.
After the sudden loss of both the Berado king and the Parnese general, the invading army beat a headlong retreat southward. Being unable to rely on their own fairy sight, and therefore unsure of whom to trust, Lord Parna’s fairy knights stayed in Gado territory to sort things out. Their fairy pride wouldn’t allow them to risk fighting on the side of demons.
Which felt a little weird. I mean, they and their clan had tried to kill me more than once, yet here they were following me back to the command headquarters. We had accepted their parole as knights, so I expected them to behave themselves, but it just felt uncomfortable, acting all civil and non-hostile like this.
I had already tried the obvious first solution for their issue. I had charged up my [Purification] to its highest voltage and flooded Feraen as hard as I could. But, just as I had feared from the experience of her grandmother Mára, who could not see the gidim even after I purified her, it did nothing to fix their blindness.
It didn’t work on Lilhàn, either.
“Just so you are warned, we have no luxury accommodations,” I told Feraen as we arrived.
She frowned for a moment, then gave an airy reply as we touched down in the fort’s main courtyard. “I’m not depending upon you for housing. I’ve slept in the forest many times.”
“No, I’m sure we can provide you with a bunk…”
“Fele Tiana,” Feraen interrupted. “Would your allies truly welcome the thought of hosting the fairy knights they were facing this morning?”
“Uh…” I grew a wry smile. “I suppose that is true. But since you’re paroling yourselves, we need to treat you with respect as fairy knights, right?”
Dilorè saved me. “We shouldn’t be here overnight anyhow. Once the situation is stable, we will depart to bring Sir Diurhimath to Tëan Tír.”
“Ah, that’s true,” I nodded.
“Diurhimath is the mage you want to have look at us?” Feraen asked.
“Yes. He was badly wounded in battle recently, so we are preparing to bring him for treatment. But, I would like to consult him about your blindness to demonic mana.”
Feraen and Lilhàn were cooperating for now only because of that blindness, but they were still having difficulty accepting it. I could see it in her eyes at that moment, a desire to go back to denying it.
“Fele Feraen,” I stated. “What do you see when you look at that so-called magic sword you are carrying?”
“This?” she asked.
“Go ahead and draw it,” I told her with a nod. “I really want to hear your description of it.”
She pulled it and held it calmly, something I couldn’t do, with all that demonic mana oozing from it. I began circulating Healing and secretly converting it to [Purification] just to calm my nerves while looking at it.
“It’s an old-fashioned two-handed arming sword,” she stated. “The design is at least a thousand years out-of-date. It’s actually a little too tip-heavy to hold one-handed like this. It’s made of brazenglass, which hasn’t been produced since the old Ostish empire times, so it could really be that old.”
“Do you see any mana in it?”
“There’s dense Aether mana in the core. It concentrates in the edges when I swing it.”
Dilorè sounded a bit sick as she asked, “Could you… put that away, please?”
Feraen looked at her oddly. “Are you feeling okay?”
“You seriously can’t see the demonic mana in it?” my cousin asked. “It makes me want to puke!”
Feraen looked at her with shock, then at me. I nodded, vigorously.
“I’m circulating [Purification] right now, just so I can stand being this close to it. Which is exceedingly painful to my monster physiology, so… yes, please, put it away.”
Feraen and Lilhàn looked at each other, a bit baffled, then Feraen wordlessly resheathed it, accepting reality. They might not see the mana, but they had seen the animated skeletons. Although a non-demonic means exists to animate corpses and skeletons, the undead demons they had seen today were clearly not corpse golems. Those are, at their best, crude robots with simple control programs. The general and the Berado king had successfully replaced human beings with nobody noticing.
A formation of four hippogryphs was coming in for landing, so we walked toward the keep entrance to get out of their landing zone. It turned out to be Rod and his escort, returning from the battle.
“I guess we better introduce you to him,” I decided.
“Who is he?” Lilhàn wondered.
“Tiana’s hubby,” Dilorè teased before I could answer.
I rolled my eyes. “He’s the commander of the Royal Orestanian forces in this region.”
“And…” my cousin prompted.
Another eye roll. “And my fiancé. Please behave yourself, My Lady.”
The last sentence was directed at Dilorè, not the other two.
Feraen looked astonished. “Aren’t you awfully young to be betrothed? You’re not even twenty, right?”
Finally, someone who gets it, I wanted to say. Of course, if I were a full-blooded fairy, even five times my current age would be ‘too young’ for a commitment like marriage.
“Take it up with my grandfather,” I grumped. “He’s the one who decided it.”
“You didn’t think I was too young at that age,” Dilorè noted to her.
“That was just sex, not marriage,” Feraen deflected. “And I was barely two hundred at the time.”
“Adults are supposed to leave the children to play with each other,” my cousin persisted, with dimples forming.
“At two hundred, I was still mostly a child,” Feraen dismissed. “And you were certainly eager enough!”
I was turning slightly red as Rod dismounted. I walked toward him mostly in order to get away from all this personal history I didn’t want to hear.
As I approached, he was instructing the stablehand who had the beast’s reins, “He missed his morning feed, and I flew him pretty hard. He’ll need a full combing and rubdown and a proper meal. I think he might be developing a saddle sore as well. Please rub salve on it.”
He was massaging the animal’s wing root and patting its shoulder as he spoke. I got the sense he treated his hippogryph well. I waited while he unhooked his bow from the saddle and slung it over his shoulder, then curtseyed when he turned around.
“Your Highness, I’m glad to see you back unharmed,” I told him, then added, “Although I’m not happy that you took the risk of flying so close to a fairy versus fairy combat. We’re need to discuss the risks involved in such manuevers at some point.”
He smiled, then told me as he began walking toward the keep. “It’s ‘Rod’, Ti. I’ll be happy to hear what you have to say, but if my troops have to fly, I fly with them.”
“My concern is for their safety as well,” I assured him as I walked with him. “And the safety of those beautiful animals that they ride.”
“I would rather hear about why we seem to be entertaining the opposing fairy knights in our camp, now,” he countered, nodding toward the trio standing near the entrance.
“They have put their contract with Lord Parna on hold, and given us their parole. They will not take up arms against us again before returning to Parna to discuss the nature of his allies.”
He raised his eyebrow as he looked over at me, a mannerism that was totally unlike the Rod I knew. It was a one-hundred-percent Ged expression, though. I suspected that Rod was channeling his older brother in an attempt to deal with a responsibility that no seventeen-year-old would be ready to shoulder.
If so, he had picked a good role model, so I wouldn’t tease him.
To the unspoken question, I told him, “Fairies have been mortal enemies of demons since long before modern history. When I showed them the proof of the demons controlling the army they were flying for, they had no choice. Fairies do not fly for demonkind.”
We had reached the entrance and the others as I said that. Feraen nodded agreement to me.
“There is really nothing I can add to that explanation,” she stated, then dropped into a bow.
“Your Highness, I am Feraen of the Old Grove, contracted Fairy Knight to the Duchy of Parna. I have offered my parole to you and your allies until I return to His Grace the Duke.”
Lilhàn bowed as well, repeating the same speech.
I have to give Rod credit. Even though he had snuck a number of surreptitious peeks downward at my own exposure, he kept his eyes firmly above the shoulders with these two and Dilorè. Although it might have been the case that the greater exposure of their armor was a little too much for him.
He nodded gracefully. “Fairy Knights are well-known for their attention to honor. I shall accept your parole without concern.”
Rod had to go deal with his responsibilities, so we proceeded to the infirmary without him.
Melione had been staying glued to Diur’s side, but it turned out that she had been busy anyhow. When we arrived, she looked with a bit of distress at the skimpy outfits of Feraen and Lilhàn, then presented me with the travel cloak she had been sewing.
I don’t know where she had scrounged the fabric or buttons, but even though she began only the previous day, when we arrived at the headquarters, she’d managed to tailor a complete garment. It even had flaps covering the armholes, so I could stick my arms out without exposing anything.
Her eyes showed that she wanted to say something to the other two as I tried it on. I caught her eyes and shook my head, before thanking her for the cloak.
“How is the patient doing?” I asked, turning to Diur once we were done with that business.
“He fell asleep as I was feeding him breakfast,” she said, her eyes showing worry. “I gave him an extra [Restoration] treatment, but he didn’t seem to respond.”
Frowning, I left Diur’s cot to reach my bags. I hadn’t taken quarters overnight because I had stayed with Diur, so they were stowed in the infirmary with him. Retrieving my combat mage’s fan, I returned and cast light [Healing] on him.
“How can she use Healing so young?” I heard Lilhàn whisper to Feraen.
“The real mystery is, how can she use Healing when she’s half-monster?” was Feraen’s reply.
Physically, he was still in the same shape as before, not good but not getting any worse. I stopped the spell, sharpened my fairy sight and gave him a careful look.
“I’m not getting worse,” the patient declared as I studied him. Until that moment, everyone had assumed he was asleep.
“Your pneuma is becoming fatigued again,” I stated. “It’s happening faster now. You should release some blood from your core.”
“If I did so, I would lose what little spirit body I currently have,” he stated. “My spirit body cannot survive without my blood core. It is not yet strong enough. And if I lose my spirit body, I lose the spiritual techniques that are keeping me alive.”
I shook my head, then gathered Healing mana, charging it up almost to the point where I would begin glowing, then silently chanted, [Restoration] and let it flow out through the fan.
Being a fan, this focus could perform this task much better than the Starfire Jade Writing Brush. I was able to cover his entire body with the wave of [Restoration], from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet. After I held that for a minute, I let it drop and inspected him again.
With a sigh, I said, “We have to hurry, I think. I barely improved matters, just now.”
“He seems to be a monster similar to you, Fele,” Feraen stated. “Is he also a vampire?”
I nodded. “We have very similar physiques, yes.”
“Does he not need to feed, then?” she wondered. “That is how a vampire normally replenishes lost pneuma.”
“I do need to feed,” he stated. “I am using spiritual magic to prevent myself from reverting to that instinct. Otherwise, I would have long since attacked the lovely healer who has been treating me, and every other mortal I saw.”
“So if we obtained a willing donor…” I began.
“I would have to cancel the technique in order to grow fangs. Feeding instinct would then overcome me and I would lose control of my spiritual magic. Losing that would lead to my death before I recovered. You must get me to Morrígan, My Lady. Nobody else has the knowledge to overcome this quandary.”
“By Morrígan, do you mean the Fairy Queen?” I asked. The name was unfamiliar, but he had mentioned getting the help of the Fairy Queen before.
Well, not unfamiliar, but it didn’t belong to the Fairy Queen in my Earthly memories. The Morrígan was a goddess from Irish mythology.
“The same,” he agreed. “Morrígan has put me back together before. She’s the only one with a chance to help me.”
I heard Feraen mumble, “I’ve never heard that she had a name before…”
Dilorè spoke up. “I’ll go let Pasrue and the others know. In the meantime, you need to discuss the other issue with him.”
I was confused for a moment, until I remembered why I had brought the two fairy knights along to see Diur in the first place.
