Tia wound up having to half stick her tiny hands into the man’s mouth in order to shove her back-washed sample of his own blood back down his throat. Really, it wasn’t so much that she had to do it as she simply just did that as her first solution. It definitely left me feeling a little strange as once again this bloody scene seemed juxtaposed with something a perfectly normal toddler would do. It was to the point I was suddenly sympathizing with Mr. Adderson’s earlier statement about how our adult-like behaviors in these toddler bodies gave him vertigo.

I closed my eyes for a second and breathed out a breath to clear my head and turned toward the man in question. Mr. Adderson was glaring balefully down at me. It was very clear he was not happy about this. He would definitely have words to say when this was all over. Even more words than he probably has on his mind right now considering what I have planned. However, he seemed resigned to go along with it for now.

It’s good he’s being a reasonable person. I have some kind of plan, and we have to put up a unified front when the enemy is around. That’s all there is to this, and that’s all he needs to know for the moment.

I had to pause when I caught myself thinking those things. When did I ever do such an in-depth psychological evaluation on this guy? Was it… shit! I suddenly realized I really did know a lot about this guy and how he was likely to react to things. It must be because I'd eaten some of his spirit energy earlier when we were running from him. Did that seriously give me that much information about him?

Well, no time to ponder the implications now. I’ll just consider it a handy tool and move on, at least until we deal with this man.

The man let out a groan when Tia removed her hands from the man’s mouth.

“Sit him up and restrain him.” I said. “Don’t worry, he’s not going to be in any shape to fight in just a second.”

Mr. Adderson flinched when he heard that, but he still went along with it anyway. He held the man’s arm exactly as I’d told him, one hand on the man’s shoulder and the other near the man’s elbow, keeping himself clear of the upper arm. I stood on the opposite side from Mr. Adderson, and I was aware of the older man’s eyes watching me carefully the entire time.

I brought up my hand for the opening posture of the fire kata once again, and then I threw the knife-hand strike at the man’s upper arm. There was a sound of breaking glass as the now completely frozen fabric of the man’s robe shattered and the pieces fell to the ground.

[Ahhhh!] The man screamed, but I immediately threw another fire kata strike at the arm which was already as hard as stone, due to all the frozen meat in the way. My hand throbbed from striking such a hard object, but I had to make sure the cold penetrated all the way to the marrow of his bone for the next step.

[Ahhh… you traitor! These are! These are the… what is this? My arm!]

“Holy crap!” Mr. Adderson peeled his hands off of the man, pieces of the frozen robe stuck to his palms as he reeled backward and shook his hands. “Shit! What did you just do? It’s all frozen!”

“Sorry about that, I didn’t know it would be that strong. Do you need Tia to heal you?” I asked.

“How the fuck are you so calm right now you little psycho bitch! What the hell is this! I’m going to need some god damn explanations before this goes any further!” He yelled.

“Trying to get him on our side so he can deliver a message for us.” I said. “However, I don’t think he’s going to just cooperate if we ask nicely and we are too far along with this approach to back out at this point anyway. To answer your question, I’m not calm, but I can’t show that right now. Now, do you need healing, or can we continue this? The shock this guy got from me freezing his arm is not going to last very long.”

“Shit! Shit, shit shit shit shit!” Mr. Adderson continuously swore as he started pacing in a small circle while he curled and un-curled his hands. He only made one circle though before he pounced on the new fairy man’s other shoulder. The one that was not frozen over.

[Tia, strike this frozen arm as hard as you can and then heal Adderson the same way you just healed this guy from the wounds we gave him earlier.] I said as I backed off and then turned my attention to the man. [My sister is very good at healing. The methods she uses could even heal a severed limb.]

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The man’s eyes grew to three times their previous size as he most certainly had to realize what we were intending.

[What? No! What do you want?] The guy panicked and tried to move backward straight into Mr. Adderson’s knee that was now planted in his back. After this, he tried to lurch forward but Mr. Adderson’s hold was too strong.

[Shouldn’t it be obvious? We just don’t want to die. You were talking about killing us earlier, weren’t you?] I asked.

[No! No! That was…] He kept trying to scramble away. Tia was in position at this point, but she stopped to look toward me to see if I had somehow changed my mind. However, I gave her a nod. She nodded back with a serious look and then turned to the man.]

“Levin, don’t look!” Rolwen shouted [Ahhh… ummm… quick! Cover eyes, Levin!] He yelled at my mother with panicked broken Elven. This sudden shouting drew my attention toward the waiting elven adults off in the distance. They both looked horribly shaken by what they were seeing, mother a lot more than Eirlathion.

Mother was not moving to do what Levin had said. In the meantime, Tia was already delivering a brutal palm-strike to the man’s frozen inner bicep, shattering the whole upper arm in the process and dropping the now unattached forearm to the ground. At some point, I noticed Eirlathion had set Rolwen down on the ground and rushed over to attend to the task of blocking Levin’s view. Taking this opportunity, Rolwen had decided to jog over toward us.

“Crap!” Rolwen said as he stopped up short as he began really taking in the scene, glancing from the severed arm and the chunks of frozen meat all over the forest floor and then up to the now silent and stunned man and Mr. Adderson who was supposedly holding him. Both of them seemed to have decided to figuratively turn themselves into a stone statues in order to cope with all that was going on.

I turned back toward the man. He seemed to have sensed my gaze on him as this snapped him out of his stunned state as he started to panic again.

[Nnnnn.. no! I swear! I swear I won’t do anything to hurt you! We… we wouldn’t! No! Not for someone like you! I mean. No! Power! Yes! You… you are not just a normal grey elf child! You… you can! The queen! She would want someone like you! Lord Indirniri would not have given such a careless order had he known you had enough power to fight against a great fairy like me!]

Whether it was from fear or the cold, his speech was horribly slurred and his teeth were at a constant chatter as his body could not stop shaking.

[Really?] I asked. I tried to put a skeptical tone into it, but I honestly doubt my shrill little voice allowed it to come out properly at all.

[Y-yes! Really! A grey elf with power is… is an invaluable asset to us! We would… we would not have…] The man scrambled to explain.

[I am not so sure I can trust this lord Indirniri like that. If he was worried about what is best for the power of this nation, he would have allowed us to flee when he heard that we were on our way to leave the forest. Anyone with a brain could figure if we were leaving with the help of an elven magus that we would be going straight to join a Hidan tribe, and that we would be trained to fight against demons in the care of them. If he was more worried about the safety of the village, he would have assured >Nymph< that we would be brought back safe and healthy and allowed to live in the village, and then have moved to carry that out.

[Do you know what I think?] I asked. [I think that this lord Indirniri simply wanted to capture Levin and Rolwen to use for personal gain. He wanted us, the rightful birthmates of those two, dead so that he could claim them. That is the only way to explain this behavior. If he thinks like this, would he really move to spare us if he knew we were powerful?] I asked.

[Y… you…] The man’s face went pale.

[Yes, me and Asa have kept the memories from the last life we lived.] Tia jumped in with an assist. [So have Levin and Rolwen. Eirlathion thinks it has something to do with the heaven fall. This is why we are already extremely capable, and we are also not easy to fool.] She explained. I found it a little annoying that she was pouring out a lot of information without properly weighing what she got in return for it, but I still realized what she was going for.

The man’s eyes focused back on me as he processed this information. It gave his mind something more solid to grasp onto and he would no longer be under-estimating us now that this one source of fear and confusion in the situation had been resolved by Tia. A roadblock to efficient cooperation was removed.

[Y-yes. I can see that. You two are no mere children.] The man said. He looked down at his stump of an arm and hissed. I wondered if he was trying to move it. It seemed like the cold had penetrated much deeper than I had expected. Are all the muscles of his shoulder frozen too? Guess he’s going to have zero mobility in that area until it’s healed.

[S…s-so] He said through clinched teeth. [You believe that lord Indirniri is a traitor to the nation and still wishes you harm? Queen Oren would not tolerate this! She has even sent an observer. If we can contact him and tell him of the power and talent you have, lord Indiniri will be unable to harm you.]

[And how would I trust that you intend to help us in this way?] I asked.

[I swear to you again I will not do anything to harm you. That is the second time I have sworn this oath. If I give you this word one more time and I go against it, the pain of going against this oath will be taken out upon my soul.]

[This is true.] Eirlathion said. [A thrice sworn oath carries a terrible price for a fey who defies it.]

[Hmm… well then, go ahead and swear this oath again.] I told him.

[I swear that I will not do anything to harm you. I will further swear to carry out my word to see that tales of the power and talent you possess reach the observer of the queen or, lacking this, the queen herself…]