Twenty minutes later, all of us in the tavern were still listening raptly as the ghost-cat Lothar told the stories of how inept our King Jend had been at his early attempts at magic. Bula had been laughing so hard that the tea she’d been sipping ended up coming out through her nose. Ghershod the merchant was taking notes, which I guess was to aid his political party in some way – maybe for use in blackmail against our king.

  Some of the university orcs had sent word to their friends, and the common room was filling up. It was becoming a very successful dinner-time for the tavern, as far as sales were concerned.

  The tavern needed it too. With the war, most of the human merchants had stopped visiting. And the tavern’s human food had only a niche following among the orcs. This niche was mostly with adventure-seekers, looking for a new taste they could tell their friends about. Or “snobs” as I thought of them.

  For the general orcs, the food wasn’t spicy enough – they just found it very bland. That difference in tastes is the main reason that humans don’t get invited to orc pot-luck dinners very often.

  And goblins don’t like human food at all. The problem was that it contains absolutely no rodent or insects, at least as far as the humans would admit. So it just doesn’t sit right with the goblins.

  I could eat it though, if I were hungry enough. Even human food was better than what they served at the university dorms.

  So just when Digits was starting to mentally tally the night’s receipts before they were even in the money chest, a bright green light appeared outside the tavern.

  “Oh, gods, it's the royals,” I said.

  The timbers and floor beams began to vibrate. The plants we had by the window started to twirl around and hiss at Lothar. The wood of the door bent back revealing a group of people, ready to strike.

  “The door was unlocked! You could have just turned the handle!” I yelled at the group, who were in attack positions, weapons and spells aimed at the ghost-cat in the armchair.

  The crowd began to clear out from the center and move to the back and to the walls.

  The first two of the attacking group advance cautiously into the tavern. I could see it was Major Adane and Sergeant Luna.

  Major Adane looks like a blond, middle-aged human, but he is a werewolf, so he is okay. Sergeant Luna, just a step behind him, is an actual giant wolf. We had some mutual friends, and, although she was not a student, she would occasionally stop by parties at our university, and she was great fun. Right now she was crouched low, growling as she advanced on the ghost-cat, who remained sitting in the armchair.

  Behind them were our wise elven queen, Aida, and her orc-elf daughter, Princess Myla, who was maybe seventeen or so at that time. Behind the queen and princess were three orcs from the elite castle guard.

  Queen Aida had conjured a bright green force shield, which covered the party. More green energy also swirled around her hands and arms and she prepared some sort of spell. Princess Myla stood next to her, looking like she was preparing the same spell.

  Mercifully, neither King Jend nor the crown princess, Wyndy, were there. I assume that they were off doing something more important for the kingdom than bringing a large force to ruin our tavern's dinner rush.

  I didn't know the queen personally, but I had met Myla a few times at the parties that she and her fashion friends would give in the city. Great music at those parties. The trouble was that Myla, knowing that she wouldn't inherit the kingdom, was trying to build a fashion empire around her brand, Scarves For All Creatures. So at all her parties there was a lot of pressure on us to purchase scarves, and those scarves were expensive, and I was a broke student. But it still seemed that every time I came to the capital, more people were wearing SFAC scarves.

  As the queen, princess, and her elite guards advanced on the ghost-cat, he eventually looked in her direction.

  “I know you,” he said. “You are that annoying elf who was there when I was killed. You kept doing the things with the vegetation. Making branches grab and roots reaching for my soldiers' ankles. Very old school. So druid. I bet you also drink grass shakes and hug trees.”

  “I use the power of nature to fight you and that abomination that is your dark magic!” said the elf queen as she prepared a bolt of green fire to strike the ghost-cat.

  “Hmmph, whatever. One man’s ‘abomination’ is another man’s party trick,” replied the cat as the elf queen lashed out with the powerful green magic bolt. The bolt hit the armchair where the cat sat. The chair caught on fire, while the ghost-cat just sat there, unharmed.

  “Oh, your highness, you destroyed our best chair!” I said, distraught. “If you want to blast things, please go to the tavern down the street, The Bleeding Edge. They are a tavern for engineers, so have metal furniture to withstand the occasional explosion.”

  As Viggo and I dragged the burning chair outside, the ghost-cat jumped through one of the guests to another chair. The chair’s previous occupant quickly got up and found another seat, as the cat settled in and turned to the elf queen.

  “You know, I always knew Jend would go for an elf. He had such a thing for elf girls. He had that picture of S’Naka Elenan in his room. Jend was completely obsessed with her,” explained the evil ghost.

  Queen Aida’s eyes glowed a more intense green as some of the floorboards began to warp up towards her

  “How could he? A picture of that bitch!” she said. The building began shaking again.

  “Who in the hells is S’Naka Elenan?” asked her daughter.

  “That S’Naka woman is a member of the High Elven Royal Family that rule Dhu’Nemos. She is very popular and is a big influencer of public opinion and fashion trends.”

  “That doesn’t sound so bad…” began her daughter.

  “She set impossible standards that none of us mere peasant elves could ever hope to match. And there is no way she made her own wool from scratch! Also, that bitch had me exiled for heresy!” The wooden table next to the angry queen collapsed, but the patrons had already removed their drinks.

  I was completely in shock. Our elegant Queen Aida was known for her deep wisdom and calm counsel. Her manners were considered the ideal of the kingdom, and in middle-school manners class we were taught to emulate her. Before that day, I had never heard her say anything even the least bit rude. Now she’d yelled the word “bitch” twice in the same minute.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “Mother, he was a teenager! You can’t hold people responsible for things they did as teenagers, before he even met you,” said the princess. Rather rationally, I thought at the time, but of course that was back before I myself was married.

  “Oh, if it is your husband, you most certainly can," explained the queen to her daughter. "All former crushes are forbidden and are punishable if the wife finds out they existed. It doesn’t matter how long it was before we met. It is the principle of the thing."

  “I guess I have a lot to learn about marriage. You still say it’s a good idea?” asked that daughter, rather skeptical about the whole concept.

  “Yes, of course,” said the queen, with a dramatic sigh as her glowing eyes began to return to normal. “I still love that big dumb annoying ox with his pictures of S’Naka and I’m certainly going to punish him as soon as he’s back. He is going to have to finally do something about the sea serpents outside the harbor, if he wants to make up for this. And bring me of flowers. Like building a whole national botanical garden.”

  Lothar’s tail twitched with glee. Revenge was sweet. I was starting to realize just how very evil that ghost-cat was. Even more evil than a standard house cat.

  “Your Jend, he used to have this stuffed animal that he needed with him to fall asleep every night. It was a little plush blue kraken that he named ‘Snuggles.’ Does your great king still have his Snuggles?” asked the ghost-cat to Queen Aida.

  “I’m sure you are just making things up now, to try to embarrass the might orc warrior that vanquished you!” said the queen.

  “No, no, no! I just wanted to make sure Snuggles was okay. I remember having half the fortress staff looking for it one evening, after Jend got frightened by a horse and dropped it outside. I hope your Jend is no longer so scared of horses.” purred that very evil thing sitting on the armchair.

  “I wouldn't know. He rides a dragon now,” replied Aida, defiantly.

  The ghost-cat Lothar paused and looked out the window, as if remembering something painful.

  “Well, even I will admit that is impressive. Riding dragons is difficult. How did he finally pull it off?”

  “It was me who figured it out! I’m the princess and I found the right fabric for great scarves that dragons could wear and I taught the whole air force how to do it!” said Myla.

  “Oh, well then, aren’t we special, princess?” said the ghost-cat. “I hadn’t realized we were in the presence of such a special person here. You all in the crowd, you should listen to the special princess, not me.” He flicked his tail in the direction of Princess Myla.

  “She is here a lot. We already have to listen to her,” said one of the orcs in the crowd.

  “She keeps trying to sell me scarves!” said another. “I don’t need any more scarves!”

  Many in the crowd agreed.

  “Please Lord Lothar, save us from the scarf girl!” said one particularly scarfphobic orc woman.

  “Hey!” said the princess.

  “How dare you all speak ill of the royal family!” said Adane. “They kept the kingdom safe from the humans!"

  Luna growled at the crowd for emphasis.

  “We all fought in the battle too,” said one of the orcs in the crowd. “So we can say what we want!”

  “Oh, Adane, let it go. Myla really does go too far with her scarf marketing. She needs to hear it from the people,” said the wise elven queen.

  “Mother!” said the princess.

  Lothar jumped up on the bar and addressed the crowd. “But I am sorry, my orc and goblin children. I am here in this diminished form, because this woman here,” he pointed his tail in the direction of the elven queen, “worked so hard to kill me, even though she had never met me! So I can no longer save you, even after I worked so hard for three hundred years to protect your tribes. You are at the mercy of the special princess and her scarves!” The ghost-cat finished by giving the crowd a very sad look.

  “You were a tyrant that put the orcs to work in the mines without pay!” said the elven queen to her former mortal foe. Nobody seemed concerned about that, as they were concentrating on the price of scarves.

  “My scarves are really nice!” said the elf-orc princess. “The price is very reasonable considering the materials.”

  “And if you think the scarves are expensive, you should see what tuition is going to be this semester,” yelled out Spegat, another orc at the university’s Cradel College of Magic. I knew him from a party they’d thrown at his fraternity.

  “What is this ‘tuition’ of which you speak?” asked the ghost-cat, probably sensing a subject with further evil.

  “It is what we have to pay to attend the university,” explained Spegat.

  “And this university – you called it the University of the Northern Lights. Is it worth paying to attend?” asked the ghost-cat.

  “We have a great university, with magic, healing, general and now even an engineering school,” said Aida. “You had nothing like it. We built it to provide education to all the creatures of Pelsa!”

  “But they raise tuition every year, Your Highness,” yelled back Spegat. “It is already what both my parents together make in a year. And now that the school’s ranking is going up, they want to raise it more!”

  “Ranking?” asked both Queen Aida and Lothar’s ghost.

  “The magic colleges are ranked by the wizards' guild in Ushos. And since we had a lot of students in the battle against the humans, and we won, that helps our ranking. The humans' university in Carstones dropped six places after they did so badly, and now we are in the top ten!” explained Spegat.

  The ghost-cat looked the queen straight in the eyes. “If the university was set up, as you claim, to provide education for all the creatures of Pelsa, then why should a higher ranking lead to higher costs?”

  Viggo answered this one. “It shouldn’t. But a higher rating means more applications, so more demand, so they think we will put up with the higher price.”

  “Will the money go to pay for better teaching? Does it go to the professors, perchance?” asked the ghost-cat. He seemed fascinated by the possibilities of the university system.

  “No, not at all. But if the tuition goes up, the administrators can pay themselves more. Also, they build more buildings, and name the buildings after themselves,” explained Viggo.

  “And if you can’t pay the tuition, what do you students do?”

  “Well, the university generally gives us loans if we can’t pay now,” said Viggo. “I have loans. I’m hopeful I can pay them off before I die.”

  “Loans, yes, good. I enslaved many people that way. Amazing, your university. You pay to finance its leaders’ higher salaries and the expansion of their empire, and go into a lifetime of debt to do it. Even I could not have come up with a system so evil! ” cackled the ghost-cat. “Who runs this university? I really admire their work!”

  “Alu’iza Komtogk is the chancellor of the overall university, and Duke Cradel is the head of its Cradel College of Magic, the biggest of its four colleges,” Aida told the cat. She sounded almost embarrassed about it, which I didn’t understand, until the ghost-cat replied.

  “Komtogk and Cradel! You let them run your university? They were two of my main lieutenants!” he screeched.

  As the room looked on, Aida tried to defend their decision. “Well, Jend promised Cradel that if he came over to our side, he could run his own school of magic. And then later, we needed Komtogk to stop continuing the war against us, and we wanted to expand from just the one college to a full university so we made a deal with her and…”

  “And they betrayed me and my legacy and now work for you and your new country and are getting rich with their schemes while I am dead and forgotten…” hissed the evil kitty, still pacing on the top of the bar. “Cradel, well, he was always a bit slimy, but I thought Komtogk had some loyalty… I will have my vengeance on them both!”

  Around him the orc and goblin students were in a state of complete commotion. Loud, and not entirely polite discussions, with animated gestures, were going on across the common room. The general consensus was that the tuition increase was bad, that the students had all fought in the war, and they should really write a strongly-worded letter of protest. But then the evil feline apparition, the ghost of Lothar, former ruler of the north, had an idea.

  “Orcs, goblins, sons and daughters of the tribes I long cared for. What has happened to you since I left? You allow such tyranny? You must rise up and overthrow this ‘university’ and its ‘tuition.’”

  He jumped onto the shoulders of the tallest orc. Even I thought it an inspiring sight.

  “Follow me, and we will teach these ‘administrators’ a lesson! Gather tomorrow morning outside this tavern, with all the forces you can muster! At dawn, we march on the university!”

  With that, the ghost-cat leapt through the ceiling and was gone.

  The queen, princess and their guards left quickly, as the students continued to debate what to do. Some of the students even ordered food or drink from the tavern, as the discussion continued long into the night. I was busy serving, so I couldn’t tell which way the discussions were going, and if many of the students would answer the call of the Cat-Sith. We did at least sell a lot of drinks, and a good amount of that human food they served there.