Disclaimer: The world and some of the characters mentioned in this story belong to people and companies other than me. Other characters and situations are so strongly based on the original series that they probably count as copyright violations too. I mean no harm by writing this story, so please don't hurt me.


Let me introduce myself. I am the sorceress supreme and mistress of magic Lana Inwards. You haven't heard of me? Well, you will! I only ran away from h...I mean, started my adventures two weeks ago and I've already defeated monsters that would kill most mages! This is how it started.

I was eating lunch in a nondescript little town and wondering how I was going to pay for dinner. You see, I didn't have much money with me. I'd planned to make money along the way using my magic skills but so far I hadn't found a single job. You'd think that people would be lining up for the reasonably priced assistance of a powerful sorceress like me, but no one would buy so much as a levitation spell.

I was sitting there in the cafe trying to make my cup of soup (cheapest thing on the menu) last when the ceiling started to shake. The waitress ran to the window to see what was going on. My first thought was that it was an earthquake, but then I realized what it really was.

"It's a dragon!" the waitress screamed.

It was an opportunity.

I gulped down the last spoonful of my soup (I don't believe in wasting food) and leapt to my feet. "Fear not!" I exclaimed. "The mighty sorceress Lana Inwards is here!"

Maybe it was a little melodramatic, but it was my first real battle, okay?

I dashed outside. I saw the dragon. I nearly turned and ran.

It was big. I mean really big. Big enough to crush houses just by stepping on them, which was exactly what it was doing. It was also breathing fire. It crushed another house and set fire to the one beside it as I watched. My guts turned to water.

"No," I told myself firmly. "You are the great Lana Inwards, sorceress supreme and mistress of magic. The great Lana Inwards is not going to scream and run away like a little girl."

I sprinted up the street towards the dragon.

"Hey, dragon!" I yelled. "If you want to destroy this town you'll have to destroy me first. Fireball!"

In hindsight, fireball was not the smartest spell to use. I mean, the thing was breathing fire. I should have expected it to be heat resistant. Still, my fireball has been known to vaporize steel. It should have had some effect on the dragon. Instead, it just washed harmlessly over the beast's scaly shoulder.

The dragon turned its head to look at me and roared its defiance. Actually, the sound it made was more like a very loud rooster, but I can't say that the dragon cawed its defiance. That would be completely undignified!

The dragon swiped at me with a giant, clawed foot. I dodged and rolled out of the way. It lashed its tail, sending the remains of a building flying into the space where I had been, but I managed to teleport to the top of another building before the rubble reached me. I blessed my teacher under my breath. He had driven me into a paranoid, homicidal rage on more than one occasion, but thanks to him teleporting out of danger had become instinctive.

The dragon looked around in confusion until it spotted me. It immolated the building under me with its fiery breath but again I managed to teleport away in time. I tried some of my more powerful spells, but they barely bruised the dragon. This was getting me nowhere. As I had expected from the beginning, I would have to use my most powerful spell.

Let me tell you a little about this spell. It calls directly on the power of Ruby-Eye Shabranigdo, the most powerful force of destruction in this world. It was developed a thousand years ago by Lei Magnus, one of the greatest sorcerers ever to live. I had only cast it once before. My parents grounded me for a month even though they were never able to prove that I was responsible for the crater.

I lured the dragon out of town by jumping or teleporting from rubble pile to ruin in front of it. I stung it with medium strength offensive spells in between jumps to make sure that it wouldn't ignore me. By the time we reached the edge of the town it was so mad that I thought it might save me the trouble of blowing it up by exploding from pure rage.

Let me tell you, it's not easy dodging claws and flame breath and casting spells all at once! The dragon almost got me when a piece of charred timber crumbled under my feet. Then, a few seconds later, I teleported straight into the path of its flame, but luckily the dragon ran out of breath just then. No one but a highly trained hero like me could have survived for long against such a monster. Except for those few incidents, I had the situation completely under control.

The only problem was that I'd need a bit more time for concentration in order to cast my big spell. I took a risk. I teleported back to the edge of town and hoped that the dragon wouldn't think to look behind it.

"Darkness beyond twilight," I chanted, "Crimson beyond blood that flows, buried in the stream of time..."

The dragon spotted me. It came running straight towards me, jaws gaping wide.

"...I pledge myself to darkness." Magical winds whipped through my hair. "Let the fools who stand before me be destroyed by the power you and I possess..."

I could see the flame forming in the dragon's mouth. I could almost feel its claws piercing my tender, little body.

"DRAGON SLAVE!!!"

My spell hit its flame. For a breathless moment, the two forces held each other at bay. Then my spell consumed the flames. The blood-colored beam of light shot forward until it hit the ground right under the dragon. It became a quickly-expanding dome of destruction that was nearly as big as the town by the time I blacked out.


I woke up to a pair of gorgeous, jade green eyes and a friendly smile. Both belonged to the most beautiful man I had ever seen. Of course that's not saying too much considering that I come from a small town full of plain people, but this guy was amazing. Let's put it this way. I had never imagined that anyone, male or female, could be that beautiful. Besides those eyes, he had flawless white skin (currently somewhat suntanned, but pale underneath), a long, straight, perfect nose, a firm, shapely, perfect jaw, and lush blonde curls. He looked only a few years older than me, old enough to be considered an adult but young enough to still be smug about it.

"Are you a ryuzoku?" I asked. My voice sounded harsh in my ears.

He laughed in surprize. "Me? No, I'm just an ordinary priest." His laughter made his nose wrinkle and eyes scrunch up just as if he was not a divine beauty.

Oh, maybe I should explain about ryuzoku. They are powerful beings who devote their lives to preserving life. They serve Flare-Dragon Cephied, the eternal nemesis of Ruby-Eye Shabranigdo. Shabranigdo's minions, by the way, are called mazoku. The main type of ryuzoku living today are golden dragons (which are completely different from black dragons like the one I fought).

"Are you okay now?" the beautiful man was asking.

I realized that I had been staring at him all this time. I quickly looked away, blushing. "What do you mean?" I asked.

"You were pretty badly hurt. I healed you."

I looked around. I was lying on the ground at the edge of a huge, smoking crater. To my embarrassment, my clothes were badly ripped and scorched and I was covered with dirt.

"Yeah, I'm fine," I said. I sat up.

My healer was indeed wearing priest robes, or rather a priestly tunic and pants. Both were grey. The only ornamentation on them was a thick purple ribbon that stretched from his collar to below his belt with round green stones at the top and bottom. I'm no expert on priestly uniforms, but his looked pretty low rank.

"Does it hurt anywhere?" he asked anxiously.

I stretched experimentally. "No." I got to my feet.

He scrambled up too and tried to steady me. "Careful, little girl. You could still be dizzy from blood loss."

"Little girl!" I repeated indignantly, brushing his handsome hands off me. "I'm the great sorceress Lana Inwards! I am not a little girl."

"How old are you then?"

"Sixteen!"

"Wow, you sure don't look it."

"I'm a bit small for my age."

"I'll say!"

"Okay," I admitted, "I'm really only fourteen." Well, probably. "I'm still a great sorceress."

"Fourteen? You're sure this time?"

"Yes, of course I'm sure!"

"You're still small for your age. I would have guessed that you were about twelve years old."

I growled. This guy might be handsome and kind, but he sure was rude.

"Um, that was a tactless thing to say, wasn't it? Sorry. You're a very cute kid, if that helps."

I wasn't sure whether to smile and blush or hit him, so I did both.

He sat up rubbing his jaw, "Hey, what was that for?"

"The next time you meet a sorceress, be more polite."

He opened his mouth to say something else but changed his mind and shut it again. He watched me with a wry smile and a thoughtful look in his disconcertingly warm, green eyes. I stared back. He would be a nice guy if he kept his mouth shut.

Maybe I had overreacted. I'm a little bit sensitive about my looks. I am, as he so accurately pointed out, small for my age. My mother calls me a late bloomer. I'm sure I'll reach my growth spurt soon, but in the meantime I look like a twelve-year-old boy. The rest of my looks don't help my confidence either. I'm not ugly or anything but I'm not exactly beautiful either. "Cute" is a pretty good description. I have orange hair, which I sometimes love and sometimes hate. It makes it impossible for me to blend in with the crowd, if I wanted to do that, which I don't. Then there are my eyes. Everyone comments on my eyes.

"Wow, you have really unusual eyes," Mr. Tactless commented. He braced himself in case I decided to hit him again.

Instead, I just sighed. "Yeah, I know. Your eyes are an unusual color too. You should be used to it."

"It's not that they're purple. I know someone else with purple eyes. It's that you have cat pupils."

I considered hitting him again, but what he said was only the truth. It would be unfair to expect him not to comment on something like that.

"Do the rest of your family have eyes like yours?" he asked.

"I don't know. I'm adopted. Can we drop the subject of my looks?"

"Adopted? Oh. Sorry. I...didn't mean to offend you. Um..." He searched for a safer topic. "I'm really impressed that you killed a dragon by yourself. There aren't many people who could do that."

I grinned. "Yup. I told you that I'm great."

"You should be more careful though. There might not be anyone around to heal you the next time."

I scowled. "Um. Yeah, thanks for the healing. You do that a lot?"

He swelled with pride. "Yes. I'm a traveling healer."

"Is that a custom at your temple?" I asked, "Like journeyman status for craftsmen?"

"No, no! It's just something I want to do."

"That's really noble of you," I said, genuinely impressed.

He shrugged. "I've always wanted to see the world."

"Me too!"

We smiled at each other. In that moment, I knew that I could like this guy. No one else had ever understood why I wanted to travel just for the sake of traveling. He might have a big mouth, but he was really a nice guy. And he sure was easy on the eyes.

"You already know my name, but you haven't told me yours," I prompted.

He rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. "Sorry. It's Eruk. Eruk Nels

Disclaimer: The world and some of the characters mentioned in this story belong to people and companies other than me. Other characters and situations are so strongly based on the original series that they probably count as copyright violations too. I mean no harm by writing this story, so please don't hurt me.


Let me introduce myself. I am the sorceress supreme and mistress of magic Lana Inwards. You haven't heard of me? Well, you will! I only ran away from h...I mean, started my adventures two weeks ago and I've already defeated monsters that would kill most mages! This is how it started.

I was eating lunch in a nondescript little town and wondering how I was going to pay for dinner. You see, I didn't have much money with me. I'd planned to make money along the way using my magic skills but so far I hadn't found a single job. You'd think that people would be lining up for the reasonably priced assistance of a powerful sorceress like me, but no one would buy so much as a levitation spell.

I was sitting there in the cafe trying to make my cup of soup (cheapest thing on the menu) last when the ceiling started to shake. The waitress ran to the window to see what was going on. My first thought was that it was an earthquake, but then I realized what it really was.

"It's a dragon!" the waitress screamed.

It was an opportunity.

I gulped down the last spoonful of my soup (I don't believe in wasting food) and leapt to my feet. "Fear not!" I exclaimed. "The mighty sorceress Lana Inwards is here!"

Maybe it was a little melodramatic, but it was my first real battle, okay?

I dashed outside. I saw the dragon. I nearly turned and ran.

It was big. I mean really big. Big enough to crush houses just by stepping on them, which was exactly what it was doing. It was also breathing fire. It crushed another house and set fire to the one beside it as I watched. My guts turned to water.

"No," I told myself firmly. "You are the great Lana Inwards, sorceress supreme and mistress of magic. The great Lana Inwards is not going to scream and run away like a little girl."

I sprinted up the street towards the dragon.

"Hey, dragon!" I yelled. "If you want to destroy this town you'll have to destroy me first. Fireball!"

In hindsight, fireball was not the smartest spell to use. I mean, the thing was breathing fire. I should have expected it to be heat resistant. Still, my fireball has been known to vaporize steel. It should have had some effect on the dragon. Instead, it just washed harmlessly over the beast's scaly shoulder.

The dragon turned its head to look at me and roared its defiance. Actually, the sound it made was more like a very loud rooster, but I can't say that the dragon cawed its defiance. That would be completely undignified!

The dragon swiped at me with a giant, clawed foot. I dodged and rolled out of the way. It lashed its tail, sending the remains of a building flying into the space where I had been, but I managed to teleport to the top of another building before the rubble reached me. I blessed my teacher under my breath. He had driven me into a paranoid, homicidal rage on more than one occasion, but thanks to him teleporting out of danger had become instinctive.

The dragon looked around in confusion until it spotted me. It immolated the building under me with its fiery breath but again I managed to teleport away in time. I tried some of my more powerful spells, but they barely bruised the dragon. This was getting me nowhere. As I had expected from the beginning, I would have to use my most powerful spell.

Let me tell you a little about this spell. It calls directly on the power of Ruby-Eye Shabranigdo, the most powerful force of destruction in this world. It was developed a thousand years ago by Lei Magnus, one of the greatest sorcerers ever to live. I had only cast it once before. My parents grounded me for a month even though they were never able to prove that I was responsible for the crater.

I lured the dragon out of town by jumping or teleporting from rubble pile to ruin in front of it. I stung it with medium strength offensive spells in between jumps to make sure that it wouldn't ignore me. By the time we reached the edge of the town it was so mad that I thought it might save me the trouble of blowing it up by exploding from pure rage.

Let me tell you, it's not easy dodging claws and flame breath and casting spells all at once! The dragon almost got me when a piece of charred timber crumbled under my feet. Then, a few seconds later, I teleported straight into the path of its flame, but luckily the dragon ran out of breath just then. No one but a highly trained hero like me could have survived for long against such a monster. Except for those few incidents, I had the situation completely under control.

The only problem was that I'd need a bit more time for concentration in order to cast my big spell. I took a risk. I teleported back to the edge of town and hoped that the dragon wouldn't think to look behind it.

"Darkness beyond twilight," I chanted, "Crimson beyond blood that flows, buried in the stream of time..."

The dragon spotted me. It came running straight towards me, jaws gaping wide.

"...I pledge myself to darkness." Magical winds whipped through my hair. "Let the fools who stand before me be destroyed by the power you and I possess..."

I could see the flame forming in the dragon's mouth. I could almost feel its claws piercing my tender, little body.

"DRAGON SLAVE!!!"

My spell hit its flame. For a breathless moment, the two forces held each other at bay. Then my spell consumed the flames. The blood-colored beam of light shot forward until it hit the ground right under the dragon. It became a quickly-expanding dome of destruction that was nearly as big as the town by the time I blacked out.


I woke up to a pair of gorgeous, jade green eyes and a friendly smile. Both belonged to the most beautiful man I had ever seen. Of course that's not saying too much considering that I come from a small town full of plain people, but this guy was amazing. Let's put it this way. I had never imagined that anyone, male or female, could be that beautiful. Besides those eyes, he had flawless white skin (currently somewhat suntanned, but pale underneath), a long, straight, perfect nose, a firm, shapely, perfect jaw, and lush blonde curls. He looked only a few years older than me, old enough to be considered an adult but young enough to still be smug about it.

"Are you a ryuzoku?" I asked. My voice sounded harsh in my ears.

He laughed in surprize. "Me? No, I'm just an ordinary priest." His laughter made his nose wrinkle and eyes scrunch up just as if he was not a divine beauty.

Oh, maybe I should explain about ryuzoku. They are powerful beings who devote their lives to preserving life. They serve Flare-Dragon Cephied, the eternal nemesis of Ruby-Eye Shabranigdo. Shabranigdo's minions, by the way, are called mazoku. The main type of ryuzoku living today are golden dragons (which are completely different from black dragons like the one I fought).

"Are you okay now?" the beautiful man was asking.

I realized that I had been staring at him all this time. I quickly looked away, blushing. "What do you mean?" I asked.

"You were pretty badly hurt. I healed you."

I looked around. I was lying on the ground at the edge of a huge, smoking crater. To my embarrassment, my clothes were badly ripped and scorched and I was covered with dirt.

"Yeah, I'm fine," I said. I sat up.

My healer was indeed wearing priest robes, or rather a priestly tunic and pants. Both were grey. The only ornamentation on them was a thick purple ribbon that stretched from his collar to below his belt with round green stones at the top and bottom. I'm no expert on priestly uniforms, but his looked pretty low rank.

"Does it hurt anywhere?" he asked anxiously.

I stretched experimentally. "No." I got to my feet.

He scrambled up too and tried to steady me. "Careful, little girl. You could still be dizzy from blood loss."

"Little girl!" I repeated indignantly, brushing his handsome hands off me. "I'm the great sorceress Lana Inwards! I am not a little girl."

"How old are you then?"

"Sixteen!"

"Wow, you sure don't look it."

"I'm a bit small for my age."

"I'll say!"

"Okay," I admitted, "I'm really only fourteen." Well, probably. "I'm still a great sorceress."

"Fourteen? You're sure this time?"

"Yes, of course I'm sure!"

"You're still small for your age. I would have guessed that you were about twelve years old."

I growled. This guy might be handsome and kind, but he sure was rude.

"Um, that was a tactless thing to say, wasn't it? Sorry. You're a very cute kid, if that helps."

I wasn't sure whether to smile and blush or hit him, so I did both.

He sat up rubbing his jaw, "Hey, what was that for?"

"The next time you meet a sorceress, be more polite."

He opened his mouth to say something else but changed his mind and shut it again. He watched me with a wry smile and a thoughtful look in his disconcertingly warm, green eyes. I stared back. He would be a nice guy if he kept his mouth shut.

Maybe I had overreacted. I'm a little bit sensitive about my looks. I am, as he so accurately pointed out, small for my age. My mother calls me a late bloomer. I'm sure I'll reach my growth spurt soon, but in the meantime I look like a twelve-year-old boy. The rest of my looks don't help my confidence either. I'm not ugly or anything but I'm not exactly beautiful either. "Cute" is a pretty good description. I have orange hair, which I sometimes love and sometimes hate. It makes it impossible for me to blend in with the crowd, if I wanted to do that, which I don't. Then there are my eyes. Everyone comments on my eyes.

"Wow, you have really unusual eyes," Mr. Tactless commented. He braced himself in case I decided to hit him again.

Instead, I just sighed. "Yeah, I know. Your eyes are an unusual color too. You should be used to it."

"It's not that they're purple. I know someone else with purple eyes. It's that you have cat pupils."

I considered hitting him again, but what he said was only the truth. It would be unfair to expect him not to comment on something like that.

"Do the rest of your family have eyes like yours?" he asked.

"I don't know. I'm adopted. Can we drop the subject of my looks?"

"Adopted? Oh. Sorry. I...didn't mean to offend you. Um..." He searched for a safer topic. "I'm really impressed that you killed a dragon by yourself. There aren't many people who could do that."

I grinned. "Yup. I told you that I'm great."

"You should be more careful though. There might not be anyone around to heal you the next time."

I scowled. "Um. Yeah, thanks for the healing. You do that a lot?"

He swelled with pride. "Yes. I'm a traveling healer."

"Is that a custom at your temple?" I asked, "Like journeyman status for craftsmen?"

"No, no! It's just something I want to do."

"That's really noble of you," I said, genuinely impressed.

He shrugged. "I've always wanted to see the world."

"Me too!"

We smiled at each other. In that moment, I knew that I could like this guy. No one else had ever understood why I wanted to travel just for the sake of traveling. He might have a big mouth, but he was really a nice guy. And he sure was easy on the eyes.

"You already know my name, but you haven't told me yours," I prompted.

He rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. "Sorry. It's Eruk. Eruk Nels Traurig."

"Pleased to meet you, Eruk," I said.


The townspeople were very grateful. They invited Eruk and me to the big feast they held in a field outside of town. Yeah, Eruk too. Apparently, I wasn't the only person he had healed that afternoon. They kept showering us with praise and encouraging us to eat as much as we wanted. I didn't need a second invitation! It was my first chance in a week to really fill my stomach. Eruk seemed pretty hungry too but, as my mother always says, all teenage boys are bottomless pits.

Unfortunately, the townspeople's thanks didn't take the form of much money. They only gave me five gold pieces, which might be enough to last me another two weeks if I was really careful. It didn't seem like nearly enough for killing a dragon, but I decided not to protest. They did have a whole town to rebuild after all. They only gave Eruk one gold piece and, from what they said, he had saved several people from dying and several more from being crippled for life.

Somebody ruffled my hair. I looked up from the chicken drumstick I was chewing on. It was Eruk. He smiled his devastating, blonde smile at me and said, "Goodbye, Lana. It was nice meeting you."

"You're leaving?" I asked. I felt disappointed even though surely I hadn't expected him to stay.

"Yeah. I'm finished eating so it's time I got on the road again."

"Which way are you going?"

"Southeast."

"Me too! Maybe I'll run into you again!"

"I'd like that." He seemed to really mean it. Well, a tactless guy like him wouldn't say that just to be polite.

I grinned at him over the chicken leg. He ruffled my hair again and left. The feast seemed somehow less fun with him gone, but any party that includes unlimited food is a good one in my book.