.
A few more arrows came at me, including a Fire-mana-type enchanted arrow. It got through Durandal’s shield but missed me, rocketing past me as a streak of flame. But then the archers held their fire as their ally charged once more.
Durandal had wanted to handle all shields and sword buffs, but he had conceded one item. We had determined that my Earth mana capacity outstripped his, so he would conserve his for his shield and his special attack.
I poured it in, fortifying him with manifested mana as I met her sword.
Earth opposes Wind, so the clash of our blades at the great levels we were using produced a blinding burst of light and we actually rebounded from the blast.
The surprise special effect caused a laugh to bubble up out of me. It was like encountering some cool new twist I never saw before on my first play-through of a game. Now even more pumped, I dashed in for another strike, meeting her blade half-way, producing another bright golden burst, and then we began trading them continuously.
Each of these bursts included a dramatic shock wave, I now noticed. The cavalrymen were struggling around us with their mounts. A couple flight beasts had bolted and their riders were fighting to rein them in.
“You’re using Earth at this altitude?” my opponent asked with an incredulous tone as our blades finally locked together.
I grinned, then let out a bright laugh and exchanged several more burst-inducing swings with her. She seemed to be meeting me with mana levels similar to my own. No matter how flustered she was at my trick, she continued to hold up against it, countering it with the equivalent in Wind mana. For some reason, it made me even more hyped.
We broke apart, and she immediately threw a supercharged [Wind Bullet] that Durandal met with a shield like [Wind Wall] but somehow using Aether. It was only partly slowed as it tore through, but I was able to destroy it with his Earth-loaded blade. The result was a burst of power double the previous ones.
The hurricane force wind smashed outward, leaving the wyvern formation in pieces. One rider hung from his harness as his beast fell in an inverted position, and two other beasts were in nose dives. The rest fought to regain control of their flight.
Inside me, a weird split-personality reaction was talking place. A laugh bubbled out of me, because I was jazzed with the cool result, while at the same time I was horrified at the effect we just had on the riders. I mean, I know they had just been shooting at me, but I had never considered them a serious threat, so I was more concerned about their safety now. They were too dangerously close.
But I no time to waste worrying about them. It was becoming painfully clear as we closed and traded blows once more that this girl was no Aenëe.
“You’re an awfully confident little monster, aren’t you? Too bad those attacks of yours aren’t enough to touch me!”
Her confidence just made it funnier when when a surprise point-blank [Wind Scythe] from Durandal passed through her shield and left a slice on her upper arm.
She clicked her tongue as she broke away, which just made me grin bigger.
“Well, somebody touched you!” I taunted.
We were both now fighting at far more power than my fight in Cara Ita, and nothing I did surprised this opponent enough to slow her down. She was even adjusting without hesitation to Durandal tossing out surprise moves in the middle of it using magic I’ve never heard of before, and to my own tricks using Earth mana that shouldn’t be easily available at this altitude.
Of course, I was only using the supply I gathered in old Oste, but that supply had been quite a lot. I had pretty much sucked up everything I could hold of Earth and Darkness.
I don’t know how it works, but it seems like the capacity I can circulate of each element has no effect on how much I can hold of the others. They each have their own capacity. I seemed to have used up some of my Darkness while flying, because my wings need it, and of course I had already used some Earth during the fight, but I still had a good charge of each.
How much? Ryuu complained about not having an MP bar to keep track of this stuff. The old Tiana hadn’t understood what he meant, but I sure do. I didn’t actually know how much I had left, and that was a pain.
My goal wasn’t to beat a fairy knight. My goal was to get to Tëan Tír. I needed to focus on my objective, and that meant I had to changing things up. Mid-swing, I winked at her, then resumed my Vampire Cloak.
Immediately, I propelled myself straight down with Wind, then, after a one-second drop, rocketed off in the direction of Relador.
For several seconds, she remained motionless behind me, probably still searching for me, but then I heard her yell, “[Track]!”
Behind me, a surge of Darkness mana flared.
All I knew about it without looking back was that it began following me. I turned northward to confirm that theory, and sure enough, it turned to match me. And it was getting closer.
I resumed my course for Relador, pouring on the speed. Behind me, the mysterious pursuing form again tracked me and it would soon catch up.
My repertoire does not include any anti-magic skills, unless you call slashing a manifested form with a mana-loaded sword a “skill”. [Dispel] and [Break] seem like they ought to be simple things, and they are technically level-one magic, but they are the hardest level one spells to master. It’s a matter of finesse, apparently.
There’s a progression to mana in use. It begins as potential mana. That’s the mana in the environment. Technically, it’s manifested, but because it’s tied with its element, it’s just like it’s a different state.
Untie it from its element, and it becomes substantiated mana. That’s the mana in living things or in combinations, like the Fire mana in boiling water or magma, or the Earth mana in the muddy churn of a flash flood, or any mana that a mage is circulating after drawing it.
Once you apply it, it becomes manifested mana. That’s the mana that assumes the character of the element it incarnates without being attached to that element.
Finally, it’s materialized. That’s when Fire mana becomes actual flame or Water mana becomes actual water.
Mana has to be at least manifested to interact with physical matter. The mana portion of a magical being (like me) is manifested, not materialized, which is what makes us different than mortal creatures. I know it sounds weird, but half of my body is not physically there at all.
But if the magic spell doesn’t need to act on physical matter, the mana can do its work while remaining in substantiated form. If that’s how it is, I can swing my sword all I want, but I’ll never hit it.
That’s what was coming after me. Whatever this attack was, I knew no way to stop it.
The fairy knight had been doing something with Wind mana– I was already too far away to tell what– but now she was also following me, and she was even catching up to the Dark mana form!
“How do you fly that fast on moth wings!” I yelped, but she was too far away to hear my protest at that moment. She would be a lot closer, very shortly. Obviously, the Wind mana thing had been something to accelerate her in order to catch up.
As she nearly reached the Darkness form, I did a quick vertical climb so I could see behind me, to find out what was going on, and realized that form was attached to the spear she had been carrying. It was flying through the air ahead of her.
Was that why she had been gripping it like a lance? It had some kind of magic to track me, and she’d been letting it steer her?
No, at the end of the day, she had still been aiming at me while stealthed and holding a weapon, so I wasn’t letting her action off on that sort of excuse.
She grabbed onto it, and slowed to its speed, probably to allow it to guide her.
This was not good. She could outfly me, she had a spear that could track me down for some reason, and I wasn’t sure how much farther I had to go before I was in Relador.
I also did not know if these people who were already operating outside their jurisdiction in Suldor would hesitate to pursue me across the border.
I flipped out of the climb to face her, ready to fight again and wondering if I should drop my cloak. It was chewing up a lot of Darkness, and it evidently had no effect on the spear’s ability to track me. Before I actually dropped it, though, the fairy knight and spear suddenly veered away from me.
Unsure what was happening, I almost elected to stay and watch, but this was a golden opportunity. I went dashing westward again. Although, I continued paying attention to the movements of mana behind me.
The spear continued guiding her for a little while in a different direction than me, toward the north, but then it jerked around and headed due south.
“Wait a minute!” I could hear her protest. “What are you doing?”
I got beyond the range where I could track it by mana, but I was mystified enough that I slowed down so I could watch over my shoulder. It had begun dragging her through a zigzag.
The spear suddenly guided her straight up. After several hundred feet as she kept demanding explanations, it then quickly reversed direction.
“What?! Whyyyyy?” she cried out as it dragged her into a nose dive.
Ahahahahahahaha! Durandal burst out. That little missy is really something, My Lady!
“Kiki’s doing that?” I asked. I had stopped to turn and watch by this time.
The fairy knight let go of the spear, rather than plunge with it into the forest below, but as she hovered, staring at it, it stopped short of the treetops and hung in the air beneath her.
She kept staring at it in disbelief as it very slowly and deliberately flipped over. It hung there for a long pause, pointing up at her, then it came flying up. She took off in fright as it began chasing her. Unfortunately, she chose to flee in roughly my direction.
I took off again, heading west, straining for every bit of speed that I could. I had no idea where the border was, but Suldor’s entire western boundary is Relador, so I couldn’t miss it as long as I flew toward the afternoon sun.
Behind me grew a massive flare of Fire mana, circulating in her body…
I’ll shield, My Lady! You just keep flying!
Trusting Durandal, I accepted his guidance and kept my mind on my task.
