.
The morning light had strengthened, and that rooster was becoming annoying. Sidis wanted to go to the nearby houses to learn our exact location, but I stopped her immediately.
“If there is a chance that they will soon find themselves in occupied territory, then they are better off not knowing about fugitives,” I told her. “They can more persuasively tell the truth and say they’ve seen nobody than lie and say they’ve seen nobody.”
The preserved food seller that I visited in Dausindiu sold an unusual hardtack with nuts and dried fruits baked into it. Probably didn’t have the same shelf life as regular hardtack (which basically can outlast the apocalypse), but it functioned as a convenient field ration. I handed Sidis one and pulled out another for myself, setting out the canteen I had purchased while bitterly missing my water stone.
“Let’s eat quickly so we can get going,” I told her.
After she swallowed a mouthful of the hard-to-chew food, she pointed into the hills to our west and said, “Then I have to figure out where to go, right? I should be able to find an aerial unit in the mountains.”
“Your brother mentioned ‘joining up with a border unit’. Are you part of the military?”
She gave me a slightly bemused look, then said, “I’m not sure how to answer that, My Lady. We don’t really have something called ‘the military’ here. In our tribe, when there’s a fight, if you can fight, you fight. I’m the daughter of the tribe’s aerial commander, so I must fight.”
I remembered her mentioning she could get me a meeting with such a person. It seems she had been talking about her father.
“Where would your father be, now?” I asked.
She frowned, then said, “The Greenwater Fen is under attack, so, unless he went out on inspection yesterday, he would be there.”
“Is that your home?”
She shook her head. “Our family farmstead is in the hills. But we’ve been staying in the Greenwater ever since the trouble with the Berado began.”
“Is that your capital or something?”
With a frown, she said, “I suppose it is, now. The Berado already pushed us out of the valley where our chieftain’s stronghold stood. We moved all the head families into the Greenwater because the enemy would never be able to spy on us there.”
I thought about what I had seen last night. “Is it possibly the place five or so miles wide that’s blocking my senses, about nine miles to our south? A place with strong magical barriers?”
She looked at me with amazement. “You can sense something nine miles away?”
“At night I can,” I said. “Or in a dark forest. In the daytime, out in the open like this, the Dark mana is too thin to see that far. I sensed a lot of activity starting a few hours after Midnight, close to that area. In retrospect, I was probably sensing combat. Shall we go take a look?”
With a look of reverence, she said, “I knew fairies are amazing, but I had no idea they could manage something that extreme.”
“Hm,” I responded, then made a decision. “Well, fairies much older than me can be more extreme than that, but this was a special Dark magic. Sidis, I should explain, I’m actually a half-fairy… or I think in this part of the world you call my kind a ‘Fairborn’.”
She looked dumbstruck for a moment, but then said, “But… you seem so powerful!”
I laughed and said, “Fairborn can be powerful too, you know? But, I’m also versatile. I use other kinds of magic. And I’m able to use certain magics you wouldn’t see a fairy using. If you want to go to the Greenwater Fen, I can get you there, by using a special kind of Dark Magic.”
Specifically, Vampire magic, but I didn’t need to tell her that.
“My brother said…”
I interrupted her. “If you say no, then I will help you find one of those mountain units instead. But I would like to know what is happening with the Berado, so I would prefer the latter. I won’t force you.”
She stared at me for a bit, then asked, “That stealth of yours works that well?”
“Did you ever see me yesterday?” I asked, while tying the bedroll to my little travel pack. “I flew right up next to you, in the broad daylight.”
After she thought for a few more moments, she stated, “Then I would like to join my father and brother in the Greenwater Fen.”
“Make sure all your stuff is secure,” I told her, as I began doing the same. I had finished eating, so I started rolling up the bedroll I loaned her.
In an almost soundless whisper, while she was busy securing her bag of rocks and other articles, I told Durandal, “Hey, old man, we’ll use the regular rules, okay?”
You call out the attacks and I choose the defenses? He responded.
“Yeah. Although I can’t draw you while I’m carrying her, so it’s all defense on this flight.”
I had no means to use Cloak on her from a distance, the way that Kiki was able to use stealth on me. It would only work on bundles I was carrying. So, after I buckled on the travel pack, made sure my weapons and wallet were secure, I scooped her back up into my arms.
She let out a slight yip of surprise and I could see her cheeks immediately warming up. I gave a slight laugh at her reaction as she looked away in embarrassment.
“How long did I carry you like this yesterday?” I asked.
“That doesn’t mean I’m used to it,” she muttered, still looking away.
I began my [Vampire Cloak] and grew my wings, then took off with a vigorous series of wingstrokes into the air. It’s a bit more work, while carrying seventy or so pounds of bird-girl.
“I just need to follow the river, right? It runs straight into the place I saw last night.”
It was a stupid question, I realized once I had put a hundred or so feet of air beneath us. I could clearly see the river disappearing into a wide, mottled expanse of copses, bogland and reeds, in a crazy quilt of different styles of wetland that didn’t look like they belonged together at all.
“Yes, My Lady. You can see ahead, where the river spreads out to become the Greenwater. But the only passage through the barrier where the river enters is underwater, and only admits creatures of the water.”
So I can probably get through, there, I was about to say. After all, magic that distinguishes things like that generally determines whether one is capable of holding one’s breath for an extended time, like a turtle, or breathing underwater, like me. But then I realized a problem with that idea.
“How long can you hold your breath?” I asked her.
Her eyes widened. “My kind are meant to live in the sky. Why would I ever hold my breath?”
“Darn,” I griped. “The barrier won’t recognize you are a water dweller.”
“Oh,” she responded. “That’s right. You called yourself a water fairy.”
“It probably would recognize me as such,” I nodded. “So, either you have another way in, or we have to hope your barrier is the kind that I can pass through.”
She looked at me with surprise. “You can pass through barriers, My Lady?”
“It depends upon how the particular barrier is made. If the magic just creates a simple wall, then I can’t. But those are easier to break. Stronger shields must perceive the intrusion and react to it. When I’m using the stealth magic I’m currently using, I can fly right through those.”
Not saying I would have wanted to attempt it on Tëan Tír’s Great Barrier, which was fairy magic created by some of the strongest of that race. Besides, I think that was a multi-layer shield using both types of barrier spells. But I felt pretty good about my chances with this mushy looking barrier. Yes, my perception wasn’t penetrating it, but that was a different function of the barrier spell. This wasn’t about whether I could see through it, but about whether it could see me.
“I honestly don’t know how the spell works, My Lady,” she admitted.
“Even though you’re a mage?”
“It isn’t my tribe who made it. The water folk who created the Greenwater made it.”
That puzzled me a little. Water folk? Lizardmen, possibly? It wasn’t impossible. Lizardmen had developed villages in a few areas in Pendor, where they farmed magic fish species so they didn’t have to bother mortals. They were marginally civilized monsters, just like gnomes. But I didn’t think Lizardmen lived in cold climates such as this.
“How do you normally get in?”
“That way will be closed, My Lady,” Sidis answered. “Once the enemy invaded, they would have flooded the tunnels. Now only those with keystones can open a passage, and those only work from inside.”
As we cruised, about twenty paces above the river, she asked, “Are we really stealthed? I can see myself, and you, as well.”
“It’s not an optical spell, like your Light magic,” I explained. “It’s a kind of Darkness magic. And it isn’t mortal magic, so I wouldn’t be able to teach you.”
As we neared the wetland area, we saw many clusters of warriors on the ground, and I spotted a squadron of wyvern riders as well. Nobody noticed us, of course. In my fairy sense, I could feel the Dark mana making up the barrier ahead of us. If it worked like I expected, the Darkness was for detection, and the barrier would react with Wind mana against intrusions. Or perhaps Aether mana.
“I’m going to ramp up to maximum power on my stealth spell and try the barrier,” I told her. “In case I hit something and drop you, how high up do you need to be to recover and fly?”
She paled a little at the thought of an uncontrolled fall, but she said, “If we ascend above a hundred paces, I should be safe.”
I frowned and looked upward, seeing to my surprise that the barrier really did extend that high. Actually, it was sloping inward as it became an enormous flattened dome, shaped sort of like a contact lens. The center might actually be five or six hundred paces high. As I rose higher, to get the altitude she requested, I began to see that, although the wetland had a somewhat irregular shape, the barrier was a perfect circle, which meant it had a specific center.
Hit by a suspicion, I asked, “Would the center of this thing happen to be that mana spring?”
I mean, this thing would require a serious power source.
Her instant reaction, looking away as soon as I said it, confirmed my guess, even though she said, “I would rather not say, My Lady.”
I humphed a slight laugh, and noted, “You should probably avoid playing card games, girl. Prepare yourself; I’m going in.”
With those words, I turned toward the barrier
I shouldn’t raise any kind of shield, I assume, Durandal commented.
“Please do nothing of the sort,” I answered in a whisper. Anything like that would certainly set the barrier off.
“My Lady?” Sidis asked.
Yeah, with her ear hardly six inches from my mouth, there was no way she wouldn’t hear me.
“Sorry, talking to myself,” I said. Then, as a precaution, I cast, “[Body Fortification].”
At this altitude, the slope was around 45 degrees, so I was flying level. I figured that, if I collided with it, I should ricochet rather than bounce. The fuzzy, uncertain boundary of Darkness mana was probably invisible to Sidis, but it was nice and clear to my Fairy sight, like a gray, transparent fog. It rushed up at me, and I have to admit, I cringed, just a little.
