Chapter 14-387: The Elven Race, Part II (2/2)

“She is coming.” I rose from my seat and headed for the door. Needless to say, this conference had just been pre-empted. The shocked elves jerked as if released from paralysis, and hurried out after me and the bone-chilling cold I was coating the hallways with.

I sort of skated along without actually moving my feet, and they had to run to catch up with me. The guards saw the hallways riming with ice, and hurriedly opened the door for me as I headed outside.

Sleipner came around the side of the Sea Palace calmly, having vacated the forest as soon as I informed him of hostile Fey presences, and him not being an idiot.

She had Transported via Plants, coming through just outside the Interdiction Ward around the Sea Palace. The trees were groaning and creaking as they drew away to make her and her entourage a path down to the lakeshore. The frosted grass and the roots below all smoothed out and formed an unbroken carpet down to the lakeshore, heralding her arrival and displaying her casual mastery of the forest all at the same time.

I stepped down onto the water, casually Dispelled the warming effect keeping it unfrozen, and equally casually started the freezing process.

From my drifting feet forwards, the water crystallized with sharp pings, metallic in sound as they cracked and protested and resettled, spreading faster than someone could run from my point of presence, racing out in front of me, to the sides, and around the entirety of the Sea Palace as the surface of the lake froze solid and chased the colorful mutated fish down below away.

The ice was jet and silver.

With a thought, I released the curling ram’s-like horns, now balanced to jet with silver highlights, and my wings, demonic black and bat-like, but also with silver highlights, and gleaming with sacred silver Runework and maybe some celeste sparkly-star effects. My nine Tails flowed out as I glided along, ruffling artfully in my wake.

None of this had any real effect save the wings, which were considered a Binder bonus. I didn’t have the Racial Levels to use any of them, and even the lilithi stingers in the Tails were just cosmetic, as I didn’t have the actual coordination with them to use them as weapons effectively... unless I reached back with my hand or TK and whipped them around.

Still, if you knew what you were looking at, it indicated that I was even more dangerous than I seemed.

Sleipner rolled along beside me, his unicorn spirit fading into visibility in the backwash of my magic, especially as I began to Hum and the whole manafield began to chime along with me.

I saw her coming along the path, while the elven nobles behind me finally resorted to Flight spells and flew after me to keep up. They all had unsightly expressions at the level of power being shown here by both me and the incoming hamadryad, but I was frowning at the fact they could fly. I glanced up, and frowned minutely further.

I didn’t go up on the shore, and the coming Fey didn’t step onto the black and silvered ice. Imagine that.

They were a collection of satyrs and dryads, fully armored in bronze for former and livewood for the latter, goat-men and tree-women who were actually two sides of the same Fey species. I noted the colors of green and gold they were showing, and my eyes narrowed further as their queen, drifting along the ground in an ornate green dress that no leaf or ice dared despoil, a picture of Fey natural beauty, advanced with regal dignity between them.

Hamadryads are the usual regional queens of local Fey Courts, beneath the High Kings Mab, Titania, Oberon, and Robin Goodfellow, who represent the Courts of the Seasons. Hamadryads are full Fey Twenties, which make them powerful Casters, but not combat machines. Going up against Soulborn in combat, or most warrior races, Fey generally get their asses handed to them.

However, against most mortals, being a Twenty was just fine, thank you.

Golden hair, lightly tanned skin, emeralds aplenty over a green dress of spider-silk, great emerald eyes, the ice flowing out of her path as she brought life and vitality with her...

The edge of her influence reached the edge of the water... and stopped there. The jet and silver ice did not give way in the slightest, the metaphorical equivalent of a breeze blowing against a brick wall.

There were twenty paces between me and the shore. If they wanted to truly confront me, they would have to come out onto the ice... into my domain.

The domain they couldn’t melt.

She came up to the shore slowly, while I clasped my hands behind my back and simply waited. Was she making me wait for her to arrive, or was I accepting a supplicant?

Magic thrummed in the air, and if she kept her face a mask, I could feel her tensing and pushing at the threads there, feeling their response to me.

Those threads were basically not moving at all. It didn’t mean she couldn’t use them, but she couldn’t affect my Will upon them.

It meant I was a much stronger Caster than she was, and she knew it.

And naturally enough, I knew who she was. Our knowledge of Pact-granting Patrons had been expanding considerably of late, this particular one having staying secluded in some transient realm while magic was low, before being captured and thrust into the main world after the arrival of the Shroud.

There was a protocol to these things, and statements of power were part of it. Whether she liked it or not, she was now in my domain, in my power, and she could not ignore it.

I waited to see how she would approach this. She in turn, was studying me with some trepidation, having no idea whatsoever on how to accurately assess me.

She decided on a rather poor tactic, looking behind me. “Queen Huellia, will you not introduce Us to your guest?”

My wing snapped over to bar the queen in a gesture that could not be mistaken. At the same time, there was a pulse, and Einz pulled harshly.

There was a scream as he suddenly became visible and was wrenched savagely out of the sky a hundred feet overhead. His plummeting body, raven’s wings beating uselessly at the air, fell diagonally as he came down, smashing face-first down on the ice directly in front of his queen, the jetsilver surface fragmenting with snapping metallic pings all around him, his wooden sword burying itself hilt-deep there and his wooden armor fragmenting from the impact.

My wing came back smoothly. “Yes, introduce us to them.”