§
As they had been all set to leave after my Investiture, the time of departure was literally immediately following the meeting. I asked Bruna to stay back as the others left, promising not to delay her for long.
The blond warrior scratched the back of her head and grinned after the door closed. She’d done a good job sitting properly during the meeting, but now her slouch in the chair was as contrary to the image of her baroness adoptive mother as possible. It much better fit the adventurer I met in Cara Ita so long ago.
What didn’t fit was the complete lack of a cat girl at her side.
I still sat at my spot at the table as well. I tipped my head and asked, “What’s up with you and Ceria? This looks very abnormal to me.”
She humphed and nodded. “Feels weird to me, too. But I think I should let Ceria tell you directly. She’s embarrassed enough about the situation as it is.”
I echoed, “Situation?”
Bruna grimaced. “Lady, for honest and true, it would be wrong for me to tell you first. Let Ceria talk to you, alright? I already told her that she’s gotta.”
Looks like I was putting her in a difficult spot. I nodded.
“Alright.”
She stirred in her seat a bit. “Is that it? I gotta go get my gear and join the others.”
I chuckled. “You really aren’t cut out for being around nobles. It must feel weird for you, what’s happened with your mother.”
A quite notorious former adventurer and magic shop proprietress, the ‘Baron’s bloody daughter’ had in fact inherited the barony from which she’d thought her father disinherited her. For her daughters, adventurers and occasional prostitutes, it might be the most surreal situation they could imagine.
Was the ‘situation’ that Ceria faced related to it?
I put it aside. Bruna clearly didn’t want to tell me, so I wasn’t going to find out here. Fan Li didn’t know, either.
Bruna grinned and shrugged again. “If I had any decency, I would just disappear so I don’t embarrass Mom, but then I would worry her to death. Besides, I never had any decency to begin with.”
I chuckled. “I’m sure that woman wouldn’t care if you embarrassed her anyway.”
She grinned more.
After drumming my fingers for a bit, I stated, “I have a favor to ask you. You’re the best choice, since you have Darkness affinity.”
She blinked. “How do you know that?”
“Bruna, it’s a racial trait for you. The civilized monster species will usually have other affinities as well, but they always have darkness affinity. Nobody taught you that?”
All of the Elder-descended races do. But vampires, succubi, amazons, ogres and satori are often lumped together in common knowledge as the ‘civilized monsters’, and academia does know quite a bit about those five specifically. Some scholars have published detailed studies regarding their resemblances and similarities to each other, so modern scholarship does at least suspect a common origin for them.
She scowled. “I don’t actually know a lot about my species, Lady. My birth mother died when I was just a baby, and Mom could only teach me what she knew.”
Since amazons are not common in our part of the world, there was nothing surprising about that, so I nodded.
“I see. Well, the favor is very simple. I can’t join your expedition, and neither can Hiléa nor Fan Li nor any other of my incarnations.This [Blood Effigy] technique is too tightly connected to my spiritual vessel, so that formation might be able to harm my real body through it.”
I paused, realizing that she wouldn’t understand the finer points of what I was talking about anyway, so this was useless information for her.
Shrugging, I continued, “Anyhow, I can still monitor the situation, using a different technique, and I want to react quickly if anything happens again, like the thing with Áne at the Green Tower. And I need to do so secretly, because that demon pretending to be Cullen is almost certainly trying to monitor my activities. I’ve thwarted him more than once, if he’s who we suspect him to be, so he’s watching for me.”
“Who do you expect him to be?”
I pursed my lips, then answered, “I’ve told Arken and Serera, and I’ll be telling them to inform all of you, so there’s no harm telling you. I believe this entire war to be the work of Lord Durash, an archdemon.”
“Archdemon?” she echoed, her alarm clear.
“Remember Trisiagga? The bitch we ran into in Carael?”
She nodded.
“She was working for him. So was the hellspawn that I captured, Shindzha. Demons obey their superiors, but they don’t cooperate with peers unless superiors make them. Lord Zagolig was the bastard we brought down in Ilim Below. He was invading through there. Durash was invading through Hamagaar. So the two were competing, but now Durash has no competition. Parna was cooperating with both, playing them off each other. Now that Zagolig is dead, Parna found himself dealing only with Durash and is now his pawn.”
“This is guesswork on your part, or…”
“I’m a royal knight, so I report all the encounters I’ve had with demons. Royal Intelligence put this together, but I agree with it. The only thing we don’t know is whether or not Parna knows the supposed Cullen is actually a disguised demon. He might be getting played for a fool.”
She mulled over what I said, then asked, “So what’s this have to do with my Darkness affinity?”
“Your affinity means that I am better able to hide my secret means of monitoring the situation on your body. Of course, since that means I will be monitoring you constantly, I certainly have to ask your permission.”
I hadn’t used the [Blood Sigil] in quite a while, having the [Blood Effigy] at my disposal. But this was a perfect application for it.
Her eyes turned twinkly. “You remember what I do to get my mortal mana, right?”
I sighed. “Yes. I’ll try to look the other way.”
“No need,” she said, looking ready to burst out in laughter. “It’s fun, having an audience. So what do you need to do?”
“Having an aud…” I started to retort, recognized she was yanking my chain and snapped my mouth shut. Then I simply explained, “I’ll hide a small vampiric technique on your back.”
She began unbuckling her brigandine.
“Wait, what are you doing?” I stammered.
“This is what I gotta do when Ceria does something like this,” she explained. “She’s put all kinds of defensive enchantments on my armor that get in the way. You need to put this thing on my skin, right?”
I immediately realized this wasn’t anything new. Ceria or Allia must put magic charms on her in that spot normally. It isn’t unusual.
“Well, I might be able to…” I started, then gave up. It was a moot question. She had already shed the thing.
But I facepalmed. “You still don’t wear anything underneath it.”
“I told you before, Lady! It gets too hot!”
An amazon is basically a blond succubus with a six pack. Tall and athletic, while remaining sexy in order to attract her meals. Bruna’s not busty like Ceria, but she’s got plentiful appeal of her own sort…
She noticed where I was looking and reminded me, “We can’t feed each other, remember?”
“I know that!” I snapped, coloring.
Having now exposed myself to teasing, I became a target. Bruna dimpled and leaned closer while confiding, “I’m kinda jealous of Ceria, you know. She gets to be all intimate with Lady without me!”
Rolling my eyes, I said, “Miss Bruna, please be serious.”
“You know, maybe you and I can’t feed each other, but we can still play…”
I became keenly aware of Syl, near the door, patiently waiting to respond to a request for tea or such while silently witnessing all of this.
“Bruna…”
“So you got any requests?” she asked, fully in tease mode.
“Requests?” I echoed in confusion.
“I mean, if you’re gonna watch anyway, you have any particular mortals in mind?”
My blush returned and I huffed, “Turn your back toward me already!”
Bruna responded with merry laughter while she complied.
§
Unlike the [Blood Effigy] that requires constant awareness, the [Blood Sigil] can just ride on someone or something without direct control. It’s not really necessary to monitor it full time. If the situation warranted it, Fan Li or one of the others would do so. So really, I was only paying attention to it while the group departed Narses because I was curious whether someone like Serera or Kottos would notice it on Bruna’s back.
If they ever did notice, they never said anything.
Nevertheless, after Gyges completed her report and the other aides rotated through my office, I was still keeping half an ear on it while reviewing the stack of briefing folders that the aides had left.
The Oseri Mission, as Serera had dubbed the new group, rode the same rails that Ryuu, Dilorè, Chiara and I rode months before to reach Oseri, but they had to depart the train after it reached the now-closed spur connecting the abandoned town to the main line. Thus, by early afternoon, they still had miles to go on foot before actually reaching their goal.
Why on foot and not riding beast? It takes extra time to arrange for animal carriers. The military currently had every available horse coach busy far away, so the time saved to reach Oseri on horseback would be lost waiting for the transportation to arrive.
That’s the sort of trivia I was learning, while hearing nothing important. Not that I expected to learn anything important.
<Why not turn it over to us, Your Grace?> Fan Li wondered as I relaxed in my afternoon bath. <The only purpose for doing this is so you can be instantly aware if something dire happens to them. They don’t need your supervision.>
My lip twisted as I faced the question, and I had to admit, <Stupid curiosity, I guess. I’m still half-expecting someone to notice the sigil, so I can’t stop paying attention.>
<In retrospect, placing it on her in secrecy may have been an error,> she mused.
<No, you were right,> I disagreed.
Fan Li had felt that others might have been uncomfortable around Bruna if they knew she was basically wired for sound. Also, eavesdropping gidim, or more powerful demons spying by other techniques, would not catch on to the sigil’s presence if nobody ever discussed it.
They made camp about half-way from the junction to Oseri, with the two fairies deciding to fly ahead from there while the mortals dealt with mortal things like dinner.
Of course, I had to deal with mortal things like dinner as well. Because my [Blood Effigy] doesn’t actually need it, I had the contents of a seriously full [Mustard Seed] technique ‘stomach’ to ralph up.
“Genette,” I broached the subject gingerly. “Do you remember when I plugged up the water closet last month?”
Due to that rather embarrassing episode, Genette was now one of the few who knew the reality about my state of existence on Huade. I definitely waited too long to do it. And I had done so again, I think.
She frowned very slightly, then asked, “Your Grace, do you need to be sick again?”
There’s no other way to put it, is there? Without Fan Li performing some sort of miracle of engineering, the [Blood Effigy] can only imitate so many bodily functions. Eating? No problem. Digesting and excreting? Yeah, that’s a tad too complex. I have to just hold onto it until I can vomit it up.
<This small one has been researching alternative means of disposal,> Fan Li noted.
Not that it helped me at that minute.
“I… don’t know if I can eat dinner with Husband otherwise,” I admitted.
“I’ve made arrangements, Your Grace,” she stated primly, and led me all the way down to Benedetta’s store room in the ‘dungeon’ basement. The one which she also uses to travel between Narses and Atianus.
“Why here?”
“It’s the most secure location, My Lady,” Lady Benedetta stated as she followed us in. “And I will deal with it here.”
Genette retrieved a fairly large trash bin from its resting place.
“You’re seriously going to send this to Atianus?” I asked as she positioned it at the center of the magic circle in the middle of the room.
“You have not digested it nor has it rotted while preserved inside you,” Benedetta stated. “It’s just random food waste, which we have ways to deal with, there. Nobody over there knows where it’s coming from, so it might as well not go to waste.”
I realized that the estate in Atianus is a farm, and they were probably going to feed it to the pigs…
Ugh. How should I feel about that?
Should I describe what I did next? Nope, not gonna do it. But just imagine how much one eats in a month.
