.
Both of my companions’ hands went straight to the hilts of their weapons as the imps passed us, turning toward the stairs we had just descended. I tightened my grip on their waists, which they fortunately understood to mean I didn’t want them attacking. We watched them in silence as they disappeared, and I didn’t let go until I heard them exit the next landing up, which led to another staircase.
Once their footsteps had vanished, I quietly told Dilorè, “Use the stealth you used outside on us, the one that isolates sound and sight. That way I can let go of you guys.”
“Why’d you stop us?” Brigitte demanded as soon as Dilorè finished.
“Unless we’re confident we can permanently kick these guys out, they need to never suspect we’ve been here. That goes for both the Berado and those guys.”
“But those were demons!” she hissed.
It was an understandable reaction, in Brigitte’s case. We had run into them too many times in the last half-year. And there had been an undeclared, unending war between the demonic race and the rest of the world for thousands of years. The way demons see all other species only as fodder, raw material and tools renders peaceful coexistence impossible. That’s one Anime cliché that Huade didn’t cover. It’s not one of those ‘demons are people too’ kind of places.
“And relatively high-level ones, yes,” I answered, calmly. “But we know nothing about what they are doing here, nor do we know how many more there might be, nor, most importantly, what they might do if they thought this entrance has been discovered. We’ve still got somebody to rescue down there, remember? We cannot risk them getting the idea they need to seal this entrance before we get her out.”
“Right,” Dilorè nodded, showing dawning understanding in her eyes. “Somebody already sealed one entrance, in Lisrau. If it was their idea, they might seal this one too.”
“So what do we do now?” I asked them. “It’s another five hundred paces down, and we don’t know what we’ll find down there. Do we keep going, or get out now and report what we know so far?”
“Those guys were headed up, so it’s probably open all the way down,” Dilorè said. “But we can’t say for certain that they didn’t only just now go down, find the way blocked and return. We can only say it’s open for certain once somebody makes it all the way down.”
I considered her words, then pointed at the pouch holding Lucy’s stone.
“What range do you figure Lucy’s clone can fly from this stone?”
“Probably only a hundred paces or so,” she answered. “But that’s an excellent idea, Your Highness. I think I shall borrow it.”
Facing away from us, she produced a short, thin wand from her belt-wallet and pointed it to the floor in front of her feet. A glowing magic circle spread out from the tips of her sabatons across the floor.
“Aa, movin / Cili gipave / Dâ dànrànydd / Dihevaí!” she chanted. (Oh Wind / To this place / Your spirit / Convey!).
I was surprised to hear Fairy being spoken in an incantation. Fairy magic rarely uses chants, and only occasionally uses invocation words. It’s usually completely silent.
A wind spirit appeared before our eyes, hovering at about eye level in front of her. Although ‘our’ eyes meant just Dilore’s and mine, as Brigitte couldn’t see it. Like the one from the other night, it was an amorphous cloud, constantly shifting in volume and form. Thanks to the fact that I was looking at it simultaneously with physical sight and fairy sight, it was effectively transparent.
Dilorè’s mouth began moving, but I couldn’t hear anything but a slight, whispery breath escaping her lips. She had the appearance of someone silently rehearsing their lines, but her eyes were fixed on the wind spirit as she ‘spoke’. The spirit clearly heard something from it, because after a short ‘conversation’, and a stream of Light mana passing from Dilorè to it, it flew off, disappearing down the staircase from which the demons had appeared.
Before I could ask Dilorè about it, Lucy appeared in front of me, then flew out of the stealth concealment to circle the summoning circle, clearly curious about it. She didn’t say anything at all for a while, until she looked up in our direction and her eyes grew wide.
“Where?” she asked, tipping her head. She began looking all around.
“My Lady, drop your stealth,” I said. “You’re confusing her.”
“Hm. She just has to undo the cloning and she’d come back, though,” Dilorè mused, with a curl touching the corners of her lips.
“Don’t be mean,” I chided, and she chuckled. The stealth spell vanished, and we reappeared in front of Lucy’s eyes.
“There!” she declared triumphantly, flying up to us.
The stealth returned, encompassing her along with us. Lucy appeared to notice the spell, because she flew around us, now fascinated by the spell’s perimeter.
“Can your friend find us again with this spell active?” I wondered.
“It will return to the circle,” Dilorè stated confidently, then added, “It probably never saw us in the first place. My stealth would have hidden us from it.”
“But you were able to talk to it?” I pointed out.
“Spirits communicate via a different medium, and that medium isn’t blocked by this stealth. If you have the aptitude to communicate in that manner, you can learn to employ them in spirit magic, to speak to them and to train them.”
Durandal had also mentioned that spirit communication worked on a different wave-length, so to speak. I nodded.
“So, when is somebody going to tell me what’s going on?” Brigitte asked, sounding annoyed. “A big magic circle appeared, then Lady Dilorè started acting weird, then your bug showed up. I’m not following any of this!”
Dilorè laughed lightly, looking at the fox girl with an apologetic smile. “I summoned a wind spirit and contracted it to fly through the tunnels down to the cavern, remaining in open air. Once it either reaches the cavern or encounters an obstruction it can’t get through without passing through rock, it will return and report.”
“Reaches!” Lucy declared suddenly, upon flying up to my face and throwing her arms out wide.
I was confused by the strange declaration. “What reaches?”
She means the Wind spirit reached the bottom, My Lady, Durandal interpreted.
Simultaneously, Lucy answered, pointing at the staircase down, “Wind spirit!”
I thought for a moment, then asked Dilorè, “Do you suppose that means she’s talking with it now?”
“Talking!” Lucy nodded, with her arms crossed. “Coming up!”
Looking a bit bemused, Dilorè held up her hand, like a priest saying a blessing, and a small magic circle appeared in front of it, facing Lucy. The little figure turned and looked at the circle, tilting her head.
Dilorè was doing the silent speech thing again, for several seconds, then stood there, nodding once or twice. She dropped her hand and the circle vanished. Lucy turned and watched the exit down, done with whatever it was the two had been discussing.
“Looks like simultaneous to my deal with that Wind spirit, Lucy was interviewing it about the missing princess, and exchanging other information. It seems that conversation kept going after it departed.”
“Long enough for it to reach the bottom, five hundred paces below us?” I asked, doubting what I was hearing.
“They can keep a connection up over a fairly long distance,” Dilorè explained. “If a Wind spirit is involved, the range can be miles.”
“Lucy’s a Light spirit though.”
“It’s limited by the spirit with the shorter range. If she were talking to a fellow Light spirit, she could communicate for thousands of miles. Ah, my friend’s back.”
The Wind spirit had indeed arrived, appearing once again above the large magic circle. Dilorè again held conference with it, then turned back to us.
“Just as Lucy said, it reached the bottom without hitting any obstructions. It verified that a large open space filled with vegetation and creatures is awaiting us down there. It wants to show me a picture of it.”
“Show you a picture?” Brigitte asked, one of her ears flattening out as the opposite eyebrow went up. I have to admit, that sounded a little strange to me, too.
“A wind spirit’s imagery is hard to describe. And I have no way of projecting it to you, so it will only be able to show me. This one’s a cheeky little profiteer, it seems. Since it wasn’t part of our contract, it wants to charge me an exorbitant price. Should I pay?”
“It wants money?” Brigitte retorted, astonished.
“It wants either mana or juicy information,” I answered.
Dilorè looked a little surprised, but nodded with a smile. “Exactly, Your Highness. And it already received Light mana from me. It wants something else it can’t normally find.”
“If it hangs out down here, that would be Healing or Aether,” I stated. “Ask it which it would like.”
Dilorè’s eyebrows rose. “You’re able to pay mana to a spirit?”
I hesitated as I realized that it was Durandal who had handled the transfer before. But, by now, Dilorè had to have noticed my ‘magic sword’ was, at the least, very unusual. I had seen her shoot Durandal intrigued looks before.
Bless his soul, my trusty holy sword realized what I was struggling with and offered a solution. If you coat me with mana, Lucy can transfer it, Your Highness. I’ll tell her what we want while you explain to Her Ladyship.
I repeated, “If I coat my blade with it, Lucy can transfer it. We were able to make a deal with the Wind spirit that led me to Amelia that way.”
“Ah,” Dilorè nodded. “So that’s how you managed to get its help.”
She turned back to her Wind spirit and negotiated a bit longer, then nodded and told me, “It agreed.”
I pulled Durandal out as I told Lucy, “Don’t give it everything. Only give it as much as she agreed to.”
I carefully summoned a small dose of Healing and coated Durandal’s blade. Shortly after that, I saw a thin stream flow from the blade to Lucy’s spirit stone, and onward from her to the Wind spirit.
Hahaha, Durandal chortled. Lucy’s charging you a toll. That Wind spirit isn’t getting everything she’s taking.
I had been wondering what a Wind spirit or a Light spirit would need Healing mana for, and realized that I had a companion who could probably answer that question, since his existence had begun in spirit form. But I couldn’t ask him right now. I still couldn’t manage to speak to him accurately without using my voice.
When the stream stopped, Durandal said, I would like to absorb the rest for myself, My Lady.
As a response, I just nodded, then put the blade away. The Healing mana disappeared from the blade, vanishing into wherever a spirit or a sword kept its mana.
“Oh, dear,” I heard Dilorè say, in a very troubled voice.
In response to Brigitte and I turning questioning looks toward her, she explained, “I just reviewed the images the Wind spirit sold us. We have a problem.”
“What did you see, My Lady?” I asked.
“Demons. A large group of them, having a meal. They included several imps and a fiend.” She twisted her mouth and added, “It looked like they had a base set up, right at the entrance tunnel mouth.”
