.
“I might not be ready to work as a fairy knight.”
We were in the entrance tunnel, and Lady Dilorè and I were on point when she said that to me. Talene, Ceria and Lady Allia were behind us, taking turns levitating Diur’s stretcher, while Melione monitored his condition. In order to hide all the missing flesh, damage to a degree that would have been lethal for any mortal and most fairies, we had swathed Diur heavily in bandages, making him look like something from a comedy bit. We also strapped him down to the stretcher, out of fear for his twice-broken spine.
Amelia had finally stopped clinging to me– she had been quite possessive for a while after we finally retrieved her and Brigitte that morning– and was allowing Ryuu to escort her back with the rest, behind the stretcher group.
Because we had a princess with us, we were organized as a protective detail for the sake of protocol. We had no known enemy to fight. We and the Arelians who came down into the cavern to support us had long since mopped up the demons and the Berado troops, both in the cavern below and the plateau above.
Now, an allied force of Orestanians, Arelians and adventurers were holding the cavern, with planning underway for an expansion northward and southward to take over the underground and find the passage coming in from the Regaritan side of the Great Wall. King Owen had sent a large contingent of Royal Mages and army combat mages to guard against the threat of a returning archfiend or worse, so they had plenty of firepower to replace us.
We had been rescuing demon victims and sending them to the surface for days, while I and Melione gave Diur repeated doses of [Restoration] to keep fatigue from deteriorating his depleted pneuma further. Now, five days after the battle, we could at last bring Diur and Amelia to where they respectively needed to go.
We would surely be back. An incoming passage from the Demon Wastes was also a corridor straight back to the heart of demon territory. Sooner or later, it would be Ryuu’s job to lead a force there to defeat the evil that had befallen the Regaritans, and this might become the best invasion route.
Dilorè had broken my reverie with those words. Until that moment, I had been deep in thought over how I was going to deal with Lady Chiara once we were back on the surface.
“Why would you say such a thing?” I asked her.
“My two hundred years of seniority didn’t count for much the other day.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked, slightly baffled.
“I’m talking about the fight against the archdemon, of course.”
“You were the most important element through most of that fight!”
She gave me a slightly odd look, then noted, “You were not there until the end, so I don’t know how you can say that.”
“I can see the abilities of those who fought the fight, and reconstruct it,” I told her. “I will describe it to you, now. The team was successfully blocking the tunnel, and even pushing the enemy back into the cavern. Then, the archdemon executed an unknown Dark magic that allowed him to pass through the rock into a lightless section behind you, trapping you between himself and all the upper- and mid-level demons in the cavern. When that happened, a very powerful magic caster shielded the rearguard who were suddenly facing an archdemon that far out-classed them. That magic user was you. Am I right?”
Her face clouded as she said, “I couldn’t hold him in place though. He shoved me backward until we were forced out into the cavern.”
“Where you conducted a brilliant offense while Allia, Arken, Talene and Ceria mostly rotated to provide a defense. It was all they could do to hold up against an archdemon and an archfiend working together. Bruna and Graham became wounded when they had to leave that defense to make their attacks. You and Ryuu did the same, but came out unharmed only due to your sheer strength.”
She pressed her lips together as she listened to my assessment, not contesting anything.
“It was a team effort,” she confirmed. “So how do I come out as the most important link?”
“You made it possible for the others to hold out. You were doing the lion’s share of the attacks, weren’t you? There’s a saying, ‘the best defense is a good offense’.”
I’m not sure if anyone actually puts it that way on Huade, but there are Orestanian military adages that add up to the same idea.
She was silent, so I continued, “And you may also have been shielding the other attackers, although I didn’t see you doing so. Whenever I saw you, you focused on using your sword.”
“That’s because I wasn’t fighting as a magician! My role in the battle was fairy knight!”
Ah, I responded in my mind. Now I knew why she hadn’t used her strength to protect the other attackers. She had been too focused on being a vanguard herself. Fairy knights aren’t normally defensive forces.
It wasn’t the right time to critique that choice, though. But I definitely did need to fix her misunderstanding about her accomplishments.
“Don’t worry about what your role was,” I advised her. “Worry about what your presence meant.”
“It meant nothing! You decapitated an archdemon by yourself! I couldn’t even wound an archfiend, and I had help!”
I frowned and shook my head. “In the end, I defeated the archdemon with help from you and Ryuu. When I arrived, I was able to land a sneak attack on him because he was forced to turn all his defenses against you, leaving his back unguarded. And I was able to attack his neck because Ryuu had the confidence that he could leave the archfiend to you alone and turn his attack on the archdemon.”
I knew that Ryuu was as frustrated as Dilorè. In the last five days since the battle, he had yet to come clean on what exactly was bothering him, but I couldn’t recall five consecutive days during our six months together in which he didn’t clearly and loudly give his opinions. I had been uncertain why, but this talk with my cousin had made me realize what was eating him. I needed to have this talk with him as well.
“Allia was a huge help on offense, I bet,” I judged. “But I’m confident that Talene, Ceria and Arken were rotating between defending and recovering for most of the fight, while you were fighting continuously. Am I wrong?”
She didn’t answer directly, but she didn’t refute it. I added, “Anyway, my main evidence that you were the most important is that you and the rest were still alive when I got there. Such a small number of mortals would not have lasted that long against a pair of such high-level demons. It was the equivalent of simultaneously taking on a dragon and a typhon. No, it was worse, since demonic beasts don’t coordinate their attacks. Your strength and endurance made the difference.”
“Talene is a fairling…” she countered.
“She is still a mortal. And Ryuu and Allia are incredibly strong for mortals as well, but they too are still mortals. In the long run, they simply don’t have the stamina nor the magic capacity of a fairy. Your presence made all the difference.”
It didn’t appear to be helping, so I asked, “In the end, isn’t it fine, My Lady?”
“Exactly how? You destroyed an archdemon and two asuras. I landed dozens of blows with my sword and could hardly move any of them! My strength as a fairy swordswoman is laughable!”
“Then stop relying on your fairy strength to overcome your lack of training,” I told her bluntly. “Rely more on skill and strategy. Learn better sword techniques. And carry a sword capable of implementing them!”
That was a major handicap, frankly. She was wielding an ordinary nightsteel sword, which was neither dwarven nor svartalfar workmanship. Durandal is my secret weapon, but it’s the fact that he is an amazingly high-quality blade from ancient times rather than his Holy attacks that make him so. I was able to load him with overwhelming quantities of Water and [Purification] during the fight.
Dilorè stared at me, then softened slightly. “You were supposed to be my kid cousin who was barely old enough to leave her mama’s side. I keep forgetting that’s not what you actually are. You seem to grow a century older with each day that passes, lately.”
Emotionally, I didn’t feel like I had really changed that much, but… well, if I looked at it intellectually, I knew that I must have. Were the changes that were coming with my returning memories showing that much?
Dilorè had just said so, right?
I shrugged. “I’m either a bargain bin Elder, or a very messed-up fairy knight. I have fifteen thousand years of memories, but most of it is still unavailable to me. I don’t think you or anyone else should be gauging themselves against me, My Lady.”
She seemed to accept that, but I had already made up my mind. I already had a plan to go visit Little Jia and use the facilities in Senhion’s small world to sort some things out, especially with respect to knowledge I had acquired from Fan Li. I needed to bring this woman with me, and give her some training.
When Chiara and I went to pick up Amelia and Brigitte, I had contacted Jia through the portal network and told her to begin restoring the entrance. By the time I made it back to my mountain, she would be finished with the work. She had also assured me that she had already long since fully restored the mountain’s defenses, and they were ready to activate on my command.
Not knowing the current situation on the surface in that location, I told her to hold off turning them on. I could imagine accidentally creating a horrible uproar.
For now, I just had to figure out how to get Dilorè to come along with me.
The trip to the surface went far faster than the trip down, since we weren’t stopping and probing with magic after every turn, this time. Dilorè and Talene were both in contact with the surface, which our allies had fully secured. We had only waited until now because, when the commanders on the surface decided it was safe for us to come up, it was already late on the fourteenth of the month. In other words, it was about to be the Day of the Full Moon, the holiest day of the Benemite month. So we had to wait an additional day, until now, Secondday morning.
We emerged from the mine entrance– although nobody was calling it a ‘mine’ any more– and instantly, I was gobsmacked by the sound of a completely unexpected voice.
“Ti!”
