.
I really, really didn’t like the direction of this conversation.
“Miss Möemnen, I do not wish to feed on a mortal who doesn’t agree willingly. That’s why I normally pay professional courtesans to provide blood for me.”
The girl Becca that my grandmother bewitched still haunted me.
I knew, no matter how long she lived, Becca would never feel that I violated her or harmed her. Grandmother used the permanent version of fairy bewitchment, which is apparently more difficult but safer for the mortal subject. The only real ‘harm’ was that her orientation may have suffered a slight tweak; if she was heterosexual before, she was bisexual now, although she wouldn’t necessarily feel much motivation to pursue the yuri side of bi with anyone else. And she would live to her old age treasuring her memories of that night, and possibly even hoping to feed me again.
But, you know what? That’s beside the point. In the end, she never agreed to it of her own free will, and I don’t believe she would have chosen to have her mind altered by Grandmother, had she been asked first.
Even if Grandmother isn’t biologically a monster, she is not a harmless existence. The fact that she admits she is dangerous doesn’t change questions of right and wrong. But I was beginning to understand that this is what most fairies are. If this were DnD, they would be neither chaotic nor lawful, neither good nor evil. Grandmother abhors evil and praises good, but she does not aspire to either. She is an absolute neutral alignment.
Mother seems to lean lawful-good, but that’s with an accent on ‘seems’. I think it’s more an intellectual decision to act that way, rather than any root belief.
I’m different. I think even the old Tiana was different. I could comfort myself that Becca would never feel unhappy about what I did, but I could never see it as okay.
Möemnen went without replying until she finished her sandwich. I was nearly done with mine when she finally spoke again.
After swallowing a sip of sake, she noted, “If I don’t let you out of my woods, you won’t have a choice, will you?”
Her cup was empty, so she poured herself a second helping, then topped off my cup as well.
I swallowed my most recent bite of sandwich, and asked, “Is that what you’re planning?”
With a smug smile, she withdrew a wicker box from the basket. She opened the lid to reveal clusters of fairy grapes within. They looked sweet and positively dripped with the mana that had nourished their vines.
She plucked a couple fruits and ate them. Then she plucked another, leaned toward me, supporting herself on her hand, and pressed it to my lips.
I was more than a little baffled, and didn’t open my mouth. Not so much because I was refusing, but because I was frozen in confusion. She took it as refusal though, and chuckled.
Then she popped the fruit into her own mouth, leaned forward while corralling my neck with her hand, and pressed her lips to mine. It was done swiftly enough that her tongue pushed the grape into my mouth before my brain came online.
While her tongue was exploring the inside of my mouth, I recovered from my shock and tried to press her away. It took a second try before I was successful in separating our lips, since at first I was trying to avoid injuring her.
She gave a dark laugh while still hanging onto my neck and back. “Are you sure you want to resist, Your Highness? You are only a child, and you are in my house. I might enjoy having to play a bit more dominant with you, you know?”
As she spoke the last sentence, I noticed that nearby vines had already snaked out from the bushes nearby. At the same time, Möemnen’s raiment blended into the grass beneath us and her merry laughter turned a bit crueler.
Tentacle vines are a phenomenon that I’ve only seen in anime. In real life, I had never encountered a ‘green magic’ strong enough to cause plants to move in either experience or books. They captured my wrists before I had struggled loose of Möemnen’s grasp, then my ankles…
Yep, they began snaking upward from there.
Nope, nope, nope and NO! This was one anime trope I was not going to tolerate!
I could already see that the vines were filled with Earth mana to protect against attacks along with Water mana that was doing the actual moving. It didn’t seem to be Möemnen casting a spell. The vines themselves seemed to be drawing their own mana and choosing their movements, although I was certain the real manipulator had to be something else.
As the most aggressive of the vines was making its way up my thigh, I began to draw mana… and discovered to my shock that I couldn’t! No, I could just barely draw some, but it was trying to suck through a skinny little straw.
Möemnen’s grin at my expression told me she knew exactly what I had just discovered. But lack of mana didn’t mean I was helpless. As the ivy vine threat extended itself further, I sucked in a breath, then strained against the vines gripping my wrists.
The smirk on her face slipped slightly as I successfully pulled against the vine. It was hideously strong, but I was just a bit stronger, and I was able to reach for the wannabe sex offender vine, just before it reached my panties. I managed to get my fingers around it, and then the fight became a tug of war between the vine on my wrist and the vine on my leg, with me assisting on the wrist side. By the time the vine on my wrist had changed tactics, I had already pulled the nasty little pervert on my thigh away from its goal.
Having subdued the immediate threat somewhat (although other vines were still moving in), I did a quick mental rundown of my resources. The Water mana that was still coating my body was available, but I didn’t have any Water magic useful for this situation. Then I remembered the secret stash of mana I had hidden in my blood core, or spiritual core, or whatever the thing was.
This had all happened in a few moments, so she had only begun to prepare a magic to counter my little show of strength.
As long as I was unable to draw more mana, the store in my ‘core’ was a non-renewable resource. I had to choose carefully. I drew fire and aether and circulated them, then drew off the Water mana coating I had formed and returned it into circulation as well.
The look on her face as my mana flows changed was pretty special. It was clear she couldn’t tell where the mana was coming from, and had not expected me to find a supply. It probably looked to her fairy sight like my secret new source of mana was appearing out of nowhere, the way Healing does.
The vine gripping my other wrist was trying to pull my arm behind my back. It was time for the first experiment. Straining to twist my hand into position, I got a grip on that vine and let loose a short hit of Aether. I was rewarded with a nice burnt smell and a slight lessening of the vine’s power, but it continued to grip me.
I felt Earth wrapping my wrists and ankles, forming iron-like shackles. The flow of mana told me that this time, it was magic that Möemnen was directly casting upon me. I tapped my core again, this time to draw from the Earth stored there, and put it into fortification. If she just tried to use Earth to trap my limbs, the fortification might not do much, but it would protect me if she tried tightening down on them like a constricting snake.
Since I still had a grip on the pervert vine, I concentrated on it next. The Fire mana I had in circulation was the opposite of the Water mana that was allowing the vine to move around. I sent some into the vine. Due to the presence of Water, it didn’t burn, but the vine’s ‘muscle power’ instantly vanished as the contrary mana neutralized the magic. The vine turned back into an ordinary plant. Immediately I did the same to the other vines. As they fell away, I grew my wings by tapping my Darkness and Wind reserves.
By this time, Möemnen had begun to respond. Wary of me, she had risen and was putting some space between us. I had to press the ground with my arms and wings to overcome the grip of the Earth shackles, but my wings are my most powerful limbs by far, and I was able to get my feet underneath me and push myself into a standing position. Straining against the invisible shackles, I managed to get to Durandal’s grip and draw him.
I didn’t hesitate. I chose the most powerful option. I pointed him at her.
“[Holy Smite!]”
Her eyes grew as she beheld the magic circle forming in the air around the blade. The massive ‘fist’ of Earth mana struck her.
She hurtled backward into the woods and my shackles disappeared. I leapt into the air and tried to fly. For a short distance, I was free, then a massive cloud of butterflies covered the air above me and began making kamikaze runs at me, pummeling me repeatedly and forcing me back to the ground. I was going to have to run instead of fly.
