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Before Lady Alwain left Narses, Lady Tiana made sure that she knew exactly what the rebels had been doing in the Kasarene Highlands, trapping her monsters and magic beasts so that demon beast trainers could enslave and use them as weapons in the war against the Loyalists. After she returned to her territory, she sent out her scouts to investigate the wider parts of her domain and confirmed what Shindzha had discovered for us, that most of the denizens of her border regions had gone missing.
Now, the boiling mad apsara wasn’t merely cooperating with us. She and her Domain of the Red Tower were officially joining the war on our side.
Without the agreement, I don’t really know when the standoff would have ended. My guess is that Domerà would not have let it continue too far into the night, but I can’t say that as a fact. We would never find out now, because, with Alwain’s help, we would be the first to strike.
So, well before moonrise, in the deep of the night in a forest filled with mana-active plant light and the soft chatter of insects and night creatures, I slipped through the woods using my silent movement technique, [Water Glide]. The skill allowed me to slide along through the foliage and over the ground cover as if carried by a stream. It was the upgrade of [Water Step], which I had now mastered enough to move to the more advanced technique.
I could be even stealthier if I went immaterial, but a pair of fairy warriors were with me, similarly silencing their movement with [Feather Step]. They were both spear-users, and I was constantly in fear that their weapons would get snared in the dense undergrowth, but I was not giving their martial skills enough credit. Their spear tips expertly slipped through the brush almost like snakes navigating in their element.
I knew not only their positions but those of many other members of the expedition as I ran. This was the first time I was using [Vampire Sense] while moving, and it seemed I couldn’t send it out as far while I was moving, but I had a pretty fair range, anyway.
When I think about it, it seems almost crazy that I can use Tiana’s senses in my own body, when everything else works like the body I had while alive, but that’s how Fan Li had set up the [Blood Effigy]. I won’t pretend to understand it. I think only Fan Li does.
Durandal would not yet be present inside the replica of him on my hip, but I would only use him for defense when I did summon him. Fan Li feared that his holy attacks might overwhelm the [Qi Blade] technique creating it.
But she brought me back to the Spirit Core for an intense refresher course on swordplay before letting me take the original [Blood Effigy] back from Sirth. She was able to compress time dozens of times over to give me days of practice, so I was very prepared to use the sword the old-fashioned way. I suspected I would never need to call on the sword spirit, but he would stay prepared and waiting to come instantly upon my call.
<I see you and your team,> Lady Elhàn, the fairy knight leading the fairy warriors from Tëan Tír, informed me with her silent communication technique. <My girls are paralleling you to your right.>
<I see them,> I replied in [Spiritual Voice]. <The vanguard from Alwain’s side is closing from my left for the pincer.>
Our side’s job was to cut off a group that included one of the fairies that Alwain believed to be carrying a progenitor together with other potentially ‘blind’ fairies. Meanwhile, the main force would attack the center of Domerà’s camp.
Alwain herself was observing from a nearby mountain top, while concealing her firebird mount from fairy eyes. When the time was right, she would dive in to join Serera in driving the main force away from the fairies we cut off, while an SAS team rode in with the mages and Princess Amana, so they could perform the ‘delousing’.
I felt a little sorry for Domerà’s main force, to be honest. I had by now seen the size of the nightmarish force of monsters and magic beings that Alwain had prepared in order to drive the invaders from Fiorene out. They would also be largely pressing the main force, remaining engaged with them and driving them like a herd straight out of the territory.
And perhaps I should add, she would be considerably more forceful this time then during her first battle with the rebel-contracted fairies. Then, she had chiefly been blocking them from coming any further into her land. Now, she was extremely angry.
<You’ve reached your spot,> Elhàn sent. <Wait for the signal.>
I and the two warriors came to rest together and crouched in the undergrowth. I noticed them using stealth techniques, so I started up [Vampire Cloak].
In a few more seconds, I sensed Alwain’s girls stop as well, and far to my right, I could feel the closer members of the main force getting into position. And…
<There is a rebel scout coming this way, fifteen paces to my left> I sent to Elhàn.
<Your friend is already tracking her,> she answered with amusement. A moment later, I noticed the trace whisper of Darkness that was a certain fox-girl, slipping from shadow to shadow, right behind her. She wasn’t attacking, and I guessed she was only going to do so and risk alerting others if the Rebel lesser fairy threatened to expose us.
But…
<Even a lesser fairy is a lot to leave to one mortal!> I worried.
<She’s quite a brave one, isn’t she?> Elhàn giggled.
Brigitte really would take her on, I realized. While working with her earlier, I received a full dose of Sen’s memories of her inherited from Lady Tiana. The fox girl thief– she insisted that I call her a ‘scout’– was fearless, and Melione had needed to heal her many times in the six months they traveled together.
<Don’t worry,> Elhàn advised. <I’m here both to coordinate and to back up whoever needs it most. It’s no different if it turns out to be Brigitte.>
A hundred paces to our rear, horses and riding beasts carrying the mage group waited to advance. They wouldn’t move until we corralled some fairies for them to treat. It meant the main force only had their fairies, plus Ceria, Arken and the two SAS combat mages under General Kosto for magic support. Ordinarily, that would be quite heavy support, but they were up against fairies, which was a whole different kind of war.
But who knows what all Alwain was throwing at the fairies. She had called in additional forces, too, who would arrive after the fighting got under way. Regardless of whether we succeeded in the plan to purify some of the Rebel fairies, it was a certainty that Domerà’s force would be unable to remain in the Kasarene Highlands after tonight.
Coming from somewhere in the far distance, perhaps from Alwain’s location, a grief-stricken keening wail rose up, that sent chills down the back and raised hairs on the scalp. It was somehow both like a faraway trumpet or bagpipe, yet also like the voice of a woman, and echoes of it began coming to us off the surrounding hills after a moment.
“What in Heaven,” the super-hearing I had received with Tiana’s senses caught one of the fairy warriors hissing.
“Banshee,” the other answered in a similar voice. They both sounded as spooked as me.
“Why would mortals ever think that horrific sound came from one of us?” the first fairy complained.
Sen’s memories come to me of a people on Robert’s world who used that word for a fairy dedicated to reporting deaths in the family she watched over using such a voice, and of a similar concept that Tiana had learned about on Huade.
In this world, a banshee is one of the varieties of quasi-fairies, girls of human birth, twisted in the womb to have the seeds of magic physiques when their mothers are exposed to too much free mana. It’s one of the many possible first steps to becoming a lesser fairy or a pixie, undergone while the girl still feels an attachment to her family. She grows up to be a sort of a fairy, but not quite. Such quasi-fairies aren’t accepted in Faerie as lesser fairy members until they let go of their human attachments.
We had been told that the signal would be unmistakable. Elhàn came to the same conclusion as I did about this hair-raising wail.
<That’s the signal, girls,> she sent. <Let’s go.>
The two fairy warriors rushed forward, as did the girls from Alwain’s side. I went immaterial and rushed forward faster. We slipped between our targets and their main group, fearlessly leaving the enemy behind us to our main group. If everything went to plan, Serera would shortly be coming down to protect our backs.
I manifested my image directly before the first fairy I found with the [Qi Sword] drawn and declared, “Hiléa ro, margilo!”
I probably could have killed or badly wounded the lesser fairy warrior in my path, but that wasn’t the plan. I squared up with my sword en garde instead, giving her a chance to bring her spear to bear before attacking.
The others followed the same tactic, except for Brigitte, who literally tackled her quarry to the ground. Meanwhile, the battle was joined off to our right, where the main forces were meeting.
My opponent fought desperately, and she soon had a mate helping her. I battled two lesser fairies while my companions respectively fought a fairy knight and a lesser fairy. This probably doesn’t sound like an ideal arrangement, since I would be a better match for the fairy knight, but it was my job to begin the pressure that would drive them away from their comrades.
I kept disappearing and reappearing, driving one back and then another, pushing them toward where my battle mates were dealing with the fairy knight.
I expected Alwain to come in to save her warrior who had wound up facing the knight, but the warrior managed pretty well on her own. And Brigitte, whom I also worried for, was also holding her own. She had already drawn blood and driven her opponent into the sky.
Where Dilorè was waiting for any of our targets who tried to escape that direction. She found herself driven back to the ground.
Spears parried and stabbed at me, failing to find me as I used [Water Glide] and the immaterial form to confound their attempts to deal with me. I soon had three opponents, but I still drove them backwards to where the others were fighting, while Alwain’s fairies were driving their own opponents toward us.
That’s when I realized that we had managed to trap not one but two fairy knights. We had one and Alwain’s girls had another. I called a warning to Dilorè about it, telling her to come and help my companions. Brigitte had already badly injured her opponent and was in the process of binding her with some Dark magic I didn’t recognize, freeing Dilorè up to help over here, so I went immaterial and dashed across to join Alwain’s fairies in taking on the knight.
I found myself facing my old friend Lilte. I took over as her primary opponent, so that Somono and her companions could deal with the warriors beside her.
I had at her with extra vigor, my [Qi Sword] even faster and more skillful than when I first faced her, thanks to Fan Li’s merciless drilling. And then it happened. Lilte’s sword spun into the darkness. She defensively raised the hand holding her focus, an ornate comb…
It was time to play my hidden card, the strongest of my magics. Elemental users of my world don’t have ‘spells’. Our magic abilities all correspond to what Huadeans call ‘skills’, magical powers etched directly into our bodies rather than Huadean spells that are controlled by words and actions and forms in their mind.
And my most powerful magic isn’t one that moves me, or protects me, or heals myself or others (which I haven’t been able to make work, yet. We’re still working on that.) It’s…
[Water Bind], I mouthed soundlessly as I invoked it. There’s no need for me to actually say the magic, but it helps me focus.
A rope of Water poured out from the palm of my free hand and spun around her, tightening and trapping her arms to her sides. She used Water of her own to try to dispel it, then Fire, then…
I had my sword tip at her throat. She stopped moving and simply glared up at me. My companions had also subdued theirs by this time.
Alwain and her firebird flew across the sky above us, headed for the main forces, to join a surge of magic creatures and monsters, beings that normally never worked together. The combined armies, with the Hero’s Party and the mortals and fairies from our expedition at the center, were driving their enemies before them, pushing downstream on their way back to Fiore. Meanwhile, hoofbeats told us of the mortal group coming to employ their magic on our captives.
My [Blood Effigy] heart was hammering in my chest as loudly as my real one would have, but as I gradually recovered my breath, I slowly let myself believe that we had won.
