.
The valley’s great defensive screen had one opening, the arch over the river that ran through it. Airships couldn’t pass under that arch, but it turned out they had way around that problem. The two great columns that rose on each side of the river, adjoining the arch over it, weren’t just decorations. The defensive screen could rise in the space between them like an overhead door or a window sash.
Either the guards recognized the vessel, or Pasrue had called ahead, because as Manlon’s “launch” slowed while approaching Tëan Tír’s port of entry, that great curtain rose before us without any interaction with the ground, in time to allow us through.
Becoming suddenly nervous, I grew my wings so I could hop directly up onto the quarterdeck to consult her.
“What about the purification field?” I asked hurriedly. “Diurhimath may not survive it in his condition!”
She waved negation with a confident smile. “He’s fine. The field only covers the space within the arch below. It doesn’t cover the airship passage.”
The ball of sudden stress in my stomach unwound as she said that. As we got close enough, I was able to feel with fairy sense that she was right. With the screen raised, it was just open air ahead of us.
I was still angry at myself. Until I saw that arch, I had totally forgotten about the difficulty that monsters normally have entering the valley. That lapse of memory could have killed the man currently riding in the hold below.
Then I became a little miffed at the guards who had stood at the port of entry back then, when I needed to go through. Couldn’t they have raised that curtain to let me, a flyer in my own right, through?
Well, I didn’t know what was required in getting it raised. Perhaps it needed to be arranged in advance too.
Ceria was watching Diur and Dilorè was keeping an eye on our two parolees, but Ryuu was chatting with Chiara nearby. The two had spent most of the trip together, which was a clear indication she had become his latest target. Ryuu was very non-cliché in one particular way; unlike most Isekai MCs, he lost his virginity within a week of his summoning, and he regularly made sure it stayed lost. It never took him long to find willing partners.
Although, for some reason, his seductive powers never worked on Tiana, Melione, or Brigitte. Not for lack of trying, mind you, but all three were permanently out of reach for him during the entire time she traveled with the Hero’s Party. I had seen nothing to suggest anything had changed in that respect.
My re-emerging memories of the Elder Age, and of the Empire of Fan Li’s world, adding to my memories of Earth, all left me a little jaded on the subject of imposing structures. Neither the arch passing below us nor the two ethereally thin stone spires that we were overflying could impress me much, anymore.
But at more than a hundred paces tall yet barely five paces wide, impossible dimensions in any natural setting, the twin spires were stunning the young Orestanian knight accustomed to architecture on a par with 19th century London. Chiara was gaping up at them, tipping her head back so far that I feared she might fall over backwards. Ryuu, a Tokyo native, was grinning at her reaction.
Yes, Ilim Below was amazing, but Oberon’s capital was stunning in its own way.
“It’s really something, isn’t it?” I asked, beaming a little.
“Why do you say that like you’re proud of it?” Ryuu wondered.
“This is my place of birth,” I stated, raising my chin. “Specifically, I was born in the forest where we are headed. It’s ahead, beyond all those towers you can see rising out the trees.”
We never stopped for any sort of inspection, although a small flight of half-fairies, who might have been the same ones that escorted me before, did do a quick flyover before the boat began picking up speed once more. I think they were only checking to make sure that somebody they recognized was in command; they didn’t hail us and they only took a quick look, saluted and flew off.
“You were born in a forest?” he wondered, looking a little bemused.
“My birth mother is a fairy, after all. She says she gave birth in a mana spring pond.”
While we passed over the hamlets and towers of the lower valley, I went back to the hold, where Diur was resting. He had explained earlier that he wasn’t actually falling asleep; he was using a spiritual technique that allowed him to focus entirely on keeping his body operational. So, even though he appeared to be unconscious when I arrived, I greeted him anyhow.
Then I took out my fan and gave him another dose of [Restoration], because I didn’t like what my fairy sight was telling me.
“This technique of yours appears to be draining your pneuma, Diur.”
Without opening his eyes or moving in any other way, he stated, “It can’t be helped. I have a serious attack of inflammation throughout all my open wounds now.”
I frowned, then gave him a dose of [Healing]. I kept it down below the roasting sensation level, but I maintained it for more than two minutes.
“I have told you, My Lady, you have already reached the limit of what [Healing] can do.”
“Wrong,” I told him. “[Healing] can also eliminate the foreign microorganisms invading through your wounds.”
“Mi.. cro… or.. ga…” he muttered, his face finally showing expression in the form of a perplexed frown.
I realized that I had fallen back on the English word for a concept that Ostish does not have a word for. Then, with a shock, I realized, despite all his thousands of years of experience, that Diur had no idea what I was talking about. Surely, Elders who had that knowledge existed in the old days, but those would be medical and scientific types. Average Elders, thanks to their mighty constitutions, had no need to worry about germs normally, and didn’t pick such things up as common sense.
Orestanian science has a crude germ theory, involving vapors of illness that could pass from person to person, or contaminate a person from another medium. They even understand that cleanliness and alcohol-based sanitizers can destroy these vapors. But it is all very recent knowledge, and has the hallmarks of something reincarnators and transmigrators had taught the locals who didn’t know about microbes.
Diur probably had not had enough time to learn this theory, but I figured he was smart enough to hear the factual version.
“Tiny carriers of illness, living creatures but too small to see, are attacking your body through your open wounds,” I explained. “[Healing] eliminates them as foreign substances. I should have realized this and continued to cast [Healing] on you, so that is my oversight.”
He looked skeptical, so I added, “The inflammation should be gone now, so you can verify that the [Healing] worked, even if you don’t believe the reason I’m giving for it. Let me know if it comes back.”
Not long after this conversation, the gentle bumps and vibrations of the boat settling onto the ground announced our arrival.
Pasrue had as much skill with levitation as Ceria or Talene. She personally floated Diur’s stretcher out of the hold and over the side, down to a waiting group of fairy and fairborn girls, all clad in filmy raiments that suggested moss, cobwebs, willow leaves, fern fronds and other natural materials. I recognized some of them as the same women who had helped bring Mára and Lâsin into the Fairy Queen’s cave abode.
I grew my wings and hopped over the side to follow them from this sunlit meadow where Pasrue landed into the Fairy Queen’s ‘Palace’… which still looked like a mist-filled grove to me. The same temple gate as I remembered passing under before guarded the edge of that grove, and the same thick mana surrounded us, evidence of the output of a mana spring being somehow dammed into this area as a thick reservoir.
Ceria called down from the deck, “Should we follow, Lady?”
“No,” Pasrue answered her sternly, before I could even think about it. “The Queen’s Grove is not a safe place for mortals. We will head to the Fairy King’s palace while the fairies deal with this.”
I cringed a little at the thought of my Servants being cast into a lion’s den composed of predatory females, and it was probably that thought appearing on my face that inspired Pasrue’s playful smirk as she looked down at me.
“Your Highness,” she stated, “we shall land on the Palace moat, but we will stay on board. I’ll do my best to monitor any visitors.”
I gave her a sheepish grin, then a bow. “Thank you, Your Wisdom.”
Yes, one of the things I had learned recently was that both of Prince Manlon’s (Miröen Fairling’s) apprentices were sages. It seemed that half-fairy, half-elf Pasrue had been one for more than a century.
Which begs the question, why are they still ‘apprentices’? I have no answer for that.
The stretcher bearers were already headed into the woods. Dilorè waved her head that direction as she passed me with Feraen and Lilhàn, following them.
I curtseyed to the mortals watching from the deck. “It depends on the Fairy Queen how long this will take, but I’ll make it as short as possible.”
Having said so, I hurried after the rest. When I caught up, Dilorè was looking down with concern at the man on the stretcher as she walked beside him. She glanced up at me.
“His pneuma is fading again.”
I began preparing to cast [Restoration] again, hardly more than a half-hour after my previous casting, but one of the half-fairies walking alongside the group pulled out a small fresh oak branch from… well, I’m not sure, exactly. She silently began a casting of something that involved Healing mana, which must have been [Restoration] or something similar, because his pneuma recovered once more.
She turned toward Dilorè once she finished and stated, in Dorian, “My fairy sight is insufficient, My Lady. Thank you for monitoring him.”
Another of the girls looked at me and noted, “He is a very unusual monster. You two seem quite similar, Your Highness. Is he a relative?”
The girl who had just cast magic looked with dismay at her and stated, “Söezin, you mustn’t say such a thing to a princess!”
“But, Nere…” she protested, looking at me.
I smiled and nodded, “I am indeed half-monster and half-fairy. We are not related, but we do have similar constitutions.”
We arrived soon at the same misty clearing as before, before the same steep rise featuring the same cave entrance. On my previous visit, I wasn’t invited inside, but one of the girls gestured for us to follow as she took up a station beside the entrance.
