Beneath the Dragoneye Moons

We all boarded Fenrir and took off towards where the wyrm had made its lair.

Hakram, Baelin, and Alan were clutched in Fenrir’s claws, bleating with terror. They were in the grip of a predator, of course they were terrified.

Their end was soon, but not from Fenrir. They had a right to be nervous.

The rest of us?

In some ways, this was the most comfortable situation for us. Iona was trained from childhood to be a Valkyrie, to go forth and slay monsters, no matter what form they took. Fenrir was a natural predator - I’d believe it if his instincts were constantly screaming at him to snap up and eat the small, tasty, unguarded morsels that were constantly running in front of him. I was trained as a Ranger and a Sentinel.

Auri was the only one a little out of place in terms of how natural this all was… but then again, we were asking her to set a lot of things on fire.

What more could she ask for?

“Want to tell me what you asked for?” I’d been patient. I’d been good.

I was dying of curiosity.

“Oh, this and that.” She replied.

I made a small, pained whimpering noise.

Iona laughed, and it just filled me with light and warmth. I was so happy that I could make her laugh, it was like sunshine and mangos all wrapped up in warm fuzzy feelings.

“Alright, alright. I did ask for the backpay thing.” Iona said. “Night pointed out that your family had been paid the entire time you were gone, and ended up inheriting it all when you were officially declared dead, and when dead, you were sort of out of commission. Arachne mentioned that while you were at the School, you weren’t known to them or available for missions, but that it could be considered your off-cycle years, and Sentinels still get paid then. Does Night have a sense of mischief?”

I thought about Night, cheating at cards with the rest of us.

“A slightly terrifying one, why?” I asked with no small amount of trepidation.

“Because he got a huge fangy grin in the middle, and completely pivoted. Said that they’d be more than happy to give you the backpay if that’s what it took to get you to join up, and they’d deliver it to us as soon as we’d confirmed we were joining, direct to our home.”

The image of a monkey’s paw curling briefly flashed before my eyes.

“Uh oh. I’m almost wondering if this is a bad idea.” I said.

Iona nodded.

“Yeah… I have a feeling we’re going to regret it, but for the life of me, I can’t figure out why. Money is money. They also mentioned needing to work out exactly how many years of pay you were owed. Sixteen is the highest they’ll go, with two and a half on the low end. Something about Sentinels getting half-pay when they’re off-cycle.”

Two and a half years of stupid amounts of money was more than enough for me. I’d gone from destitute to ‘how do I spend this much money??’ in weeks.

Then again, I knew how to spend that much money. It wasn’t just for me - it was also for my team. The rest of the Eventide Eclipse. Armoring and gearing Iona and Fenrir more than they had now would cost a fortune - a fortune roughly the size I was acquiring. That was before the home we wanted to build was factored in, which would be another fortune’s worth of money.

“Anything else?”

“Oh yeah, tons. One thing I knew they’d reject was full support for the Order Valkyrie, to let us recover in their lands, and form the Order with all the rights and privileges.”

My mouth dropped open.

“What?” I asked, kinda stupidly.

Iona shrugged.

“I needed to give them some things to negotiate on, some obviously poor points that they could reject. Arachne understands, she even hinted at it to us! All part of the game. We’re all elvenoids, we all have ego. Giving her something to happily reject. When she goes to Command and they ask about it, she can truthfully say she bartered me down, and got themselves an excellent deal, making everything else look more reasonable and sane in comparison.”

My head hurt.

“Wait, how is that not violating the deception part of your [Vow]?” I asked.

“Because… it doesn’t?” Iona answered, puzzled. “I’m not deceiving anyone. I’m not lying. I really would like Exterreri to support the Order Valkyrie. I just recognized that it would be rejected, and everything else accepted.”

This. This right here. This is why I didn’t want to interact with people.

“Anything else I need to know about? At this point, skip the things I don’t need to know about.” I was almost regretting asking.

“Yeah. The big, easy one, that I think you should’ve asked for is that you’ll be on relief or defensive operations. No being the tip of the spear as we invade someone else, no need to be part of an army pillaging someone else’s city.”

Wow, yikes, yeah, that was a great concession. This was why I had Iona helping me out.

“I’ve asked for a list of Shadow operations in the last two decades, along with rationales and results. That’s going to be the big sticking point for me, and the main reason why they can’t immediately give me an answer. I might also recommend we don’t join if I don’t like it.”

Well, that was a lot to process all at once.

“Recommend?” I settled on.

“Recommend.” Iona confirmed. “I don’t control you. I don’t control what you do. You’re a free woman, if you want to join the Sentinels, I’m not going to stop you or force you not to.”

I nuzzled the back of my head against her chest, which was smooth armor at this point.

“We all know what I’ll do though. With that being said, after getting the last 20 years of Shadow operations, do you really think they’ll let us live?”

Iona nodded.

“Yes. I swore I wouldn’t reveal the contents to anyone else, and Arachne had some binding language. On its own, it wouldn’t mean much, but I’m [Vowed]. It’s possible that they’d betray us and murder us, but that slightly defeats the whole purpose, yeah?”

I put it out of my mind entirely. It would only be terribly distracting, and I didn’t need that right now.

We kept flying, and before long, we broke out of the ashen shadow that darkened Sanguino. I leaned back, letting the light hit my face.

“Sun. Glorious sun. Goddesses, this was the right move, I hadn’t realized how much I was missing the light.” I basked in the light, shifting my face around to get more sunshine.

Bonus of having cut my hair! Nothing to flick out of the way.

“Brrrpt!” Auri appreciated the light as well.

“I’ve been feeling almost itchy, not being able to see the moons at night. This is right.” Iona had all the conviction of a religious fanatic, which was a little scary on one level.

On the other hand, ‘see the moons now and then in the evening’ wasn’t the worst of religions.

We weren’t alone in the air, and I gave a very armored, very armed, very scary-looking airship a leery look. I didn’t recognize the symbol on the side, but I would be willing to bet it was from the elves. What they were doing over Sanguino, I hoped I’d never find out.

For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how airships worked. It had to be a powerful classer or three doing nothing but lifting, but they were just so damn heavy I struggled to envision how. Arcanite weighed a ton and a half, and the amount needed to just lift itself perpetually was mind-boggling.

“There!” Iona pointed, changing the subject. I immediately looked where she was pointing, turning off my notifications in the process.

It was a large hill, or small mountain, depending on one’s point of view, in a forest. Large swaths of trees had been bulldozed, and I recognized the place. Somewhat.

“Hey! We flew over this on the way to Sanguino!” I said. Then again, we’d been able to see a lot on our way down.

I scanned the mountain, not seeing any obvious wyrms, not even with my massively enhanced eyesight.

“Can’t spot it, can you?” I asked.

“Brrpt.” Auri shook her head. I hadn’t been asking her, and I’d honestly be a little surprised if her tiny hummingbird-phoenix eyes could see in detail that far away. Still, her participation warmed my heart.

Iona didn’t answer, but I saw her eyes scanning the ground.

“Not yet. Let’s circle around.”

Fenrir was clearly listening in, and did a long sweep around the mountain, the four of us staring down for any signs of life.

“Deploy the goats?” I suggested.

“Deploy the goats.” Iona grimly confirmed.

Fenrir snorted unhappily. He’d had first dibs on eating them if we didn’t need to use them.

“Brrrpt!” Auri chirped a too-cheerful goodbye to the goats as Fenrir swooped a little low, releasing them over the top of the mountain.

“BBBAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaah” The goat’s plaintive bleating protests at being dropped from cruising height was rapidly lost as they fell and we continued flying.

I twisted around Iona, looking over the back of the wyvern to watch them fall. I didn’t hear them land, but I pulled a face as I watched two of them splatter on the rocks.

The third one, miracle of miracles - Baelin, I think - somehow survived the fall, and started to slowly drag himself away from the crash site using its front hooves, the back two dragging uselessly.

I couldn’t resist. [Long-Range Identify] brought back [Goat - 256].

“Did the goat just get 30 levels for being dropped?” I asked Iona in disbelief. Fenrir banked around, and Iona took a look.

“Yup.” She confirmed.

We circled a bit longer, the crippled goat nearly tugging on my heartstrings. I was fine eating goat, I was fine using them as bait or sacrifices. Letting them clearly suffer like this though?

I was just about to suggest we go down and do something about the goat one way or another when the ground seemed to warp. Without a big explosion, without any massive fanfare, the wyrm came through the rock, swimming out of it like it was water. Its gigantic jaws snapped around the dead goats, poor Baelin losing his rear hooves and getting spun through the air.

[Wyrm - 620]

It was about as thick as Fenrir’s body, and there was no telling how long it was. Its long teeth were a dark grey, looking nothing like ivory, and more metallic colors swirled around its skin.

“Mantle, Mountain, Radiance.” Iona rapidly reported, scanning it with far more powerful abilities than anything the System could hope to offer. “It can swim through rock, its got skills for thick plates of armor, reinforcement skills, it can manipulate both stone and metal, it’s got skills to slowly heal, it’s got skills around hitting things hard, with both its body and its bite. Wyrm also has some blinding Radiance skills, and it can fire off what looks like the mother of all Radiance explosion attacks. How are we feeling about this?” Iona rapidly gave the breakdown of the important skills, skipping over unimportant buffs, passives, and skills that wouldn’t apply to a fight like this.

“Brrrrrpt!!” Auri was raring to go.

“Radiance?” I said with no small amount of surprise. “I’m all for it. We’ve got all the advantages over it. We’ve planned, we’ve prepared, is there anything in the wyrm’s skill list that’s a good reason to abort?”

Iona shook her head.

“Armor skill looks potent, but we should be alright. Fenrir?”

Fenrir didn’t answer, but I felt the metal plates under me swell as he took in a deep breath. Then he let out a deafening roar, a territorial challenge from one beast to another, letting the wyrm know that he, Fenrir, Lord of the Frozen Skies, was now the ruler of the mountain.

The sound was deafening, and I clapped my hands over my ears to try and tune it out. I was attached to Fenrir though, and the vibrations and noise went through me, rattling my entire body.

The wyrm screamed defiance back, contending in its own primitive way that it owned the mountain.

“Fire. 20%.” Iona declared, and it was on.

I had nothing to do at this range. Nobody was injured, and my Radiance couldn’t reach that far. My butterflies might, but them against the wyrm’s armor? No contest, wasn’t going to waste my mana. Sure, I could use wizardry to summon some rocks and let gravity do its thing, but that was both inefficient and weak. Best that I sit tight.

Auri opened up the fight with [Auri’s Meteor Storm], dozens upon dozens of flaming meteors, each one burning a different color, rained down in the general area of the wyrm. From how high up we were, it was hard to perfectly aim, the little phoenix instead choosing to fill the entire area with flames.

Fenrir and Iona’s joint assault came a moment later, dozens of sharp javelins made out of Ice forming around the wyvern. Gravity would’ve been enough for the weapons, but Iona quickly flicked them out with [Telekinesis], giving them all some initial speed and aiming them roughly in the direction of the wyrm. At the same time, she summoned her short bow, pulling out a few normal arrows and letting them fly against the wyrm.

All of our attacks broke against the thick armor of the wyrm, who roared back, pulling itself out of the mountain. It didn’t shoot anything back, simply declaring itself the king of the hill.

It had something of a point. We were high up in the sky, and it had the mountain.

“Any objections to close combat?” Our fearless leader asked.

“Brrrpt brpt brpt BRRRRRRRRRRRRPT!!” Auri declared a charge. She wanted to get up close and personal and show the wyrm what we could do.

Nobody objected. I broke out the potions, handing Iona’s to her, then drinking my own.

I was slightly judging Iona as she tossed the empty vials off Fenrir’s back. I packed mine away back in the satchel, but it wasn’t the time or the place to discuss it.

“Elaine, sit behind me. Break into pairs when we’re closer.” Iona said. I unbuckled myself, and Auri flew over to my hands. I split my mind into four, each part tasked with something different. Healing. Flying. Wizardry and Radiance. Situational awareness and the general ‘other’. I’d been able to track everything even before [Parallel Thoughts] entered the picture, but there was no reason not to apply every bit of force, every skill I had to the upcoming battle.

I held Auri close as we dove.

It was terrifying and exhilarating to be on top of Fenrir’s back as he went in for a full dive. His mouth opened as we approached at terrifying speed, and the wyrm started its attack. Razor-sharp shards of obsidian and metal tore into us, the difference in relative speeds making it all the worse. Parts of the assault were blunted and turned by Iona and Fenrir’s armor, the enchantments and reinforcements empowering them, a poor angle turning the blow. Others hit dead on, shredding through delicate wing membranes coated by only a thin layer of armor, and entering through Fenrir’s unguarded mouth.

Auri and I were sheltered behind Iona’s broad protection, shielded from the storm.

One particularly large and heavy rock hit Iona’s head in an ugly way, snapped her neck back with a sickening crunch.

[Persistent Casting] saved the day. It had been set up before we left, every injury instantly reforming and repairing itself as it happened. Fenrir’s flight was barely changed, instead of being grounded. Iona’s head snapped back, the Dusk Valkyrie still in the fight instead of crippled for life.

My instinct was to bail off of Fenrir, to dodge out of the lethal hail, to split off and hit the wyrm from a different angle. I had to fight that instinct - in the moment, right here, right now, I needed to stay.

Then Fenrir got close enough, and he breathed.

Wyverns weren’t dragons, not by a long shot; they were their smaller, weaker cousins. Nothing that could be compared to a dragon was weak, and I hadn’t seen Fenrir’s breath attack before, for real, for one very good reason:

It was too strong for most things we fought.

A solid beam of freezing Ice magic, like a dragon’s flames but cold, roared out of Fenrir’s mouth, Lightning arcing all around it. It hit the wyrm dead-on, the Lightning playing all over the monster as the Ice chilled and cracked the armor.

The wyrm screamed in pain.

Fenrir kept going, and Auri and I split off. My wings snapped open as I leapt off of Fenrir’s back, and he and Iona hit the wyrm at full speed like a comet strike. The three of them ended up in a twisting, snarling, fighting mess as Auri and I got to work.

The world exploded. Burning Radiance washed over us as the wyrm clearly used the powerful explosion skill Iona had warned us about, and my [Radiance Resistance] wasn’t quite up to the task. Loose rocks blasted out from the epicenter of the explosion, trees were flattened, if not outright vaporized, and the whole world burned.

I cooked very slightly, becoming entirely blinded as the brightness and relative skill level worked against my super-sensitive eyes.

Healing pulsed through Auri and I, keeping us safe. Healing was also going through Iona and Fenrir, thanks to [Wheel of Sun and Moon] - assuming Iona was still touching sunlight in some way.

I pumped my wings, flying closer to the spinning, snarling mess that was Fenrir and the wyrm locked in mortal combat, the two of them having enough combined mass and muscle to level a large town or small city. I spotted Iona, sunlight gleaming off the shaft of her Dreamsteel glaive, stabbing down to the wyrm’s head.

Auri was trying out a bunch of different flames, different colors flaring to life, only some of them ‘sticking’ to the wyrm. Of those, a number of them simply ‘shed off’ as the wyrm discarded that part of its supernatural armor.

I checked my mana levels, and found I had over 97% of my mana left. When I spotted the occasional hole, when I got a clean shot, [Nova Lance] was the name of the game, striking at an eye or an exposed piece of flesh under the metal. The wyrm had its own [Radiance Resistance], especially with the large-scale Radiance ‘bomb’ skill it had, but it was better than doing nothing, better than staring at my full mana and waiting. When my mana levels were down to 90% of my max, I stopped, saving for any healing that might need to be done.

There was a lot of healing that needed to be done.

The battle raged, the wyrm fighting with all it had, the monster having a hundred level advantage on us. Significant, but class quality became the greater question at the relative difference. The battle didn’t stay in one place, the five of us rolling down the mountain, crushing everything that got in our way. Flesh, blood, bone, and metal went flying in every direction as the battle raged. Metal spikes flew with deadly accuracy, punctuated by the occasional Radiance explosion, like a nova bomb going off. The wyrm’s own mass and armor was deadly, but there were four of us. Fenrir was also coated head to toe in armor, and had the mass and bulk to fight with the wyrm, his armor not only reinforced by his skills, but by my enchantments. For every Radiance explosion, Fenrir blasted the wyrm with Lightning. For every set of metal spikes, Fenrir responded with Ice. He was slightly out of his element - tangled on the ground was inferior to aerial combat - but Iona was right there with him.

The wyrm was a little large for Iona, who didn’t quite have the skills to punch up that hard. From what I’d seen, the wyrm’s skill-based armor, the thick plates of metal it had around its tough skin, was thicker than the blade on Iona’s glaive. It didn’t mean she was useless - she sped and skated along the wyrm, keeping her balance with one of her skills as she made sure she was never in a position to become completely flattened - one of the only blows that would likely be lethal, even with me in the picture. What Iona lacked in raw penetrative damage, she made up for in sheer consistency. Every second saw a half dozen or more powerful blows by her glaive on the wyrm’s armor, peeling and carving away at the protections. Individually they weren’t much, but they added up fast.

I was darting and flying around, flitting like a butterfly around a rose, shifting with the roiling mess of limbs. I was constantly shooting out [Nova Lance] that was [Imbued] with [Dance with the Heavens], healing injuries as they occurred, ignoring the shrieks, snarls, and yells of battle. [Sunrise] kept me invigorated, letting me move at full-tilt the entire battle. The wyrm crushed Fenrir’s legs, and a moment later they were healed. Iona took a shard of obsidian longer than her leg through the gut, and I fixed her up before her severed spine could betray her.

The whole time Auri was burning, experimenting with different flames, until at last she hit whatever the magic formula was for her. A whole section of the wyrm’s armor erupted in sinister pink flames, and no amount of rolling and thrashing could extinguish them - although it also caught Iona’s armor on fire as she tried to leap over a line of flames. It was that, or be crushed by the wyrm’s roll.

After minutes, maybe hours, of deadly battle, the wyrm screamed and dove directly into the ground. No amount of trying to grab or hold onto it worked - none of us had hands large enough - and the wyrm didn’t leave a tunnel in its passing.

We didn’t need to say anything. I immediately flew up into the air, and Fenrir took a moment to right himself before joining us in the sky. I flew over and intercepted the two, the Eventide Eclipse reuniting.

Iona was panting and sweaty, and Fenrir was flagging. I hit Fenrir with [Sunrise], knowing Iona had her own energy skill.

“What now?” I asked. “Are we concerned about its healing skill?”

Iona took a few more deep gulps of air, and nodded.

“Yeah…” It looked like she wanted to say more, but she focused on breathing instead.

We circled around for a few minutes, then for twenty, our eyes focused on the ground, waiting to see where the wyrm would emerge from next, where the battle would result.

“Is it over?” I finally wondered.

Iona frowned.

“Maybe. Feels weird.”

I thought about it for a moment.

“Fight for dominance, it decided it wasn’t worth it and left?” I almost didn’t want to believe what I was saying. It sounded too easy.

“Brrrpt.”

But then again, it had been a monster that knew when to leave things be. It hadn’t been executed by Rangers or Sentinels yet, and not all fights had to end in death. A creature knowing when it was time to bow out was more likely to survive, and continue, and the wyrm had been fairly high level.

Fenrir roared, and without prompting dove back down. He alighted on top of the mountain, took a deep breath, and bellowed once again that he was now king of the hill, and all he saw was his domain.

Or something like that.

Some movement caught my eye, and I laughed. I nudged Iona with my elbow and I pointed, all while forming a [Kaleidoscope] butterfly [Imbued] with healing.

I sent it off as I spoke to Iona.

“Look. The goat survived!”

“Brrrpt!!”

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