.
During my bath, I had been concentrating hard enough that I hadn’t noticed the presences that had come into my area and were waiting for me to come up. Or rather, I sort of noticed in passing, but the place was supposed to have several fairies currently resident, so it wasn’t odd enough to pay special attention.
Yeah, that wasn’t smart. In my current situation, I didn’t have the luxury of taking it easy like that.
The wing I had selected for my bath had the one feature I craved more than any other, after suffering involuntary outdoor nudity more than once… a sense of being in private. I had wanted to rent a private bath without the attendant, but it seemed they didn’t offer that option.
The other wings had varied from being wide indoor pools with generous sight lines and abundant viewing positions to largely clear glass roofs, probably to enjoy a hothouse effect in the winter, to being, frankly, giant patio covers lacking in exterior walls to allow the guests to enjoy the great outdoors from their baths.
This wing had been the only one with a less wide-open view, although it still had a glass roof. It had a gentle breeze that blew through it to offset the spring warmth, since with that warmth added to the greenhouse effect of the design, a less ventilated room would be sweltering. But, the glass roof was allowing palm trees and citrus trees to grow between all the fountains and small baths scattered through the room, and raised rocks intended as sunning beds during the winter added to the tree trunks and hanging branches to block sight lines, creating dozens of little private alcoves like this one.
I had a suspicion, based upon the wide grassy spots near the bathing sites, that at least one intention of this wing was to provide outdoorsy but semi-private spots for sex. Which is why I was feeling intruded upon. Each of the resting spots in this wing were supposed to be respected as private spaces. I mean, I wasn’t going to, but what if I had been?
As I climbed out of the pool, Lady Feraen stood under the branches of a nearby mandarin tree, with Lady Mára sat on a stone bench. Now that they were together, I could see the family resemblance between the green haired grandmother and the blond granddaughter. Both sets of jade green eyes were glaring at me.
The grim-faced manager stood next to them, with her arm around a wary-looking Laneia. Curious fellow guests had made their way over to find out why two fairy knights in full panoply had barged into their bathhouse. There were two fairies who had climbed up on a nearby sunning perch, and two more watching from the path that led to my bathing spot. Behind them, farther up the path, mortal staffers were also watching.
I didn’t know precisely what the story was going to be, but I could easily predict I was going to hear the word ‘monster’ any moment now.
If this were my house or if I were otherwise to be interpreted as the host here, I would be expected to greet them first. Perhaps they expected it based upon the fact that I was the paying guest. But as far as I was concerned, if this place was ‘mine’, then by any measure, these two were intruders, not guests.
Snubbing them seemed the best approach. I ignored them and went over to the table where the towels Laneia had brought me were stacked.
I think she was supposed to be doing it, but she looked too frightened to ask, so I began toweling off. While I was still drying my hair, and still pointedly saying nothing, Feraen finally couldn’t stand it any more.
“Are you going to just continue ignoring us? Have you no courtesy?”
I wrapped my hair, then picked up a second towel to dry my body, while looking up at nothing and pondering the question.
“Courtesy… I wonder, what sort of courtesy I owe a pair of intruders who rudely barge into a private area while I am bathing, in order to ogle the skin of a defenseless unclothed fairy who is too young to grow a raiment?”
“What fairy?” Feraen scoffed. “I see only an ugly monster preparing to rampage among the helpless innocents here.”
“Lady Feraen,” I stated her as I toweled off, keeping my tone polite and conversational, “We’ve had a discussion about this before, haven’t we? I make it a point to only take the blood of consenting girls. For that reason, I will not be partaking of any blood here. I cannot consider women whose will has been permanently damaged by fairies to be willing partners. I indeed paid money to be here, but I did so only to bathe, dine and, if I must wait that long, sleep.”
I smiled gently at the fearful-looking Laneia and assured her, “I will not take the blood of any unwilling mortal present.”
Her fear would be strange, since she had already been clearly told I was a vampire, but I took it to mean that Feraen had fed her a pack of lies about me.
“As if I can believe the word of a monster!”
I wrapped the towel around my torso, secured it, then crossed my arms. “My Lady, as my senior in the knighthood, perhaps you can tell me, exactly how many of your vicious lies and slanders am I obliged to endure?”
Mára had been fiddling with a comb, flipping it back and forth in her fingers. She held it in curled fingers now and pointed it at me. “Impugn my granddaughter’s honor at your peril, monster. I will not hesitate to burn a foul creature of your like down where you stand.”
It didn’t take any imagination at all to realize the comb was her magic focus. It appeared to be fashioned from either black tortoise shell or onyx jade, both being ancient materials I had only encountered before in books. That comb was as priceless as Raphale’s fan.
There were witnesses though, so I wasn’t feeling particularly intimidated. She had to know that, even with the claims about me that her granddaughter was making, it would get back to my relatives if she attacked me while I was defenseless. My aunt might be apparently neutral, but my uncle had at least shown a lukewarm level of support to me. And Mára had been present to hear Prince Manlon clearly call himself my uncle.
I stared at the comb for a bit, then raised my eyes to hers and stated, “The lies are matters of record, My Lady. I clearly heard you state that I assaulted your granddaughter, despite the fact that it was in fact her who attacked me, and also claim that I attacked that noble jury, when in fact your granddaughter and the other knights on the jury were the ones who attacked Lady Serera and I.”
I tipped my head and concluded, “If I had to guess who fed you both of these falsehoods, it’s easy to do so. Lady Feraen cast a [Far Voice] spell at the border. She probably used it to contact Lady Domerà in Royses in order to set up the obstruction we encountered. No doubt she also used that spell to send you these falsehoods, and the falsehoods concerning myself in Atianus. She is a documented liar, lacking the proper honor required of a knight.”
“You dare!” Feraen flared, drawing her sword.
While my wings grew in a reflex response to danger, I poured the Earth and Wind mana in my core immediately into circulation, preparing to cast [Body Fortification] and my level-one [Wind Wall].
There was [Fire] mana flaring up from both fairies. With no resources at all, and still boggling at the idea that either of these two would actually attack me in this place, in front of so many witnesses, I drove myself backwards into the air.
This was really bad. I’d mouthed off just a little too much at her. She’d already shown herself a good match for me when I was carrying a sword, but right now I was unarmed. As I flew backwards, she was flying at me, her sword bursting into flames as she charged.
I cloaked and dodged to the side, noticing my towel falling away as I flew. Spotting the reappearing towel as it left my Cloak, Feraen swept her blade in a powerful slash that sent a tongue of flame through the air in my general direction. It struck one of the roof supporting columns, sending out a spray of sparks.
From around the room, a chorus of loud voices was raising in protest. Then a massive water ball struck Feraen, causing her to tumble out of the air. She fell into a little pool similar to the one I had been using.
As she floundered her way to the edge of the pool, Mára rose into the air, her sword in hand, demanding, “Who dares!”
Rising up out of a larger pool on the other side of the room, a woman sat cross-legged on a cloud of white mist. It was a strange thing to see. In order to fly, rather than using wings and Wind mana, this woman appeared to be using a dense fog of water particles bound with Water mana, to create a flying seat of water vapor.
It was quite a lot of water mana, too. It was as dense as the Fire in a [Fireball].
Don’t ask me the theory behind it. Water is heavier than air; it shouldn’t fly. It was weird in the same way that Durandal’s midair [Earth] shield was weird. It was as mysterious to me as Möemnen’s tentacle vines and butterflies. I was beginning to understand just how exotic and unlike mortal magic this fairy magic stuff can be.
In her hand, a mass of not Water but Aether mana swirled in a tight ball as she spoke. Her voice was hard, with a mocking tone that carried a dangerous edge.
“Ladies Mára and Feraen, is it? You two little children are quite courageous, coming into my bathhouse to attack my guests. I wonder how harshly I should respond?”
