.
I woke up in a cold sweat, because the combination of the passage back through the spiritual realm and the frightening revelations I had received there had thrown me into a nightmare during my return.
Fan Li had feared something would happen, so she had wrapped the vital memories under spiritual seals that would protect them from distortion. And thus, not only the three points that Eurybia had stressed, but most of the balance of my time in the Illusory Space remained firmly separated from the dream that had followed.
However, this might sound strange, but I didn’t actually know what those memories were, at that moment. They were still sealed. I only knew they were important. The least important items had probably been lost to entropic backlash, but the most important items had been sealed the tightest, to insure they survived. She had chosen to do it that way, to make sure entropic erosion ate away only the parts that were unimportant.
At the moment, I could no longer understand how any of it worked, and only vaguely remembered how to form and remove the seals, but Fan Li clearly had understood the nature of ‘entropic erosion’ and ‘entropic backlash’. I wasn’t sure if that was because she had learned about it in life, or if her knowledge and Senhion’s had somehow combined to provide the techniques she needed.
As I stared at the ceiling, willing my heart to stop pounding, I heard a panel slide open behind my head, and twisted in the futon to see Dilorè kneeling on the other side of the wall opening. She waved her hand and a small [Fairy Light] cast soft illumination.
“Are you okay, Your Highness? You called out.”
I noticed that my chemise was soaked. The nightmare had been that intense.
“A really bad dream,” I said as I sat up. “And more. Before the nightmare, I heard from my great-grandmother.”
That much I knew. I had a visit from my great-grandmother, and Fan Li had taken over, to ensure that I wouldn’t lose the important parts of what she said.
Dilorè tipped her head sideways, looking at me with a raised eyebrow.
“What?” I asked.
“You heard from yourself?”
I snorted in spite of myself, then got up. I needed to change clothes.
“Different great-grandmother,” I answered on the way to my bag. “Eurybia.”
“Oh,” she replied, and looked like she wanted to ask for details. Instead, she asked, “Are you staying up? It’s barely three hours before Morning.”
I mentally translated that to 3 AM, then shrugged. “Up or not, I’m drenched with sweat. I’ll get another bath.”
I had just soaked before going to bed, so it probably wasn’t bad, but sweat stink is sweat stink.
“You and your baths.”
“Complain to my grandmother.” I said as I dug out my spare chemise.
“You’ll have to re-fill that huge tub,” she said, and stood up. “Let’s go.”
“Go where?” I asked, becoming a little concerned.
“Lose the wet clothes. We’re going to a better spot for you. It’s only a short flight.”
“Naked?” I said with alarm as she untied my chemise. Then, “Flight?!”
“You have stealth, Your Highness,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Nobody’s gonna see you.”
Dilorè, needless to say, has too much practice stripping people. She had me naked before I thought about resisting. She grabbed my hand as her raiment vanished, walking toward the sliding doors out to the courtyard. I quickly started my Cloak as the door slid open.
“Come on!” she told me, then started up her stealth as her wings grew. I could still see her in fairy sight, although she vanished to my regular vision. She let go of my hand and stepped off the porch into the air.
I sighed, closed the door behind me, and followed.
As I was only keeping the cloak strong enough to block sight, I asked, “Where is this better spot? There’s soldiers everywhere!”
“Nobody is using the Viscount’s residence,” she answered. “They must have left it alone in case he comes back. There’s a garden pond in his courtyard.”
“How do you know this?”
“While you were sleeping, I reconnoitered the city. I got curious if there were any ghosts of the missing nobles. It would settle the question of where they were, if I found a ghost viscount walking around.”
We descended into a beautiful, well-tended garden courtyard, with paths and a pair of pavilions. I could easily imagine the viscountess sitting on a blanket inside one of them, watching her children play on perfectly mown grass.
Beside the larger pavilion, a koi pond reflected the moons that hung high in the sky, almost directly south of us.
I extended my fairy sense through the residence, searching for occupants, but confirmed that Dilorè was right. Mother’s soldiers had left it alone, respecting the local lord’s property while they were commandeering the houses of his citizens.
Landing beside the water, I gave the water a careful inspection, discovering that the water was quite clean. There was the sound of running water nearby, which was probably the magical answer to the need for an aeration pump and filter, and it clearly worked.
With the possible exception of ghosts, there were no eyes other than Dilorè’s, so I dropped my Cloak and waded in. I spent a few minutes immersing my body, then found a spot to rest in the water near where Dilorè had chosen to sit.
“So?” she asked. “What did your great grandmother tell you that frightened you so much?”
“It was the nightmare that followed that did that,” I answered. “I need to sort through my memories, so give me a bit.”
After saying so, I carefully undid the seals on my memories. I experienced the chills all over again, as the three vital revelations unwound themselves before me. Fortunately, they had arrived in the Mortal Realm fully intact.
The parts that had followed the three vital revelations were fragmented, but I had discussed my options with the three Immortals. I remembered enough to understand what I needed to do, though.
“Are you alright, Your Highness?” my cousin asked. She sounded worried. I realized that my face had paled considerably.
“It’s… fine, but I feel pretty uncomfortable about just chilling here in a pond, now.”
I answered her perplexed blinking with a rapid summary of what Eurybia had told me. Her response to the news was more horrified than mine had been.
“He just… erased their bodies?”
If you think about it, it’s a pretty horrifying thought. Probably, the effects of the Illusory Space had buffered my mind against the shock when I heard it. It felt creepier in the retelling.
“Is that even possible?” she asked with a faint voice.
“Frankly, I don’t think it would normally be,” I said while shaking my head. “It would require control over the nature of matter itself. Only a being who came from outside the Mortal Realm could possibly have such an extreme ability.”
“Or perhaps, could the gods…?”
I shook my head. “The boundary between the Mortal and Immortal realms keeps them from directly touching anything in this world. They can only work through intermediaries, so they can’t do anything that their intermediaries can’t do. They can’t control space and matter in this world to that degree.”
“But…” she frowned. “If this person could do that, why can’t he just directly attack that ‘Ascendant’ guy with it?”
“Since I don’t understand the methods, I don’t know what prevents them,” I answered. “I only know that Eurybia says he used his only option, and that means he didn’t have the option of directly attacking his enemy. That suggests the opposite is also true.”
“So, will you leave immediately, like she told you?”
I frowned. “I don’t like running, but… I have no way to defend against either threat. If that formation activated, I would be as defenseless against it as the citizens of this town were.”
“Or against this Ascendant fellow, if he used the same countermeasure again?”
I nodded. “Right.”
“So, stay out of town, then,” she suggested. “If the formation only activated when refugees from the countryside arrived here, that means they were outside the formation until they came in from their farms. Probably, the monster attacks were done to drive them into the town and fill the formation.”
I nodded again. “Yeah, I came to the same conclusion. But I can’t just sit out there and wait for more soldiers to arrive here either. I’m going to send an order not to send any more troops, but in addition…”
As I said, I remembered some of what the goddess had said. And one of the things she had advised was…
“I’m bringing you, Chiara and Ryuu to my mountain to train, as I originally planned. Just going out to the country isn’t enough. I don’t want any of us anywhere near this place. To keep our absence from hurting morale, I’ll tell the Major that we’re headed back into the wilderness, but we’ll actually carry the two humans and fly back to Relador. I’ll inform Mother and the Fairy King, and leave it up to them to figure out what to do next.”
Dilorè’s eyes bugged out. “You plan to carry that big lunk all the way to Mount Ciddan?”
I smiled sheepishly as I nodded. Dilorè, like any fairy, is light for her appearance. So is Sidis, a bird-girl. I could carry either of them fifty miles without much difficulty. But Ryuu was a human, and a fairly muscular one. Add the sword and armor he needed to carry with him, and considering the much greater distance, I was proposing a much more difficult feat.
“We have to do it in stages, I guess,” I admitted. “But we can’t leave the way we came. I don’t even want to allow another train to come here. Frankly, I’m considering ordering at least a partial withdrawal.”
Dilorè twisted her lips, then said, “You’re rinsed off now, right?”
I would now smell like a pond instead of sweat, but that was an improvement. “Sure, I suppose.”
She stood up, letting the water roll off her. “I want to show you a much better option. There’s an air boat sitting behind this house. I don’t feel anyone over there, so it should be fine. Come on.”
“An air boat?” I asked, a little doubtful.
“You can commandeer it and we can use it for transport. Between you and I, we should be able to supply it with all the mana it needs.”
“No, I mean… Do you know how to fly it? I don’t.”
“In theory, yes. The controls are similar to the big airships, which I’m familiar with, and the flight principle is the same used by elven aircraft on the Eastern Continent, which I’ve already mastered.”
I looked at her outstretched hand, that she was offering to help me stand. With a sigh, I took it and let her pull me to my feet.
Between this girl and my older sister and my grandmother, how many times had I been pressured into outdoor nudity?
As we waded out of the pond still holding hands, she performed a few gestures and her [Fairy Wind] with heating effects started up, surrounding us with a warm full-body blow-dry. Then she grew her butterfly wings.
“Ready?”
I raised my brows. “No raiment?”
“You don’t like being the only one naked, right?”
“I just don’t like being naked.”
She laughed and rose into the air, flying up into the moonlight, on a course to pass over the rooftop without a care.
Yeah, that was a bridge too far. I Cloaked before following.
