Beneath the Dragoneye Moons

Fenrir classed up, and a week quickly passed. I was focusing most of my time and efforts on the upcoming battle we were planning, entirely skipping my work in the slums. I’d handle the Triad at a later date. I had a brief moment wondering if they thought I’d run away or not, but eh. End of the day, I didn’t care what they believed.

Arrows were prepared, strategies were discussed, and a few literal sacrificial goats were acquired. They were tied up in the stables, munching on hay and constantly trying to escape.

I didn’t think they knew what was coming. They were just escape artists, and Iona even laughed when she saw one of their skills was related to getting out of things!

Auri had promptly and unwisely named them Hakram, Baelin, and Alan. Baelin was the slippery one, and I hated that I knew that.

“Don’t get too attached.” I warned her.

“Brrrpt!” She protested, pointing out that she was already very attached to the idea of using them in a pie filling.

“That’s… unlikely, given what we’re planning.”

“Brrrpt.”

Sometimes there was no winning.

Iona and I continued to talk and laugh, plan and prepare. I didn’t bug her about the Sentinel thing, but she made it clear that she was thinking about it, mulling it over. Occasionally she’d dash back to our room, scribble something down in one of her notebooks, then dash back out.

I was polite and didn’t peek.

The Ashes above Sanguino brightened, showing that it was the start of a new ‘day’, as Iona and I worked on finalizing our preparations.

“I’m going into town.” Iona said as she tightened the last strap on Fenrir’s gear.

“What for?” I already had three different thought processes going, so I could easily continue reviewing the spells I had prepared, mentally running through different scenarios that I’d want to use them in.

“I’ve worked out what I want to ask Sentinel Arachne, and it’s bugging me like an itch. I don’t want to go into battle distracted, and while you haven’t said anything - thank you for that - I think it’d be a weight off your mind as well.”

It was a weight off my mind, and I jumped up, teleporting my books back into [Bookwyrm’s Hoard].

“Brrrpt!!” Auri cheered happily from my shoulder. She wanted to be in the Sentinels, quite badly. I think the one mission I’d gone on and left her behind on had left a deep, lasting impression… or she just wanted to add another ‘badge’ to her collection.

A dozen thoughts flitted through my mind, my filter somehow working. In the end I kept it simple.

“Thank you.” I kept it short and sweet.

She grinned at me. Goddesses, that grin.

“No, thank you. For not pressuring me. For letting me think about it. I think I managed a reasonable list that’ll make everyone happy.”

Her grin turned wider and predatory.

“It was so nice of them to let us know how over a barrel we had them.”

I facepalmed, mostly for dramatic effect.

“Do I want to know?”

“Mmmm…” Iona trailed off.

“That’s a no. Don’t get any of those assassins sent after us!” I called out to her.

Iona gave me a jaunty wave as she sashayed back to town. I went back to reviewing our preparations.

“Auri, you’ve got a bunch of knowledge from me. Can you look over the enchantments on Fenrir’s armor, and see if I’ve missed anything? A second pair of eyes would be great, thank you.”

“Brrrpt!” Auri saluted, fluttering off to Fenrir. I was fairly confident in my work, but hey, free pair of second eyes, critically with a different thought process entirely, what was there not to like? Especially with her ability to [See Magic], I hoped she could spot any malformed enchantments, thanks to her knowledge due to our companion bond.

I got immunity to fire, she got some of my knowledge, we all won.

Also, it was hilarious watching her flit around Fenrir, examine one place, then peck at him to shift over so she could look at another spot. Good times.

Arrows were good. Time to go over our potion stocks, and to confirm who would use which to buff up for the fight.

We weren’t risking anything on Auri and Fenrir - at first. Potions were broadly brewed for elvenoids, and while some could work on the two, there was only a few emergency potions we were risking for Fenrir, as a measure of last resort.

Potions didn’t follow the normal rules. A dose for a human was the same as a dose for a gnome, was the same as a dose for a giant. Same effect on all three - there was clearly something extra going on.

Both gnomes and giants had issues drinking potions. Gnomes could literally bathe in a normal potion dose, and drinking a full bathtub worth was difficult. Giants had the opposite problem - getting the teeny-tiny dose into their mouth was tricky if they didn’t want to also eat the vial.

To start with. Four potions were set aside for Fenrir - a general broad-spectrum antidote potion, which wouldn’t hit anything strong and made no sense to me how it could possibly work, antidotes didn’t work like that -

Focus.

A generic potion to stem bleeding and scab over wounds, a more specific potion for blood loss, and the big one, a Brew of Lasting Breath, which promised to stave off death for just a few seconds after being drunk.

It was incredibly niche, but if we got separated or I ran out of mana during the fight, it might keep him alive long enough for me to reach him, or fix any critical areas with the small amount of mana I’d regenerate in the timeframe, which should let him turn the corner and live.

We were going to stuff them into his jaw, and he could crack and drink them as needed, and we’d pray to the goddesses if that happened that the potions would work on him, and he wasn’t drinking sludge. The local [Alchemist] had simply shrugged when we asked if the potions would work on a wyvern.

They’d never interacted with one before, so how would they know?

I’d been forced to give myself a budget when I went shopping for my own potions. I didn’t have too many other monetary expenses - I was skipping armor entirely, convinced it wouldn’t do a thing to help me, and blank spell books were cheap. Prepared spellbooks were expensive, and generally the good spells had a bunch of obfuscating skills and fake runes that did nothing, designed to stop people like me from simply copying them over into my own spellbook. Bah, the audacity of some people, wanting to be paid. Just let me copy them! The expensive part of a blank spellbook was the endless hours needed to fill them in with mandalas.

Thank the System for [Parallel Thoughts], I’d quite literally compressed four weeks of prep work into one.

The most interesting potion I had was a Concoction of the Sun God, which promised to boost how powerful my Radiance skills were. I’d hoped it was multiplicative with [Solar Corona], but even additive would be a nice boost to my skills.

An Astral Ambrosia promised to boost my effective Celestial Affinity, which wasn’t quite as potent as the Concoction of the Sun God, but was still nice. My set was finished by an all-in-one stat booster, and a small barrel of mana potions.

I had no idea how I could possibly drink that much fluid in a single go, but better to have it and a stuffed stomach that literally couldn’t take another drop, than to want it and not have it.

Speaking of mana, we weren’t bothering with massive amounts of arcanite. Just a little here and there, mostly poorly integrated into Fenrir’s armor.

I swear Iona better have included an armorer for Fenrir on her list. I’d be disappointed if she didn’t have a few selfish requests like that for Arachne.

Thanks to [The World Around Me] I didn’t need to manually crack open the mana potion barrel to check that it was still there and good. It had a fancy straw-like thing that would let me drink from it, even if we were all upside down or some other craziness like that.

There were a number of thought speed improving and intelligence potions offered on sale, but the warning label had scared me off.

…in rare cases, repeated use of this potion may cause insanity, especially in those with an established history of mental instability. Discontinue use if you experience any of the following symptoms:

Persistent hallucinations

Paranoia

Extreme mood swings

Losing touch with reality

Memory loss

Vivid, intense dreams that appear to be real

The sensation that nothing exists beyond your immediate vicinity

If symptoms persist for more than eight hours, consult with a professional, if you can still remember this warning and find the appropriate [Healer].

Yeaaaaaaaah, no. I was fairly well grounded… relatively… except for some minor thought process drifting… and lack of focus… but I wasn’t risking it. I was pretty sure my healing could manage the side effects - we’d studied it at the School of Sorcery and Spellcraft - but I also knew my healing wasn’t the best at mental effects, and it wasn’t entirely clear if it was a side-effect that could be cleared out with magic, or if it was simply the natural result of the brain going a little nuts. In other words, I was concerned about the effect of the experience, which my healing had nothing for, as opposed to the composition.

My head already ended up in the clouds now and then, what would happen if it ended up in the clouds even harder?

The reward wasn’t worth the risk.

Iona’s potions were a little different. She had the same general all-rounder stat booster, along with a Serum of Sharpness which promised to make all her weapons sharper. I had no idea how that worked, but hey. Alchemists were a crazy lot, and the whole field was fairly interesting. There was a reason I’d almost picked it to study at the School!

A Whiskey of Whimsical Weightlessness promised to do exactly what it said, freeing Iona from the grasp of gravity. Combined with [Flight of the Valkyries], she’d have complete freedom to fly at almost no cost for the hour or so that the potion lasted. Cool how potions could interact with skills to make strong effects!

A Radiant Rosehip Remedy was similar to Fenrir’s Brew of Lasting Breath, promising to briefly hit the pause button on death. Ice Tea Tonic was going to boost her Ice skills, a Prickly Pear Precision Potion would improve her eyesight and steady her hands, letting her make crazier shots.

I closed the satchel back up, nodding to myself. Potions were good.

For my healing, I went over all the images I had prepared. I had one for Fenrir, a hyper-specific one tailored to exactly the wyvern. However, I was going to hit him on an as-needed basis. The wyvern was so massive that all my mana could easily be drained in a careless moment.

For Auri, I set up a [Persistent Casting] with [Wheel of Sun and Moon] through our bond, ensuring she wouldn’t need to level up [Phoenix Rebirth]. She was so small that it’d take a miracle for her to drain me of mana.

I had my own permanent healing on, dialed into my own chimeric image, and I had Iona’s [Persistent Casting] set as well.

In a bit of a weird twist, any other [Healer] trying to work on Iona would find their efficiency plummeting, as she didn’t follow the normal human standards. It wouldn’t be enough to cause issues, just a larger chunk of mana than normal.

Healing set, I grit my teeth and did the next necessary job - cutting my hair short.

I liked my long hair, but it was a pure liability in the upcoming fight. We were in Sanguino, so finding someone to fix me back up after the right would be trivial.

I pulled out my knife, grabbed my hair, and gritted my teeth.

It was just so hard to cut it short. I blamed the companion-boosted vanity. I had to force an image in my mind of someone grabbing my hair and pulling me around by it into my head before I could get my knife to move and slice it off.

“Auri, how’s it looking over there?” I asked. “I’ve got some hair here for you to burn cleanly if you’d like.”

Before I was done talking the little bird was zipping over to me, my chopped-off hair igniting without a shred of smoke.

“Brrpt! Brrpt, BRPT!” Auri had a couple of spots she wanted me to check. I got up, stretched, and walked over to Fenrir.

“Hey, how are you doing?” I asked the huge wyvern, patting his armored wing. “Nervous?”

Fenrir growled as he turned his helmeted head towards me, his head and eye getting close to me. He then growled something that sounded like an assent, as he bobbed his head.

I patted his armor. There were no scales to touch.

“Hey, yeah, I get it. Been a while since you fought something big, hasn’t it? We’ve planned and prepared for this, we’ve got this.”

Fenrir bobbed his assent again.

“Pipe?” He asked.

“Pipe - oh yeah, hang on.”

“Brrrpt!” Auri protested my distraction as I crossed the field back to the inn, grabbing another pile of herbs for Fenrir, walked back over, and packed his pipe full.

“Brrrpt.” Auri flipped in front of me, and made the most exaggerated eye roll before igniting Fenrir’s pipe. The wyvern settled down comfortably as he started puffing on the pipe.

“Alright, show me.” I told Auri.

“BRRRPT!” She shrieked in protest. Half the things she wanted to show me Fenrir was now lying on!

I patted my shoulder, letting Auri know her favorite perch was open.

“Come on. You burn flowers, Fenrir smokes, we all blow off steam and pre-fight jitters in different ways. Now, show me what you were concerned about.”

“Brrpt!”

Iona came back less than an hour later, looking both worn out and elated.

“How’d it go?” I asked her.

She was beaming sunshine and rainbows.

“Fantastically! Arachne mentioned she needed to clear a couple of my requests with her Command, but she thinks it’s all doable. Might take a week or two to finish sorting out.”

I pumped my fist.

“Yes!” Remembering the architect of all this, I jumped into Iona’s ready arms, and planted the biggest kiss I could on her lips, wrapping my legs around her.

Iona kissed me deeply back, then broke it.

“Unless you want to put this off until tomorrow, we should get going.” The Valkyrie said with a suggestive wiggle of her eyebrows.

I wiggled my way out of her embrace.

“We should get going.”

I felt my mental walls slam down, my focus narrow. Iona had been right. Getting the conversation out of the way with Arachne had been important. I felt reassured now that I was Sentinel Dawn, that I could proudly say who I was, that I didn’t need to keep it hidden like some dirty secret.

Because it wasn’t a dirty secret. I was proud of it, and I’d be able to let everyone know.

The entire Eventide Eclipse were fantastic, and I loved them all. Okay, Fenrir a little less than Iona and Auri, but I’d still follow them wherever, no hesitation. They asked me to do something dangerous, possibly illegal? I was there for them. They were my family, and I knew they had my back.

But we were like a small comet, spinning through space together. An inseparable group, but a small one.

With Iona’s decision, with Arachne’s likely acceptance of whatever her terms had been, I now felt like we were on a planet. That there was a large, reassuring presence behind our back. I briefly dissected the feeling, drawing it out of myself the way Linnet had helped me learn how to do.

In Remus I’d always been part of a greater whole. One person in a nation. I hadn’t realized just how much the ‘of Remus’ part had meant to me, of having the broad support and working for a common good, had meant.

Exterreri wasn’t Remus. I didn’t think it would ever be Remus.

But it was a home, a place I was starting to put down roots. Night was here.

I had solid footing again. It was a weight off my mind. At the same time, it was a subtle pressure, a comfortable mantle settling around my shoulders once again.

I was Sentinel Dawn.

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