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I blew air out through puffed up cheeks, hoping it didn’t ‘show insecurity’ like all the other things Sen wants me to not do. She wanted ‘Miss Hiléa’ to be a confident adventurer.
<It’s questionable behavior, but I’ll let it pass,> my adviser commented with amusement.
It was just my relief at having finished the spell with the ogress in one piece. It turned out that I had really messed her up. But her partner (mate?) gathered the now-conscious woman into his arms, perhaps to get her away from me but with enough tenderness that I figured there was another reason. She opened her eyes, now breathing easily, and looked between me and her man with a hint of confusion.
“I’ll back away, now,” I told the two and the fairy warrior still watching me with steely-eyed vigilance, and stood up.
They gave me no response, and I wasn’t sure what they would do if I turned my back. I figured this was a good spot to use my best trick. I dissolved the image and moved back toward Brigitte in the immaterial [Blood Effigy] form.
Once I was about three paces away from my destination, I rematerialized my ‘body’ in view of the opponents so they would know I wasn’t sneaking around behind them in stealth, then finished walking back.
Brigitte’s eyes were large, as were the SAS boys, but they said nothing. The fairies had done a lot over the last six days to promote the rule, ‘Don’t pry into Miss Hiléa’s affairs.’
I looked up at Lady Tiana’s projection and waved, to make sure she saw I was back. She had an odd look in her eyes as well, even though she had at least a simplified idea of what the [Blood Effigy] was. Maybe she hadn’t figured out yet all the tricks we could do with it.
She turned back toward the Lady of the Red Tower. “My comrade has healed your follower, as you can see. Will you accept that we mean you no harm?”
“She’s the one that injured her in the first place!”
“Allow me to apologize for her sake, My Lady,” Tiana answered with her best diplomatic smile. “She mistook the defensive power of your comrades. She showed her sincerity when she took the initiative and asked to save her. May I offer as a goodwill gesture to have her and her three comrades withdraw back to their main group, to lower the tensions a bit?”
“Please withdraw all the way to Fiore!”
Tiana gave her a tight, patient smile. “Naturally, considering that is rebel territory and therefore highly hostile to us, Fiore isn’t an option for us. You very well know my people did not come from there, considering you watched them cross all the way through your territory from the Kasarene Pass and waited to ambush them until they emerged here, on the opposite edge.”
Sen mused, <Just as I thought. Rhea is feeding her what to say. There’s no way Tiana knows any of that.>
<She could just be working out from reading Ceria’s reports of our progress, you know?> I rebutted. <Lady Tiana would know about the pooka who was spying on us. This ‘Lady of the Red Tower’ is sure to be the same ‘Lady’ he mentioned, right? So this domain of hers is probably the land we’ve been traversing over the last six days.>
I felt Sen’s stunned reaction to my claim, as she realized my guess was very likely right.
<Tiana’s a smart girl.You’re underestimating her,> I sulked, feeling she was probably underestimating me as well. I mean, I get that she’s way older than us, but we’re still the same soul in the end…
<You’re right,> Sen admitted, sounding a bit contrite. <Although, allow me to point out that the owner of the prior land might have left us alone. We might be entering Alwain’s domain as the next territory rather exiting it.>
<Nope. If that was the case, she would just tell us to return in the direction from which we came,> I noted.
<Ah.>
And a few beats later, she added, with amusement, <You’re getting good at this, Lhan.>
Getting tired of the long silence, Lady Domerà finally spoke again. “Lady Alwain, if you will simply stand down and allow us to arrest these miscreants, I promise you, you will never see them again!”
“Ah, then what happens after that?” Tiana asked. “Will you return and continue kidnapping her subjects? It’s her monsters and beasts you’ve been raiding.”
“The King has a right to the resources of his lands!”
“That argument is between you and her,” Tiana stated, pointing first at Domerà and then Alwain. “My people are uninvolved.”
She turned to Alwain and added, “If you’ll accept a truce with me, my people will assist you in driving these poachers from your mountains.”
“And then what will your people do?” the Lady of the Red Tower demanded.
“Continue to their destination. It’s that way,” she pointed vaguely in the direction we were planning to head, which was farther west but farther into the mountains, away from Fiore. “If I don’t miss my guess, that should be outside your territory.”
“And who will I anger if I allow you to pass?” she demanded. “The Lords of The Mountain Freeholds? The Witches of The Grand Hollow? Or will you reach as far as the Lady of the Green Tower?”
<Ooh, I wish we were,> Sen mused. <We’ve got a decent relationship with Áne. But that’s farther west than we need to go.>
I grew impatient for instructions on what I should do, and called out, “Excuse me!”
Again, all eyes swiveled toward me. I grimaced slightly, but I went ahead and asked my question.
“Lady Tiana offered for us to pull back,” I reminded them. “Shall we do it?”
Tiana’s eyebrows wrinkled, then she nodded. “Go ahead.”
I gestured for the soldiers to go. The healthy one helped the one I had treated up and headed for their unit. But I stopped Brigitte from following and told the personages in the air, “Actually, the bodies of two soldiers are lying a couple hundred paces that way. May I and my comrade go retrieve them while you talk?”
Tiana’s face went blank, then she frowned. “Ours, you mean?”
“Two SAS troopers, My Lady,” I told her.
Her mouth twisted and she shot a glance at Serera, who nodded gravely, confirming my news. Looking at the other two, she asked, “Any objections?”
Lady Domerà rolled her eyes and looked away, while Lady Alwain hand-waved a disinterested signal for me to proceed.
As they returned to trading insults and demands up above, I gestured for Brigitte to follow and we crossed the battlefield to where I had found the bodies before. We quietly grabbed the hands and feet of the first fatality and began walking back to the main body of the SAS troop.
As a seasoned adventurer, Brigitte saw more than her share of dead bodies, I’m sure. The original me wouldn’t have been ready for it, but I had the memories of old veterans in the back of my mind, propping me up. We quietly gathered the first of them up, with Brigitte taking the arms while I grabbed the legs.
She was silent for the entire trip, but as we returned to collect the second fallen, I found out she had something on her mind.
“You aren’t what you tell people, right?” she asked. “You’re something different.”
She didn’t say it in a particularly suspicious way. It was more like making small talk.
Caught by surprise, I think I jolted a little. I cleared my throat and asked, “What do you mean?”
“I mean you aren’t half halfling. You might be half fairy, but I wonder about that part, too. You’re too different from a normal fairborn. You’re not like anything I’ve seen before.”
I scratched my nose while thinking furiously to find a way out.
I told her, “I promise you, I’m here to help.”
“I kinda figured that. That’s why I didn’t mention to anybody how you don’t smell like anything alive at all. You might as well be a rock.”
This time my surprise came out as a cough. I never once thought about that…
<This one now regrets having delayed dealing with that issue,> the creator of the [Blood Effigy] spell mourned.
“I haven’t said anything because Ceria’s giving you a pass,” Brigitte noted. “Or rather, she very obviously trusts you like a close friend, even though she should have also smelled the problem by now. I’m curious why that is. She’s with you all the time, but I only gave you a closer look because you don’t like like you really have halfling blood.”
“What do you mean, I don’t look like it?”
“Maybe you do to humans. You’re short like a demi-halfling, and that’s probably good enough for them. But I’m actually am a demi-halfling, you know? My mom’s a halfling, and I don’t see any of her kind in you.”
“Oh.”
I had forgotten about that. Brigitte’s father is the reason she’s fox kindred.
Beast kindred take on the species of their father, provided their mother is mortal. They sometimes inherit some influence from their mother’s species, which is why Brigitte is on the short side for a foxkin, but they are always definitively beastkin.
“Are you gonna explain it, or leave me wondering?”
“It’s… a little complicated, Miss Brigitte.”
“Hm.” She flashed a dark look at me.
I wondered, “Will it help if Melione vouches for me?”
“Does she know about you?”
I twisted my mouth, then admitted, “She does.”
“Why is it something she can know and I can’t?”
Oops, I thought to myself. I did avoid saying it, but that was a good point.
<Say that it’s something Melione can understand because she is a priestess, but will be difficult for Brigitte to understand,> Sen suggested.
I hesitated. I mean, that sounded almost like I was saying she wasn’t smart enough. And Brigitte strikes me as really smart.
<It was a dream revelation,> Sen said.
<I can’t lie to her!> I protested.
<It isn’t a lie,> Sen answered. <Rhea already told her in a dream. Melione was having trouble with the idea that both you and Lady Tiana in Narses were her mistress, yet separate minds, so Rhea came to her in a dream.>
<Really?> I probed, even though I could already see for myself in her thoughts that she wasn’t lying. Melione can’t take daytime oracles like Mireia can, but she can just barely manage dreamtime ones.
Brigitte still had her eye on me, patiently waiting for an explanation.
With a sigh, I said, “Melione received a revelation in a dream. She has to believe the explanation because her goddess told her to believe it.”
Brigitte just stared at me, taken aback. Confused, I wondered why she looked so astounded. Then I remembered that was not exactly a normal thing to say. My life as a supernatural entity had really warped my common sense.
“Her goddess?” Brigitte finally repeated.
“Has she… never told you that she’s a priestess?” I wondered.
“Well, even if she is…” Brigitte began, then closed her mouth. Melione has always been a powerful healer, and she leveled up after becoming a Servant. It shouldn’t be strange for her to be one of the priestesses with actual divine powers.
She grimaced. “She mentioned it. And I already knew she’s a little special. But…”
“She’s a priestess, and sometimes her goddess talks to her in her dreams,” I told her firmly. “And she knows what I am and that I can be trusted. And you can really trust me, Miss Brigitte. The safety of Lady Tiana’s people and the success of this mission are my only reason for even being here.”
Quite literally, I added silently. I have no other reason to even be out here pretending to be a resident of this world.
“Just…” she started, then closed her mouth and chewed for a bit on whatever she had on her mind. Finally, she voiced it. “Just give me an honest answer about one thing. What purpose did Lady Tiana have for sending you here?”
That was the last thing I wanted to answer honestly. I looked at her, and flinched a bit at the dark look in her eyes as she stared at me.
Finally, I asked, “You know about the first expedition? When Ryuu and Chiara went with some Pendorians to do what we’re trying to do?”
“Yeah. They told us.”
“The Lady of the Green Tower derailed it. You know about that?”
“Yeah?” Brigitte’s expression turned less suspicious and more concerned.
“She did it to stop an extremely powerful enemy from ambushing them. Someone that group couldn’t handle on their own.”
That wasn’t good enough, I realized as soon as I said it. She needed more details.
“Maybe Lady Tiana took out his spies in Narses when she caught that hellspawn, so the enemy might not know where this expedition is right now, and maybe this expedition is safer because it has more firepower than before. But, maybe not. She sent me here because she can’t leave things as is, without doing something to improve your odds, but she can’t come here herself.”
Brigitte’s eyes narrowed and her ears twitched.”And you’re that big a deal? You can make that much of a difference?”
<Say yes,> Sen advised.
It was embarrassing to make a claim like that. But Sen didn’t mean me, alone. She meant the power that all of us incarnations could bring to bear. So I could muster the confidence to say it anyway.
“Yes, Miss Brigitte,” I said, raising my chin. “I can make a very large difference.”
