. “No! Miss!” The pink-haired fairy warrior dashed forward and grabbed at me. “It’s dangerous!” She had pulled pretty hard, but as a mere lesser fairy, she didn’t have my vampire fairy level of strength and failed to do more than halt me. “I’m already standing inside the field,” I pointed out. My voice was shaking a bit, because… IT …

. A short while after I climbed back into the sky to resume my flight, Kiki reappeared. I had been so busy I didn’t realize she’d been missing. “Where have you been?” I wondered. “Sneak sneak on greenie!” she said as she reclaimed her perch, this time right between my shoulders with her legs hanging down each side of my …

. By reflex, I had already cast my clumsy [Wind Wall], forgetting my agreement with Durandal, but the holy sword spirit didn’t miss a beat. His Earth mana shield formed around the children and the fallen mage, instead. He had read the tactical situation faster than me. I couldn’t shield the others myself, because I couldn’t locate the new attacker, …

. “Left!” Kiki declared. I resumed flying, heading to our left. She said, “More left!” then, “Too much. Go right!” We kept that up for a bit until she was happy with my direction, then she asked. “Bad fairy strong strong, yup? “She was,” I agreed. “But I guess she didn’t chase after us.” “Nope nope! Kiki strong strong too! …

. Up ahead, I was pretty sure that I could see the meadow where Möemnen’s pets abducted me in the first place. I didn’t know how far her territory extended, but if she sent her bugs to that meadow to bring me to her, perhaps her direct control didn’t extend that far. She had to have their help to pull …

. The forest became completely alive with small flying life of every form. Birds, bats and insects were all competing to harass me and blind me as I struggled through the woods. I figured if I just kept running, I would get somewhere that wasn’t her territory eventually. It was a foolish and naive idea, as it turned out. After …

. I really, really didn’t like the direction of this conversation. “Miss Möemnen, I do not wish to feed on a mortal who doesn’t agree willingly. That’s why I normally pay professional courtesans to provide blood for me.” The girl Becca that my grandmother bewitched still haunted me.  I knew, no matter how long she lived, Becca would never feel …

. I already understood that unidentified magics were messing with navigation and senses in this country, but I hadn’t received any detailed information on it. My senses were only telling me that Light and Dark magics were involved, but they couldn’t decode anything. It was the result of a single spell? I doubted that, but still, I was all ears …

. My palm had been on Durandal’s pommel this entire time. That voice intimidated me enough to lift my hand off him, and raise my other hand to match. As soon as I did, the mass of butterflies suddenly imploded. I found myself lifting off my feet, born up into the air on Wind mana in the same way I …

. I wanted to return to the experiment that had sidetracked me while I was in the river gorge. The mystery tricks that the ball of condensed blood, or what the angels had been calling a ‘core’, had been playing when I wasn’t looking were bugging me and I had to study them. But I had already come close to …