In the Magic City of Vane, floating in its eternal orbit around the Goddess Tower, weighty matters of state were often debated, with the greatest, most influential minds of the world of Lunar gathering together to tackle the most desperate crimes to threaten the world of Althena's light. Mighty wizards and heroic Dragonmasters filled the history of Vane with a tapestry of legends that would take a thousand books to tell.
"Aaaargh! I can't believe this!"
This is not one of those legends.
"Bart, what's wrong?" asked Merrill, picking of the copy of Hot Girl News that had nearly struck his head as he entered their dormitory room. Red Bart (he'd wanted to be Black Bart, but nature had given him red hair, so he was out of luck in the nickname field) was not one to treat great works of literature so cavalierly, so it was clear that something must be gravely amiss.
Bart snatched the magazine from Merrill's hand and began to page through it. The two were fourteen years old, apprentices studying at the Magic Guild of Vane. Because both were from out of town, they boarded together at the Guild dormitory and had become fast friends.
"Here! Listen to this: 'It's obvious that Jessica de Alkirk is by far the hottest girl in Lunar. Her perky smile, the sweep of her long, honey-colored hair, her superbly toned figure--truly, there can be no more perfect example of the female form. Let us all get down on our knees to Li from Meribia who provided us with this picture.' The hottest girl in Lunar, Merrill!"
"Can I see the picture?" Merrill asked, interested.
"Aaargh!" Red Bart hollered again. "Not you, too? Not my best friend? Don't you see, Merrill? These lies are an insult to the Magic Guild, to the city of Vane, to every red-blooded man in Lunar! As charter members of the Mia Ausa Fan Club, we cannot let this outrageous slur to our fair Mia's hottyness go unchallenged!"
"Um, Bart, didn't Master Ghaleon say something about your blood pressure?"
"We must defy this calumny, this horrible libel, to restore Mia to her rightful place as the hottest of all hot girls!"
Merrill took advantage of Bart's distraction to get ahold of the magazine. Looking at the picture, he had to admit that Jessica was definitely worth looking at.
"I'll write a letter this instant to the editors of Hot Girl News, setting them straight. You too, Merrill. We must drown their lies in a flood of pure truth to set the record straight!"
"Are you sure that's going to work?"
"What?" Red Bart squawked. "When they read our stirring testimonials to Mia's beauty--" He broke off as Merrill held up the magazine to display the picture of Jessica. "All right, I see what you mean. They won't be convinced by our words when they have the pictorial reality of Jessica before them."
"That's pretty much what I meant, yes."
Red Bart slammed his fist into his left palm.
"Then the solution is obvious!"
Merrill got a familiar sinking feeling in his stomach. He'd heard those five words before, and whenever he did, trouble invariably seemed to follow.
"We'll send Hot Girl News a picture of Mia! That way, everyone will be able to see for themselves that those who prefer Jessica are just Meribians who can't face up to reality. This is our sacred duty, Merrill. The honor and dignity of the Mia Ausa Fan--Merrill, are you paying attention? Darn it, Merrill, stop looking at that picture of Jessica!" Bart ripped the magazine out of his roommate's hands. "Have you turned quisling? Gone over to the enemy?"
"Just evaluating the competition. Know your enemy and all that."
"Ha! Consorting with the enemy is more like it!"
Merrill had a fleeting vision of being Jessica's consort, but wisely decided to keep that to himself.
"So how are we going to get a picture of Mia, Bart? Neither of us can draw, and Mia is too shy to pose for the Art Club."
"Ahh," Red Bart said dreamily, "the natural modesty of a beautiful girl, who would never put herself on vulgar display. This is what makes our Mia so... so..."
"Elusive?"
"Yes, elusive--no! No, no; she merely displays the reticence of the well-bred lady that she is," Bart rhapsodized.
"Lunar to Bart. Come in, Bart."
"What?" Bart returned to reality, or at least as close to it as he got on a regular basis.
"We've got to get a picture of Mia somehow, don't we? I don't know how we're going to do it. The only member of the Fan Club who can draw is Stu, and we can't have him ask her to pose for him."
"No, we can't. Stu gets tongue-tied and blushes whenever someone says Mia's name. He'd never be able to talk to her, and if by some miracle he did, he'd probably be so nervous he'd drop his pencil every three seconds." Closing his eyes, Red Bart gave a deep sigh and said, "I feel for you, Stu. What true man could keep his equilibrium when face-to-face with our beloved Mia?"
"So no picture?"
Bart hung his head.
"No, the only way would be for Stu to sketch from memory, and we need a model taken from life to show everyone the true beauty of the next leader of the Magic Guild."
Then, just as suddenly as it had fallen, Red Bart's head snapped back up.
"Aha! The solution is obvious!"
Twice in five minutes? thought Merrill.
"It is?"
"We're students at the Magic Guild, aren't we? If normal methods will not suffice, then we can turn to magic to accomplish our goal!"
Trouble, Merrill decided. Definitely trouble.
"Nooo! Don't touch that, Merrill! We just had the windows replaced from the last time someone blew up the lab."
Merrill snatched his hand back from the rack of chemicals as if it had been bitten.
"Now," asked Colin, the senior apprentice who acted as assistant overseer of the laboratory, "what can I do for you two?"
Merrill stuck his hands in his pockets. That seemed to make the older boy much calmer.
"We're looking for a way to magically capture a person's image on paper," Bart explained.
"I suppose that pencils, oil paints, watercolors, or any of the seven million other nonmagical ways of doing it just won't do for some reason? Well, as it happens--noooo! Merrill, don't lean against that shelf! If it tips over, the reagents will eat right through the floor!"
Merrill jumped back just before he let his weight rest against the shelf.
"Really, Merrill, find someplace to sit down and don't touch anything, will you?" Bart said. "The last time you blew up a room we were on cleanup duty for three months and it wasn't even my fault. Now, Colin, you were saying that you have something which might be able to help us?"
"That's right. It's a new invention of Guildmistress Lemia's called the Magic Camera."
Merrill thought about the irony of using an invention of Mia's mother's to display Mia's picture for the eager eyes of thousands of sweetie-deprived young men across Lunar. Then he thought about Lemia Ausa's probable reaction if she ever found out about it and decided to stop thinking before he gave serious consideration to how far someone would fall if tossed off the edge of the Magic City.
"How does it work?"
"I'll show you."
Colin fished through the clutter on a table until he found what he was looking for: a small pinewood box, attractively carved with dragons and a crystal disc set in one side.
"You just point the crystal lens, here, at whatever you want to take a picture of, and press this button on the side." The button was made to look like part of the carving, specifically the head of Quark, the White Dragon. "The magical lens then transmits the image of whatever is in front of it onto a roll of paper inside the box, and the image slides out of this slot in the back. Let me show you."
He pointed the crystal at Merrill and thumbed the button. The lens glowed with azure sparks for a moment, and then a length of paper slithered out of the back of the box. Colin tore off the sheet and handed it to Red Bart.
"Wow, this is incredible! It looks exactly like you, Merrill. It even got that mole under your left ear and the way your tunic is all rumpled in front."
"That's how the Magic Camera works," Colin said. "It takes an exact image from life--no artistic license, no smoothing out of flaws, no exaggerations of positive features. It only shows what's there, exactly as it is."
"Perfect!" cackled Bart. "This is exactly what we were looking for!"
"You know, that's the exact same look Nash had when he borrowed it two days--noooo! Merrill, don't sit in that chair!"
Merrill, who had settled himself into a harmless-looking purple chair, gulped hard.
"Too late," Colin groaned.
"What's wrong?" Merrill asked, expecting to be turned into a frog, ignited by a fire elemental, or otherwise inconvenienced by magical pyrotechnics.
"The paint isn't dry yet."
"We're lucky Colin didn't ask what we wanted the Camera for," Merrill commented as he pulled on a fresh pair of breeches. Unfortunately he had not been wearing purple, so the large blotches of paint on his clothes were all too obvious. Unless someone invented a Magic Laundry, he reflected, the tunic and breeches were a total loss.
"We'd have thought of something."
"Lied through our teeth, you mean?"
"In the name of restoring Mia Ausa's reputation as the hottest girl in Lunar," Bart exclaimed, "no sacrifice, no dishonor, is too great a price to pay."
"In other words, yes." Merrill straightened his new clothes and asked, "So, now that we have it, how are we going to use it? We can't just walk up to Mia and take a picture of her. She's too sweet and innocent to ask too many questions, but if word ever gets back to the Guildmistress..." He cringed feelingly.
"It's not just that!" Bart proclaimed. "We need a picture which not merely shows the wondrous Mia, but which depicts her in such a way as will capture her incomparable beauty! After all, the artist who painted Jessica de Alkirk certainly took pains to feature her best attributes. Just think of it!"
They did, and as the picture of Jessica was a subject worthy of deep thought they spent a good ten minutes in contemplation of it.
"This," Merrill remarked, "is going to be a difficult challenge."
"Don't lose heart, Merrill. Mia's wondrous beauty is on our side, sure to provide us with the opportunity we need. We only have to be diligent and not miss it when it comes!"