Policeman and the cat

105 - Raul Stephensou

[[the prime minister, military commander and president were sitting in cushioned square chairs and moments after a circle lit up above an empty chair and a young man appeared landing by the chair and sitting down startling the other three a bit. He looked a lot like Brielle to phone cameras - brown hair and blue eyes, age wise he might be in his early thirties, extremely attractive in a way only those with legendary skills were, long hair falling in a loose ponytail over one shoulder, modern clothing, there was a certain sort of flair to his gestures only nobles have. He was dignified, but seemed light as well.

A text box appeared under him - [Raul Stephensou, head of the Stephensou Mage family]

"Do I introduce myself?" He asked, glancing over at the camera.

"No need, the screen will have it," The prime minister said, "Did we just see your spell line-up up above the capital?"

"Only the flashy ones," Raul said, "Magecraft is best used in cooperation with the environment and most of our strongest spells look small and plain starting out."

"After seeing that it's hard to believe humans drove mages out nine centuries ago," the commander said.

"They did not drive us out with their power," Raul said, "they drove us out by releasing us from service, they only killed off very weak aether users who were naive and didn't think it would happen to them.

My mother, our family head back then, made a warning to aether users when she was released to move out that rulers had lost sense and people would soon follow. But only about a third packed up and left. And then a century later there was a genocide."

"For audiences, where was your mother serving?" the prime minister asked.

"Kingdom of Gyar," Raul replied, "It perished about a century after releasing mother as Hungary formed. There used to be these little kingdoms all around back then, after we left people duked it out and united them into bigger countries."

"Could she use all the spells you showed?" The President asked.

"All except the first one," Raul replied, "But she can use plenty even without that one. A court mage of a kingdom had to be able to do at least that much. The point behind hiring us was to make the kingdom into a bad option to attack which would cost a lot of men to the attacker."

"And for what reason exactly did they release your mother?" The President asked.

"The excuse they made was that she was pulling strings and influencing the crown prince too much, which is too much of a hassle for any mage to do," Raul said.

The actual reason they released all mages is because we are no different from nuclear weapons - great assets if you mean to have us as a deterrent, but horrid things in hands of unwise rulers. We follow orders and do not make choices in place of the rulers who hire us and we do not feel guilty about it and do not let others hold us accountable for following orders either.

Like we also agreed in our contract if there's a war and you choose to surrender, our contract ends and we leave, we do not engage in the sort of punishment games humans did following their recent world war. It's common sense for a mage to die fighting for the country they serve, not get hanged as scapegoats for cowardly rulers. Humans have always disliked that part of us too."

All three of them nodded, looked like they were all aware of that and accepted it.

"Secondary reason, not applicable to my mother, our men are very appealing to women, including queens. We don't go out of our way to seduce anyone, doesn't mean we can't be seduced. Our women tend to be far more selective. But I don't think that will be an issue nowadays, the rulers are elected not born. We are long-lived. We will live somewhere in this city and do what we must when we are called to act, but otherwise we will study tomes and practice magic and better our craft.