Instead, I blurted out the first thing that came to mind, “What is your purpose here?”
“That’s easy, I’m a Standingwater demon often used to connect the lands of the world, the powers, islands, empires and kingdoms, attempts at self-rule and democracy, you get the gist. My purpose is to facilitate these communications and to ensure messages are sent and received as quickly as possible.”
“Never heard of you,” I said. I had, who hasn’t heard of these demons. “That’s it? You’re a communication tool.”
“It’s far more complicated than that,” Wass said. “I’m magical and I know things. And when people stumble into here I get to torture them and eat what’s left. Not all of them. That would put too great a burden on the Standingwater bit of the gig.”
I shook me head.
Faelix said, “The magics been blocked for over two hundred years.”
“That makes sense,” Wass said.
“Of course it does,” I said.
“What do you know, pretender?” Wass asked, all of her attention suddenly on me.
“My name,” I said.
“Normally,” Wass said. “If you knew your name, you’d know that you’re not Flora Rose and since you claim to be Flora Rose you clearly don’t know your name.”
“Okay,” I said, “that’s it. We’re going to settle this and believe it or not, I’m going to kick your ass.”
Wass laughed and looked at Faelix as though she expected him, too, to laugh at me. Faelix didn’t seem interested in contradicting either one of us and instead decided to find refuge in my personal dimensional space inside my satchel. As he dived in I saw the elven sword and somehow it seemed to be speaking to me, saying that I needed to use it. Which was weird, but I wasn’t in the mood the argue with an inanimate object and unsheathed it as I turned to face Wass, realized things were about to get real.
For her part, I was thinking of Wass as a she, Wass had shifted from the center of her grotto to one side. The puddle was still in the middle, and I wondered how her moving Around worked, but not enough to look too hard.
“Magic isn’t going to save you,” Wass said.
“Who said anything about magic?”
“This is what I’m saying. From what I know of Flora Rose, magic is second nature. She resorts to it no matter what.”
I just shook my head and tried to remember the sword forms I’d learned, and mastered, over the years. Lots of forms over lots of years.
Taking a step forward, I brought the elven sword in an arc from one side to the other, twisting my arms and shoulders in a way that would’ve rent in two anything solid. Given my strength on top of my powers and had Wass been anything else, she’d be dead.
She wasn’t.
The sword, while have an effect, went straight through her and out the other side sending me off balance. There was, for the briefest of moments, a flash of color in the water that made up Wass’s body, and then it was gone. I watched the shock in her eyes and then the anger that followed.
“Smart a little?”
“No,” Wass said.
Even though I’d gone of balance, I was able to recover as Wass formed and then sent flying a ball of water straight toward my chest. I moved out of the way and deflected the ball of water out of the way and then moved toward Wass a second time, this time sweeping my sword up from where her bottom should’ve been to her neck. Again, my sword went through her and again the water seemed to take on color and then it was gone.
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And, again, Wass looked as though she’d felt something and didn’t like it.
This times I could sense an increase of magic and as I watched Wass, a wave of magic was thrown out in all directions. There was nowhere for me to go and nothing for me to do and while I didn’t have an answer as to why I wasn’t using magic, other than I wasn’t because I couldn’t when I got out of the faerie circle, I ducked under the way and throwing out one of my hands, created a magical shield to stop any of Wass’s magic from connecting with me.
“Clever girl,” Wass said with a sneer on her face. “Very clever.”
“Not really,” I said. “It’s a simple shield.”
“One that isn’t well known among mortals,” Wass said.
“So?”
“Still doesn’t make you Flora Rose,” Wass said.
“Still doesn’t make me not Flora Rose,” I said back, attempting to at least be clever in my banter. It wasn’t very successful.
Instead of waiting for a response, I opened myself up to the natural magics around me. In an instant, there was a ball of fire hovering over my hand and it felt good. I hadn’t, yet, reverted to the more chaotic or playful of my powers. The things that make me me. In that moment I was only interested in shutting down Wass and figuring out why we were in her grotto.
It was probably true that I had less influence in the grotto than I would elsewhere, but as I’ve said I’m as close to being a god as one could get and not be a god or one of first creation. That’s a different set of circumstances and since I was pretty sure I was dealings with a strictly elemental creature, all I really needed to do was figure out Wass’s weakness and move in from there. Until then, or until the situation changed such that I could interpret Ant’s warnings under different sets of circumstances and understanding, I had to keep out of Wass’s jets of water and steam.
So far, as I was constantly learning, there where and what I was doing was largely dictated by outside factors. I had no idea what all of those outside factors were, but I did know that I needed to get ahead of some of it before I found out just how limited I was in this forest. The forest was nice and I’d been here before I’d been trapped in a faerie circle, but then the forest also wasn’t ground zero for some human invasion of monstrous proportions. It was just a forest.
Now, it was something else and there was a barrier outside. Wass, a water demon and one of the Standingwater, a rare set of elemental demons who connected to each other and allowed for long-range communication, but at a cost. In Wass’s case, it sounded as though she liked to eat the messenger, maybe not eat – though consume didn’t have a lot of alternatives when it came to people and magical creatures.
Wass also didn’t believe that I am Flora Rose, which makes me mad, but so far the faerie circle had changed how I approached the use of my powers and magic. Wass was correct that in the past I would’ve ended this using my powers. And I still could. But now I had different concerns about the consequences of what I was doing, even though I was certain those same consequences weren’t going to fall, too hard – if at all, on my head.
I was, as they say, different.
In response to a series of water tentacles, I stepped in and around them, wrapping my body around them without touching. I took several arcing swings, really trying to keep Wass away from me more than injure her, when I began to take note of Wass and her puddle. The puddle wasn’t moving, Wass was. All over the place. More to the point, she had a small tendril of water running from the puddle to her feet and that tendril of water. Focusing on the tendril, I started to advance by attacking aggressively in area I could, my elven sword still causing the water around the strikes to change appearance before returning to normal an instant later.
While I didn’t know what was happening, I did know that this was magic responding to magic and if that was true then it also meant that Wass had weaknesses I could exploit.
Faelix popped out of my personal dimensional space to watch the fight, he started cheering otherwise I might’ve only noticed his presence after-the-fact. Yeah, I may be really powerful and impossible to kill, but that doesn’t mean my mind isn’t going to narrow my focus when it needs to. The fact that Faelix made himself known enough to draw my attention was a bit worrying and I couldn’t tell for whom he was cheering. Maybe both of us, he was a male faerie after all, but I didn’t care so much about that. Especially since his cheering had somehow influenced me in missing the blast of steam and water Wass was sending my way.
“What the hell?” “I said.
Wass smiled.
“Prove you’re who you say you are,” she sneered.
“I don’t need to prove anything,” I said. I was finding the banter with Wass to be vexing and tiresome.
She smiled at me, shooting a kiss before she changed her attack, this time allowing a ball of water and energy to form over her hand and as she moved her hand, forcing it into her own version of the sword I was carrying.
“Are you ready to die?”