Now that Teto and I were finally reunited, the two of us stayed at the royal palace for a few days while we waited for Elnea and her servants to organize a meeting between Fauzard and his contractor’s next of kin.
On that day, there was a knock at our door; when I answered it, Elnea was standing on the other side.
“Good day to you, Chise, Teto. Is my palace to your liking?” she asked.
“It is. We went to check out your museum again yesterday.”
“The magic stones looked really yummy!” Teto piped up.
We had asked Elnea’s servants to take us to the museum inside the palace and spent the past couple of days looking at everything on display. We were only allowed to look at part of Elnea’s collection—the rest was restricted to her and her advisers. Nevertheless, what we saw was definitely impressive: elven pottery and wooden statues, taxidermied dangerous monsters, trophies crafted from magic stones, and raw amber ore unearthed from deep within the forest, to only mention a few things. Some of the art pieces on display were so confusing that neither Teto nor I understood them, while others—in particular, the magic stones—aroused Teto’s appetite so much I had to drag her away. A few pieces caught my eye, and I asked the servants where I could find similar ones to buy for my own collection. All in all, it was an enriching experience.
“I am glad to hear that. I personally have little interest in material possessions, but after two thousand years, they’ve piled up into quite a collection. Some of these items were given to me as offerings, while others were displayed in the museum by my advisers. They claimed that it was to highlight my achievements,” she explained with a chuckle.
Judging by her words, it seemed that she had been the one who had defeated all of those monsters and collected the magic stones used to create the trophies.
“I have no interest in magic stones and the like. I can offer them to you, Teto, if you so desire,” she said.
“Really?!” Teto exclaimed. “Yes, please!”
“Hold on a minute, Lady Elnea!” Althea intervened. “Those mounted monsters and magic stones are there to show off your strength and deter others from attacking you!”
Despite Elnea being a high elf and having ruled over the elves for two millennia, there were still, to this day, some elves who dared to underestimate her prowess and leadership. The taxidermied monsters and magic stone trophies on display in the palace’s museum were there to remind them that she could defeat even strong opponents with ease.
“Please don’t just start handing off the pieces in your museum to everyone you meet,” Althea said, concluding her sermon.
Teto’s shoulders dropped. “Teto is sorry for saying she wants the magic stones,” she said sheepishly.
Elnea, on the other hand, had started sulking. Her body language screamed I should be able to do what I want with my own things.
“Ahem. Could we proceed with the true reason for our visit?” Fauzard asked from the spirit lantern, interrupting Althea and Elnea’s bickering.
I decided to intervene too. “Fauzard’s right. What brings you here today, Miss Elnea? Since Fauzard is with you, I’m assuming it means that everything is ready for the meeting with his contractor’s relative.”
Elnea nodded deeply. “Indeed. She arrived in town earlier; we sent for her not long ago. She should reach the palace any minute now.”
“She has said that she would like to thank you for saving Lord Fauzard,” Althea added.
“I would also like for you two to attend our reunion. You are the ones who appeased my anger, after all,” Fauzard said.
Teto and I nodded in unison. “Sure, we’ll come.”
“We want to see your reunion with our own eyes!” Teto chirped.
“Let us proceed to the drawing room, then, shall we?” Elnea said, and we did just that.
After a short wait, a knock echoed on the door. The next instant, a petite, pale elf entered the room, escorted by a maidservant.
“Sorry to have kept you waiting. I am Rorona, the spirit sorcerer Rowell’s granddaughter,” she said, her eyes closed and her ears twitching rhythmically.
“Thank you for coming, Rorona,” Elnea said.
“Please do not mention it. If it is you beckoning me, Lady Elnea, I shall come running,” Rorona replied as she let the maidservant lead her to one of the sofas.
“As I have told you in my letter, Fauzard, the greater fire spirit your grandfather had bound himself with, has been found. There he is,” Elnea said, signaling for Fauzard to introduce himself.
“It is a pleasure meeting you, Rorona. I am your grandfather’s spirit,” he said from inside the spirit lantern.
Rorona addressed the spirit lantern directly. “It is an honor meeting you. My grandfather told me much about you.”
After that, an uncomfortable silence settled in the room. Both Fauzard and Rorona must have spent days thinking of what to tell each other, but now that they were finally face-to-face, they couldn’t find the words.
“What? After all that fuss about wanting to meet each other, you two merely sit here in silence?” Elnea interjected, breaking the tension. “Oh well. You two can discuss when you are alone, I suppose. Now, Rorona,” she said, turning towards the elven girl.
Rorona let out a little “Huh?” as Elnea’s words snapped her back to reality. “Ah, um, what is it, Lady Elnea?”
“These two here are the ones who released Fauzard from his seal and alleviated his anger. You may hand them the spirit tags,” Elnea said.
Rorona nodded and stood up, bowing slowly before Teto and me. “It is an honor to meet you. My name is Rorona. I work as a priestess in the forest.”
“I’m Chise the witch. It’s nice to meet you.”
“And Teto is Teto! Lady Witch’s guardian!”
I held out my right hand for a handshake and Rorona did the same, but she missed my hand repeatedly, grasping at thin air.
“H-Huh? That’s weird. I cannot feel your mana signature properly, so I cannot shake your hand.”
“Ah, my bad. I usually keep my mana signature concealed.”
I released a bit of mana; this time, Rorona got hold of my hand with ease.
“Are you visually impaired, Miss Rorona?” I asked.
“Yes. I’ve been blind since birth, but I can feel mana and spirits, so it is not usually that inconvenient,” she replied with a smile before shaking hands with Teto.
“I asked her to make spirit tags for you and Teto as a thank-you for saving Fauzard,” Elnea said.
“Spirit tags?” I repeated, trying to make sense of what it could be. “What are they?”
At my words, Rorona took out two wooden tags wrapped in red cloth from her bag and set them down on the table.
“Lady Elnea told me to make these for you two when she informed me of Lord Fauzard’s return,” she explained.
She explained that these wooden tags were magic items made out of wood chips that fell from the World Tree and were further enchanted with magical seals.
“Most outsiders have a difficult time in our forest due to the spirits’ interference,” Elnea explained. “However, if you have one of these spirit tags on your person, you will be able to bypass them.”
She added that all we had to do was release some of our own mana onto the tags to activate them. They were exclusive to a single individual, so no one else would be able to use ours.
A bit like guild cards, I thought, as Teto and I each picked up a wooden tag and passed some mana into them. Instantly, they changed color and texture; they still weighed the same as before, but they looked and felt like metal.
“Congratulations. Now you two can move about the forest freely,” Elnea said with a mischievous smile.
I could easily discern the meaning behind her words.
“So we can come visit you whenever we want, right?”
“You have found me out.”
Now that we had the spirit tags, we could use our transfer gates to pop by the elves’ kingdom and come see Elnea without having to go through the whole ordeal of crossing the forest. Considering she was a fellow immortal, she wouldn’t be disappearing anytime soon, meaning we’d have plenty of occasions to visit.
“Lady Elnea, if you keep handing these to outsiders, you will put us in danger,” Althea scolded her.
“But they shall have a much simpler time coming to help us if we ever need it,” Elnea retorted, dismissing Althea’s concerns with a wave of her hand.
“Still! I beg of you, please be more cautious!”
Rorona listened to their exchange, an amused smile on her face.
We exchanged some more pleasantries before Rorona left with Fauzard’s spirit lantern. A few days later, we were told that the two of them finally managed to have a conversation about Rowell, Rorona’s grandfather, and that Fauzard decided to forge a new contract with Rorona, swearing to protect her.