Plan C

“Someone tell Maria to cancel the food.”

I said, sighed and then shook my head. “Beatrice, I’m sorry. It’s just too risky. I can’t trust Femto.”

The devil in question merely shrugged. “Told you he is too much of a pussy, Bea.”

Beatrice started and I interrupted her right away. “I get what you are saying. You trust Femto. But Fisti is right. Femto already betrayed your trust once.”

“We wouldn’t have to do this if you would have just followed the initial plan!”, Beatrice responded through gritted teeth. “Don’t you get it? This is it, Mari! Now stop being a pussy and follow the plan!”

“Your brilliant plan involves me getting tortured for a month!”, I shouted. “Get a grip Beatrice! How the hell am I supposed to beat my Queen when I’m stark raving mad!”

“Youuuuuu!”, Beatrice stared at me with immense anger. “You incompetent, ignoble, impeteous, incorrigible, impenitent idiot! I hate youuuuuuuuuu!” Beatrice ran back into her bedroom.

“It was the right choice.” Fisti said as we watched the angry ex witch slam the door shut. “Rice needs to learn she can’t always get her way.”

“Aww, you made her cry.” Femto for her part took the rejection with considerably more grace. “Pity. Eh, can't win them all. Toodles.” And just like that the devil vanished.

“A fine decision, my Lord”, Sanakia nodded pleased. “You ill need the help of such a fiend! You can beat that Hebi-san with your eyes closed!”

I can only hope.

“I’m all for teaching the little brat a lesson”, Cassandra, having finished the remainder of the breakfast lazily stretched herself. “But that means you better come up with that Plan C.”

“C...C…”, Sanakia made a rather complicated face and then gasped. “My Lord! You mustn’t! Castration is not the answer!”

OF COURSE NOT!

“Dick needed until mating complete”, Aiju agreed.

“Would love if it was that simple”, Cassandra sighed and went straight to drinking. “But snakedick could still just hypnotize Daddy and made him surrender.”

I’m very happy we established that me becoming a Eunuch is not a viable strategy.

But that also meant we where back to the drawing board.

“I don’t think the core premise is wrong”, I finally stated. “It’s just the execution I don’t agree with.”

“Ya mean fighting blindly?”, Fisti was obviously skeptical. “Yerself said it’s not possible.”

“I know”, I responded. “But I didn’t lie when I said I know the basics. I need to finish off Hebi-san quickly. I know where she is at the start of the match, so all I really need to do is push hard and aim for an early kill. I think I can make it work if I get just a little bit of training in.”

I still had about four and a half hours before the start of the match. In this time, I needed to learn how to fight blindly.

…

..

.

“Eyaaa!”

I evaded the sword strike with relative ease.

This was not as difficult as I expected it to be. Despite the fact that my eyes where closes I managed to hold my own very well.

Finally, confident in my position, I shifted my body and moved on the offensive, slashing my training dirk towards its target.

“Eeek!”

There was a hasty stumble followed by a loud splash.

“That was a clear victory.”

“Yeah, no shit.”

The training was going well. But then again I was up against Sanakia. The Galmon was hopelessly splashing around in the spa's hot spring.

“Ya can stand in there, Sana”, Fisti told her with a sigh.

“Not bad, Daddy”, Cassandra nodded. “Want to up the ante a bit?” The Huntress got up from her lounge chair and readied her bow

“O-Oi!”, Fisti intervened. “Do ya plan to off him? He can't avoid arrows blindly!”

“Oh? But he can avoid magic blindly?”, Cassandra countered.

Yes. This was the biggest issue. My Queen wasn’t just reliant on mind control. She also knew a number of offensive spells. I had no way of sensing these.

“My arrows are the closest thing we have”, Cassandra continued. “I won't actually hit you. Just stand still and try to guess from where the attack comes from.”

I ignored Fisti and Sanakia's protest, nodded and closed my eyes. “Shoot.”

Despite knowing that there was no danger to me, I still had a queasy feeling. I could sense that Cassandra was stalking me. Circling around me as she prepared her attack.

Then I felt a gust of air as an arrow whistled close to my left.

“That's too close!”

“It has to be so close, dumbass!”

The voices came from...in front of me? I thought she was to the back.

“Concentrate!”

The training continued well in the afternoon. I did manage to beat Sanakia but that was only because she had the habit of shouting her attacks. Things where going...poorer against Aiju and Fisti. The girls managed to got numerous hits in but at the very least I got a sense where they were.

I was hopelessly outclassed by Cassandra. Ranged attacks where my absolute weakness.

Yeah, that was about the extend I could achieve like this. I wouldn’t just stumble around helplessly but that was about it.

“I will just have to endure her attacks and defeat her as fast as possible”, I explained as we had lunch. It was rather empty bravado.

Perhaps predictably, Beatrice did not join us for lunch

We did a bit more arrow training after lunch, before stopping one hour before the battle, making sure I was well rested and as prepared as possible.

And then the clock struck three.