.
I am a knight, in soul and in fact. If I see a robbery happening in front of me, I have to act.
Even so, I was in a foreign land, of unknown alignment with respect to my friends and foes, so I had a need to keep my visibility to the local government at a minimum. That fact was limiting my choices concerning what I could do, here.
Keeping the [Vampire Cloak] active, I circled the scene at low altitude, just above the nearby treetops. The bird men had all landed around their target, surrounding her. They were holding back, which suggested they were still uncertain what tools or weapons she might be holding.
I pulled out my writing brush, holding it with the handle end outward, and filled it with the lightest dose of Wind.
“[Wind Bullet],” I chanted quietly, and pegged one of them between the shoulder blades.
He was knocked off his feet and to his knees as he let out a holler of pain.
Naturally, their attention was immediately no longer on the girl. The leader looked at ground level in the direction the bullet would have fired from, had it been fired from the ground. Meanwhile, I had reached the opposite point of my circling path around them, and…
“[Wind Bullet],” I pegged another.
“It’s a flyer!” the leader yelled, then, “[Seek]!”
This was a strong operator. I could feel his taming [Command] right down to my bones. It’s impossible for a monster trainer to actually Command a fully sentient monster, but it is annoying as hell. The magic soaks right into your skin. In the Royal Knights, I always try to stay away from the trainers so I don’t inadvertently lose my temper at them.
The giant bats began their work and locked onto me right away. [Vampire Cloak] works by clouding the mind, not through optical camoflage, but it normally leaves ears alone, operating mostly on eyes and noses. Annoyed, I raised the power and they lost track of me again, but then a tactic occurred to me. I began pulling Fire from my core and reduced the power once more.
They locked onto me again, all six creatures becoming a closely gathered formation to give chase. I pointed over my back and chanted “[Fireball]”
Unlike the [Wind Bullets], I hadn’t held back on the power this time. A basketball-sized [Fireball] streaked across and seared three of the beasts. They fell while making piteous shrieks, so they were tough enough to survive it, but they were injured.
I picked off another of the remaining creatures, then the leader yelled, “[Return]!”
The remaining pair stopped following me.
“Where are you!” the leader demanded, his head swiveling around, trying to somehow penetrate my [Cloak] with his senses. None of the trio tried to perform [Detect Presence], so their number didn’t include a mage.
Channeling a random mixture of dark and dangerous characters from my years of watching fantasy anime, I sucked in a deep lung-full of air and let out the best evil “Hahahahaha…” I could manage.
“Show yourself!” he yelled.
I called back, “Foolish mortal, you might claim the sky, but the night is mine!”
His head had begun following my voice, so I turned sharply to dash across the circle, flying right above their heads to get behind them, then fired another light [Wind Bullet], tagging the leader in the back of the head this time.
“You have dared to tread upon land that is not yours!” I yelled, then changed direction again as they about-faced once more.
“Leave this place!” I yelled, then turned inward and crossed above them again.
As the night deepened, my cloak was only going to continue getting stronger. Darkness mana was literally free as air for me in this environment. I could keep my [Cloak] up all night if necessary.
They seemed to be prepared to try to defy me, and I wanted to get this over with and get the girl to safety. But I didn’t want to be leaving mortal corpses around to make the authorities curious, so my options were pretty limited. Fortunately, I had one almighty good attack I could fall back on.
I pushed additional Darkness into my cloak, pushing it back up to where it would block sound, then circulated a heavy charge of Healing. After coming in to land directly behind the leader, I chanted “[Sleep]” while holding my palm near his head.
The other two heard nothing, they simply saw their leader slump to the ground.
“Kurga!” the other two yelled, then began whipping their head around, trying to identify their attacker. I took off again, reducing the [Cloak] so they could hear me once more, and let out another ‘evil fairy laugh’.
[Sleep] isn’t natural sleep. I’m pretty sure it more closely resembles general anesthesia. They weren’t going to wake their leader any time soon; hitting the ground hadn’t woke him, after all.
“I’ll give the two of you a choice,” I told them. “The first option, carry the fool and leave this place. Take him back to your own country. I will allow him to awaken later. The second option, defy me and I will drop both of you as well, and who knows whether I allow any of you to awaken? The first option is your only chance to ensure your survival, mortal fools!”
I expected them to defy the order. Unlike flying monsters like me, mortal bird men are not strong enough to carry the weight of another bird man into the air. Except for extraordinarily trained mages, mortals cannot continuously manage the Wind magic necessary for that. Their flight ability relies more on mortal muscle power, with just enough magic to raise the power to mass ratio to levels that allow them to get airborne. They also have especially light bones, I understand.
One of them yelled at the fallen man, “Kurga! Wake up!”
I was confident he couldn’t rouse him– Lâsin the satyr had stayed asleep all the way to the Fairy Queen’s prison under my spell– but just in case, I hovered directly behind the guy as he walked over to his leader.
I pulled more Healing mana, ready to use it, but to my relief, he really was unable to wake him. I rose back up into the air and waited.
The Greater Moon came out from behind the clouds, brightening the area a bit, and I learned that the differences between male and female bird-kin wasn’t as extreme as between the sexes of other beast-kin.
Both the girl and the men had contour feathers instead of head hair. Two of the men had contour-fitting dark feathers and the other had wilder white feathers like the head of a bald eagle. The girl had longer golden-brown feathers. Neither had human external ears, so their ears must have been hidden beneath the plumage just like birds.
Other than that, and the wings, they looked completely human. Just like fairies and vampires, they lacked a tail, so like us, they must use Wind magic to stabilize their flight.
Well, their faces were human, but the men all had thin faces and long noses that suggested beaks. The girl’s face was normal.
“He won’t wake up!” the man told his comrade once he stopped trying to shake the leader awake.
“Is he breathing?”
“He is, but he won’t wake up!”
After a long pause, by which time, I had put some distance between us once more, he yelled out, “Will you let him wake up if we carry him out of here?”
“If both of you leave, and take him with you, he will awaken once I decide you are far enough away from these grounds.”
He would awaken when the spell wore off in any case, but I didn’t want them waiting here. I wanted them out of here before I dropped my cloak and helped the girl.
“What about the girl?” he demanded.
I got a little ticked. “You shall not touch her, Mortal. She is under my protection. Do you intend to challenge me?”
I heard the guy curse under his breath, then tell his comrade. “Help me get him onto my back.”
He had to fold his own wings strangely to make it possible, but he was able to piggyback his unconscious leader with the other man’s help. I stood behind the fallen girl and watched the two men trudge across the field to reach the road.
The girl watched them steadily as they trudged away, then began looking around the darkness surrounding her while the men were negotiating the fence at the edge of the field.
“Relax,” I said quietly. “I’m right next to you. You’re safe.”
“Who are you?”
I had just enough middle-schooler left in my heart to want to say something painfully embarrassing like, ‘the Dark Queen of the Night’… I overcame the temptation.
“A passing fairy who disliked what she was seeing them doing. I will bring you to town now, so that I can tend to your wounds.”
“Not that town! It’s not safe for me there!”
“I don’t know the local fairies,” I told her. “It’s safer to bring you to a mortal town than to accidentally trespass the grounds of a fairy who doesn’t know me. I will protect you.”
“Please! I mustn’t fall into Berado hands! That town is full of them!”
Her eyes were huge, and the anxiety in her voice was something I couldn’t dismiss, considering what I had just witnessed.
“I will protect you,” I repeated. I still had that dose of Healing circulating. I lightened the charge up, then used [Sleep] on her.
Bird-kin wings are flesh-and-blood, not manifested mana like vampire wings or fairy wings. They don’t appear and disappear at will. I had to carefully fold hers into place before I could carry her. Just before I was about to lift her into a princess carry, I realized I could see the mana signature of a magic tool lying nearby and walked over to retrieve it.
It was the talking stone she had been using. It had fallen from her hand as she plummeted to the ground. I tucked it into my belt-wallet, then gathered her into my arms.
The training of Tiana’s innate vampire skills that Aunt Elianora had drilled into her ‘niece’ had included how to extend the [Vampire Cloak] to include bundles she was carrying.
A bird-kin can’t fly while carrying their own weight, but I can. My innate flying magic works in response to my wing motion, so I had to beat harder to rise into the air and continue flapping hard to stay aloft, but that extra effort intensified the flow of the flight magic as well, and I was soon on my way back to Lisrau Castle Town.
She weighed about as much as a ten year old human girl, although she was clearly in her late teens or early twenties. That was due to so much of her body being hollow bones and the bulk of her wings being mostly lightweight feathers. I had little difficulty carrying her, and within ten minutes I passed over the simple boundary fence– only the castle on the hill above us had actual fortifications– and began looking for our wagon.
It wasn’t too hard to spot. I had been following it all day, after all, so I knew exactly what it looked like from the air. It was parked in the wagon lot of an inn near the main road. The goats had already been unhitched and the drivers were probably caring for them in the attached stable.
I landed behind the wagon and put my hand on the safety stone that Arken had set up, which could identify me. After I felt it give a series of ticks in response, I used the steps to climb in.
Within only seconds, Dilorè had appeared behind me, demanding, “Who’s in there?”
She had just come back from an aerial survey of the surroundings, and had noticed the wagon suspension sink with our weight. I realized that I still had my [Cloak] active and quietly called out, “It’s me, My Lady.”
I canceled the [Cloak] so she could see me. She noticed the unconscious girl in my arms and frowned at me.
“Your Highness, wouldn’t it be safer to do your feeding indoors?”
