.
I thought about how our location looked to mortal eyes. There would be nothing visible to Brigitte except what the [Fireball] and the [Fairy Light] lit. The space beyond, both above us and down the two corridors, receded into pitch black in her vision.
Brigitte had asked a valid question, but I pointed at the ‘outrider’. “Diur gave us a guide.”
She looked vaguely in that direction, then I realized why and apologized.
“Sorry, you can’t see it, right? It resembles a Wind spirit.”
She nodded. “Yeah, I can see Fire spirits and Dark spirits a little, but not other elements.”
That shocked me. Fire and Darkness are the racial affinities of Fox kindred, but if she could actually see them, someone should have taken her in as a mage apprentice. Fairy sight, even limited to one or two elements, is a rare and valuable ability to non-fairies.
“With an aptitude like that, why didn’t you train to be a mage?”
“Our village had nobody that could teach a mage, but my big brother could teach me how to hunt. He uses a lot of Dark skills.”
“For stealing as well, maybe?” I teased with a grin.
She frowned, then humphed. “It was mostly my mom that taught me those skills.”
“The halfling?” I asked with surprise.
“Being small is a big advantage for thieves,” she said with a toothy fox grin. Then her mirth vanished like it had been a lie.
“That bastard knocked me out, right?” she asked, as she scooted closer to the [Fireball]. She still looked cold.
I said nothing at first, thinking it over. Then I noted, “That man is who-knows-how-many thousands of years older than us. He’s probably older than the Fairy King. I’m sure he sees us as infants, and he’s doing what he believes he needs to do to protect us.”
She frowned at me. “So you’re just letting him off the hook like that?”
“No,” I answered with a shake of my head. “I’m as angry as you. I want to dive back into the water, swim back to him and give him a piece of my mind. Only, I don’t know how to bring you with me, and I can’t leave you here on your own.”
We were checkmated, after all. And we had walked right into it.
Frustrating.
Brigitte looked around the darkness outside our tiny lights and wondered, “Do you think this place is empty?”
“I doubt it,” I told her, looking around as well. “It should be open to the cavern we’re headed to, so animals should be able to wander in. Although, nothing much seems to be growing in here, so they might not be interested. A few might wander in to build nests or sleep, I guess. Keep warming yourself up. I’ll do some checking.”
“Checking?”
“It’s kind of like [Detect Presence],” I explained. I shifted over to the wall and leaned my back against it.
“More skills you never told us about,” she griped, but it wasn’t as bitter as usual. She probably didn’t have the energy for it.
Closing my eyes, I expanded my sense outward again. Now that I had mostly overcome the old Tiana’s dislike of her vampire skills, I was starting to become more adept at this. My senses expanded out, around, above and below. I quickly verified that this was the lowest level above water. Four flooded levels below turned out nothing like this barren level. Three grew thick with mana-active plants, and fish and subaquatic monsters were abundant. The bottommost was choked with ancient muck.
I concentrated on the passages leading away from this landing. Other than an occasional insect, I didn’t encounter anything. Just empty room after empty room, standing along empty corridors.
It felt unnatural.
I want to underscore the word ’empty’. This place had once been an office complex, an apartment complex, a warehouse and a manufacturing center of sorts. I didn’t know what function the rooms which I was sensing played, but they were completely empty now. Dust must have been a rare event here, because in the ten thousand years since it was abandoned, hardly any had accumulated.
That thought made me frown. Was that even possible? Even rarified dust must be floating in, or flaking off the walls, or dropping off the occasional visiting animal. Heck, even decomposing insects should have created at least enough to cause a thick layer on the floor over the last ten thousand years. I put my hand on the floor next to me and felt. It seemed to be quite clean.
I opened my eyes to see Brigitte untying her breechcloth. She had already shed the dudou.
“Um…”
“They’re too soaked,” she told me. “We need to dry them.”
“Hm. Put them back on. I have an idea.”
She shrugged and retied it. Once she had her top back on, I stood and chanted, “[Fairy Breeze.]”
I willed the wind to circle both of us, blow drying our hair and skin. But after a while, she frowned and shook her head. I ended the spell.
“My skin will be dry as leather before it even begins to dry my clothes. We need to just take them off and let them dry, My Lady.”
She was right. Currently, everything under my clothes was still soaked, but my skin felt like a desert. I nodded and started stripping as well. Yes, I totally forgot about the ‘proxy’ still floating there, waiting for us. In retrospect, I just hope Diur was telling the truth. Well, if he lied, then he had already seen me naked more than once, anyway. Good thing I didn’t do anything else at that time.
We laid our clothing out down the corridor a little, and I moved my harness, sword and dagger over to lie beside them, emptying my belt-wallet of it’s current contents as well, then I set up a slightly hotter [Fireball] there. After we retreated to the landing, I resumed the [Fairy Breeze]. I had an inspiration and caused the first [Fireball] to float into the stream of the [Fairy Breeze] slightly, causing the wind to warm up. We were dry in very little time.
I dropped the [Fairy Breeze], [Fairy Light] and the small [Fireball], leaving just the big [Fireball] drawing our clothes, since I wanted to conserve my magic. The one spell remaining gave plenty of light and was giving some warmth even at the distance we were standing. I had a reserve blood supply in my blood core, but that didn’t mean I could afford to waste it.
It was then that I noticed Brigitte looking at me funny.
Mind you, I was mostly avoiding looking at her. I wasn’t really in any immediate danger of blood hunger, but I didn’t need to test that theory with a comely little nude fox-girl. Although, I will dutifully report that her body is indeed comely. Pleasant, gentle hills with tiny tips and an athletic, yet not particularly boyish figure.
I averted my eyes once again, then asked, “What is it?”
“You had three spells going at the same time just now, right?”
That fact had gone right past me until she mentioned it. I admitted, “Yes. I was chaining [Fireball], so it was three spells in total.”
“That’s the same as level three magic, right?” She asked as she sat at the mouth of the corridor.
“Well,” I blushed a bit, then sat as well, resting my back against the wall. “Yeah, I suppose it is. But I don’t know any level three spells.”
It really had never occurred to me that I had been doing multi-level magic every time I maintained [Fortification] or coated mana while at the same time casting magic with my brush or my fan. This was supposed to be a difficult thing. Mages were supposed to work for months and even years to level up, and I had never even paid attention enough to determine exactly how many spells I could cast at once.
Skills don’t count. Skills process differently. They are embedded in the blood, nerves and bones and draw their mana through the body. They don’t use the mage’s mystic reservoir that stores spells or the mystic cognition that accesses those spells or consciously manipulates mana.
Of course, I had been using mystic cognition all along, for my mana coating and other raw techniques. I only gained a mystic reservoir recently, the storage for spell forms which seems to be crippled in Elder bodies, leaving us dependent on our Servants. Had that been enough? Had I been leveling up since the day Matthias first taught me how to use mana with my blade? Or had I been subconsciously manipulating magic using Senhion’s previously acquired skill level?
I shrugged. I couldn’t figure it out here. I gave her the best answer I could. “I’m a magic swordswoman. I’m supposed to be adept at magic.”
She shook her head, then said, “I’m gonna lay a little closer to the fire. That fire isn’t gonna move, right?”
“It won’t move until I let it,” I told her. I had very firmly fixed it to that spot, using the strong consciousness of position of an Elder to nail it down.
She nodded, then picked a spot not far from the clothes to lie down. In a short time, she had again curled up into her fetal ball while hugging her tail.
Again, I cannot express how cute it is when she does that.
With a smile, I closed my eyes and tried using fairy sense to explore, this time. That’s what reminded me of the presence of Diur’s ‘outrider’, causing me another blush, but it was certainly too late to worry about it now. I went seeking again, fruitlessly exploring empty corridors out to the extent of my range. I found a few mysterious mana constructs buried in the walls, which I figured were ancient remnants of the complex that had once thrived her, but none seemed active. They were simply waiting forever for someone to use them.
Growing tired of it, I first went to check the clothing, moving the [Fireball] down the corridor, out of the way. I decided to flip all the items over, except Brigitte’s silk dudou, which was already dry. I dropped that next to her sleeping form.
After putting the [Fireball] back into place, I descended the stairs to the water’s edge, about a pace below the level of our floor. It was disconcerting to use steps that were tipped forward, thanks to the tilt. I sat down on the bottommost dry step and rested my legs in the water. The ‘muck’ burying the stairs turned out to have long since hardened, except for a thin coat of relatively firm mud. That mud, thanks to the steep slope of the stairs, would make it difficult to get out of the water, if I went for a swim. I would need to just fly out.
In my fairy sense, I noticed a little school of fish swimming out of a corridor on the level below and wondered if I could catch one, the way my grandmother can. Someday, I was going to try that…
“Back off!” Brigitte’s sudden yell snapped me back to the present, followed by her call, “My Lady!”
In the same moment, I felt weak mana moving in the corridor behind me. I scrambled up the stairs to see stark naked Brigitte facing something like a thin cloud hovering near the floor containing multiple types of mana in the dim space beyond.
