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I’ve described Fan Li’s original blood magic, [Blood Effigy], as a replacement for the spiritual proxies of the Elders, but her own paper effigy technique from Huajie, that she based the magic upon, differs from spiritual arts in one very profound way. Proxies like Kanon are distinctly separate entities, intended to survive independently until they expire or return to reunite with their principal. But the [Blood Effigy] magic, like Fan Li’s paper effigies, is never fully independent from its creator.
A more accurate way to see her magic is to imagine each Effigy as the pseudopod of an amoeba, an arm extending out from the central mass of my spiritual vessel, manifesting in the physical world within the condensed blood vehicle that I have sent out, but never disconnected spiritually from me the way the condensed blood is separated physically.
The reason is that the condensed blood, like the strands of Blood-and-Qi that animated Fan Li’s paper effigies in her world, are always stamped with the aura and therefore the control of their owner. Blood-and-Qi is the Qi internal to sentient creatures like mortals. Once united with a first stage cultivator, it becomes an inherent part of their being, and that inherency can never cease except with the death of the cultivator.
In that way, it is exactly like the condensed blood within the blood core of a vampire of Huade, or a member of the Elder race. I was only able to absorb the blood of two asuras by killing them. Because that condensed blood making up the [Blood Effigy] isn’t separable from my being, the destruction of the technique results in the blood returning to me. And because it isn’t separable, my spiritual vessel is inherently connected to it.
So, while it was possible to think of Sirth and Fan Li as ‘out there’ at the Green Tower, while I was here in my bath, the reality was that we were never actually apart.
That’s why I understood what Fan Li intended as soon as she acted. Although I was reading a report at the time, I was aware of what she was doing in real time. You may bow down to me as the Queen of Multitasking now. I’ll allow it.
I rolled my eyes as soon as I knew about Fan Li’s plans, though. I was none too happy about it. But I couldn’t actually find cause to object, because I had made the choice to put her in charge of this mission in the first place. I had wanted her judgment and this was her judgment. Second-guessing her now would be contradicting myself.
Looking over at Mireia, who was staying with me, I wondered how to warn her. She was sitting on one of the maid stools and studying Inda’s notebook because I had decided she needed to learn about local politics just as much as I did. She noticed my glance and lowered the tea cup she had been sipping.
Setting the report safely away from the bath, I settled into the water while telling her, “I’ll be asleep for a bit. Don’t panic, okay?”
“You’re gonna sleep in the bath?” she retorted, sounding slightly alarmed.
“I sleep underwater sometimes, Mir,” I told her. “I’m part Naiad, you know?”
“But… but…” She couldn’t come up with an objection, but still wanted to object.
“Maybe this will help,” I told her, and shifted to my aquatic form, my tail stretching out below the surface and just touching the far edge of the enormous tub.
Her eyes had grown as huge as I had ever seen them by the time my transformation finished.
I raised my flukes and waved them in the air. “Does it feel safer now, with me looking like this?”
She stared at the flukes, then, after I had let them settle back down to the bottom, turned to stare at my face once more. Her mouth stayed open but it didn’t seem she had any plan to answer.
I chuckled, leaned my head back and closed my eyes. My last request to her was, “Don’t wake me, and tell anyone else to wait. I will wake up soon enough.”
Fan Li proceeded with her plan just as soon as she knew my body was in a safe situation for a ‘nap’, so my main body was ‘asleep’ almost instantly.
With the expansion of my mind into the entirety of my spiritual vessel while Fan Li and Sirth were still ‘active’, it felt for a moment like my mind was absorbing them. Of course, that was an illusion. They would be back, the same as normal, next time I summoned them. But doing it this way left me with a much sharper understanding, at least for the duration of this expansion, of their memories and skills.
No longer Tiana, Fan Li or Sirth, I was now ‘Little Sen’, and this time I was a Little Sen with a very good grip of Sirth’s spirit magic and Fan Li’s spiritual arts. And a more expanded awareness than Fan Li’s voluminous mind. In this state, I was still less than half of the Senhion of my past life, but I was also much better aware of her memories and skills than any of my current incarnations could be.
I also had a very clear awareness of the fairy knight who was currently dashing headlong through the sky, desperate to stop me.
Although it was a bit disrespectful to ignore her, I saw no way to allay her fears as long as she saw me as a young fairy, or perhaps, in this current image, some sort of mortal, foolishly traipsing into danger. Her protective urges were overwhelming her common sense. The most constructive thing I could do was disappear from her sight.
So I did. Just before she reached me, I and the floating lotus blossom upon which I was standing scattered into a cloud of small creatures, my human form dissolving in front of her eyes. She arrived as they were scattering.
Tiana likes crows, and Fan Li likes sparrows, so I chose neither of those, instead scattering into an impossible school of flying fish, somehow high in the air above the mount where the Green Tower stood where flying fish had no right to be.
They weren’t real fish, so they could behave impossibly without any issue. Flying like insects or hummingbirds, they dashed away, before dissolving yet again, into a mist of condensed blood.
My [Blood Effigy] technique was not coming apart. I had dispersed it into the air until it could not be perceived without extreme effort. Neither Tiana nor Sirth would have been able to manage this, with their mentalities too tightly tied to their forms as living beings, but Fan Li’s experience with her Air Escape and Water Escape techniques both had strong affinity with my effigy’s current form, so I handled the unfamiliar form without difficulty.
In this diffuse state, I surrounded the Green Tower, my spiritual sense, what Tiana calls ‘fairy sense’ taking it in. I could sense the many enchantments woven into its surface, defenses layered upon and etched into the stones over many years.
Although she had not mentioned it to anyone, a contradiction had terribly bothered my young current incarnation, concerning this tower and its owner. When Tiana encountered Áne in the past, she had perceived her as not particularly ancient or powerful, just a backwoods dryad whom Tiana had overpowered with a sneaky mix of spiritual and vampiric powers.
Later, she had learned that Áne was far older than Mother. She was, in fact, a fairy who had lived since the Ancient Fairy age, that misty prehistory before the rise of the great Elven civilizations and the foundations of modern Huade. She should not have been someone Tiana could overpower, even using the spiritual vessel my young incarnation possessed at that time. And more importantly, she should not have been someone Tiana could sneak up on, the way she did.
Now I learned the reasons for it, and I felt a strange sympathy for the bewildered Áne of that time. It had been entirely by accident, but Tiana had profited immensely from Áne’s vulnerability.
This tower was far more than an ancient, half-ruined building. It was a citadel bristling with weaponry and defensive shields, built with an eye to do battle for centuries or millennia. And at its heart lay a dryad and her domain.
The domain of Möemnen the dryad, deep in the Reladorian forest, had a grand scale and a very generalized purpose. It stretched her power, her Will, outward across her territory, in order to grant her protection while it provided her a comfortable livelihood. It produced the food she needed while managing the forest and her beloved animal and plant residents within it.
But the domain of Áne was nothing like it. Utterly contrary to her nature as a dryad, her domain had taken root in rock and mortar, converting this ancient building into an impregnable fortress, not to keep out common mortals and monsters, although it would do well enough against most of those, but to keep out demons.
Everything was a demonic defense. Layers of Light and Dark mana formed shields meant to suck in and destroy gidim, while harvesting devices sucked more mana in from the sun and the earth to power them. Weapons hid in every crevice and pocket, ready to deliver attacks of Purification and Light. Such weapons were far less effective against ordinary targets than they were against monsters or demons.
A domain comes with a cost, though. The more of herself that a fairy invests in the domain, the less of herself is left for the woman in the center. And when a monster with powerful enough stealth to overcome her senses appeared, blissfully ignorant of all the dangerous threats surrounding her, and wandered straight through those defenses in order to confront the being at the center of them, Áne wasn’t strong enough to stand up to her.
And, once outside the tower, where Áne was far less well-defended, she was completely helpless to stand up to the spiritual assault that Tiana inflicted upon her.
Had she been willing to let her domain go, Áne could have brushed Tiana off like an annoying fly, or flattened her like a marshmallow. But as long as ninety percent or more of Áne was wrapped up in the effort of defending this tower, this abode so unlike the natural habitat of a dryad, she never stood a chance against her.
Outside the tower was outside Áne’s domain. She was far more powerful within than without. So at first blush, it was probably foolish for me to enter the domain and confront Áne in her own element.
That is, if I didn’t possess an advantage as unfair as the one that Tiana had possessed. Tiana had the strength of her ignorance and her one-sided match-up of skills versus Áne. My advantage was even more severe though. I wasn’t here at all. I was resting peacefully in a bath, far away in Narses. Literally, the worst thing Áne could do was force me to dissolve the [Blood Effigy] and disappear.
With my assessment of the tower’s defenses complete, I allowed my gaseous form to penetrate the walls and invade the tower, beginning as an undetectable substance spread out over several floors. Maintaining that form, I sought out the tower’s mistress.
I discovered Áne resting on a flowery bed in a room that filled an entire floor and was completely given over to mana-feeding plants. It felt like a location deep within a mana spring, but it was an artificial environment she had created in order to maintain this garden.
Áne had plants on every floor, so this wasn’t a surprise, but this place was far denser. In size, it was completely insufficient as a garden for a dryad, but with lichens and mosses covering the walls and ceiling and plants in every direction, it was a womb where a fairy of the forest who had trapped herself indoors could take refuge.
I slowly gathered myself together, flowing first to the same floor as her, then the same room as her, then finally into a single position near her. Finally, I condensed the [Blood Effigy] back into a living form, which stood before the startled dryad.
