Nina coming into our lives was interesting, and promised to keep us all busy for the foreseeable future. However, I still had a job to do, and the meeting with the rest of the War Sentinels was just around the corner.
Literally.
“Auri, can I get a dozen cookies, a loaf of your tastiest bread, and a stick of butter?” I think I was Auri’s first customer in her new bakery.
Rows upon rows of fairly basic goods lined her shelves, but to be fair, she’d just opened up for the first time. Burning flames were above each one, giving a price. The kitchen roared in the back, Auri effortlessly keeping a dozen different confections in various stages of cooking at once.
How the fuck she’d gotten a spot, supplies, a kitchen, and the required logistics chains in a few days, even with Night pulling some strings was astonishing.
Especially the location! There had to have been a working store here just a few days ago, what happened to it?!
The sheer speed boggled the mind, and I put it out of my head.
Tasty food was here, for sale, and Auri had a business. One that she was taking seriously.
“Brrrpt!”
I spluttered in outrage.“Really!?” I protested.
Taking way too seriously.
“Brpt.”
One of Auri’s [Mage Hands] poked me in the chest, and made the ‘pay up’ motion. I sighed, fishing the coins out of my pouch, and handing them over.
“Thief! Scoundrel!” I protested.
“Brrpt!!”
“I knew Amber was a bad influence on you!” I shook my fist at Auri as she neatly packed everything up for me with a legion of hands.
“Brrrrrrrpt!”
“Yes, of course I’ll tell everyone where I got it from… if it’s good!” I teased Auri with one last parting shot before I left her store.
“BRRRRRRRPT!” A fireball chased me out, and I legged it.
The Celestial Supper was just around the corner, and the place was fancy. They were leaning hard into the Celestial theme, pillars of stars on the marble columns, the moons and sun over the entry arch. I went inside, discovering that the entire ceiling was an illusion. An inky black sky, scattered with stars, with various planets and suns slowly drifting through the vast cosmos.
Good taste.
I realized as I entered that I had no idea where in here we were meeting. Fortunately, the place had staff. I waved one down, noting that I seemed to be a little underdressed for the place.
I got a Look. I probably deserved it.
“May I be of assistance?” He asked, giving my bag a dirty look. It obviously had someone else’s food in it, and it was probably a little insulting to walk in here with it.
Sharing the glory of Auri’s baking would make it all worth it.
“Hi! Yeah, is War Sentinel Tyrannus here?”
He sniffed at me. Actually sniffed!
Oooooooh, I was going to have fun.
“He is currently in a private room, and has asked not to be disturbed.”
I grinned at him, channeling my inner shark. Sure, it was teeny-tiny, but I was pretty sure it had a good predatory grin.
“Yeah, see, I’m supposed to be there. Oh! Let me introduce myself.”
I stuck out my hand.
“War Sentinel Dawn, pleased to meet you.”
He brightened up.
“Ah! Dawn, a pleasure to make your acquaintance. I’d heard rumors of a new War Sentinel, and was wondering when you’d arrive. Please, right this way.”
I was a little taken aback. I was half expecting to go through the whole usual mess of ‘yes I am’ ‘no you’re not’, and I’d planned to shortcut that all by asking him to ‘just skip to the end where you poke your head in and ask’, but…
Well, I guess if this was a regular hangout for the War Sentinels, the staff here would be a little more in-tune with what was going on with us than usual.
He brought me back to a private room, and knocked on the door.
“Enter!” A booming voice commanded, and I boldly stepped into the smoky room. [The World Around Me] showed Arachne’s ever-present threads terminating at the edge of this room, the Sentinel giving us some privacy for our chat.
Seven people sat around a table strewn with cards and dice, plates of bloody snacks near everyone.
Right. Fuck. Vampires, they liked their food bloody, not baked. How did I forget that??
I recognized most of them. Tyrannus was the highest leveled of them, sitting at the center of the table. He’d mentioned he was off-rotation during the Sentinel meeting where I’d met everyone, but that didn’t seem to extend to the weekly card game. Flood had been with Arachne when she was dishing out [Loremaster] knowledge, the woman’s hair half-black and half-white. Depths had also been at the meeting, and hadn’t said much, but she looked intense. I recognized Calm, but I didn’t think I’d seen the other three yet.
Well! Time for a good first impression! I’d half-laughed Iona out of the room when she suggested I just ‘be myself’, and gotten a decent first line out of her.
The rest was up to me.
“Hi! I’m Dawn! Nice to meet you all in a more casual setting. I brought some goodies! My companion recently opened a store nearby, and I figured I’d bribe you all. Forgive me for being a complete idiot and forgetting the blood!”
Welp.
I had started off strong, and promptly veered off track.
Tyrannus gave a boisterous laugh.
“Well met! Dawn, sit, sit! Anything you want here today’s on me!”
There was an obviously open chair, and I sat down.
“Thank you! It’s so nice to meet you all like this! I’ll be honest, I’m still a little overwhelmed by it all.”
Flood gave me an arched eyebrow.
“Proper prior planning prevents piss-poor performance.” She starkly reminded me, a direct jab at my food offerings.
The other Sentinels looked interested in what I’d say to that.
“Shaking down equipment and methods in low stakes environments is how we correct and learn.” I bit back. “I doubt anyone here can say they’ve never made a mistake.”
To my surprise, Flood grinned at me.
“Good to see you’ve got some spine! Introductions all around, I suppose? Tyrannus, would you like to start?”
“Sure! I’m War Sentinel Tyrannus, and arguably the most senior War Sentinel.” He said. I tilted my head at that.
“Arguably?” I asked.
He threw his head back and laughed.
“Arguably! You’re around now!”
I chuckled at that, and waved my hand at him.
“No no, I have no idea what I’m doing here, I’m not going to claim seniority on anyone. Unless it’s really convenient!”
My joke landed well with the crowd.
“Necessity is the mother of pulling rank!” One of the Sentinels I didn’t know yet said. He was the one smoking, although his eyes didn’t reflect an Ash element. Possibly a secondary or tertiary element - or he just liked smoking, as noxious as the habit was.
“I’m the ‘classic’ War Sentinel.” Tyrannus continued. “All my elements and classes are geared for it. Mist. Poison. Fossil. I hit morale and slowly kill lots of people. Blinding, disorienting fogs for our foes, followed up by poison-infused bone dinosaurs stomping through. While the enemy is confused, lost, and being murdered by the bones of ancient tyrannosaurus rexes, the Fifth legion moves in and mops up, easy as pie. I’m far weaker in an individual fight than most people my level, but I got the title Tyrannus as a combination of my signature bone constructs, combined with the terror I instill.”
A little bone construct of a T-rex was assembled on the table by Tyrannus, and two smaller armies of people were made by one of the other Sentinels here. One looking all shiny, armed like the Legions, and the other a mass of barbarians. The two ‘armies’ clashed, the bone T-rex went through the barbarians, and they were routed, running screaming as the ‘legions’ crushed them.
“Cool! Who’s doing the illusions?” I asked.
One of the Sentinels I hadn’t met yet waved his hand.
“That’s me!” He volunteered. “War Sentinel Legion. I am the Seventh Legion, hence the title.”
I leaned forward with a grin.
“Okay, that’s a totally cool statement. How are you the Seventh?”
He rubbed his hands together.
“Brilliance and Mirage are my only relevant classes and elements. Third one’s for me. Most of the Seventh is an illusion in the field. People quickly figure out they’re fighting illusions, which is when the blades start to become ‘real’. By that point, it turns into a massacre. An illusionary army, whose blades are real?”
I shuddered as I imagined trying to fight such a thing.
“And of course your team is hidden with you… or do you disguise yourself as just another one of the soldiers?” I asked.
He winked and tapped the side of his nose.
“That’d be telling, yeah?”
All the while the soldiers had regrouped, the barbarians against the legion again. The barbarians charged into the legions, getting a confused look on their face as their weapons ‘missed’ everyone, comically scratching their heads.
Then the ‘legions’ started hacking them apart.
“Why do you bother with the illusion of an army, when you could just send a whirling mass of Brilliance at people and be done with it?” I asked.
“People know to run away from that, or could figure out how to counter what I’m doing.” Legion bluntly replied. “That, and one person standing outside a city is easy, the solution clear. An entire ghostly Legion setting up siege weapons? An army filled with unkillable people? That gets people working along different lines entirely. It’s far, far, far more complicated than what I’m saying. For example, one member of my support team is an Ooze expert, who makes a lot of the blows other people make on the soldiers look and feel real, which makes them coming back and hitting all the scarier. I could literally spend all day talking about different things I do, but that defeats the point of a quick introduction!”
“Sounds good! I might have some Mirage-related questions for you later. A member of my team just picked up a kitsune as her [Squire]...”
“Yes, I’d love to compare training notes at some point!” Legion said.
Tyrannus gently coughed.
“I think all of us are going to want some training notes from Dawn.” He said. “That’s half the reason we have these meetings.” He explained to me. “There aren’t a ton of us, and trading resources and training is valuable. Let’s save the swaps and offers until introductions are done?”
He looked around, quickly getting buy-in from everyone. I nodded as well. No reason to rock the boat, or avoid going with the flow.
“Sentinel Flood. We’ve met.” The woman gruffly introduced herself. “I’m a [Strategist] and buffer. Completely useless without an army to support. I’ve got a thousand tricks up my sleeve.”
Legion had team barbarian against team legion again. The two armies clashed, only for the barbarians to get flooded out.
“Story! Story! Story!” One of the last Sentinels I didn’t know yet started to chant, her voice quickly picked up by the rest of the Sentinels.
Flood sighed, rolled her eyes, and crossed her arms.
“Fine. FINE!” She grumped. “Title’s Flood. Third Legion. I had a brief moment when I was a Legata where diverting rivers into our enemies was my go-to trick. Did it one time too many, got promoted as Flood when raised to War Sentinel.”
The Sentinel in question who’d started the ‘story’ chant loudly booed, and Flood gave her the evil eye.
“Well, what about your title story, War Sentinel Stacked?” She pointedly glared.
“There’s no way.” I said, eyeing her. Sentinel Stacked was, well… stacked.
She glowered and crossed her arms under her generous bust.
“It’s War Sentinel Queen, and you know it. Titan had a terrible naming sense, may the gods look after his soul, and we all know it.”
I wasn’t a social savant, but I knew when to keep my mouth shut.
The woman sighed, picked up the deck, and shuffled it with impossible nimbleness and dexterity.
“War Sentinel Queen, formerly Stacked. Second Legion. The long and the short of it is - we deal with cards. We’ve got a half-dozen meta skills that lets us slowly charge up different cards with powerful effects, and the longer we’re at it, the bigger they get. What’s fun is the longer we are between conflicts, the bigger the cards get, and the more people know our stockpile’s growing. It’s getting to the point where us simply showing up will get people to leave. Only real limit on how high we can go is Guardian intervention. Manadhion, The Nightmare, gave us a real talking-to at one point and destroyed half our stockpile.”
She shuddered at that.
“Haven’t charged anything up that high ever since, but they seem to be fine with us having more, weaker cards. Title’s Queen, both on the card suit in half the world, and because at one point we ended up forming our own little monarchy after an Immortal War.”
She chuckled at that.
“Arachne was pissed. We had to do a whole song and dance to get our people accepting the fact that we were getting absorbed into another country, which was a mess and a half. Got a bunch of neat songs out of it though! Half of them are still sung.”
That sounded like a story and a half! Also, I wasn’t going to ask about Titan. I might ask Night or Arachne. Sounded like he was giving out titles at some point? I was a little confused about Queen’s operation though. Was that her entire team doing stuff? That was an interesting way to look at things - it wasn’t her, it was her and her entire team making things happen.
A good way of recognizing and supporting the people who worked in the background and made things happen. I approved.
Tyrannus kicked Queen under the table.
“Half of them are still sung, and four centuries later you’re still referring to yourself as royalty! That’s why Arachne gets so pissy over it!”
Nevermind. All those lofty ideals just crumbled to dust.
“Calm.” The next man introduced himself, steamrolling the coversation. “Lava. Mountain. 11th Legion. Large channeled skills. Major disruptions. Nobody can fight when the ground under their feet betrays them, and when volcanoes erupt.”
Legion was much more descriptive with his little lightshow, a volcanic eruption emerging in the middle of a group of barbarians and just killing a ton of them. The legions came in after, casually ‘stabbing’ the fallen barbarians.
Night had mentioned how Destruction had been a sort of precursor to War Sentinels, and it looked like Calm was a sort of successor to his seat. Massive ‘fuck this army up’ effects - with the benefit of having a full Legion to act as mop-up.
Dude did not seem chatty. I couldn’t tell if that was his personality, if he really was as calm and emotionless as his words and title implied, or if he just barely had a lid on his anger, with the title a cruel joke or misdirection.
[*ding!* [Ancient Loremaster of Legend] has leveled up! 180 -> 181. +100 Dexterity, +100 Vitality, +800 Mana, +800 Mana Regen, +1600 Magic Power, +1600 Magic Control from your Class per level! +1 Strength, +1 Dexterity, +1 Speed, +1 Vitality, +1 Mana, +1 Mana Regeneration, +1 Magic Power, +1 Magic Control for being Chimera (Elvenoid)! +1 Mana, +1 Magic Power from your Element per level!]
I gave the notification the side-eye. I hoped that was Auri cooking a bunch of new goods in a high-stress environment - grand new opening of a bakery in a swanky part of town, new business, all that jazz that got [Bakers] levels - and not because there was another fire started somewhere that I’d need to attend.
“War Sentinel Depths. Ocean. Unattached to a Legion.” The next woman introduced herself. My eyebrows tried to escape into my hair.
“How’s that work?” I asked.
She shrugged.
“Because, like Legion, I can take on an army or city myself and win. Unlike Legion, I don’t have the same intimidation factor. Like Tyrannus, I’m not great at punching at my weight, but I punch down fantastically well.”
I stared at her, and saw Tyrannus nudge her under the table. Legion had his little army of ‘barbarians’ facing off against a single woman.
“Skills! I’ve got a weird one called [Water Echo]. It’s a toggled passive. When it’s on, anytime I move I leave a trail of water behind me. I’ve got some more skills dedicated to the specific handling of just that water, and it’s tailored narrowly enough that I get to control it all on a macro scale. I start off small, but watch.”
She gestured to the little lightshow Legion had going on. Depths was alone, running in circles away from the barbarians. Water sloshed off behind her in great gouts, slowing down her pursuers. Slowly, bit by bit, the water level rose, and she started to control it, flinging great amounts of water all over the place. By the time the barbarians realized there was an issue and started to run, Depths had whole tidal waves crashing around on what was once a dry and flat plain.
I blinked at that. How much mana was that!?
Wait, she said it was a passive. So no mana to summon the water!? That was broken.
“I’m also our deep-sea specialist, and most of my missions are Core instead of War. I’m a little surprised I haven’t been reassigned to Core, but Arachne reckons there are morale reasons not to ‘lose’ a War Sentinel.”
Tyrannus shook his head.
“You’re still War because you can take on an entire army.” He said. “Not many Core Sentinels could, and I’d argue only three War Sentinels can. Don’t sell yourself short.”
Depths looked pleased as she leaned back, grabbing another snack.
“Calamity. 1st Legion. I kill people.” The last man said. His eyes, unlike everyone else in the room, had no markings of an advanced element, and he had one of the highest levels I’d seen any vampire have - [Mage - 2625]. “Poison. Miasma. Third class is to keep me entertained. I’m half the reason Forbidden Four exists as a concept in this day and age.”
He flicked a few cards.
“There’s really not much more to say.”
A picture was worth a thousand words, and Legion was quick to deliver. A bunch of barbarians showed up, a mini-Calamity showed up, and they just keeled over and died.
Sounded like Toxic mixed with Hesoid. Mass murder on an industrial scale. I had a lot of thoughts about that, but I’d been the one dishing out death myself by the thousands to civilians at one point.
“That’s us! We all have teams, a few of us have companions, but tell us about yourself. What are your relevant elements, how do you see yourself operating, and what’s your experience?” Tyrannus asked me.
I was glad they’d had me go last. Gave me a good feel for how they did things.
“Well! Celestial healer. I’m hammering all the details out still, but I imagine I’m going to be a great big ‘nobody dies while I’m here’. Not as big or flashy as the rest of you, but I’ve historically been fairly popular on battlefields.”
“Like this?” Legion made the two armies again, the sides clashing. Each time a barbarian was struck down, they stayed ‘dead’, but each time a legionnaire was hit, they just shrugged it off and kept going.
“Yeah, close enough!” It got the idea across.
“What are your limitations? Range, power, sustainability, large-scale combat prowess, personal combat prowess, and what does your team currently look like? How much experience do you have in warzones, and what types of conflicts?” Tyrannus asked. Before I could answer, he added a few more words.
“We’re only asking because we want to help. You’re one of us now, and nobody comes into this with all the right answers.”
I nodded.
I’d heard all about them - now it was time to tell them all about me!
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