.
Time advanced. Many days passed. I stood in the white plain that was the top face of a gargantuan cube ten times the size of the Imperial capital and watched as Orho fired arrows at the hero.
It was only a comment by Ka that had revealed that Orho had archery skill. When I heard, a training technique was born. Mr. Kowa stood facing her, sword in hand, but he was only to swing as a last resort. When we first tried this, I had to revert to my Tiana incarnation four times to heal the young warrior. Now, he was swinging every other shot, and when he didn’t deflect them with his sword, he caused them to change course on their own.
I planned to keep making him do it until he could make them all veer away.
It wasn’t precisely Mr. Kowa’s Will doing the deflecting. Will alters phenomena to achieve results, rather than directly effecting them. He was using Will to control the dense spiritual energy around him to alter the flight of the arrow.
As we took a break and had tea, he asked the question I knew had been brewing for some time in his mind.
“Will I really be able to use this on Huade? This spiritual energy stuff is thin there, isn’t it?”
“Perhaps you won’t use it this way at first,” I admitted to him. “But that hardly matters, does it?”
“How can that not matter?” he blustered. When he wasn’t in meditative communion, he was much more the prickly hero that Tiana knew.
“In the visions I show you, is it always spiritual energy I guide? Do I not guide the qi within that boy’s limbs in the vision of him practicing in grassland?”
“So you’re saying there is qi I can use on Huade?”
“There is the equivalent. Huade’s physics divides the underpinnings of the world into pneuma and mana, rather than essence, aura and qi. Although different in concept, they are parallel. The means to influence qi is also the means to influence mana. Could you not push the arrows aside with the Wind element through which they are passing rather than the qi within the air?”
“Can’t I just use a spell?”
“Do you know such a spell? Wind magic doesn’t work that way. It requires channeling the Wind element within oneself and sending it outward, rather than willing mana already in the environment at a distance.”
Frankly, this was the secret behind Grandmother Lâra’s swimming skill and Tiana’s flight skill. They were actually deliberately seizing control of the mana of the water and air directly through their will. They simply didn’t understand that this is how it worked.
Or perhaps Lâra knew this perfectly well, being an ancient demigoddess. I shouldn’t guess at what she knows. But it’s likely that she does not. Immortals do these things without knowing how they manage them.
I held my sleeve to my shin and added, “Or you could simply use the Earth mana within the arrow to turn it. The magic of Huade cannot do these things, and yet I am offering such a mystical and profound ability to you here. I began training you to use spiritual energy because it is far easier to influence in this place, but now that you know the technique, you can extend your Will to other media.”
I saw an expression that I had not seen until this moment. It was as if I was seeing a light turn on in Mr. Kowa’s eyes for the first time.
# # #
From my lotus blossom platform, I observed the battle scene yet again. This would be our last raid of the day. The team advanced and the defenders rallied. But something critical had changed. The bird soldiers began falling from the sky. Mr. Kowa’s accuracy had dramatically improved, as he guided his shots through the air, much like the effect of a [Guidance] spell, but forgoing the Light or Darkness magic required to make it work. His Will itself chose where they flew. He was often unsuccessful, but firepower, rather than a hundred bullets that miss, is one bullet that hits. Enough shots landed to matter.
Alarmed, the bird soldiers withdrew, and the ‘battleship’ formation advanced toward the ball as it pushed through the ground defenders, then landed hit after hit on it, again and again. It was not destroyed, but it rolled faster, trying to escape the onslaught. It was now headed rapidly in the direction of the cube’s edge.
Desperate to stop the progress as they perceived where it was headed, the defenders themselves struck the very object they were protecting, in an effort to turn it. But they had no firepower of Mr. Kowa’s level, and their efforts took time to show results. In the meantime, the bird soldiers rallied, managing to put Ka out of action and allow the dog soldiers to gang up on the ‘battleship’. Eventually, they had to retire, but not before moving the ball miles closer to the edge.
At the camp, a respawned Ka served tea as we discussed the raid. By the rules, she couldn’t compete until tomorrow, but she could serve our meals.
“We definitely made progress,” Mr. Kowa declared, with his arms folded.
As strange as it seems, I find myself agreeing with you, Mortal, Orho nodded. We were a far more effective team, today.
The skymaid had become far more amiable to Mr. Kowa over the course of a few days. She even casts him smiles, from time to time. I began wondering if it were possible that his suspicious charm extended to Spirit Beasts
“I am not prepared to agree with you,” I stated archly. “We lost Ka, and they definitely understand now what we are trying to do. They were clearly working to steer the ball away from the edge. Come tomorrow morning, we will find it has rolled farther away from the edge than where it was when we found it this morning.”
Neither of them replied. They both looked down at their tea.
“Tomorrow, you must cause the ball to roll at least double the distance closer to the edge than you accomplished today,” I declared.
Mr. Kowa’s eyes bugged. “Double?!”
“At least,” I stated, repeating the rest of my direction for emphasis. “And after dinner today, you will defend against two hundred arrows. This time, try to seize the qi in the air– or rather, the Wind mana– as I suggested before.”
His expression for the slave-driver training him was not kind, but he also did not argue. Mr. Kowa had become quite dedicated to conquering this challenge. One way or another, that ball and its defenders were marked for death.
The following day, after yet another round of raids– and a failure to reach the goal I set, although they came close– as I stood on my lotus platform beside the skymaid, materializing arrows for her to fire, she finally asked me a question I had been expecting for about a day.
That mortal… I hear he has the affections of one of your Servants. Is that true?
“Who told you so?” I wondered, forcing my mouth to not quirk. Naturally, I already knew, since the culprit had already described the conversation to me herself
The Huadean who flies. She who calls you her cousin.
“Lady Dilorè,” I nodded. “Her grandmother is first cousin to my current incarnation on Huade.”
And the answer to my question is?
“They undoubtedly have a relationship,” I told her. “It has progressed into physical intimacy. Does that fact distress you?”
Distress? Ah, no, but I find him quite interesting. I have not dallied with a mortal since the old days.
“You dallied with them, then?” I responded, a little surprised.
You had many Servants in that day, Commander, she noted, amused. Surely you did not monitor all their actions.
I sighed. “In this personality, I do not remember those days well. It is difficult enough to recall the long years of my own life. But I think that what you say is correct.”
Lady Senhion, truth to tell, normally had hundreds of Servants at a time. Most, she rarely saw. Intimate relationships with Servants with whom Elders bore children were actually quite uncommon. Evidence for that may be seen in the fact that Senhion never bore a child for any of hers during four thousand years on Huade.
But I found it amusing that this woman had an interest in Mr. Kowa, just like so many others. To think this creature would become just one more in a long line who fell for him. The reality was that far more women grew interested in him than those he actually slept with. It made the fact that exactly zero of the women who traveled with him in the Hero’s Party were attracted to him all the more odd.
If I were currently in the Tiana incarnation, I would be rolling my eyes. I could feel her doing so, in the back of my mind.
I noticed something after that exchange, though. Her rate of fire seemed to have increased a bit. And she seemed a bit agitated if I did not provide the next arrow in time. Was she possibly miffed at him?
For the time being, I materialized and handed over the arrows with my left hand so I could hide my mouth with my right sleeve.
# # #
In two more days, the results had become inarguable. In the first two raids of the day, Mr. Kowa and company had pushed the sphere back more than three miles, farther than the defenders could recover during the break. And in each of the raids, they had multiple losses. I now stood on my lotus platform, watching Orho descend like the tip of a tornado threatening calamity on the hapless remains of the team, while Mr. Kowa moved forward almost without resistance.
Ka wasn’t even opposed, now. The Ball Defense Team was putting its all into stopping the main threat, leaving the elklion free to steer the sphere in order to ensure that it did not run into any obstacles. They had learned, the previous day, that letting the sphere strike a large obstacle head-on would completely reverse its course.
It was already a foregone conclusion. I was considering simply granting them the win by default, then decided that they had earned the pleasure of seeing their target drop over the edge at last. The raid this time never withdrew. The last dog soldier lay dead, unable to respawn until dawn, and Mr. Kowa’s team was free to follow the sphere and insure success. Mr. Kowa simply ran along, occasionally adjusting its progress with a shot to the right or left flank, while Orho floated above, vigilant for any tricks the game master (me) might have waiting for them.
For the record, I did not. The training had accomplished its goals already. There would be no point in a surprise ambush by some new opponent at this point. Although I will confess that I had one planned, if they had somehow managed to get to this point too early, before Mr. Kowa was prepared. It involved bringing in his old friend, the God of Storms.
At last, Ka returned from scouting to report the edge was just ahead. Mr. Kowa mounted her, slinging his sword, and they rode behind it, eventually coming to a halt. Orho chose to witness from mid-air, out beyond the edge.
The ball did indeed drop over and fall.
At that point, as Orho came swimming to rejoin the others, Mr. Kowa did ask a question he had probably been wondering since they first chose this strategy.
“What do we do if the ball isn’t destroyed by the fall?”
At that point, I suppose that Ka must take on her human form and the two of you must ride on my back to go down after it, Orho replied as she arrived.
After they looked at each other for a bit, possibly wondering why no announcement or sign had confirmed their win, Orho stated, I shall go confirm the kill.
