The Course
Finley Cai Aies Hall: April 20, 20XX
Corin and Cambridge had departed from the castle on an assignment and had left me alone with the general, Esmeralda and the General’s aide.
I’d woken up from my nap about an hour ago and had gone through the unpleasant experience of being dressed and shuffled into a dining area I’d never seen before. It was now late in the afternoon, so the day wasn’t over, but it still felt too late to be making plans.
Esmeralda sat beside me as a chaperone while the general and her aide sat opposite the table. The green fairy would enthusiastically speak with the General’s aide and the General (if she would permit it) but otherwise pretended I wasn’t even here.
I focused on the delicious food in front of me and wondered why I was even here. This time would have been better spent in training or purifying a bit more magic. I’d gotten better at filtering the foul magic outside of my body, so the process wasn’t as nauseating as it had been.
The General seemed just as bored and still regarded Esmeralda with a palpable amount of hostility. Of course, she did nothing that crossed the line, but unless Esmeralda dared directly address her, the General refused to acknowledge her.
Esmeralda seemed stressed out and tried even harder to connect to the general, but the stone wall of a fairy completely ignored her and left her aide to deal with my’ chaperone.’
Well, for all the fun I had watching how the General ignored Esmeralda, I had to acknowledge that the bronze-themed fairy paid me little attention either. While I didn’t particularly want her to fawn over me, I’d thought we could at least become friendly.
By letting me put that seal in her, she’d confirmed that the marriage would happen, even if it wouldn’t be for a while. I didn’t know her actual personality at all, but I figured if we were at least friendly, she wouldn’t try to control me and mess with my frequent disappearances.
Cambridge and Corin let me do whatever I wanted because I always came back regularly, and they knew when to expect me. Esmeralda would probably be happier if I disappeared permanently, so the only potential complication now would be the General.
I didn’t particularly want to tell her where I went, so I hoped the question never came up.
Hmm, maybe it would be best if we kept a distance.
On top of being stressed about the general ignoring her, Esmeralda also noticed the awkwardness between the two of us and her eyes narrowed with glee as she assumed something had happened.
She’d been unconscious for most of the day, and no one had filled her in on what had happened. The green fairy had been in charge of the place for so long that I was sure someone would eventually spill the beans, but for now, it looked like all the working fairies here had listened to my request to leave her in the dark.
I didn’t plan on taking control of the castle, nor did I want to. But it was fun to mess with my ‘caretaker’ like this.
I also didn’t want her to know that I’d been able to perform such sophisticated magic on the General. While it wasn’t the most complicated spell in existence, it was at a higher level than she had ever bothered to teach me.
The only loose end was the general, but she made no secret of her dislike of the green fairy. I doubted she would talk to Esmeralda for the time span of a coin flip, never mind sit down and give her a full explanation of how I had suppressed my influence on her.
Esmeralda finally caught the General’s attention and cautiously started a new line of conversation.
“So I heard that-”
Before she could continue, the General interrupted her and spoke to me for the first time since I’d entered the room.
“Your Highness. My Ruan duchy is putting on an amusement event of sorts at the academy near the palace. As an alumnus and a member of the Ruan duchy I am required to go test it out… would you be interested in accompanying me?”
Before I could even respond, Esmeralda lit up like a light bug and urged me to agree. It sounded more fun than just meandering around the palace, so I would have agreed anyway, but Esmeralda made it evident that she would agree on my behalf if I tried to deny the offer.
I had intended to accept either way, but the feeling of being forced into it left a nasty taste in my mouth.
“It would be an honor General.”
“You may call me by my first name, your highness. It would be better to do away with formalities earlier rather than later.”
She let out a small but charming smile that made it difficult to turn her down.
The sudden friendliness caught me off guard, and I struggled to respond.
“Thank you, general… you can call me by my name as well.”
It wasn’t like I’d ever been uncomfortable calling others by their first names in the past, but somehow her declaring I could do so made it a challenge.
Her eyes slightly narrowed as she noted I didn’t use her name, but she didn’t push me.
Looking at things objectively, the General had yet to do anything terrible to me, at least while she was in her right mind. On the contrary, she actively asked me about my opinions on things and wouldn’t push me to do anything I showed resistance toward.
I opened myself to letting a favourable opinion of her overwrite my previously negative impression.
The meal ended quickly after that, and a few familiar worker fairies led me back to my room. I was fully awake this time, so I declined their help in dressing me but accepted their aid in doing my hair and choosing my accessories. While I had to interfere when they chose burdensome-looking jewelry, the process went pretty smoothly.
Since neither Corin nor Cambridge was here, and there was no way I would let Esmeralda tell me what to wear, I dressed more comfortably than before. Besides, if it was an amusement park, I’d want to play around, and those stiff clothes would make it uncomfortable.
I’d specifically asked one worker if there were any shorter and lighter clothes I could wear without breaking some plethora of social rules and had asked for some to be bought for me. Cambridge had always hidden them from me, saying that they were unfit for my status as a prince, but she wasn’t here to nag me today.
The conspicuous crown forlornly glistened to the side as I flew out of my room in my new clothes. Since I was going on with the general, I clipped the ‘travel crown’ onto my arm. It was a replica of the tiara they always braided into my hair but shrunk down into an armband.
By the time I made it to the entrance of the palace, the General was already waiting. She had changed out of her long robes into more tight-fitting combat clothing as well. I could still trace out a few outlines of weaponry on her, but more of them were visible and unhidden.
The combat clothing was a well-fitted high-necked top over a pair of baggy pants. It was an outfit that would have been better suited on an action starlet in a high production movie than a respected general of a queendom. It seemed to be made of a material similar to leather, but instead of being made from animal skin, I could see a few grains that showed its plant origin.
The General didn’t notice me until I was only a few feet away from her, but she looked taken aback and let out a slight cough once she did. Her bright eyes lingered on my exposed arms and legs, and I felt somewhat uncomfortable, but not enough to go change clothes.
“Your high- Cai. You’ve arrived.”
I landed a few feet from her and walked the rest of the way towards her to avoid collision since I still wasn’t confident in my landing skills.
“General.”
She nodded and led me outside, where both our fluttermoths sat side by side. The General’s flutter moth was older than Galen and indulgently looked over the younger, more excitable beast.
The attendants struggled to hold him back from running towards me and would periodically extend more strength every time he made progress to drag him back.
At the sight, the General and I frowned, but for pretty different reasons.
“Your Highness… Are you sure he’s trained enough to ride? You can accompany me on mine if you wish.”
I shook my head and rushed towards him, worried that he might get hurt in his struggle.
As I neared him, the attendants slowly loosened their grips and had completely let go by the time I arrived. Galen calmed down a bit and nuzzled into my hand, encouraging me to pet him again.
Seeing the colossal beast, who was now the size of a small bus acting so affectionately, was enough to elicit a chuckle out of me, and I petted him some more. Galen was a pure-blooded beast, so being surrounded by others that were not royalty had probably irritated him. I quickly purified some of the magic around him, and he soon resumed his usual slow and heavy-lidded expression but still stuck close to me.
The General’s beast tried to amble closer to the cloud of pure magic I’d created for Galen, so I extended the area of effect to wrap around the larger beast.
Once Galen calmed down, I quickly went about saddling him and climbed up. As of now, he was only large enough to carry me and maybe a child, unlike Mei’s, who could probably take ten or twenty people.
In fact, Galen could only handle a small-sized saddle that required me to sit cross-legged and grip the reins, while Mei’s could support a carriage-style saddle, which was essentially a horse carriage strapped onto its back.
For the outing today, she had switched to a similar style saddle as mine, but her harness could most definitely hold more than a single person and a child.
She led her much larger fluttermoth to stand beside Galen and looked down towards me with an odd expression on her face but still implied that I should follow her.
We only flew for a few minutes, not even half an hour before we arrived, but as we flew, I realized that this was technically the first time I had ever left the palace while in the fairy world.
Or well, no, that was untrue. I’d gone through about three unplanned ‘field trips’ because of issues with my transporter. I’d made my determination to figure out both how it worked and how to get to Theodulus’s place without being summoned first.
From our height in the sky, I could look down at the landscape and saw a few compact figures flying around in the towns. A few of them pointed to the sky at the General and me, but none made to approach us.
Behind me was the large and imposing palace that, now that I looked at it from another angle, really looked impressive rather than tacky as I had thought.
The General descended onto a large plot of land and got off her fluttermoth. She stood facing a field that held many wooden obstacles and waited for me to land and join her.
Immediately I saw the difference between the amusement parks of the fairy world and the human world. Rather than a fair, it would be more accurate to compare it to a training camp.
The General flew toward me once Galen had landed to help me off. While I was used to being helped with things I could do on my own, I somehow didn’t want the General to treat me like that.
I got off on my own and fluttered down to the ground. She was flying in place rather than standing, so I couldn’t connect my feet to the ground and wobbled around as I tried to hit a rhythm with my wings.
Thankfully, the General mistook my unfamiliarity with my wings for excitement and a warm smile graced her face.
“I’ll take you through the space.”
She inched forward and waved for me to follow her in case her verbal explanation wasn’t enough.
There were a couple of things I could recognize, such as an obstacle course and what were probably flight agility tests, but for some others, I genuinely had no clue how to go about them.
But they looked fun.
I quickly noted each device, thinking I could probably create smaller versions to experiment with later on.
The first attraction was an obstacle course with a speed track, followed by a wall that looked pointless considering we could all fly. After that was another speed track, but they lined each side with cannons, and finally, there was the end where a prize would stay on a timer. If the contestant couldn’t get to it in time, then the award, whatever it was, would drop into a mud pit.
The next was a flying agility test, with a bunch of hoops moving in the air. The contestant would have to fly through a sequence of rings in the shortest amount of time possible. This was difficult because the hoops moved in a pattern, and the contestant would have to discern the sequence before flying through all of them.
The General snapped me out of my analysis and looked at me with an odd smile on her face.
“Would you like to try them out?”
The unexpected offer took me aback, and I couldn’t help but wonder if I had made my desires so evident that she had picked up on them or if she was that conscientious of me.
Still, I really was curious about how they would operate, and I hadn’t been able to train with Theodulus for fear that someone would notice the transporting magic being used and think that I was attempting to run away.
I’d done my best in my quarters, and I’d sectioned a place where I could guarantee solitude, but that limited my options to practice the exercises Theodulus had taught me.
Outside of that space, I hadn’t really been able to walk more than a few steps at a time. I could still do magic practice if I was careful, but most of that was theory-based and involved me reading a lot. I couldn’t practice any of the more powerful spells I’d learned since I couldn’t risk anyone else picking up on how much I knew since that would lead to questions of how I knew it.
So far, I’d been interested in strengthening the bubble I used for purifying magic and using it as a multipurpose attack and defense spell. The guards that walked around my quarters were usually more than helpful to be test subjects, but I couldn’t take that too far.
Ever since finding out about the aide bindings, I’d realized every worker in the castle had a similar, weaker version of it, so I’d devoted some time to exploring that as well. I had a theory in mind, but I wouldn’t act on it until I had enough proof and reason to do so.
“I don’t think I could even if I wanted too.”
The General laughed at the nervous tone that I had put on and confidently reassured me.
“Worry not, Cai. This is a festival, and there are more than a few male students at the academy. You may not break every record on hand, but I’m sure you’ll perform fine. I will run through it to make sure there are no flaws with its design, as that is the primary cause of my visit. You may watch me and decide afterwards.”
That sounded fair enough and hearing that other guys would do this made me stop worrying about exposing myself and my training with Theodulus and my mother’s diary. I relaxed and agreed to the General’s proposal.
“Then let’s do that.”