Beneath the Dragoneye Moons

I rubbed my hands eagerly.

Yeah, I was probably taking a [Mage] class of some sort. The sheer excitement I felt at the idea? The way I was practically drooling just talking about it?

If I wasn’t a [Mage], I was going to end up as something damn close to it. The fact that I was busy planning on how [Butterfly Mystic] could end up with Inscriptions to do EVEN MORE magic suggested that it was the path I was going to take.

“Let’s tackle this methodically.” Maximus said.

Artemis flicked a pebble at him, braining him between the eyes.

“Where’s the fun in that?” She asked. “Let’s hit the cool stuff first, and work our way from there. Elaine’s probably taking what she thinks is coolest anyways.”

“BRRRPT!”

Auri, predictably, wanted to start with fire.

I had a minor way to keep them all happy.

“Well, not if you think you’re taking an advanced element, no.” Artemis agreed.

“Yes. If you like Dark magic the most, by your own admission Void’s too dangerous to go. You’d stick with Darkness over going Void.” Maximus said.

I nodded.

“Agreed. All the advanced elements, except Void, and none of the basic elements, except Dark.”

“BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRPT!”

“I’d take Inferno over Fire any day.”

“Brrrpt.”

A mollified Auri puffed her feathers up.

“Let’s start with the Fire-aligned elements.”

“Brrrrpt!”

“Of course it’s because of you!” I told Auri.

It was only half-true. I wanted to tackle the Fire elements because I’d done the most thinking about them. I’d spent hours working on the elements when I had Fire, in preparation for my level 128 class-up, and more time inside the world of my soul, working out which element I was taking in the end.

“First up is doubling down on Radiance. I picked it for a reason. It was the element that most resonated with me.”

“Not the class?” Maximus asked.

I gave him what I thought was a withering glare.

“I had several dozen different versions of [Ranger-Mage]. Yeah, the element was the big decider, although the strength of each one played into it.”

Maximus had the good grace to look embarrassed, although Artemis laughed at him.

“Anyways. Conjuration, Affinity, [Sun’s Heart], [Solar Flare], and Resistance would all get doubled, so to speak.” I said. “No need for those skills in my new class. I’d potentially get more boosting skills, and a whole new set of skills to work with. Lots of strong benefits, and if I got four more offensive skills, that’d triple my offensive burst.”

“At the cost of your sustainability in a fight. I’d know.” Artemis grimaced.

“Sure, but the sooner a fight’s over, the better.”

“Just pointing out all the potential issues.”

“The bigger one is magnifying your risk against Mirror Classers.” Maximus added in. “I think that’s the biggest concern.”

“My other issue is I like exploring cool new magic.” I frowned. “[Butterfly Mystic] scratches that itch by giving me the option of almost any new skill, as long as I can study it enough. Radiance is a smart choice, but it’s kind of boring in a way. I can already do everything the new class would offer me. Although, it’d be easier to get cool, high level skills on a second class. But I’ve got the time to wait and get properly cool skills, I’m in no rush. Oh! What does experience distribution look like when there are two strongly overlapping classes?” I asked Maximus.

“Usually the class that’s used more gets more experience. Which is generally the stronger class, however, the weaker class needs significantly less experience to level up.” He answered.

“Why don’t we use Radiance as a baseline?” Artemis asked. “Figure out if you like an element more or less than Radiance, narrow things down a bit.”

“Sure, why not.” I wrote Radiance down on my scroll, along with the pro and the con list.

There were significantly more pros than cons, and I was honestly feeling a bit bad pseudo-dismissing it like that.

At the same time. This was my life. My very, very, long life. I had the whole WORLD open to me. Why be narrow? Why pigeonhole myself?

If there were super amazing high level Radiance skills, I already had a class for them. If I had two Radiance classes, I couldn’t, say, make a volcano erupt when my third class got to a high level.

“Lava’s up next.” I said. “I don’t think I mentioned it, but when it came time to pick my [Ranger-Mage] element, it came down to Radiance or Lava in the end. Radiance seemed to fit my needs better at the time, but Lava was attractive. I saw what a high level Lava mage can accomplish with Serondes,”

I swallowed a bit. Stupid emotions. I’d broken up with him! My mind insisted on showing me some warm fuzzy memories though. Cuddling. Serondes making me a butterfly out of glass, the wings so delicate the wind made them flutter. Serondes stepping up to shield me.

I actively reminded myself of his less-than-attractive traits - like the time he copped an extra feel when I was done - cleared my mind, and moved on, all in an instant.

Stupid emotions.

“-and I can only imagine what else Lava can do when I get to high levels. Like make my own islands. Oh! Is there caustic gas in Lava?” I asked Maximus expectantly.

“I have no idea. I’d imagine not. The element’s called Lava, not Volcano.” He answered.

I gave him a strange look.

“Does it work that way?”

He sighed.

“Would you like the long version, or the short version?”

“Short.”

“Maybe. You could mimic the effect for sure, but the amount of control you’d get is questionable. Like Fire trying to control smoke or ash. It’s a stretch.”

Sooo helpful.

“Cons?” Artemis asked.

“It’s slow when shooting?”

She gave me a withering look.

“Most of us manage to handle ‘slow’ just fine. Gods forbid you occasionally need to aim.”

“Brrrrpt.”

Wow, even Auri was against me. She didn’t miss an opportunity to burn me tonight.

Lava went on the list. I already liked it more than Radiance.

I spent a few minutes thinking about the rest of the Fire elements.

Ash.

Storm.

Steam.

Magic Metals.

Inferno.

Pyronox.

“Honestly, after my classing up to Radiance, I don’t think I’d take any of the other Fire-aligned elements. Maybe Magic Metals if I can get my hands on a bunch, and it’s interesting. Still, unlikely. I suppose technically I’ve been exposed to a bunch of them in her lair, but even then, without a conjuration skill or detection skill, it’s probably a dead end. Maybe I’ll take Storm. Storm’s pretty neat, and if I don’t have the power to use it now, I’m sure I’ll grow into it.”

Artemis and Maximus had privately, with much pantomime, had gotten the full story about Lun’Kat.

“Brrrpt! BRRRPT! BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRPT!” Auri shrieked in outrage, and practically attacked me. She flew around in circles around me, pecking at me with her sharp little beak.

It didn’t hurt at all, but I remembered mom. Her spoon didn’t hurt at all, but it cost us nothing to play along, and meant the world to her.

“Owe! Ouch! Ooof! Auri! OWE!” I pretended to swat at her, deliberately going slow enough that she could dodge, pretending that she was causing me great agony.

“BRRRRRRRRRRPT!” Auri shrieked one more time, and my hair burst into flames.

Whatever.

“I have three Fire aligned elements on my list, and it’s staying that way.” I grumped at her, shooting her an evil eye.

I thought about Etalix, summoning multiple tornadoes with a flick of his tail.

Hurricanes. Thunderstorms. Blizzards. Plus, whatever interesting magical storms the element could possibly conjure. Hopefully I could ask the elves for interesting details about the Storm element.

I wrote Storm on the list, my hair crackling merrily, filling the room with smoke.

Artemis pinched her nose and waved a hand at me.

“Phew! You never stop with the burning hair.”

Maximus was still looking a little incredulous. I was just sitting at his table, completely unconcerned with the flames merrily dancing on top of my head.

“I got used to it.” I answered his unspoken question.

“Brrrpt. Brrrpt.” Auri proudly nodded at her work, satisfied that she’d ‘punished’ me enough for daring to consider non-Fire elements.

I narrowed my eyes at her as a realization hit.

“You troublemaker! You do know burning things is bad! You’ve been faking it to get away with it!!”

“Brrrrpt.” Auri was feeling incredibly smug with herself. I pointed my finger at her.

“Ohhhh you are so in for it later.”

“Brrpt!”

“Yes.”

“Brrpt…”

Maximus fake coughed into his hand.

“Back on topic! What’s next?”

Artemis rolled her eyes at me. “Lightning.”

“Goes on the list.” I wrote it down without hesitation. “I should be offered some really nice Lightning classes to boot. After seeing Galeru and Etalix using Lightning up close? That has to qualify me for something nice, and it’s cool.”

“Plus you don’t have to aim.” Artemis’s tone was teasing.

“Not at all!” I agreed.

Auri opened her mouth as if to speak, remembered that she was still in the doghouse - bird’s nest? - and closed it.

“I think I can remove Poison from the running. I just don’t see myself using it well. My fighting is generally defensive in nature, and Poison’s almost purely offensive, while the connotations are unpleasant, and I can’t imagine super interesting things to do with it.”

“Isn’t your Radiance entirely offensive?” Artemis asked. “What’s the difference?”

I thought about it a moment.

“Poison is preemptively offensive. Radiance is reactively offensive.” I slowly analyzed. “Someone needs to be aggressive at me first. I can’t just poison a town’s well and be done with it.”

I followed that train of thought for a moment, rapidly flipping through the elements.

“Same story with Miasma. Decay I just don’t see myself using it well, or particularly liking it.” I concluded.

“Rest of the Dark elements. What are your feelings on them? Gravity.”

“AWESOME! That’s one of the neatest elements! I literally would never need to lift a finger again! It’s great in a fight! I can pretend to manipulate everything! I also saw some neat tricks manipulating how hard things hit, I can screw with mass, letting me fly with more weight, I can-”

“You can add it to the list, and stop waxing philosophically about it.” Artemis interrupted. “If you like it that much, why don’t you just grab it now?”

“Because there’s stuff like Spatial!” I exclaimed as I quickly, with a healer’s classic scrawl, added Gravity to my list.

Perfectly illegible.

“Did you know that you can expand a space? Awarthril had a box that held sixty times its size! You can teleport small things around, and that’s at the relatively low levels in Remus! Imagine at higher levels! You could teleport people! You can travel to other worlds! I got offered a purple [World Traveler] once, that might be interesting to take. I’ll definitely ask my guide about it. You can-”

“Add it to your list and keep going.”

“Ice is on the list.” I wrote it with a fancy twirl and a little icicle.

I’d never be cold again with the class - most likely it had immunity to the chill somewhere in the class - and my imagination was stuffed with thousands of things I could do with it. Ice skate at high speeds, snowbominations, dresses of frost and towers of ice.

Mage hands made of snow.

The possibilities were dizzying and endless.

“There’s not much point to making a list if you’re going to put everything on it.” Artemis’s tone was dry, and her eyes were twinkling.

“It’s not my fault magic’s super cool. But fine, I won’t take Erosion.”

It didn’t appeal to me, and the spinosaurus destroying mom’s pendant firmly put it in the “never ever” group. Petty, but the element wasn’t that exciting.

Speaking of pendants, I wrote Gemstones on my list.

“How’s Mountain sound to you?” Artemis conjured up a pebble, shaped exactly like a little mountain. It had cliffs and ridges and a summit and everything. A fine display of her control, and relentless practice.

I shook my head.

“I need to make some decisions, and Lava appeals to me more than Mountain does.”

Artemis’s tiny mountain crumbled with the expression on her face.

“Your Lightning is way more interesting.” I reassured her, and she brightened up.

Honestly, was she a kid or something? Stone cold killer by day, desperately seeking approval by night.

Then again, I wasn’t exactly that much better off. A lifetime of fighting gave us all weird quirks.

I was amazed she hadn’t killed a student who’d said “BOO!” a little too loudly yet.

“Arcanite…” I hesitated over it. It seemed like it could do some interesting things, but I hadn’t seen too many Arcanite mages. The highest level people I’d seen with the class sold Arcanite recharging, the only element that could effectively move mana from one person to another.

I stuck it on the list, to investigate more.

Maximus didn’t look impressed.

“Brilliance is neat. Regeneration focused, with barriers? Like, that’d fix dozens of my combat issues, give me a multitude of non-lethal takedowns, and let me conjure weapons up. It also synergizes well with everything else I’ve got. Radiance interacts neatly with Brilliance, I already have two Light-aligned elements, it’s beautiful in a dozen ways. That’s just the start, I’m pretty sure there are more things it can do, just haven’t had a chance to interrogate people over it.”

“Brilliance warriors can move extremely quickly.” Maximus added in. “One student of mine was able to ‘punch’ people with Brilliance beams he conjured. He swears it’s an aimed skill, but it looks like it’s as fast as Radiance and Lightning. Packs enough of a punch against the training rocks that we banned it from spars.”

On the list it went!

“Celestial. Cheat on the affinity, potentially move my shield skill around, yup!” It went straight on the list, with some little doodled stars.

I loved my starry eyes.

“Mirage. Holy goddesses above, I am going to be offered the BEST mirage class.” I realized, writing it down. “Just as long as it doesn’t directly reference her.”

I wasn’t going to take [Lun’Kat Illusionist]. She’d seen me [Identify]ing her. For all I knew, a class that referenced her that directly would be noted, and verboten.

Mirage was also something of a nonbo with Radiance. However, I’d also spent a lot of time wanting to be, or going, invisible, and the ability to make illusions and stop a situation without getting into a fight seemed promising.

Mirage was limited by the imagination of the user, and I’d like to think I had a vast and vivid imagination.

Plus, if I ever got bored, I could combine Mirage with [Pristine Memories] and…

Well, it wasn’t stealing if nobody from Earth was around to complain about it, right?

I spent a moment thinking about Mirror.

“OOoh! At high levels, I bet I can make clones of myself! Also, borrowing, copying, and reflecting other people’s magic is a thing. ALL THE SKILLS in one element!”

It went on the list. I put a little happy star next to it.

I ignored the fact that my clones might be as lazy as I was, and wouldn’t want to do the work either.

“Sound… yes?”

I wrote it on the list, and drew an unsure squiggle next to it.

I knew it had amazing depth and breadth, but nothing was springing to mind as an amazing example.

It was like vitality. Did a thousand small, useful things without gigantic, flashy magics. However, life was about balance, and I had some incredibly flashy magic already. Plus, I was unsure just how far Sound went - my imagination was failing me.

Glacia, as much as I disliked her, had some excellent points on the element. She could combine multiple skills to do almost anything, and wasn’t that one of the things I craved?

Heck, she managed to heal. As a bard.

There was untapped depths here, and I wasn’t willing to let it go.

I reviewed my Wood-aligned magic theory for a moment. Wood-aligned elements all massively overlapped with each other, borrowing liberally from each other’s domains.

I had Coral, Verdant, Spore, and Forest. I quickly cut Coral, and reluctantly cut Forest as well.

Verdant got on the list. Growing things sounded fun, and if my class was broad enough, I could have a class that let me grow certain specific fruit trees at home, while also letting me pull off the types of stunts Nature did in the field. Grow flowers for Auri to burn, and wouldn’t that just be the nicest combination?

Like growing certain specific fruit trees whenever I needed them.

Daily.

For every meal.

Medium combat capabilities, logistics, and easy to level in peace, all rolled into one? Yes please!

Spore had left a strong impression on me as a kid, and I imagined I could mostly mimic what Verdant did, except I’d be dealing with fungi instead of plants. Completely different, in spite of looking the same.

However, part of this was predicated on me liking gardening and growing things. I didn’t have a ton of experience, and I should experiment with it. It’d suck if I hated it, and spent my first class up focusing on it.

If I liked it? All the better, more achievements racked up for a stronger first class.

I was aware that I could always reset my third class if I disliked it, as early as level 32. At my level, with my stats, that’d be measured in weeks, if not days..

However, Maximus’s advice was to focus on what I wanted for the first class, and get general skills to improve it. After I classed up for the first time, all of my offerings were locked. Immutable. I’d never get another chance at improving my starter class, although I could take mental notes on what I was offered, and talk with people about the classes. Get their advice and input.

Like, I could easily grab any class once I got in there, hit 32 in a day, then reset my class and go again. But the initial offers were the same. I wanted to get it perfect the first time.

Actually, that was an interesting question. If a requirement for a class was ‘has never killed another person’ or something, and I killed someone then reset my class, would it still be offered?

A theoretical question for another day. My hands were drenched in blood.

Mantle got cut for the same reason Mountain did, while Acid just sounded vicious.

I knew that acid was something I’d studied back in my prior life, but the more I tried to tease and pry the memories open, the more holes I found.

I gave up, and I was discouraged. The element clearly had potential in spades - so much so that one of the biggest deities around decided to entirely prune the knowledge from my mind - but I remembered none of it.

Knowing that I’d never live up to the true potential of an element was enough for me to strike it from my list.

Mist didn’t excite me, and the deep water terrified me. Ocean got removed from my list.

“She’s going fast.” Maximus said.

“Shhh! Don’t break her concentration!” Artemis harshly whispered back.

I dismissed them again from my thoughts. I was in the zone. Focused on the task like one of my tight Radiance beams.

Ooze was written down as soon as I thought of it, and I doodled a little picture of a wolf puppy. I was reminded that I wanted to level [The Stars Never Fade] for Kiyaya, and that Awarthril would swing by…

Soonish?

How did I register 200 years now? What length of time was that for me?

I cut Gale for the absolutely terrible reason that my list was already gorged, and the slightly better reason that I didn’t see what it could do for me. It just felt like such a narrow, underpowered element.

Sand was the last element on my list, and I semi-reluctantly added it on.

Serondes had done a ton of interesting things with it, and I could just sink into its soft, warm embrace while mage-hands fed me grapes.

With that, I was done. I’d tackled every element, and had a ‘short list’ of potential candidates.

Radiance

Lava

Storm

Lightning

Gravity

Spatial

Ice

Gemstones

Arcanite

Brilliance

Celestial

Mirage

Mirrors

Sound

Verdant

Spore

Ooze

Sand

Given how long the list was, I wasn’t sure if I’d helped or hurt my cause.

Either way, I was done for the night.

We spent some time chatting about my list and choices, then Auri and I headed back. My mind swirled with the endless possibilities of MAGIC.

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