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If the captain had not insisted upon me taking a companion, I could have just used the immaterial form of the [Blood Effigy] and instantly reached the stricken soldier. But I had no time, and I couldn’t show my irritation without explaining my reasons, so I agreed to it.
But I rejected the SAS trooper who was going to accompany me and picked Brigitte instead.
We had barely interacted in the week since I joined up with the mission, so she was rightfully confused when I rushed over to grab her. It was Sen’s memories of her skills that pushed me to choose the fox girl scout, after all. I had barely interacted with her as Lhan.
She was exactly like Sen’s memories of her. Jack of plate armor, an absolutely gorgeous shade of blond hair but kept so tragically ragged that it looked like she trimmed it with her short sword, enormous, highly mobile fox ears, and a piercing gaze from her amber vulpine eyes.
As beastkin adventurer girls went, she couldn’t be any more different than our friendly catgirl. Ceria is exactly as playful as Brigitte isn’t.
“I need your help!” I urged. “There’s an injured soldier about to be ambushed!”
“What…” she started, then looked in the direction I was pointing, out into the woods.
I explained. “An SAS man is wounded. He’s got a buddy, but they’ve got enemies closing in on them. Please, there’s no time.”
Ryuu, standing nearby, reached over his shoulder for the handle of his huge blade, but before I could say it, Brigitte told him, “No, Ryuu. This requires sneaking, not thundering in like a monstrous beast.”
She looked at me and prompted, “Right? Or you would have asked those soldiers. Let’s go.”
With that, she took off in the direction I pointed, plunging into the undergrowth.
It caught me off-guard for a moment, but I quickly recovered and dashed after her. She was using some sort of skill to stay completely silent as she ran, but I had been practicing a technique like that, too. I outpaced her and got in front, since she was just traveling the direction I had pointed, perhaps planning to find the soldiers herself. Once I was in the lead, she followed me.
Of course, their position had been only a hundred paces or so from us. With both of us moving at high speed despite our silence, we arrived immediately. On arrival, Brigitte caught the unwounded soldier’s hand and made a silent shushing gesture before he went for his gun and I pressed my palm down on the wounded soldier’s chest.
But before they could do more than recognize us, a voice shouted in the Forest Tongue. “Get down!”
The words weren’t for us, because other than me and maybe the fairies, it was unlikely anyone from Pendor spoke the Forest Tongue. It was the common language of Rock Dwarves like the blacksmiths in Atius, as well as Lowland Elves like Arken, and likewise, it was the language of most of the denizens of the Highlands. Unlike the Elvish and Dwarven ‘Mountain Tongue’ spoken in the Dragonsbacks, this was a language of humans in the regions to the north before Ostish took over, a thousand years ago. Today, it was only spoken by the nonhuman population in the fringes.
Presumably, this included the pair of forest ogres sneaking up on our position, because I sensed them flattening to the ground as the fairy who had shouted while dashing toward us let loose a stream of magic bolts.
Before I could react, a [Shield of Oranos] blossomed into existence, protecting us. The [Lightning Bolts] shattered and dissipated as they battered it. Seeing it, the lesser fairy warrior braked to a halt, uncertain of what she was facing.
She wasn’t the only one uncertain here. But at least I had a guess.
<Durandal?> I asked silently.
<Present and ready, My Lady,> the holy sword spirit replied. <Your other self summoned me.>
Before I could ask who he meant, a new presence appeared above the shield. At least, a new image did. Above and behind us, an illusion of Lady Tiana now stood in midair, wearing a simple, strangely ancient-looking white garment.
She didn’t hover with wings because she did not grow them. She just stood on nothing. My [Spirit Sense] was telling me that she wasn’t physically present, anyhow. I was seeing some kind of illusion.
But it was audible as well as visible, it turned out, because she spoke as she bowed.
“Ëi onar lâ,” she greeted the warrior in the fairy language, then switched to the same Forest Tongue that the fairy had spoken to continue, “Do not approach any closer to my people, please.”
You can’t see from the point of view of an illusion of yourself cast somewhere else, so this was something different. But it wasn’t the [Blood Effigy] technique, either. Somehow, Lady Tiana was doing something I had no idea how to do.
<This one does, however,> Fan Li told me. <This is [Blood Presence]. It is a blood magic spell that I taught to Lydia.>
As she named the magic, knowledge of the technique came to me. It was one of the many existing [Blood Magic] spells that she had deduced during her time in the Spirit Core.
So I understood how Lady Tiana was doing it, but…
<How did she cast it here?>
From Narses, she would have no way to see where to send it, nor should she even know what was happening, in order to show up here.
But this was my chance, so I returned my attention to the wounded SAS trooper. As I quietly cast [Regeneration], the mystery woman on the firebird demanded, also in Forest Tongue “Move no closer to my people!”
As her image rose into the air to a height equal to the woman and the two Fairy Knights faced off against her, Tiana calmly replied, “Tell your people to move no closer to mine. Especially, tell those two.”
She pointed squarely at the two ogres hiding in the brush, who had begun sneaking closer again. Then added, switching to Dorian, “And kindly speak a language my people understand.”
<It would seem the goddess Rhea is directing her actions,> the scholar explained.
Brigitte and the SAS boys were staring at me in surprise as they saw the [Regeneration] spell working. But they kept quiet.
The mystery woman defiantly proclaimed, still in the Forest Tongue, “All of you are invaders anyhow! Leave our lands, immediately!”
<But…>
Sen interrupted before I could voice the obvious problem with that claim. <Rhea is watching us through her priestess on the ground here, and relaying her directions through her priestess sitting next to Tiana.>
Perplexed, I wondered, <Her priestess on the ground here?>
The image of Tiana gave a polite curtsey to the woman on the firebird and announced, “This Tiana, the Acting Duchess of Pendor, greets the esteemed Lady of the Red Tower.”
<She completed the process of making Melione her priestess some time ago.> Sen reminded me. <She can’t talk to her like she can with Mireia, but she can use her Immortal sense in Melione’s vicinity.>
Ah. I had forgotten about Melione’s priestesshood.
<Rhea can talk through Mireia to Tiana, to tell her what to say, and she can watch the results through Melione. I’m certain that right now, she’s coaching Tiana as she speaks, as I doubt Tiana knew this woman’s identity before this. We didn’t, after all.>
After the woman glowered at her for several seconds, she finally answered, in Dorian at last, “Alwain of the Red Tower accepts your greetings, Lady Tiana. But I neither welcome you nor anyone else here to my domain. All of you must leave immediately!”
Lady Domerà retorted, “This is the royal forest of King Cullen the Fifth of Orestania! Bow down and submit to his dominion!”
“She will do nothing of the sort,” Tiana declared tautly, before Alwain could reply. “My people will defend her ground against you, your lord, your pretender king and all others. The true King of Orestania recognizes the Highlands as unclaimable wilderness.”
Lady Serera, suddenly left out of the negotiations, was just looking between all three with a wry smirk on her lips.
“I do not need your help!” Alwain scolded Tiana.
“I’m not asking permission,” she replied coolly. “As a member of the Royal Family of Orestania, I will exercise our authority when and where I please.”
<She’s bluffing like crazy,> Sen mused. <I can tell. She’s using the same acting skills that I used when I was Tiana. I’ll bet Rhea is feeding her the words.>
“You’re still pretending to be a princess, Monster?” Domerà jeered. “What power can you even wield here? This image of you is just some sort of illusion!”
Tiana should have no memory of meeting Domerà in Relador, but Sen sighed in the back of my mind. This was a very old and stale refrain, after all. And the verbal mud flew entirely unnoticed right past our cool headed fairy vampire.
Instead, she replied, “The people whom you ambushed are my envoys. They are on a mission for the Duchy of Pendor and the Viceroyalty of Doria, commissioned on the authority of Gerald, King of Orestania. They are the power I wield in this place. And with that in mind…”
Tiana looked down, directly at me and directed, in Forest Tongue, “Stop those fools without inflicting serious wounds.”
For a moment, I froze, caught by surprise. I thought I was just an audience member. But my [Spirit Sense] registered the two ogres once again creeping up on our position, so I dashed forward while whipping out my sword and filling it with as much Wind mana as it could bear, grabbing more from the air around me as I dashed.
<Leave the shields to me!> Durandal cried out in my mind. I could hear the grin on his invisible face.
I didn’t use one of his attacks, and I didn’t use a formal magic swordfighter technique. I just slashed a hard horizontal arc while letting the Wind mana loose.
The foliage before me bent flat instantly, and the two crouching opponents went flying backwards.
I did worry momentarily if I had just overdone my attack, but I couldn’t worry for long, because the lesser fairy warrior flying cover for them let loose another volley. This time it was [Air Bullets].
[Shield of Oranos] again blossomed, and again protected me perfectly, and then I used [Water Step] to run upward to meet her, charging the [Qi Blade] with Aether this time.
Our weapons collided and locked, her spear parrying my sword, and the mana coating the weapons roared angrily as we pressed each other. I began forcing her back, so she gave a mighty wing beat and escaped backward. She stopped after putting several paces between us and watched me with wary eyes.
I simply held my position, glancing down quickly to check on the two ogres. It looked like I hurt one of them pretty bad.
Lady Serera dashed sideways to block Alwain when she briefly made to move our direction.
The Lady of the Red Tower demanded, “Is this the alliance you’re offering?”
“Your people attempted to ambush ours,” Tiana answered coldly. “We simply held our ground. Have your soldiers remain in place while we parley.”
I worried that my over-attack had ruined things, but instead, the undeclared ceasefire resumed. Alwain didn’t agree to anything, but people stayed in their places.
“Um…” I called, holding up my hand.
Several eyes turned toward me at once. I had to force myself not to flinch.
Once I had their attention, I told the lesser fairy warrior, “One of your comrades got hurt from my attack. Please allow me to heal her.”
“Stay back!” she shouted, reverting to Forest Tongue.
“Fair warrior,” Tiana said in the same language, “Why don’t you go down to stand guard over your comrade while my comrade helps her? She looks badly wounded and my comrade can save her.”
The fairy’s eyes darted around, from Tiana to Serera to me to the ogress on the ground. She finally turned to Alwain, whose brow wrinkled.
“Do it,” the Lady of the Red Tower finally agreed.
The warrior frowned, but obeyed, landing near the wounded girl and waiting for me.
Once she’d established herself, I went down as well, sheathing my sword as I descended my [Water Step] stairs. I wasn’t entirely happy that the warrior didn’t seem inclined to raise her spearpoint. It looked like she planned to keep it trained on me. But I could risk it. She could only disrupt the [Blood Effigy]. She couldn’t kill me.
<Watch my back, Old Man,> I told the sword spirit anyway. It would be troublesome if she dispelled the effigy.
<You can rely on me, My Lady,> he promised.
I knelt down next to the wounded woman. Despite being nowhere as pretty, she reminded me a bit of Bruna. I think it was mostly that she had a similar build. Her horns, sprouting from her forehead, were certainly different, but ogres are also descendants of Elders, however crude they appear. They are like if a goblin lost their warts, grew taller and became a lot better looking.
Her crudely sewn fur clothing did a poor job of covering her body, and the flint knife in her belt matched the flint spearpoint on the weapon that had fallen nearby. And no amount of shampoo and brushing could ever rescue her hair. It brought an image to Sen’s mind.
<Practically a stereotype caveman,> she mused. <Or cavewoman, I guess.>
Her companion, a similarly equipped male ogre, glared at me, but grunted in Forest Tongue, “You heal, I no kill.”
Honestly, I felt like a mouse staring up at a cat as I crouched over his mate, but I nodded. “You’ve got a deal.”
