“This place is like a ghost town...” I said.
Our past trips to Bindewald had been anything but peaceful: first a bunch of shrieking ladies, then feasts and ditter matches to entertain Dunkelfelger’s knights. Now it was barren land almost entirely devoid of greenery.
“As expected,” Ferdinand replied. “The estate was closed, and the servants moved to a neighboring city. It will remain this way until you assign a new giebe.”
I couldn’t do that until after the Archduke Conference, where the Zent would formally recognize me as the new Aub Ahrensbach. Well, I could, but people would view it as a massive slight against Eglantine. It was much safer to wait.
“Still...” I said. “If we don’t appoint someone soon, the commoners will suffer the consequences.” Spring Prayer and the Harvest Festival needed to be performed and noble tax collectors had to be sent out or the commoners wouldn’t be able to pay their taxes. It wouldn’t be their fault, but they would face punishment nonetheless.
“I shall prepare several viable candidates for your review after the Archduke Conference. For now, form your highbeast and start moving the attendants and chefs.”
“Right.”
I made Rainbow Lessy and started to transform him, trying to picture the inside of a large camper. To ensure maximum comfort, I added as many beds as we had people.
“How’s this?” I asked when I was done, showing off my double-decker-bus-sized creation. “Now everyone can sleep peacefully.”
Ferdinand tapped his temple and made further demands. He wanted separate floors for the men and women, a separate space for the servants, higher ceilings, and more width than even the largest camper could provide. By the time I was done, Lessy looked more like a house.
“Ferdinand, I don’t think this even counts as a (vehicle) anymore...”
Was this seriously still a highbeast? I was starting to wonder where people drew the line when Ferdinand gave a contented nod and said, “As abnormal as it looks, it should serve its purpose.”
“Abnormal”? Hah! The pot’s calling the kettle black!
“Begin preparing food and making the beds,” Ferdinand instructed the others. “If we need water, there is a well nearby. Rozemyne and I shall take our guards and start restoring the land.”
I put down feystones to ensure my highbeast wouldn’t disappear, then took the chalice and climbed onto Ferdinand’s white lion, leaving the chefs and attendants behind. We would spend the morning replenishing the northeastern towns around the summer estate, then work our way south after lunch.
“Let us hurry to the first farming town,” I said once we were airborne.
“Not yet,” Ferdinand replied, taking us past the one closest to us. “We should prioritize land away from the settlements.”
“But why? The towns come first, don’t they?” The best way to improve the harvest was to restore the land closest to the farmers. It didn’t make sense to do anything else.
“Not this time. If we focus on the farming towns, the mana will attract hordes of starving feybeasts. We should replenish the most rural areas first if we want to avoid casualties.”
“Ah,” I said, finally understanding him. The feybeasts were as famished as anyone. “In that case, let us hurry to the forests and mountains. My mana’s starting to spill out of the chalice.”
Ferdinand peered down to see, then immediately sped up.
As soon as we reached our destination, I poured some of the rainbow liquid out of my chalice. The earth below us darkened, and patches of green sprouted all around us as the land returned to its original appearance. My normal mana wouldn’t have been able to accomplish this—not without a prayer to the gods. It would only have enlarged the hungry feybeasts and feyplants.
Divine power sure is something else.
The changing scenery rendered me speechless. I wanted nothing more than to keep admiring it, but my arms soon started to tremble.
“Uh-oh. Ferdinand... My arms are tired from holding the chalice.”
“Endure it for a little while longer—until fourth bell.”
“I’ll do my best, but I might drop it.”
Dyeing an instrument with one’s mana made it feel almost weightless, but the chalice was still a nightmare to hold. It was surprisingly large—about eighty centimeters tall—and slowly sapped every ounce of my stamina.
Though I managed to hold out until fourth bell—thanks, in part, to Ferdinand—I wanted to scream that I’d reached my limit. My hands quivered, and my already weak grip strength was now practically nonexistent. Our trip had drained some of my mana and restored vast swathes of land, but we would absolutely need to rethink our approach.
We returned to Lessy for lunch. Hartmut had gotten back ahead of us and was regaling the attendants with an overly animated speech.
“It was extraordinary! The descent of a true goddess, without question! The divine avatar shone brighter than the sun, exuding the power of the gods, and quenched the barren earth with her omni-elemental mana. Geduldh wet the soil, Bluanfah visited with a profusion of sprouts, and Anwachs grew them with vig—”
“Hartmut, is this really the time?” Lieseleta interjected. “Lady Rozemyne needs to rest.”
“If you will excuse me, Hartmut...” Gretia said. “Though I am eager to know what my lady has been up to, serving her comes first.”
My attendants escaped with practiced ease, lightly chastising Hartmut before getting straight to work. Sergius wasn’t so fortunate; his eyes darted all over the place as he stumbled through a one-on-one conversation with the raving scholar.
“Ferdinand, should we save him?” I asked.
“Justus is approaching them now. We can leave the matter to him.”
Ferdinand was right—Justus was already marching to his fellow retainer’s rescue. He took the plates Sergius was carrying... and returned to us without a word.
“That wasn’t saving him...” I muttered. “That was leaving him to die.”
“An attendant’s priority is serving his lord.”
Right... Stay strong, Sergius.
Cheering him on in my heart, I turned to the plates Lieseleta had set in front of me. Steam billowed from the freshly made food.
Lieseleta leaned closer to me, inspecting my face. “You look tired, Lady Rozemyne.”
“Carrying the chalice was exhausting. Could we fasten it to my stomach before I set out again? Then I should need only to rest my hands against it.”
“Fasten it... to your stomach?” Lieseleta paused—she must have been imagining it—then gave Ferdinand a queer look. I continued to explain before he could shoot me down.
“It won’t look elegant, but what other choice do we have? I’m physically incapable of using it gracefully.”
“Yes, this morning made that clear...” Ferdinand mused. “How fares your mana? Replenishing the land must have worked wonders for you if you are proposing something so crude.”
Was I the only one who didn’t care about elegance? This was supposed to be an emergency—that was why we’d put naming my new city on the back burner.
“Less abundant than before,” I replied. “If we keep up our current pace and account for how much mana I regain each night, I should run out in... five days.”
“Five days... Have you forgotten that a single morning completely drained your stamina?”
“Accounting for that is your job, not mine.”
Ferdinand could glare for as long as he wanted. He was my head doctor, and it was his belief that replenishing the duchy was the best way to drain my mana. I was just following orders.
“In other words, we need a less tiring method...”
Ferdinand pondered while he ate, searching for another solution. He must not have found one, though, as I spent that afternoon with the chalice tied to my stomach, restoring the land as we had done that morning.
“I’m so tired...” I groaned.
Over the course of the afternoon, I’d poured mana into the rest of Bindewald and the province of Kannawitz to the south. Now I was slumped over the white lion taking us back to my Pandahouse, too exhausted to even sit up. I would probably have fallen by now if not for Ferdinand acting as my backrest.
“It is your own fault for getting so excited about Kannawitz,” he replied. “You expended stamina for no good reason.”
“My fault? How was I meant to stay calm when the province has such a vast ocean?”
“You have seen the ocean countless times since coming to Ahrensbach.”
“From the castle, sure, but never up close. And thanks to my divine power, the once murky waters turned clear blue and sparkling. Fish leapt out of the brine! It doesn’t even compare to anything I’ve seen before.”
The fishermen at sea had rejoiced and waved at us from their boats. I’d returned the gesture and given the province even more mana as a show of my appreciation. Ferdinand was right that I’d neglected to preserve my stamina, but why couldn’t I celebrate the birth of my fish paradise?
We returned to Rainbow Lessy and got ready for dinner. The retainers who had accompanied us gave Ella and Hugo our spoils: fresh fish we’d purchased from the fishermen. I planned to stash the ingredients in a time-stopping tool and enjoy them on the road.
“Here you are, Lady Rozemyne. And this is for you, Lord Ferdinand.”
As archducal family members, Ferdinand and I ate first. Once we were done, some of our knights would take their meals in another room while our other retainers continued to serve and guard, awaiting their turn. I tried to eat quickly so as not to delay them.
My hastily devoured meal soon turned into after-dinner tea, which I sipped while waiting for my retainers to finish eating. Eckhart and Laurenz were the first to rejoin us. The attendants refreshed our drinks one last time before leaving to have some food.
Lounging on one of my Pandahouse’s sofas, I took another drink of tea. I waited for Ferdinand to do the same before launching my attack.