.
Finally, Serera nodded and gestured for me to move closer to the unconscious fairy knight. I did so while muttering, “Wish I had my fan for this.”
I put my hand out, palm forward, and intoned, “[Heal].”
As gently as I could, I let the mana flow onto her, concentrating on her torso.
The information about her condition flooded back from her body. In my mind, I saw injuries to her lungs, her liver, her spleen, her intestines, and watched as they closed and the bleeding halted. She still had multiple fractures to the ribs, clavicle and pelvis…
“Aaaaahaaaaaah,” Feraen cried out as she became conscious. Her back arched and her eyes opened wide, staring at me, then she thrashed violently, and the fairy soldier who was carrying her lost her grip.
I immediately propelled myself downward, fast enough to get past the falling knight and catch her, then clamped my hand on her forehead as I decelerated. I intoned, “[Sleep]!”
There was no way I could let her attempt to fly with all those broken bones.
Feraen instantly slumped, and I looked around at the others descending to join me. Serera stared at me with wide eyes.
“Well, I could tell that was Healing, but…”
“I’m too strong,” I admitted. “And I am very inexperienced. I still have trouble controlling it properly. The patient feels like they’re on fire when I do it. But it heals fast.”
“I could see that, but the speed at which you put her to sleep… was that perhaps a vampire skill?”
I shook my head. “No, that was just a standard healer’s [Sleep] spell.”
The fairy captain’s eyebrows rose. I guess being able to just knock someone out instantly with a [Sleep] spell like that isn’t normal. A really good healer like Melione can make you drop off fairly fast, but not cause instant sleep.
As she came closer and laid her hand on the fairy now nestled in my arms, I told her, “She is a lot better, but there are still broken bones.”
She nodded agreement. She had done some really light technique that didn’t even show up in my fairy sight, but it had evidently been some method to check Feraen’s condition.
I added, “I can finish healing her, but it will wake her again. For safety, I should do it on the ground.”
Serera nodded. “Follow us.”
It felt like she was trusting me now. Or at least not distrusting me.
Their camp was more of a hang-out spot than an encampment. There was no evidence of prepared areas for sleeping or anything. It was simply the worn stones of an ancient human ruin. Some of the stonework was tumbled, but it offered a defensible location in the hills above the wooden fortification that was serving the same purpose for a human garrison.
Mortals and fairies were unlikely to actually work together, but they had to coordinate to an extent. That was probably the reason for the proximity.
After I healed the protesting Feraen again, with Serera and a pair of her soldiers holding her down, several of the girls disappeared into an underground space beneath the ruin. They reemerged, bearing a meal of fairy grape wine, shadow squash and roasted mana-enriched mushrooms.
It sounded a bit creepy, but they had converted the remnants of catacombs into an underground farm with the assistance of some gnomes, after clearing out the monster population that had formed around an eruption from a mana stream. During dinner, a pink-haired half-fairy soldier named Diara enthusiastically regaled me with her theory that the eruption and subsequent monster invasion had destroyed this ancient settlement in the first place.
Diara had picked up her interest in this from her father, a scholar who dug around in ruins a lot. Since the man had become involved with a fairy, I worried about his fate, remembering what Grandmother said, but from what I learned, it sounded like the soldier’s mother followed my mother’s approach and the man was still alive and well. My dinner companion was compiling information about the place and sending it to her father during her duty here.
I ate while enjoying a picturesque scene of this gaggle of apparent teenage girls relaxing and picnicking in the ruins and the late afternoon sun. Some of them had already transformed their raiments from warrior outfits to more fairy-like attire.
Most of the fairy troop were lesser wind fairies, with a few other types and a couple half-fairies like my new acquaintance mixed in. Serera, as a sylph, was the only true fairy in the troop as well as the only knight in the bunch.
Not a surprise. Few true fairies would waste their time on sentry duty.
Serera’s girls were trying to earn their way upward in the fairy world by doing the grunt work. A half-fairy or a lesser fairy had a shot at evolving into a true fairy through tempering, through both hard work and aid earned from the true fairies above them. These girls served for the opportunity to receive Serera’s training and instruction.
Could I evolve into a full fairy too? I’m a half-fairy, so it should be possible. But Mother thinks I would lose a lot more from eliminating my vampiric nature than I would gain by cultivating myself toward True Fairyhood. She doesn’t want me to try. A normal half-fairy has a reason to try, because they are half-mortal and will eventually die of old age after a few centuries unless they achieve it. I’m not half-mortal. Age is no threat to me.
Getting rid of my father’s legacy seems like a good idea to me, but until I’m an adult, I’ll respect Mother’s advice.
Being a fairy knight, Serera was likely much more than a mere ‘captain of the border guard’. It was probably only one of the hats that she wore for the canton employing her. But as I watched her interact with them, I concluded that shepherding these girls as her disciples was her main reward.
After dinner, Serera pried me away from Diara, who I suspected was chatting me up with bedtime in mind, and brought me over to sit near where Feraen was resting. It seemed this was a matter for true fairies only, because she sent her troops off to their normal duties. Getting rid of a certain pixie was impossible though, so Kiki stayed.
I gave Serera a summary version of the events at the royal academy while a glowering Feraen listened. Serera’s attitude toward me had turned neutral, bordering on amicable. I guess I had passed the test.
She wondered about the ‘magic sword’ I was carrying, but I didn’t want to go into details which would reveal Durandal to be a spirit sword, so I simply said my grandmother told me to take her magic sword with me. It wasn’t a lie, right?
Feraen wasn’t convinced by my claims of innocence.
“What kind of fool would risk making the Fairy King mad at him?” she demanded once I finished. “Parna isn’t that far from here!”
It was just on the other side of Suldor, in fact.
I had wondered the same, and repeated the reasoning the duke had given. “He claimed that my grandfather wouldn’t care what happened to me, or even remember about me. But I think he doesn’t really believe that. I think he only said it to dishearten me. He wanted me to lose hope, so I wouldn’t fight him.”
“Then…” she prompted, since my answer didn’t answer her question.
“It was easy to figure out, once I had time to think about it. I believe he expects my grandfather to blame King Owen. Parna is working to put Owen’s brother Cullen on the throne. If I were to die, Parna thinks grandfather would blame the king and side with Cullen in revenge.”
“This is ridiculous!” Feraen declared. “Lady Serera, my lord is an honorable noble! This monster went on a rampage and terrorized a town with her blood thirst!”
I humphed. “And I managed to continue doing so after they locked me up? Did Parna tell you that the attacks continued unabated after they arrested me?”
“This is preposterous! Lady Serera, this monster…”
“I have a name, and titles, and requisite stylings to go with them, Lady Feraen!” I snapped. I usually try not to mind it, but I had been called ‘monster’ a few too many times by this woman.
“My lord told me you would make wild claims of titles!”
“Lady Feraen,” Serera answered with a calming tone, “I have only heard of one vampire half-fairy in the world, and I attended the council in which the nobles voted to exile the one that I know of. This child has the same mana characteristics as the infant I saw in Princess Déhare’s arms fifteen years ago. The King vetoed the council, so Her Highness’s child remains a princess in her own right. You shall use the proper style when you refer to her.”
She then bowed her head to me and stated, “Your Highness, as the Clan of the Gray Mountain chief’s daughter, I had no vote that day, but for the record, my father voted in opposition.”
Feraen scowled and looked away. Serera wasn’t finished with her, though.
“I have a question for you, Fele Feraen. We observed you and your wyvern unit arrive nearly a full day before Lady Tiana’s arrival. You were lying in wait for her, yet she only left Copen yesterday in mid-afternoon. Can you explain what you were doing there?”
“Obviously, I received my lord’s warning that she could come our way. He told me of her crimes in the same message!”
There are many means of long distance communication in Orestania, like Arken’s origami messengers. She didn’t say what their method was, but it wasn’t surprising for someone at Parna’s level to have mages with the ability.
“When did you receive the message?”
“Yesterday… morning,” Lady Feraen admitted. She noticed it was before I escaped. But she recovered. “My Lord is a very wise man! Surely, he suspected she might escape and deduced her destination!”
“Or he thought a poorly armed child would easily fall to a fully equipped fairy knight with centuries of experience, armed with a spear specialized for vampire slaying, so he maneuvered her into fleeing,” Serera countered. She had picked up the spear in question, a black, wicked-looking thing, as she made the point.
I was bristling a little at being repeatedly called a ‘child’, but I was only fifteen years old and I had no idea exactly how many centuries older than me these two were. They could even be millennia old, like my grandmother.
“How did you come to be armed with such an unlikely weapon, My Lady? Surely it isn’t part of your normal gear?” Serera wondered.
Feraen twisted her lips, then admitted, “My Lord ordered me to carry it on this mission.”
“This spear was specifically designed for killing vampires. Its function is to lock onto a vampire and deliver a lethal dose of purification,” Serera mused. “And you came at Her Highness under stealth.”
“I owe no chivalry to a criminal!” Feraen retorted, looking away again. I guess she wasn’t blind to how dishonorable her actions sounded.
“Enough!” Serera declared. “I am not of sufficient rank to judge Her Highness. I will escort both of you to Tëan Tír in the morning. You shall present your claims there.”
