§
“Ti, this is way too much exertion for you right now!”
I rolled my eyes and looked over my shoulder at the prince climbing the stairs behind me.
“It really isn’t, Your Royal Highness. It’s just a few stairs.”
“This is a lot more than a few stairs, Lady!”
As is probably obvious, that wasn’t Rod’s retort. It was Ceria, who was also insisting on following me, as was Melione.
And yes, the circular stairs coiling upward inside the East Tower in classic fashion were more than a few stairs. They weren’t wrong.
I suppressed a sigh and noted, “If certain people weren’t intent on sticking with me, I could just fly up. That would be even less exertion, you know.”
“Why do you even need to climb the castle’s highest tower?”
That was Uncle Arken, also tailing me.
I twisted my mouth, trying to come up with any kind of explanation I could present successfully to a learned man whose learning was limited to this world. I gave up.
“Uncle, the technique I’m going to use is almost impossible to explain to you without a long, long explanation first. And the ‘why’ part can’t really be answered without that explanation. All I can tell you is, I need open air between me and as much of the space as I can, while staying together with Benedetta, who needs to stay in contact with the castle, so I can’t fly. The top of the East Tower is the best choice.”
I also need to be as high up in that clear air as possible for best effect. At least I felt I did. I really wouldn’t know for sure until I actually began.
“My Lady, you are saying so, but I do not know what it is you are expecting of me,” objected the previously-mentioned elemental, who was the last member of this parade. She had a role here; Melione and Ceria did not. They just invited themselves, refusing to part from me so soon.
“Your spirit nature will know, when the time comes, Lady Benedetta,” I told her. “Please just trust me.”
After all, the knowledge of beings of extremely similar nature were going to be my guide. Benedetta and her kind were the closest thing in this world to the half-spirits of Huajie, and also bore strong resemblance to the quasi-men of Kwelabi’s kind. These facts were why I could feel confident in her ability to assist me.
“Fine,” Rod finally retorted. “But please stop climbing for just a moment.”
“Huh?” I asked as I stopped, then let out a surprised laugh as he scooped me up once again. “Rod, you’re doing this too often!”
“Am not,” he insisted as he set out climbing the stairs. “And you aren’t supposed to be exerting yourself, remember?”
Rod practices his swordsmanship in his spare time. It’s basically his hobby, so he is in excellent shape, but carrying my nearly sixty pounds the rest of the way up these stairs was going to be a chore.
No, I didn’t misstate my weight. The non-material half of a fairy or vampire’s body doesn’t weigh anything. But even though I’m not quite sixty pounds, I’m nearly sixty pounds. A human isn’t going to easily climb a tower carrying three twenty-pound potato sacks, right?
I looked at the man stoically marching upward with me in his arms, his jaw set with the firm intention of communicating his resolve, and decided not to argue.
“Does this have something to do with those babies he mentioned, Lady?” Ceria wondered.
“Babies?” Melione immediately pounced.
I looked over Rod’s shoulder at the two girls with sparkling eyes following us, then gave him an accusing stare. He ignored me.
After heaving a deep sigh, I admitted, “I’m… sort of… yeah.”
“That’s not something you can be ‘sort of’!” Ceria retorted. “You either are or you aren’t!”
I rubbed the back of my head and weighed the options. Didn’t have any.
“I am.”
Melione let out a squeal and grabbed Ceria’s arm, adding serious bounce to her step as she climbed. Really, I would have expected the reverse, with Ceria squealing and grabbing Melione’s arm.
Benedetta asked with a slightly perturbed tone, “My Lady, are you intending to keep your pregnancy secret or not? This morning you said not to spread information about it yet.”
“Oh, that’s right,” I nodded. “My Lady Benedetta, these two are Lady Ceria and Miss Melione. They are my Servants, not outsiders.”
“Servants?” she echoed, her eyebrow rising.
“Just like Aunt Elianora, I dislike the term ‘Blood Slave’,” I told her. “It places an improper character on the relationship. I understand many other vampires have the same opinion.”
“Your father felt that ‘Blood Slave’ was simply honestly calling that relationship what it is, My Lady.”
“A vampire thousands of years old probably didn’t understand how negatively those words ring in a mortal heart, My Lady. A centuries old elemental probably has a similar handicap. The word is ‘Servant’, from now on. ‘Blood Servant’, if you must clarify. That is final.”
Although ‘Elder Servant’ is how it will be called in the future, when my daughters reach the age of needing them, I added in my heart. After all, that is the name that clearly elevates them to their rightful position at the right and left hands of the Elders as fellow Legionaries of Heaven.
My brain jolted slightly as my thoughts returned to normal Tiana thoughts. That brief excursion had been a lot more Senhion than Tiana in character. It wasn’t a symptom of Senhion waking up, though. It was simply proof of how proud she had been of her valued allies, even if she had probably understood mortals no better than my father did.
I looked over Rod’s shoulder again, to tell the other two, “That information is not for public consumption yet. We’re not announcing the pregnancy until after we’re within the span of a human gestation. It’s less disturbing for the public that way.”
“And you need to complete your marriage ceremony, My Lady,” Benedetta added in a tone as dark as her element.
“Uh… yeah. And that.”
I noticed a little grin that Rod was fighting mightily to keep off his face, at the mention of marriage. He remembered I wouldn’t be sleeping with him, right?
“So it takes longer for you?” Melione asked.
“Ten months,” I said.
I saw their eyes bulge a little. Understandable, considering ten Huadean months is a full Earth year.
“How long more?” Ceria wondered.
“Nine to go,” I said
“Only one month is really early to know already!” Melione retorted.
“Fairies know almost from the start,” I told her. “We can feel the aura.”
I put my hand on my tummy and confirmed, even though the part about putting my hand there didn’t actually accomplish anything. By concentrating, I could feel Mother and one other presence.
Mother had worried about me giving her more love than my former unborn little sister, but I was already feeling quite a lot of affection for both. It was really weird. I didn’t expect maternal instincts to be that fast to kick in, but that was probably the connected feeling that being able to sense their aura gave me. Or perhaps fairy or vampire maternal instincts just set in that much faster. I honestly don’t know.
I just knew it gave me a really weird, warm feeling, sensing them there. And as they grew and it became unnecessary to concentrate in order for me to feel them, I knew that warm feeling would only grow too.
We arrived at last at the top, a classic round deck surrounded by a crenelated wall. It was actually a comparatively high wall for such things; the top of the wall was well over my head and the sills of the crenels were only just barely below my shoulders. Defensive tactics like shooting from the crenels wouldn’t have been done from this tower, after all. That was what the crenellation of the curtain walls and turrets was for. The crenels were here so the tower could be used as an observation platform. In terms of actual weapons, at most, someone might put an arbalest or a combat mage up here for air defense. The tower stood too far inside the walls for anything else.
Actually, Tiana’s military lessons told me, a tower of this size in this position was mostly here to look impressive. But it was great for what I needed to do next.
Rod was enjoying himself with the whole surveying-his-domain-while-holding-his-lady-in-his-arms schtick. I whacked his arm.
“Let me down, already.”
“Ah, yeah,” he said, with that slight smile still trying to turn into a grin, and did so.
“Benedetta, come over here, please,” I requested as I stepped over to the crenel facing Miröen’s launch.
I had to lean over slightly to see it in the courtyard below, but one thing I had lost in this life was a fear of heights (the ability to grow wings does that to you) so it didn’t bother me. Down there, hidden in the hold, within the privacy shielding of an especially well-fortified safe room, my foster sister Amelia was huddling in fear…
No, knowing her trust in Ged, Rod and me, she was probably quite confident of her safety. But she was bored, I bet. But that was enough of a reason to come to her aid.
“My Lady?” Benedetta asked as she took up a place beside me.
“When I take your hand, just follow my instructions, My Lady. I’ll probably be speaking in your mind, so don’t be surprised.”
Benedetta looked very mystified. “You… know how to do that? At your age?”
I gave her a tight smile. “I know how to do a lot of things, My Lady. You’d better get used to it.”
Closing my eyes, I expanded my vessel once again.
– Your Highness, you need to limit how much you are doing this while Sirth is out in the field.
I know that, I just need to…
– This humble scholar has already read it in your memory. Yes, you may create ‘half a Fan Li’ in the manner that you wish. It will indeed work, and it will be good for your training.
With that unusually curt reply, she reduced the vessel to what she judged the best size, causing her awareness to once again go dormant as a result. Clearly she was getting worried about using up too much of a precious resource.
Well, I was, too. I didn’t disagree one bit. But I needed the guarantee from her, for the sake of my confidence.
I purposefully sought out Fan Li memories as I expanded my mind into the unused space of the vessel, and her understanding began blending with mine.
It had a strange effect. When I was simply being ‘Little Sen’, my mind widened inside the Illusory Realities of my seniors, or while expanding my mind without steering toward any specific set of life experiences and wisdom from my past selves, I didn’t really lose a sense of my identity as Tiana. I simply became a different sort of Tiana. It was a technique, like “Tiana Full Battle Mode”, that just sharpened my ability to access and operate the knowledge.
Immersing myself specifically in Fan Li knowledge had a different effect. I could feel my mind filling with a millennium and a half of study and cultivation alien to my own life. I felt as if I could easily reach out and pick the many fruits of knowledge surrounding me. And I definitely felt my personality coloring with hers. A lot.
In that state, I reached out and took Benedetta’s hand.
Lady Benedetta, please open your mind and let me show you what I need.
“M… My Lady?” she stammered.
No need to speak out loud. Cast your elemental sense into the stonework of the castle. Seek out the whole structure.
My mental voice even sounded a little like Fan Li. I resolved not to refer to myself in third person, though.
The whole…? I can’t !
As your Darkness mana flows into the castle, I will feed you more. I will send as much as you need. I simply need you to steer it for me, while I concentrate outside. Close your eyes and trust me.
She did so, the Darkness spilling forth into the floor below her feet, and as she did, I sent more after it. My control of it simply followed hers. In reality, she was thinning her mana far thinner than she could do on her own, while I used Will, at levels I couldn’t do without my expanded vessel and Fan Li’s skill, to help her steer the whole.
Once she had filled the entire castle, and surroundings well outside and below it, I sent forth [Blood Mist], again thinned out into the bare hint of a vapor, until I had filled a cylinder of air outside the castle covering ten square miles to an altitude of a thousand paces. If I was navigating more than one substance, I could never do this. Only because I was dealing with a single medium, air, could I pull this off at this volume.
My eyebrows bunching up in concentration, I sent my spiritual sense through the entire cloud of mana within the grasp of my Will. All of it that Benedetta was steering and all of it that was under the control of my blood magic.
And in that huge volume, I sensed what I was looking for.
