.
I had to stabilize my sense after the depressing discovery of the mud-choked passage shook my control, but before I could look for the next entrance, I noticed something approaching me.
Extending the vampire sense into the distance requires concentration, but while it’s active, I see the close range area surrounding me constantly. Close in, my fairy sense is always on. Only extending the range requires active effort. But my fairy sense was showing me nothing.
In my vampire sense, I could feel a vague presence within my field of Darkness. I learned in that moment that stealth that defeats my fairy sense can still appear in my vampire sense. Mother’s ability to hide from me had been a source of frustration for Tiana since forever. This discovery made me unreasonably excited. I had to force myself to focus on the present and my approaching visitor.
I had no time to dig out my socks and shoes from my pack, so I withdrew my legs from the water, stood and turned to confront the visitor barefooted, summoning Fire mana to my upraised palm, just in case.
The form of a human figure with giant bird wings coalesced in my sense, showing that it was probably Diurhimath. He gave a chuckle and dropped his Cloak when he drew near.
“Looks like you spotted me this time, My Lady. That’s very well done for one so young.”
I didn’t much like being spoken to as a child, but this being was probably millennia older than the current me, so I told myself to put up with it.
Diur landed a couple paces away from Brigitte, then sat where he landed, cross-legged. He began digging into his bag.
I noticed that Brigitte hadn’t woken, and went over to wake her. It was odd that she hadn’t, so I decided she must be a lot more fatigued than I realized. Had she not had good sleep at the village yesterday?
Thinking it might be a good idea to give her a boost, I channeled Healing mana and held my palm out toward her.
“[Restoration].”
As soon as Brigitte’s eyes opened, her ears stood straight up and she rolled onto her feet facing our visitor.
I looked back over to him. He was staring at me with widened eyes and a slightly slack jaw.
“You really can use Holy magic,” he stated, saying it as if confirming it to himself.
I nodded. “You’re acting like you didn’t believe it until now. You should know it already. I hit you with it twice.”
“Holy magic?” Brigitte asked, confused.
I told her, “He means Healing magic.”
“Of course I didn’t believe it,” he stated. “I thought I imagined it, because I wasn’t in my right mind at the time.”
“Then what did you think hit you?” I asked. “It was a powerful attack. You certainly noticed it.”
He sighed and then nodded. “Yes, I knew I was hit with [Purification]. But I was still delirious then, and after I followed you a while, I realized you were still a child. I thought I must have misunderstood. I thought you must have either used an artifact on me, or one of your companions was the one who actually cast the magic.”
He returned to digging into his pack, extracting a familiar style of hardtack. We had bought the same kind in the village of Magrau. Had he been following me there, too?
Glancing at me, he asked, “You two have supplies?”
“You don’t need to worry about us,” Brigitte answered flatly.
He grew a wry quirk to his smile and then bit off a piece while rummaging in his pack again. After extracting a corked bottle gourd, he told us, “I drove off that general and his gang. We’ve had a few battles before this, so it didn’t take long to convince him.”
“You drove off a Class S demon alone?” I asked while he was taking a swig, not bothering to hide my doubts. “When a Class A demon had you under her control before?”
He corked the gourd and dropped his hand holding the bottle to his lap. He pooched his lips, then laughed. “That’s a fair point. But, I’m quite a bit older than you, My Lady. Now that I’m regaining my strength, I’m also stronger than you. Although I’m still handicapped by a lack of resources, a general without a force worthy of a general behind him is just another strong demon. Until he can bring in an army, he can’t beat me.”
“Then how did you end up under that asura’s control in the first place?”
“Asura… I assume you mean Lady Trisiagga, the commander back in C’r Al’t’xa?”
“Cur… You mean Carael, I guess?”
He pooched his lips again. “Cara Elata was the name of a city long ago, on the surface above C’r Al’t’xa. The resemblance is my fault, since I named the city after the land that once thrived underneath it. The two were separated by several thousand years. I was referring to the cavern where we met.”
I remembered the legend Uncle Arken had made me read. Diur really was the demon from that legend then. I was curious how Arken had connected the two.
“You didn’t answer my question,” I told him.
He humphed and nodded. “I’m embarrassed to admit it, but she caught me with a sneak attack. In my defense, I was in a highly vulnerable state at that time.”
“Did you come out of that monument that shattered, like they said?” Brigitte asked. “The people in Cara Ita said that the demon showed up when something destroyed the monument.”
“I did,” he nodded. “An immortal emissary wrapped me in a preservation cocoon when I began losing to the Affliction. She told me that the supervisors had figured out that the disease would die if I stayed in the cocoon long enough. The mortals must have found the ‘monument’ and moved it into a shrine to worship it. Trisiagga somehow figured out what was inside it and released me. She captured me with her puppet magic before I knew what was happening.”
“How long was long enough?” I wondered. “That legend was at least three thousand years old!”
He gave an embarrassed smile. “My meditation turned into hibernation before the Affliction finally vanished from my body. I never woke to discover I was cured.”
“This emissary never checked on you?” I wondered.
With a sad, thoughtful stare at the piece of hardtack in his hand, he suggested, “Perhaps she thought it would be a mercy to let me sleep. There was nobody else of my kind left, after all.”
He turned that thoughtful stare to me, then said, “Which brings us to you. I was the last of my kind, so how did you come to be? Did your mother put a time skip curse on you? Hide you in a time dilation space? Or perhaps she put you in some kind of preservation state like I was in?”
I debated whether or not to explain to him. I couldn’t come up with a way to avoid it, other than just refusing to answer. I was convinced he was quite strong, having felt that battle between him and the demons until he had driven his enemy far enough away that I couldn’t sense it. Trying to convince him I wasn’t really the same kind as him just wasn’t a good idea. Our safety was currently ensured by the fact that he believed that I was.
But his theory that I was a child of that ancient era and my parents had somehow forwarded me to this time to put me out of danger… it was a great story, with a superman origin vibe that I appreciated, but I didn’t remember enough details about that era, or about how the methods he suggested would work, to pull it off. I decided against it, in favor of the simple truth.
“The supervisors arranged for me to be born,” I told him. “My mother was a fairy and my father was a vampire. Oranos figured out that, between my specific parents, a child of our kind would be born.”
Or perhaps with any fairy and vampire? I suspected that wasn’t the case. Oberon had suggested that my ancestry having multiple demigods might be part of the formula too.
He frowned, shaking his head. “So you really are only fifteen years old? I had thought that was a cover story the Orestanians made for you.”
“You said it yourself, that I was a child.”
“But I figured you were at least forty or fifty, getting close to adulthood. You have Servants, after all.”
“How much have you been stalking me?” I demanded. “How do you know that?”
He raised his eyebrows. “Obviously, I know because you’ve been throwing magic spells around, child. I lost my spiritual body to the Affliction, so having no Servants is my biggest handicap right now. Other than a few magic seals and blood magic using the core I built in Copen, I have no spells to cast.”
Senhion knowledge floated up, shaken loose with those words. If one’s servants died, one lost the ability to cast their magic. The ‘seals’ he mentioned were a way to preserve a few of the spells learned from a servant, but it wasn’t possible to have seals for every spell in a good magician’s repertoire. Each seal cost the Elder dearly to create, and could hold only the equivalent of a small grimoire.
It was a sobering reminder that Melione and Ceria would die, some day. Their lifespan wasn’t unlimited like mine.
Being reminded of his crimes, my attitude about him hardened. It might have been a bit catty, but I asked him, “You were attacking all those girls in Copen. Why didn’t you take a few of them for servants?”
He grew immediately stern. “Is that how you got Servants at such a young age? You forced them?”
My cheeks grew hot. “My first happened by accident. I didn’t really know enough about what I was doing at the time. The other was a volunteer. And they’re both fine. I paid good money to have magic items made to protect their independence.”
His expression softened again. “So the vampires preserved that knowledge, at least. Do they still know how to teach Servants to cultivate so they can learn to do without the tools?”
“Um… I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
After hearing that, he twisted his lips. “I’ll have to help you teach yours. They shouldn’t be left at the mercy of tools.”
The way he spoke made it sound like he planned to stick around with me. I frowned. “Look… I know you might be getting some idea about being the last man and woman and rebuilding our race, but I have no intention of helping you. You better give up now.”
His eyes grew, and his brows wrinkled in puzzlement. Then he grew a mild smile. “I guess it’s true then. You really didn’t have a X’n’e mother. There was nobody to tell you where X’n’e babies come from.”
An instant crimson blush covered my face, my Tiana DNA instantly going hyper-maiden on me. “I know where babies come from!”
“Apparently not, if you think I can father a X’n’e child,” he said, sounding amused now. “Only a mortal man can give a X’n’e a baby. X’n’e males like me are an aberration, one in a hundred births, and we can only father mortal babies, and only in mortal wombs. So it’s unfortunate, but you will have to rebuild our race without my help, My Lady. My offer to help you is out of concern for your servants, not an effort to ingratiate myself with you.”
Still embarrassed by the subject, I looked down. I was also embarrassed to have forgotten this fact. It was part of my knowledge from Senhion. One of the ways we were dependent upon mortals was for reproduction.
“In the sense that every adult protects children with an eye toward protecting the future, you could say I’m hoping for you to bear that future, but the only role I can play is to protect.”
He took another swig, corked his bottle gourd again, and stuck it back in the pack. He turned back to me and nodded.
“We can talk about the future later. We have a more pressing concern, right now. We need to get you two out of this cavern before that general’s reinforcements arrive.”
