World of Women - World of Women – V5 – Chapter 19

It was becoming cold enough that even my spell wasn’t enough. Casting spells continuously was exhausting. There was a mental tax from using mana nonstop, and it wasn’t like I had been practicing that skill to the limit very often given my lifestyle. I had a throbbing headache, and the night was only getting colder.

I realized I had miscalculated many things. First of all, I had expected us to be quickly rescued. I only expected to be waiting a few hours. However, time passed and no rescues came. I kept telling myself it’d just be a little longer, but now that time had passed and I possessed even less energy. My second miscalculation was how long the heat would remain. I was producing heat much like a space heater, blowing it out of my hands. It was enough to keep us warm temporarily, but it was ultimately a massive waste of mana.

I could have wasted that energy making a fire, although I didn’t because there was no area here that wasn’t under feet of snow. I could have also made an igloo or something similar to hold in the heat. Heck, I could have picked up my daughter and flown out of the mountain with the amount of time and energy I had wasted. However, that would have exposed the true extent of my magical ability, something I had hidden from the world for years.

Yet, I had done none of those things, partially because I didn’t think I’d have to, and partially because my daughter had been hurt. She cringed whenever she moved, and I was worried her neck or spine could be damaged as well. If I picked her up, she might have had even worse injuries. It was too late to worry about it now though.

“Wh-where are you going?” Raven asked in a panic as I finally gave up producing heat and stood up.

My knees and butt were ice-cold. Since the heat was coming out of my hands, most of it had been used to keep Raven warm. Some of the body heat from her rose and was enough to keep me from freezing, but I had all but ignored by knees and butt sitting in the snow. Now, they stung painfully as I finally started to use them after countless hours of inactivity.

“We can’t wait here any longer.” I declared. “We need to find shelter.”

I didn’t believe either of us could survive a trip down the mountain, and I didn’t know how to build an igloo on the spot. My magic was too depleted to do it anyway, and I didn’t like the idea of being buried in snow. It’d only make the chances of finding us worse.

“You’re not leaving me, are you?” Her voice was trembling, and not specifically because it was cold.

“No, I’m going to have to carry you,” I responded.

“The pain…” She touched her abdomen absent-mindedly.

I slapped my hands together, causing her to jump slightly and then wince. “I can do something about that.”

I could heal wounds too, but broken bones were different than skin. I could even heal a broken bone, but if it wasn’t set right, then it would heal wrong. I didn’t want to risk healing my daughter only for her bones to be set wrong. That could cause even more trouble down the line. Furthermore, it was difficult to heal when I didn’t know what was wrong. Magic healing wasn’t a one-size-fits-all spell like people imagined. Didn’t spells accomplish different things, and if you weren’t careful, you could kill someone just like if you gave them the wrong medicine.

In my case, I was going to cast a spell that inhibited the pain. I’d still need to be careful, but at least she wouldn’t be in too much pain when I carried her. After imagining the runes in my mind, I put my hands on her abdomen. She flinched for a moment, but since she couldn’t move within the snow and it already hurt, she quickly allowed my hands to touch there. Her knitted eyebrows slowly relaxed as the pain relief set in.

“You couldn’t have done that sooner?” She demanded.

“I don’t like using such things,” I responded. “Pain relief can become addictive.”

“Then why even carry a rune like that on you?”

“Huh?” I asked, giving her a strange look. “What do you mean?”

“I understood why you had the heat rune. People bring those just to warm up while they are waiting. However, if you don’t want to be tempted to use pain relief runes, why carry them,” she reached out and grabbed my hand, turning it over and looking surprised. “Where is it?”

I realized what she was thinking. In this world, magic required a magical formula, and those magical formulas were written in geometric shapes called runes. To activate a rune, someone either drew one out or memorized it and then sent magic through. Memorizing it was difficult because not only did you need to remember the shape, but you needed to remember the shape as you drew it. It was a bit like the difference between drawing with trace and drawing freehand. Anyone could trace an image, but only those with skill could do it freehand.

Most people around me knew about my magic ability. However, those who were people around me every day. They either had been with me during major events in my life or had simply gotten used to the little things I did for convenience. However, my daughter had kept her distance from me, and there were so many rumors and tales that she likely didn’t believe the majority of them. The result was that she assumed I had to be using a rune to cast the spells rather than doing them in my mind.

If she knew that I wasn’t memorizing existing spells, but creating them myself on the fly, I was certain that she’d never believe it. I put all of that aside and pulled my hands from her confused grip and then brought them under her. Raven let out a cry of surprise as I lifted her out of the snow. She started to fight but then seemed to realize that it was futile. The spell had also numbed some of her body, making it difficult for her to move.

It was dark out, but the snow reflected the moonlight, making visibility pretty good. That was one of the reasons I was so vexed we hadn’t been discovered yet. After a brief look, I couldn’t decide what direction was better, so I started heading for an area that looked rocky. I was looking for a cave. At least a cave could hold some of the heat I produced and get us out of the biting wind.

Raven didn’t say anything as I trudged through the snow. She seemed to have fallen into a sullen silence, almost like she was upset I was saving her. I didn’t care though. I was her father, and if I couldn’t protect her, then I didn’t have the right to call myself that. This was something that no amount of being in this world was going to change. I’d never be the kind of man to walk away from my family.

For a while, all that could be heard was the sound of my crunching boots and our staggered breaths.

As I left the tree-laden trail, I found the area by the rocks was pretty barren, no plants or anything. As I had feared, we were too close to the summit. It would be an hour before we found a cave and a few more hours after that until it was warm enough that we could sleep. We had been walking for less than ten minutes, and it was already hard to move forward, but I kept plodding on, not allowing myself to rest until Raven was safe. The ski boots were all I had on, and they weren’t the best for trudging through this soft snow.

I started to feel a little dizzy, probably from hunger and fatigue. My head was still throbbing as well, probably from over-drafting my magic, but I didn’t want to stop. I just wanted to keep moving. We kept walking in silence for another minute or so before I decided to break the quiet, mostly to get my bearings, but also because I was curious.

“Are you doing okay?” I asked, not turning to look at her.

I was watching where I stepped and kept scanning our surroundings, but it was mostly just to give the illusion that I was looking at something.

“It doesn’t hurt anywhere else?” I continued. “Your face is red, but I think you’ll be fine once we get to a warmer place.”

Raven didn’t say anything in response, and I tried not to be annoyed by her continued silence. I mean, it was hardly like she had a reason to be angry with me. I had saved her life, even if she did end up getting hurt because of it. Still, she didn’t need to be cold with me. I was just trying to help.

“I might be able to cast a spell to locate a cave,” I added. “However, it’s too large to do in my head.”

“All spells are too difficult. Don’t act like you understand magic.” She finally spoke up. “Everyone knows you just steal the credit from women.”

“And what women are letting me take credit?”

“Aunt Lilith!” She responded defiantly. “Nobody knows more about magic than her!”

I nodded my head. “That’s true, Lilith is very knowledgeable. As expected of the demon queen.”

“She’s not the demon queen!” Raven snapped. “She might share the same name, but the real demon queen died a long time ago. Although I wish Lilith was her…”

“Really…” I raised an eyebrow, just happy to have gotten her speaking.

“The demon queen will free us from the tyranny of men! That’s what the WRA says. It’s prophecy!”

I stopped for a step. “You even know about WRA doctrine? Most girls your age who join the WRA only know as much as ‘boys are bad’.”

“I’m not a fool. I know what I signed up for. The WRA doesn’t just want women’s rights, we want to protect the world from the inherent pressure of men. The demon queen tried to warn us that men are bad! We didn’t listen, and now… you’re trying to bring back the patriarchy to oppress us.”

“Is that what I’m doing?” I smirked, continuing to walk.

“Don’t deny it! You’ve already created a government where men disproportionately control the government. That’s a patriarchy.”

“You’re not wrong,” I responded.

“Right… and, ah!” She realized I agreed with her.

“The demon queen was right as well. Bringing men into this world introduced it to a horrible danger.”

“If you understand that, then why don’t you just leave.”

“Leave where? Leave my country? I already left it. Leave this world? I’m not sure how.” I sighed.

The dangerous thing about WRA was that even if they sounded like a crazy cult, they had too many things correct. They blended truth with lies, making it very difficult to just dismiss their fanaticism. They worshipped Lilith, the demon queen, who tried to destroy the only existing man, the hero. He ended up making her submit to him, and that’s where the story ends and the legends begin.

The truth was that even with the legacies I absorbed, I had no clue what happened back then. I didn’t know where the hero came from or how he was born. I didn’t know how they ended up. All I knew was that a woman named Lilith found the first of the four demon lord legacies. She declared herself the demon queen and then used monsters to try to destroy the first male born in a countless amount of time. The demon lord’s legacies all proceeded this story, so naturally, they didn’t give me any clues.

She did this because she realized that the man born back then had blood that allowed him to be possessed by demons. He passed on that blood to his children, and their children to theirs. The curse was insidious too. It only had a one in a thousand chance of being passed on, but if the male born didn’t have the right blood, then the child was never born. This became the demonic curse that plagued this world to this day. Only one in every one thousand children would be male. Now, any man could potentially become possessed by a demon in the right circumstances, and if enough of them were turned, then this planet could end up being ruled by demons rather than men.

For whatever reason, I came to this world and my blood countered that curse. Raven didn’t know about that, and to her, talks of the demon castle and legacy would sound like fairytales. Even many of my closest women only half-believed in this stuff, and they had seen shadow people and demons right in front of them. Yet, it seemed she knew about a history that was all too accurate, even if it was manipulated to a certain point of view.

I couldn’t explain to her that the WRA was a duplicitous group that was trying to use male sacrifice as a means of bringing demons into this world. She wouldn’t listen even if I explained it. This left me feeling a bit hopeless.

“You should just leave…” She mumbled after a long, sullen silence.

“Leave you in the snow?” I raised an eyebrow.

“No!” She cried out, grabbing like she thought I’d drop her on the pile to my right.

“Here, I’ll try to do it this way.” I paused for a bit.

We were under a rocky mound that had blocked some of the snowfall. It ended up creating a large pile of snow on my right, and a rocky ledge on my left. If the pile collapsed though, we’d both be buried.

“W-wait.”

“I’m just putting you down for a moment,” I explained as she struggled. “Unless you like staying in my arms.”

Raven thought for a second before letting go, shooting me a hateful look. She might hate me, but she was still a teenage girl. She was pretty easy to manipulate. With just a word, she did exactly what I wanted, all because I suggested the alternative might mean she liked me.

Once I set her on the ground, I looked around for a bit until I found a stick. I then went up to the large pile of snow and started drawing on it. I was pleased to see the snow here was more compact than elsewhere, and the stuff I drew remained. My actions started to catch Raven’s interest. She watched me, although she kept her mouth shut.

Finally, after about ten minutes, I finished the rune. In truth, it was only because it was in this position that I could even see it. The depressions cast a shadow, and it was the shadow that was dark enough to give me an impression of the rune. Even then, this wasn’t the entire rune. It was just enough that I could complete it in my head.

I held up my hands, and even though my head was throbbing, I started to send mana through the rune. I used the image in front of me as a reference point, but once I finished the base, I added a few parts to it. When the spell finally finished, a wave of energy flew out. Within my mind, I got feedback from that energy, quickly creating a topographical map of the nearby area. I had a good idea of where were on the mountain now.

“You just cast a spell?” She asked in surprise.

“It’s just a sightseeing spell.” I shrugged, turning to pick her up.

“You drew it right there…” She spoke quietly.

“Mm..hmm…” I responded as I lifted her, tottering slightly due to my exhaustion.

As the clogs clicked in her head, she glared at me. “Lying like that just because you wanted a break!”

I almost dropped her in disbelief. Rather than accepting I cast a spell, she’d rather believe I wrote for ten minutes just to get a break without saying I needed a break. Raven was helpless in that regard.

Shaking my head, I continued, but this time I changed directions with purpose. I knew where I could go for shelter. The image was still in my mind. Although it was as far as I had already walked, with a sense of purpose and direction, we were able to make it there, even though my body was already feeling frozen. The night had only grown colder. Had we stayed out there, we might already be facing hypothermia.

Once I entered the cave, I let out a little sigh. I laid my daughter down once again and then started to do more runes. These only amplified my headache multiple times, but I knew if I didn’t pull them off, we’d die. The first created a barrier that would reduce the flow of air in and out. It wasn’t airtight, but it would keep heat better than nothing. The second I scrapped into a rock with a chalky rock. It was difficult because my fingers were numb now. When I was done, I set it in front of Raven.

“What is this?” She asked.

“It’s a rune. Channel your energy through it.”

“Why don’t you do it?” She demanded cautiously.

I sat down across from her, holding my head. “If I try to draft anymore, I might pass out. In that case, you’d be on your own, and we’d probably die.”

“You…”

“Just take a breath, and send magic through the lines. You should have learned about this in high school.”

“I know what I’m doing!” She snapped. “I just never did the rune you drew. It’s hard to read all scribbly like that.”

“Just do your best,” I responded, lowering my head, only half conscious.

It wasn’t just magic I had over-drafted. My body was near the breaking point too. Whether it was carrying her for nearly an hour, or kneeling in the snow for many hours, my body had reached a physical limit too.

She held her hand over the rock, and then slowly sent mana through. “Nothing’s happening!”

“Just keep it up,” I responded as my eyes slowly began to close.

The last thing I saw before I passed out was the rock slowly starting to turn red, and the gentle feel of heat emanating off of it.