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Lady Serera’s eyes widened when she noticed my approach, and she used a voice projection to demand, “Your Grace! What are you doing out of the castle?!”
<I’m still there! This is an effigy!> I called back as I flew into position, taking a much higher point facing the new threat.
The ‘me’ in the castle isn’t the real me either, I didn’t add. I’m safe and sound in Sky Ocean, you know? Actually, Lady Serera did know, but she might have been losing track…
I’m aware that I presented an odd image, donning my fairy knight armor while halfway through pregnancy, but at this stage of pregnancy, it would be more confusing to move in a non-pregnant form. I’m too used to feeling the babies with me, both physically and spiritually. The cuirass was too tight, but otherwise I could move fine, so I went in with my current appearance. Anyway, I was not the world’s first pregnant fairy knight, so nothing was actually unprecedented about what people were seeing..
Setting all that aside, I glanced down to the ground. Because they arrived with the intention of an immediate evacuation, the train idled with a full head of steam, relief valves huffing and wisps of escaping vapor drifting upward from various spots on the locomotive. The Hero’s Party, reinforced by Bruna, Kottos, Shindzha and the three Lower Pendorian nobles, spread in a defensive line facing the stampede,, along with a few locals. They stood ready to catch anything that got through the fairy defenses while those who could provide ranged fire reinforced the fairies.
For their part, the fairies were not facing a foe whom they must provide honorable hand-to-hand combat, so they could use large scale spells to turn the tide.
The panicked magic beasts from below formed a mass like a nightmare. The subterranean creatures normally swam through the ground, but the bursting dam deflecting the mana surge upward, spilling through Morrígan’s hasty blockade which deflected the surge but not them, was hurling them to the surface. No doubt, their instincts prevented them from diving back in, toward the raging clash of energies below, leaving them only with the option of fleeing instead straight into the train.
It wasn’t malice that drove them, just simple vectors. The deep mana stream flowed out of the mountains in the north. The train station lay to the south. They surged in the direction they were already moving.
Describing them is difficult, if not impossible. I can only say they had no reason to adopt an appearance meant to be seen. Their substance is designed for different senses, and their bodies are adapted for a different medium. The mass boiling out from below the town came as an aggregation of miscellaneous bodies, composed mostly of manifested mana. A bare minimum of matter would be scattered throughout their anatomies, so little in total to be possibly nothing more than a scatter of dissociated electrons and ions. These were beings evolved to flow with the mana through solid rock, after all.
But they did have an appearance. Clouds of shades of gray, the color of the earth formed into shapes like tetrapods or lobe-finned fish or sometimes pelagic reptiles, able to move on the dry land they did not seem meant for, because they had nearly no mass.
They had inertia though, completely out of mathematical proportion with that mass due to the nature of manifested mana, and they would be a hazard to townspeople and train alike. The defenders were not looking to kill these beings but to deflect them, to split the stream of beasts into two flows and turn those to head in new directions.
But even so, I yelled down to Amana, “Salne, you and Serera, get up here quickly! Leave the stampede to the others!”
My sister looked up at me in confusion, but I simply pointed toward the horizon without saying another word. Although too far away still to make out visually, it had a signature completely out of scale with common sense. No matter what, once a fairy sense was turned to notice it, that sense would see it. Sure enough, the color drained from her face.
“Lady Serera, to me!” she called immediately as she rapidly ascended. Her guardian followed without question. The fairy warriors to each side of them closed ranks to take up space they left behind.
It was time to tighten the ranks anyhow. The train was nearly loaded. Townsmen were still tossing the last luggage into the baggage coach, but the majority were now on board and the crewmen were calling back and forth, making their last checks of their train.
On the horizon, that presence was becoming more apparent. In my heart, I was prepared to see a boiling mass of demons, swarming in from the Oserian Highlands, similar to the mass I witnessed in Hamagaar. Nothing else in my recent memory could have delivered such an impression as I had received through Fan Li’s [Mole Sense].
“W… What in Heaven…” Her Highness Amana stammered.
“Not ‘what’!” I snapped, not quite too baffled to answer. “The question is “why”?“
Why was only the second dragon I ever encountered on Huade proper flying toward this abandoned town?
What purpose could this possibly serve? It made no sense!
The Fairy Queen, already aware of the new threat, ordered, “We’ll need an air defense! Adventurers, board the rooftops! Fairies remain airborne!”
Fan Li broke into my thoughts as I drew the [Qi Sword] Durandal.
<This one trusts you are not thinking, ‘I’ve already beaten one dragon, what’s one more?’>
My brow furrowed deep. <It’s a dragon, you know? I’m not an idiot! Even if I did beat one before, it was practically a fluke!>
<My meaning is, observe it more carefully. Your previous conquest cannot compare to this one.>
Actually, I was in the process of realizing that as she spoke. Or I was picking it up from her thoughts. It’s hard to tell. As well as struggling to understand what possible reason this creature could have for being here, for coming to this place, I was struggling to understand how such an enormous beast could have hidden, completely unknown, even in the Oserian Highlands.
<As the [Mustard Seed Technique] demonstrates,> Fan Li replied with a wry smile in her thoughts, <Immortal techniques can ignore physical limits through application of a well-selected concept. If the concept exists within the universe, the effect is ultimately possible, however unlikely. The magic of this world of Huade employs this same fact. The complex magics of your world, those that involve more than the simple application of brute mana, actually function by temporarily overwriting the physical rules of Huade’s universe with rules borrowed from elsewhere.>
I snapped, <Even so, the people of this world only have the magic of this world to work with!>
<The exception being Astaroth. We are at the location of a descended Immortal’s nefarious engine. It’s natural to assume anything inexplicable that happens in that location is of his devising.>
In other words, no matter what the reason, we at least know whodunnit.
<The [Mustard Seed Technique] can hide the great within the small, and so might another Immortal technique hide a gigantic being in a small world adjacent to Huade, or allow it to normally exist in a much smaller form, or any number of other possible explanations. Demonic dragons are ultimately the creation of Astaroth and his minions. Who knows what variations on the theme of reality a former Immortal might have picked up in his untold myriad millennia before coming to this world?>
As she delivered her monologue, I watched the beast on the horizon continue to grow. Once upon a time, I compared the dragon of Tavital, the one that killed the original Tiana, to an airliner. But airliners come in a lot of sizes, you know? That first dragon had been like a 737. This one now approaching… Yeah, this was a bit more of an A380.
Below us, the expedition members were scaling the built-in ladders to the roof of the train. Lady Ilni joined them, but Kottos was ordering Ansri and Tagit, her fellow Lower Pendorian nobles to remain inside with their countrymen. Her persona in this place, “Lt. Madrin”, was a Pendorian military woman, after all.
As everyone took their places, the locomotive let out its mourning wail with a blast of steam, and the slow hiss and chuff began, initiating a series of clacks and bangs as it began forcing the cars into motion, one by one.
At the train station, the fairies continued their defense, splitting the tide of creatures which flowed in the same direction as the train was now traveling. Meanwhile, the mortals on the roof were becoming aware of what was approaching from the north.
<Fan Li,> I asked carefully, <about this effigy…>
<Yes, that is the other issue. Do not mistake it in performance for your natural body. I have mentioned this before, but the highest cultivation that the effigy can emulate is roughly the Spiritual Refinement realm, the Third Stage of cultivation, and not even at the peak. Your main body at this point stands on the verge of the Fifth Stage, equal to this small one as she lay dying on Huajie. Further, its resistance to physical damage is not that of a living being of similar realm. Probably, not even that of the ordinary juvenile Elder you were when you last faced such a creature.>
Morrígan, still in her spot on the ground, still maintaining her shield, transmitted a single order to the rest of us. <Stay with the train. I shall catch up with you later.>
Fan Li had already dropped her web of [Mole Sense], but I could directly sense the tremendous energies still raging below. She had never determined just how deep the reservoir of mana ran, only that the pressure remained immense. No doubt the Fairy Queen also realized just how much force she was holding back.
Together with Serera and Amana, I began falling back, matching the motion of the train, and the rest of the fairies arranged themselves below us. Serera quickly split them into teams to guard the train and teams to guard their primary charges, Amana and Ceria, while Ryuu organized the mortal defenders. The Ryuu of old would have prioritized attacking the dragon, but this one was mostly concerned with keeping the passengers under their feet safe.
In fact, nobody had a plan to actually attack the beast. Honestly, I think everyone understood that, with no idea why it was here, nor what it was about to do, just blindly attacking it would probably be foolhardy.
Morrígan’s receding back, left at the station while she faced the flood alone, looked like the image of valiant self-sacrifice, but of course, just like me, she was there in a projected form. Almost certainly, she used a different technique than my effigy, but she wasn’t risking her life.
<No, but just like you, she can be harmed through her projection,> Fan Li corrected. <Her soul is present within that form. You can see it, right? While perhaps her life is not at risk, she does risk damage.>
I responded with a wry smile to myself. Fan Li had just used a back-handed way to remind me not to take too many risks either. Good advice to remember, as the beast approached.
<Old Man, are you able to coordinate your shields with what the fairies are doing?> I wondered. I didn’t have any real experience in using Durandal in a team effort.
<With so many capable magic users around, it’s better to hold me back as a last resort, My Lady. I may cause confusion otherwise.>
As the train began picking up speed, Morrígan either hit her limit, or determined we were far enough away. Whichever was the case, her shield let go, and the still gushing torrent burst through the surface.
Technically it was an eruption, not an explosion, but it might as well have been a bomb. The ground ruptured all at once, propelling soil and building rubble skyward.
The fairy shields splitting the stream of magic beasts in two suddenly became a serendipitous defense against the shockwave, but I realized that another peril was about to hit.
“Debris!” I yelled. “Prepare for falling debris!”
A patchwork canopy of magic shields went up, mages and fairies somehow coordinating to create a cover for the train, as the first bits began raining down. And as it did, the beast appeared within the cloud of dust behind us.
