.
Why was I running instead of fighting? I admit, it seemed cowardly, but this wasn’t a proper Knight’s duel anyway. She had ambushed me in stealth, clearly in the belief I couldn’t see her coming. And she had refused to declare her name.
Besides, just like when I fought Aenëe, I seriously did not want to do injury to another fairy. I had no idea what my standing really was in Fairie, but if I could avoid violence, it could only help me. So I was hoping she was under orders not to pursue me beyond the Kingdom’s border. If I could just get there, I might not need to fight her at all.
She was now circulating mana at a quantity climbing far past anything I saw Aenëe do. This girl was on a completely different level.
They were heading on a course different enough from mine to show that the fairy knight was fleeing the spear, not pursuing me. I was getting ready to break in a different direction when that mana suddenly manifested. I braced for it, but she shot it backward instead, at the spear pursuing her, in a super-powered fireball.
I heard Kiki shriek. She became visible in my senses and flew away at a right angle from my course. The fairy knight pursued her, yelling something filled with anger, but I didn’t catch what she said. I was too focused on the spear, which immediately targeted me once the pixie released it. Kiki must have simply been dragging it around the air, overpowering it to drag it a different direction than it wanted to fly.
As it closed the distance, I whirled to swing the sword behind me while yelling, “[Holy Rend]!”
Durandal had warned me he could only do a limited number of attacks in a row, but he hadn’t warned me yet about running out. And, I figured it was better to use them on the spear, anyway. Now that I knew the mysterious substantiated mana was attached to a physical spear, hitting the form had become an option.
I had timed it perfectly. The sword met the spear as it arrived and the collision made another massive flash.
The spear spun away through the air in a long arc downward.
Only one more strike, My Lady! Durandal warned me.
My head snapped around, looking for the fairy knight. I found her in furious pursuit of Kiki, and throwing Aether attacks. The pixie was zigzagging through the air, trying to shake her, while yelling, “Big Siiiiisss!”
I flew on an interception course. Fortunately, Kiki turned the perfect direction to lead the fairy knight right across my path. Our opponent had not yet spotted me, or perhaps she could only penetrate my cloak with the Dark formation on the spear. I pointed Durandal and chose this as my best opportunity to use that last attack. I poured Earth mana into Durandal and chose the third attack, the Earth mana strike that I hadn’t used yet.
“[Holy Smite]!”
Durandal’s a holy sword. It somehow wasn’t a surprise that ‘Holy Smite’ was an option.
I have no doubt that, if this were Japan, it would have been something way cooler, a downright middle-school-worthy name, spelled out in four Chinese characters. A juvenile part of me was slightly disappointed.
Manifested Aether appeared in a giant formation, creating an inscription in air similar to [Inscribe Formation]s I had seen Ceria do. An eruption of Earth mana poured into it out of Durandal’s tip, forming a massive ball which launched forward like the fist of a god and smote the knight broadside.
It blasted her sideways through the air. She tumbled away, dropping downward in an arc as Kiki circled back toward me.
I was using up Darkness fast, so I dropped my cloak. I sheathed Durandal and turned to fly west, but I immediately halted as a line of fairies dropped their stealth in front of me.
The one in the center was a fairy knight with slightly less immodest armor than my opponent’s. At least, her hips were wrapped by something resembling actual metal faulds everywhere except the front, which was open to reveal a leather bikini bottom, and she wore actual greaves and sabatons. Her gauntlets were fine-mesh fairy steel mail, like mine, but were elbow length.
However, I say only ‘slightly less’ because she didn’t follow through, above her sword belt. The one and only item she wore other than those gauntlets was a skimpy ‘scarf’, also made of fairy steel mail. It was flexible enough that she could tie it in a knot, and translucent enough to show a hint of rosy pink tips beneath. As thin as it must have been to do that, I doubted that it offered any protection at all.
The big surprise was, she had the bird-like wings just like mine, except grayish white. I had never seen one before, but I knew that if she was indeed a true fairy, then those wings identified her as a sylph, a true fairy of the wind and mountains.
The rest of the fairies facing me weren’t dressed as knights. They all wore their raiments instead. A couple carried swords, but the majority were spearwomen and archers. A couple also had white or gray bird wings, but all of them had weaker mana signatures than true fairies, so they were probably lesser fairies, similar to my great-grandfather’s girls.
“Stay where you are, monster,” the fairy knight commanded, speaking in Dorian. I was kinda getting tired of people calling me that.
“On what authority do you command me?” I demanded in the same language, keeping my hand on Durandal’s hilt.
“I am Serera of the Gray Mountain, Captain of the Biriden Border Guard,” she answered. “This is Biriden Canton. You are in my jurisdiction.”
I was in Relador.
This may sound weird, since we were hovering a couple hundred feet above the ground, but I smiled and took my skirt in hand and curtseyed. Really, I dipped slightly in the air while doing the motions, but I think it was convincing.
During my flight, I had thought carefully about how I should identify myself once I reached Relador. My first thought had been to go completely incognito. But the fact that my destination was full of people with fairy sight who would see my monster biology immediately argued against that, so I didn’t.
I gave the fullest version of my identity possible. Stil in my curtsey, I declared, “Ëi onar lâ, Fele Serera. Pendorle lianelfen Orestaniale enorafen Vesirle enel, Semöan Cenole Tiana ci cyralinëo.”
Eyes grew a bit as they listened to me unreel my full name in Fairy: Noble daughter of Pendor and royal knight of Orestania and princess of Faerie, Tiana of the High Forest.
In the silence that followed, three more soldiers in raiment flew up from below. They were respectively carrying the inert fairy knight, her sword and her spear. Thankfully, the spear did not seem to be trying to target me anymore. My strike had interrupted it in some way.
Finally, Serera spoke. “I am aware of a half-monster fairy princess, but wasn’t she given to be a bride?”
I bowed my head in assent. “I was indeed bestowed to marry into my kingdom, Fele Serera. I am betrothed to His Highness Prince Roderick of Orestania. I am as yet not old enough to consecrate the marriage, according to their royal traditions.”
In Fairy, Fele means ‘Sir’, except it’s used for a knight of either gender.
“Can you explain why Lady Feraen, who serves an Orestanian duke, was fighting such a personage?”
“The traitor whom she has the misfortune to serve has lied to her,” I answered. “And thus, she mistook it as her duty to attack me without due challenge or warning. For the sake of her honor, I tried to slip away so I could end it without defeating her, but she persisted and forced me to deal with her.”
I looked at the still limp form laying in the fairy soldier’s arms with concern. “How is she?”
You struck her with my strongest attack, My Lady, and she had no shield raised against it, Durandal noted. And I was charged with your Earth mana at the time I made it, which added to the spell and reinforced the impact.
I could increase his attacks by adding to his mana? That had to be a special function of the sword; it wasn’t the normal way magic swords worked. I made sure to file that one away for future reference.
“Quite broken,” was the girl carrying the unconscious knight answered. She looked to Lady Serera with concern. “Ma’am…”
The captain frowned, then sheathed her sword and moved over to where the girl was holding the fairy knight apparently named “Lady Feraen”. With their leader no longer on guard, the others became a bit less so, as well, but they still watched me closely.
She spread her fingers, sending Healing mana into the injured knight for a while, but it was weak. She soon halted.
With a shake of her head, she said, “I only recently mastered the ability to heal, Rien. I can’t channel enough Healing for this level of injury yet.”
“Will you allow me to try?” I asked. I had been doing it so long, I had almost forgotten about it, but I had been circulating Healing mana subconsciously since the beginning of the fight.
The fairy captain gave me an uncertain look. I insisted, “I was doing everything I could to avoid hurting her. My last attack caught her unaware when my companion distracted her.”
Okay, actually I didn’t realize how strong the attack would be, but whatever…
Out of nowhere, Kiki appeared, plopping her butt onto my shoulder of all things. “Big Sis nice monster! Big sis good good!”
I never thought I would have a literal shoulder angel. This was weird. I found myself trying to remember if the one on your right shoulder was the angel pixie or the devil pixie.
Serera had a speculative gaze for Kiki. “I know you. You’re that river lord’s pet.”
“Not pet!” the pixie retorted. “Kiki little sister!”
I explained, “‘The river lord’ you mean is my great-grandfather. He told Kiki to guide me to Tëan Tír, to report to my grandfather.”
The fairy captain twisted her lip, considering me carefully.
I repeated, “Will you allow me to heal her? I have strong Healing.”
“A monster can do Healing magic?” the soldier carrying the magic spear asked in a doubtful tone.
But Serera, after regarding me a bit longer, pursed her lips. “I’ve never heard of a monster who could heal before.”
“My Lady, this monster is also a half-fairy,” I pointed out.
Understanding colored her eyes and she nodded.
I insisted once more, “I really can heal, Lady Serera. It’s brute force, because I don’t have much control. But I have strong healing.”
Serera gave me a deep stare that was probably her applying fairy sight on me. She nodded. “I can see an amazing amount of healing mana in you right now.”
After a long pause to think it over, she directed, “Drop the other mana, first.”
I sighed, then asked, “May I keep some of the Darkness? I may need it to maintain my wings.”
She gave an accepting gesture. I carefully unwound my unused mana, holding back about half the Darkness remaining. It took a while to let it all go safely.
