Francine the Reluctant

Francine was tasked with living behind the scenes so others could save the day. And she was damn good at it. Spectacles slipped down her nose, flared nostrils struggling to keep the large square glasses in check until she was ready to pause in her writing to push them into place.

Her report for that day was an exciting one, she was sure, but she did not stop to absorb the content more than necessary. Francine reviewed the star charts and crunched the numbers. She never bothered worrying about what would happen to the infant born under the last gasp of a dying star when Orion’s bow pointed toward the peak of the tallest mountain. It wasn’t her job to speculate; it was her job to verify. This infant was going to be the son of a peasant—they always were—but Francine would still review the topographical maps later to make sure the latitude and longitude referenced a tiny hamlet equal parts remote and rustic.

An intern tiptoed into Francine’s cubicle and deposited a sheaf of parchment next to her elbow. Always a sheaf of premonitions, never a stack nor a binder; such a thing just wouldn’t be proper. Not in the Department of Interpretation. The intern backed out thinking he had avoided detection when Francine’s fingers paused, hovering over her keyboard. Her eyes cut to the sheaf, and she pushed her glasses back up to squint at the poor intern. “Where is the Crone’s identifier?”

He wrung his hands and glanced out into the hallway hoping someone would rescue him from the interaction. As the second son of a lower pixie caste he knew he should be grateful for a position within the castle’s corporate division, but he would have been ecstatic to join his younger siblings mucking stalls if it meant avoiding the sharp brown eyes boring into him now.

“Um, there wasn’t an identifier when I picked it up, I asked but-” Francine held up a hand to silence the timid pixie. His translucent wings fluttered, mussing his button up which already looked tragic with a loose tie and untucked front. He followed her gaze and blushed as he tried to smooth the front of his shirt and will away a coffee stain that hadn’t seemed that big on his commute over.

Francine sighed and removed her glasses to pinch her nose in what she fancied was an impressive show of exasperation. “Jim, is it?”

The pixie glanced again into the hallway while shifting from foot to foot in what was an equally impressive show of crippling anxiety. “Um, Jim was promoted last week, I’m new. My name is Gastonian the Third.”

Francine had to keep herself from rolling her eyes. These pixies and their ridiculous hero worship. Never, in hundreds of years had a pixie been the hero of a story, and yet they continued to give their children grandiose names that would sound important scribed into the everlasting tombs of adventurers and saviors. In reality, the most they ever achieved was a footnote referencing an anecdote that provided additional context to a hero’s quest.

“Ok, Gastonian, perhaps in your-”

“The Third.”

Francine raised her eyebrows and the young pixie clapped a hand over his mouth, shocked with himself. “What was that?”

He stammered and seemed to shrink even smaller than his already tiny two feet (counting the tips of his wings if one was feeling generous).

“I-I-I’m so sorry, it’s just that, my name. It’s the Third. My mum always insisted I-”

“Gastonian the Third.” Francine cut in becoming as eager as the pixie to end the interaction. “Perhaps in your training you were not made aware that each piece of parchment is stamped with the identifier of the Crone that made the premonition. This has been the procedure for the past fifteen years since we began our digital coding process. Without the identifier I now have to spend hours reviewing our physical catalogues for the matching scrawls. Is that what you want? Do you want me to spend my day in the dungeon reviewing moldy bits of outdated premonitions for similar handwriting? Is that what you want, Gastonian the Third?!”

Gastonian the Third was predisposed to the high stress traits of pixies and was on the verge of fainting from panic. He had, after all, lost one cousin to a quest, but had lost all four grandparents and thirty-two other relatives to high blood pressure.

“M-m-ma’am they told me there was no identifier and to bring it to you straight away. They were very insistent that it come straight to you. I-I’m so sorry, I just started and I already made a mess in the messenger bird department so they sent me here for the day and I couldn’t find my way out of the labyrinth for over an hour and I bumped into one of the step sisters and spilled hot coffee on her-”

Francine held up a hand again and at last rolled her eyes. “Listen, Gastonian the Third. I am not-” and here she placed a hand over her heart as she had seen others do to indicate their sincerity, “-prejudiced against pixies. I think you all are a great bunch. Some of our finest tales involve a vital role played by a quick thinking, if not brave, pixie. But I am just not sure this floor is able to accommodate your specific...temperament. I need to get this premonition sorted out, but I'm happy to write you a letter of recommendation if you would like to transfer to a department that focuses more on majestic animals, or even a position with damsels, dames, and princesses? I know they have been trying a more heroic application of their interpretations, but I’ve heard they are looking to shift back to distress and enchanted sleep. With that updated policy I can guarantee working there would be uneventful.”

The young intern grasped the offer with a significant, if a bit offensive, amount of enthusiasm. Francine promised to ink out a letter on her return from the dungeons and sent Gastonian the Third on his way.

Francine looked with regret at her screen; her report was almost done and scheduled to be delivered to field mice to bring to the village elder that evening under a full moon. She worked hard to ensure the utmost care was given to each premonition and that included the correct atmosphere was set for the handoff.

Sighing in defeat, Francine triple checked that her report was saved before logging off. She logged off every time she left her desk. It wasn’t necessary, no one was after predictions in an office these days—they preferred robbing messengers or holding scribes at sword point—but the handbook said she should, so she did. Francine pushed in her chair and straightened a pen. Reluctantly, she gathered the sheaf and headed into the hallway.

Her low heeled and practical pumps made a gentle ringing sound that echoed about the shadowy halls. For all the fluorescent lighting and lumbar support her cubicle contained, the corridors and most levels of the castle remained quite archaic. Francine held a hand to her nose as she passed a sputtering and smoking torch.

Despite a thorough search, the dungeon produced no results. Francine prided herself on her knowledge of Crone handwriting identification—she had, after all, attended each optional seminar—but she could not find a premonition in the archive that shared the same looping ‘j’ and spiking ‘m’. She replaced all the tomes in alphabetical order—correcting a few others as she did—and gathered her sheaf back up. She would have to visit the floor of Crones and Seers. They could sort it out since it was their fault after all. She had been tempted to stop in before visiting the archives, but that was not the correct procedure outlined in the handbook.

At the door to the Department of Prophesying Francine clutched the sheaf to her chest and wondered if she was having a stroke. She was certain this was not in the handbook. Blood spattered the walls and she recognized one or two of the bodies from the last holiday party. Francine wondered ridiculously how long it would take to clean up the mess, then less ridiculously how much paperwork would be involved.

While there was not a particular set of guidelines for this situation, Francine did know that upper-level admin should be alerted. They would know what steps to take and they might even allow Francine’s floor to remain open so she could finalize her report.

Blood trailed down the hall toward the lift so Francine opted for the twisting stairwell. It would take longer, but she wasn’t going to be the one who tracked bloody footprints all over the castle.

The Administrative Department was on the seventh floor and one of the most modernized areas of the castle. The chrome desktops, and motivational posters were as they should be, but the pile of bodies stacked behind the receptionist’s desk were not. Francine stood in the stairwell door knowing she should back away and run screaming until she found someone with the authority to solve the issue, but she was frozen.

Perhaps she froze because some part of her was able to see past the logistical nightmare of the death and destruction and think about the people killed. More likely she was stunned by the slew of frogs holding tiny daggers that approached her.

They began to croak and hop toward her at an awkward, lilting angle (it's hard to hop and brandish a blade at the same time).

“Hold!” a more humanoid looking frog—in that he was wearing clothing, stood on two legs, and was a bit larger than a pixie—walked around the mob of amphibians and approached Francine. “Are you the one they call, Francine?”

“Um, yes.” Because how else does one answer a bloodthirsty frog-person than with the absolute truth.

The frog leader pulled out a sword and brandished it. “The foretelling shall be denied! Have at thee!” He lunged at her and would have run her through, but for the puddle of blood seeping from adjacent bodies. As it were, the frog slipped into a rolling chair and sprawled across floor. The froggy minions hopped to their leader’s aid and Francine, despite the abruptness of the attack, came to her senses and got the hell out of there.

She kicked off her practical low-heeled pumps as their practicality did not extend to sprinting down stone steps while being pursued by evil frogs. She swung out of the stairwell when she hit the fourth floor and scrambled into the cafeteria. It was full of very alive employees chatting and eating their lunches. The sight was jarring given the context of the day, but Francine was also disoriented by the layout since she disliked stepping foot into the dining hall, preferring to eat lunch at her desk.

The walls were decorated with the pennants of notable knights and candelabras flickered on each long wooden table, but the rest of the decor was functional. Vending machines lined one wall, a buffet serving station was along the other. Francine’s eyes darted around until she saw an elf wearing a hair net serving overcooked mac and cheese to a familiar looking pixie.

“Gastonian! Gastonian!” Francine made for the startled intern and grabbed at the front of his rumpled shirt.

“Gastonian the Third.” he mumbled, but his focus was on the insane looking Francine in front of him. Her hair was wild, her glasses askew, and her shoes nonexistent. She was still holding the incomplete report he had delivered, and he thought she had come to reprimand him further, though doing so barefoot was an odd choice.

“The castle is under attack! Dead everywhere! Frogs!”

Gastonian the Third disentangled himself and backed away, both hands held up to fend off what he interpreted as an emotional break. He had heard Francine’s life revolved around work and the stress must have gotten to her at last.

Other staff members had stopped chatting and were staring at the spectacle.

“Run, you idiots! They are going to kill us all!” Francine screamed at them.

For a moment the only noise was the chomping of a satyr chewing his cud, but conversation started back up with a hum, and everyone returned to their meals. Francine stared around with wild eyes, making distressed noises and gesturing with her wad of harassed looking parchment.

Gastonian the Third tried to escape, but his movement caught her attention and she snatched his wrist, dragging him along behind her. “Come on Gastonian—”

“the Third.”

“—we need to reach the throne room and activate the King’s Banner.”

Gastonian the Third stuttered his protests, but Francine was determined. All of her superiors appeared to have been inconveniently murdered, so she was responsible for resolving the crisis. “The activation requires two individuals so you have to come. I’ll include your participation in the letter of recommendation so stop looking so put out.”

The doors of the throne room were splintered and blood pooled on the floor where the guards had once stood. Francine saw the disembodied head of the CEO at the foot of the dais and wondered how this would impact her stock investments. Gastonian the Third was sick, spattering vomit across the entry.

Francine hesitated for a moment before she pulled him into the room, over to the first dead guard. She rummaged through the corpse’s hauberk, and Gastonian the Third squeaked in protest, but Francine continued to the next guard, patting him down; avoiding the blood but not paying much attention to his dignity. “Oh, stop fretting and check that one over there. You’re looking for a golden key.” Gastonion the Third, by now very pale and a bit green, toed at the limp arm of another guard.

Once they had recovered both keys, Francine latched back on to her incompetent intern and dragged him toward the dais. They mounted the steps and Francine gave him her papers, so she had both hands free to shove the headless corpse of their CEO off the throne.

Gastonian the Third was sick again as the body thunked at his feet, but Francine was already shuffling him to the side of the giant seat. She thrust a key at him, then ran to the opposite side where she slotted her own key into the hole. “On the count of three, turn. One, two, three!”

Both keys clicked and the throne slid forward, just as the remains of the doorway were blasted apart by a wave of frogs. Gastonian the Third stared in horror as the horde hopped toward him with aggressive purpose, but Francine was focused on the stairwell below the throne. “Empty? It’s empty!”

Gastonian the Third turned to see what she was talking about, but just then the leader of the invaders entered the room and there wasn’t much else to say because the situation had become not only dire, but ridiculous.

“Here.” Francine shoved an abandoned sword at him and Gastonian the Third stared at her in horror. “The King’s Banner is off this week for a team building retreat. I had forgotten. So…we’ll do our best to optimize their absence as a hands-on self-defense training.”

It was at this point Gastonian the Third considered flying away and abandoning Francine. But, as weak willed as people assumed pixies were, they were, in fact, quite loyal. Gastonian the Third turned toward the approaching bipedal frog with feigned confidence and held the sword in a shaking hand.

The amphibious enemy hesitated when they saw Gastonian the Third, sword in one hand, prophecies in another.

“No! It can’t be!”

Gastonian the Third and Francine looked at each other in utter confusion and Francine shrugged. They were startled when a frog’s tongue lashed toward them and the sword, already loose in Gastonian the Third’s grip, went flying as he threw up an arm to shield himself. His flailing caused the tongue to miss him, and it instead slapped the throne with a squelching, acidic hiss and the sword flew in an arc, slicing through the skull of the frog leader with just the right amount of suspicious precision to indicate a prophecy was involved.

For a moment, no one moved.

Just as Francine opened her mouth to call for help the remaining frog horde all croaked in united anguish and dropped to the floor, dead. Francine, still clutching her own sword, was at a total loss. Gastonian the Third vomited once more.

Hours later, the remaining survivors of the castle gathered to talk with the knights who had arrived at the scene. Gastonian the Third was being interviewed and the story was evolving to cast him as the hero of the hour. Francine was wrapped in a foil blanket, shuffling through the sheaf she had recovered from her intern between his dry heaving and sobbing.

The idiot pixie had gotten the parchment all out of order and Francine was still determined to find the identifier and get the prophecies filed away for whatever future quests would require them.

She was peeling apart two bloodied pages when she saw her name. There it was again, and again. Francine flipped to the start of that particular prophecy and started skimming, “The blood spilled by the innocent, blah blah blah…” until she found the first mention of her name and froze in horror, “Francine the Reluctant, first of her name, will shepherd the greatest hero of our time on his journey to defeat a grave threat to the realm...” She continued reading until she confirmed the horrible suspicion creeping up her spine. “...and Gastonian the Third, third of his name, will dispatch the Lord of Flies…”

Francine dropped her hands in shock and stared out at the worst intern she had ever had, the greatest hero of their time: Gastonian the Third.