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Class is over and everyone has left. Everyone that is, except for Dess Holiday. To most it would seem strange for the cool, punk teenage girl who wore her hair streaks boldly in church and whose rock music could be heard blasting from her mp3 in the hallway to be hanging out with the high school teacher who the most action he saw these days was swinging his cane to slow jazz while he sipped his afternoon tea, but these days it felt as natural as rain.
“I finished The City of the Shining! Now it’s your turn! Time for you to get back into Dragon Blazers!” She says as she excitedly hands him her console.
”You breezed through that one didn’t ya, and after you had some much trouble getting through the first chapter of The March of the Dark King.” He boots up the game. For someone who’d it taken ten minutes to simply explain how to turn the game on, he’d settled pretty nicely into the gameplay.
”This one was a lot better! The characters were a lot more interesting and it was actually funny at times, and the action scenes were really cool, it actually kept me up at night instead of putting me to sleep.”
”The second novel is when most people really started getting into it. Part of it is I started taking it more seriously, another part is I decided to take more risks. The first book I was so concerned with creating such good role models for my kids, but by the time I got to the second I thought ‘What valuable lessons could my kids ever learn from such squares?’”
”Yeah, I like how they were actually assholes sometimes in this one. It made me want to slap them less, actually. I hate the queen though.”
”Gehehehe, many do. She’s quite divisive.”
“Everything would’ve gone so much easier if she just listened to the heros, and let them help her!”
”You have to understand she’s seen war for so long and she’s been betrayed before, she’s not just going to just trust anyone even if it’s in her best interest.”
”But she was completely irrational, there’s being catious and there’s fucking up your whole kingdom because you refuse to trust anyone.”
“Hurt does that sometimes, it ain’t pretty but once someone’s bought out the worst in ya, it’s hard to even bring out the just okay again.”
”I get that, still hate her.”
“Fair, it’s important to understand others even if you still hate ‘em.”
”I do like her relationship with Seraphine though, at the end. That actually made me cry. Seraphine is my favorite.”
”Really? Seraphine? Didn’t expect that from ya, I figured you’d go for the flashier more heros”
”I thought I would too, but I don’t know I was really drawn to her. She reminds me of my sister in a weird way. Like at first she seems really fragile but then you realize she’s kinda the most badass out of all of them.”
“I’ve always had a soft spot for Seraphine. She’s a bit of an odd one, as far as prophecy inspiration goes. Many have wondered what to make out of the girl, is she the same as the second hero, is she another hero, is she even a hero at all or just someone else mentioned in the prophecy. I thought about it and I couldn’t come up with an answer, so I didn’t. I made the readers come up with one . That’s a tip for ya, if you’re ever struggling to come up with an answer.”
”Thanks, I’ll try that on my next test.” She says with a wink. I felt really sorry for her at the end. It’s unfair that she has to keep going and just travel along with the heroes to the next journey after all that happened to her. I mean she’s just as strong as the rest of the party, but she’s also really young.”
”A lot got better about Lord of the Hammer as I went along, thanks to me becoming a better writer but some of the earlier canon I never could reconcile with my later vision, one of them being the choice to make the heroes start out as already pretty experienced and put together, again to make them better role models. Seraphine being so young is important to me. It had already become common to depict the prophecy heroes as older at that time, but I fear the books popularity put that interpretation at a point of no return.”
”It would’ve been cool if the heroes were younger. I actually think they’d be better role models that way, it’s cool to see people my age be badass and awesome.”
”Not just that, it’s also…there’s something so tragic about the heroes. They’re doing the right thing, saving the world even, but to have who you are laid out like that, to be told who you are before you can even decide that yourself, it’s more of burden than a blessing if you really think about it, and most people don’t want to acknowledge it. Seraphine is the only one who really carries that tragedy throughout the series which is why she has such a protective spot in my heart.”
“That’s really pretty. I’ll protect Seraphine. I know it’s a book series that’s already written but I’ll protect her.”
“I love that mindset in you, I know you’re family likes the cold, but you’re the one that has that fire in ya. You’re like their fireplace, remember that.” His character has been going in a circle for several minutes now. “How do you get out of this place?”
”Find the Ice Mage.”
”Who?”
”She’s just… keep going, you’ll see.”
“Oh, is it this little lady?” He says as the protagonist encounters a mysterious figure in a white cloak.
”Yeah, that’s her.”
”Oh, and she’s got little ice spells. Ha, ain’t that something.”
”Don’t use those!”
”Why are they bad, or something?”
”If you use them once or twice it’s fine but if you keep using it it’ll send you on the…bad route.”
“Miss, there are no bad routes, just different adventures to be had.”
”No, I mean you’ll be on the evil route, and all the characters will turn on you and you’ll get a really gnarly ending.”
”Evil route? Who ever came up with something as crazy as that. Oh, you know what? You ever heard of the Angel Doomsdayers?”
”The cult?”
”Not a cult, a group that believes in an alternative interpretation of the prophecy. They think the Angel shouldn’t be trusted, that its intentions with our world aren’t noble and it’s seeking only after its own gain. They don’t think we should be putting so much trust into a being we can’t understand or know the intentions of.”
”That’s crazy. I mean, I can’t lie, they kinda have a point.”
”They do, and nothing in the prophecy contradicts them and some scholars have even uncovered lore that supports the idea that at the very least suggests the Angel is unknowable if not malicious. I’ll be, I’ve been told that these games were just cheap cash grab slop that had no respect for my books but to put something like that in someone had to be doing research.”
”Holy cheese and crackers, that implies that the devs were like, total nerds.”
“Nerds make the best art, my dear.”
”I know. That’s why my sister is so cool. She’s actually managed to escape out of here without the help of the Ice Mage which should be impossible but somehow she did it. She’s so smart. When I play video games, I just you know, play them but she started playing Cat Petterz recently and then started looking up all these mods and stuff.”
”What are mods?”
”It’s like a way you can go into the code of the game and change it so you get infinite money or change how all the characters look. I don’t really get it, but she’s like so much younger than me and already she can do this type of thing.”
”Geheheh, she sounds like Seraphine alright, a little genius. You know, ice girl over here reminds me of how a lot of people envisioned her.”
“Oh, she’s very special but I can’t tell you about her yet.”
”Sounds promising.” Finally he’s made his way out of the maze, and is promptly jumped by a large bright red draconic figure with prominent muscles and whose face is cloaked by a large fiery pink mane.
”Who’s this now?” He says with a chuckle and a lot of intrigue.
Dess smiles big, “The Dragon.”
”That’s the Dragon? Her outfit, ehhh, leaves little to the imagination.”
”I vividly remember rushing my parents away from that section of the store when they were advertising the limited edition special covers with her all over the cover art.”
”Gotta get those sales somehow. Who am I to judge with all the flack I got for racier scenes in the latter books. Nevermind that my kids were all grown up by then and I wasn’t writing it for them anymore, anyhow.”
”There’s sex in these books!?”
”Yes, and I trust you will be well behaved about them and just glaze your eyes over them when you get to ‘em.”
”Right, of course, of course. It’s like Azzy said, it’s not appropriate for us to be reading books with that sort of content.”
Gerson laughs, “You know I thought Alvin was exaggerating about him when he used to tell me about him. Shouldn’t have doubted him. You know I once told him that he should tell him the prophecy said smoking cigarettes was good for you and see how he responded.”
Dess laughs so hard she almost falls out of her chair. Gerson steadies her, “I was joking but what I really meant was, check to see where he’s basing his principles. Is he doing things cause he believes that’s the right thing to do, or because he’s been told it’s what’s right. There’s a big difference.”
He switches back to focusing on the game, which is currently kicking his ass.
“Ugh, use the fire potion! Now the air potion! No, not that air potion!” Dess cries.
”Dess, what did I tell ya?”
”No backseating, I know but you’re doing awful.”
”Then let me be! It’s the only way to learn.”
”Don’t you have any more healing?”
”That shopkeeper was tryna rip me off!”
”Then grind for more money. Fi-okay, I’ll just let you die.”
Die, he does, but not before the Dragon flips him off, pounds her foot on the protagonist's head and enters into a gloating laugh. Gerson burst out laughing too.
”Well, if I get a death like that then it was all worth it.”
”I knew you’d like the Dragon. Don’t worry, there’s plenty more where that came from.”
“I think we’ll end here for today, but this was a blast. You know people were shocked when I gave these games my blessing, why would I approve of my work being turned into such low class art. I wasn’t really thinking it through at the time, I was frustrated with the series, frustrated with myself. My logic was “Fine, whatever if, I’m tired of these books and people asking me about them. If you wanna desecrate them, then do ahead, you can’t do a worse job than me” but playing this has made me realize I signed off on one of the best things I ever could’ve. I mean the art is gorgeous, I don’t even think most Lord of the Hammer covers come as close to as gorgeous as this is, the humor’s hit or miss but I get why the kids love it, it does things I never would’ve dreamed of and this music.”
”Yeah man!” Dess says, as she headbangs to the music still playing from her console. Gerson joins in with her.
“I never understand why people think genuine creative reinterpretation is disrespectful to my work, to me, putting me up this pedestal, acting like I know everything about my work while not thinking about what it means to you, that’s what’s disrespectful.” There’s a sadness to his voice as he says those last words. “And miss? I know we were joking about Azzy, but I really want you to think about what I said about principles. I know you’re all about rebellion, but something being the opposite of what you’re told doesn’t necessarily make it right either. I want you to think, think, why am I doing what I’m doing. Decide that for yourself.”
She looks unusually contemplative. “You’re probably right, I don’t just do things cause they’re rebellious, sometimes I do them because…well if I don't, who will.”
”Who will…I love that about ya. Tell your family I said hi, don’t procrastinate on your homework and get started on that third book.”
She gives Gerson a big hug before grabbing her stuff and leaving. You couldn’t have told her two months ago that this would become her favorite part of the week but it really had. ”I will, Mr. Boom, see ya!”