§
We had the battle half-won, but we still had to deal with an army that had no right to exist. Multiple liches, fiends, skeletal knights and imps face us when ordinarily such creatures would only show up on their own, as the commanders over lesser demons.
Perhaps a real ‘Miss Hiléa’, the role I was playing, would not have known that this was strange, but Sen’s thoughts had come through forcefully as we battled. Even in the ancient days, when we were Senhion, Commander of the Third Legion of Elders, this sort of assemblage only happened under one condition.
So many upper demons would only work together when they were under the direct yoke of a Demon Lord, what modern demonologists called an Archdemon. Even a Demon General, an Archfiend, could not command this many. Upper demons simply cannot cooperate sufficiently to do so on their own.
Even on the orders of a Demon Lord, they would not work as a unified army like this, unless he were present to directly pressure them.
All of the above thoughts ran through my mind, the moment I had a chance to think. Which was a moment after I spied Diurhimath, carrying Pasrue in his arms, at the head of a host of sylph warriors.
No wonder their absence did not bother Serera, nor had their employment of some mysterious stealth magic, that made the rest of us fail to notice their absence. She’d sent them to fetch allies from the lords of this region. Did her brother command this many fairy war maidens, or did he simply have the influence to draw forces from his neighboring lords? Either way, he must be an impressive man.
Not long before this, I had been slightly terrified to learn that an Archdemon had hid amongst this army, unifying this horde. But according to Fan Li, he should have vanished already, along with those clouds, and now, I just felt renewed vigor, seeing such a large army of fairy warriors was on its way, as I took on a flying demon that had a hag mounted.
It wasn’t the hag fighting while using it as her mount, but rather a demon beast trainer using the creature she was riding as the weapon. I couldn’t identify the creature, which seemed to be a huge goat with wings, but it was attempting to attack me with a breath weapon, so I just had to keep firing off [Water Mirror] spells to deflect it while sending [Water Bullet] attacks at it.
Did I even learn this magic at some point? No, it was knowledge leaking across from Sen.
As they neared, the flock of gray wings spread out to take on the demons in a broad front. That was some serious confidence, but… well, they were fairies.
<Lord Durash is gone, so this won’t last long,> Sen reminded me. <Once the distortion collapsed, he could no longer be in three places at once. The demons will begin collapsing as soon as they realize he isn’t here. Demons possess no courage to stand and fight on their own. We only need to hold out until they fall apart and run.>
As the line of fairies arrived, I could see the ground force advancing across the ridge, on their way back. Graham had the two bodies strapped to his back. The load didn’t hinder him from swinging his ax, plus Ryuu had his back, while Bruna and Matthias protected the mages. The fairy air cover and the ground force’s ranged attacks were keeping most of the enemy at bay, so the fighters could deal with the attacks that were reaching them.
Lady Elhàn sent an attack very nearly in my direction, causing the wraith mage I had faced previously to suddenly reappear, to my surprise. He had used flight magic and stealth to come after me after his mount died, but now she sent him spinning down to the ground.
I opened my mouth to call out a ‘thank you’, but at that moment, my vision of the world crumbled.
§
The rakshasa arced through the shield on a one-way trip, blown away by Durandal’s attack. The castle’s screen allowed our attacks to exit while allowing nothing to enter, and it seems it permitted the use of ballistic rakshasas as attacks. Passing through it hadn’t even slowed him down. He would have to repeat his gambit again to return to face me again, sacrificing more of his powerful underlings to break through.
For gawd’s sake it feels like the universe was trying to squeeze me out like a zit.
No sooner than I thought it, I knew that this was exactly what was happening.
The crush of memories that had invaded my head included more than memories. They also included the current thoughts of personas like Kwelabi, Sirth, Rhugau and Fan Li, unable to speak to me because they were too busy working as a team to hold back as much of the Spirit Core as they could, as it was beginning to pour into me. They included the thoughts of the shocked and confused Lhan who had only a moment ago been battling demons above the Kasarene Highlands before her [Blood Effigy] failed, whose mind was now desperately trying to catch up with what just happened to her.
And quietly weeping Lydia, feeling the crushing guilt over failing in her role.
<You didn’t fail,> I told her. <I failed you. I somehow tapped into these memories myself, despite your efforts.>
<Correct,> came the cold, almost machine-like thoughts of Daq R’mion. <Now ignore it and focus your attention on the technique which I am executing. We must keep your physique under control.>
<What physique?> I demanded <It’s my mind that the universe wants to get rid of!>
<Your body is a physical, living organism,> he declared. <No matter what metaphysical nonsense you others subscribe to, the physics remain the same. As long as you can continue the control technique, your body will remain alive and your mind connected to it.>
At the end of his life, he had gone hours past what should have been his limit, while ravaged by both solar radiation and nuclear radiation, in order to complete the work that would save his family, and by extension, his colony. This was the technique he had used, in order to refuse to die until he was finished.
When I grabbed onto the technique he was using on my body, I recognized it immediately, despite how alien it was.
<Do I recognize it because I used to be you?> I wondered. It was strange, but I was somehow feeling my mana pathways in a whole new context. Instead of seeing how the mana coursed through me, I could see how the pneuma within me carried it.
<It is partially your memories from me,> he agreed. <But it is also the ‘Will’ of Fan Li’s world that you learned how to practice, being applied to your own physique. It is also the instinctive powers built into your own fairy and vampire genetics.>
<Weren’t you just saying something about metaphysical nonsense?> I shot back.
<This, too, obeys physics,> Daq insisted. <It is merely part of a larger physics than you learned in your own worlds.>
My worlds, plural, meaning both Robert’s and Tiana’s worlds.
With the dire turmoil covering the sky, and the castle shield buffeted by demonic attacks, I spread my senses wide, looking for any more intruders. Hovering here, midair, underneath all this fury, was certainly a bad idea, but I couldn’t just turn my back and flee back inside without knowing what might be following.
The demonic clouds made a perfect mirror of my mind at that moment, roiling with confused thoughts and the oppression of far too much memory. Only the dire situation, and the danger all around me, kept my mind focused on the situation.
Finally convinced no other demon had followed the rakshasa through, I sprinted back inside. To my frustration, my husband and our mutual girlfriend were waiting for me in the room.
I told them to get to safety! My [Command] had not worked on them?
I wanted to fuss, because they should have followed my request anyhow, but at that moment, my body was beginning to feel something akin to vertigo. No, it was more like the space around me was trying to press in on me. So I just grimaced.
Mireia’s lips were pressed firmly together as she guessed my thoughts. Or her goddess leaked them to her. With taut tones and a raised chin, she declared, “I refused to allow it to work, My Lady.”
Her troublesome otherworld talent to deal with my vampire side had come in handy at entirely the worst time!
Rod had obtained a sword from somewhere, and it was bristling with mana. Good, it looked like he’d had magic swordsman training at some point. Maybe he could defend her if something worse went down.
“Now, get out of here before that thing comes back,” I ordered.
“Not without you!” my husband insisted.
“You saw that thing!” I argued, as that awful crushing feeling tightened around me. “It came for me! You need to be nowhere near me! Now leave!”
“Leave you behind, My Lady?” my troublesome Servant cried. “There’s no possible way!”
Somewhere above us, I felt a new series of blasts hitting the castle screen. These were far heavier than before. While whirling to face the open french doors, I cast my [Fairy Sense] outward and saw that something more powerful than a mere rakshasa now loomed above the screen.
Lhan materialized her [Blood Effigy] next to me. Looks like she didn’t need long to recover.
“You stay inside! I’ll look!” she snapped, and dashed out, running upward from the railing.
I shuddered as that squeezing sensation intensified and focused harder on Daq’s technique. The amount of Spirit that had already poured into me out of the core was becoming too much. The ‘world’ of the core was collapsing. My other personas were here with me, no longer safely isolated in the Spirit Realm.
The reality that the mortal realm was trying to kill me and my children was setting in.
Eurybia, Gaia, Oranos, Immortal Mother, I don’t care who! I prayed. The God I used to pray to on Earth! Anyone! Someone! Protect my babies!
“Ti? What’s happening to you?” came my husband’s voice.
My hands, gripping Durandal two-handed, had a strange golden aura. It didn’t correspond to any form of mana. It just… was what it was. Taking in more from my peripheral vision, I confirmed that I was generally glowing with that same light.
Husband. I repeated that word to myself bitterly. Tiana’s husband, more like. I had stolen her from him, and I had stolen him from her. I never wanted him in the first place, and here we were.
Lhan dismissed her [Blood Effigy] in mid-air, while warning me from within my head, <Get away from those two! It’s coming!>
Her warning came too late, even as the knowledge of what she saw came to me. In a virtual replay of the rakshasa’s entrance, a blond-headed man surrounded with demonic mana and a golden fire, a remnant of the shield he had just smashed through, landed on my balcony and stood.
It was too close-quarters for a [Holy Smite]. I dashed forward, swinging Durandal while changing, “[Holy Rend]!”
The sword’s attack blasted into him, but he simply laughed and took it. The colossal [Wind Scythe] smashed across his chest, doing great destruction to the doors and walls and nothing to him.
“Cullen?” Rod exclaimed in shock.
“This is a demon, Rod!” I told him. “A really bad one!”
He certainly looked like a human, and yes, like a man more than a decade older than Uncle Owen, at least to human sight. I could see the family resemblance to the late king as well. Was a demon possessing the exiled former prince Cullen, or was a demon impersonating him? Perhaps reanimating his dead body?
I almost thought ‘possession’, because he looked human even to [Fairy Sight], but in [Spirit Sense] somehow stronger than my normal senses, information courtesy Fan Li’s advanced powers, I could see that this was definitely a powerful demon. In fact, in context, with demonic mana of this strength and density, it had to be Lord Durash himself. Or rather, this was a very convincing presence of him, some technique similar to my [Blood Effigy] magic.
Which meant he was physically somewhere else. Perhaps he was not even within a hundred miles of this place. If I could destroy the presence magic, I could potentially cause the army attacking us to fall apart for lack of a leader.
“A holy sword,” Cullen/Durash stated as he saw my blade. “What a fool you are, to carry one of those obsolete things. We rendered them all useless, thousands of years ago.”
Demonic mana boiled up in the demon’s hands. I had seen exactly that spell before, while facing the other Archdemon. He was preparing to cast the curse that Durandal had just told me about.
<Throw me away, My Lady!> Durandal immediately warned.
But hesitation would kill me here, so I ignored him and let Holy mana come pouring out of my core, while forming a wall of Will around my womb to protect the twin girls sleeping there.
Please! Protect them! I called out to any Immortal listening, wanting any amount of additional protection for them that I could get, as I drew Durandal back and chanted, “[Purification]!”
I dashed forward, using my wings to propel myself. In the half-second that I could see him, Durash grinned without humor, his hands blazing black with mana. The Holy mana continued pouring forth from within me, double, triple, a dozen times, a hundred times as my vision whited out in the glare of Elder magic while I blindly swung the holy sword through.
It connected. I slammed into the dissolving mana body as my momentum carried me through. Behind me, a [Fortress of Gaia] protected my husband and our concubine from the backlash as I landed on the balcony and slammed into the railing. Thank goodness for Mother’s (Father’s?) reinforcement still fortifying it. It held up, when I had somehow turned around in the impact to slam into it with my back. I had lost my wings in the process…
“Ti!” I hear Rod yelling, and Mireia yelling “My Lady!”
<Hold on just a bit longer!> Daq ordered. <They’re nearly done!>
Who’s nearly done with what? I wondered, as my head rang and the universe came crushing in on me. I had indeed somehow continued the technique through all that, or maybe Daq had done it, but I could feel my grip on it and my body fading.
“Big Sis!”
“Auntie!”
“Auntie!”
“Auntie!”
Was I hallucinating? A quartet of pixies was whirling around me like the birds circling a cartoon character’s head.
But the tiny things were grabbing and pulling, no, carrying me. Conveying me upward, into the air. Bearing me up to a hole that formed, through which I could see a patch of blue sky instead of the demonic stormclouds that I saw everywhere else.
