#
After cutting down the last ghoul in the upper class cemetery with a holy symbol of Odin wrapped around her sword's hilt, Rose turned to its owners with a smile. "Now, where's my payment?"
"What?!" one of the fat, eloquently dressed undertakers said. "I thought heroes like you were not supposed to demand payment."
"Oh, it's not for me. I'm going to give it to starving kids or something."
"You mean to give our money to children? But don't you know by taking it away, you would deprive our children of the best possible education?"
Rose frowned. "I'd think the money it costs to give your kid the 'best' education could be used to help a lot more than one."
"But how do you know our children won't grow up to be great leaders and help others more with a better education?" the other, fatter undertaker asked.
She shrugged and turned to leave. "Okay then. But I'll have to think twice about helping out here next time."