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I’m confident that Áne sensed nothing before I appeared. One moment, she lay curled up on a patch of clover, safe and alone within her tower. The next moment she was panicking and attempting to flee the intruder whom she surely never imagined would suddenly gather from the mana in front of her.
Her reflexes were good. Rather than attempt to fight when she had no time to assess the situation, she immediately sprinted headlong for the door, flying rather than using her feet for an extra bit of speed. She was right that the best strategy was to retreat in order to give herself a chance to gain information on her opponent. Unfortunately, I wrapped her in tendrils of condensed blood before she was able to get far.
“Let me go!” she shrieked as she struggled. “What do you want from me?!”
“You already know the answer to that,” I answered with patience. “We just spoke, only a short time ago.”
Perhaps it was her shock at learning who her captor was, or perhaps she simply realized her struggles were futile, but she stopped straining against the tendrils.
“Your Highness?” she asked. “How did you get in here so quickly?”
When in my expanded state, I am normally above such concerns, but Tiana’s sense of morality and Robert’s sense of shame forced me to become bothered by the dryad’s current state. As was normal for a dryad, when alone in her natural habitat (which this certainly wasn’t, but it was a decent recreation of it), Áne was nude. Having her wrapped up in my blood tendrils in such a state of undress was bearing an unfortunate resemblance to certain pornographic entertainments from Robert’s world.
Let me say this clearly; the tendrils don’t act like that, and I feel no sense of touch through them. But the resemblance was close enough to make me want to put an end to this situation.
“That’s not important,” I declared. “Give me your word you won’t struggle or flee, and I’ll release you.”
“Y… yes, Your Highness,” she replied. “I shall obey.”
“If that answer was an attempt to avoid answering as I asked, I will keep you like this,” I stated, increasing the pressure wrapping her chest and arms a bit more.
“Aaah! On my honor, I shall not struggle or flee, Your Highness!”
“Better,” I judged, and laid her down unharmed on the clover. Incredibly, a couple bees were investigating the blossoms next to her. It made me wonder if they actually found enough food to support a colony within this tower.
After the tendrils of blood disappeared, she rubbed her upper arms while turning a slightly offended pout in my direction.
“Had you warned me that you were entering, I would not have fled, Your Highness. I feared that a demon had somehow invaded my home.”
I let my voice turn a little colder, and switched to Ancient Fairy. “I am not so lax that I give a fairy old enough to remember the Ancient Age the opportunity to do me harm. Giving warning that I am on my way into her fortress bristling with weapons to someone who has already entrapped my comrades does not seem prudent to me.”
She finally rose, and assumed a seiza position, then bent down into a bow. Switching into the same language, she replied, “Áne, the Lady of the Tower, offers to Your Highness my apologies for detaining your comrades. I swear to Your Highness that they have not suffered any harm and I assure Your Highness that I took this action for their protection.”
I retorted immediately, slipping back into Dorian. “Not suffered harm? My sister seems rather addled, in my opinion.”
Keeping her head down, she shook it while answering, “I assure you, Your Highness, she is merely caught up in a dream.”
“Raise your head, Áne. I’m not happy, but I don’t wish to continue addressing your hair.”
Pressing my lips together for a moment to contain my annoyance as she rose back into an upright posture, I considered the woman before me. Tresses like green jade, eyes like emeralds, skin like sweet cream. She could easily have escaped from a nineteenth-century painting depicting the nymphs of Earthly mythology, although, as is typical of the Huadean versions, she was rather more buxom than most models of that era.
Her brow wrinkled as she wondered, “Your Highness, I know it’s you by your aura but… what manner of projection is this? You seem to be both here and not here. It isn’t standard illusion magic.”
What she saw was a reproduction of Tiana, wearing approximately the same kimono Tiana had been wearing this morning. But, of course, a fairy of her age had fairy sight sufficient to recognize that something was wrong. And she had seen my unnatural entry as well, which was surely a tipoff that the body in front of her wasn’t a physical object.
The corner of my lips rose slightly. “That’s a reasonably good description. Let’s leave it at that, shall we? I’m still waiting for an answer to my original question.”
She tipped her head slightly. “Your question?”
“Why have you detained my friends?” I replied, repeating my words from outside the tower. “I will hear your explanation, Daughter of Erebos.”
She sank slightly, as if the weight of her crime had just settled on her shoulders. Sounding a little dejected, she answered, “I saw no other way, Your Highness. It was my only choice.”
“No other way to do what?”
“Prevent them from being massacred,” she answered, then, as if that answer gave her some resolve, she straightened again. “Your Highness, I was acting to safeguard their lives! I swear!”
I frowned. “You say that, but you used some mind controlling magic to draw them here and imprison them…”
Áne cried, “If the rest would just come inside, where I can explain it to them, I would have no need to do so!”
“You expect them to just come willfully inside, when you could just tell them from here?”
“I don’t dare! Outside, the evil one can hear everything I say! They must come here, where I can guard against spying ears!”
Puzzled, I asked, “Why can’t you just tell Lady Serera via spiritual voice? She’s mentioned that she knows you. You must be able to speak privately to her.”
Again, she sank, her shoulders distinctly drooping now. “Your Highness.. have you ever heard me using the secret voice of the fairies?”
I thought back, recalling my prior encounters with her, but… she had always used a strange Light magic to cast her physical voice into the distance. It generated normal physical sound, unlike spiritual arts that transmitted directly to the mind.
I told her, “A fairy of your age can surely do such a basic thing though?”
She shook her head emphatically. “No, Your Highness. I cannot. My mind has been sealed against mental communications. I may speak only to those who can hear my voice.”
My eyes bulged. “Who could do such a thing, against a fairy of your age?”
“My father, Your Highness,” she stated quietly. “Until he releases me, I am a captive here, and I may only speak to those within the range of my voice. All other means of communication are forbidden. The distance you saw me travel from the tower when you were here before is the farthest I may travel, and the magic I use to cast my physical voice has a range of only a couple miles beyond that.”
Even the me in this expanded state was shocked speechless for a few seconds. Erebos had imprisoned a dryad, his own daughter, within a jail of stone walls?
She gave a weak, sad smile. “I can guess your thoughts, Your Highness. But he did so out of love, I assure you. It is for my protection, and my freedom. And it cannot end until the evil god is gone from this world.”
“Your freedom?” I echoed, very confused.
“My mental freedom, Your Highness,” she clarified. “To keep my thoughts out of Astaroth’s snares.”
When I did not reply, she understood that she hadn’t clarified enough, so she kept speaking. Her voice had grown husky in her previous reply, but now it decayed into a pained whisper. “A very long time ago, after the demons killed my sisters and nieces, and destroyed this tower and my clan, I became a slave of the evil god and a traitor to our race. I am only alive and free thanks to my father’s forgiveness and the seal he placed on my mind.”
My frown deepened. If the darkness spirit parasites had been around that long, the fairies would have encountered them long ago. They wouldn’t have been a recent surprise. But normal demonic methods of enslavement don’t work on fairies.
She nodded. “I understand your doubt, Your Highness. It would never have been possible, if a young fairy had not foolishly entered into a voluntary pact with the evil god. I created my hell with my own hands.”
“Why would you do such a thing?!” I demanded.
“Why would a child younger than you, in grief over the loss of all her loved ones, while held helpless in captivity, commit such a heinous crime?” She gave me a gentle smile as she said those words. “If she believed her sisters were fellow prisoners, and her sacrifice could free them, if she didn’t realize that the freedom the evil god promised her was only the release of their cold, withering corpses, that Astaroth was somehow keeping those corpses from decaying while animating them as flesh golems through his own magic, to trick me into believing they were still alive? I wasn’t smart enough or skilled enough to see through the deception. It was magic no mage on Huade could perform. But I know that’s only an excuse.”
“And the gods could not help break the enslavement?” I asked. “Your father can ask them directly. Something of that level, surely they would intervene?”
“The pact can only end once Astaroth is removed from this world, Your Highness. It’s not a curse; it’s a promise in perpetuity that I am unable to break.”
“And preventing your communication helps how?”
“It prevents me from giving the evil one any information,” she answered. “My father’s magic stops me from leaving the tower, to prevent the evil one from capturing me and removing the seal, and I cannot do anything within the tower without my father noticing my intentions and stopping me. I cannot assist the evil one with information via normal sound or writing or other physical means, because Father could detect and block that as well. But to prevent me from using mental means, Father could only place a total seal on that ability. I can only hear the strongest communications, such as those from Father, and I cannot send any thoughts whatsoever.”
With tears beginning to leak from her eyes, she noted, “The evil one gave up trying to send me commands long ago, since I never succeeded in obeying him or even answering him. And because I cannot respond to him, he cannot use his sophistry to beguile me further. But if the seal were lifted, my contract would surely drive me to contact him and re-enter his service.”
Her smile turned from sad to brave, and she added, “There is a silver lining, Your Highness. As long as I guard this place, the evil one’s minions cannot come here to free him or attack my father. I am the sentry guarding the front door of his prison, and I can never be absent from my post.”
“That’s not much of a silver lining, My Lady!” I retorted.
She laughed, then sighed and smiled. “It is not all ill, Your Highness. Many senior fairies know me, and understand that I cannot leave. I have many friends who bring me books and news of the world, and I do have some ability to look outward into it.
I sat and digested the information for a while, then asked, “So, you claim to have saved my comrades from peril, but how? They would not have come to this place if you had not called them.”
“The peril wasn’t in this place, Your Highness,” she explained. “It was at their destination.”
“And, trapped here in this tower, how would you know their destination?”
“I don’t,” she admitted simply. “I know only the dangers that my father deduced and relayed to me. I acted according to his orders when I bewitched your comrades in order to bring them here.”
Erebos deduced… Ané was using that term the way Fan Li uses it, meaning to access the Sea of Knowledge by Immortal means, rather than using [Divination].
“What dangers?”
“A large and very powerful ambush is waiting at that destination, and your friends are the intended target. My father foresaw that if I did not find a way to stop them from reaching that destination, they would certainly perish.”
