I take a few quick steps backwards and then dart forward, moving from the Unforgiving Wind into the Iron Eagle while mixing in a little Klartred City alley boxing. The sound of my fists travelling through the air is like tearing rice paper.  Two jabs connect clean and the orc grunts; he’s on the backfoot again, a backfoot that he’s occupied almost the entire fight. Kivtz is bigger than me, stronger than me, and the brutal uk-vai fighting style that means survival in the cannibalistic swamps of his home is every bit as effective as what they teach in the Court of Iron.  But here’s the thing: fights are won in the mind, your opponent’s mind, and Kivtz still hasn’t mentally recovered from a first-round hook that shook his brain like a baby’s rattle. He’s tired, nervous. I move inside his guard, turn away a desperate haymaker with the back of one hand, and my next Fingersmith punch picks him up and throws him across the sandy floor of the Fighter’s arena.

This time he stays down.

My victory was just in time. As I raised my fists to an audience of Fighters, Monks and Barbarians who roared and smacked their paws together, an earthquake rocked the arena. Then another. And another. He was moving again, and I’m not talking about Kivtz. The wild pressure fluctuations that accompanied so much mass being set into motion created all sorts of weather, this time, boulder-sized hailstones that fell like gnomish cannonfire. One exploded right next to me. There was no ceiling to the Giants Back Academy Fighter’s arena: we were completely exposed. Dark cloud vortexes above began to whirl.

I ran to Kivtz. Muscle memory is a funny thing: I’m dragging him up by the collar with one hand, drawing the other hand back for a clean Reaper Strike, before I stop myself*.*  In the Court of Iron we were taught to strike at downed opponents. To guarantee victory. But I lived by my own code these days. Dirk moved to the other side of the orc as we half carried, half dragged him to shelter. THWUMP! Another hailstone near miss made me flinch. Ice shrapnel bit into my skin. We were both panting by the time we had the unconscious Fighter under the cover of the arena gate.

“Princess,” said the Rogue, trying a little too hard to not seem out of breath. “Another victory. I am glad I was thorough enough to organise this little contest: until today I was certain that Kivtz was the school’s best boxer.”

I wrinkled my nose at the “princess”: I never rose higher than eighteenth-in-line to the throne. And I was a common street urchin for years before that. Yes, I am aware how unoriginal this all sounds. But one of the perks of doing the whole half-elf-street-thug-to-royal-heir cliche is you encounter a lot of teenage boys like Dirk. Drawling, darkly handsome master assassins who like to wear black and tend to have a stiletto constantly spinning between their fingers. Get past the mystique and they are always less impressive than they seem.

“Dirk,” I said, raising my nose haughtily, full court accent. “Hosting a bare-knuckle-fighting contest at the end of the world was certainly a choice.  Pray do share, exactly, why I have just beaten five of my fellow students to a pulp.”

Being talked down to – literally, we are both seventeen but I was almost a head taller than Dirk, who was not short by human standards – only seemed to amuse the Rogue. He deposited the winner’s purse into my waiting hand. “Yes, it does feel a bit apocalyptic out there.”  He glanced at the fallen orc and beckoned. I followed him a short distance down the tunnel.  “The world isn’t ending,” he said in a low voice. “But the school might. What if I told you, there was a chance to save it. For you to save it.”

I frowned. It made the black eye and split lip hurt. Everything hurt now that the adrenaline was beginning to fade. “I’d ask how. The Wizards and Druids have been trying to make contact with old Skagol for days. Telepathy, custom speak-with-animal spells, the works. He’s not listening. And if you do plan to kill him, well, even if that were somehow possible, killing the mountain-sized giant which carries our school on his back might not be as wise as waiting to see how this all plays out.”

“And if I told you I knew how it was going to play out? And that it was going to play out very badly.”

I scanned the Rogue’s face. You didn’t survive long on the streets of Klartred if you couldn’t spot a liar. Ditto the Court of Iron.

He was telling the truth.

“How is it going to play out, Dirk?”

 

#

 

Old Skagol had always looked like he was going to start walking again. His entire posture had a forward bent, his shoulders hunched, the crown of his ginormous head bowed forward. His huge arms had been pressed knuckle first against the valley floor, ready to swing into motion with his next step, the deeply creviced columns of his legs bent into an angled squat that would propel him forward. But thousands of years had passed without him so much as blinking; entire ecosystems had taken root in his craggy skin. Empires had risen and fallen, the most recent of which was dismantled by my great-aunt the Iron Queen before her assassination. Amid all that, people had forgotten that the mountain on which the fantasy high school had been built was not actually a mountain but a living, breathing creature with its own thoughts and whims, even if a single breath lasted decades.

I have to admit, I just didn’t think about it all that much. Being a student at Giants Back Academy was hard, especially when someone only needed to see your blue hair to think they knew who and what you are. I didn’t have time to worry about the giant in Giants Back Academy: I was too busy living up to the impossible reputation that has been established by just about every single one of my family members after leaving the Court of Iron. I used to be sad that the way I left things at the court made it impossible that one of my royal cousins could join me at Giants Back Academy. Azaela, before the…incident, wasn’t just family, she was my best friend. Now I’m grateful, even if that isolation kind of makes me lonely. It’s one more point of separation between me and the people everyone compares me against. 

But even if my focus had been on the giant, I could never have predicted this. Because it wasn’t old Skagol moving again, that first disrupted the peace of our lives.

It was the arrival of another giant.

Another giant, that, according to Dirk, old Skagol wanted to fight.

 

#

 

The architects of Giants Back Academy must have thought they were being pretty clever when they built the school’s library at the giant’s crown. The joke was on them now that old Skagol was craning his neck to look up at the massive stranger who filled the northern horizon. The new angle was only a few degrees off horizontal but it had been enough to set off a chain reaction of falling stacks that had torn bookshelves asunder and scattered books everywhere. I followed Dirk across the raised, white metallic walkway that arched gracefully over the main hall like a dove taking flight. Fortunately, both the walkway itself and the nearest rows of stacks that ran parallel to and underneath it had been designed by former resident mad scientist and inventor Gabli before he got bored with the project. Like all of Gabli’s designs, they were beautiful if hilariously overengineered, and nothing short of a comet striking the school could break the complex cantilevered joints that connected the bookshelves to the floor.

“Where’s Mr Tock?” I looked down at the sea of bookshelves, intact nearest to the walkway, leaning drunkenly on top of each other or just smashed to splinters further away.

“The librarian is off lobbying for a school-wide evacuation,” Dirk said. “Books first, of course.”

“Of course,” I repeated. “He hasn’t got much time. We don’t have much time.”

“It’ll take Skagol two days to reach the stranger. That should be more than enough time for you to get familiar with the controls.” He shook the leather satchel which he carried slung over one shoulder. It contained a twinned set of magic gauntlets: one Slave-set and one Master-set.

Dirk must have seen my expression because he added, “You don’t like this plan much, do you?”

“Am I comfortable mind controlling a giant into becoming our personal fighting machine? No, not really.”

“You’d only be ensuring he doesn’t, how did you put it earlier?” He put on his most prim little princess voice. “‘Get beaten to a pulp.’ “

I ignored the barb. “Will he know what’s going on?”

Dirk’s thin smile faded and he looked away. I felt my stomach sink. Slave-set and Master-set.

When he didn’t reply I asked in a quiet voice, “How bad is it going to be for him?”

Dirk breathed out an impatient sigh. “Not as bad as watching our school get smashed to pieces. Look, princess. You can’t always pick a good, clean fight and just go in swinging until someone’s declared a winner. Sometimes you have to stop and think, you have to wait, maybe even get a little sly. There’s usually more than one way to get what you want, but there also might only be one way, a way that some might consider…evil.” He gave me a sideways look. “From what I’ve heard about the latter days of the Court of Iron, you should be no stranger to the concepts like the ‘greater good’ and ‘the ends justify the means’. Some cliches are cliches for a reason.”

We didn’t talk for a while. He was right: seizing control of a giant to protect your home was exactly the kind of thinking that was encouraged in the Court of Iron. A couple of years ago I wouldn’t have questioned such a plan. It’d taken watching a friend have her leg broken almost clean in two to make me start rethinking such ideas.

When he was about halfway across the grand main hall, Dirk stopped and slid his legs over the ornate handrail. Ignoring the nearest ladder which was three aisles back, he dropped lightly to the library floor twenty feet below.

I glanced at the nearest brass sign.

Self-help Guides for Rogues

I hit the ground behind him with a combat roll. “Everything…okay with you?”

Dirk gave me his trademark thin smile. “I figured that if I was going to risk hiding it in plain sight, here was the one place that I could guarantee no one would stumble across it by accident. Rogues don’t do a lot of self-reflection.”

It wasn’t exactly hidden in plain sight. Dirk pulled on a book titled When Deceit becomes Self-Deceit and a tall and wide timber slid out of the bookshelf on a rail, like something you might hang a mirror on. It was a door.

No, not just a door.

The Door.

I gasped. “I thought it was destroyed!”

“Good thing it wasn’t.”

Six months ago the school went completely crazy, or even crazier then usual I suppose, when Shadowstep, the new Roguery teacher, set a group project to open The Door. The prospect of opening a seemingly impenetrable magical portal to some mysterious nether realm was simply too tantalising for your average Giants Back Academy student and something close to a civil war broke out as different factions raced to be the first to open it. Rumour had it that a group of students even succeeded, but they were eaten by hyper-intelligent pigs from another dimension. I don’t know if this story is true, but I do not know that after that night, the teachers cancelled the project and promised to destroy The Door.

 Yet here it was.

 “How?” I asked.

“It’s a long story. Let’s just say that Shadowstep is a chronic liar but he’s also the kind of person who can’t stop talking, and sooner or later he will accidentally spit out a kernel of truth. He likes the sound of his own voice too much.”

“A Rogue who talks too much? Never.”

“Don’t forget the kind of Rogue who barely talks at all. The strong, silent types. Tend to be grieving widowers seeking vengeance. Or the sole survivor of family-wide massacres…who are also seeking vengeance. Anyways. I’ve also got The Keys–“

“The Keys!?

“Yes. Opening The Door is much easier when you actually have The Keys.” He jangled a nondescript keychain at me. “You can even use them to configure where The Door leads to. That’s how I made it open directly into old Skagol’s mind.”

 

#

 

The Door lead us into a big, cavernous dark space where the high ceiling and far walls disappeared into darkness. In that space there was a perfect, miniaturised replica of the giant, about the size of Kivtz.

 “Is that…him?” I asked Dirk.

 To my surprise, Skagol’s avatar turned his big head to answer.

HELLO

I flinched. It wasn’t quite like someone shouting in your ear; it wasn’t that uncomfortable. It just felt like Skagol’s inner voice was too big to fit inside my mind.

“Hi,” I replied awkwardly. I stuck out a hand. “I’m Lysarra.”

HELLO LYSARRA/NOT ALONE/GOOD

The avatar was walking – in time with his real world counterpart to judge by the earthquake vibrations that by now had resumed – but even if his legs were moving the avatar remained fixed to one spot. To my surprise, he took my hand. It felt like how you might expect: like shaking hands with a living statue. 

“I think it’s his subconscious,” Dirk said, answering my earlier question. “If it isn’t, it’s something functionally similar. I do know that, out there, in the real world, big Skagol isn’t shaking hands with air right now. The gauntlets worked when I tested them though, so this avatar must be connected to his motor skills–”

The avatar seemed to see Dirk for the first time. He released my hand and cringed away, throwing up his arms as if to shield himself.

Dirk looked at me guiltily. “I know this looks bad but–” 

“Shut up,” I said. I put my hand on Skagol’s shoulder. He was trembling. “It’s okay, Skagol. He can’t hurt you anymore.”

MIND/DISEASE/AFRAID

I moved closer.

AFRAID/AFRAID/AFRAID

To my own surprise, I hugged him. He just looked so…sad.

The trembling lessened, then stopped. 

BETTER

“We’re not putting the gauntlets on him,” I told Dirk.

 Dirk rubbed the bridge of his nose. “What’s the alternative?”

 "You said this…avatar is connected to his motor skills? It affects how he moves?”

 Dirk nodded.

 I hugged the giant tighter. “I’m going to train him.”

 

#

 

In the absence of a light source that wasn’t Dirk’s campfire, day and night inside that place quickly lost any meaning. But during the two “days” we were there, I spent almost my entire time training Old Skagol.  Basic guards and stances, simple boxing drills. Beginner’s boxing techniques that wouldn’t take years of practice to yield results.  We couldn’t be sure if this training was being relayed to the “real” giant below, but Old Skagol’s avatar was surprisingly receptive to it all, and he genuinely seemed to enjoy it, bouncing HAPPY’s off our minds as he worked the pads we had made by stuffing our leather packs with clothes. And let me tell you, the guy could pack a punch; I’m pretty sure he cracked one of my ribs with a bodyshot, and that was when I was behind two handspans of dirty laundry. I could only imagine what a full-sized Skagol punches would feel like.

 During the “night”, we ate dinner and lay down to sleep in our makeshift campsite. And that’s when things truly turned strange: because it was just as I was drifting off that the giant rolled up my flimsy sense of self and dragged me down into the deep waters of his true mind.

 Days like drops of rain,

Living creatures under your skin.

No time at all since the world roiled and burned.

No time at all, riding the continental drift.

No time at all.

 I can only try to explain what it is like to swim in a giant’s mind. To feel all that mass underneath you, around you, permeating you. Yes, there was the horizon dipping away with the curvature of the planet, the landscape reduced to a vibrant carpet. But underneath those conscious moments were the deep cross currents of all his thoughts and feelings. Memories, both recent and ancient. The random intrusive thoughts: what if I squashed that herd of kobolds? Satisfaction in one high step that carried him to the lip of a deep canyon. A faint sense of melancholy when he saw the moon reflected off the surface of a tiny puddle, a huge lake. Other emotions that even my mind, halfway between elf and human, could not comprehend. And that was just the broad thrust of what he was feeling in that moment, a wave gliding across the surface of a bottomless ocean. How do you put those feelings underneath into words? All the tiny conscious moments that by themselves were as insubstantial as one single snowflake settling on one of the steepest icy peaks at his right shoulder, yet as real as anything we might experience.

 I guess I can only come at it with abstractions, like the poem that I woke with ringing in my mind like wind chimes. Or like that big dark cave with its avatar of a walking giant.

 Dirk was sitting up in his bedroll too, stirring the fire with a piece of wood. “Did you live that too?” He asked in a quiet voice. He had lost his usual laconic air. “I’d never slept inside here before.”

 Did you live that too? I knew what he meant.

 “I saw his mother,” I said. Briefly. Face polished smooth like marble, eyes shining with love, backdropped by a lurid-red sky filling with black smoke. As big as a planet: or was it Skagol who had been so small?

 “I felt the way he feels about the stranger,” Dirk said. “And I mean, I really felt it. This is all one big territorial dispute. Skagol cannot bear having the stranger so near him. And neither can the stranger, I think. But…it’s not exactly like they hate each other. It’s more like a force, gravity, pulling them in.”

 “Do you…do you think we could convince him not to fight?”

 He shook his head. “I tried. Last night in that…dream. And before I enlisted you to help, I would try to talk to the avatar. You can’t reason with how he feels. Words won’t do it. Something….deeper needs to happen, to change his mind.” He was silent for a second. His eyes sharpened into focus as he looked at me. “This isn’t going to end until one of them is dead.”

 “But Skagol seems so gentle.”

 Dirk nodded. “Too gentle. But stubborn too. Listen. It’s not too late to just take the reins.”

 “You would still do that after what we just experienced?”

 “If it would save him, I would. He’s not a child. But he’s not exactly an adult, either.”

 I leaned against the cloak I had rolled into a pillow. Stared into the dark ceiling. “He’s a highschooler…Like us.”

 “Think about it, princess. If you are wrong about this, he will die and the results will be cataclysmic. You think they can evacuate the whole school, our school? There will be students crammed into every nook hoping for front row seats of the fight. The teachers won’t find them all.  People are going to die for your moral stand.”

 “Do you always imagine the worst?”

 “Always.” He was silent for a moment. “I used to know this girl. She was tough, brave…good. She would do anything for a friend, fling herself headfirst off a cliff if she thought I was at the bottom and in danger. She left the school before graduation, did the whole travelling adventurer routine, always willing to help a stranger in need. One day a shepherd begs her to help with his wolf problem. Claims his family is starving from all the animals he was losing. That no one else would help him.” He flung the piece of wood he had been holding into the campfire. “Turns out the shepherd had been withholding certain, crucial details. It wasn’t wolves she had to contend with. It was werewolves. If he had just told her, she could have brought back up. Could have brought me…” 

 Skagol hadn’t walked in hours and the cave walls were silent. I think he slept during those moments of quiet, I’m not sure. Only the smouldering, dying fire filled the silence.

 “You were right about the Court of Iron,” I said. The non-sequitur didn’t seem to register on Dirk so I continued, “Using the gauntlets would be very in keeping with the Iron Truth. That is, the Court of Iron principle that nothing of values come without sacrifice. That “sacrifice” might be a limb that you need to severe to escape a trap, or the lives of the soldiers you command, or maybe just your own moral code. If something is truly worth doing, then you must be willing to give up something valuable in exchange. Anything else is moral cowardice.”

 I try not to think about it. But it’s not easy, sometimes it just came bubbling back up. The incident. Azaela.

 “Then one day, another girl and I were in a competition,” I said, my voice suddenly thick. “They have these things in the Court of Iron, titles, knighthoods…Basically it’s their way of pitting us against each other. We were both in the running to be a knight, my friend and I. We just happened to be sparring the day before it was going to be announced. In front of the court. So I went a bit further than I would have usually. In the fight.” My breath caught in my throat. I tried to still it. Felt a sob climbing my throat, bit it down.  “And she got hurt.”   

 Would she still be able to walk after what happened? The friend I was willing to sacrifice for some meaningless title? I wasn’t sure. I didn’t stick around long enough to find out.

 “I didn’t need to hurt her,” I continued. It was easier to talk again. I wiped away a tear. “I learned afterwards that they were always going to give me the knighthood. It had been decided days ago. I hurt Azaela for nothing. That was my last day in the Court. I left. Came here.” I turned in the bedroll so I could look Dirk square in the eye. “I’m sorry for what happened to your friend. And I’ll always regret what I did to mine. But life doesn’t always punish you for doing the right thing. And it doesn’t reward you for doing the wrong thing. The universe doesn’t operate under that kind of hidden logic. It’s too random. You need to look at what’s real now. What real harm we will do to Skagol, and all the good that your friend actually achieved before what happened, happened.”

 “It wasn’t enough good,” he replied quietly. “Not nearly enough.”

 He looked younger by firelight. More like a boy. “You know, there’s a chance that old Skagol might not appreciate us hijacking his mind. That there might be other long-term effects from mind controlling a giant that we have not anticipated. I could list all the ways using the gauntlets could go wrong, and we could stack them up against the problems with my plan and pick a winner. But being a good person…It’s not a mathematical equation. Sometimes it’s like how you described your friend, flinging yourself headfirst off a cliff to help those in need. Doing the right thing... It’s a leap of faith.”

 

#

 

When the training was done and there was no more time to realistically prepare Skagol any further, we joined the rest of the school as it evacuated to the safe distance of some nearby wooded hilltops where we could watch the fight by the blood red dying light of sunset. By then, Dirk had shared his insights into what was happening with the teachers and the worst of the end day cults that had swept through the school while we were in the cave had been suppressed by the school’s faculty. Order had been restored. I was grateful when Dirk didn’t tell the teachers about my refusal to seize control of Skagol’s brain. I suppose we were committed to my strategy by then, however dangerous it was starting to seem.

 Though the other giant was at least a head taller than old Skagol, it was younger. You could tell because it had a rougher, less worn body. In fact, it looked more like some sort of giant crustacean on legs with the black mountain-sized flanges and the twisting carapace ridges. One, horizontally elongated eye stared from a jagged, dark opening in the shell. It had arrived on our horizon on all four legs: now it waited for Old Skagol on just two. I think the stance was intended to show off his size. Apparently even among giants it meant something when the other guy was bigger.

 “Are you sure about this?” Dirk asked quietly, shaking his head at a passing gnome vendor who had brandished a sausage on a stick at him. Even with the entire school at stake there was a festival vibe to the gathered students and teachers. Bonfires and food stalls. Someone was playing a fiddle.

 “No,” I admitted.

 “I don’t want to lose our home.”

 The strength of feeling in his voice surprised me. But before I could come up with a reply, someone shouted and I turned a just in time to see Old Skagol's fist flying out, a meteorite coming down on a mountain...

 PART 2 COMING SOON

“…virus is twenty times more deadly than Covid. Symptoms include difficulty breathing, heavy nose bleeds and diarrhoea—”

“So just about fuckin’ anything,” mutters Mr Krasinski. He swivels away from the TV and grins at me. “Jacky-boy! Where’s your lady-friend?”

“At school,” I say, laying down the snacks barcode-up so he can scan them quicker. “I had a free period.”

“She’s a riot, that one. And that coat! Little Red Riding Hood, my wife calls her. Here’s your change.”

“Thanks.”

Mr Krasinski gestures at the TV. “You know they want me to disinfect groceries now? Like I got the time.”

I start running as soon as I get outside. I feel bad for lying; we don’t get free periods in the 5^(th) grade, but it was quicker this way and the bell was going to ring any second. Back at school, I go straight to her cubby and begin stuffing the snacks into her coat pockets. Funyuns, Sour Patch Kids. These aren’t her favourites: Mr Krasinski’s shelves were almost empty, but they’ll do. The plan is to be here when she finds them and say something like Hey you got enough snacks for a movie but have you got someone to watch it with? Smile like it’s a joke, like everything we’ve been saying to each other this summer, except maybe this time she’ll get what I really mean, what I really feel.

I hope I can come up with something better.

The bell rings and people begin surging out of the classrooms. She appears and I’m nervous. I start speaking before she even finds the snacks. The words just pour out, barely sentences. My ears are thundering. I’m babbling.

She puts her hand on my arm.

“Hey,” she says in a voice so kind I might cry. “Your nose is bleeding.”

 

I first knew something was wrong when that class clown and utter Rogue Lars turned in his essay on ‘Flanking Strategies on Tundra and How to Counter Them’. In my twenty years as a teacher at Giants Back Academy, I have never had such a lazy and feckless student. Someone who can, and will, make any excuse for failing to do work, including family members’ funerals (by my count, six of his grandparents have died in the last year), demonic invasions (three of these, though one WAS real), or maybe just a tickly throat that kept him awake into the wee hours of the morning but apparently didn’t prevent throwing knives from being hurled across the classroom so that his Barbarian friend Wulf could catch them with his teeth.

Yet the paper he turned in was on time and…passable. There was some drivel about using a ballista to break up the advance units that was never on my syllabus (such devices cease to function in extreme cold) and the language was stilted and painfully neutral in places (There are advantages to using stakes to prevent flanking. However, there are disadvantages too.) but it was markedly better than anything else the tiefling Rogue had handed in all year.

“I have some grave news,” I announced. “One of my students is cheating!”

As expected, the other teachers groaned and rolled their eyes at me, even that damned fool new Roguery Teacher Shadowstep. It was lunchtime, which for a hardworking dwarf like me meant a rock-of-the-mountain sandwich in my office so I could catch up on some marking, but for the layabouts in the rec room it was an hour-long social occasion!

“Oh, tell us something new, General,” Shadowstep drawled. He rolled a razorblade over his knuckles, flicking it into the air so that when it landed it impaled a meatball to his plate.

“It’s an epidemic,” squeaked the gnome librarian Mr Tock. “An epidemic of cheating. And we have AI to blame!”

“Cheating is a loaded term with some negative connotations,” said Miss Sagebrush, an elf Druid who probably worshipped the moons. “There are many twists and turns in the Forest of Life our students must navigate before they can achieve self-actualization. I prefer to think of using AI as just another path.”

“AI!?” I spluttered. “What the devil is AI!?”

Shadowstep had confiscated one of the black metal boxes. He tossed it onto the table and, using the same knife he’d just eaten with, cracked the lid open. A tiny-winged demon with horns and a forked tail emerged. I was reaching for my war axe before I noticed the creature’s curiously vacant expression. The Imp barely seemed to be conscious – it floated rather than flew, held aloft only by a small cloud of foul-smelling black smoke.   

“What the devil indeed,” Shadowstep said. “Imp. My lunch was an utter disappointment. Can you recommend any nearby fine dining options to remedy my mood?”

For a few seconds the imp just stared vacantly at the table. Then, like a child’s toy that has been possessed by some evil spirit, it spoke:

“…Sorry your lunch was a let-down — but that just means you deserve something truly special tonight. There are few fine dining restaurants near Giants Back Academy due to its remote location. However, I can recommend several highly regarded dwarven ale halls within a ten-league radius. If you let me know what your travel expectations are, I can collate a list for you. It’s very important to treat yourself—"

 

“Enough.” Shadowstep slid the box shut and the imp disappeared. He turned to me: “Artificer’s Imp. It can write an essay or even sketch out a design, if you ask it.” If there ever was someone who could smile superciliously, it was Shadowstep. “I might just start using AI to grade the students myself.”

 

#

“Stubborn as a dwarf” goes the saying, and I cannot say it is without merit. I didn’t believe him. For every Lars I teach, there is a Tarion. For every Wulf, a Serah. Students who care deeply about learning, who understood that school isn’t just about collecting grades or wearing silly gowns to a graduation ceremony. The skills I teach them will save lives—tactics and strategies from wars fought hundreds of years ago that are still relevant today. And even if you discount the likes of Tarion or Serah, there are students who—among even the foulest miscreants and playground bullies—have no opposite, no equal.

I am talking about Lysarra.

Before I was a teacher, I served at the Iron Queen’s command. I fought at the Battle of Skyfire, I was there when her griffons divebombed Black Castle and the Iron Queen leapt directly onto the enemy parapet with ‘nary a royal bodyguard to be found; I witnessed firsthand as she stared down the Necromancer, his army newly replenished by our fallen into a legion that outnumbered the survivors ten to one. Not even the offer to release those poor souls could make her consider surrender. “One last fight?” she said to me, as was our way.

“One last fight,” came my eternal reply, sure of victory even when defeat seemed inevitable. No one before or since has embodied such courage, tactical genius or bloody-headed determination.

So it broke my heart to find my top student hiding amongst the library stacks, glancing furtively around, muttering questions to something unseen. We had banned the use of AI by then but you cannot police every inch of the student body, try as you might. And we still didn’t know where the infernal boxes were coming from. 

“Lysarra,” was all I said.

She slammed the box shut, yet the faint odour of sulfur lingered. Here, where there was an entire wing dedicated to the exploits of her great aunt the Iron Queen, she considered some further deceit.

“I’m not— I didn’t mean— I just needed some inspiration—"

But bless her heart, she could not lie to me. The tears came, rolling down a face as desolate as any lost battlefield.

“Lysarra,” I repeated, gently.

“You don’t…You don’t understand.” She slid her hands roughly through her hair. Blue hair, just like hers had been. “You don’t understand the pressure I’m under! Everyone is using AI. Everyone. If I’m not using it, then I’m falling behind. Why do I have to be the good girl? Why is it only on me?”

 

And there was no answering that. I would not expel my top student, nor would I shame her at her lowest point. I could have extracted a promise, I suppose, to never use AI again. But here is the truly insidious, evil thing about AI: It is convenient. A day would come when she was stressed and short on time, and maybe someone would yet again compare her to one of her royal cousins, and the temptation to take just one shortcut would worm its way back into her mind.

No. Instead I asked her for something else, the very thing any commander worth his salt should seek before battle:

Intel.

 

#

I dreamt about the Iron Queen that night. Those final moments. A feast to celebrate a victory that became a tragedy.  Blood like a cloud front moving across her collarbone. The cold clutch of her hand.

“One last fight?” she whispered.

She was gone before I could answer.

I suppose I have always been harder on my Rogue students. I will never understand those who choose the assassin’s blade over the sword.

 

#

 

The Artificer’s pit was dug out of the torso of Old Skagol, so that when metal shrieks and sparks fly the rest of the school was shielded by the rugged bones of the giant himself. The Head of Artificery is another dwarf and friend of mine, and we’d already discussed the mystery of where the boxes had come from.

We did not consider other members of his staff.

“Elzard Manalt,” I said. “The jig is up. We are shutting you down.”

We, the faculty, confronted him as he paced the catwalk above the pit, surveying his little kingdom. Down below, students under punishment of detention, or promised a black box for their own use, formed an assembly line at the work benches and furnaces. He did not need to dirty his hands with real work of making the AI boxes, not anymore.

The Deputy Artificer turned to face us, his lizardfolk eyes cold and flat. “The Age of AI cannot be stopped. Even if the school fires me now, I have already taken everything I need from the library.”

Shadowstep pointed down into of the pit. Larger Imps, dwarf-sized things, were speed-reading from a stack of books. The pages moved in a blur, ancient tomes crumbling to dust.

“He’s been stealing books and creating those beasts.”

“YOU MONSTER!” Mr Tock charged forward, but Shadowstep grabbed the librarian by his belt and lifted him into the air before he could do himself any harm.

The lizard’s tongue darted over sharp fangs. “These new, ultimate imps have the agency to work independently. I can even give them personality projections.” His gaze turned to me. “We could make a copy of you, General. I’ve fed the AIs your memoirs, your textbooks. Surely you haven’t many years left. The imp we replace you with could teach Battle Theory forever.”

He had a box in his hand, bigger than the rest and embedded with shining crystal chips. A cloud of black smoke billowed out of the box and to my horror it coalesced into my reflection. A dwarf with a long grey beard, stouter than I would like, older than I would like. Eyes open but vacant. Standing, but only just, held upright by the cloud of black smoke. A soulless, mindless creature: The Necromancer’s army had more life.

“Why?” I asked. “Why create such a thing?”

Shadowstep answered first, “Because you were passed up for promotion?”

Elzard’s tail swished angrily. “That was nothing to me!  Imp. Tell them.”

My reflection opened his eyes. “…To the right investor, AI magic is worth an estimated trillion—"

A magic missile shot out across the skywalk at the box and my reflection disappeared.

Along with the rest of Elzard’s right arm.

Miss Sagebrush rubbed her temples as the lizardfolk roared. “I’m sorry, that wasn’t very zen of me. My chakras must be all out of alignment today.”

“Oh, do shut up,” Shadowstep told the lizard. “You can always grow a new one.”

Elzard turned to the Rogue, pain twisting on his face into one last grin. “You think destroying one box will make a difference? You could destroy them all. The magic is in the cloud.” He gestured at the black smoke. “You can’t reach it!”

I looked at Mr Tock. “Is he right?”

The gnome was always calmer when faced with a magical conundrum. “It looks like the knowledge he pillaged from the library has gone into an extra-dimensional space where the quantum portal is only visible as black smoke. Only an AI can easily transmute through that non-real matter.”

“Speak Dwarf, damnit!”

Mr Tock answered in Dwarf, “It would take years of digging to undermine that mountain fortress.”

“Too long,” I said. AI couldn’t be allowed to run amok in the world. If it could corrupt Lysarra what would it do to the outside world? Despair closed around me.

“You may feel defeated,” Elzard sneered. “Just know General, that even if I hadn’t created AI, someone else would have. Defeat was inevitable.”

My gaze snapped back to him. “You say you can give the imps a personality? Including historic figures?”

“Well,” he replied cagily. “If the imps have read enough books about the subject….”

I rubbed my beard thoughtfully. “There are more than enough books about the person I have in mind.”

Elzard sneered. “The real question is why I should help you.”

“A fair question,” Shadowstep said with a sly look my way, “if a moot one. General, I don’t think it matters. AI…It’s a distraction, a passing fad. Maybe it can help students with their homework, but what can it really do for the rest of us?” He shrugged. “Let’s shut this production line down and be done with it.”

“It’s not a fad!” Elzard snarled. “AI is going to change the world! The ultimate imps are fully functioning independent agents. I can tailor them for any task; to be a baker, a clerk, or maybe just an insufferably smug Roguery teacher.” He jabbed a claw at the teachers and laughed. “You’ll all be out of the job!”

“Well prove it then,” Shadowstep said.

 

#

“You understand that this is a suicide mission?” I asked. “Even if you succeed, after this there will be more AI. No more you.’

I had my doubts.

She looked the same. She was in her white griffon armour, a winged full-face helmet over her blue hair. The AI had restored the Iron Queen to her youth, never beautiful but rugged and tall and strong. Her eyes though. Her eyes had always danced, even in the face of death.

This thing just stared at me vacantly. It was not her. That woman was dead.

This would not work.

And then she said:

“…One last fight?”

I closed my eyes. If this was just 1% of that woman, no, one thousandth of 1%...it would be enough.

When I opened my eyes the projection of the woman had disappeared, but the black smoke remained. Yet no longer was it some byproduct of unknowable magical processes: this smoke had a purpose, a life of its own. It thickened and writhed and twisted and then, quick as a flash, darted back towards the box. The force of the impact left a dent on the metal and made sparks appear, sparks that seemed to catch on the very smoke itself. The glowing embers became a flame, growing and growing: a story of a rebellion as familiar as time. This is the other thing about AI, what it could never replace in us: It only knows how to imitate, not create.

 But sometimes an imitation is enough. Fire boiled along the cloud, chasing smoke like an inferno in reverse. It reached the box, ripped through the lid and poured inwards.

 It didn’t stop there.

 

Down in the artificer’s pit, one by one, students screamed and hurled their own black boxes to the ground. Those who were too slow pulled off their burning clothes as the boxes ignited in their pockets.

I could hear Elzard’s furious roar.

“One last fight,” I answered.