.
Eurybia’s sad eyes regarded me as she read my churning thoughts. As an upper realm immortal gazing down upon a mere celestial maiden, she knew those thoughts already, so I simply waited for her.
People in the position of planetary supervisor, like Oranos and Eurybia, must allow the lives beneath them to proceed with minimum interference. They know that death is not the end for those in the mortal world, only a means to grow and begin the next life. Oranos had surely watched at least a billion souls pass. But the possibility that he had deliberately robbed his own progeny of her first life angered me.
“I can’t tell you what happened, without causing so much entropic backlash that you would forget this entire conversation,” Eurybia stated. “But due to the urgency, he could not wait for Tiana to give birth and raise you.”
I frowned, because her words left the darkest of my thoughts unchallenged.
“So he really did cause the first Tiana to die to make way for me. He killed his own great granddaughter.”
She hesitated, then shook her head. “No. He only allowed her death to happen, once he foresaw it. If it were possible to wait for your birth and growth to adulthood, I’m sure he would have intervened to grant her a miraculous recovery. I don’t think that even Oranos would have actually manufactured her death, no matter how manipulative he can be. He would have sought a different champion, instead.”
“Did he arrange Robert’s death, so my soul would become available?” I asked.
“No,” she said firmly. “Nor did he need to. You could have lived to your old age as Robert and still be brought here at the exact same moment that you arrived. Time is not so rigid between worlds, you know.”
I remembered the HR manager mentioning brief excursions in time being easy to deal with, and finally knew what she had meant. To a celestial maiden, even a hundred years is ‘brief’.
Eurybia smiled, gave my forehead another kiss and said, “Your friend will be on her way soon. I shall return you to your Mortal Realm vessel now.”
The transition this time did not involve going back to sleep to reawaken in the Mortal Realm. Rather, my vision and my senses blurred slightly, as if losing focus for a moment, then
# # #
Eurybia was gone, and so was Senhion.
A moment ago, a wide range of knowledge had been at my fingertips, now vanished due to the small capacity of my Mortal Realm mind. Fortunately, Senhion knew it would happen and made certain to put a reasonably good recollection of Ilim Below’s map and nearby entrances in the forefront of her thoughts before the transition.
My body had fully recovered its mana while I dozed. I stood, letting the water run off, then climbed up the bank onto the little patch of dry ground where my things were waiting. It was time to try out my brand new spell. I had told Ceria about Dilorè’s fairy spell and learned that she knew a level one spell similar to it. A lot of basic mortal spells are fairy magics adapted for humans.
The difference would be that this would take longer to dry me, because level one magic can only invoke one element. This would use Wind mana only.
“[Fairy Breeze],” I chanted, invoking a wind that was too strong to call a breeze. The direction from which it blew was under my mental control, so I made it circle me several times to whisk away all the dripping water from my body. Fortunately I had not made the mistake of getting my hair wet this time. The spell would probably have done poorly at drying my hair. Thanks to the lack of heating, it wasn’t as effective as my cousin’s spell.
I felt a presence at the edge of my fairy sense, swimming just below the surface. Once again, it was remarkably fast, slaloming through the obstacles of the swamp like a downhill skier.
Durandal was within reach, so I stayed calm and finished drying. I had just dropped the Wind spell when Piri rose out of the water and waded ashore. Seeing me preparing to don my chemise, she leaned against the cypress whose root I had been using for a backrest and crossed her arms.
“Good morning to you, Lady Tia,” she greeted me, causing me to chuckle. She hadn’t learned that name from me, so my alias had made it to her ears through other channels.
“Good morning, Miss Piri,” I replied. “Did you speak to your grandfather?”
My hair is long enough that it might have reached the water, so, before getting in, I had used a hair stick I bought in Dausindau to manage what was probably the ugliest bun achievable. It was nothing like the pretty stylings that Mother’s Dorian maids often wore, using their kanzashi-like hair pins. I pulled the stick out and retrieved my comb and ribbon to remake my ponytail.
“I did, and I can take you to him as soon as you are ready,” she stated, continuing to watch the show. I sighed and did my best to ignore her and finish dressing.
Following her had complications. She had expected me to swim there, having identified myself as a water fairy, but there was a male at the end of that swim. I refused to go either in soaked clothes or naked. We ended up with me tracking her from the air as she swam to his place, where I could land on the ground that the mortals normally used for meeting with him.
I hadn’t sensed him the previous day when I used my Vampire Sense, so I wasn’t surprised at all to learn that his place was, in fact, the mana spring itself. The free mana was too dense there for my sense to penetrate. It had been like looking into oncoming headlights at night.
The place was a small pond deep within that dense thicket I had seen across the lagoon from Center Isle. The majority of the mana flow was directly out of the water, with the Fire component of that flow, in conflict with that water, causing the pond water to warm, creating a fog that was probably always present. In the cool of night, it was thick enough to drop visibility to a few paces.
The spot for mortal visitors was easy to find from Piri’s description; it was a semi-circle of flat-topped stones on the bank of the pond, facing a large flat rock in the water. I sat down on one of the stones and waited as Piri disappeared into a hut that could almost be mistaken for a beaver lodge. A regular wood beaver, not the kind that chew stone.
Vodyanoy, rather like male fairies, are rare. I’m not sure of the exact ratio, but it is at least similar to fairies who have one male to a hundred females. Before I met my grandfather, I had imagined that it would be like one of those tropes where the powerful male had nude females draped on and around him as decorations. My audience at Oberon’s throne and my subsequent meetings with him had been nothing like it, in reality.
Admittedly, that moon-viewing party was a bit like that, but he had mostly sat alone and most of the women were his descendants hanging all over each other rather than his harem.
Fortunately, the vodyanoy was also nothing like that. He rose out of the water without any companions at all. The great mass that looked a bit like an anthropomorphic cross between a frog and a walrus hauled himself onto that rock to squat in just about the most ungainly fashion possible.
My fairy vision was telling me quite a lot at that moment. He was a monster with the exact same balance of mana and miasma in his flesh as his granddaughter Piri, clearly demonstrating vodyanoy and rusalki to be the same species. But his skin was patterned with tattoos of dense mana, invisible to normal vision, no doubt to provide him with an arsenal of magic weapons and tools.
I had no doubt this being was a formidable mage.
From somewhere, he produced a pipe and began stuffing it with tobacco. Given he had just come out of the swamp, I was surprised when he was able to light it. Fire mana had been involved in some way, which was a greater surprise. Water monsters rarely possess Fire affinity.
As he sat puffing on it and staring off into the distance, Piri slipped out of the water and stood on her knees next to him, then hugged him around the neck while saying, “Grandfather, I brought Lady Tia, the one I told you about.”
Okay, so now, he had one naked chick duly draped. Although she was his own granddaughter, so maybe it didn’t count.
He glanced over at me. I stood and gave him a curtsey, then said, “Greetings, Sir. I am Tia Mona, an adventurer.”
After giving a grunt of acknowledgement and puffing several times, he stated, “I was told about the help you and your companion have given the mortals. Thank you for that. I hear you can fly through my barrier like it isn’t there.”
When he called it ‘his barrier’, I was a bit surprised, although I had heard Piri claim he had literally built this fen. The cypresses and black gums were all visibly ancient, so that construction had to have happened many centuries ago, but all monsters live until something kills them. The surprise is that he would have the power to do this scale of landscaping.
Both landscaping and barrier could be explained through powerful enough magic skills though, and I had heard a definite hint of wounded professional pride in his voice when he mentioned my penetration of the barrier. That suggested he was indeed the master mage who designed it in the first place.
“It wasn’t easy to do, Sir,” I stated. “I think you will not find many with the ability to do it. And you may rest assured that the one who did it this time is a friend.”
“Mm,” he grunted again, his scowl remaining dark.
Piri laughed and kissed his cheek. “Grandfather, don’t be so grumpy. You’re making our guest anxious.”
“How?” he asked with another brief glance my way.
I tipped my head. “I’m sorry?”
“He means how did you penetrate the barrier,” Piri explained. “He wants to know, in return for helping you with your search.”
I contemplated whether I should tell him. He obviously wanted to know so he could fix the vulnerability. Finally, I decided he probably wouldn’t manage to patch this particular hole until after I was long gone from this place.
“Your barrier works by detection and reaction. I’m sure it is extremely sensitive, but I can use a dark magic that intercepts the knowledge of my presence. That is the vulnerability of your magic.”
His huge brows bunched up. “My barrier uses seventh-level detection! Are you saying you are a level eight mage?”
I was taken a little aback. It was as good as declaring himself a seventh level mage.
“It’s not a question of level,” I answered. “I’m a half-fairy and a magic swordfighter with an almost unmatched mana capacity. It’s my ancestry and my constitution that give me an advantage.”
“Mm,” he replied, falling into thought and continuing to puff.
“May I have the honor of knowing your name?” I inquired.
“Moram, Lord of Greenwater Fen,” he grunted.
It was almost certainly a self-awarded title, but I curtseyed again and replied, “Thank you, Lord Moram.”
“Do you have a likeness of the one whom you are seeking?”
Actually, I did. The team had brought several copies of a hand-sized mass-produced portrait of Amelia which is a popular gift-shop product in Orestania. After Piri brought it over to him, I explained, “She has a companion with her, also quite beautiful. The companion has light blue hair.”
“Not in my water,” he declared while staring at the image.
“They never came here at all?”
“Never. My spirits would have reported them,” he stated with certainty.
Spirit magicians don’t say ‘my spirits’. Ordinary spirit magic employs whatever spirits happen to be nearby. ‘My spirits’ implied that this being was a spirit trainer, a far less common occupation, and one that only high-level mages can become.
He chanted a long string of words in a language I didn’t recognize, casting a Wind magic in the process, then took several more puffs on his pipe and waited.
At last, he had Piri give the picture back to me and said, “I have relayed the image to my spirits. In return for the information about my barrier’s vulnerability, I have tasked them with the search.”
I knew from my experiences in Tëan Tír the reconnaissance capabilities of such spirits; Oberon had known Lâsin’s entire battle plan thanks to the spirit tamers of Serera’s clan.
To cover my surprise, I curtseyed again. “I am deeply grateful, My Lord.”
