Heart of Dorkness

Bane One - Home

I gestured into one of the rooms. “This can be for either of you,” I said. “There’s another room just over there that’s empty too. Mine’s the one in the middle.”

Felix stuck her head into the bedroom and sniffed around. “It’s big,” she said.

The rooms were decently sized, with a four-poster in the back and a small living area. There were empty drawers for stuff, a few little sofas set on a nice oval rug. A window at the back overlooked the side of the castle, not one of the more scenic vistas, but it wasn’t a bad view. The rooms were dust-free and smelled nice and clean.

“It’s a cell,” Esme said. “A fancy cell, but that’s what it is.”

I rolled my eyes.

Esme wasn’t taking the fact that she’d been kidnapped all that well, which... that was fair. I couldn’t judge her because she didn’t like that. Still, she was being very negative about the whole thing. “How about we talk in my room,” I said. “Or my cell, if you want to insist on calling it that.”

“Sure,” Emse said.

“I’d like to see where you lived,” Felix said with a happy grin.

Well, at least one of my friends wasn’t being a big butt about everything. Felix was doing a lot of gawking at all the statues and at some of the bigger halls and such. To be fair, the castle was pretty massive. Like, very massive.

The footprint alone was larger than the Hero's Academy back in Montele, and the castle was a lot taller, with spires and towers and several layers of walls and battlements. Mom kept adding to it as time went on, so the castle was never really complete. The building was slow, but she’d been adding little sections to it every couple of decades for centuries.

“This is my room,” I said as I opened the door. It had been a few days since I’d been in my own room. It felt a little weird.

There was my bed, with a pair of bed-warmer monsters lounging on it, their big furry bodies slumped over as they slept, and there was my dresser, nearly empty of clothes, mostly since all of my clean clothes were on a chair next to the dresser.

I had a bookcase, of course, and a nice comfy chair next to it with a heap of cushions and blankets on it.

“What’s that?” Felix asked as she pointed to a monster in the corner next to my desk. It was one of the biggest monsters I’d ever made, basically a large pair of lungs, a small skeleton so that it could stay upright, and a stomach and mouth under that.

“That’s my heater friend, his name is Mister Twitchy Breath,” I said. “You feed him under there, and when he’s full he starts contracting all of these muscles inside of his lungs that make a bunch of heat. He can blow hot air at you all day long as long as you keep him fed.

“That’s disgusting,” Esme said.

I sniffed. “Well, he works very well, most of the time. Look, not every monster can be aesthetically pleasing. Besides, he’s a prototype monster. I think getting an angry monster who can use fire magic and also is mostly made up of lungs would be much better. ”

“You have weird hobbies,” Felix said.

I crossed my arms. “I find it fun. Besides, you can’t read all day. Sometimes I want to do something with all of that knowledge I’m learning.”

Esme crossed her arms right back and me and glared. She didn’t look like a glarer though. Not with her frizzy hair and her puffy cheeks. “I don’t like it.”

I took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “I’m sorry, alright? I shouldn’t have kidnapped you, but... well, yeah, it’s my fault, I could have found a better plan, or explained things more, or... something. But it’s done now. So I’ll just apologize a lot and maybe I can make it up to you?”

“Miss Valeria isn’t mean,” Felix said.

Esme pouted some more, then she nodded. “Okay, but only if you promise that you won’t do that kind of thing to me again.”

“Okay,” I agreed. “Uh, what kind of thing? Just to be sure.”

Esme counted off on her fingers. “Trick me into doing crimes, kidnap me, put me in a whole heap of danger without explaining things first, and keeping big secrets from me.”

“Uh, that first one wasn’t my fault, you knew what we were doing was illegal,” I said.

She crossed her arms again. “Fine, we can do crimes, but only if I know that we’re doing crimes and I don’t mind doing them. I’m not going to hurt innocent people for you.”

“That’s okay. Uh, I think I can promise all of that, yeah.”

“That was a quick promise,” Esme said.

I shrugged. “It’s hardly all that hard, is it? What I did wasn’t very nice to a friend, and I shouldn’t have done it, so I promise that I won’t do it again. I can swear on, uh, Mom?”

“There’s no point in swearing on the name of a god that will always be in your favour. That's like cheating,” Esme said.

I giggled at the idea of Mom having to punish me for not keeping my word. She totally would, but I don’t think it would be much worse than a grounding, and as it was, I was grounded for life already, at least until Mom calmed down. “I guess so. Anyway, supper’s not for a bit, did you want to visit the library?”

“Yes,” Esme said angrily. “Yes, I would.”

I led my friends out of my room. We could have a sleepover later. I was sure we had enough blankets and pillows to build an awesome pillow fort to sleep in, and worse case I could recruit some of the softer monsters around the castle to help.

“So, I don’t know how long you two will be staying here,” I began.

“Can we even go back?” Esme asked.

“Sure you can. Mom can give you permission to pass and none of the monsters around the capital will bother you, I’m sure.”

Esme shook her head. “I meant more... you know, going back home. To the library and Montele.”

Oh, I didn’t realize that she wanted to go back so badly. Then again, I probably should have. It was one of those obvious-in-hindsight things. “M-maybe you can?” I asked. “People won’t recognize you that much, will they?”

“We’re pretty distinct,” Esme said.

“I’m not. I’m just some blind street orphan. Bet everyone I knew thinks I’m dead now,” Felix said.

That was also somewhat morbid. “Well, you’re not any of that anymore. You’re my friend, which makes you... uh... I don’t know. Mom doesn’t do titles that well.”

“Aren’t you a princess?” Esme asked. “Felix could be your handmaiden.”

“That sounds nice,” Felix said. “What’s a handmaiden?”

“It’s like a servant that knows all the court stuff. Politics and intrigue, and how to put on complicated dresses,” I explained.

“Oh,” Felix said. “Can I be like, a royal guard instead? I heard they get cool spears.”

“Halberds,” Esme corrected.

“What’s that?”

“It’s like a spear, but it also has an axehead on the end,” Esme explained.

Felix nodded. “Cool spear, like I said.”

I giggled. “Sure! I’ll tell Mom you want a nice spear and a big suit of armour, I bet we have some somewhere in the castle.”

“Nice,” Felix said.

“We’ll also teach you how to read and write, right Esme?” I asked.

We both nodded in time, even as Felix’s good humour deflated a little.

“It’s okay, Felix,” I said. “We’ll make learning fun! It can’t be that hard to learn how to read. Oh! And I bet if we tell mom about all of our adventures she’ll be willing to give us all a bit of magic training.”

“Training from your mom?” Esme asked.

“Yeah. Don’t you want that on your resume? Trained by a god?”

Esme blinked. “Well, when you put it that way.”

We got to the top of the stairs, just a little winded, and I moved us over to the doors leading into the library. I grinned at Esme’s little ‘oh’ as the doors opened and she saw the towering shelves filled to the brim with ancient tomes and books collected over centuries.

“Don’t worry guys, while you’re in my home, I’ll do my best to make sure that we have a lot of fun, and that we learn lots!”

***