§
The amazon helped herd the townsfolk into the waiting railroad carriages, her nervous charges unsure of boarding a vehicle which they were seeing for the first time. Her sister literally floated mid-air, helping the fairy warriors provide air cover for the evacuation. Naturally, this small one had not told her in advance, so she learned only this morning about Ceria’s pregnancy and her new relationship.
With the Fairy King of all people.
Bruna is finding it difficult to unpack everything she’s learning here.
This one could already feel her doppelgänger’s disapproval from the back of… my mind. Yes, understood. I must try to think in first person.
Bruna’s troubles came not just through this current demonstration of magic power even further beyond the ‘power up’ she gained from Her Grace. Her big sister had already become a noble heiress– a ‘Childe’ as the folks in this part of the world call it– but now she would become minor fairy royalty! Bruna was struggling to be happy for her big sister as she watched the gap between them widening.
This small one supposes that these observations suggest the ability to read Bruna’s thoughts, as would be the case if this one were resident in the back of a Servant’s mind, but this one’s location, remotely operating the [Blood Sigil] on the beautiful amazon adventurer’s back, does not grant such an ability.
Rather, this one had been hearing Bruna’s private complaints, after she learned about Ceria’s new status as well as her pregnancy. While surrounded by all her compatriots, she could only secretly complain to the entity controlling the [Blood Sigil]. Watching her through spiritual sense now, this one could easily guess her thoughts had returned to those complaints.
<You are doing it again,> the nagging other me clucked in the background.
I decided to provide some small counsel to Bruna.
<Although you should indeed be happy for her, it is normal to feel jealous as well. Especially for a longtime companion as close as she is to yourself. Use that guilt to help you remain fair, and allow neither the guilt nor the jealousy overwhelm you.>
Her annoyed reply was no surprise. Under her breath, she hissed, “I know that!”
Then she gestured negation to the startled woman passing her at that moment, and waved her to move on.
<If it is any comfort at all, her choices have been well chosen. That man does not force his concubines to stay by his side. Once the child is born, Ceria will doubtless return to your side. This one believes she plans to pressure your mother into raising her daughter, as recompense for forcing her into this situation.>
This time, Bruna remembered she did not need to use her voice. <But that’s not fair to the kid, you know? Am I supposed to be happy with that idea? That kid will be my niece, you know? She needs a mom too!>
Well, that was certainly a valid point. Although the baroness was no doubt the more practical choice as acting parent for the child destined to inherit her barony, Ceria was, after all, the child’s mother.
I replied, <Ceria is a kind-hearted child. She would never abandon family, even if she mostly allowed your mother to raise her. One imagines her future relationship will be more akin to a father dividing his time between parenting and work.>
She didn’t reply. This… I decided to leave Bruna to her thoughts, and turned my attention once more to my self-assigned task.
We have made continuous adjustments and improvements to the basic functions of the [Blood Sigil], using not only techniques from the magic of Huajie and elsewhere, but more importantly, we can now employ more advanced ancient Elder methods learned through cosmic deduction. [Blood Sigil] is limited to a fraction of Her Grace’s true power in the power of the Blood Magic it can perform, but it has no limit in the type or nature.
The ability to do so, just like the ability to maintain so many streams of awareness between Fan Li and the other Incarnations, is the result of an extraordinary advantage gained ever since the incident which merged this one’s Spiritual Core with Her Grace’s Spiritual Vessel. The raw spiritual energy which we can tap allows us to explore some truly amazing magic potentially available to Her Grace, much of it lost to the vampire race since the Elder Age. No doubt, Tiana’s father, born during that time, knew some of these, being most likely the one who preserved knowledge of Blood Magic in the first place, but he had been a young Elder when he was torn apart by the Affliction and transformed in the end into the first vampire. His knowledge had been limited.
Thus, while Ceria and the fairy warriors guarded the skies, this … I maintained a vigil below ground via that magic. The art I employed used nothing more than basic [Vampire Sense], but the technique wrapped it in a special Dark magic control spell, with an Ancient Fairy name which translates roughly as [Mole Sense], which turns the innate skill into filaments which spread outward for miles below the surface. Because the sense travels strictly underground, the threads can extend outward to a range far greater than normally possible during the day, reaching distances which ordinary fairies would likely find quite extraordinary.
In that subterranean world, most of what transpired above ground would only be vague, reaching no higher than [Vampire Sense] on its own could reach in the light. But the ground itself is a powerful sensor. Events on and above the surface affect the Earth and Darkness that permeate the underground terrain.
The space below the town yielded no surprises at first. The Demon God’s formation was a known quantity, after all. Out of defensive instinct, my threads avoided penetrating lower in that area. The mass of mana surging from beneath, and the equal force from Morrígan countering it had a density my sense would never penetrate anyhow.
That was as expected, and this one’s mind was on watching for other threats. Surely, if they had set off a booby trap, the Demon God was now alert to their attempt to disperse his formation. One might reasonably assume that demons would come in response.
And in the area immediately north, the direction where the Oserian Highlands rose, it appeared. But in the same moment that this one spotted that threat, another boiled up from below.
§
When Fan Li woke me from my sleep, I had instant mixed feelings about the night before. I recognized them as a symptom of my merger threatening to fall apart and composed myself, then giggled to myself.
It probably helped that Rod had already left and it was just me and his cute concubine. With his muscles and male fragrance in my face, I’m sure I would have come apart, with Tiana fleeing to Sky Ocean, leaving Lydia to deal with the aftermath.
In the night, I had decided I should enjoy my man a little if I had him, anyway. No, we didn’t do everything, but I pushed how far I could go without threatening the merger. I wound up letting myself wander everywhere about the waist, and letting him wander… Well, I didn’t stop him at the waist, even though he hesitated to push things. I still left taking care of him to Mireia in the end, as usual. Still, it was a lot further than Tiana on her own was prepared to go, and I regretted it a little, for her sake. It’s weird how I see Tiana on her own almost as a separate person, somewhat like how Tiana treats “Tiana Full Battle Mode”. But I have different desires with Lydia coloring my personality, even though I have all the same concerns and goals.
Anyway, I couldn’t dwell on it. The news from Oseri was urgent. I caressed Mireia’s shoulder as I kissed her awake, then told her, “I’ll need to stay in bed again. Please go tell the maids for me.”
Once she agreed and we exchanged a good morning kiss, I laid on my back and closed my eyes.
My projection appeared in the middle of a battle in its opening moments, and I immediately knew I needed a [Blood Effigy] instead.
Fan Li’s thoughts agreed with mine. <This one shall maintain your effigy in Narses and spawn a new one to send here for you.>
With that, I found myself flying through the air in immaterial form, dashing at supersonic speed in the direction of Oseri. It gave me a moment of mental clarity to catch up with what I witnessed there.
Many mortals have a pair of false equations in their heart. Monsters are bad, magical beings are good. Leaving aside that one can hardly call fairies as a group, with their callous attitude toward mortals, ‘good’, however tolerant they may be, a monster may just as easily be ‘good’ as any other creature, and certain magical beings can be intensely dangerous to mortals.
For example, the beings that came boiling out of the ground at Oseri in the minutes before I arrived.
The underground rivers of mana that stream throughout Huade, things vaguely comparable to ‘ley lines’ or ‘dragon veins’ while being neither, rarely interact with the world above. Only when catastrophic events alter their route and they penetrate the surface as ‘mana springs’ are they even a factor in the world above ground. But these rivers host fish of a sort, magical beings which roam them and subsist off them, lacking enough physical substance for solid rock and soil to hinder their movement.
The denizens of the aboveground world only encounter these beings at mana springs, and scholars have a theory that interbreeding between these beings and natural beasts are the origin of aboveground magical beasts, serving as an explanation for why said magical beasts so often resemble mortal species.
There was no mana spring here, but there was a formation, and a mysterious construct beneath that formation, serving as a means to destroy it, should someone tamper with it. And that construct’s location… was in the middle of a massive mana stream, a deluge of mana coursing out of the chaotic mess of free mana that defined the Highlands of the Arbolian Range as much as the mountains and plateaus did.
That construct, now activated, was redirecting torrential quantities of mana out of the mana stream’s natural course and forcing it to the surface. So far, Morrígan held it back, turning the stream back underground, but the creatures which inhabited it, blasted out of their natural habitat by the first dam and also sent flying toward the world above, now desperately sought escape from the barren desert of rock they found themselves in and swam to the surface.
I saw them again as I approached and converted to Tiana form, with Durandal’s [Qi Blade] form at my hip, since Sirth wasn’t using him. She was busy in the back of Shindzha’s head, helping her communicate with the fairies.
<Hey, old man, are you ready?>
<Haha, I’m always ready! It’s been a long time, My Lady! Same rules as always?>
<That’s right,> I confirmed.
There were twelve fairy warriors between the fairies guarding Ceria and the fairies under Lady Serera’s command to guard Amana. That made fourteen fairies total in the air, with Ceria joining them, forming a ring around the train where the last of the townspeople were still boarding.
Below them, ten surface combatants, between Kottos, Ryuu’s party, Bruna, Shindzha, Ansri and Ilni formed a sparse defensive ring. No guards had come with the train; it was normal civilian transportation and they had not expected to be met with a stampede.
But it was a stampede, not an attack. The beasts were a danger because of their panic, and because their numbers were so great. Something about the construct had created a far greater torrent than the mana stream below should, sweeping an unnatural herd of beasts along with it. This was far less a river being forced out of its banks than the bursting of a dam.
With the town, the townspeople and the train still in the process of loading them in the way.
As I flared to slow myself down, I sent an urgent order. <Fan Li! Look downward, not outward! Something’s wrong!>
<This one has just done so, and your suspicion is correct,> she replied.
She had avoided penetrating the mass itself and delved downward from the sides to see what lay below. Sure enough, the construct was not a mere diversion dam, but a massive reservoir, built up over a long time and now released. Mana and magical beings had pooled there in great numbers over a long time. The magical beings were just a bonus. If not for Morrígan, the mana would have already destroyed both the formation and the town.
But the magical beings were accidentally serving as a diversion. With their eyes down, busy diverting the stampede, the defenders did not see the incoming threat.
