.
The familiar magic circle formed, larger than any I had seen Durandal form before. I couldn’t begin to guess exactly how much mana had just flown into the sword, but the old man was hanging onto it and forming it into his strike without difficulty. The magic fist flew forth, smashing through the shield Lâsin projected and then into the clan lord himself, propelling him backward at supersonic speed. He arced into the mountain behind him.
The King clicked his tongue. “Still alive.”
He dashed forward, right through the sudden gap he had created in the attacking force, following after where the fairy lord had smashed into the mountainside. After a stunned three or four seconds of looking around, the warriors and knights grasped the situation, and the fight re-erupted around us.
Realizing I had been robbed of my weapon, I quickly dug for the writing brush in my belt wallet. Before I had it in my hand, Tenre ordered, “Back to the galley! Go!”
A couple magic bullets smashed into a shield that she hastily threw in front of me. Belatedly, I realized that, without Durandal there, I had lost my shield. I quickly poured Earth into my [Body Fortification] as I obeyed Tenre’s command.
The enemy knights were skilled and competent. Even though the King had just swatted their leader out of the sky, they quickly organized. Half went to rally around their fallen lord while the rest marshaled their panicking troops into an orderly retreat.
As I touched down on Manlon’s ‘galley’, its fish-fin ‘oars’ had switched from just skulling to maintain position to actively stroking, beating like pairs of wings, exactly the way Homer described the oars of war galleys, in pursuit of the retreating troops.
Talene and Pasrue were coordinating their forces while Manlon observed the situation and gave occasional commands and the other two mages defended the vessel. I looked around me, counted five mages and the golem at the steering wheel, and asked what should have been a stupid question.
“Does anyone have a sword they can loan me?”
Without Durandal, I was more limited, but I wasn’t helpless. Still, I shouldn’t be without the weapon I was most skilled at, when in the middle of a battlefield.
Manlon looked over at me and said, “On the bulwark at the foot of the companionway to the passage under the quarterdeck.”
I know some terms, but I don’t speak sailor. I blinked with confusion, not sure how to ask ‘what does that even mean?’
He sighed. “We are standing on the quarterdeck. Ahead where the deck drops to a lower height, there is a short ladder down to the main deck. You will see, next to it, an opening with a staircase down into a hallway running beneath us. Several weapons are secured to the wall there. There are four fairy steel cutlasses and two moonsilver sabers.”
Moonsilver is actually something like bronze. It’s copper alloyed with silver and mithril. Strong, durable, holds a good edge, and has properties as a focus that make it brilliant for magic swordsmanship. My knowledge of saber techniques was nowhere as complete as my knowledge of the long sword, but I had trained with one as a squire.
I didn’t need to bother with the ladder– I have wings, you know? — so I just hopped over the railing and down to the ‘main deck’, where I turned and…
…hit the brakes so I could dematerialize my wings when I realized I was never going to fit through the skinny opening otherwise. It took a long, frustrating moment, but then I was down there, grabbing one of the sabers, and emerging as quickly as I could.
Regrowing my wings, I sprang into the air, chasing after the two battling male fairies. I immediately put as much of the mana as my passageways could hold into circulation, drawing it off the storage in my core. I could get it that way much faster than from the environment around me now, so I would first draw from there, then I would draw from outside to replenish my reserves.
While flying through the chaotic fighting around me, I almost couldn’t hear Serera protesting, “Your Highness!” as she chased after me. I knew she was gaining on me, and I didn’t want her doing something stupid in order to stop me in the name of protecting me, so I folded my wings like a diving hawk and pushed all the Wind I could manage into propulsion.
As a sylph, she could fly faster than my best speed, but now she would need more time to catch me. I would arrive at my destination before she reached me.
At a spot in the air not far from the mountainside where the two men were battling, the fairy knights who had followed them were also battling. Both groups were there to keep their leader from being overwhelmed with numbers on the other side, so they had simply progressed into a series of 1v1 battles. I could identify no distinct battle line. The situation was simply too confused for something so orderly to germinate.
That made it extra dangerous now. I had to add a shield of some kind. I retrieved the Jade Writing Brush from my belt wallet, raised it and called out “[Wind Wall]!”, pouring the mana out through the brush to protect myself from frontal attacks. I couldn’t do Ceria’s advanced magic 360 degree wall, though. The level one version left me vulnerable in the other directions.
The combatants saw me coming and turned to face me. I frankly didn’t know friend from foe, and many of them didn’t know who I was, so I finally held up so as to not get attacked by my own side. Serera dashed in front of me to guard me.
“Your Highness, what do you think you’re doing out here?” she demanded.
“Purification!” I yelled back at her. “The one person here who would make this situation impossible to resolve if he’s possessed is that man fighting my grandfather! If I can get close enough to cast it…”
I know. I was pulling a desperate idea out of thin air with no supporting evidence to say it was valid. If I was wrong, I could be casting a spell that would have no effect whatsoever on a normal, not-demonically-possessed fairy who was extremely belligerent toward me. In retrospect, it was a dumb idea. But I had been frustrated and unable to contribute anything this entire time, and it was the one thing that I could think of to help.
The defenders, having identified me as a friendly from the way their known ally Serera was guarding me, resumed their battle with the attackers.
“Well you can forget getting close enough to cast such a thing!” she told me. “Just look at those two!”
Oberon was putting on a dramatic show with Durandal, demonstrating an excellent knowledge of the bastard sword and of magic swordsmanship in general. Lâsin was battling him with a short sword and a parrying knife, and he was demonstrating equal expertise. Personally, I don’t like two-bladed fighting; your off-hand isn’t free to add to your sword arm for a power up. Of course, since lately I’ve been learning to fight with a focus in my off-hand, that isn’t a fair criticism anymore.
That was enough random analysis, though. Serera’s point was, the space around those two wasn’t safe to enter, and she was absolutely right.
“You damned fool, listen to reason!” Oberon yelled as he swung Durandal around.
“I’ll listen to reason when you speak some!” Lâsin roared, blocking the swings.
Waves of mana blasted from the blades with every swing and collision. One came our direction and destroyed my [Wind Wall], pummeling my body and driving both Serera and me backward. Thanks to [Fortification], I wasn’t hurt at all, and I didn’t lose my grip on either brush or saber, but it was a solid reminder of how much energy these men were throwing around.
Serera formed a heavier shield than my clumsy efforts could manage, encircling both of us, then turned to me with something approaching anger in her eyes. “Your Highness, do you understand now? This is a dangerous place to be. We’re leaving.”
I didn’t want to go. I may have run from these people when I had a duty to carry out, but I normally face my enemies directly. The biggest enemy I had in the vicinity at that moment was right in front of me. I wasn’t leaving this place as long as he was there.
During all of this, the main attacking force had escaped the valley, so it was at this moment that their leader let out a hearty bellow of laughter– it was pretty much the classic bwahahaha — and yelled, “To me! We’re leaving!”
He whirled and plowed a path directly away from Oberon, projecting a heavy shield. But he made a critical mistake in that action.
He chose my position as the direction to flee.
With a surge of adrenaline flooding my bloodstream, I instantly flooded the magic pathways of my arm with Wind mana dumped straight out of my core while chanting “[Wind Bullet!]”
At this point, I had not only grown my blood core even larger on the blood of my three Elven maids, but I had supplemented it with the blood of five additional palace staffers who had learned about the experience from my girls. For the mortal women in the Fairy King’s palace, something about ‘She’s a princess’ was able to overcome their aversion to ‘She’s a vampire’ so that they could try it for themselves.
After handing out so many joyrides in the bedchamber, I wasn’t kidding myself about it anymore. No matter what it was for me, my donors were enjoying sex with me from their point of view. But my desire to learn just how much this blood core could do was enabling me to keep my focus– mostly– on my vampiric goal. Although I won’t deny that my Robert side was enjoying all the naked female attention coming my way.
So the strength of that core had increased quite a bit since the duel with Mára. The growth wasn’t a straight line. It had grown a lot more with the first few feedings than it did now. But every feeding still added a bit more to my capacity. I had an enormous supply of Wind mana at that moment to dump into this spell.
As he charged at me, I could see him recognize he had a chance at me and prepare to swing his blade.
In the same moment, a ball of mana blossomed from my brush handle, the size of a beachball but ten times as dense as the bullet I can cast with my hand. My attack blasted directly into the oncoming fairy lord point-blank, striking him with a force equal to the [Holy Smite] Oberon had delivered earlier. It blasted him backward, drilling a second crater in the mountainside.
The Old Grove knights who had been rallying to Lâsin at his order found themselves suddenly bereft of a leader. The pursuing knights on the defender side quickly surrounded me to prevent the attackers from counterattacking me.
I didn’t stay there, though. I dove after Lâsin, with Oberon and Serera in pursuit. Our escort followed in formation around us.
As I drew closer to the clan lord, I could see that he was still alive, and, unbelievably, still conscious. But I had a remedy for that. Pointing the brush straight at him, I dumped a dose of Healing out, equal in quantity to the Wind I had just hit him with, and chanted, “[Sleep!]”
