Fairy Dance 1

  “Yep. My family left some food out for me.”

  “That’s nice. Well, let’s get going. If we don’t get to the mining town before too late, it’ll be a pain to log out. C’mon, we’re almost to the mouth of the cave!” she jabbered hastily, to Kirito’s and Yui’s surprise. When they didn’t react, she spread her wings and beat them a few times.

  “Uh, okay. Yeah, let’s go,” he agreed, looking hesitant. He spread his wings, but then turned back toward the forest they’d come from.

  “…? Is something wrong?”

  “I feel like…” He scanned the line of trees with a scowl and a squint. “Someone was watching us…Are there any players nearby, Yui?”

  “No, I don’t detect any signals,” the pixie reported, shaking her head. Rather than being reassured, Kirito looked even more suspicious.

  “You felt it? Is there a sixth sense inside this game?” Leafa asked. Kirito rubbed his chin.

  “It’s not worth just writing off…Say that someone’s watching you, for example. The system has to scan us, to read the data it gives to him. Some folks say your brain can sense that process happening…in theory.”

  “If you say so…”

  “But if Yui doesn’t see anyone, I guess I must have imagined it.”

  “Well, it could have been a tracer,” she muttered. Kirito raised his eyebrows.

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a tracking spell. It takes the form of a tiny familiar and tells the caster the location of the spell’s target.”

  “Sounds convenient. You can’t get rid of them?”

  “If you can spot the tracer, sure—but the higher the caster’s magic skill, the farther distance the spell will work from the target. In the wide-open outdoors like this, it would be basically impossible to stop.”

  “I see…Well, it might have been my mind playing tricks on me. Let’s keep going.”

  “Okay.”

  They took flight. The white mountain range loomed overhead, as sheer as cliffs, with a yawning black cave mouth smack in the center. Leafa beat her wings, accelerating toward the evil-looking cave, which seemed to be emitting an ominous chill.

  After a few minutes, the group was at the aperture in the rock.

  Right in the center of the nearly vertical mountain face was a square hole, as clean as if a giant had chiseled it out. It was three or four times Leafa’s height in both directions. Only up close did it become apparent that the sides of the cave were decorated with eerie carvings of monsters. Directly overhead, a much larger demon head menaced all who entered.

  “Does this cave have a name?” Kirito asked.

  “I think it’s called the Lugru Corridor—Lugru being the name of the city down here.”

  “Ahh. This really reminds me of an old fantasy movie…” He grinned.

  Leafa looked at him sidelong. She bet he was talking about that really famous trilogy, based on an even older set of books. Kazuto had the complete collector’s edition box set, and she’d snuck it out of his room once to watch the series.

  “I know the one. They go through the mountains and into an old underground mine, where a giant demon of fire attacks them, right? Well, you won’t find any demons here.”

  “That’s a shame.”

  “There are orcs, however. If you’re that eager for them, I can let you handle the fighting.” Leafa turned her head and started marching into the cave.

  It was chilly inside the passage, and the light from the outside did not penetrate far into its depths. Darkness closed in around them. She was about to raise a hand and cast a light spell when a thought occurred to her.

  “Have you been pumping up your magic skills?” she asked Kirito.

  “Uhh, if it’s the starter magic I got from this race, at least, yeah…Haven’t used it much, though.”

  “Spriggans are good with magic for caves and dungeons and the like. You’ve got to have a better light spell than my wind magic.”

  “Do you know what I should use, Yui?” he asked, scratching his head. Yui popped her head out of his pocket and took on her best educator’s tone.

  “You should at least read the manual, Papa! The light spell is…”

  She enunciated the syllables of the spell clearly, one at a time. Kirito repeated them awkwardly with his hand in the air. Soon a pulse of pale light spread from his hand, and when it enveloped Leafa’s body, she could see much better than before. Apparently this was not a simple source of light, but a kind of night-vision spell that enhanced their sight in the dark.

  “Wow, that’s useful! You spriggans aren’t half bad after all.”

  “Hey, that kinda hurts.”

  “Hee-hee! But you really should memorize the spells you have. Even crappy spriggan magic might actually mean the difference between life and death…once in a blue moon.”

  “Wow, that hurts even worse!”

  They traded jabs as they descended down the twisting passage. In time, the light from the entrance was gone from sight.

  “Uhhm…Ahr-dena-r…ray…”

  Kirito was poring over the glowing purple game manual, muttering the unfamiliar words of the spell to himself.

  “It’s not going to work if you stumble over each and every part. Don’t try to just mechanically memorize all the sounds of the words. Learn the meaning of all the Words of Power; then it’s easy to figure out the spells based on the combinations and their effects.”

  Instead of inspiring the black swordsman to learn further, this suggestion sent his head slumping with a deep sigh.

  “I thought I was playing games to get away from learning foreign vocabulary words…”

  “Just so you know, the top-tier spells are made up of about twenty words each.”

  “Ugh…I think I’ll stick with being a pure fighter.”

  “No complaining! Now start over from the top.”

  They’d been in the cave for two hours. The ten or so battles against orcs had been a breeze, and they had no fear of getting lost, thanks to the map Leafa bought in Swilvane. According to that map, they were nearly to a bridge that spanned a massive underground reservoir. On the other side of that bridge was the mining city of Lugru.

  Lugru was not as large as the mammoth underground fortress that was the capital of gnome territory, but the ores and veins were rich here, and many merchants and crafters gravitated to it. Yet despite that, they ran across no other players on their trip. The cave was not the best hunting ground, and most sylphs would avoid a place where their advantage in flight was of little use. There was enough space to the corridors to fly, but without any sunlight or moonlight to refuel wing power, there was no way to regain the charge.

  Most sylphs who wanted to visit Alne for trading or tourist purposes chose the much longer detour north to cait sith territory, thus avoiding the mountains. The cait siths, recognized by their feline ears and tails, were experts in the Taming skill, which allowed them to control monsters and animals. Throughout the year of history in ALO, the cait siths had traded tamed mounts to the sylphs, and they’d been on good terms. The lords of each territory had remained friendly, and some even said there would be an official alliance soon.

  Leafa had a number of cait sith friends, and she considered using that route for this trip, but Kirito’s obvious haste led her to choose the shorter way. The underground route made her uneasy, but so far, the going had been quick.

  But Kirito’s reasons for rushing to Alne and the World Tree were still a mystery to her. His aloof demeanor made it difficult to read his mind, but the way he tore through their battles told her much about his haste.

  Leafa remembered him saying that he was looking for someone. Trying to track down someone in a game who couldn’t be reached in real life wasn’t that strange of a story. There was a bulletin board out front of the general store that was always packed with wanted notices looking for specific players. It usually had to do with grudges to settle or romantic entanglements, but those didn’t seem likely to apply to Kirito. S
earching in Alne made sense—but why the World Tree? It was unconquered territory at this point. They might reach the foot of the tree, but they couldn’t made it to the top…

  She continued mulling over this mystery as Kirito stumbled over his spell words. Being lost in thought out in neutral territory was a great way to get killed, but Yui alerted them to the presence of nearby monsters with frightful precision, so there was no danger of ambush.

  Several minutes later, when they were nearly at the lake, Leafa was snapped out of her haze of thought—not by Yui but by a sound effect very much like the ringing of an old phone.

  She looked up with a start and called out to Kirito.

  “Ack! I got a message. Sorry, hang on.”

  “Sure.”

  She stopped and touched the floating icon just below her chest. A window opened at once and, sadly, Leafa knew exactly who it would be from—her only registered friend in the game was Recon. She scanned the message quickly, expecting it to be something pointless. But…

  JUST LIKE WE THOUGHT! BE CAREFUL, S—

  It ended abruptly, mid-message.

  “What is this?” she muttered. It made no sense. What did he think? What was she supposed to be careful about? And what was that s at the end supposed to mean? If he were signing the message, it would have been an R. Did he accidentally send the message before he was done, or did he hit the extra letter by mistake?

  “S, s, s…sa…shi…su?”

  “What’s wrong?” Kirito asked. Just as she was about to describe the message, Yui popped her head out of his shirt pocket.

  “Papa, I’m detecting something approaching.”

  “Monsters?” He put a hand on the hilt of the giant sword slung over his back. But Yui waved her head.

  “No, players. Many of them…twelve.”

  “Twelve?!” Leafa was stunned. It was far too many for an ordinary battle party. Perhaps it was a sylph trading caravan on its way to Lugru or Alne.

  About once a month, a large trading caravan was arranged to make a trip to the center of the map. But that was always widely advertised for several days before the journey, in order to recruit volunteers. There was no news of the sort on the bulletin board when she checked this morning.

  As long as that mysterious party was made of sylphs, there was no need to fear. It seemed highly unlikely that such a large PK gang would be waiting in a lonely place like this. But despite all of that, Leafa felt uneasy.

  “I have a bad feeling about this. We ought to hide and let them pass.”

  “But…where?” Kirito looked around in confusion. They were in the middle of a long, straight corridor. It was spacious, but there were no branches down that they could hide under.

  “Just leave that to me.” Leafa grinned confidently, grabbing Kirito’s arm and pulling him toward a divot in the rock. She snuggled in close to him, trying to avoid feeling self-conscious, and raised a hand for a magic spell.

  A swirling vortex of shining green air sprang up from her feet and enveloped both of them. Their vision was colored just a slight shade of green, but it did mean they’d be virtually invisible from the outside. She turned to Kirito next to her and whispered, “Speak as quietly as possible. Make too much noise, and the spell will break.”

  “Got it. Real handy spell to have.”

  Kirito scanned the space outside the veil of wind. Yui whispered from his pocket.

  “They’ll come into view in two minutes.”

  Leafa and Kirito pressed themselves against the rock wall. After several tense seconds, Leafa heard the sound of approaching footsteps. She thought she heard the scrape of heavy metal armor, which gave her pause.

  Kirito stretched out his neck and peered in the direction of the unidentified party.

  “What…is that?”

  “What is what? I don’t see them yet.”

  “It doesn’t look like a player…Is it a monster? It’s like a little tiny red bat…”

  “?!”

  Leafa’s breath caught in her throat. She squinted into the darkness—and saw that a small red shadow was indeed fluttering toward them.

  “Crap!”

  The curse tore its way out of her throat, unbidden. She rolled out of the hiding spot into the middle of the hallway. The concealing spell was broken, and Kirito hurriedly looked up, confused.

  “H-hey, what’s the big idea?”

  “That’s a Tracing Searcher—it’s a high-level spell! We have to crush it before it finds us!”

  She held out both hands in front of her and began chanting. It was a longer list of words than before, and when it finished, countless needles of emerald green fired from her fingertips. They screamed through the air and bore down on the red shadow.

  The bat darted nimbly about, avoiding the projectiles for a time, but their number was too great. Several needles eventually brought it to the ground, where it went up in a tiny flame. Satisfied that the job was done, Leafa turned back to Kirito and screamed, “We’ve got to run for the town, Kirito!”

  “Huh? Shouldn’t we hide again?”

  “The enemy knows we killed their tracer. Once they get up to this spot, they’ll unleash a swarm of searchers—we can’t hide anymore. Besides, that was a fire familiar, which means the party on our heels are—”

  “Salamanders!” he finished. The heavy metallic marching was growing closer. Leafa turned back and caught a glimpse of red light in the darkness.

  “Let’s go.”

  They took off running.

  Leafa checked her map as they moved, noting that their current path would take them to the large underground lake very soon. The cave tunnel turned into a bridge splitting the lake, and on the other side was the gate to Lugru, the mining city. In such neutral cities, there was no attacking between player factions, so despite their numbers, the enemy could not hurt them there.

  But why such a large party of salamanders…?

  Leafa bit her lip. The presence of the tracer meant that they’d been tracking her all along. But Yui’s search ability had been in full effect since they left Swilvane. They shouldn’t have had the chance. The only way they could have done this was if the spell had been cast on them while they were in town.

  There were sylphs who could use fire magic, of course. Each fairy race had an affinity for a certain kind of magic—wind magic for sylphs, earth magic for gnomes, and so on—but any player could learn any magic, provided he or she worked hard enough for it.

  But that red bat she’d squashed was a high-level spell combining the pursuit abilities of a tracer and the scrying abilities of a searcher. It would be a herculean effort for a non-salamander to learn a fire spell that advanced. Which meant…

  “There was a salamander inside Swilvane?” she muttered to herself as they ran. But that was nearly unthinkable. Swilvane was comparatively open to other races, but salamanders were the enemy, and were subject to considerable scrutiny. If the powerful NPC guardians had noticed any, they would have advanced with blades swinging. There were very few ways to evade that kind of protection…

  “Hey, the lake!”

  Kirito’s cry snapped Leafa back to the matter at hand. She looked up to see the rough stone floor turning to cobblestones ahead, followed by a wide aperture and the dull shine of dark blue water.

  The stone bridge extended straight over the center of the lake until it reached the looming castle gate of Lugru on the other side, its wall reaching right to the ceiling of the enormous chamber. If they could just get inside the city, they’d have won the game of tag.

  Momentarily relieved, she turned to look back again. There was still quite a gap between them and the red light of their pursuers. She redoubled the pace of her run, feeling confident.

  The temperature was slightly cooler over the bridge. They raced through air heavy with the smell of water.

  “Looks like we’re going to make it.”

  “Don’t get sloppy and fall in the water—there’s an enormous monster in the lake.”

&n
bsp; Just as they reached a circular viewing platform in the dead center of the bridge, two points of light shot through the darkness over their heads from behind. It was the signature glint and sound of a magic explosive. No doubt the salamanders had fired them in desperation, but they failed to aim precisely.

  They slowed down, preparing to let the bombs fall and then run past them. The lights dropped about thirty feet ahead.

  Leafa held her right arm in front of her face, bracing for the blast, but what occurred took her by surprise. There was a heavy, rumbling roar, and a towering rock face shot up from the surface of the bridge ahead, blocking their progress. She scowled and hissed a curse.

  “Oh no…”

  “What the—?”

  Kirito’s eyes went wide, but he didn’t slow down. He loudly drew the sword from his back and brandished it as he charged the rock wall.

  “Hey—Kirito!” She didn’t have time to tell him it wouldn’t work. He struck the wall with all of his might, and then flew back to land on his rear. There wasn’t even a scratch on the brown rock face.

  “…It’s pointless,” she finished, holding her wings wide to skid to a halt next to Kirito. The spriggan glared up at her.

  “You could have told me that sooner…”

  “Not with how fast you ran ahead. This is an earth-magic barrier; physical attacks won’t hurt it. With enough attack spells, we can knock it down, but…”

  “We don’t have that much time.”

  They turned around and saw a group of people clad in shining bloodred armor starting out onto the bridge.

  “I don’t suppose…we could just fly around it. Maybe jump into the water?” Kirito asked, but she shook her head.

  “Nope. Like I just said, there’s supposed to be an ultra-high-level water dragon in this lake. Jumping in there without help from an undine is suicide.”

  “Then I guess we just have to fight.”

  He readied his giant sword again as Leafa nodded, biting her lip. “It’s our only option…but it’s not a good one. This is a very high-level earth magic spell for a salamander to be using. There must be an expert mage in their ranks.”

  Thanks to the narrow width of the bridge, it was at least a guarantee that the enemy couldn’t surround them. But it was two against twelve, and they couldn’t fly in the dungeon. Leafa couldn’t even make use of her greatest skill, aerial combat.