Chapter 192: Prayers
Michael closes the book with a slight frown, not as many improvements as he'd been hoping. He hadn't been taking advantage of his Essence Shift ability lately, and while his improvements could be called impressive for anyone else, he still wasn't satisfied with the speed of his progress.
Shaking his head, he carefully extracts his arm from Tiffania's bosom and climbs out of the tent. He pulls some food from his inventory and walks over to the smokeless campfire Riki had taught him to make. The assassin had thought such a thing would be useful, and he was correct in that as the lack of smoke would allow them to cook and warm themselves without alerting everyone nearby to their presence.
He stabs a few morsels of meat onto some shaved sticks to make some make-shift skewers and sets them atop the fire to slowly cook. While that's happening, he sits on a nearby stump and flips open Brimir's Prayer Book, wondering if he could glean anything from it before he handed it off to Tiffania.
Blank pages greet him, eliminating all thoughts of learning anything from it. With a sigh, he tends to the fire while waiting for Tiffania to wake up.
Eight minutes later, the smell of cooked meat envelopes the small clearing, eventually drawing a still tired-looking Tiffania out from the tent. "Good morning." she greets with a small, forced smile.
Michael returns it with a sincere one of his own, gesturing to the cooked skewers, "I've made breakfast, how're you feeling?"
She sits beside him and begins blowing on a skewer, "Tired, just tired... Even with the Arcane Ring you gifted me, using so much magic yesterday taxed my body... D-did you sleep well?"
"Better than usual, but I hope you don't mind if we continue our arrangement? The winter's cold enough without sleeping alone." he says, not really wanting to test if night terrors were still a factor.
She nods and begins nibbling on a skewer, her eyes afterwards drifting to the book on his lap, "Is that-?"
Michael holds up the Prayer Book, the thing looking more like a diary or a booklet than anything magic related. He knew that it had more pages than its size implied however, even if said pages were all blank to him. "It is," he says, offering it to her, "This is our ticket out of here, now it's up to you to learn the spell... Think you can do it?"
"I can-, I will." she affirms, quickly finishing her skewer and taking it from Michael's hand. The book glows slightly in her grasp before returning to normal, and once she opens it, she's greeted with many long lines of archaic-looking writing. It was written in the common tongue but used words that had long been made obsolete or replaced. Still, she thinks she could translate it fairly easily.
"What do you see?" Michael asks, leaning over but still seeing blank pages.
"It's a meditation technique," she says while flipping to the next page, which glows as words write themselves into existence before her eyes, "My Erase spell?" she mutters, seeing the many intricacies to the spell that usually comes instinctively to her.
Michael watches her expression become more and more excited as she flips through the book, "Induce Structural Weakness spell...? Elemental Fusion? Vacuum? I've never heard of any of these before." Tiffania utters.
"Is there anything in there concerning World Travel? Or Gates or any kind?" he probes.
Tiffania flips through some more pages before stopping on one, "This is a... Teleportation Gate? It says that it can be used to cross vast distances," she flips the te page to read more about it, but quirks a brow at the blank page, "It's blank...?"
Michael nods, remembering from the anime that the Book only reveals spells when the Void Mage is ready. "Maybe you need to learn the Teleportation Gate first before you can see any variations on it?"
"That sounds right... The book warns that improperly cast Teleportation Gates could instantly kill any who travel through it... Or dismember them, or send them somewhere random... Maybe it's best that I master this before trying its advanced forms... If all of that could happen to you with the basic version, I'd hate to imagine what the varients would do..." she shivers slightly at the thought.
Yeah, Michael could imagine many things worse than death if they entered an improper Dimension Gate. Teleported into the Eye of Terror in Warhammer 40k? Teleported into a literal hell ruled by Satan? Teleported into the Marvel Zombie universe? Teleported into the Carebear universe? Teleported into the Deadspace universe? Even just teleported into the vacuum of space itself... Yeah, not fun.
Still, that did create a question... Where would they actually go after this world? Did they have a choice? Could they return to his home dimension? Michael shakes his head, "How long do you think it will take for you to learn the Teleportation Gate spell?"
Tiffania chews her lip in thought, "If I spent all my time on it, maybe, a week? Maybe less? I usually have Ralf to help me but, I doubt even if he were here he'd know what to make of Void Spells."
Michael nods, "Well, if anyone was going to master them, it'd be you. Just remember that we need to take Charlotte and her mother away from here soon enough. The King of Gallia will probably be searching for her already, so the sooner the better... Still, without Sheffield working under him, I think we have enough time to get things done."
She smiles, "I hope so, it's a lot of pressure though. Having people rely on you..."
He chuckles and pats her on the shoulder, "You rely on me, I'll rely on you, seems like a good deal to me... Now, we should probably move further away from the capital before someone stumbles across us." he says, finishing his own skewer and getting up to pack up the camp.
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Chapter 193: War Time Repression
Throughout the entire kidnapped princess debacle, other countries hadn't stopped what they were doing. Germania's invasion of Albion was underway. Prince Wales had sent many of his forces to intercept Germania's airships before they could land on the floating continent, they used a multitude of ballista's, cannons, mages, and whatever was left of their aerial forces to combat them.
Unfortunately, Prince Wales and his commanders had been anticipating an attack by Gallia first, and thus were caught somewhat off guard by the abrupt hostility by Germania, especially since they had all figured that the country would invade Tristain first.
Albion's forces held off the first few groups of airships, but soon enough they were forced to flee from their positions once the airships got into range to begin firing back. The many fire mages and cannons aboard the ships proved their worth, hammering all the defensive positions the Albion forces were hiding in.
A couple keeps were utterly decimated by this, and not even hastily constructed magical defences could protect them for long. Germania were employing enchanted cannon balls that had been specifically designed to breach through matearial. These were intended to be used against enemy airships, but turned out to be just as effective against keeps, castles, and other fortifications.
Soon enough, despite Albion's efforts to keep them out, Germania had secured itself a foothold on the edge of the floating continent, allowing it to quickly mass its many troops there. Albion's army of monsters were on the march towards it, but the undisciplined and frankly self-destructive army was as slow to move as it was to react.
By the time Princess Henrietta had been returned to her country, Germania had built many fortifications and begun raiding nearby villages to supply their army further. All in all, Albion was on the backfoot in this conflict, with little to no leverage outside of having the obvious home and defensive advantages.
Albion hadn't even started to recover from the most recent civil war, so against a country as large and powerful as Germania, their odds weren't good at all.
Elsewhere, Gallia had also begun its invasion on Tristian. It's army easily snatching up the keeps and castles on Tristain's western border. Villages were subsumed, men were drafted, women forced into prostitution for the soldiers to keep their children and families fed. While Gallia's army was pretty disciplined as a whole, there were many instances of villages being razed, raped, and destroyed by soldiers in the throughs of battle. Specifically, these were the villages which attempts to resist Gallia's control.
The commanders of Gallia's army didn't care all that much for the fate of those who resisted them either, so the soldiers were given a light slap on the wrist afterwards with little to no actual punishment.
Survivors of these massacres escaped to other nearby villages, and the message was quite clear. Resist Gallia and suffer. It was this combined with Tristain's lacking military response that had many villages kneel towards the foreign country, despite having belonged to Tristain for many, many years.
Tristain's military had always been poor compared to its neighbouring countries, but their presence, plus the Magical Academy, plus the presence of Romalia had usually kept them safe. But now, after a civil war in its borders and in its only ally, Albion's land, things were quite dire.
Tristain's military eventually began setting up defences to the west, but it was far too late to properly prepare for the tidal wave that was Gallia's forces. What was the reason for this slow reaction though? This was mainly due to the kidnapping of Henrietta, who was obvious unable to command her forces, leaving her rather witless subordinates to do it in her stead.
Fortunately, not all was going badly for Tristain. King Joseph was utilising Sheffield as a spy for most of war, so to have her suddenly go silent after attempting to acquire an artifact held by the enemy Void Mage was anger inducing to the man. Not because of the loss of his Familiar, but because he now no longer held the information advantage.
Gallia's army stopped their progress almost immediately, now that the commanders lacked the information Sheffield was giving out, they'd have to actually use their minds now. Using actual tactics instead of having a comprehensive list on the opponents weaknesses.
And now that Henrietta was back in command, Tristain had been unified under her, with all of her forces being stationed West, despite Germania still being a threat. Still, there wasn't anything to be done about it. If Germania decided to invade at the same time as Gallia, Tristain would die regardless of what she did. And now, even the choice of marrying the Germania Emperor was lost to her.
Honestly, she was beginning to learn towards using the tactics that General Gramont had employed, using the students in the magical academy as hostages... Unfortunately, doing that would lose the respect of most of her subjects, especially after she'd cut down thousands of her own men stopping them from attacking the Academy... That's not even mentioning Headmaster Osmond.
With Louise sent off to Romalia to learn under the Pope, there was no hope for Tristain. But, the Princess was determined to go down with her ship. It's what a respectable ruler should do, her mother, the Queen had already fled to one of her properties in Romalia, so Henrietta was determined to prove that she deserved her position, even in death.
Now, if only she could remove whatever mind control spell was cast on Agnes, maybe she could die without regrets...
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