As I ran across an open field, Astria was chasing after me, throwing out spells in an attempt to knock me down. However, I was able to avoid most of her attacks. Once or twice, I struck with my sword, cutting her spell in two. This especially frustrated her, as she had no clue how I was doing it. In her experience, such a thing should have been impossible.

The other issue was that I was moving far too fast. She wasn’t anything like Celeste, who could move like the wind. In fact, she was probably the slowest a fairy could be. As she chased after me, she did everything she could to keep up. She was even huffing as her wings beat to keep up with my speed. This also irritated her, and so she was even more wasteful with her spells. I was fine if she tired herself out throwing useless spells though. It wasn’t like I had anything riding on victory here.

I finally reached the mana spring, and I could see what was going on. The few remaining golems that Terra had built appeared to be under her control. They appeared to build a palace. That palace was catching the majority of the mana shooting out. As for the mana spring, it was built at a very distinct angle. In fact, it wasn’t natural at all. It looked like someone had bored a hole at that angle.

“What is this… this is tapped into the fairy spring?”

I began to realize what was happening. This wasn’t a new source of mana, this was the old source of mana, the fairy spring. Astria, for whatever reason, had bored a hole from the side, mining the mana reservoir and stealing it from the city of Chalm to use for her uses!

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“She doesn’t have the right to use it anyway!” Astria snapped. “I was here first! I built it! I wouldn’t allow her to destroy everything I built! Hey… where are you going?”

I had already switched directions. This time, I was heading toward the palace. Over the palace were hundreds of fairies. They were dancing around right where the mana was splashing, likely absorbing the mana energy. However, they were full size like this, and thus instead of looking cute, it made the entire palace look foreboding.

I slowed finally as I got a view of a line of beds. The wall hadn’t been finished yet, so I was able to look right in. There, lying on the beds, was a line of little girls. Faeries gathering the spray of mana came down and occasionally showered mana on the children. The entire palace seemed to be built to gather all of the mana and dump it on these children.

This was something I didn’t truly grasp. I had no clue what Astria was trying to do with the children. However, some of them were crying, and a few looked genuinely unwell.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

The chasing Astria stopped again as I addressed her once more. She gave a dark grin.

“Behold, my future army. It doesn’t work on adults, but children are still pure enough. If you shower them with mana, their bodies will eventually break down, and they can form new bodies, mana bodies”

“You… you’re turning them into fairies?” I let in a breath.

“Clever, isn’t it?”

My hand tightened on Alysia so hard that my knuckles turned white.

“Deek.” Alysia tried to soothe me.

As soon as I left, Astria had fled the city, conquered a small piece of land, turned my citizens into food for her fairy army, kidnapped their children to turn them into fairies, and cut off all of her ties to me. I had wanted to see things to the end. I did. Now, I was very angry.