Camelot of a Strange World (4)

They say trouble always comes in a string. I couldn't have told you who first said it, but I was finding it hard to argue with a single word.

I had only just managed to fall asleep, heavy head resting in Franc's warm arms, when a skin-crawling, unclean sensation raked up my spine through Spatial Perception and my eyes flew open.

Something was coming out of the north, straight at us — something that stood the hair on my neck on end. Even Spatial Perception, which let me turn a thing over in full three-dimensional volume, couldn't tell me what it was.

If a plague's miasma ever took on a body, it might look like that. It resembled the smoke that boils up when toxic waste burns, clotted into one mass, and it was moving at a speed that should not have been possible.

Straight toward me and Franc.

"What is that?"

I couldn't feel any Phase Power. It wasn't an Aberrant either. Faced with a phenomenon that ordinarily could not exist, and that my common sense had no hope of parsing, wariness set in, and I woke Franc.

"Seoha...?"

"Something foul is coming this way. Uncanny smoke. It doesn't feel good, so let's get clear of it for now."

Had it been an Aberrant, I would have simply erased it with a Space Wall. But that smoke gave off no Phase Power at all, and the danger clinging to it made me reluctant to lay a hand on it. I decided that if the thing needling my Spatial Perception flew all the way up after us, I would erase it then — Space Wall or mana round, whichever it took — and used Space Leaping to climb high into the sky.

Four kilometers up, standing on a Space Wall, I kept my eyes on the foul smoke. As if it had noticed us leap skyward, it halted where it was and began to drift, hesitating, wandering the ground below.

The sight of it was unpleasant enough that merely looking felt like bad luck. I was a breath from wiping it away with a Space Wall when something Myrddin had said rose in my mind.

So this world had a thing called magecraft. I didn't know much about it, but there was probably some mystery in it deep enough to notice my Spatial Perception. And then there was the being Myrddin had spoken of, one who had set a foot in the half-realm. Wasn't the half-realm his name for those who had stepped into a world that was not ordinary?

Myrddin, who had noticed my Spatial Perception. The black-haired witch of Camelot Castle. The ill tidings Myrddin had mentioned. The witch who had crossed space itself to stare at me. Whatever had tracked my back until we left the castle, and now this foul smoke, chasing us out of the north where Camelot lay.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

At this point it would have been stranger not to assume the mist had been sent by that witch. But why? Because my face and my abilities were curious, and she meant to catch me? Or because, unlike the people of this world who had shown themselves at Myrddin's house, the two of us looked different, and that had stirred her curiosity? What was certain was that a cloud shaped like a plague had not come near us with anything good in mind.

Which meant that if the black-haired witch really was, as Franc had said, Morgan le Fay — fairy and witch both — and if this smoke was something a witch like that had sent, then nothing good would come of touching it. When I laid out the conclusion I'd reached, Franc thought it over, took my arm, and asked.

"Is that smoke still following us?"

"After we came up, it reached the place we'd been, then stopped and started hesitating."

"Then there is something I would like to test. Move a little, if you would."

"All right."

I did as she asked, running due west before dropping down into the forest. The smoke began to waver, shifting this way and that. It didn't seem to have fixed our position, though. The clotted mass drifted off in a completely wrong direction.

"It's heading somewhere else."

"If Morgan le Fay truly made that smoke and sent it after us, I suspect it was because we were near the lake."

"Why?"

"Morgan le Fay wears many stories and many faces. Most famously she is called a great sorceress rivaling Merlin, and there is also the tale that she is mistress of the Isle of Avalon, a fairy of the waters. This world has a discipline called magecraft, so she may well have mastered some power bound to water that we simply do not know."

"Myrddin joined the door of a hut to a mansion at Stonehenge. Using water as a medium, would it not have been simple for her to find us while we rested by the lake?"

"So it really is..."

"Yes. She must have taken an interest in your abilities. Now then, back into the sky..."

Irritation shot up, and anger climbed all the way to the crown of my head. I was already sick to death of demons, and seeing a trick played on me like this made my chest feel ready to burst. I slammed a Space Wall into the smoke as it wandered off course. The moment the amber Wall of Space wrapped the cloud, the smoke melted, sinking into my Space Wall as if it were being drunk down.

What was that? A foulness I had no words for scraped against the Space Wall, and then it was gone.

In that instant a voice rang through my head — not Myrddin's deep tone, the one that set a heart at ease, but a high voice, lush with want.

"Who's there?!"

I wasn't the only one who heard it. Franc spun and planted herself in front of me, sharp eyes sweeping every direction. I was looking too, but there was nothing to see, and Spatial Perception showed no anomaly either. This voice, though. Could it be...

"Morgan le Fay?"

Laughter was threaded through the voice, and the image of that perverted exhibitionist witch — stripped bare, lying on a bed, smiling — rose in my mind as if it belonged there. No. I wasn't thinking it. The image was being forced in.

Franc seemed to receive it as well. Her face twisted hard, and she began glancing back and forth between me and the north, where Camelot lay. A bad feeling started piling up, thick and fast. I caught her hand and leapt into the sky again, and the voice came after us as if it were still giving chase.

As the words landed, the image moved. She spread the legs she had been holding together, baring the valley between them, then lifted her left foot onto her right knee and wiggled her toes. The moment her thighs parted, her sex lay open, and something glinted there. Her wetness. She was in heat.

A grating little scheme, and a cheap honey trap laid over it. My guts were boiling. I gave her no answer and climbed higher, and higher still, while Morgan's voice went on.

"Sorry, but I've got nothing I'm curious about when it comes to you. And I'm busy right now. This doesn't seem like a good time for the two of us to stand around trading questions."

I let it out cold, edged with killing intent — cold enough that even Franc flinched — and a laugh meant to stroke the ear ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠in a sexual way echoed through my skull. How was she sending image and voice this far?

"Yeah? Well. Figures."

At the voice in my head, and at the shift in my manner, Franc looked up at me with uneasy eyes. I reached out and brushed her fine, soft brow, meaning for her not to worry.

"Myrddin was the same way. How are you talking to me directly like this? Is it because I erased that cloud just now?"

I stayed quiet and gave her nothing, and Morgan murmured on.

She let out another long laugh, the kind meant to stir lust.

So by striking the smoke down with a Space Wall in a fit of temper, I had handed her exactly the information she needed. I clicked my tongue at the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠mess my anger had bought and tried to think of a way out, but the only choice my head could produce was flying back to Camelot and erasing her with a mana round.

No. It felt as if the vicious nature sleeping deep in my gut was waking, and Morgan kept needling my temper with that strange voice of hers. I didn't want to kill her that cleanly. I wanted to wring screams out of her with rough torment that went past violation. Damn it.

Haa...

Ah. Maybe that way, then. I opened my mouth again, and this time my voice was hard.

"I've got plenty of questions too, but there's something I have to do before any of that. It matters more than anything else."

"You said that in knowledge alone, you stand level with Myrddin. Tell me this, and I'll consider your invitation."

Of course, when that time came, I meant to arrive only after I'd stripped away every part of me that could be seized as a weakness. One look at that foul smoke — and it had to have been hers — and it was obvious that if I displeased her, or if things went sideways, she would start some vicious little scheme.

Morgan had said nothing while I finished the thought. Then she murmured, low, as if something about it pleased her.

The bloodless, snow-white face that rose in my mind drew a smile like a poisoned apple. Sorry, but all I knew of her was what Franc had told me.

An incestuous woman. A creature of whim. A necromancer. A great sorceress. A fairy. A witch.

"It's simple. About two meters tall. Horns at the temples and on the forehead. Eyes fierce, steeped in blood-red. An upturned nose, and a mouth torn all the way to the cheekbones, hideous as a beast's. Teeth sharp as saws. Blue skin. Muscular, fond of eating people — vicious as demons. They live in a castle that looks black. Do you know anywhere they are, or anywhere they're likely to be?"

The place I had meant to ask Myrddin about, and never had. If this witch called Morgan could tell me that, I was willing to meet her face to face and talk, once. Finding that castle alone, without telling a soul, might take a very long time. Set against that labor, that effort, that time, a brief conversation was nothing.

Franc couldn't hide her worry at the sight of me trying to deal with a witch. She wrapped her arms around my waist. Morgan wore a slightly troubled look and lifted a finger to rub her bright red lips.

"Then I've got nothing to say to you. We're done."

Morgan covered her mouth with one hand and laughed, loud, and with every laugh the two heavy swells on her chest rolled. And in that moment I passed judgment on her. A mad, filthy bitch I would never have anything to do with. Absolutely.

You dare use Franc as a threat? Without even knowing what I can do?

"...I'm curious myself which of us ends up in trouble. You, or me."

Black fire seemed to rise out of me, and before I knew it I was sneering as I answered.

"No matter who you are, so long as you're a woman, the moment I get hold of you you're nothing but one more female. Did you notice that, and chase me all this way because you want to be trained like a beast?"

I said it with a thin, baiting smile. Franc looked at me, a little bewildered. I set a hand on her head and stroked it, telling her without words not to worry.

Morgan, hearing me, wore a look of sheer disbelief, then shaped a smile cold as ice, and little by little her face began to contort.

The growling voice seemed to scrape my eardrums.

"Enough. Are you telling me, or not. Decide. Now."

This bitch...

"You're going to lay a hand on Franc? Try it. Do that, and I'll start with Camelot. I'll tear King Arthur and Lancelot apart and kill them while you watch. As a bonus, I'll wipe this landmass off the map. Once this island nation is gone and there's water where the ground used to be, I wonder what becomes of you."

She had reached for the one scale I do not let anyone touch, and I answered her pouring out killing intent, as if I meant to chew her up and swallow her. The killing intent probably couldn't reach her. If I didn't do at least this, I wouldn't be able to stand it.

As if she had felt that I meant it, and that I could do it, Morgan's face hardened in a frightening way, and the light in her eyes began to sink.

I didn't know what had set it off, but her face grew harder and more twisted, white as unused paper and changing into something like a malicious ghost. Her voice rippled and began to steam with wickedness. Her eyes filled with emptiness until it seemed holes might punch straight through them. Had she gone mad? Leave her like that and she would burn herself into a fit.

Sure enough, the fit took her and she screamed. I grimaced at the roar — loud enough, even in my skull, to make my brain shudder — and pulled Franc into my arms.

I drew on every bit of TP, now grown to seven million, and concentrated it through my whole body. More than that. I accelerated it from the heart and dragged in the Phase Power around me, hauling it in close. I expanded the Mana Sieve that had only ever guarded my own body, focusing everything I had on the will to protect Franc as well, and blue light burst from me the way it had when I broke through the vision at Stonehenge, covering her too.

The phantom of Morgan that had seemed cast across my retinas vanished.

"Throwing a fit? Who the hell do you think you are, you crazy bitch. Franc, can you hear Morgan's voice?"

"Ah — no. I cannot. But are you all right?"

"I'm fine. I'm irritated, and part of me wants to chase her down and kill her... but I won't. Not now."

Franc's startled eyes had been caught, for a moment, by the blue light covering me and her own body. She listened, then lifted a hand and stroked my cheek.

"You thought well. A woman like that is best not answered at all."

As I'd hoped, Morgan's interference was blocked. So the sieve could be expanded this far, and an expanded Mana Sieve could protect the people around me too. That would be useful. Rather than move somewhere else, I would wait here until we could return to reality.

I drew Franc, still caressing my cheek, into my arms and buried my face against her neck. My mood had already been foul. Talking to Morgan had made it filthier. I was sighing when I felt one side of my body growing warm, and when I turned east, the morning sun was rising.

I shaped a Space Wall into a small, thin chair, sat, and settled Franc on my lap. Then I waited for time to pass while the sun climbed overhead. I kept the Mana Sieve concentrated the whole while. After that, Morgan's words no longer reached us, and perhaps because we were so high, the foul smoke never appeared either.

The wide Mana Sieve barrier kept Phase Power flowing endlessly out of my body, wandering around Franc and me, then coming back in, over and over. Thanks to that, spending anything on the technique was practically ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the same as spending nothing. Fortunate. I could keep the barrier up.

As we passed the time above the sky, several of those plague-struck clouds I had first seen came as far as the lake, and I watched them search the shore. Just as Franc had said, they seemed to hold some power tied to the lake and to water. They only poked around the campfire where the two of us had stayed. They never found us, floating overhead.

Crazy bitch. You dared try to lay a hand on Franc? Later, when I get hold of you, I'll train you like a bitch in heat.

I was grinding my teeth inwardly, swearing I would not let it pass, when Franc lifted both hands and gently caressed my cheeks.

"Seoha, do not hand your reason over to anger. When reason is ruled by a negative feeling, the heart warps as well."

With that she gave me a bird-kiss on the lips. Hearing her, I began to quiet my heart and bring it to heel. Of course I still meant to make Morgan howl like a bitch in heat. But as Franc said, letting a woman like that twist my heart — that, I couldn't allow.

Around the time the sun passed overhead, I turned on the Certifier and checked the time. Five days had just passed since we entered this medieval fantasy world.

"Haa... I followed a hunch and jumped into a Return Point, and it's been a shocking stretch of time in more ways than one."

"..."

Franc sat wordlessly on my lap, arms tight around my waist. I sighed, feeling her warmth.

"Franc, I'm sorry, but..."

If we stayed, there was no telling what madness that exhibitionist witch might commit, so I meant to apologize and return to reality. Franc smiled first, and spoke before I could.

"It is all right. Once we go back, there is no knowing when we might come again. I think it better to leave legends as legends, and let imagination spread its wings."

She glanced toward where Camelot lay, then whispered small against my ear.

"Honestly, Lord Myrddin's appearance was so different from what I had imagined that I was badly disappointed. I do not wish to be disappointed any further."

I looked at her, dazed.

"Ehe."

The tip of her tongue peeked out. So we had come all this way, and she was going to talk behind Myrddin's back...

When we got back, I would have to ask Mom and Dad. Whether my aunt really was my birth mother.

I called reality to mind with force, so we could leave this medieval fantasy world that had dealt me one shock after another. The blue aura wrapped around Franc and me began to drink in Phase Power, and ripples rose in the space around our bodies.

"Ah. This phenomenon..."

"Yeah. It's what lets us go home. Let's go back."

"Yes!"

The world stretched to either side as if something were pulling it, then began to gather toward a single point. A pitch-black dot appeared before my eyes. It swelled as if devouring light and the world itself, and in the end it swallowed Franc and me as well. And so the world sank into pitch blackness.