.
Brigitte and I both immediately bristled at Diurhimath’s sudden declaration. The last thing either one of us wanted to do after working so hard to get here was to turn around and leave.
I was trying to come up with a reasoned response, so Brigitte retorted first. “We aren’t leaving until when we’ve got what we came for!”
He scowled at her, then lectured, “You can’t get them out past the demons, child! They are safer staying where they are now!”
Instantly, I felt a chill. “How do you know what we came for? Exactly how closely have you been following me?”
With his frown continuing, he told me, “I haven’t been following you at all, My Lady, I’ve been following that princess. And right now, I’m protecting her until I can make a safe path out of here for her.”
Now, I was just confused. “You’ve been protecting Amelia? Why? You should be completely unrelated to her, though?”
Putting his hand to his forehead, he answered, “Look, the list of things we need to talk about is very long, and I can’t give you all the whys and hows in detail, because I believe time to be short. The demon general running this operation is expecting the imminent arrival of a force commanded by his superior, a demon lord.”
If a demon general was an archfiend, then this demon lord might be an archdemon.
“How do you know?” I demanded.
“I just said, we don’t have time…”
“How, do, you, know?” I repeated, sternly.
His mouth quirked, then he nodded. “My most powerful seal provides the spirit craft [Far Presence]. I’m using it to spy on them.”
I didn’t understand much of that. I understood ‘seals’, and I could guess that a ‘spirit craft’ was a type of spirit magic. All I knew about [Far Presence] was what I could deduce from the name. My face probably showed my lack of understanding, because Diur volunteered an explanation for the skill he had named.
“The craft allows me to convert lesser spirits that haven’t formed their own awareness into mind clones bearing my will. I currently have many copies of the simplest form, called outriders, all over this cavern and in a number of places on the surface. One of them spotted you a couple days ago and I’ve had it following you since then. That’s how I knew you were out here.”
“And you know we’re here for Amelia because…”
Diur smiled. “Because it’s obvious, My Lady. I worked out a pretty good understanding of your relationship with the royal family while I was in Copen, so when you showed up out of nowhere and sent a spirit down into the vicinity of the princess, I realized you had come here looking for her.”
My skin crawled. “You’ve been peeping on me ever since then?”
He gave a sigh, and his words responded exactly to what I was thinking. “The outriders I’m using aren’t capable of transmitting visual records. That requires a higher level Presence, such as a proxy. Yes, my outrider reported that you were taking baths, but all I received was a report, not an image.”
But just a minute ago, he’d called it a ‘clone bearing his will’… I wasn’t sure what that meant, but my frown and my distrust wouldn’t go away.
While I was still seething, Brigitte took over for me. “There’s no way we can trust you if you can’t explain why you would be here, protecting Her Highness. It makes no sense.”
He started at her, then let out a breath with his lips closed tight. “Fine. It’s quite simple. My motivation is to protect Lady Tiana, but I lost track of her in Copen. However, the same people that built the Fate Magic hex around My Lady in Copen arranged for the princess’s kidnapping, and it appeared to be part of the same plot. I figured if this was all one plot, then protecting her might lead me either to Tiana or to the people troubling her. I cast the blood magic [Bloodhound] through an outrider and sent it to track her. It could smell her blood from miles away, so it couldn’t lose her.”
Brigitte’s ears went sideways. “What’s a ‘Fate Magic hex’?”
I was a little surprised she didn’t ask, What’s blood magic? instead, but maybe she’d heard of it already?
He looked toward her with pursed lips, then stated, “An arcane magic that you would be unlikely to encounter or even hear of, in this era. The one cast on Lady Tiana was quite formidable and destructive. But…”
He turned his eyes to me. “Your eyes told me that you knew what I was talking about when I mentioned it. You already knew there was a hex placed on you, didn’t you?”
I nodded, with a frown. “Some immortals noticed it and warned me. But they couldn’t tell where it was coming from.”
After putting a hand to his chin and thinking, he suggested, “They have no Mortal Realm vessels, and brought you into an illusory space for the conversation?”
I gave him a second nod.
“Thus, they were unable to come here and deal with it,” he concluded with a nod of understanding. “Naturally, they’re forbidden direct action. They could only warn you.”
“Yes,” I confirmed. “You said you broke it already?”
“It was three days after you fled Copen before I had sufficient resources to accomplish the task,” he replied. “I’m sorry I was unable to break it faster. It would quickly kill you if I didn’t. By the time I was done, I had no chance of finding you, and she had fallen into demonic hands, so I chose to come out here and protect her.”
“The Berado had her at that time,” I frowned.
“The Berado are controlled by the demons,” he answered. “And Amelia was taken on their instructions.”
I mulled over the information. The Fate Magic wizardry that had plagued me was gone, just like that? It was good news, if true, but give me back my last three weeks of worry! Give me back my resolution to break the curse!
I had been thinking there wasn’t much effect lately, but I assumed it was because I was far from home. Three days after I left Copen had been the day of my duel with Mára. I had not had a lot of ire coming my way since then. The people in Oberon’s palace had treated me quite nicely, and the battle with Lâsin had been about his wife’s imprisonment, not about me.
Why hadn’t those two immortals told me it was broken when they spoke to me in Tëan Tír? They must have known the spell was broken by then, right?
Thinking back to that most recent conversation with them, the subject simply never came up. Our talk had been all about my worries over what games Oranos had played with my reincarnation and my spiritual body.
If it actually was broken. Did I believe him?
“You say you broke the Fate Magic.” I said. “How? You had to locate the magic user maintaining it.”
He pursed his lips again, then asked, “This era only understands Mana Craft. Even with Holy magic, it only knows the type that draws Holy mana from higher realms into the Mortal Realm and calls it ‘Healing mana’. How do I explain it to you? Do you even understand how magics other than Mana Craft work?”
“Other magics?” Brigitte asked, sounding confused.
“I know that a lot of racial skills use mana that can’t be seen by fairies,” I stated. “And I know that there is something called Wizardry that uses mana I can’t see, and the spell on me was that sort of magic.”
Diur considered my answer, then stated, “It’s true that Wizardry executes its effects primarily through mana from higher realms, but the real process of Wizardry is to combine Mana Craft with Spirit Craft and Phenomena Guidance in order to synthesize otherwise impossible feats.”
I vaguely felt I had known this before. I assumed it was Senhion who had known it. To me, it was just random terms whose meanings I could sort of guess.
“The magic was cast upon you through a suitable surrogate who knew you, at least in passing, and who was capable of Holy magic. It was quite difficult to identify her, because the only Holy magic users in this era are simple healers with little understanding of the magic they are casting. The Holy magic user used as the vessel for Fate Magic needed to be far more adept, as she was the one actually casting the magic on her controller’s behalf.”
I felt my brow curling up. Who was this Holy magic user who knew me? Not Melione, if it was cast on me in Copen.
He hurried onward, probably noticing my expression.
“An ordinary healer wouldn’t do, for Fate Magic, so the caster drew their surrogate from another world where such skills exist. They summoned the soul of a Holy Adept and put it into a body under their control after driving out the former owner. They then used demonic magic to make her use her powers either against her will or subconsciously. In her previous world, she had been capable Holy magics such as [Rain Prayer], [Holy Blessing] and [Holy Scourge]. Those are spells that use Holy magic as the starting medium in order to perform Wizardry. In particular, [Holy Blessing] and [Holy Scourge] are a Holy Wizard’s means to perform Fate Magic.”
“They summoned someone from another world, just to put a hex on me?” I asked, incredulous. My grandmother had suggested it would be someone from another world, but she had assumed it was the spellcaster.
“They didn’t summon her specifically to target you,” he answered, shaking his head. “You were just the latest of many targets. They had been using her for several years already. To free her, I had to break the control, but I also had to free her physically from their clutches, so they couldn’t use her again. If I left her, they could have just recast the hex on you.”
In the silence while I absorbed this, Brigitte asked, “You’re saying someone else was brought here from another world?”
Diur grew puzzled. “Someone else?”
I explained, “The king had a hero summoned. Brigitte is one of his party members.”
He frowned. “I suspected that matters with the demons might be getting that bad again. Has this hero reached battle strength yet?”
“Against an archfiend or an archdemon?” I asked. “No. He’s only been on Huade for about eight months. And you already petrified him once.”
“Unfortunate,” Diur judged, “But it’s just as well. We need you two to go to the surface and call for an army. A hero isn’t going to be enough.”
“You’re an Elder who’s at least ten thousand years old!” I objected. “And I’m strong! You and I together could take on a few demons!”
“I am not even remotely at full strength,” he countered. “It was all I could do to get your princess and her knight away from the demons in the first place. And it’s all I can do to keep a demon general out of this end of the cavern. I can’t protect them while moving them, and adding the power of a child such as you isn’t going to make enough of a difference to guarantee their safety. Not to mention I can’t risk the safety of the only X’n’e child on the planet!”
“Well there’s no way in hell we’re going back after just taking your word that the princess is safe,” Brigitte injected into the argument. “We gotta see her first.”
He glared at her, then at me when I set my jaw, showing my agreement with her. Then his shoulders dropped and he let out a sigh.
