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“Rebe Norle Domerà ro!” the lilac-haired beauty with mayfly wings standing mid-air declared with her chin and her sword lifted. “Cenove amoen ralesanhetole zihazelseinla, serofen redaro sëandéli! Öa marvo diacâho!”
During my lifetime as Lhan the slave, I never knew any language but the one spoken on my plantation. I didn’t even know what the name of that language even was, because I had no concept of other languages.
But as one of the fellow incarnations sharing the soul of Senhion, I learned that my native language, which Fan Li identified as Tsala, was only one of many languages I could understand. Language is the first knowledge we acquire, upon connecting with the memories of another lifetime.
As Fan Li had explained, language is absolutely fundamental to mortal memories. Even though we rarely recall memories in words, the words of the languages we spoke at the time are interwoven as symbols into them. They guided and molded how we saw the world during that time.
Multilingual Tiana alone brought me command of five languages, and one of those five was Dan Vesirrí, the High Fairy language that the proud woman before us had just spoken to declare her challenge.
Which is why, even though I, as Lhan, had rarely heard any words spoken in a fairy tongue, I understood the silver-haired woman’s prideful, lilting proclamation perfectly.
I am Domerà of the Water Forest! O thieves who sneak through the woods, stand and show yourselves! Let us debate with our swords!
As soon as she finished, the remaining women in fairy armor then drew their swords one at a time while announcing themselves.
“Ôn Ëononle Lilte, margilo!”
“Dâ Sinle Mitora, margilo!”
“Rebe Norle Tenhàn, margilo!”
“Mea Tírle Sanân, margilo!”
They had each named themselves — Lilte of the Sun Grove, Mitora of the Stone Field, Tenhàn of the Water Forest and Sanân of the Sand Valley — and followed their names with the declaration ‘drawing her sword!’
Sen mused in the back of my mind, <Looks like they aren’t in the mood to parlay.>
Her memories of fairy knight etiquette flooded through to me clearly with her words. Declaring ‘margilo‘ after giving their name kept them just barely on the polite side of rude. It technically stayed within the limits of honor while bluntly shutting down the usual pre-battle banter.
Really, it was normally something one only said to announce oneself while wading into a battle already underway.
While they made their announcements, the mortals, especially the Pendorian soldiers and the adventurers, formed up in their defensive arrays, and the fairy warriors on our side rose into the air, with a grim-faced Lady Elhàn leading them. Her steep expression had good reason; she was badly outnumbered..
Domerà dropped the tip of her blade and finished the announcement with, “Vesirorazin, margilo!”
Fairy knights, drawing their swords!
Sen snapped, <Get ready!>
But even as I put my hand on the pommel of my sword, a merry laugh broke out, completely disrupting their momentum.
“O-O-O-Oh-Ho-Ho-Ho-Ho-Ho-Ho!”
Their momentum suddenly interrupted, the skirmish line of fairy warriors whirled to face Ladies Serera and Diloré, who had dropped stealth and appeared in the air above and behind them.
Serera was in her usual panoply, of course, with her sword undrawn and her hand to her mouth as she laughed, but Dilorè was not in her mage outfit. Instead, she had changed into her fairy knight gear, her costume as Serera’s apprentice. Her sword also remained at her hip, but the giant’s bone spear she had carried since she picked it up in Ilim Below, the one she had been using as a mage’s magic staff, now rested in her hands in a fighting grip as a weapon, while her eyes fixed her opponents with a grim battlefield stare.
The visiting knights quickly rearranged their formation, with Lilte and Sanân remaining to face Elhán, while Domerà and the other two knights rose to Serera’s altitude. The hostile fairy warriors similarly rearranged themselves, with half splitting off to face the original front while the other half rose to stay with their leader.
Dilorè’s blue monarch butterfly wings were fluttering, as were the wasp, moth and butterfly wings of their opponents, but Serera’s massive gray dove wings remained outstretched and unmoving, giving her an aura of immovable strength far beyond any other fairy present.
“Don’t be rude, little girl,” Serera scolded Lady Domerà. “Speak Dorian so our friends can understand your baseless accusations.”
“Serera!” Domerà sneered. “You’re fallen in with these thieves?”
“Such audacious words require cause, unruly child.”
“Address me as a knight!”
“Hohohohoho!” Serera burst out again. “In order to be treated like a knight, you must act like one, little girl! You’ve yet to stand before the king to receive justice for your attack on a princess of Faerie! You’ve long since dishonored yourself!”
<Oh, so that’s who it is,> Sen mused. <I knew I recognized her.>
A memory came to me along with her words from her experiences in Relador. This knight had led a contingent of fairy noblewomen intent on arresting Tiana and sending her back to Duke Parna. Serera had held them all off while ordering Tiana to escape.
Domerà lost her temper, forgetting the dignity of a fairy knight, and dashed forward toward Serera while drawing her blade back for a slash. A titanic blast of mana meeting mana came a moment later, blowing her back to her starting point.
The fight that had been about to start suddenly froze again. It had happened so fast, nobody else had moved yet, and shock had shut down the action.
Domerà’s eyes locked on Lady Dilorè, who advanced, carrying her spear level with her waist. Wind mana still whirled around the spear from the [Gust] that Dilorè had used to intercept the fairy knight.
“You’ve lost your right to cross swords with my master,” Dilorè declared. “I’ll be your opponent.”
“You dare lecture me on etiquette and then send out a sneak attack?” Domerà demanded.
Dilorè simply laughed. “I swatted a fly that tried to annoy my master. My sneak attack is far stronger.”
<She’s not kidding. That spear is a magic weapon with an attack called [Dragon’s Breath]. It takes a long time to recharge, but she could’ve done the woman heavy damage at this range.>
Planting herself in front of Serera, Dilorè announced, “If you demand it, as is your right, I shall switch to sword, but this spear is my primary weapon. Do you dare face it?”
“You think I’ll accept a duel?” the woman sneered. “We are here to arrest trespassers!”
Serera humphed. “No matter whose property you claim we trespass, it is nobody whose claim we recognize, little girl.”
“You will recognize the claim of the rightful king of Orestania! He has declared these highlands his Royal Forest!”
<You get one guess who she means by the ‘rightful king’.>
<Cullen,> I replied. It was already in her thoughts, so I guess I was cheating?
“You think you can refuse a duel over mortal foolishness?” Dilorè demanded. “Your honor is far too cheap! Defend yourself or die!”
She dashed forward, the mana around herself and her weapon suddenly roiling like a pot at full boil.
<She’s putting her training in Sky Ocean to good use,> Sen chuckled. I could barely see a furious confusion, so I wasn’t sure what she was seeing.
Domerà had no choice but to parry Dilorè’s spear, and Serera had no choice but to take on the other two fairies. The fairy warriors on both sides, a collection of lesser fairies and fairborn, had no choice but to flank their respective knights. But Serera and Dilorè were without support to deal with the fairy warriors, and Elhàn and her fairy warriors were outnumbered even by the divided numbers facing them.
Realizing they would quickly overpower Elhàn and her warriors, I dashed into the sky to stand beside her with my sword drawn as well.
The mortals weren’t standing back and watching either. In the following seconds, the forest filled with the din of battle.
I’m sure that Sen, or even Tiana, could keep track of everything that happened next and describe it all. I’m not experienced enough to do so. I was only able to keep track of the fight in my immediate area.
And so, as I crossed swords with Lilte of the Sun Grove, all I could see was a couple of the fairy warriors keeping their opposite numbers off my flank while shots from the ground below harried the remaining fairy warriors.
It took me to that point to realize I had jumped into a fight against a fairy warrior. But I had already initiated all the defensive skills I had absorbed from Sen while training in the Spirit Core, and I had my ‘bastard sword’ that was really Fan Li’s [Qi Sword] technique, which was working quite well against a fairy knight’s blade.
“What manner of creature are you?” Lilte demanded as our swords clashed. “You’re not a fairy or a fairborn! Are you some sort of phantom?”
Some fairies use means other than materialized wings to fly, so the fact that I walked on hardened masses of Water mana shouldn’t seem strange to her. And my clothing only meant I was an adventurer rather than a knight. Higher powered adventurers who can go toe-to-toe with fairy knights are not common, but they aren’t impossible. Most likely, her [Fairy Sight] was telling her that my physique lacked the material portion of a proper magical creature.
“I’m just a perfectly average mysterious being,” I quipped innocently. “You run into strange phenomena like me in these hills all the time, right?”
The fairy-like taunt coming out of my mouth baffled me more than her, until I realized that Sen had just used me to say it. But I was too busy fighting to get mad at her.
Lilte tried to pull back and initiate a dogfight, but I used my ability to accelerate my Water footholds underfoot, propelling myself forward and staying with her. I forced her to continue parrying, shutting down her plan.
Meanwhile, Sen was lecturing me. <Fairy battles hinge upon who can get whom to lose their temper and do something stupid. Trash talking and teasing are part of the game.>
<I can’t do that!> I protested.
<Exactly. So never mind my help. Just concentrate on your sword.>
The SAS troop had fallen into a defensive formation, but I knew the moment I saw it that it wasn’t all of them. They had sent some people into the woods, probably to snipe with weapons or magic from cover while the rest of them pretended to be the whole unit. And Ceria and Bruna were acting as a defensive wall protecting the Reladorian mages, who were attacking from behind them. Ceria was also launching attacks of her own, showing off her ability to juggle multiple multi-level spells.
Amana, one of the ‘civilians’ guarded by the SAS, had cast off her cover as a civilian mage to join their combat mages. Meanwhile, Melione and Arken attacked with long-range spells from behind Graham while Ryuu and Brigitte went out on attack.
<And he’s showing the skills he learned in Sky Ocean, I’m glad to see. He used to just fire [Spirit Shot] attacks everywhere, endangering his allies.>
She was following what everyone was doing better than me. In fact, as I battled Lilte, all of what I just said was actually coming from Sen’s thoughts as she kept track of everything through our [Spirit Sense]. I was too busy with the fairy in front of me to watch it for myself.
“Why do you fly so strangely?” Lilte demanded, as her bee wings beat furiously, trying to adjust to my erratic movements.
“Are your eyes that bad?” I mocked. “I’m not flying, I’m running!”
The arrogance coming out of my mouth was embarrassing, but it looked like Sen had no plan to stop using it.
One thing I was gathering from Sen’s information was, no fairy knight was using her maximum level of mana in her sword, like in the one-on-one fights that Tiana had fought in the past. Being bunched too close together, they were holding back to avoid harming their own allies.
But the fairy fights gradually spread out farther across the forest, and as they did, the strikes became more intense. We were forcing the knights away from the mortals, and the mortals and our fairy warriors were now keeping all the enemy fairy warriors occupied. That still meant our people were in danger, since fairy warriors are a serious threat, but our people were neither ordinary soldiers nor ordinary adventurers. And Sen was beginning to assess the fairy warriors that Oberon had sent as far above the norm as well.
As our altitude increased, and the fighting grew more intense, I kept expecting to reach a point where I was out of my depth, but I continued to stay inside Lilte’s sword reach and match her blade. The point never came.
If it ever did, I was going to reach out to Durandal again. Using his help seemed to be especially hard on Tiana, so I wanted to avoid that. But in the midst of the battle…
<Beware, Mistress! Incoming on your southeast!>
Shindzha’s voice in my mind shocked not only me, but Sen as well. And from below, I heard Melione, Chiara and Ceria immediately warning the people surrounding them. “Southeast! Incoming from the Southeast!”
A surprised Sen marveled, <Shindzha’s spiritual voice got through to the Servants as well?>
No time to wonder about it. Sen had already cast our senses in that direction, so she and I were the first to sense the massive flaming flying beast and the woman mounted on its back.
