The Night of Flutrane
Once I was on Brigitte’s highbeast, we began heading back to the Goddesses’ Bath, following the sharply curving path created for us by the trees. Ferdinand raced ahead on his own highbeast, and the surface of the sunlit spring began to swell upward upon his arrival.
“Talfroschs! Rozemyne, your blessing!” Ferdinand shouted from up ahead.
I immediately poured mana into my ring, accustomed to the process since I had prayed for Angriff’s blessing many times before.
“O God of War Angriff, of the God of Fire Leidenschaft’s exalted twelve, I pray that you grant them your divine protection!”
At that, a blue light flew out of my ring before raining down upon everyone. I was anything but a fighter and held everyone else back with my lack of stamina, so blessings were the most I could do to help out in combat.
“Damuel, Brigitte—stay by Rozemyne! Eckhart, follow me!”
“Sir!”
A large shadow formed in the center of the spring. From it, three—no, four—smaller shadows burst forth, leaping out of the water.
The talfroschs turned out to be toads, about as wide as an adult spreading their arms out as wide as they could. While this sounded pretty big, it was almost nothing compared to the goltze that we’d fought during the autumn, or the schnesturm that had become the Lord of Winter. Where the talfroschs did excel, however, was in how disgusting they looked.
“Why am I always up against (toads)?” I asked with a sigh.
Damuel and Brigitte both looked at me in confusion, having not understood. “What do you mean?” they asked.
“(Toads) are creatures that look a lot like talfroschs. You understood what I meant, right, Damuel? These talfroschs remind you of Count Bindewald, don’t they? And the similarities don’t stop there—they’re even about to be exterminated by Ferdinand.”
Damuel burst into laughter, before quickly facing forward in an attempt to hide his amusement. His armor let out a small clank as he moved to cover his mouth, but the fact that his body was still shaking made it pretty obvious that I had really tickled his funny bone.
Brigitte hadn’t seen Count Bindewald herself, so she didn’t have the same reaction. “A man who looks like a talfrosch? I would very much like to keep my distance from him.”
“They’re going to combine,” came Eckhart’s voice.
I turned around to see the largest talfrosch flick out its tongue, wrapping it around a nearby smaller talfrosch before pulling it into its mouth. No sooner had it swallowed than it began rapidly growing in size, firing its tongue at the remaining talfroschs one by one.
“Eep! Eep!”
“There is no need to be afraid, Lady Rozemyne; mere talfroschs pose no threat to us,” Brigitte said. “They are simply... gross, and nothing more.”
It was clear that she disliked talfroschs and found them disgusting—a sentiment I agreed with entirely. The left arm she kept wrapped around me for protection was even more tense than usual.
Ferdinand and Eckhart turned their schtappes into swords, filling them with mana as they glared up at the still growing talfrosch. They then set their sights on the creature’s belly, which continued to swell in size as it swallowed more and more of its companions, before raising their weapons to attack.
The talfrosch’s long tongue whipped out at incredible speed, wrapping itself around Brigitte’s highbeast in an instant. Before I could even process what had happened, we were being dragged through the air toward its mouth.
“Wha?!”
“Eep!”
I noticed Brigitte trying to whip out her schtappe, probably to change it into a weapon, but we were yanked into the talfrosch’s wide-open maw before she could. The creature then closed its mouth, its tongue still wrapped around us, leaving us stranded in a pitch-black, uncomfortably warm, and foul-smelling cave.
Brigitte took this moment to turn her highbeast back into a feystone, freeing us from the tongue. She then transformed her schtappe into a long halberd like the one she had used before. Perhaps due to the mana inside, it shone a little in the darkness.
“Lady Rozemyne, are you okay?” Brigitte asked, stabbing her halberd into the roof of the talfrosch’s mouth to stop it from swallowing us. I was doing fine, since she had been holding onto me the entire time, though due to her having softened her armor, I had very nearly suffocated in her soft chest.
“I’m okay. It’s very wet and sticky in here, though.”
“In that case, would you be so kind as to fill your gathering knife with mana and stab its tongue?” Brigitte asked, keeping her right hand firmly on her halberd as she crouched down with me in her left arm. She was setting me down on the tongue, but she wasn’t about to let go of me.
We both grimaced at the soft springiness beneath our feet.
“Okay,” I said, taking out my knife and pouring mana into it as instructed. “I’ll do it.”
I could feel Brigitte tighten her grip around me, determined to protect me no matter what. Once the knife was full, I stabbed it into the talfrosch’s tongue as hard as I could.
“...Wh-What?”
Nothing happened. The talfrosch didn’t shriek, nor did it open its mouth. I broke out into a cold sweat, surprised by the complete lack of reaction, and nervously refilled my knife with mana, stabbing the tongue over and over again.
“Hyah! Hyah! Hyah!”
Suddenly, a bright light pierced the darkness, causing me to instinctively close my eyes. My legs trembled, and my body suddenly tilted diagonally, at which point I lost my balance with the knife still in hand. I rolled down with Brigitte, who tightened her grip around my stomach before leaping toward the light.
By the time I realized that the light streaming in was from the talfrosch opening its mouth, I was already soaring through the air in Brigitte’s arms, having been flung out of the thing’s mouth. I could hear all sorts of sounds again. The stench disappeared as clean air washed over me, accompanied by the sting of cold wind brushing my skin.
“Go straight into the spring!” Ferdinand roared.
In response, Brigitte directed her speedy free fall toward the water. I shut my eyes tight, desperately clinging to her as I braced for a hard impact.
We landed in the spring with an enormous crashing sound, but the landing was surprisingly soft. I didn’t feel any pain or even any resistance; it was as though the water had simply accepted us in.
It was strange. At this time of year, the spring was supposed to be full of freezing water from the melting snow—water cold enough to stop one’s heart if they jumped in unprepared. But this water was neither hot nor cold. In fact, I could breathe just fine, too. And when I opened my eyes, I could see so clearly through the stirring water that even the air bubbles coming from my own mouth were visible.
There was a large shadow blotting out the sun above, and two balls of radiant light racing toward it. I could guess that these were attacks launched by Ferdinand and Eckhart. They smashed into the talfrosch, sending it soaring high into the sky, where it exploded.
Brigitte and I quickly rose to the surface, gasping for air the moment our heads were above the water. By that time, the reverberations from the attack had started to settle down.
“...It’s over,” I said, sighing with relief. But Brigitte looked up at the sky and gave a sharp warning.
“No, here they come!” she exclaimed, her voice tense as she readied her schtappe.
When I looked up myself, I saw dark blobs coming down overhead. I squinted, thinking they were maybe the exploded guts of the talfrosch... only to make eye contact with one of the many, many falling frogs.
“Eep?!”
Frogs—or talfroschs, rather—of all sizes rained down from the sky, ranging from as big as my thumb to the size of an adult fist. Some landed on my head, face, and shoulders, sticking to me in an instant. A shudder ran down my spine the second I felt one of their damp, slick bodies wriggling on my cheek.
“GYAAAH! Get them off, get them off, GET THEM OFFFF!”
“Rozemyne, cease your screaming! Peel them off and kill them with your knife, otherwise they will recombine,” Ferdinand said sternly, mercilessly abandoning me to focus on crushing the talfroschs around him. Eckhart was busy doing the same.
As it turned out, talfroschs simply split into smaller versions of themselves when hurt, and what made them especially annoying was that you could only kill them when they were as small as they could go.
Brigitte similarly had her hands full with the talfroschs around her.
Once I understood that no one was coming to help me, I tried to get the talfroschs off myself, shaking my head while flailing my arms and legs. But they clung to me as much as they could. The slimy things moving on my face destroyed the last ounce of consideration I had toward acting refined and graceful; I immediately dropped the facade and wailed in desperation.
“No, no, no! I can’t do this! Someone, please! At least get the one off my nooose!”
“Come to me, Lady Rozemyne! I will remove them for you!”
“Damuel, you are the most heroic person I’ve ever met!”
Damuel flew over, picked my flailing body up out of the water, and set me down onto his highbeast. Once he had pulled the talfroschs off of me, I wiped away my snot and tears.
“I hate this! I’m never coming to this spring again!”
“You fool,” Ferdinand barked out instantly, shooting me a cold glare. “We are hunting these talfrosch so that we might gather the nectar tomorrow at dawn, so you will be coming here again. In any case, the talfrosch has been defeated. You shall now be able to gather safely tomorrow.”
“Are you really sure about that?”
“Enough! Tonight is the Night of Flutrane. Get in bed early and prepare for dawn tomorrow.”
Upon arriving back at camp, I immediately closed Lessy’s windows so that Monika and Nicola could help me change out of sight.
“Even a healthy person could become deathly ill from falling into a spring at this time of year, Lady Rozemyne, and you are far from healthy,” Monika said. “How are you feeling? What did the High Priest say?”
“You won’t be able to go gathering tomorrow if you catch a fever. Please take care,” Nicola added, both of them lecturing me as they peeled off my wet clothes and wiped me with a towel they had dipped in warm water.
Brigitte was changing as well. “Your highbeast certainly is splendid, Lady Rozemyne. I never thought I would be able to comfortably change clothes while camping on a long-distance mission such as this.”
Apparently, if not for my Pandabus, she would have been forced to change in the snow, spreading her cape across a tree branch to serve as a makeshift curtain. In my opinion, that wasn’t something a noble lady should ever have to do, even if she was only removing her feystone armor.
That said, according to Brigitte, minors weren’t given missions that required them to leave the Noble’s Quarter. And since adult women married fairly quickly, it was rare for female knights to go on hunts or gathering missions deep in the wilderness.
Ferdinand gave me instructions on how to gather the nectar as we ate the food my attendants had prepared for us. All I needed to do was move it from the center of the flowers into bottles, but he was very firm that I had to do so using the metal spoon he had given me.
“The spoon is made such that it will not pollute the mana. Use it when scooping the nectar into the bottles, no matter what. The ruelle flowers and fruits gathered on the Night of Schutzaria held properties entirely unlike the same flowers and fruits gathered during other seasons, and the same may be true for the rairein nectar gathered tonight,” Ferdinand said, wearing the expression of a mad scientist.
I wasn’t really all that pleased that he was getting the time to indulge in his own hobbies, though this was probably because I still wasn’t given much reading time. Call me selfish all you want, I strongly believed that Ferdinand wasn’t being fair.
“Ensure that you put nectar into each bottle. I wish to experiment with the nectar that has your mana and the nectar that doesn’t.”
I didn’t really mind Ferdinand using the materials for his own research, but I was starting to think that his ultimate goal here wasn’t actually to help gather ingredients for my jureve. But maybe that was just me.
Once we had all finished our food, we went to bed early. I reclined the driver’s seat of my Pandabus so that I would have room to stretch my legs, and Ferdinand shook his head with exasperation upon seeing all the blankets that my attendants had spread out.
“Your highbeast is unnatural and bizarre.”
“I prefer the term ‘convenient.’ Just be glad that I didn’t make him into an (RV).”
“Good grief... In any case, it is sizable; all the women here may choose to sleep in it. Fran, come with me.”
And so, Ferdinand decreed that Lessy would be the sleeping place for all the girls in our group. Brigitte got inside and Fran left, looking a little relieved to not be stuck in the girl-filled highbeast.
That night, I woke up to the strange sensation of my Pandabus swaying side to side. When I sat up, I realized that I could see the Goddesses’ Bath through the window.
But why...? We should be at the campsite, I thought, wondering whether this was simply a dream as I continued peering out the window. The spring looked entirely different from how it had during the day, perhaps due to this being the Night of Flutrane. The red moon—which was actually more of a dark pink upon closer inspection—was reflected in the water’s surface.
In fact, the whole spring was... shining. It wasn’t just the light from the moon, either—small, round, bubble-like things of various sizes were slowly rising out of the water, shining brighter than fireflies. They burned with mysterious light as they rose out one after another and floated around, resulting in quite the magical sight.
“Wow, this is amazing! They’re so sparkly!” came Nicola’s voice.
I turned around and saw her looking out the window too, wearing a bleary expression that made it hard to tell whether she was fully awake or still half asleep.
Her sudden exclamation woke up Brigitte, who leapt up and whipped out her schtappe in an instant before peering outside herself. After a moment’s pause, she looked at me with her brow furrowed.
“...What is the meaning of this, Lady Rozemyne? The air is positively brimming with mana.”
“I have no idea, but it’s beautiful. I don’t think we’re in any danger.”
Each shining bubble leaving the pond let out a bright, clear sound similar to a bell, and their chimes overlapped to create some very strange music. Rosina started murmuring musical scales in her sleep, then suddenly sat up and asked, “Where is the harspiel?” in a sleepy tone, aimlessly groping around for the instrument.
“Calm down, Rosina.”
By that point, Ella and Monika were of course waking up as well. They all looked outside in unison, then blinked in surprise.
“What in the world is going on...?”
Rosina began to move her fingers restlessly through the air, overwhelmed by the music being played from the lights above the spring. Her eyes soon fell on the harspiel that was with the rest of the luggage.
“Well, everyone’s awake now, and I can’t imagine we’ll be going back to sleep anytime soon,” I mused aloud. “It should be fine for you to play, Rosina.”
“I thank you ever so much,” she replied, eagerly picking up the harspiel and playing music to match the sound of the bubbling spring. The songs she chose perfectly accompanied the high notes coming from the lights.
“Your musician truly is talented, Lady Rozemyne,” Brigitte observed.
As we all listened to Rosina’s symphony with the lights, they began to gather around Lessy, floating right up to the windows and trying to come inside as though they had minds of their own.
Monika smiled. “I think the lights like your music, Rosina.”
“Maybe you should go outside and play for them?” Nicola added, giggling with Monika. The lights blinked as though indicating their agreement.
“Shall we offer up music, then?” I suggested. “The Goddesses of Spring love music, to my knowledge; they might appreciate such an offering on the Night of Flutrane.”
“And the goddess of this spring likes sweets, Lady Rozemyne. We should offer up our remaining cookies,” Nicola added, and Ella agreed with a smile.
Together, Nicola and Ella brought out a box of sweets, while Rosina climbed out with her harspiel. Brigitte followed, keeping a close eye on our surroundings, leaving Monika with no choice but to join us as well.
I jumped out into the clearing, feeling like I was having a nighttime picnic. It wasn’t cold at all, and the spring was giving birth to even more glistening lights. The high-pitched, reverberating chimes they made were so beautiful that just hearing them filled me with exhilaration.
I peered into the shining spring and saw yet more mysterious lights rising up from its depths. That was when I noticed some talfroschs nearby, flicking out their tongues to eat them.
“Brigitte, the talfroschs!” I called, pointing in their direction.
Brigitte instantly whipped out her schtappe, hunting them down one by one, and the lights floating out of the water happily swarmed around Brigitte as if thanking her.
I looked around and saw that the floating lights had split in three groups: one stuck with Rosina and her harspiel; another went to Ella, Nicola, and Monika with their cookies; and the third stayed with Brigitte.
The lights seemed to like music, as they were all flashing in time with Rosina’s harspiel. They liked my arrangement of the song from my Urano days the most, blinking rapidly as if clapping in approval.
“They seem to enjoy the song that you composed, Lady Rozemyne. Would you care to sing the lyrics for them?”
“...I think I will sing an entirely new song for them,” I said. I didn’t have my own harspiel with me, but I could make do with just my voice. And if they liked to hear new songs, then I could just debut another from my Urano days. It was one of the spring songs, the lyrics of which I had translated into this world’s language in preparation for the next time I needed Ferdinand to do something for me.
I stepped in front of the spring and inhaled.
“O waters of spriiing...” I began to sing. And as soon as I did, my ring started sucking up my mana on its own, releasing it as I continued my song.
The lights of the spring shone brighter, the entire clearing becoming steadily more dazzling. The stems carrying rairein flowers in the middle of the water began to stretch in size as well, countless stems wrapping around each other as they extended upward. They grew like giant trees resting in the water, and soon, the flowers began to bloom as well.
“O Goddesses, might I be permitted to take some rairein nectar?” I asked once I had finished my song.
A large leaf that had rested in the center of the spring blossomed open and stretched down to rest in front of me. I stepped onto it, urged forward by the lights, at which point it grew even larger in size before slowly stretching high into the sky.
“Wow!” I exclaimed.
It had taken me right in front of a rairein flower. I took the spoon from my belt of tools, just as Ferdinand had instructed, and started gathering the nectar, capping each bottle when it was full.
“Okay, that should do it. In fact, I think I managed to do that perfectly. Go me.”
The leaf was so, so high up that I could see the sun slowly rising over the horizon, gradually brightening up the night sky. The lights floating around the spring faded and disappeared one by one as the morning sun washed over them.
“Hm?”
The stretched-out flowers began to shrink, returning to the water’s surface. The large leaf beneath my feet was no different, shrinking to the point that it could no longer hold my weight. And then, just like that, the stem snapped.
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