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“Ugh,” I grumbled, and Sen chuckled inside my head.
My thoughts were more hers than mine, though. After hearing all the details about what had been happening in the camp from Dilorè and the Servants, my mind was too cluttered with her ideas, stuff that had nothing to do with the life of a teenage slave girl. But during my life, I experienced just enough to have some idea about politics inside a group working on a common task. That’s what life is for the slaves on a plantation, after all. So I could feel the same dissatisfaction as Sen.
The three groups, meaning General Kosto and his people, the Faerie group, under Amana, and the Royal Champion’s Party (that’s the name they use officially, rather than the Hero’s Party) with Ryuu back in command, each had their own ideas about how to handle the mission, so I had heard a lot of frustrations from Dilorè and the Servants. It seemed tempers had already risen several times during their planning sessions.
Rod would not have organized it this way, if he had spared sufficient time to deal with it. The first mental note I made was to tell him to stop stretching himself too thin. Then I shook my head free of the alien thought and reminded myself that I was not Tiana.
Somebody needed to tell him, though. He needed to let others do more of the general management and focus on the higher level things only. He clearly had thrown this together while not clarifying who was in charge.
Sen noted, <Or he isn’t as cerebral as you’re thinking he is. He’s not Ged, remember. He needs to rely on Tiana to supply the brains while he concentrates on charisma and leadership.>
I nodded, then noticed that I was again letting the alien thoughts dominate and made myself stop again.
By giving me to Dilorè, Kosto had put me in the ‘others’ group, made up of Ceria, Bruna and the fairling mages whom Relador dispatched to deal with Fairy Demonic Blindness. Theoretically, we were part of the ‘Faerie group’ under Amana, but the fairies and non-fairies split naturally into two groups, thanks to the fact that the non-fairies couldn’t fly. Well, it seems Ceria can fly somewhat via a spell she has been practicing, and I would eventually have to admit that I had an aerial technique.
Of course, Diurhimath and Pasrue would also be in this group, even though they could also take to the air. They were currently on one last logistics run with the airship before the expedition departed. So I guess half of us actually could fly. But we were the group who would normally stay on the ground with the fairling mages.
Being in the least structured group was a good thing for me though, because I had stuff to do, once everyone bedded down.
I started getting restless as the night grew deep and black. I had already waited past midnight while feigning sleep. The Reladorian mages and Ceria were sound asleep, but Bruna was for some reason sitting near the door with her glaive propped up on her shoulder.
My eyesight shouldn’t have been able to see her well, but Sen was lending me her eyesight through some process I didn’t understand. I suppose it was like how she could occasionally control my body. I could see the amazon staring into her hands as if deep in thought, but through Sen’s [Fairy Sight] I could tell that she was actually hard at work, filling magic stones with mana. Earlier, she had been filling Aether, and now she was doing Earth.
Finally she finished, but she just put the stone away into her belt-wallet and sat staring into the darkness, chewing her lip. I guess now, she really was deep in thought.
Wasn’t she ever going to sleep?
After a while, she sighed and called out, softly, “I’m keeping watch, little fairborn. You might as well stop waiting for me to nod off. It ain’t gonna happen.”
Since I was already found out, I complained, “Why would you keep watch in the middle of a military encampment?”
Bruna humphed. “Old adventuring habits. My sister and I don’t really know the Pendorians or the Reladorians. It’s hard to trust people you’ve only just met. I took the first watch and she’s taking the second.”
“You’re the precious friends of their princess,” I objected. “You’re being ridiculous.”
Another deep sigh was my only answer. I guess it wasn’t as easy as that.
I sat up on the edge of the bunk, since she knew I was awake anyway, then busied myself by arranging the bedding.
Glancing my direction, she noted, “You stayed fully kitted out, though? You can’t lecture me about acting paranoid.”
I did it because I wasn’t confident enough at controlling my raiment to literally take off parts of it like clothing. I didn’t think I could even safely disappear pieces of it while leaving the rest unchanged. I was pretty likely to end up completely naked instead. But I wasn’t sure how to explain my problem to her.
When I didn’t respond, she asked, “You were waiting to sneak out, weren’t you?”
I grimaced, then admitted, “I have an errand to run.”
“An errand?”
I twisted my lips while hesitating to answer, but Sen counseled, <You need to give her the trust you were expecting her to give just now.>
Right. Bruna was certainly an ally.
I answered, “I need to do a survey of the area.”
She visibly chewed over my answer for a bit, then wondered, “You are here as a ‘guide’, right? Do you really know the territory?”
Being a ‘guide’ was an excuse for me to join the expedition, and General Kosto had complained that the fairy warriors were already here in the role of guides, but I really did have ways to help them find their way through the unknown territory of the Highlands. However, pretending to be a native in order to explain why I could do it was for the mortals, not Tiana’s companions. And if I was going to trust her, I might as well trust her properly. I had to keep the details secret, but I decided to at least tell her something that was effectively the truth.
“I have resources I can depend upon. And I do have a very effective means to scout ahead. Which is why I need to go out and get started.”
“You’re trying to leave out the details, right?”
She figured that out, huh?
I shrugged. “Sorry. Amana and Dilorè know them, but…”
She dismissed it with a wave of the fingers. “It’s fine.”
“Diurhimath and Pasrue should be back before morning, so we’ll be moving out at dawn. I want to go and get back before that. I was waiting for everyone to be asleep so I wouldn’t alarm anyone by disappearing.”
She looked in my direction while chewing over it, then nodded, accepting the answer.
“So, don’t be surprised, okay?”
“Surprised?” she echoed.
“When I disappear,” I clarified. “Oh, and keep it a secret.”
Then I dissolved my image the way Sen had taught me, returning to the formless, invisible [Blood Effigy].
I could sense Bruna still, and the others sleeping in the room, but I couldn’t see her expression, so I don’t know how she actually reacted when I suddenly vanished.
Dissolving the effigy is still the only part I can do on my own. I depended upon Sen to fly the formless effigy out of the encampment and into the wilds beyond the valley. But I was able to remain connected to it, which sort of means I stayed “in” it, as much as any of us are in anything at all on Huade. I had to remind myself that I wasn’t really ‘there’, I was actually in the Spirit Core, somewhere outside the Mortal Realm.
It’s hard to remember that, when you don’t actually understand it yourself.
All this time that the [Blood Effigy] was active, I could have actually been ‘present’, no matter who was in control. The connection goes from the effigy to Tiana’s spiritual vessel to the Spirit Core itself. It doesn’t matter who in the Spirit Core actually controls it at the moment. But my flight from Narses Castle to here was my first experience of actually being ‘in’ the formless effigy while not controlling it, so I guess I was improving.
<You should try,> Sen told me, meaning I should try flying the effigy. But I didn’t quite have the confidence to do it yet. I only know how to move my body.
My main problem with trying it was that I’m not seeing the world around me when it’s formless. Sen was navigating entirely by spiritual senses. It’s not actually vision. Instead, it’s the spiritual ability that powers [Fairy Sense] and [Vampire Sense], except without the flavor that a fairy or vampire body gives it. Maybe we could call it [Spirit Sense]? Because while we’re in the formless state, we basically see the world the way that a spirit like Lucy does? It’s probably how Durandal sees the world too, come to think of it.
<That’s pretty good,> Sen judged. <I like it. We’ll call it [Spirit Sense] from now on.>
I know it’s kinda dumb, but her approval gave me a weird sense of achievement.
<This is where I’m supposed to encourage the young girl to believe in herself and stuff, isn’t it? But I can’t BS you like a normal adult would here, because you can pick up on my thoughts.>
I felt the urge to giggle. I probably would have, if I were in a normal body at that time.
<Should I try flying anyway?> I wondered.
<Later,> she suggested. <We’re already almost there.>
That surprised me. While I wasn’t particularly paying attention, we already flew up the north slope of the pass, back down the East Pendor side, around a mountain shoulder and up into a small hollow, high up near the tree line.
I felt mana disturbance everywhere, in a chaotic mess that almost kept me from sensing where the actual ground was. It was a little frightening to witness. And when I could tell the actual ground, it was torn up, with craters, great burnt patches and trees blasted down. Scary!
<A battle took place here, probably a week or so back,> Sen stated. <A nasty one, from the look of it. Probably our guys were digging out that destroyed redoubt upslope of us. They don’t seem to have been defending anything other than themselves, though. At least, there’s nothing behind what’s left of the redoubt to defend, that I can detect. It was probably a rebel lord or senior officer refusing to surrender.>
With Sen’s words, I could feel all the thoughts of ‘tactical analysis’ coming out of Tiana’s knowledge. She could read all that in the pattern of mana still embedded in the ground where attack spells and magic weapons had struck. Even though I sort of understood how she could, because I had access to all that knowledge myself if I tried, I was a little in awe at how quickly Sen put a scenario together to explain what she could sense.
<Sorry,> she apologized. <Tiana FBM kicked in for a moment there. Ah, we just barely made it in time. They’re arriving.>
She said that as we both sensed the approach of the airboat that Miröen called his ‘launch’. Diurhimath and Pasrue were on their way back from their ‘logistics run’, but they would make a short stop here to deliver a special passenger.
