Vaneria
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Chapter One
Zhoom was glad that the Oath-Breaking Lich that called himself Sek-Duat was gone, and would never wish him back (the bastard hadn’t even planned to pay him, after all), but he had to admit that things had been a lot more interesting when he was still around.
The rebels he had been contracted to hunt down had posed a much better challenge to fight, what with a network and a cause to aid them, and put up a bigger fight when he caught them. The petty bandits and runaways that he had been reduced to finding these days had a depressing tendency to surrender as soon as they saw him, rarely bothered to hide their camps or tracks, and were worth so little gold that Zhoom often left them to the would-be Heroes who occasionally showed up.
Quietly following the Heroes and watching them flounder about trying (and often failing) to hunt their quarry was far more entertaining, anyway.
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During the Sandsea War, before the Lich’s true plans had been revealed, a Hero had attempted to make Zhoom break a contract by offering him gold. Zhoom had refused, his personal code of honour making the violation of a promise unthinkable, but had kept the idea of working in Falconreach in mind.
The main problem with that was the fact that being half Sand-Elf affected more than just the shape of Zhoom’s ears.
Much like Sea-Elves lived underwater or, very occasionally, on ships, and Ice-Elves were bound to the frozen North, or how Wood-Elves had to be physically dragged out of their beloved forests, so Zhoom’s maternal heritage meant that he was never really comfortable away from the desert. He could leave, but he could never bring himself to stay away.
Sand-Elves needed the dry heat and the ever-changing sands of the desert, the relative solitude that came with knowing that no other race could thrive away from an oasis for any long period of time, and Zhoom was no exception.
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It didn’t stop the Heroes who wanted to train as a Ranger from hounding him day and night, however.
They weren’t always very polite about it, either, and many were annoying enough that Zhoom didn’t even feel guilty about sending them to be flattened by Tomb-Traps, or to clear out ruins followed by one of Zeri’s hours-long lectures on archaeological discoveries.
And all of them seemed to think it could be done in a day, at which point they could move on to some other quest in a more hospitable area of Lore!
Zhoom took a certain amount of pleasure in teaching them the bare essentials and letting them go to be beaten up by desert monsters that had experience fighting those with ranger skills (Zhoom had certainly encountered them enough times that they had become used to him).
But even that got repetitive after a while, and it wasn’t until he encountered the Hero Who Didn’t Want To Be, that things finally became interesting again.
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Vaneria was a Mage, and a fairly skilled one.
She was the daughter of a Hero and a Guardian of Falconreach, sister to a Rogue-in-training and a Warrior-in-training, and totally disinterested in anything to do with reckless heroics.
She had a dragon, named Skysong, as most mages did, and clearly adored it, as the hip-high sky-blue and silver-grey (which prompted constant questions on if the colour co-ordination was deliberate; it wasn't) Wind dragon loved her. However, the quests to find and raise a dragon egg were part of basic training, rather than vital Quests
In short, she was about as enthusiastic about being trained to fight as a Ranger as Zhoom was at having a favour called in to teach her. That is; not at all.
Zhoom loved it.
Finally, a student who wasn’t complaining about the slow pace of learning, or being left alone if Zhoom had to rush off somewhere, or wanting to sneak away on a Quest in Osprey Cove every few hours. In fact, as long as Zhoom left her with some kind of History Text, or a book on Sandsea Cultural Traditions, he could easily leave her to her own devices for hours or days at a time, if an interesting bounty came up.
It also worked the other way, though. He would send her to Zeri or the Sandwitch, and Vaneria would be absent long enough for him to actually become worried and track her down to make sure that she wasn’t unconscious too far from a healing pad, only to find her sharing a drink and a long conversation about whatever they could teach.
There had been one memorable time when he had gone looking in the Sandwitch’s lair, and been flattened by a slice of bread bigger than he was. The Sandwitch had found it amusing, at least. She might have been exiled from her Sisters for being too nice, but she was still a Yaga, and took a bit too much delight in someone else’s random misfortune.
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During one of the bounty hunts near the end of Vaneria’s training, when Zhoom wanted to test her skills, he also had a chance to swap backgrounds.
Vaneria had muttered something dire when she learned of Sek-Duat’s betrayal of Zhoom and genocide of the Sand-Elves, and surprised him a few days later by showing up with a traditional Sand Elf family alter, and a few offerings. Since the rest of Zhoom’s life to date had been mostly fighting, training and bounties, they moved onto hers.
Vaneria had discovered her powers when she was seven, in the aftermath of one of the many times Falconreach had been burned to the ground. Sneevils, seizing the opportunity to snatch several boatloads of boxes and moving crates, had managed to seize one containing Vaneria’s book collection, and promptly been flattened by the backlash when she accidentally blew up the out-house trying to stop them (very difficult when you’re trying to hobble on a leg broken by flying debris in a recent attack).
Alerted by the loud wails of distress, her parents had come running from where they had been helping a neighbour, three charred ruins over, returning just in time to witness the sneevils getting blown up. Seeing Vaneria standing over them, a broken piece of wood serving as a beginner’s staff, they decided to find her a teacher so she could get started on becoming a hero, despite their child’s loud protests.
Warlic had been busy, but owed Vaneria’s aunt a favour. The apprenticeship had lasted exactly a fortnight before Warlic’s other, half-dragon; apprentice decided that enlisting the aid of someone too young to know better might actually succeed in unlocking her bound powers.
The result was a shockwave that flattened everything in a two-mile radius, and Warlic deciding that one apprentice was enough for one lifetime. Cysero, deciding that anyone capable of causing that kind of commotion was well worth the effort, offered to be her teacher, but everyone agreed that occasionally blowing things up by accident was far better than learning to create explosions of mass destruction on purpose, especially when the Green Mage was involved.
The next choice was Lady Celestia, infamous for force-drinking her visitors all kinds of tea, and who had both another apprentice studying magic, and the patience of a saint.
Vaneria had tried to avoid that option by pointing out that Lady Celestia had also trained Atrix, the well-intentioned Paladin whose passion for smiting the Undead tended to result in Smiting a good deal harder than was strictly necessary, such as his exorcism of the Ghosts of Frostival Past, Present and Future.
Her parents had countered by pointing out that Vaneria had not had her entire village massacred by the Undead (Falconreach tended to get destroyed, invaded or burned down on a regular basis, but the population generally survived more or less intact) immediately before she started training, and would therefore be inclined to be a bit more level-headed about things.
Scowling, Vaneria sulked off to pack. Lady Celestia trained Heroes, not those who wanted to be future Lore keepers, and Vaneria didn’t want to be a Hero!
To quote Nythera, this was so not fair!
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Well, the good part was that she got to read a lot of books on magic and spell-casting, but it was hard to concentrate with Alina’s magic occasionally backfiring spectacularly, and the constant stream of visitors, most of them with dragons who had yet to master the basics of ‘Sit’, ‘Stay’ and ‘Don’t bother the Innocent Bystander and stop setting fire to her study books’. Having acquired her own dragon during her brief apprenticeship with Warlic, Vaneria felt justified in being smug that Skysong was far better behaved, despite being younger than most of the visiting dragons.
Then, of course, there was Atrix, whose visits consisted of talking of little but slaying the Undead, training Heroes to be Paladins (Vaneria ignored the very obvious hint), slaying the Undead, complaining about Zorbak, and, of course, slaying the Undead.
Possibly the worst was the one-time visit of a young boy by the name of Galenoth, who treated everyone to a long lecture about the evils of dragons, particularly foolish when you considered Lady Celestia’s main occupation. He probably would have continued, filled with the righteous indignation only achievable by those who know that no matter what they say, they are not going to win the argument, had Vaneria not been unpacking and enchanting a box of Birthday Weapons at the time, and hit him over the head with a staff.
Lady Celestia separated them before it could turn into an all-out brawl, sending Vaneria to her room as Demento showed up to haul his younger brother back to Dragesvard.
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Unrestrained laughter was not a familiar concept to Zhoom, but it seemed to happen with increasing regularity whenever her attempts to avoid becoming a Hero arose in conversation.
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