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It was true that Shindzha’s safety trumped my dislike of acting as a puppet for the gods, and perhaps my elder incarnations, but I was still quite annoyed.
I had a right to be! Shindzha was here rather than safe and sound in her cell in Narses due to the meddling of the older incarnations, and now, the reason I and Kiki had to chase into the wilderness after her rather than protect the main expedition was that Shindzha was not safe and sound in that cell.
What had been the point of sending her here, anyway?
(“She helped Lhan considerably up until the Lady of the Red Tower and her gang showed up,”) Rhea pointed out.
<Enough to risk her life?> I demanded, completely dissatisfied with that excuse.
I hardly even know her, but she’s one of my Servants, and I feel responsible for her safety. Is that a built-in racial trait for Elders and vampires? Probably, but that doesn’t make my concern for her any less valid.
(“Their reasons for getting her out of her cell and putting her to work in your service rose from their concern for her, My Lady,”) Rhea noted.
<Why should they care about her?> I rebutted. <She’s blood-bonded to me. That should have nothing to do with them!>
(“Ah… well, that’s not something I can easily explain to you. Suffice it to say, even though they are strangers to you, you are no stranger to them. Your concerns ring as deeply in their hearts as your own. That’s why they’re working so hard to protect your expedition, after all.”)
The glaring fact that she was leaving something important out couldn’t have been more obvious. I had the example of Lydia, and could see how detached her experiences, her thoughts, and her concerns were from mine. She watched my life with great interest, but I couldn’t imagine my troubles worrying her.
<You and your loved ones do worry me, though?> Lydia answered. <They certainly didn’t during the lifetime of memories you’ve touched, when I knew nothing about them, but they became important to me through you.>
There was still something missing, that bugged me. I couldn’t put my finger on it.
Kiki slowed down at last, quite abruptly, and banked into a spiraling descent. The coiling course downward allowed me to acquaint myself with specific landscape, a distinct change from simply watching mountaintops and the glens between them scrolling past.
Our destination was one such glen, and we were down and amongst the trees almost before I had taken in the valley as a whole.
I established a clear sense of the expedition’s position while I was using the [Blood Presence] projection. Now, I had a clear sense of Kiki’s position, placing us clearly with respect to the others. The standoff, assuming it was still ongoing, was downstream, to the east at the intersection of this valley and another.
That confused me instantly. I knew where the [Blood Presence] spell was because I could sense its position in relation to myself in Narses, but how could I possibly know where Kiki was right now when I wasn’t even sensing my own body?
(“Kiki and you were once one individual,”) Rhea noted. (“That individual had the same sense of position and time as you both, so you share it without any incompatibility. It is included in the senses I am having her share with you.”)
I’ve always found the position sense the most difficult to explain fairy racial trait. I studied my science well in my lessons with Uncle Matthias. The world is a globe that spins on its axis while circling the Blue Moon, which in turn circles the Sun, which in turn spins along with the galaxy like a giant top in space. If they didn’t spin, they would all collapse together from gravity. But doesn’t that mean that the points in space that I have visited in the past have all been left far behind, somewhere way out in space where the Sun used to be?
Rhea’s chuckle, in Mireia’s voice, came to my ears with a fond tone. (“Points in space are subjective, not absolute, and so are points in time. Your sense could never function in the way you are imagining, because you never had a ‘point’ to memorize in the first place. Instead, your mind instinctively maps space and time according to whatever the local coordinate system happens to be. But I will not explain the science behind it any more than that, for fear it would trigger memories from your first life as an Elder.”)
I sighed internally at hearing that dodge yet again. Just like the meddling of the older incarnations, it was a feature of this irritating situation that made me feel I would probably be far better off without it.
(“I can only express my regrets and ask for your forbearance, My Lady,”) Rhea apologized.
Kiki zipped around the forest, flying an efficient search pattern that struck me as out of character for her. Everything she does is so random that it seemed strange to see her doing things so logically.
<Kiki smart smart!> she retorted my thoughts. <Kiki find pretty demon girl, no problem!>
(“The two of you are resonating almost as a single mind right now, My Lady,”) Rhea pointed out. (“You should be able to see her firm grasp of matters better if you simply follow along with her thoughts.”)
Indeed, I could feel her control of her path as she flew, and could tell that she was in full command of her flight. Otherwise, this ride over which I had no authority would have terrified me. We zipped between trees and through foliage, dipping into tunnels and holes and sometimes grazing various creatures and plants without slowing at all, all at speeds such that my thoughts could barely register each place she checked.
It looked wild and out of control but, as she tacked and jibed, zigging and zagging around and over and under and through, I could feel Kiki choosing her path. Her keen mind spun lightning fast as she navigated her course, and I knew I could put full faith in her judgment. This being’s mind was anything but random. She scanned her surrounds and chose her paths far faster than I ever could. I didn’t grasp quite how she did it, but somehow, being witness to her thoughts made it possible for me to depend on her, despite the mad torrent of forest and brush tumbling past us.
On the far end of the valley, where the land began rising and narrowing into a vee following a rushing brook, we reached a strange jumble of ruins. In many places, it was really only identifiable as this rather than natural debris by the square cut nature of the stones. But in places, there were wide slabs bridging other slabs set up on their ends, forming simple structures, or tumbled stone that ran in lines for far enough to show that they had once been a structure.
The age was impossible to guess, but the weathering was extreme and the ruins had the style the Ancient Fairy Age, that inexplicable time when, it seems, fairies inhabited buildings rather than living in woods or ponds or mountain caves. Or at least, so the local traditions always go, claiming that fairies built the structures, or lived there, or held court there. The elves and dwarves, who retain records of that time when they themselves preferred to live underground, or confined themselves to islands isolated from other mortals, also believe that fairies built them.
<Big mistake, Big Sis!> Kiki objected as she whizzed through a tunnel made up of giant slabs. <Human place!>
<What?>
<Village human!> she insisted. <No fairy!>
<How would that even be possible?> I wondered. <Humans living here in the midst of all these mana springs?>
But Kiki’s memories came to me, of this place in its heyday, with humans in homespun and leather clothing. Their thatched roof houses were built of wattle and daub, their implements were knapped flint, roughhewn wood and crude pottery and they wore ornaments made of animal teeth or shells or simple beads. Yet they did not have the aura of poverty. No, these were healthy, productive people going about their lives as people do, simply lacking the products of modern industry. They kept their village well and its walls stood proud, perched far enough above the stream to avoid the floods while being close enough to access the water. They tended their livestock and their fields with care. These people lived a good life.
Here in the present, not the slightest trace remained of the wooden structures I could see in Kiki’s memory, but the stone tumbles that poked out of soil here and there were certainly what remained of the drystone walls. Those people had truly lived in this place. Perhaps the mana spring that now thickly filled this valley had not arisen yet, and it had still been safe for human habitation.
<You’ve been here before?> I wondered.
<Yup yup! Kiki everywhere!>
Having searched the ruin thoroughly, we turned back toward the valley that spread downward from this point.
Kiki had been especially seeking out these stony places, so I wondered, <Is Shindzha in a place with stone ruins?>
<Mmmm… dark place. Stone ground.>
So she’d couldn’t tell precisely what sort of place it was, but she’d been looking for the hollows under those massive slabs of stone as one possibility. There had been one spot like that in the village, although none of the houses in Kiki’s memory had that form. I wondered if it had been a granary, or a safe refuge.
There was no telling, but her answer explained why she was also checking trees fallen over stony ground and dark underbrush in ruin areas.
(“My pets can’t give me the sort of mana sense that you are used to, so I had no image of her mana signature to give Kiki. Just whatever sense of sight, sound or smell they use.”)
<What exactly are these pets you keep mentioning?>
(“Snakes, mostly. I also have a good affinity with shrews, bats, moles and voles. Things that huddle close to the earth or beneath it. Although, I don’t do well with rats or lizards for some reason.”)
Kiki now sped away from that enigmatic place, her thoughts now on a cluster of those strange structures made solely of giant slabs of stone. But I identified it as a place we’d already visited. She was doubling back now.
<Does she have to be down here in the valley bottom?> I wondered.
(“We are near the altitude limit for most of my pets,”) the goddess replied, (“None of them tend to like higher altitudes. But a few species could reach the lower parts of the slopes around here.”)
<Like caves? Are there caves?>
<Oh!> Kiki piped up. <Yup yup!>
Suddenly she reversed course and we went dashing up the slopes above the ancient village site, instead. Ahead, barely visible in the hillside, I could see a spot where the ground had crumbled… no it was ancient stonework which had collapsed, half-hidden behind some fir shrubs.
Kiki went zipping into the hole with no hesitation, where I would have carefully investigated first. Well, that’s how she had negotiated every hollow we encountered. But this time, in her [Fairy Sense] ([Pixie Sense?]) I felt a strangely dark aura.
Kiki does not have [Vampire Sight], but she sees well in the dark, and [Fairy Sight]– or we’ll call it [Pixie Sight]– gives her enough, between material and mana vision, that I could see a figure crouching in the shadows. Instantly, streamers of Aether flared between the figure’s hands, lighting Shindzha’s alarmed face.
Around us, there were indeed drystone walls, although in other places, it was clearly natural cavern wall. This cave had been improved at some point.
The hellspawn girl let out a mild Regaritan curse word, and dropped her mana. “A pixie.”
Kiki squeaked out, “Oh no! Pretty demon girl gonna eat Kiki!”
She was teasing her, of course, as pixies do. She had no fear at all of Shindzha.
“I’m not going to eat you!” the hellspawn girl retorted in a barely audible hiss. “Just pipe down! And… and go away! There’s something outside hunting me and you’ll give away my position!”
(“Interesting,”) the goddess mused as Kiki randomly flew around, exploring the little cave instead of heeding Shindzha’s request. (“She doesn’t seem to feel the bond with you in Kiki. Well, you aren’t physically present, I suppose. It must be your condensed blood in the spell when she sensed that the [Blood Effigy] spell was you. She can’t have been sensing aura or mana signature, because you and Kiki are essentially identical.”)
Well, that made sense to me. Mireia had never mistaken Kiki’s presence for me, that I knew of.
<You thought she might know it was me?> I wondered. I was also wondering what enemy could be hunting Shindzha, when we had encountered practically nothing.
(“I was hoping,”) Rhea admitted. (“Although I wasn’t depending upon it. We’ll have to gain her trust some other way, I suppose.”)
