I’m a Human among Fey

After some time of us hugging and crying, Hildi starts moving again towards the end of the hallway and into a room with a huge bath. It seems like AbBEE has been preparing everything for us, since the pool sized bath is already filled with warm water and herbs from the fey realm. According to Hildi, they have some mana regenerative properties. Hildi then sits me down on a chair, takes off my dress and washes my hair and face for me. Next, after undressing herself, she carries me into the bath.

"Eew I hate the feeling of my bandages getting soaked."

"I know…But it's not safe to take them off outside of the herbal water."

Hildi then starts slowly taking off my bandages from top to bottom.

"Oooh look Sammy, they're still a little scarred but your arms seem completely healed now!"

"Woah…The last time they only had patches of skin regrown. Regeneration sure is fascinating."

Hildi continues unwrapping me down to my navel and mumbles, "Hmm…Your back is still patchy but there is definitely more skin on it than the last time."

"That's good I guess…"

She finishes with the lower half of my body while I try to look away.

"So…How bad is it?" I ask her.

She answers slightly apprehensive, "Well…It's still not looking good but at least your bones are now completely covered in flesh. There are only a few parts where it looks like chunks are missing and the area around your hip is starting to regrow skin."

"No wonder I still can't move them…AbBEE could you please put in the bubbly soap? I don't want to be able to see the hurt parts of my body…It frightens me."

"Of course my Lady!"

She then pours in some soap until the bubbles cover the top layer of water.

"It's safe to look now, my Lady!"

Slowly looking down, I take a sigh of relief as I can't see any of the wounded parts. "I appreciate your work AbBEE."

"And I very much appreciate serving you, my Lady!"

Floating around in the herbal water is very relaxing, it feels great to not feel the bandages all over me.

"Oh! By the way, Hildi. Who did you end up sponsoring?"

"I chose the second son of some provincial noble. He seemed the most incompetent."

"If he's incompetent, why'd you choose him?"

"I chose him because he is incompetent. He is rash, prone to anger and immensely arrogant without having great combat skills, while also having the status to be able to rise high in the order through betraying his comrades and abusing his status. With him in power, the knights will be severely crippled."

"And that's a good thing why…?"

"Because knights hunt Fey like us. Their iron armor and weaponry makes it especially hard to fight them."

"They do!? Wait a second…So were the ones that killed the druids knights?"

"Most likely."

"But their armor was different! They had more furry armor, not the shiny one like the knights we met…"

"That might just be their winter armor."

Feeling suddenly really anxious, I ask, "So you're saying there's a chance the knights that stopped the druid's ritual are in this city!?"

"It's possible…But we need more intel. I have also been trying to find an informant about druids in the city but it seems that news about the death of the druids in the forest has already spread, so they're all under high alert and have gone into hiding."

"But that's good right!? I mean if we find one, we could probably find a way to give me back my old bo…Or maybe we should just give up."

"What do you mean Sammy?"

Playing around with some foam, while avoiding her face, I answer, "Well…This body isn't so bad after all and if I stay like this I can keep being with you for a very long time. But if I go back to being a human we will only have maybe sixty to eighty more years together before I die and that's like barely any time in the eyes of someone like you…"

Putting her arm around me, she says, "Hmm…Assuming you really are human, which for the record I don't believe is the case, there are ways to make you live longer. The Humanoid tribe originates from humans after all, so it might even be possible to turn you Fey even if I'm not sure how. And even if it might not be easy, it's still better than with how your body is now. If something bad were to happen to you right now you would end up just being a soul stuck in a corpse until that curse is lifted, in fact this already nearly happened."

"If that's the case then I guess we should still look for a cure…So when all this is over wh-"

"Damn it!" Hildi says angrily while suddenly getting out of the bath.

"What's wrong Hildi?"

"Someone sent assassins for us. Sammy, you stay here. AbBEE there is a crystal ball in the cupboard. Focus it on me, if I die or get captured get Sammy out of here and bring her to ElBEEzabeth, there is a secret passage from here to the outside, use it if that happens.
I'm going to seal the way into the bath from the outside."
Then, out of a hidden compartment, she takes out her Silent Leaf armor as well as some weapons, puts them on and runs outside into the manor.

"AbBEE, you can see her in that ball right? Show it to me as well, that's an order!"

"Of course, my Lady!"

AbBEE hands me the crystal ball while she starts bandaging me. Looking into it, I can see Hildi, she is currently moving upstairs out of the basement. She hides behind one of the curtains near the entrance as the front door opens and three men, wearing dark clothing and holding daggers, sneak into the manor.
Hildi seems to pick up some sort of stick…No, more like a pipe, and puts in what looks like a dart. Quickly repeating it for 3 different pipes using her four arms. Next she, in quick succession, blows through them, the assassins seemingly noticing some sting around their necks before falling over. She then starts crawling up the wall and above the entrance door. When two more assassins enter through it, she jumps down on them, choking them out with one pair of arms and holding their mouths shut with the other. She takes out another dart and pierces both of their necks while they're on the ground, repeating that with the ones she hit from a far.
Next, she climbs up the wall to the first floor, goes through the hallway and stops at my door. She takes out some sort of bottle, lights it and opens the door just enough to throw the bottle in. There seems to be some smoke coming out of the room and Hildi goes back down to ground level, waits a few second and climbs back up, peeking through the creak of the door.
Afterwards, she enters the room, there are three assassins lying on the ground. As she goes to pull out some more darts, one of them suddenly stands up and charges her, dagger in hand. Hildi also charges toward him but right before she could get hit, she dodges, takes his arm and puts her knee in front of his legs causing him to roll over to the ground with his arm twisted behind his back. She then stabs the dart into the back of his neck, causing him to go unconscious. Hildi repeats that for the others as well. Once she's done, using three of her arms, she picks them up off the ground and moves back to the foyer. She seems noticeably more relaxed. She then picks out what looks like a seashell with her fourth arm and from AbBEE's pocket I can hear her voice saying, "Threat eliminated. For safety reasons stay where you are for now but it seems the problem is solved."

I excitedly say, "AbBEE give me your phone please!"

"You mean, this?" she points at the shell.

"Yes!"

"Alright my Lady, here you go."

"Hildi, can you hear me!?"

"Sammy? Is everything okay?"

"Yeah, I just saw everything, that was awesome! You even flipped that one guy over that charged you!"

"Wait, you saw all that?"

"Yeah the moment you left I ordered AbBEE to let me watch too."

She sighs and answers, "Of course you did."

"So, are they dead?"

"No, they're knocked out, I'm going to interrogate them first to find out who sent them and why."

"Are you going to kill them after?"

"Well…I know that you have a lot of sympathies with humans but they tried to kill us and they saw my hybrid form so most lik-"

"Oh no I was just asking because I wanted to eat them."

"What? I think I misunderstood you, did you say you wanted to eat them?"

"No you understood right."

"But…I thought you liked humans a lot?"

"I do but criminals like them are scum and deserve worse than death."

She sounds concerned when she asks, "I…Are you sure? I mean I don't have a problem with it but this seems a little out of character for you, Sammy. I don't want you to do anything you'll regret later."

"When I was lying in bed unable to move after I was burned I had a lot to think about and I came to the realization that some people don't deserve to be treated like humans when they do abominable things like killing others out of greed or pleasure."

"Uhm…But you do know that I kill people for money, right?"

"Yeah, but you don't get any joy out of it. You do it because you were born into it and because it's helping the country."

"Hmm…I think I understand. I'll let you eat them but not until I'm done interrogating them, okay?"

"Yeah, sounds good."

"Can you give the seashell back to AbBEE now, so I can discuss things with her?"

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"Sure! Here you go AbBEE."

AbBEE then takes the seashell and starts talking into it "Yeah…Uhuh…No I didn't notice anything different about her…They're applied yes…No she's still in the bath…Alright I will tell her…Goodbye Miss."

"What'd she say?"

"She says it shouldn't take too long for her to interrogate them because they're all humans and have no obvious connection to anyone dangerous but we should still stay here until she comes to get us just in case."

"Okay, just tell me when she's done."

"Of course my Lady. But, if I may ask, are you sure you're doing okay?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well…As my Lady's mother already said, you seem a little…Different than usual."

"How so?"

"Just a bit earlier you showed hesitation about killing a deer for sustenance and now you have no problem with killing humans, despite seemingly valuing humans above deer."

I answer with a smile, "Oh, that's because the deer is innocent and that scum isn't. I also need to heal, so I stop being a burden to those around me and from what you told me, the average human has more mana in them than the average wild animal."

"I see…I recommend some rest then until Miss Hildegard returns. Is that agreeable to you my Lady?"

"Sure."

AbBEE then gets me out of the bath, onto a bench, puts her hands on my wet bandages and chants, "Dry like a summer day, remove water from this vessel. Repel!" The water from the bandages, all in one go, splurts out of it, dripping on the floor and making my bandages dry and comfortable again. Next, AbBEE prepares a pillow for me made from some towels. I then close my eyes to take a little nap.

Feeling my shoulder slowly being shaken, I wake up to Hildi saying, "Hey…How're you doing?"

"Good…So, how did it go?"

"I got the information out of them. Turns out they were sent to burglarize our home and kidnap you by the fur merchant we met a few days ago. But it's alright now, I ended him and anyone involved in his schemes."

"So we're not in danger anymore?"

"Not from him or any of his associates at least."

I let out a sigh of relief and say, "So, did you bring the food?"

She looks concerned, "About that, I just wanted to ask you one last time if you're okay with eating these humans."

"Sure am."

"Okay then…I'll bring them in, if you want to stop at any time that's completely okay with me."

She steps outside the bath as I sit myself up on the bench, yawning and rubbing my eyes. Hildi then comes back in her hybrid form with two gagged and tied up assassins under each of her arms and drops them down at my feet. AbBEE picks up one of them from the ground, who is trying to wiggle out of her grip with no avail, and presents his neck towards me. His eyes looking at me with disdain.

Giving him a smug smile, I taunt, "Oh, what's up? Angry now are we? Poor you, you must have thought this was such an easy job. Break into a home with two young women and a cripple. What could go wrong, right? Well, I'll show you what can go wrong!" I say as I bite into his neck, draining him dry as I watch him struggle to get away. When I'm done with him, he looks like a mummy, just a dried out husk of a man.

"Next!"

AbBEE brings another one to me, he has a scared look on his face.

"Why do you look so scared, princess? I am just a cripple, right? You look like the one that broke the quickest under Hildis interrogation, just look at you, you're barely messed up. A few bruises, a broken finger or two…Let me ask you this, do you know what it feels like to be dismembered? Of course you don't. You gave up before that, didn't you? Pathetic."

Biting into him. I drain his life from him but manage to stop myself right before he would die, I then look him in the eyes and say, "Now this is what it feels like to be on the brink of death, bitch."
There's a single tear coming from his eye, most likely because most of the moisture has already left his body.
I then bite into him once more, throwing him away like an empty juice box after he takes his last breath.

"Next!"

AbBEE brings out a slightly more heavyset man with a long beard.

"Zehahaha, zehahahahaha! Boss!? What brings you here to this little princess' castle!? All tied up like that…Don't tell me you gift wrapped yourself for me? How thoughtful of you! Zehahaha, Zehahahaha!" I don't even notice I bit into him when I look down and he's already drained dry.

Then, before me, lies my dad, his face of anger and disappointment just like usual, "What's with that pathetic face, dad? Don't tell me I'm still not good enough for you? I've toughened up so much that I survived being burned alive and yet you still think I'm weak don't you? Zehahaha…There's just no pleasing you is there? But you know what? This time you're the one about to endure, Zehahaha ZEHAHAHAHA!"

Opening my eyes, I am in an unfamiliar room. Next to me is another bed with Hildi sleeping in it. Did I have a nightmare? Man… My legs are itchy…Wait a second!

"Hildi!"

As if struck by lightning, Hildi jolts awake and moves over to my bed. "Are you okay Sammy!? How're you feeling?"

"Hildi! I can feel my legs again!" I say tears streaming down my face.

Hildi hugs me and answers, "That's wonderful Sammy but are you feeling alright otherwise?"

"Yeah, I had this weird nightmare about assassins coming after us while I was bathing."

"That wasn't a dream honey, that happened two weeks ago. When you ate the bandits, you started hallucinating and when you were done, you fell asleep and didn't wake up until now. Your body must have needed that rest to heal."

"Wait…Two weeks!?"

Slightly tightening her hug, she whispers, "Yes but don't worry, mommy has been watching over you the whole time, you were never alone. You even had that human friend come visit you."

"Morgan was here!?"

"Yes, he came here a week ago. He came by a few more times after that to ask about you. He started his training as a squire now just like you wanted."

"Is he happy?"

"He seems concerned about you but otherwise I'd say he's determined and takes his work seriously."

"That's good but…How have you been holding up, Hildi?"

Looking like she hasn't slept in awhile, she answers in a slightly sad tone, "Well…I was very concerned about you as well. But at this point, I know you're prone to going unconscious for long periods of time to recuperate. What made it bad was how long you've been unconscious. After about four days, I started growing quite concerned but in the end it doesn't really matter because you're alright."

"I love you mommy."

"I love you too, Sammy."

Out of nowhere, I can hear Pavels voice saying, "Seems like a lot happened while I was gone. You two really got close, huh?"

"Pavel! Is that you?!? Where are you?"

"On the foot of your bed."

Taking my eyes off Hildi, I look at the foot end of my bed where Pavel is lying on his side, resting his head on his fist.

"Woah…Pavel you got a lot bigger! You went from soda can to toddler size!"

"Yeah…Now you're able to manifest about a fourth of my actual size."

"So I'm already quarter the way there!?"

"Not quite, because I'm a three dimensional being, the mana needed for me to manifest grows exponentially not linearly."

"So if you're about three times as big as before that means…My mana increased by twenty seven times in a few weeks?"

"That's about right, yeah."

"Soo…Is that good? Is that a lot?"

"Hmm…For your age, it's practically unheard of. But that's also because you got the queen's gift and you've been in the process of dying for almost two months. Your body has been forced to use up all of your mana the moment it is created, causing your mana regeneration to go into overdrive which in turn tells your body to also increase the vessel for all that mana so you have a place to store it once you aren't dying anymore."

Feeling happy, I ask, "So basically I just went through the best possible mana workout imaginable?"

"Oh no, not at all. You went through one of the worst ones imaginable. There were hundreds if not thousands of times where you almost died. Both Hildegard and I had to infuse our own mana into you so you wouldn't die on a few occasions. These results are not from a 'workout' they're a byproduct of you being in intensive care for so long."

"Hmm…I guess that's true. But since you're here now does that mean I'm healed?"

"I don't know if you're healed but your body has at least been producing significantly more mana than you're using up so it's safe for me to be here again."

Giving him a smile, I say, "Well, either way, I'm really pleased by your actions Pavel. You could have just left me to die and go back to your job but you didn't. I am very glad I met you."

"Yeah… About that." He stands up, walks over to me and grabs my cheek, pulling on it HARD, "Don't you ever, EVER dare to do something so stupid again as sacrificing yourself for others. Do you have any idea how worried your mother and I were throughout this whole ordeal!?"

"Pffft, hahaha you sound like an angry parent."

"Look, I might not be your father but you're still a child and I'm a royal knight. And even if we do not have a pact, I'm still a guardian of yours and I'm certainly not going to watch you go through something like that again. Understood?"

"Yes, Sir…"

"Good, shall we change your bandages then to see how much you healed?"

"No, Hildi, AbBEE and I are gonna change bandages, you're not allowed in."

"Why not?"

"Because we get naked in there! I don't want you looking at us while we're undressed."

Pavel gives me a smug smirk and says, "And why is that? I doubt Hildegard or Miss AbBEE mind me being there. And since the women aren't bothered by it there shouldn't be a problem right?"

"I'm a girl too, you know! And I am very much bothered by it, okay?"

Pavel then looks at me and breaks out into laughter, "Xaxaxaxa, you really did change, huh? Fine, I respect your decision. I'll be waiting outside."

"Can we go change my bandages now, Hildi?"

"Of course we can, Sammy."

Hildi then picks me up from my bed and carries me downstairs with Pavel following after us. Once we're in the bath, she sits me down and washes my hair, while letting in the water and herbs into the tub. Afterwards, she carries me into the water and slowly starts unwrapping me.

"Woah, look Hildi. My arms are completely healed, there is no scarring whatsoever."

"Your back is also completely healed. No scaring there either."

"That's great!"

She then starts unwrapping the rest of my body.

"So…How is it looking?"

"Your legs are still a little scarred but otherwise everything seems fine. Can you try to wiggle your toes a little?"

I try to wiggle them but it's a lot harder than I imagined.

"Looks like you can move them fine, how does it feel?"

"Kinda weird, it's a lot harder to move them like I want them too than normal."

"That's to be expected. You haven't been able to feel your legs for two months. It's going to take some time for you to adjust again but since your muscles regrew and didn't atrophy, you should be able to learn to walk again soon."

"So I don't need the bandages anymore!?"

"No I don't think you do."

"Really!? That's great!!! Hey Pavel!"

"Yeah!?" He yells from outside the hallway.

"I'm almost completely healed!"

"That's great! So are you done in there!?"

"Almost!"

Excitedly, I go to the edge of the bath and try to get out but before I can do so Hildi grabs me.

"What do you think you're doing Sammy?"

"Ehm, getting out of the bath and dressed by myself?"

"Honey…You can barely move your toes, if you try and get up alone while you're all soaped up you'll just hurt yourself."

"Sigh Fine…Can you help me dry myself then so I can try walking?"

"Sure."

Hildi gets out of the bath, dries my legs and offers me her arms to help myself, if I need them. I try to stand up without her help at first and nearly fall over as my legs buckle under my weight but thankfully Hildi manages to catch me in time.

"See, try going a little more slowly. It will take some practice but I'm sure together we can get you to stand today."
She offers me her hand again and this time I try standing up while putting some of my weight on her and I actually manage to stand up straight, even though my legs are shaking heavily.

"Very good Sammy, now try to really stretch your legs, try pushing your feet against the ground as hard as you can."

"O-okay," I do as she says and after some trying, I manage to make the shaking stop.

"Look, mommy I did it! I did it!"

"Yes, very good. Now let's try this again while letting go of my arms." She slowly lets go of my arms and moves a little bit back.

"W-wait Hildi. I'm gonna fall if you do that!"

"You'll be fine, I'm still here and can catch you if I need to. Just use that confidence from before and you'll be fine."

Hildi then fully lets go of my arms and even though I start shaking a bit in my legs again, I keep on standing.

"I'm doing it Hildi!"

"Very good, Sammy! Now try putting one foot forward."

Trying to take one step forward, I look down at my feet and slowly move one forward but then feel like I'm about to fall over right before Hildi catches me.

"Let's try this again, this time look at me and not your feet, okay?"

"Okay…"

Following her advice I just look at her reassuring face and take a step forward.

"Very good Sammy! Keep going!"

I take one more step, then another and another with Hildi slowly walking backwards. I make it about halfway across the room before fatigue sets in and when my legs feel like they're about to give out soon, Hildi picks me up and says, "You were doing great! I'm so proud of you! If we practice like this a little bit everyday you'll be able to walk or even run again in no time! Now let me help you get dressed, that must have been exhausting."