Maxine Nobody was shaken from her slumber by the sound of her child stomping into the room. Over the course of the last year, Drake had grown with remarkable speed, leaving the pot within weeks and quickly passing through infancy and toddlerhood over the course of the next several months. It was difficult for Maxine, who had little experience with children, to estimate their current maturity level, but they walked and talked, played and told jokes. They were even learning to read. They were energetic, talkative, healthy, everything Maxine could want in a child. Although, early in the mornings, those loving thoughts were often set aside in favor of wondering how someone so small could make so much noise.
It was just as well. She had a meeting to go to and she found that her morning routine took more than twice as long now that she had a child.
Andra von Ekko, commander of the North Continent Allied Forces, had dragged her across the ocean to meet with the generals and check on the war’s progress. Now she was staying in the guest bedroom of some demon nobleman’s house in the occupied Ambrosia City. Maxine found the room to be a little excessive for her taste. It was nearly the size of the entire first floor of her house, but only had a few pieces of furniture. The enormous bed and larger-than-average door suggested that it had been built to occupy some of the larger types of demons. The cream-colored walls were covered in old-looking paintings and delicate porcelain decorations. Not an ideal room for a woman with an energetic young child.
Maxine rose and helped Drake dress before dressing herself. She allowed Drake to select today’s mask, a paper-mâché mask that resembled a lizard, with impressively detailed scales that glimmered in the light. Drake understood that when the mask was on “mommy” became “daddy” and was always to be called “daddy” around strangers. It was a lot of responsibility to place on a child, and not really fair to them, but Maxine didn’t see another choice. Due to paranoid and dated fears of “the wider implications of letting people alter their body at will,” the International Society of Alchemists hunted down anyone who made body modification potions. Maxine feared that Drake might one day let the truth slip out and that it might reach the ISA. If that were to happen, even Andra’s influence couldn’t protect her.
Once the two were dressed, Maxine rang for breakfast, and it arrived shortly afterward, carried by a maid with lizard-like features. Of course, this was why Drake had chosen this mask. Ever since the two had arrived on the southern continent, they had been fascinated by the sheer variety of bodies that demons had. Wings, claws, horns, demons who looked entirely human save for cat-like eyes, or demons who had no human features at all, the diversity of demons was a far cry from the two-armed, two-legged appearance of the humans, elves, and orcs of the northern continent. Drake’s hair had a grassy texture and their verdant skin had the soft-yet-firm feel of a plant stem. This had always set them apart from other children, and had led to them feeling a connection with demons. They’d attempted to befriend several of the servants of this house, and the choice of the lizard mask was probably an extension of that, a way of saying “See? I like lizard people.” Maxine just hoped the maid didn’t find it offensive. She was worried enough about her child spending time with servants who were likely less-than-pleased by having to work for an occupying force.
The two ate at a small table that had been brought to the room to allow Maxine to eat in private. Although Drake gained energy through photosynthesis, they were also able to eat. Maxine wasn’t sure if water and sunlight provided them with all of the nutrients they needed, so she tried to give them a variety of foods to ensure a well-rounded diet. As the pair ate, they had their usual breakfast conversation, which always consisted of Drake asking an endless chain of questions beginning with “Why?”
As they finished, there came a knock on the door. Maxine quickly replaced her mask before answering the door. Andra stood in the hallway, smiling and holding something wrapped in tissue.
“Andra!” Drake screamed, leaping from their chair to embrace her. “Did you bring me a present today?”
Andra laughed and tousled Drake’s hair. “Of course I did.”
She picked up Drake and carried them into the room, passing them the tissue-wrapped object. Drake tore into it greedily.
“Oh, wow, a dragon scale.”
They proudly held up their prize. It was pale blue in color, and thin, shiny and slightly curved.
“Actually, it’s a seashell,” Andra explained.
“Wow,” Drake repeated, their excitement unabated. “What’s a seashell?”
“It’s a shell of an ocean animal. You find them on the beach sometimes. Haven’t you ever been to the beach?”
Drake shook their head, wide-eyed.
Andra smiled. “In that case, why don’t I take you there later today? If these meetings don’t take too long.”
“Drake has studies to do,” Maxine interjected, causing Drake’s face to sink.
Maxine had briefly enrolled Drake in public school; however, this had proven problematic for several reasons. First of all, it was difficult to gauge Drake’s maturity and intelligence. They aged and learned much more quickly than most children, which made it hard to determine which grade would be the best fit. Drake’s knowledge was often piecemeal. They absorbed information as easily as sunlight, but with only a few months of life there simply hadn’t been enough time to learn everything. Furthermore, there was the question of whether Drake would continue to grow at the same rate, and if so, whether that would mean that they would stay in the same grade or advance accordingly.
However, what had ultimately caused Maxine to pull Drake out of school was the other students. Standing out in the wrong way made school difficult in the best of times, but with the war against the demons, Drake’s plantlike characteristics made them the target for all of the anti-demon sentiment the other students learned from their parents. Now Maxine was doing her best to take care of Drake and give them a well-rounded education while simultaneously keeping up with both her work as an alchemist and her research. Unfortunately, her life had been further complicated by Andra maneuvering her into acting as the ISA’s representative. Maxine wasn’t sure how Andra had accomplished it. All she knew was that one day she had received a letter requesting her presence at the castle and a Magi-net message informing her that she would be undergoing an ISA audit. Andra had promised to “take care” of the audit issue and Maxine had heard nothing else about it. Still, she was left with the sense that her situation was more precarious than she knew.
“Oh, come on,” Andra said. “Let the kid have a bit of fun. Besides, it’ll be an educational trip. I’ll teach them about tides or crustaceans or something.”
Drake looked at their mother with hope-filled eyes. Andra was like a gust of wind at a picnic. She came sweeping in, tossing around everything that had been carefully laid out, and no matter how hard you tried to keep everything in place, you always ended up losing a napkin or plate.
Maxine sighed. “Fine.”
Drake squealed in delight.
“But right now, we have a meeting to get to,” Andra said with mock sternness.
Andra set Drake down and Maxine took their hand. Andra led the way downstairs and out of the house to a waiting carriage driven by a human man. Maxine was surprised at how many humans seemed to occupy the southern continent, or at least Ambrosia City. Most of them seemed perfectly content with living under demon rule, and were less-than-pleased with the current occupation.
Drake, of course, was crestfallen. “Aww, the driver’s a human. Humans are boring,” they said, way too loudly.
The carriage carried them to another nobleman’s house, this one was being used as the center of command for the war effort on the southern continent. They were admitted by a servant, a demon with horns so long he had to duck under door frames. Demon biology was so diverse that Maxine supposed it was impossible to take every configuration into consideration when designing a house.
The demon spoke Rampartian. Maxine couldn’t believe how many people here did, both human and demon. And the dialect was so similar despite a thousand years of little contact between the two continents. It was something Maxine puzzled over, though Andra seemed to consider it nothing more than a welcome convenience.
The meeting was in the house’s dining room, as the servant led them in, they found it was already occupied by several commanders of the various armies on the southern continent, as well as several other experts. These included Professor Copernicus from Constellation Academy and a stern-looking Athorian paladin whose name Maxine had forgotten. For some reason, the Rampartian commander was Daryl, the captain of the royal guard. Why he was commanding the forces here instead of protecting Rampart City, Maxine wasn’t sure, but she guessed it had something to do with Andra. Perhaps he had done something to get on her bad side.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
He certainly didn’t seem happy to see her. As soon as she had sat down, he said, “Good, you’re finally here. I’m not sure why we couldn’t conduct this meeting over Magi-net.”
Andra shrugged. “The king felt that I would get a better perspective on the war’s effort if I visited in-person.”
In fact, the king was most likely trying to keep Andra away from the princess. Andra and the princess insisted that they were engaged. The king disagreed.
“It’s just as well,” said the Athorian. “Magi-net is down today.”
“It’s down?” asked Daryl. “Is that even possible?”
The Athorian held up a Magi-net book and opened it to a random page. As the text faded in, it read “Library not found. Please ensure that you are in the correct universe and refresh.”
“Have you tried closing the book and opening it again?” Andra asked.
“Of course I have,” the Athorian replied, annoyed.
“That shouldn’t make a difference,” said Copernicus. “Try connecting to a book in another library.”
The Athorian looked down at the book. “Okay, so to do that I just…”
He began flipping through the pages listlessly. It was clear that he had no idea what to do.
“Oh, nevermind,” sighed Copernicus. “I’ll help you later.”
“Right, we have more important things to worry about,” said Andra. “How’s the war effort going?”
“Not good,” Daryl replied sharply. “It’s been months since we’ve made any major conquests. Morale is low and we’ve had the beginnings of infighting between different factions. Meanwhile the demons keep raiding our home countries.”
Maxine was painfully aware of that last part. Humans who had contracts with demons would, on the orders of their masters, summon groups of demons to raid various cities. Rampart had been attacked several times since the initial attempt to kidnap the princess and several of her neighbors’ houses had been burned in one raid. These attacks happened so suddenly that it was impossible to mount an organized defense, and they were over just as suddenly. Worse, they seemed to be impossible to predict.
“Measures are being taken to put a stop to those attacks,” Andra said, waving a hand dismissively.
That was not true. If anything, Andra had made an active effort to hamper any large-scale attempts to uncover those who had sold their souls. She claimed that the risk of persecuting innocent people was too great.
“Then perhaps some changes could be made to our efforts here,” said the Athorian. “For instance, if you permitted us to perform exorcisms—”
“No exorcisms,” Andra interrupted. “They serve no purpose.”
“No purpose?” the Athorian exclaimed. “If we don’t perform exorcisms, then demons we defeat can rejoin the battles in new bodies.”
“There are more demon souls than there are bodies,” Andra explained with a sigh. “Exorcisms just force a soul into the Great Unknown. But there are plenty of other souls to take its place; it’s defeating demon bodies that we need to worry about. Exorcism is just needless killing.”
The Athorian began to grow red. “They’re demons. They don’t belong in this world. We have a duty to destroy them all.”
“No exorcisms,” Andra stated firmly. “If you have any other suggestions, I’m open to them, but there will be no exorcisms.”
“Exorcisms or no, we’re spread too thin,” said one of the other commanders. The Starfalian, Maxine thought. “Have you had any luck convincing any other countries to join the war? Perhaps the orcs?”
Andra shook her head. “There’s not much of a chance of getting the orcs to join, I’m afraid.”
Daryl snorted. “Of course not. They’re probably plotting to invade us while the demons have us weakened.”
Andra’s eyes narrowed. “You know, I’ve been studying the history of the wars with the orcs. When you look at it from their point of view, they really don’t have any reason to want to help us. Any time they try to organize into anything larger than a few city-states, they end up invaded by a Rampart-led alliance.”
“Of course we invade them,” said Daryl. “We’re doing that before they can invade us.”
“Right, but what if they aren’t planning to invade us at all?”
“They’re orcs. They’ll invade us at the first opportunity. That’s what they do.”
Andra raised her voice, speaking with a passion that seemed more genuine than the charm she usually employed. “They haven’t invaded anyone within recorded history. They likely planned an invasion at one time, but it was prevented thanks to the prophecy. And now what? We punish them forever for something that they almost did? Why would they ever want to help us? Look, the reason I convinced you all to join the war was because I genuinely believe it’s in all of our best interests to stop the demon king. But the orcs? There’s nothing in it for them. They’re going to end up invaded either way.”
She sighed and leaned on the desk and for just a moment Maxine saw something she’d seen in Andra a few times recently, an exhaustion in her eyes. Leading this war, balancing all of her different schemes and lies, it was taking a toll on her. As far as she was concerned, it was supposed to be over by now. She was supposed to have found a way to kill the demon king without the heroes by now. Instead, more and more lives were being lost and even Andra could only keep telling herself that she was making all the right decisions for so long. Maxine was relieved that her mask obscured the troubled look on her own face.
A moment later, Andra sat up again, grinning confidently. “However, there is another potential ally in our effort, one even greater than the orcs.”
She paused, waiting for someone to ask who. Everyone else paused, waiting for her to continue.
“The fairies. Right now I have a diplomat, Atworth, negotiating with several fairy royals to possibly commit some of their soldiers to our cause.”
Daryl rolled his eyes. “Great, and while your diplomat spends the next hundred years dealing with fairy etiquette, we’ll continue to deal with drakes breathing fire on our soldiers.”
“I didn’t do that,” Drake shouted suddenly. They had been surprisingly quiet and well-behaved so far and Maxine had almost forgotten that she had brought them.
Maxine turned in her seat to face them. “I know, darling.”
“Daddy, he’s a liar. He said I breathed fire and I can’t even do that.”
“He wasn’t talking about you,” Maxine said.
Daryl frowned. “Why did you bring a child to this meeting?”
“There’s no one here who can take care of them,” Maxine explained.
“That was my fault,” Andra added. “I didn’t think to bring a nanny, and by the time it occurred to me, we were well underway.”
“But why bring him to this continent at all?” asked Copernicus.
“It’s ‘them.’ And because they’re an alraune, they have unique needs that most caretakers aren’t used to,” Maxine said. She felt a little perturbed having to defend her parenting decisions like this.
“Them? What do you mean?” asked another of the commanders. “Is your child a boy or a girl?”
Maxine sighed. “Setting aside my feelings on assigning a gender to children in the first place, alraunes are neither male nor female. Or they’re both, if you prefer.”
The various commanders and advisors glanced at each other, confused.
“So does that mean he has—” Daryl began.
“Okay, I think we’re getting off topic,” Andra interrupted, coming to Maxine’s rescue. “As far as the fairies, their involvement isn’t going to be what ends the war. We need to trust in the Edhru Prophecy and the heroes.”
A chorus of nods rippled through the commanders, but Copernicus looked doubtful. “Are you certain that you found the correct heroes? Because I’ve been speaking with some of the alchemists and they pointed out that several homunculi have been created in the last couple of decades. Is it not possible that one of them is the ‘child born of no mother’ mentioned in the prophecy?”
This was it. The entire reason Maxine was here. The entire reason she had been roped into working for Andra.
“That possibility has already been looked into and dismissed. We are confident that Friedrich is the ‘child born of no mother.’”
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The rest of the meeting proceeded smoothly, or as smoothly as it could under the circumstances. Andra carefully swept away suspicions and assured everyone that everything was well under control. In the end, everyone left pacified, if not entirely satisfied. Afterward, Maxine was feeling too antsy to stay indoors and decided to join Andra and Drake at the beach.
Drake had planned to look for more “dragon shells” but had quickly forgotten about them when they got into the sand. Having never been in so much sand before, they began running their hands through it, making small hills and then flattening them out. They hadn’t even gotten into the water yet, which was just as well for Maxine, who worried that salt water might be unhealthy for them.
“What about our plan?” Andra asked, eyes on Drake.
“Nightingale’s training is almost complete,” Maxine replied. “She’s taken the proper oaths and completed most of her courses and will soon be an ISA certified rifleman.”
“And the bullets?” Andra asked.
“Already in her possession. They’re alchemically designed to pierce the toughest steel and blessed by a high-ranking Athorian priest to destroy any demons they come into contact with. Nightingale’s own magic will ensure that the bullet reaches its target.”
“But will Nightingale be able to get close enough?”
“You’ve seen her; she’s as quiet as any assassin. If anyone can, it’s her.”
Andra sighed with relief, smiling. “Finally. We’re going to do it. Can you believe it? We’re going to kill the demon king and end the war.”