Chapter 4

"Um," said Caprifexia's new apprentice, Chandra, glancing about as they made their way through the small, snowy hamlet they'd arrived at after a few hours of walking through pine forest. "Ms. Caprifexia?"

"Hmm?" said Caprifexia, looking up from the arteficing book she had been reading.

It was early morning, and the light snow that had been falling through the night had stopped. It was chilly, but that meant no bugs, so Caprifexia felt quite comfortable. Besides, she'd gotten used to living at Winterhold College, before she'd become an independent adventurer.

"The people here don't seem, like, so happy to see you," said the small red-headed human, looking back and forward.

"Mortals are always getting angry or scared, often for totally incomprehensible reasons," explained Caprifexia. "I find it best to ignore them, otherwise you just encourage the behaviour."

"Err," said Chandra. "They're, like, really not happy."

"Hey, elf!" said a man, stepping in front of Caprifexia and blocking her path and holding up a dagger. "You got a lot of nerve, showing your damn pointy ears here in Bretagard!"

Caprifexia peeked over her book and gave the man an unamused glare. "Move, mortal," she said. "I have no interest in entertaining whatever particular delusion this is."

"Or what?" said the man with a laugh. All around him another humans stepped forward, some thumbing knives or makeshift weapons. "This is our village. Here, we make the rules."

Caprifexia lowered her book.

"You make the rules?" she said, frowning. "So you are the head villain?"

"Well, err, yeah!" said the man, before clearing his throat. "Well, we all sort of make the rules together. We vote and stuff and… look, that doesn't matter! Get out of our town, elf!"

Caprifexia sighed. She'd read about this strange, and somewhat obscure form of government before: a 'democracy.' Where there were no rulers, which sort of made sense in that there weren't any dragons around, but which in this instance complicated matters somewhat. After all, if it had just been an evil leader, she could have killed him and his minions without too much difficulty. But if the entire town were the leaders, then by the transitive property if one was a villain, they all were. Simple logic. That made things more difficult, and likely messy.

"Hold this," she said, giving Chandra her book before turning back to the man. "I need to save the village. Pay attention, there will be a quiz afterwards."

"Save it?" said Chandra. "From what?"

"From its villainous inhabitants."

"What do you-"

Chandra screamed as Caprifexia stepped forward and hoisted the villainous ringleader off the ground by the front of his shirt. The man tried to stab her. Before he could, however, Caprifexia caught the man's wrist. She squeezed, and the dagger fell to the frosty ground accompanied by a few nasty crunching sounds and the bones in his wrist snapped.

The man howled in pain as sparks danced in the back of her throat. He flailed at her with his free hand, but it was just annoying, not painful. Caprifexia opened her mouth, and smoke began to trickle from her nostrils as she prepared to incinerate him.

"Wait! Wait! She's not actually an elf!" said Chandra quickly, stepping forward and holding up her hands in a decidedly Einar-like manner. "See? She's got horns! And- and fire breath! We don't, like, want any trouble! We're just looking for the inn!"

The humans who had been standing around threateningly were rapidly backing away, muttering superstitious nonsense, and the man she had lifted off the ground began to gibber as he wet himself. Caprifexia wrinkled her nose. Mortals were so disgusting.

"D-don't kill me!" he sobbed. "I'm sorry! I didn't know you was a Demon!"

"Demon?" snarled Caprifexia, even more righteous fury filling her. "How dare, you!? I am no demon!"

Her inner furnace began to glow orange through her coat, and the mortal began to kick and scream, snot and tears running down his grubby little face.

"Ms. Caprifexia, he's given up!" said Chandra urgently, grabbing her sleeve. "He's beat!"

Caprifexia paused, glancing between her young apprentice and the terrified mortal villain. She very much wanted to incinerate him for calling her such a disgusting slur, but she was a hero, and she supposed she could always kill him again later if he said it again…

"Please don't burn me!" wailed the villain.

"Hmph," she said, letting her inner furnace subside. "Whatever. Fine, but any further villainy will be dealt with with extreme heroism, you understand? This is –what did Einar call it, ah yes– your first and only 'warning.' "

Heroes gave people warnings. Apparently. Some of them time. She wasn't entirely clear on the matter.

The pathetic mortal made some appropriately affirmative whimpering, and she tossed him lightly backward a few feet back onto the cobblestones. He kept on blubbering, rolling over and beginning to crawl away as Caprifexia retrieved her book from Chandra.

"A good use of diplomacy, my young apprentice," said Caprifexia, raising her book again. "But unnecessary. I had everything under control."

"You- you were about to set him on fire!" protested Chandra, agitated for some reason that Caprifexia couldn't really identify. "And- and the entire town!"

"Sometimes villains need to be incinerated," said Caprifexia sagely, finding her page. "How else will they learn?"

"How will then learn if you, like, incinerate them!?"

Caprifexia considered her apprentice's question for a moment. "Well, their friends will learn," she said. "Maybe. I don't know. What matters is that sometimes you just need to incinerate villains. That's the core lesson you should be taking away from all this."

"That is- how does- you're-" spluttered Chandra, clearly not grasping Caprifexia's heroic teachings.

"Don't worry, you were a mortal, so it might take you a while to overcome such shortcomings," said Caprifexia, patting her apprentice's shock of her red hair. "You'll get it eventually, don't worry. I'm an excellent teacher."

Her apprentice didn't seem reassured, but followed Caprifexia as she moved on through the small village, arriving at a larger building with a very poorly made sign that might have been showing a mug of some kind. They entered it, and Caprifexia sat down at one of the tables and kept on reading, leaving the complicated currency negotiation to her new apprentice.

Chandra returned a few minutes later with a key and two mugs the same sweet smelling alcohol that Einar often bought. For some reason, Caprifexia couldn't tell, Chandra seemed nervous as she glanced between her mug and Caprifexia repeatedly. Caprifexia shrugged and took a sip of the sweet alcohol. Perhaps her young apprentice was just ill at ease to be in a town of maybe-villains? Yes, that made sense.

"You're, like, not going to take this off me?" said Chandra after a few moments.

"Why would I do that?" said Caprifexia. "I have enough already. It isn't even that good."

"Err, no reason," said Chandra, grinning and taking a large gulp of her drink. "I, um, got us a room."

"Good," nodded Caprifexia. "We'll sleep here for a few days, and then move on."

"Stay here for a few days you mean?" said Chandra.

"No, sleep," said Caprifexia.

Chandra blinked.

Caprifexia woke and stretching languidly on the quite comfortable bed on which she'd been napping. That had been a good sleep. For once, she hadn't dreamt about the Eye, and instead had had a proper dragon dream – that she was fully grown, and had been blasting apart inns with her breath, crushing blue-villains with her mighty talons, liberating sheep from farmland for a snack, and generally acting like the amazing and heroic Wyrm she would one day become.

She rose and shifted her form, making her way down toward the small hall to a mostly empty common room where Chandra was sitting at a table staring at a book that Caprifexia had given her to study with an intense look on her face.

"Finally!" said Chandra when she saw her, putting the book down. Caprifexia's young apprentice was no longer dressed in rags, and seemed to have given up some of her sleep-time to go shopping for some warm looking furs and a new tunic, leggings, and boots.

"Finally what?" said Caprifexia, sitting down and covering her mouth with a hand as she yawned.

"You've been asleep for three days!" said Chandra.

"Yes, it was a nice nap," said Caprifexia. "Did you sleep well too?"

"I'm, like, human," said Chandra.

"Well, try not to feel too ashamed apprentice, you're a Planeswalker now," said Caprifexia, patting her apprentice's head. "A real step up!"

"I mean, I'm human, so I don't sleep for days on end," said Chandra.

"Oh," said Caprifexia with a frown, scratching at one of her horns. "Really?"

"No!"

She had thought it odd that her mortal so-called friends insisted on such weirdly short periods of sleep and wakefulness, but had reluctantly gone along with it while she had been travelling with them and during her time at the college. Now that she was free of them she'd reverted to far more sensible sleep patterns of three-ish days awake, three-ish days asleep that was what a growing whelpling needed, and which she had been enjoying it immensely.

"Have you tried?" asked Caprifexia. "It's very relaxing."

"I can't sleep more than, like, nine and a half hours," said Chandra in an exasperated voice. "Max."

"Not with that attitude," said Caprifexia.

"It isn't about attitude!"

Caprifexia shrugged. "Whatever," she said. "Are your bags packed?"

"I don't have any bags," said Chandra. "Just the gold you gave me and these new clothes."

"Well, you need a bag if we're going on an adventure," said Caprifexia.

"An adventure!?" said Chandra, her demeanour immediately shifting. She made a disturbing squee-ing noise. "Really? Cool!"

"That's what heroes do, go on adventures," nodded Caprifexia. "I know that mortals need things like… soap, bed-rolls, and… cheese?"

Caprifexia scratched her horns. What did mortals need? It wasn't what dragons needed, she knew. Dragons were naturally resistant to the elements, and could get by perfectly comfortably in the wildest and roughest of terrains. Also, cheese was gross. Mortals were disgusting.

"Anyway, hopefully we'll be able to get everything we need for you in this villainous village."

"They're- they're not villains!" said Chandra. "They're really nice!"

"No, no, no, they opposed me, that makes them villains," said Caprifexia, shaking her head and correcting her clearly deluded apprentice. "We've been over this."

"The people here say Harvor is widely regarded as an idiot," said Chandra.

"Who?" said Caprifexia.

"The man who threatened you?" said Chandra. "You know, you broke his wrist and were about to incinerate him?"

"Oh yes, Villain One," nodded Caprifexia. "I remember."

"That… isn't his name," said Chandra.

"I can't be expected to learn the name of every mortal I deal with," said Caprifexia. "It's much quicker to develop a standardised labelling system: Villain One, Villain Two… You can use my system if you like, I came up with it, it's very good."

Chandra stared at her for a few moments, before shaking her head and moving on. "The others are all, err, like, really sorry for what happened," said Chandra. "They, um, also think you're, err, a Demon…"

Caprifexia snarled, smoke trickling from her nostrils. "Demon!?"

"I know, I told them you weren't, but I don't think they believe me," said Chandra, holding up her hands. "But they've been nice to me, and, um, asked me to beg your forgiveness. They've done that a lot…"

"Uh uh uh, that's what villains do," said Caprifexia, waggling a finger. "This is a bit advanced, so I was going to teach you this later, but this is a perfect opportunity for a class on the 'Friendly Lich Rule.'"

"The… what?" said Chandra.

"Liches, even nice ones, are evil and if you release them, even with the purest of heroic intentions, they will go and murder a whole lot of religious zealots," said Caprifexia. "Which, although religious zealots are fools, is a bad thing."

Chandra blinked. "What?"

"Liches, even nice ones-"

"No," said Chandra. "I heard but… what's that, like, got to do with this?"

"The point is that villains will try to trick you into thinking they're not villains," said Caprifexia.

"Most of the people in this town haven't done anything 'villainous,'" protested Chandra. "I mean, some of them sort of racially profiled you when you arrived, I guess, but… but I don't think that means they should all be killed."

"That's exactly what a villain would want you to think," said Caprifexia. "And further proof of their villainy."

Chandra stared at her in incomprehension, visibly struggling with the difficult heroic concept for a few moments.

"I too found it difficult, a long time ago, of course, to understand the intricacies of heroism," said Caprifexia, pulling a bowl of some kind of strew towards her. "Don't feel too bad."

"Please… please don't burn this village down," said Chandra.

"Oh fine, if it will stop you whinging about it," said Caprifexia, sniffing suspiciously at the meal. It smelt meaty, but had bits in it that looked suspiciously like vegetables. She flicked one of them out. "But if they end up killing a bunch of religious fanatics, I'm going to say I told you so."

"So… it's hard to see in the forest, and because it was overcast when we arrived, but once we get out of it we can see a massive tree that connects this world to other ones – I went and had a look at it yesterday, it's really cool," said Chandra, as Caprifexia scoured the rest of the greenery from her meal. "Is that what we do? Planeswalkers, I mean. Climb the tree? There wasn't any kind of tree in the sky on Kaladesh…"

Caprifexia spooned some of the now de-vegetablised stew into her mouth, remembering the strange tree that had grown from the platform that led here, and the various demi-planes that connected it. She had been a bit more focused on finding another of her kind, but she supposed that wasodd, and worth looking into. It beat wandering aimlessly, at least. Yes, discovering the nature of this 'tree' would be a worthy quest for a hero of her calibre, and might prove an entertaining diversion and distraction from-

Well, it would be a diversion.

"No, it isn't. This 'Plane' seems to be made up on multiple demi-planes connected by the tree. But it is interesting, and worth investigating, and what I was going to do anyway," said Caprifexia. "I'll finish this, then we'll get you a bag, and then I'll discover this tree's secrets and make its power my own!"

Chandra blinked.

"Err, our own?" said Caprifexia experimentally.

Chandra frowned.

"Heroically, of course."

–

A.N. This was set to be the first half of a relatively short chapter, but the chapter got out of hand in the late editing stage and I realised I had to split it in half. (That's also why I've taken so long to update.)

Also, thanks to whoever made the TV tropes page for the previous work; I was really chuffed the stumble across it!