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Lady Serera’s aura was very familiar to me, so naturally I was not mistaken. We went out to find her laying unconscious outside Rod’s tent. She had bandages on all four limbs and several spots on her torso, some of them red with blood.
I pushed through the crowd of soldiers and royal knights surrounding her and crouched over her, casting just enough [Healing] to do diagnosis. I had to be cautious about using any mana at all; my skin was already itchy and dry because I was even delaying my Water-coating technique to replenish the mana in my body. But this was an emergency.
“Call the stretcher bearers,” Rod instructed his knights.
Sir Balad, his senior knight, saluted and stated, “We’ve already sent a runner, Your Highness.”
“She’s suffering from multiple stabbing and slashing wounds,” I reported when I stopped casting. “And severe miasmic poisoning. She’s had some first aid [Healing], but not nearly enough. She’s lost a lot of blood, too. She’s horribly fatigued and anemic.”
Deciding it couldn’t wait any longer, I cast [Restoration] on her. I wasn’t trying to wake her, just support her life. One of the strongest fairies I knew outside the Faerie Royal Family was at death’s door, and I was truly alarmed, enough to go ahead and use what little precious magic I could currently wield.
After several seconds of casting, she opened her eyes, saw me and smiled in relief.
“… knew… it was… you,” she muttered. Then let out a weary “hohoho” that ended in a coughing fit.
“Just rest,” I told her. “We’re going to heal you up.”
“…. ah,” she breathed. “… open… wallet.”
She fumbled for her belt-wallet, the pouch attacked to her sword harness. I opened it for her and she felt around inside, then withdrew an object. She reached across with her other hand, managed to snag mine so she could press the object into my palm.
” … keep it safe… your mother…”
With that, she let out a deep sigh, like she had finally finished her work and could let go.
“Hey!” I shouted at her, shaking her shoulder. “You can do your big death scene some other day! I’m not letting you go today!”
I saw her weakly shaking her head, but I wasn’t having any of it. I summoned Holy mana and cast [Restoration] again, until I felt faint and had to stop. To my relief, she kept breathing. She had simply passed out again.
The stretcher bearers arrived. As they moved her onto the litter, I told Rod, “Send them to my tent, Your Highness. Mireia and Aunt Elianora are still there.”
My tent was only a short walk away, since the army had kept everyone who arrived with Rod in one area. I had already checked via fairy sense, and knew Elianora had stayed with my two donors, waiting for them to wake up naturally to maximize the benefit of their post-feeding rest.
I would have led the bearers to the tent myself, but I needed to sit and recover. Rod nodded confirmation to Sir Balad, who took charge of it instead. Then he squatted next to me and put his hand on my back.
“Are you alright, Ti?”
“I pushed it a little too far,” I admitted, flashing him a guilty smile. “She was in bad shape, so I gave her a boost. Can you help me stand and walk?”
He wore a wry grin as he helped me to my feet. Then he made me hang onto him all the way back to my tent. On the way, I remembered the item that Serera had been so determined to give me, and opened my hand to look at it.
I recognized it. Mother had made me wear it on my first trip up to Hamagaar, when I met Ceria and Bruna. I had last seen it when they made me take it off while putting me in the jail cell in Copen.
Rod looked at Mother’s amulet and asked, “Is that what Serera gave you?”
I nodded. “Mother must have been carrying it with her. But why was Serera so determined to give it to me?”
“Do you have any idea what it is?”
“Not really,” I said, turning it over in my hand. There was something very different about it, now. A very strange change to the quality of the enchantment on it. Almost as if it now held something it didn’t hold before. “But I’ve seen it before. Mother made me wear it when I went to Cara Ita to rescue the Hero’s Party. And said…”
I broke off. I almost mentioned she wished she had given it to the first Tiana before she died. The fact that I wasn’t the same Tiana was something I was pretty sure Rod still knew nothing about.
“And said what?”
“She said she wished she’d given it to me sooner. Before my fight with that dragon,” I said, skipping over the most important detail. “Apparently, her grandfather gave it to her.”
He blinked, came to a halt before we entered the tent. The two knights trailing us also halted. He turned a frown toward me and said, “Deharè’s parents are the Fairy King and a demigoddess who lives in the Oste region. Both have existed since prehistory. I know nothing about a grandfather.”
I humphed with a slight smile and nodded, still turning over the amulet in my hand. There was something terribly familiar about the changes that I could see in the magic within this object. A very familiar aura.
I was a little surprised Rod knew about Grandmother, but I guess it wasn’t that strange. Lâra’s existence isn’t a secret. It’s just not well-known outside her local region.
“Mother’s mother is the daughter born by Eurybia to the Fairy Lord of the Hart River. But that’s not the grandfather in question. Mother received this amulet from her paternal grandfather, Your Highness. The Fairy King’s father, Oranos.”
After the lack of a reply for several seconds, I looked up from the amulet to discover Rod somewhat gobsmacked. Seeing that, I had a momentary whimsical urge to tell him who the Fairy King’s mother was, but I suppressed it.
“If they are demigods, it stands to reason they have gods as parents, Your Highness,” I noted. Then I pointed at the tent. “Let’s go in.”
The stretcher bearers had transferred Serera to my cot, and Aunt Elianora and Mireia were both already examining her. A pair of Army medics were also on-hand, bearing bandages and medical supplies.
Rod pursed his lips, looking at the number of other people crowding the tent, then ordered, “Anyone who doesn’t have a specific role here, out. They need room.”
The stretcher bearers left, but the royal knights were all hesitating. Rod told Sir Balad, “I know the patient well. She’s a fairy knight currently serving Father. You and your men can safely leave me with her.”
“I understand, Your Highness,” Balad nodded, and directed his men out of the tent. Chiara exited as well, having no role here either.
Mireia was applying [Healing] with her eyebrows bunched up in a worried knot.
Rod put his hand on her back. “You need any help, Mir?”
“I do, Your Highness. This is more than I can do by myself. I’m doing everything I can just to keep her alive.”
“I’ll call for additional healers,” he decided, and left the tent.
“Like me, yesterday, right?” I said. “She’s anemic and fairies are difficult to heal in the first place.”
Aunt Elianora, in the midst of examining Serera’s wounds, glanced up at me and nodded. “Yes, but not exactly the same. Fortunately she’s not as exsanguinated as you were, but she is much more fatigued. She’s probably been casting [Perseverance] on herself continuously for days.”
As Mireia continued to cast, the medics began replacing her self-applied makeshift bandages with proper dressings, giving Elianora the chance to clean and examine each wound. I watched with fairy sight and determined that Mireia was concentrating entirely on supporting the fairy knight’s life with [Restoration] and wasn’t able to divert any of her power for healing.
I slipped Mother’s amulet into my belt-wallet, then joined the team. First, I tried to apply [Healing] to some of the worst wounds, but switched to [Purification] to deal with the miasma poisoning. The [Purification] worked much better, since it didn’t depend upon the patient’s natural healing power in any way. That made it a more efficient use of my power. But I had to stop very soon, when I threatened to gray out again.
Instead, I helped with removing her armor, since I had borrowed it before. I knew how things attached.
Two more healers came in to relieve Mireia, and more medics arrived with additional supplies. The tent was beginning to resemble an emergency room.
Serera became conscious again in the middle of all this. She caught hold of my hand and rasped, “Where’s your prince?”
“He’s outside the tent,” I said.
“… get him.”
I nodded and went to fetch him. Mireia had left the tent ahead of me to breath some fresh air and was standing next to him. I paused before exiting the tent, curious about their conversation.
“You alright, Mir?” he was asking.
“I’m still not used to blood…” she said with a shaking voice. She was wrapping her arms around herself as if for warmth, but it wasn’t particularly cool.
Suddenly, I realized what was annoying me whenever Rod was around Mireia. He was calling her by a nickname, the same way he does with me.
What a stupid thing to be annoyed about. I exited the tent and approached Rod.
“Lady Serera is asking for you, Your Highness.”
Rod’s brow furrowed and he went back inside, while Mireia looked at me with worried eyes again. Perhaps because I had found them together? But I didn’t want it to bother me, so I didn’t mention it. I brought up a different subject instead.
“Miss Mireia, that technique that you mentioned, that you used to stop the vampire charm. Are you able to switch it on and off?”
Her eyes grew slightly, but she nodded. “It’s always there, so I can’t turn it off completely, but I can limit the effect instead of stopping it.”
“Like opening and closing a faucet, perhaps?”
“Yes… My Lady, why are you asking?”
I moistened my lips, then drew her away from the guards a bit, closed the distance with her and lowered my voice. “This technique is what you used in your old world so your goddess would not overwhelm you, right?”
Her eyes grew again. “That’s right, but how do you know that?”
There were way too many things I hadn’t told her yet, so I couldn’t just come out and say ‘Eurybia told me’. I didn’t answer her question and just went ahead with my own. “And it turned on automatically while I was feeding?”
“Yes,” she nodded. “I was very surprised, but… it was working, so I didn’t question it.”
“The reason it worked is that you now have a connection with me, which has replaced your connection with your goddess. The benefits will be different but, when you… open the faucet… you will find you can draw a much larger amount of mana than on your own. You use your own pneuma to borrow my non-mortal mana capacity, so the fact that I’m pneuma-deficient won’t get in the way. You can probably heal Lady Serera right up with all the extra power you can draw, even though I cannot.”
She grew very puzzled. Well, I was telling her a weird thing.
I shrugged. “Go talk to Chiara about it. Tell her that you’re my Servant now and I said she should explain things to you.”
“Your servant…?” she echoed in puzzled tones.
I patted her arm. “Don’t worry. You can stay with Rod. It’s not that kind of a servant.”
I left the bewildered girl behind and went back into the tent.
Rod was squatting next to Serera, but he was just scowling and watching her.
I joined him and asked, “What did she say?”
“She was passed out again before I got here,” he replied.
I took Serera’s hand and cautiously sent [Restoration] directly into her. She roused once again.
“Fele Serera, the prince is here,” I told her.
She opened her eyes, looked at him, looked at me, and gave a sigh. After a brief coughing fit, she gave a nod, but she spoke to me instead of Rod.
“… yes. You have what I gave you?”
“Yes, it’s here,” I answered. I dug the amulet back out and showed her.
She put her hand on it, seeming to concentrate, then nodded.
“That’s your mother’s life, Your Highness,” she whispered. “Protect it well.”
My mind skidded off the road, falling into a ditch of confusion.
“It’s what?”
Rod cleared his throat, then asked, “My Lady Serera, about my father…”
She heaved a sigh and gave a nod. Lowering her eyes, she said, “I failed … I could not protect him.”
My mind was yanked out of that ditch and forced back on track.
“What?”
She was feeling around her waist. ” … wallet…”
“I’ll get it,” I said, but my thoughts were whirling around wildly as I went to her gear. What did she mean, she could not protect him? In what way was that amulet my mother’s life? What was going on?
I brought the sword harness to her and opened her wallet for her, but she just said. “… signet ring…”
I dug through the contents, finding coins and other odds and ends, then finally a ring bearing a familiar seal. My face went ashen as I showed it to Rod.
Uncle Owen never parted with this ring. He used it for sealing official documents.
Serera spoke in our silence.
“I am deeply, deeply sorry, Your Highness…”
