Just a quick reminder that I am taking the last full week of every other month off now. Next chapter unlock will be May 2nd.
§
After I received a promise from the Fairy Queen for a private consultation, the subject of Mother’s death continued to loom over the dinner, keeping the mood muted. But finally, conversation turned toward the strange quarantine.
It came when Rod glanced across to my table and noted, “We had a peculiar experience on our way from the quarters your people provided. I recall Fairy Meren promising we could receive our explanation here.”
Meren never gave a title for herself, so Rod defaulted to the honorific mortals use for fairies without titles, which is to simple say ‘Fairy’ in place of ‘Miss’. It was probably correct, since she had mentioned no title for herself.
I asked Morrígan, “Did you quarantine the Castle because of the peculiar blindness to demons that Lady Mára and others have shown?”
She gave me an approving smile. “You have guessed it, Esteemed Mother-in-Law.”
With a wince, I held up both hands. “You have a lot of choices for what to call me, but please choose anything but that.”
Taking care to keep her laugh quiet, since her husband was still in a dark mood, she told me, “For me, it’s the most relevant relationship with you.”
“We have asked our clan members to address her as ‘Your Highness’, Your Majesty,” Oberon reminded her softly. She raised her eyes, then nodded.
“Of course, Your Majesty,” she conceded.
I wondered if her humor was a way to dodge the question, or just a fairy being a fairy.
“So, please tell us, Your Majesty,” I prompted, then added, to let her know what she couldn’t hide, “What exactly were they trying to screen out, that required causing my mother’s lady’s maid such distress and that seemed generally on guard against spirits?”
“You seem to have ferreted most of it out yourself,” she replied, eyes still twinkling.
“Please tell us in detail,” I insisted, getting a little annoyed. “Especially, please explain it to His Highness Roderick, your royal guest who has been inconvenienced as a result.”
Her amusement didn’t vanish, but she politely muted it as she turned to address Rod. Lowering her head briefly, she stated. “We humbly beg your pardon, Your Highness. We did have very good reasons for our caution. To be absolutely precise, it was not the Fairy King’s Castle that we have placed under quarantine. It is the entirety of the outside world.”
Rod’s eyes grew slightly. He demanded, “What in Heaven do you mean by that?”
Yeah, it sounded like she had just declared a pandemic to me, too.
She gave him an apologetic smile. “Your Highness, we have good reason to believe this issue strictly affects fairies. It may perhaps also affect other magic races such as Elementals, but your mortal subjects should be in no danger from it.”
“A disease that affects only magic races…” he said, verbally mulling over the idea. “I’ve always heard magic races don’t catch diseases.”
“Indeed we do not catch mortal diseases, Your Highness, but diseases of fairy-kind do exist. This problem, however, is not so much a disease as a parasite.”
Rod frowned. “A parasite spirit?”
Morrígan’s eyebrows sprang up. “You’ve guessed that much?”
“Her Highness and the other fairy knights mentioned that your people seemed to be on guard against spirits.”
“Yes,” she confirmed. “Although we do not know yet how they are coming to take residence within fairies, and we especially do not yet understand how it is happening without the fairies noticing their presence, but the Demon Blindness, as we’ve named it, is the result of Dark spirits taking residence within fairy brains and purposefully preventing them from seeing demonic mana. All the measures you have encountered today have been taken with the intention of detecting and driving out these parasitic spirits.”
“Even though you don’t believe they affect mortals, you ran all the mortals through the procedures,” Rod noted.
“Because we don’t yet know the vector, Your Highness,” she answered. “The means by which the spirits are traveling to find fairies, or avoiding their notice while infecting them.”
“But that thing that I drove out of Mára was no Dark spirit,” I objected. “That was clearly a gidim!”
Morrígan nodded. “Indeed. And Lady Mára remained blind to demons after you drove it out, so it was not the cause of her blindness, either. We do suspect the gidim is connected in some way, but it was a separate issue.”
“But, why would spirits even do such a thing, Your Majesty?” Dilorè wondered. “As a spirit handler, I must insist that this is nothing like normal spirit behavior.”
The Fairy Queen let out a sigh. “We still have so many questions left to answer. We only know right now that Dark spirits are the cause of the blindness.”
“That’s why [Purification] doesn’t cure it,” I realized.
“Actually, the Light-based [Purification] spell can drive them out,” Morrígan noted. “Only the Healing-based spell fails to work.”
Light magicians have a [Purification] they can use against low-level demons. It is nowhere as effective as the [Purification] based upon Holy mana, and is next to useless against anything higher than a ghoul.
“[Purification] works against spirits?” Dilorè puzzled. “That sounds a little off.”
“It’s actually brute force,” Morrígan explained. “It isn’t the [Purification] itself that does the trick, it’s the sheer onslaught of Light mana. Eventually you simply overwhelm the spirit and drive it out.”
“Have you done this?” I wondered.
“We have, Your Highness,” she nodded. “Thanks to the experimental subjects you provided.”
After a moment of thought, I asked, “Feraen and Lilhàn?”
She nodded. “All our progress was a result of their cooperation. We were able to determine the cause, and, because they endured the treatment without resistance, we were able to drive the Dark spirits out and capture them. Once they discovered their blindness cured, they persuaded Lâsin and Mára to undergo treatment as well.”
My mind immediately pounced on that. Lady Serera believed that all the fairies helping the rebel side were part of the ‘Field and Forest’ coalition, dominated by the Clan of the Old Grove, Lâsin’s kindred.
“Then Lâsin should know now that the demons are behind the rebellion!” I exclaimed. “Will they stop helping Cullen and Parna now?”
Upon hearing that, Oberon finally came out of his blue funk again, wearing a scowl. “Lâsin understands, but his damned son has convinced his clan that I’ve bewitched their chieftain and his wife. He usurped his father and took over the chieftainship.”
I realized at last that the Fairy King was more than a bit drunk. His short rant had been somewhat slurred. He had been saying so little, until that. Must be a quiet drunk.
§
While settling into the water, I remembered that Morrígan had created this pool for Mother’s convenience during her visits, and felt another twinge of sadness. Things which reminded me of Mother just kept popping up out of nowhere lately. I looked down between my hills at the pendant now slightly submerged in the water and gave it a wry smile.
During my last visit to the Fairy King’s Castle, I had learned that my mother had a much better relationship with the Fairy Queen than with her own father, a case which in the mortal world would be unusual between the queen and a concubine’s daughter. I wondered if I would have had such a relationship with Queen Sylphana.
Perhaps I would have, considering the relationship between her and Mother. That in itself was surely an unusual case.
Lucy appeared and began skimming across the water’s surface to check things out.
The more I observed the little spirit avatar, the more I realized it must be some kind of proxy. The real Lucy remained nestled safely within her stone, yet this projection looked and acted as if it were flying around and seeing the world itself, and acted exactly as if Lucy herself had come out for a look-see. If I spoke to Lucy, the projection would respond, yet the transactions I made with her and the communication work she did for me were all clearly being handled by the entity that was staying holed up inside.
Morrígan waded into the pool using the steps on the far side, letting her raiment dissolve as she submerged. Unlike Mother, the Fairy Queen makes not the slightest attempt to age herself, so as a human girl on Earth she would be a very busty eighteen-year-old.
Yes, I know the bust size was irrelevant to her apparent age. But it was damned hard to ignore those things. Her physique reminded me of a particular nude model who occupied her own folder on Robert’s hard drive. Very pretty, with an otherwise svelte figure, but notable for her 40-inch bosom.
As soon as she was in, she lightly paddled around the pool, then quite suddenly morphed to a sea form– unlike my dolphin tail, she had fish scales like a merrow– and gave a sudden kick, launching herself in my direction. The next thing I knew, she had pressed herself up against my body and wrapped an arm around my shoulders as I was abruptly soaked by the wave of water she had brought with her.
While her other hand cupped my breast, she purred into my ear, “Have you learned your marine form yet, Esteemed Mother-in-law? You would recover your mana faster with the increased surface area.”
“I… have… ?” I squeaked in a very weak voice. She had just shocked me into a petrified state, after all.
I was getting accustomed to thirsty fairies, but this was a full-court press, with another full-court press currently sandwiching my upper arm. While she gently molested my tit and I worked on getting my nerve up to push her away, she cooed into my ear, “Show me.”
It required opening my spiritual vessel and expanding my mind, so I had to do that first, before I could manage the marine form. But I did it quickly and grew my tail as she requested.
Predictably, she wrapped her tail around me. It was somehow as flexible as an eel despite looking much more like a normal fish. Fortunately, she had the warmth of a normal body.
And her hand kept massaging.
“Your Majesty, please stop that,” I requested, still weak.
“Mm. I’m trying to decide how to comfort you, though. You’re in a terrible state, my dear.”
She spoke as if she planned to continue, but she did stop squeezing. Although her hand stayed in place.
“Would you normally comfort a mourning woman by making a pass at her?”
“Frankly, if she were a fairy, then yes,” she answered, her eyes twinkling. “We tend to share quite a lot of comfort sex while mourning. With non-blood-related family and friends, mostly. Of course, with spouses and lovers as well.”
The answer threw me a little. I had to admit, I couldn’t exactly feel surprised, though. We were talking about fairies, after all.
Then she finally let go of my breast and pulled my head down onto her shoulder, holding me in place by caressing my hair.
“People reaffirm their bonds with those who’ve suffered a mutual loss when they lose a loved one. Mortals gather to share meals and memories. Fairies have sex. You losing your mother and me losing my friend would normally qualify.”
“Shouldn’t you be consoling your husband instead?”
“Want to know how many times I’ve consoled my husband so far?” she teased. “We started after losing our granddaughter Inda, whom we heard about first. We’ve been at it for days now.”
My eyes bugged a little. “I think that’s more information than a mother needs to know about her son’s private life.”
Her sparkling laugh lit the night, but then she leaned her head against mine. “Frankly, we fairies have sex once crying becomes too painful. But Esteemed Mother-In-Law, I have a deep suspicion you have not cried enough yet. You had to recover from your wounds, and then you had to confront this request from Gaia, then you had to pilot that machine all the way from Atianus to here. You can’t have had the time to cry all of your tears out.”
Her words jolted me. I had cried more than once. But, all my tears…?
Her hold tightened on me a bit. The contact that had been sexual before was now caring, soothing, reassuring. The tension in my limbs abated, and I relaxed into her gentle embrace… and suddenly they began flowing, completely on their own, without my bidding.
It seems she was right.
