§
The Princess made a tactical error upon wakin’. She didn’t notice that the goddess shut down her spiritual vessel and me along with it when she put her to sleep. Maybe ’cause she didn’t need it in that Illusory Reality dream thing, she didn’t think about it. Not sure. But she was distracted by her own embarrassment and the babies in her tummy and what have you, and she stayed that way, leavin’ it in its dormant state all the way up until that Makit fellow was talkin’ to her and she got frustrated with herself at bein’ caught up in her funk.
So when she finally inflated it back to the size that those immortals wanted her to keep it, I could have woke up again, but she still had her mind on any and all matters, so it wasn’t until I sort of noticed I wasn’t active and somehow woke myself that I was able to get back to my job.
Naturally, my friends patrolin’ the sky over this city came first. They wouldn’t wander off, just ’cause I dozed off, but without anyone to report to, if anythin’ was goin’ on, they’d just watch and remember. Spirits got no sense of urgency, you see. So it wasn’t like they’d come try to wake me up.
So I spent a good amount o’ time with them first, confirming that nothin’ but normal air traffic had gone in or out of the airspace. Then I had to review what all the [Blood Sigil] on Amalis’s back had recorded. It was becoming a waste o’ time at this point, ’cause he really was turning out to be nothin’ but a hard-workin’ boss runnin’ the city.
That done, I finally turned to the [Blood Sigil] on Princess Amana’s back…
Now, see, Amana’s a mage rather than a fairy knight, and a very young one who still usually wears clothes, because she can only do very simple raiments, so she should have been wearin’ her work clothes, a mage outfit. And she was supposed to be out there in the wild as part of the recovery party lookin’ to retrieve the Princess’s parents.
[Blood Sigil] works great for hearing stuff, but its power to perceive objects is weak, ’cause it’s just [Vampire Sense], which ain’t anywhere as detailed as [Fairy Sense]. But I can get an image through it. Unfortunately, it relies on Darkness mana. That means, in the light, the image can only sense a distance o’ maybe a pace.
So I didn’t see what sort of place she was in, except for the floor and the wall behind her back, but I could dimly see Amana, and I could tell how she was dressed. Or rather, how she was not dressed.
She was in some kind of a room with a stone wall and floor, she was naked, and she seemed to be sittin’ there in a stupor.
Ah, gods and whores, what is this?
I observed longer but still couldn’t believe it. She wasn’t in a prison or somethin’, because her clothing and all her gear, including a few magic devices, were sittin’ only inches away, piled up against the wall. She wasn’t wounded, in any way I could detect. If anythin’, she was three sheets to the wind, drunk as a shipless sailor.
It was high time to alert the Princess.
§
While I was diligently studying Inda’s notebook, Sirth suddenly pushed the memories of her last several minutes at me, then directly shoved control of the [Blood Sigil] into my hands. It was, to be frank, rude as hell, but I immediately understood why she did it.
My sister was supposed to be a member of the recovery mission on their way to recover the bodies of Mother and Uncle Owen. Frankly, they should have made it to the wilderness area in question the previous afternoon. Instead, she was somewhere that didn’t look anything like where she should be, in a completely unexpected condition.
I’d had no contact with the recovery mission since they left, except my brief conversation with Amana, but the recovery mission would have set up a regular contact scheduled with the military. If something happened to them, or if they fell out of contact, then Colonel Morgas, who came shortly after my breakfast to give my military briefing because they had not yet sorted out who my military aide would be, would presumably have mentioned it.
I had the same reaction as Sirth. I was frozen in stunned shock for several seconds. But then I touched Lucy’s pendant and called for her.
“Out!” she declared as usual upon appearing.
“Call Amana, please,” I told her.
She stared at me for a bit, long enough that I thought she might not have understood, but then said, “No Amana.”
“I beg your pardon?” I replied, flabbergasted.
Lucy simply tipped her head. Her human facial language isn’t always true to form, but I got the sense she didn’t understand what I wasn’t understanding.
– Sirth?
My airship captain alter-ego gave a non-verbal reply, then worked through her spirit language of feelings, colors and other shapeless nonverbal symbols to speak to Lucy in her own language.
– She’s tryin’ to tell you Amana ain’t respondin’, Princess.
So, ‘No Amana’ meaning there’s no Amana on the line. Perhaps her spirit connection relied upon one of the magic tools lying in the pile of clothing next to her.
I tried to get a sense of where the [Blood Sigil] was. It doesn’t have a direct connection to my ‘fairy GPS’, but when it is out of range of my fairy senses, I still have a general understanding of where it is, relative to my own body. As best as I could tell, she was somewhere in the Oserian Highlands, which is a huge area, around the size of Switzerland or Kentucky. Which meant she hadn’t made it to the target area on the north side of the mountains yet.
That was not a good place to be, at all. I decided to try spiritual voice.
The less clear I am about the location of the person, the more unreliable the technique is, but it was still possible for this to succeed. I had a firm image in my mind of Amana’s spiritual signature, so I had a chance.
Amana–nedo, can you hear me?
I could hear her confused voice through the [Blood Sigil]. “Tiana?”
Sal’nedo, anlin, ave ëa mo? (What are you doing right now, Sister?)
She giggled and answered in Dorian. “Tiana is so good at speaking in proper Fairy. I’m so jealous.”
Answer the question, Amana!
“Don’ wanna” she mumbled. “Lemme sleep.”
Where are you? Open your eyes and describe your location.
She giggled again. “So bossy. Hey, are you pregnant yet?”
Amana!
“Our poor little Tiana,” she mourned, shaking her head. “Pregnant so young. Where did we go wrong?”
I’m getting mad at you, Sal’nedo! Where are you?
She gigglesnorted, then shrugged. “Dunno. Too sleepy.”
Where’s everyone else? Where’s Serera and Dilorè?
“Huh? Serera? Mmm.”
She seemed to cogitate over the question for several seconds, then shrugged. “Dunno. I answered two questions for you. It’s your turn to answer. You pregnant yet?”
I held my forehead in my palm, shaking my head. It seems ‘dunno’ counts as an answer.
Finally, I answered, I’m pregnant, alright? My due date is the seventh of the Month of Greening.
“Yay!”
I was ready to strangle the idiot, but I simply sighed instead. She was out of reach, after all.
Can you explain why you’re naked, then?
“It’s more comfortable!” she declared definitively.
I had half-expected to hear ‘dunno’ again.
Even while sitting on a bare stone floor?
“… maybe?”
Do you know how you came to be where you are?
There was a long pause, then she simply shrugged and went back to, “Dunno. G’night.”
She rolled sideways, still leaning against the wall, but now with her cheek against it.
I sat there, drumming my fingers on the desktop, for several seconds, before looking over to Lucy, who had begun flying around, doing an inspection of my office. Kiki, in cat form, was watching her just like a cat watching a small bird. She had really settled in as one of the palace cats.
“Lucy, dear, could you call Dilorè?”
She zipped back over to me and declared, “Call!”
After a bit, Dilorè’s voice came through, loaded with concern. “Tiana? Is everything okay?”
“That’s my line! Where are you?”
A very long pause, then, less assertive, “Why do you ask?”
“Because Amana is nowhere near where you guys are supposed to be!”
Her voice turned cross. “How do you know where Amana is? Did you follow us?”
“I’m sitting at my desk in Narses Castle! Never mind how I know where she is! Where are you?”
She heaved a sigh, then admitted, “A couple miles away from the Green Tower.”
“The what!???”
The pieces of the puzzle fell into place as soon as I heard ‘Green Tower’.
I didn’t have to ask which Green Tower. Amana was in the Oserian Highlands, so the only “Green Tower” Dilorè could mean was the one associated with the dryad Áne of the Green Tower, the daughter of Erebos, the Ascendant Immortal who was somewhere near or below said tower, locked in a mortal struggle with the Evil God Astaroth.
Amana is a lot older than Tiana, but she’s less than a hundred years old. That’s only a late teenager by fairy standards. Think of her as a high school senior. And when Dilorè strayed too close to that tower, she wound up entrapped by the dryad who lives within it (in utter contradiction to the normal inclinations of a dryad.)
“What were you doing, going near that place?!” I demanded.
“We didn’t!” she insisted. “I specifically had us fly a path that put extra distance between us and that place! But then Amana and all the aerial cavalry beasts started flying toward it, and Master and I couldn’t stop them! They wouldn’t pay any attention to us!”
‘Master’ meant her mentor as a fairy knight, Lady Serera.
“How much extra distance?” I asked, now more puzzled than freaked out.
“We were fifty miles away from that place when it happened! Short of killing the flying beasts and attacking Amana, there was nothing we could do! We just stayed with them so we didn’t lose them!”
“Okay. Understood.” I drummed my fingers on the desk again, then asked, “So who is where, now? Is it just Amana inside the tower?”
A long pause. “So, you know about that.”
“I could tell she was inside a stone room, but I couldn’t see much more than that.”
“I really want to know how you know all this.”
“Vampire magic,” I answered tersely. “That’s all I will say.”
She let out a sigh, then breathed a heavy, “Fine! Keep your secrets.”
“I intend to,” I declared. “Now talk.”
She let out a discontented noise, then stated, “The hippalektryons landed on their own, on the hill where the tower stands, and by that time, even Serera and I were fighting the desire to head inside. I know you’re immune to it, but I can’t tell you how hard it was to fight it, Tiana!”
“At least you did,” I said. “You’ve improved a lot.”
“Yeah,” she replied, sounding a little pleased with herself. “Anyway, once they were on the ground and could dismount, the knights followed Amana inside before we could stop them. Ryuu somehow held Chiara back, and Matthias was able to resist it, but everyone else went in. We tried to follow, but we couldn’t, and Ryuu decided to drag Chiara away from there so she would stop fighting him. Master and Matthias finally managed to work out some magic that would shield her and us, and here we are.”
“And the sea wyverns?” I asked, remembering the squadron escorting them. There was no body of water near that place large enough for them to land, and they are super clumsy when trying to take off from land. Frankly, they need prepared landing strips.
“They were never affected, but Master didn’t want to take any chances. She made them return to base after the hippalektryons landed.”
Which meant they would have long since made it back. I frowned.
“Any idea why I hadn’t heard about any of this?”
“… We gave full reports when we checked in,” Dilorè evaded.
“You could have told me directly, right?” I noted. “This all happened yesterday, right?”
After a long pause, she admitted, “We decided not to tell you. And our contact in Narses is the prince’s knight Lady Halet, so…”
“… so Rod didn’t want to tell me either.”
“Well, obviously!” she retorted. “You would jump into your armor and fly straight out here! And don’t you dare!”
