.
At dawn, I stood in front of the portal, which still looked like the monolith from “Space Odyssey” to my mind, with a shadow I hadn’t brought through before.
“My Lady, you do not need to come with me,” I told her.
She frowned, looking frustrated with herself, then stated, “I feel like I should, though.”
I sighed. It was definitely post-bonding confusion. She had been amorous at first when I woke her in the dawn hours, but obedient when I stopped her and told her to control herself. Given her personality, I had expected something like Ceria’s personality change after bonding, which could be only barely held in check by the bracelet, but in retrospect, I suspect Ceria might have been indulging in a little exaggerated behavior when she noticed how well it worked as a means to tease me.
Chiara was also an extrovert, but a more disciplined one. She could hold back. Which was good, since I was not giving her a bracelet. I had brought one, because I had commissioned Allia to make me spares and Ceria and Melione had been carrying them. I had carried one of them in my belt-wallet since Dausindiu.
For now, I didn’t want her to have it. Blood-slavery was more effective as handcuffs without it. Amelia had it now, in case Chiara had to return without me.
I considered ordering her to go back to the cottage, but then decided that perhaps it was better for her to come along with me anyway. If it turned out to be time to go support Allia and company, I would just have to come back and fetch her, anyway. Besides, her inability to separate from me was an indication that the handcuffs were working. Why fight it?
“Fine,” I conceded. “But if something happens and I order you to return without me, you will obey without hesitation. Is that clear?”
Her brow wrinkled, but she nodded. “Yes, My Lady.”
I turned to the monolith. “Portal, I wish to bring the individual to my right along with me. Will she be allowed back in if she returns on her own?”
“The individual listed as ‘Chiara’ remains welcome until the world system deems otherwise.”
This portal system, unlike the world manager, Busy Lu, did not seem to have evolved an actual human-like personality. Both Busy Lu and my Little Jia spoke and acted far more like people than my memory suggested they should. Ten thousand years of self-management and self-repair seemed to have led to self-evolution for them. I suppose a portal system just sat there and kept to itself, waiting for visitors, while the world managers were actively involved in keeping their worlds stable and alive.
Suddenly, I felt a little sorry for Mr. Portal System. It sounded like a lonely existence. Although I don’t think it had the self-awareness to notice.
Then the portal surprised me. “The individual listed as ‘Chiara’ appears to have become a Servant to the Elder Senhion, Commander, Third Legion, since passing through this portal.”
“You can tell?” I retorted, surprised.
“The bond with Commander Senhion is evident in Chiara’s aura. The change in status has been reported to the world system, and to the network of portal systems serving the twenty four legions.”
You guys are networked together? I almost retorted. Then I remembered speaking to Little Jia through the portal and realized it made sense. If such connections weren’t the norm, it would have been a heck of a coincidence that one happened to exist between here and my home cave.
“Thank you,” I answered. “Chiara is not fluent in Ha-ne. What means can she use to indicate that she needs to return to this world?”
“If this system identifies her, it can open automatically.”
“From what distance can you identify her?”
“This system can sense the presence of a metacognitive being within twenty four times twenty four units of the portal, but can only identify individuals within twenty four units of the portal.”
I cannot think of any unit in the English language to translate the Ha-ne measure. I’m already using ‘span’ for the Orestanian ten-inch ‘foot’. That’s why I’m just saying ‘unit’ in my translation. The Elder unit is around eight inches. So she would have to be within around three paces of the portal.
Worst case, in order to find the portal again, she would have to slowly walk along the dome wall until she entered the radius.
“Please alert her and open for her if she enters the identification radius. We’re going through now.”
“Understood, Commander,” it answered, then the surface of the monolith ‘grayed out’.
“Let’s go,” I told her and we passed through, into the pleasure dome.
“We’re on our way down,” was my cousin’s way of saying “Hello” this time.
“You already took out the soldiers in the monastery?”
“It was hardly going to be a challenge,” she answered with some laughter in her voice.
“I hope you took out twelve soldiers,” I said, worrying.
“Why twelve?”
“Brigitte stole a pay sheet that showed payouts for twelve soldier salaries,” I answered.
“I see. Well, the local resistance provided soldiers to hold the monastery while we descended, anyhow. That village leader, that local mage and her student are among them. If we miss any soldiers, they can deal with them.”
I remembered Fol, Melis and Flinne. Dilorè was banking upon a couple retirees and a pre-teen girl. I hoped they weren’t typical of the rest of the soldiers.
My anxiety was coming back in force. “What if they come with reinforcements?”
“The Berado have their hands full with Rufin’s Brigade right now. And in a few hours, the Aerial Cavalry will be arriving from Dausindiu. They fly at dawn.”
If they were using the wyverns that are well-adapted to mountain flying, they wouldn’t arrive until close to noon. This was not soothing my anxieties much.
“I’m heading back into the main cavern,” I told her. “I have Lady Chiara with me. We need to do something about the highway.”
“The what?” she queried with a puzzled tone.
“There is an underground route from here down to the Berado home valley,” I explained. “Tell Talene it’s the goat path. She’ll understand why we need to cut it off.”
I was throwing her Thermopylae metaphor back at her. Dilorè should understand the danger without the metaphor, but if Talene told her the story, it would confirm it without me wasting time on it now.
“How far down are you?” I asked.
“We’re around four hundred paces lower than the entrance,” she said. “We’re still a couple hours away, I imagine.”
I had given her a broad description of the descent on one of our previous contacts, so she understood that there were many long ramps involved in the descent. Brigitte and I had stopped many times so I could sense ahead, but most of the eight hours from the surface to the cavern had been walking time, proceeding in caution. They were probably moving faster, this time.
“Well,” I theorized, “if they happen to notice us, it will distract them from you guys.”
“If we get all the way down to the cavern undiscovered, we plan to say hello at the exit,” she told me. “We’ll do some damage to the base, retreat, and take a defensive position.”
I felt a chill upon hearing that. “Make sure to be ready to defend against poison and flame attacks.”
“Allia has been going over our defenses,” Dilorè verified. “We have five wind mages to rotate through. We can make the demons regret any such attempt.”
I blinked. Okay, I knew Talene had six out of seven elements, and Dilorè had all seven, as is normal for a greater fairy, that being the characteristic that gave the greater fairy tribe the claim to the word ‘greater’, but five would mean that Arken, Ceria and Allia also…
Yeah, now that I thought about it, all three had Wind as one of their affinities. They could serve up a serious surprise to any demon that tried a breath attack on them. My anxiety decreased, but only very slightly.
“Be careful, okay?” I begged. “You’re facing a SS class demon!”
I ended the call with my heart still black with worry.
Chiara was watching me with a concerned look on her face. She looked like she wanted to say something.
“Say it,” I told her.
“We’re going out there to face the archdemon right now?”
“My plan is to not face him,” I stated. “But I want to cut off any attempt to surprise our allies from the rear.”
That was the theory, anyway. Although my real motivation was that I couldn’t bask in an idyllic paradise while my comrades were going into harm’s way.
I added, “You heard me warning Brigitte and Her Highness that it was possible we wouldn’t return when we go out. You heard all the instructions I gave.”
She nodded sadly. “I would have liked to apologize once more.”
It sounded as if she expected not to survive. Well, it was an archdemon after all.
I frowned and told her, “The last thing Amelia wants to hear from you is an apology.”
Her eyes clouded as she bit her lip.
I sighed. “My Lady, you are either a Brosian or a southerner. Either way, you aren’t an Atian. Do you know what it means to apologize to an Atian?”
With her brow bunching up, she looked down.
I decided to say it anyway. “The reason we have so many formal procedures for social interactions is that we value them very highly. The apology is one of the highest valued. We Atians are a very aggressive people. We’re taught that apologies are what keep us from killing each other. You apologized once, with your confession. That was correct. But if you do it again, it means you are asking forgiveness. Do not even suggest that you request forgiveness, My Lady.”
Still looking down, she nodded.
Because Chiara could stay underwater full-time, we took the outlet stream passage back to the main cavern. Its existence surprised Chiara, since they had used the same path we did to come in. I concluded that Diur had considered it safer for Amelia to stay in the ‘deep dive trance’ for the shorter amount of time that path required. He didn’t have [Healing] at his disposal to counter any ill effects, after all.
Upon reaching the mouth of the passage, I could sense no ongoing battles nearby, and my vampire sense picked up no demons in the vicinity of the lake, so we proceeded outward.
We retrieved the buried packs and equipped Chiara with Brigitte’s stuff. She was grateful to have the daggers and bow, but as a combat mage, what she really needed was a magic focus. That put me in mind of the demons we had killed. I carried Chiara in my arms and flew while Cloaked to the alraune’s clearing.
When I located the gnarled root, laying near the dead hag that I had swatted all the way out of the woods, I gave it a solid blast of purification to destroy the residual demonic mana I could sense inside it, then handed it to her. She hefted the twisted stick, charged it, then shook her head with a wry smirk.
“From the feedback, I think it’s goldleaf wood, but I can’t imagine what kind of tortured environment it grew in, to become this distorted.”
I nodded. Rowan trees usually grow fairly straight, especially so for the magically-enhanced golden-leafed variety that grows near mana springs.
None of the mana-conductive swords wielded by the wraith magic swordsmen remained, though. Either the demons or local monsters had collected them all. I had hoped to equip Chiara with one.
I had been waiting ever since we came out for what happened next, so it came as no surprise to me. It startled Chiara, though.
“My Lady,” Diur’s voice, sounding a bit tired, came from out of thin air. “Why are you out here, again?”
