§
I’m not the only one scouting for the expedition. If the mortals would listen to us, the fairies and I, plus maybe the people of the Hero’s Party, would be the only ones working as advance guards and scouts. The mortals of the Pendorian military would only be the interior guard, protecting the two non-combatants with them, acting as the last line of defense if anything made it through our perimeter. They were along, to be perfectly blunt, only because protocol required Pendor to be represented, and their job, beyond setting up camp and tearing it down, was to use their strength and fight from the middle, and carry the two royals home at the end.
We were moving daily, and we didn’t have a time to establish much in the way of perimeter security at each stop, so it was vital they did not wander off on their own.
Oh, there I go, again. I keep thinking with Tiana thoughts, which is very strange for somebody like me. But I’m kind of getting used to thinking like a royal knight with war experience when I need to. It’s happening because I’m slowly absorbing all those ideas into myself as Sen teaches me. ‘Internalizing them’, as Sen puts it. What that means is, I’m using the skills as if I were the one who fought in Lang Doria.
The trouble began barely after the mortals began setting up camp for the night. Lady Serera’s [Hidden Voice] technique spoke to me while I was prowling through a thick section of woods.
<Hiléa, are the mortals already moving toward the river in your area? We haven’t scouted it yet.>
I stretched the [Spirit Sense] out farther and saw them, out ahead of me. I became worried right away, not just because I hadn’t been there yet, but because I now felt more in their location than just the mortals Serera was concerned about. I burst immediately into my ‘air running’ (Ceria’s name for it) trick, which is really my [Water Step] when I use it to run just above the ground. Because the [Water Step] footholds are moving forward even as I push off against them, I end up running much faster than on the ground, and because of one of the tricks Fan Li was teaching me at night, I could react to obstacles fast enough to safely move through the trees at that speed.
Sen calls the result by her strange phrase ‘juking and jiving’. My path was a zigzag, but I reached the spot like the wind.
Just in time to see the three soldiers filling canteens at the river ensnared by a cast net hawk tarantula.
Not that I knew what it was when I first saw it. I just saw the impossible sight of a spider’s web flying through the air like a fisherman’s cast net, and this web was big enough to cover all three men.
They were not simply helpless fools. They were ‘special forces’ soldiers, so they were not completely caught off guard. But they never expected an ambush from the other side of the river, so they had no time to counter the unorthodox attack. Barely after I saw them, they were already getting covered by the web.
In my head, Sen yelled, <Cut the retrieval line!> and fortunately her words came with the image I needed to see. As I ran above the victims to the other side, I poured Fire and Earth into the [Blood Effigy] sword, just the way Fan Li had taught me.
My skin crawled when I finally had a good look at the monster. I saw a tarantula like we had on the plantation, except this tarantula was the size of a horse and had bird’s wings five times as wide as its body! A giant tarantula with hawk wings… creepy!
At that moment, the monster attempted to retrieve its prey. It intended to carry the three soldiers from the line as it flew away and it was already in the air above the river. The line tightened right in front of me and I slashed through it.
My sword rebounded from the blow, but cut it partially and singed it with the Fire mana as well. The weight of the men finished the job, because the damaged line snapped as the winged spider lifted them from the ground.
Fortunately, they did not fall into the water. They would not have been able to swim while tangled in the net and I would not have the strength to lift three soldiers.
The monster gave out a shrieking cry, screaming its anger at being robbed of its prey with a voice exactly like a hawk, despite its tarantula face.
Its target was now me.
<Don’t give it time to make another net!> Sen warned. <Hawk tarantulas are ridiculously dextrous and the cast-net type is a lightning fast weaver!>
As she spoke, I spied a spinning disk growing behind the strange creature and knew I was seeing the net she meant. The speed at which it was growing was insane! It would be ready to throw in just seconds!
Tiana would have plenty of options here. She had lots of training, practice and experience fighting on the ground and in the air. But I couldn’t borrow her skills for airborne combat. Fighting with her fairy flight skills is too different from using my [Water Step]. It certainly resembles the peculiar way that Sirth uses the [Sky Lotus] technique, but it’s too different from that as well.
At the moment, with no time to think, I saw only one choice. I had to summon an ally that Fan Li had taught me to call upon. I reached through the sword for him while pouring Wind mana into the blade which he would need in order to help me here, since his own is too weak at this distance.
My summoning word was simple. <Durandal!>
<I’m ready, My Lady!> Sen’s ‘old man’ immediately declared with gusto as the disk neared the size the monster had cast on the three soldiers.
“[Holy Rend]!” I yelled out as I swung my blade.
The monster-sized [Wind Scythe] flew forth and struck the hawk tarantula, nearly cutting it in half. The half-severed beast fell into the river with a massive splash. It was too big for the water depth, so the corpse just stuck, right there in the current, with one giant wing sticking two paces up into the air.
I landed, panting and trembling. That was much, much, too much like Tiana’s life for me. With the emergency over, all I could do was drop to a knee and shake.
§
After four days in the Kasarene Highlands, Lhan was becoming the wilderness guide that she originally only pretended to be. Quite a bit of it was the knowledge she gained on the side every time I advised her, using my experience and training as a royal knight, but in addition, Fan Li had been drilling her mercilessly every night in the double-edged blade. It seems Fan Li’s jian and the [Blood Effigy] bastard sword were similar enough weapons for her techniques to work. It didn’t matter that her technique looked nothing like the traditional technique for a bastard sword, since the imitation Durandal was an ancient design. No modern mortal would know the difference.
And as Lhan just demonstrated, Fan Li chose Durandal as the model for a reason other than the fact that Lhan’s outfit was modeled on the ‘Tia Mona’ persona, and Tiana had been carrying him when she was using that alias.
But let’s talk about Mireia’s unfair treatment of our lovely little Lhan.
Okay, I admit her complaints were actually fair, but it was frustrating that Lhan had to take the brunt of them. It wasn’t her fault she was in this position, yet she had to listen dutifully as Mireia berated her via the Light magic connection she set up with Ceria in order to stay in touch with the Oto Expedition.
No, I didn’t fail to mention that before. Rather, I was learning about it at the moment.
“You must limit how much magic you use, Miss Hiléa!” Mireia scolded through the little floating orb of light. “Every time Lady Tiana’s pneuma is taxed, she suffers mortal blood depletion. She needs to use it here, as well!”
“My Lady, I have used my skills only when necessary,” Lhan insisted. “This is very dangerous territory, so…”
“Please be more careful,” Mireia insisted. “Even though she has been making progress, she can only do so much! Yesterday we had her feeding down to only two mortals, but today we will again require three, because the strain on her pneuma suddenly increased while she was in her afternoon bath! Fortunately, one of the bath attendants had been prepared in advance to attend to her in an emergency, or it would have been quite an awkward situation!”
<Lhan, I’m taking over,> I said before the child began apologizing again. They were three to a tent with just her, Bruna and Ceria, and Bruna was standing watch, so we were safely alone at the moment. I took the risk and switched our [Blood Effigy] to the Senhion image.
It was just me, Sen, but I used the Senhion image (which is frankly, a carbon copy of Kanon) and not the Tiana image in order to distinguish myself from Tiana in Narses. In order to distinguish myself from Senhion or Kanon, I didn’t fake a raiment. And to underscore my distinction from Tiana, I avoided Atian or Dorian fashion, and instead wore a juvenile Elder garment, which looks like a plain white thigh-length backless sundress.
Ceria’s eyes grew large and I immediately held my finger up imperiously, warning her not to make a scene. I think she recognized how problematic it would be if anyone outside the tent noticed my presence. She still immediately snuggled up to me and wrapped me up in her arms. Fortunately, she had cast the light magic spell in a fixed spot, that did not depend upon her position.
And fortunately, it was a voice-only connection, since she was rubbing her cheek on mine and tickling my nose with her whiskers.
Doing my best to keep my voice unaffected, I stated, “Mir, this is Sen.”
A long pause, and then, “‘Sen’? As in My Lady’s great grandmother Senhion?”
I grew a wry moue, realizing my mistake. “Sorry. I forgot you don’t know the name yet. I’ve taken to using Senhion’s juvenile Elder name ‘Sen’ for myself to make a distinction between Tiana and I. Remember, Lhan and I are proxies. Please recall that I’m a proxy of Lady Tiana who split off from my principal before her memory loss and who cannot reunite with her yet without endangering her life. So in a sense, I’m Lady Tiana without memory loss.”
Her voice grew slightly troubled, “But the woman I met before…”
“I am that Senhion, but I’m not really her unless my awareness is expanded to that of an adult Elder. I can’t do that right now without badly taxing your Lady Tiana’s body, so instead, I am ‘Sen’, limiting my awareness to the same level as Tiana. Do you understand?”
A deep sigh came through the connection. “I shall try to, as long as Ceria confirms you are really her.”
Ceria immediately answered, “This is definitely Lady, you know? Hiléa is Lady too, but when she’s like this, she’s just like the normal Lady.”
This sex maniac was groping me even while vouching for me, so she had proof in her hand at that moment that not everything was the same as Tiana. I took control of her hand, moving it up to my shoulder.
“Mir,” I stated, “Lhan had an unavoidable situation today. And she handled it as efficiently as she could. Kindly remind Rhea that the burden on Tiana is shared. It equally rises from what she’s having Tiana do in Pendor and what Lhan does here.”
Fan Li was keeping me informed of the ongoing events in Narses, so I knew for a fact that Tiana’s activities in Narses were in fact a greater load on her body than Lhan’s activities.
“That’s Ti who is choosing to do that! I’m doing my best to keep her from overdoing it!”
“I know Rhea is not telling her through you, Mir, but she is behind Tiana’s actions. So kindly remind your goddess that she needs to maintain a balance between Narses and Kasar.”
“Ti needs to go daily to deal with the casualties coming out of Gattes! The battle there has been horrific and the casualties are ongoing! Exactly what sort of unavoidable situation required Hiléa to suddenly demand so much magic?”
I spent several minutes putting Lhan’s experience into words for Mireia, then told her, “It really was the best decision. She’s not ready to take on a hawk tarantula one-on-one.”
Mireia had calmed down during the retelling, and now was simply grumpy about the trouble we were causing her friend. Which I, too, felt very bad about. I can report that Lhan did, too.
“She’ll continue to do her best to avoid overdoing it,” I promise. “But make sure Tiana and Rhea remember to leave her a margin to work with, please. She is protecting Tiana’s people here.”
We spoke a few more words, but that was largely the end of the conversation.
Once the light of the spell disappeared, I remembered that I currently had a cat girl assaulting me.
“Ceria,” I told her patiently, just as her hand found its way inside my sundress. “This is just a tent. It isn’t soundproof at all.”
“Nobody’s listening, Lady,” she insisted as she pulled the straps off my shoulders. Thanks to the low back, this left the dress falling entirely from my bosom, just as I remembered that juvenile Elders didn’t wear undergarments.
“Least of all you!” I retorted.
“We can just be quiet,” she murmured, just before her mouth traveled down from my ear to my neck. Her hands were doing their best to further disrobe me, which caused me to lose control of the garment simulation entirely. Needless to say, Ceria was delighted when it disappeared.
And thus I ended Secondday, the twenty third day of the Month of Full Blooming, my hundredth day on Huade, with some somewhat questionable behavior in an army tent.
