§
The clearing that Alwain used for her headquarters was a stone circle, fairly complete from what I could tell. It had all nineteen stones around the perimeter, but also a strange stone table in the center. I wondered if this was truly something from the Ancient Fairy Age or a place built more recently, in homage to such places. They are usually in very poor repair, with stones missing, buried or knocked over.
Once we arrived, the Lady of the Red Tower made a gesture, and the various denizens of the forest gathered there left the interior of the circle. She dropped onto the stone table, using it as a perch. I positioned my projection nearby.
Looking around, I noted, “It’s an auspicious place for you to hold court, My Lady. But it seems rather un-tower-like.”
She let out a chuckle that was almost a belly laugh. “The original Red Tower crumbled to ruin many long millennia ago. And the mortals who built it as a temple to me have long since fled these hills. Only piles of rubble and this peculiar title remain.”
“There’s a Lady of the Green Tower as well, I hear. Are there any others?”
“There was once a Lord of the Blue Tower. Mortals now call him the Fairy King. And there was once a Lord of the Amber Tower, who long ago abandoned both the name and his kingdom. A mortal rules it and calls it ‘Sulador’ now, and the tower is also gone to ruin.”
She was counting them on her fingers as she went.
“The Gold Tower and its Lady were blasted to vapor by the first Demon King as the ancient age fell, and the North Branch of the Tain now flows through the new valley where the tower once stood. The mortals now call it the ‘Upper Hart Valley’ instead.”
I was aghast at that idea. If the hills of Suldor had once been an extension of the Arbolians, and the Upper Hart Valley a crater, how enormous had that blast been?
She nodded at my stunned expression. “She very nearly killed the First Demon King when he foolishly attacked her. He committed that atrocity in a desperate act of self-defense. Her effort delayed the First Demonic Empire’s rise by a thousand years, because the dust from that event caused a climate catastrophe worldwide, but he survived to raise his empire in the end.”
So the ‘ancient age’ she mentioned was the Ancient Fairy Age.
“The Green Tower partially stands, and its Lady still rules, but she rules over desolation. Few creatures can peacefully dwell within the sheer volume of free mana that flows there. My Red Tower is gone, but my domain remains, and the same is true of the Ashen Tower and its Lady. The Black Tower stood where the Kasarene Pass now runs. Orgoth ended it and its lord, four thousand years ago, in circumstances somewhat similar to the demise of the Golden Tower. The effect was somewhat less dramatic, but the destruction still total. Of course, by then, his domain was already partly overrun by monsters and magic.”
She gestured around her.
“Starting from the first cataclysm, and made worse by the second, the mana veins now run riot. Springs emerge everywhere, and these mountains that were once peaceful kingdoms have become the haunt of fairies and monsters. And thus passed all the mortal domains of the ancient age, in these lands that sheltered Humanity during that time.”
I grew a bit overwhelmed by the realization that I was listening to the history of an age that even the most knowledgeable sages of the modern world didn’t know.
After looking me up and down for a moment, she smiled and stated, “I would offer you a seat, My Lady, but it doesn’t seem like you would be able to sit. Your feet don’t seem to touch the ground.”
Apparently I had misaligned my projection slightly. I had no feedback from my soles to judge whether I appeared to be ‘standing’ on it or above it.
Returning her smile, I said, “In truth, I currently lie in bed, on my back. I will not tire of standing, so you need not worry about it.”
She nodded. “It’s as I thought. I’ve seen this spell before, long ago. That fact confuses me, though. You see, I am familiar with it as a blood magic spell, and such is an ability that a vampire as young as Lady Tiana Pendor should not be able to perform.”
Folding her hands, she queried softly, “Who are you, in truth?”
Caught with an unexpected question, I wasn’t certain what to tell her. I hadn’t been prepared to have my identity doubted.
(“She is a being ancient enough to remember the Elders, Little One. With such an eminence, the best choice is transparency. Tell her the truth about you.”)
<The whole truth?> I shot back, shocked. <About Senhion and everything?>
(“That’s what I meant,”) Rhea answered dryly. (“Literally, everything you know about your true origins. You need not hold anything back. Those things I wouldn’t want you telling her are things you haven’t yet learned about yourself, anyway.”)
That last point was a bit foreboding. I tried not to think too hard about it.
With a rueful smile, I told Alwain, “The explanation is going to take a rather long time, My Lady. And I will warn you now, I feel that few people with less experience or knowledge than you would be able to believe it. Many parts are matters that I have been taught, but have not yet remembered for myself. I’m dependent upon you having seen enough of the world to know how wide it can truly be.”
She raised her brow again, grew a bemused smile, and replied, “How terribly intriguing a preamble, My Lady. Pray, please tell me.”
My explanation, enhanced with suggestions that Rhea/Mireia whispered into my ear, would not have been too terribly long, but the multiple question-and-answer breaks dragged it out to over an hour.
“Thank you. That will do,” she stated at last, then leaned back and studied me for a bit.
“It’s difficult to imagine such a young child knowing enough to fabricate such a tale,” she observed at last. “Most either know nothing of the Elder Age or learn only vague myths about it. Yet you understand what the Elders truly were, and what truly happened to them.”
She paused with pursed lips, then stated, “Just to be clear, the only thing that keeps me willing to accept this for now is the fact that you and the girl named Hiléa have identical auras. Such a perfect duplication simply cannot happen through any natural process. I have suspected from the start that you must somehow be the same entity.”
“I am grateful that you ‘accept this for now’,” I replied. “But what will convince you?”
“As both of you are forms of illusion, a visit to your real body,” she stated flatly.
“Pardon me?” I squeaked.
“Where are you, in the flesh? I shall pay you a visit.”
For some reason, I had imagined this woman permanently rooted here in her domain, never leaving it for anything. Perhaps I thought she was an integral part of the landscape.
“Um, do you perhaps use a technique like the one I am using?”
“A technique like [Blood Presence]? I do have something that is somewhat similar, but it’s too much bother,” she answered. “For such a short distance, it’s far easier to just go there myself.”
§
I opened my eyes to discover Mireia still pressed to my body. She seemed to like that position. Fortunately, I wasn’t sweaty this time, so it was much less uncomfortable.
My husband was seated in my bedroom reading chair, looking at reports. I was in my chemise, Mireia was in her juban, and he was in his yukata. He had been staying up, waiting for me to ‘return’.
This totally would not do.
“We’re about to have a visitor!” I announced, rousing a groggy Mireia.
I guess Rhea had been sleep-talking through her. She didn’t look terribly motivated to rise. I insisted, “We need to dress, right away!”
My husband bunched his eyebrows. “Coming now?”
“Coming right now,” I confirmed. “And she’s… not going to arrive at the front gate, Your Highness. She’ll probably just show up wherever I am. And she’s not someone I can say no to.”
His scowl grew deeper as he put his reports aside. “We’re in a castle on a mountain with heavy defenses. How can somebody just drop by?”
“Your Highness, trust your wife,” Rhea/Mireia urged while setting her feet on the floor, in a completely different state than her host. “Our guest will actually arrive within a quarter hour.”
Although he remained perplexed, he nodded. Going to the bedroom door, he directed the chambermaids outside to send for his kimono and dress the ladies.
Between my pressing the maids to rush and the goddess’s encouragement through Mireia, we managed to dress in far shorter time than we would normally take, opting for kimonos as well.
My husband had made that snap decision for a very practical reason, after all. We already had the right underthings for the fashion, sort of. One doesn’t normally put an ordinary juban under a formal kimono, but it’s okay to use it that way in a pinch, so Mireia and my husband were set. And the maids could slip a hadajuban over my chemise without any trouble. So, no subtractions required, just additions.
Our hair, and the kimono and obi were really the only complicated parts, but our maids are experts. Our hair was up and all ornaments in place, and our obis tied with perfect bows, at a speed I thought was near impossible, but the maids pretended to be unremarkable.
I directed them to set up the tatami platform for tea and snacks. The maids hadn’t quite managed to pull that off in time, but they had the sitting positions ready and the preparations well-underway when I felt Alwain’s presence in the air above the Main Keep.
“Go open my balcony doors and invite the Lady of the Red Tower to land,” I told Genette. “She should be waiting above the balcony.”
Despite her baffled look, my lady’s maid bowed and went into my bedroom to open the french doors.
My husband had tolerated this without further protest up to this point, but he finally insisted, “Who is this visitor, anyway? Why is she just barging in?”
“Lady Alwain is… a very ancient being from the mountains,” I explained. “I was speaking with her through my projection and she suddenly said she would come to see me in person.”
“Projection?” he wondered. I guess Mireia hadn’t clearly explained the magic I was using to him.
“The technique I was employing earlier, Your Highness,” I stated.
“We’ll explain later, Your Highness,” Rhea/Mireia promised.
He still looked dissatisfied, but accepted it.
“How dangerous a being?” he wondered.
“Strong enough that there’s no point calling for security,” I told him, knowing what he was thinking.
He clearly didn’t like hearing that.
“Even if that is the case,” stated a suddenly present Lady Benedetta emerging from my bedroom carrying the spirit sword which had been resting in my wardrobe, “You should not be entirely without protection, My Lady.”
“I sent for her, My Lady,” Mireia explained as I stared at the black-clad newcomer in confusion.
“I… never saw you go in there, though?” I asked as the woman placed the sword near my usual spot on the tatami.
As she was wearing Atian fashion, Benedetta curtsied rather than bowing, then stated, “I have a method I can use in emergencies, My Lady.”
“Should I set an additional place, My Lady?” Syl wondered.
“I would prefer not, My Lady,” Benedetta told me tautly, countering my maid. Naturally since Syl had asked me, she couldn’t directly tell her ‘no’, so she stated her preference to me. “I shall remain in waiting, at the side.”
“Please don’t antagonize her, My Lady,” Mireia warned her.
My eyes traveled from Benedetta to Mireia (who was surely still hosting Rhea) and back, realizing there was some hidden undercurrent, but I didn’t have time to question it, because the apsara was landing on my balcony.
Thankfully, she had arrived riding a cloud of wind, which I took to be her peaceful mode, rather than approaching in her martial mode, on a firebird’s back. I assume that was why no alarm was going off in the castle. Right now, very possibly only a few people in this room were aware of her presence.
“She’s here,” I said, turning toward the bedroom door.
Genette led an ethereal beauty with silvery hair and a gown of gossamer silver cloth infused with mana into the room, then stepped aside after announcing, “Lady Alwain of the Red Tower, Your Highness.”
I was in my own territory, where I couldn’t be as deferential as before. As Alwain strode forward, I gave a slight head-bow and greeted, “Tiana, the Acting Duchess of Pendor, greets the esteemed Lady of the Red Tower again. Allow me to present my husband, the Royal Prince of Orestania and Viceroy of Doria and our close friend, Mireia, Priestess of Rhea. Welcome to my domain, My Lady.”
