.
Diur’s proxy had the appearance of his real body in the adventurer’s gear that he wore in Ilim Below, even though the actual clothing and armor it imitated had been destroyed. Showing no thought as to whether it was rude to do so, he took the Fairy King’s chair and joined us at the table.
“That… was a pretty shocking revelation, My Lady,” he told me. “Or, I suppose I should say, Your Highness.”
“You heard everything?” I wondered.
“He did,” Mother stated. “He actually came here with me.”
He chuckled. “I honestly thought I could hide from you, Your Highness.”
“As if you would have that ability in your current condition,” she chided him. “I suspect you successfully hid from Tiana, but both my father and I knew you were present.”
“Speaking of your condition, are you truly okay to be sending out a proxy?” I wondered.
“One at a time, in close proximity to my body and under my direct control, yes,” he answered. Then he grinned. “Although, once Morrígan realizes I’m doing this, she’ll put her foot down and make me stop.”
Dalia put a cup in front of him, but he held up his hand. “I’m not actually present, child. This is an illusion.”
The maid nodded and cleared the cup as he turned to me. “I wonder how much of what you said to Oberon you can assert as fact rather than judgment?”
I held my chin as I considered the question, then answered, “It’s a series of questions that have been bothering me. Perhaps everyone else accepts that Oberon always stays in Tëan Tír as some sort of law of the universe, but from an outsider’s perspective, it doesn’t make any sense. He’s terrifically strong. He shouldn’t be relying on others in a fight he clearly cares about.”
Mother held up a hand to stop me, then looked over to the maid.
“Dalia, excuse us for a while. You may wait in the entrance.”
She bowed. “Of course, Your Highness.”
As Dalia left the patio, I felt Mother’s [Realm of Silence] appear around everyone at the table.
She looked at me and asked, “If Oranos sealed the information about it, why did my grandmother tell you? Eurybia is a subordinate of Oranos, isn’t she?”
“That’s the part that I’m unsure about,” I confessed. “I hope I have an opportunity soon to ask her.”
I turned to Diurhimath, my eyes narrowing. “Just to be clear, you didn’t know about Erebos and Astaroth, either?”
“I had no idea about this Astaroth. I had heard of Erebos during the Elder Age, of course. Perhaps I even met him at some point. But he was supposedly dead by the time I returned.”
“Returned from where?” I wondered.
“From orbit,” Diur said. “When the war broke out, I was stationed in space, maintaining the climate observation satellites. The Commander of the Twenty Fourth Legion ordered me to stay up there when the Affliction hit. That’s why I didn’t get infected.”
He grew a wry smile and noted. “I imagine my servants and I set some sort of record. We stayed in the observer’s platform for almost two centuries. We only came down once the station started failing and most of my Servants had died of old age. By that time, all of my fellow Elders were supposedly dead. I never learned about Erebos still being around.”
I frowned. “But you caught the Affliction anyway, right?”
“That was thousands of years later. I’ve recently learned that they now call that time the Northern Kingdoms era. You’ve heard of it, I’m sure. That was when a series of mortal kingdoms across the North Coast rose up in opposition to the Demonic Empire. I played a role something like the fairy knights of today, fighting for a kingdom I helped establish, where Hamagaar is, today. But a demonic general managed to acquire an ancient Affliction bolt to infect me, putting an end to my time and forcing me into that cocoon.”
I realized I was hearing the real story behind the legend that Arken had shown me.
“The Ancient Hamagaarans… did you try to teach them about the Elder Age?”
He nodded. “I tried to educate everyone in the North.”
“If that includes the ancestors of the Brosians, that would explain why they still remember the Elders,” I mused. “And the Hamagaarans have a legend that seems to be about the Great Demon War.”
Mother’s eyes rose in realization. “That legend Arken showed me? Did he tell you too, Tiana?”
I nodded and hooked my thumb toward Diur. “Meet the ‘demon’ from the legend.”
“Demon?” Diur retorted, a little indignant.
“The foundation myth of Hamagaar is a combination of what happened in the Elder Age and what happened when you helped found that kingdom. But it’s garbled. The humans are called the ‘Silver Empire’ in it, and the Elders are described as resisting it. And you are depicted as a demon that helped a human girl establish Hamagaar.”
He frowned. “When the demons and humans organized against us, the puppet leadership that the demons set up over the humans called itself the Silver Empire. And I certainly did help the first Queen of Hamagaar rise to power. But to call me a demon…”
“Was she your Servant?” I wondered.
He nodded. “She wanted the bond because she knew how strong my Servants were. She needed that same strength to accomplish her goals. Since I had protected her in her youth, she trusted me. Later, she made me her consort, so her heir was my son.”
The potential grooming story that had slipped into the middle of that was a bit cringey, but I ignored it.
“So you protected the kingdom for several generations, and then a demon used an… ‘Affliction Bolt’?”
He nodded. “The delivery device for the Affliction was a special cursed missile. Somehow, they located an old weapon that was still viable.”
“And [Purification] can’t stop it?”
“The reason that Affliction is so effective is that it infects Elder flesh rapidly, and [Purification] burns away all flesh that is infected with it. But it only works on flesh that is simultaneously Magical and Monstrous, so you and I are possibly the only people left in this world whom it works on.”
He looked me in the eye and stressed, “I don’t know if any more copies of the weapon exist. It was thirty two hundred years ago when I was infected. But you must absolutely avoid coming into contact with it.”
Durandal usually stays silent during my conversations with others, but he decided to join in, just then.
They were able to wield that weapon that destroys spirit swords after the same period of time, so this is a threat you should take seriously, My Lady.
Diur’s proxy wore a wry smirk. “I had a feeling that was a spirit sword at your side.”
“More than that,” Mother commented, with a slight chuckle in her voice. “He’s one of the seven Holy Swords. That’s Durandal.”
“I had heard they were all lost,” Diur commented.
“They were, at one time,” Mother nodded. “Naegling was recovered about a thousand years ago. She’s in a chamber deep below our feet, here in the Castle. And about fifty years ago, I was able to swim down and recover Excalibur from the sea and bring her back to my sister. She sleeps under a pond in the Fairy Queen’s Palace now.”
I had heard Grandmother mention Excalibur before, but my mouth may have twitched slightly upon hearing the name of a sword from Beowulf casually drop in the middle of that speech.
“I need to bring him back to my grandmother eventually,” I admitted. “But I would like to keep him with me for just a little longer.”
Then I have a suggestion to insure you can continue protecting me as you wield me.
“Protecting you?” Mother asked.
I pursed my lips as Durandal described the near re-cursing that he went through in Ilim Below. Mother’s brows furrowed deeply as he relayed the story.
“We survived it and we’re fine,” I told her, to override her worry. “My [Purification] overcame the attack.”
Isn’t that only because your healer is fine? Durandal countered. Judging from the words the Demon Lord spoke, some among the demons clearly know what you are. So they will understand that your Servant Melione is the only reason you wield healing magic. Unless you have a second healer somewhere, she is your weakness while you wield me. If they kill her, you lose your immunity to the spirit blade curse. Eventually, they will target her.
I felt a chill at the thought of hostile demons marking gentle Melione for death as a way to attack me.
“What are you suggesting I do?” I wondered.
First of all, protect your Servant better, he stated. You don’t even have her by your side. You need to give her better protection when you aren’t there.
I frowned at that. “She’s with Ceria and the rest.”
Which is good, but for someone who is probably now a primary target of the demons, it is not enough. Take her off the front lines.
A moment of thought was all I needed for that. “She would never agree.”
Diur shook his head. “She is your Servant. If you tell her the reason, she will listen to you.”
I bit my lower lip, frowning deeper.
Also, I’m quite sure I heard that one of those three lovelies who offered themselves to you is also a healer. If you have willing Servants, you need to take them. That goes double for willing healers.
“Now, just a minute…!”
Durandal cut me off and continued his lecture. If the Demon King is on the rise, all mortals are in danger. You didn’t see what the world was like when Orgoth was building his kingdom, so you haven’t developed a strong enough fear of them yet. You aren’t necessarily protecting mortals by refusing to bond with them. If a new Orgoth is about to be born, you should be strengthening as many mortals as you can, for their own sakes and the sake of their loved ones. Any that are willing, you should accept.
# # #
The conversation lasted into the evening, and Mother requested dinner service so that we could continue. By the time we finished, Mother had agreed to return to Pendor and Diur had agreed to stop using up his spiritual strength on sending proxies out, so he could hurry up and recover.
I offered to bring him to my small world, where he could heal faster, but he declined, to my surprise. He felt it would be unsafe, unless I could somehow convince the Fairy Queen to come along. Mother felt that would be impossible, as long as she had test subjects in her Palace to experiment upon.
I did get one good bit of news. Mother and Morrígan had succeeded in identifying the cause of the strange blindness to demonic mana afflicting Feraen and the others.
“A mutated Darkness spirit with an inborn stealth had somehow taken up residence in their optic lobes. It is almost impossible to detect. If you find someone you suspect of being blind to demonic mana, you may be able to cure it with a massive dose of light. Morrígan is working on a better cure, and a better way to detect if someone has one.”
“But how are they getting into fairy brains in the first place?” I asked.
“The gidim in Mára had the ability to trap passing Darkness spirits and modify them,” Mother told me. “Mára says she developed a tendency to make frequent skin contact that she couldn’t explain. She believes the gidim was causing her to spread it.”
“That bitch is actually cooperating with you?” I wondered.
“Under orders from her husband, yes,” she smiled. “It seems Lady Feraen convinced him to listen. They’ve both been cured and can see that gidim now. It might actually be the only manufacturer of the parasite Darkness spirits, but we can’t prove that yet. Manlon is working on that problem.”
By the time we finished and I went to my quarters for some sleep, we had fully agreed on our plans. I would train my people while Mother went to take care of Pendor. In the meantime, she would go introduce herself to Erebos and try to arrange an alliance.
I was staying the night at Mother’s insistence, so I could talk things over with the maids again. My maids were already aware that I would be arriving, but, confusingly, it was Khortys greeting me at the door, rather than my footman, Khaulmar.
“We told him to spend the night with his wife,” my head maid told me with a smile. “It’s just us girls, tonight.”
I thought I sensed a slightly predatory edge to her smile, and I almost hesitated to enter.
