Beneath the Dragoneye Moons

I pulled the covers tighter over me as Iona slipped out in the early morning. She managed to extract herself so nimbly that I didn’t get a blast of cold air or anything.

On one hand, I wanted to go back to sleep. On the other, I kinda wanted to know what Iona was going to think up this morning for Nina, plus, I could surprise her by getting something hot ready for her when she got back.

It wouldn’t be a great surprise if I instantly got up though. Speaking of surprises… spring. Spring was the correct time to propose. Why it had to be late autumn now, I never knew, but I guess it beat summer?

With only a small amount of reluctance, I hit myself with [Sunrise], energizing myself better than any cup of coffee would. I shamelessly spied on Iona and Nina with [The World Around Me], tracking what was happening.

Iona snuck into Nina’s room, and gave the sleeping kitsune a concerned once-over, making sure nothing was obviously wrong. That she wasn’t getting pushed to the edge so hard that it was showing, that there wasn’t some injury she was hiding that would interfere with training.

I could’ve told Iona that Nina was fine, but this was also something she felt directly responsible for, that she had to do herself.

Satisfied that she wasn’t about to break her squire, Iona took a deep breath and roared at the sleeping girl.

“Squire Nina! Up on your feet!” She shouted, her voice reverberating through the inn, and I heard a smattering of grumbling from a number of other guests of the tavern.

“BRRPT!” Auri started awake at Iona’s shout, having a few choice words for people who interrupted other’s beauty sleep. “Brrpt BRPT BRRRRRRRRRRRRPT!!”

I mimed flicking Auri from the bed, too lazy to actually get up and out of bed yet.

“Don’t you dare.” I threatened the little pyro.

“Brrrpt…” Auri evilly muttered.

I rolled my eyes.

“Okay, yes, get your revenge by feeding Nina the tastiest food you can. Please. Be my guest.”

We wanted to feed Nina as much as possible, and Auri’s brilliant idea of revenge was to feed Nina some of her baked goods… while Iona watched.

Truly, such devastating vengeance would go down in history, striking fear in the hearts of all who heard of it.

I swear the [Innkeeper] would’ve already kicked us out if I wasn’t a Sentinel, and I suspected after a few more days of this she would evict us, VIP or not. Yelling at an unholy hour wasn’t endearing us to the other guests of the inn.

Nina scrambled out of bed at Iona’s barked orders, the two of them heading outside.

I peeked out the window to see what today’s exercise was, noting that my neighbors on either side were curious enough to get over their unhappiness to look as well.

I winced at Iona’s morning exercise.

Suicide sprints. Dash 10 meters out, 16 pushups, dash 10 meters back, 16 pushups. Then 15, 20, 25 meters, continuing the same routine. It was a punishing workout, and I was glad to be past that stage of my own training.

Didn’t mean I could slack though. I should do my own exercises.

“Ready?” I asked Auri.

“Brrpt!”

The two of us shot out of the tavern, heading towards Sanguino at top speed.

Auri had to be up bright and early to start her bread baking, and if I wanted to get Iona some sort of special treat, simply grabbing the normal breakfast that the innkeeper offered wouldn’t be enough. That was a normal breakfast, not a nice, hot, fancy breakfast.

The gates weren’t open yet, so we hopped the walls.

“Hey! You can’t do that!” A pair of guards hustled over as we flew over.

I stopped and flew down to them. I didn’t say anything. I just pulled out my Sentinel badge, and lifted one eyebrow at them.

They stopped so suddenly I swear a skill must’ve been involved, and shot off a pair of crisp salutes.

“Sentinel! A thousand and twenty four apologies!” One of them shouted. It was a nice round expression in High Elvish, no matter how awkwardly it translated.

With that taken care of, I was off again, zipping through the streets to Auri’s bakery.

Hey, she made good stuff, I wanted good stuff, it was a win all around for everyone.

It took a few minutes for Auri to get started, opening the store, organizing her kitchen, starting to knead the dough and stick it in her proofing ovens. Hilariously, Arachne’s threads didn’t go all the way into the oven, staying at the edges.

I’d be surprised if they were that vulnerable to fire, but maybe sensing the details of an oven wasn’t worth the effort.

She didn’t have a Decay skill to speed the process up. Just plain, simple [Baking].

Shipments needed to be received and processed in, and a thousand little tasks all needed to be done by one little bird.

“Need a hand?” I asked, eyeing a particularly large and heavy crate. The mana requirements to move that had to be rough.

“Brrpt…. Brpt.”

Auri didn’t want me to, out of a sense of pride, but she recognized that maybe, just maybe, her life would be easier if I gave her a hand while I was hanging out, and reluctantly let me help her.

Still, I managed to extract two hot pies out of Auri in short order.

“How much?” I asked her.

“Brrrpt!”

“Fair enough.” Pies as payment for the heavy lifting I did seemed to soothe her ego properly, and I was off, back to the inn, effortlessly balancing a pie in each hand.

I was a little disappointed at my strength cratering, but wow, I could feel the added dexterity! It was like the pies were sticking to my hand as I navigated the street, effortlessly zipping by the early risers.

I danced past the line at the early morning gate, ignoring the shocked protests. Balancing one of the pies on my head, I fished out my Sentinel badge, and flashed it at the guards as I bounced out without even slowing down.

The guards that saw it snapped to a salute, while the ones that didn’t had a moment of confusion before they were told.

Eh.

I didn’t need all that saluting, especially when it was holding up the line, but arguing with them and trying to get them to change their mind would just be a waste of everyone’s time.

I made it back to the inn, slipping in through the front door so Nina and Iona wouldn’t see me. I slipped one of the pies into Nina’s room, then threw down some quick runes to keep it hot and preserved. The second one went into our room, where I repeated the enchantments.

Then I peeked out the window, curious what was going on now.

In the time I was gone, Iona and Nina had finished up warmups, and had moved onto other training.

“High guard!” Iona ordered, and Nina spun the quarterstaff into the appropriate position. Iona critically looked over it, and adjusted Nina’s pose, gently moving her hands into the right spot before giving her an approving nod.

“Left strike!” She called out, Nina swinging the pole in the prescribed manner. Iona shook her head.

“No no, like this…” She stood behind Nina, showing her the motion again, and where she’d gone wrong.

I smiled and watched the two of them with one thought process, as my other four worked on refilling my spellbooks, writing down new spells I’d thought of and replacing my recently used ones.

If only this could occur at home.

“I swear to the moon goddesses, if you try to hug me right now, you’ll be sleeping on the couch.” I warned Iona as she entered our room.

She paused.

“We… don’t have a couch?” The Valkyrie asked.

I pointed at her.

“Exactly. Bucket of water, downstairs. Hot food after.”

Iona gave her armpit a discreet sniff and pulled a face.

“Bucket of water, downstairs, aye aye.” She winked, blew me a kiss, then turned around and bailed back downstairs.

Nina was already doing her level best to inhale the pie I’d left for her, and Iona returned after becoming slightly more palatable.

I jumped into her open arms when she came back, leaning into her hungry kiss.

“Breakfast! Goddesses, what did I ever do to deserve you?” Iona said as she hurried over to the table. I remained clinging to her like a barnacle, nuzzling her chest.

“And a show!” I threatened as she sat down. “Also, being totally awesome is what you did.”

I didn’t get too many chances to practice [Rapid Reshelving] - doing things ‘normally’ was still my default way of moving things around - but I remembered this time! Breakfast, straight to my mouth!

[*ding!* [Rapid Reshelving] leveled up! 14 -> 15]

We continued to be insufferably cute over breakfast, enough to give diabetes to even the most hardened criminals.

“Plans for the day!” I broke away from our latest snogging session. “Can I borrow Nina? I want to go back to doing my healing clinic, and without being too delicate about it, she’s something of a native to the area. She can help me navigate what’s going on socially, and it’s a Valkyrie squire-ish thing to do.”

Iona didn’t even need to think about it before she nodded.

“Oh yeah, that’s great. See if you can find ways to level her classes. We need to get both of them to 128 to reset them. I doubt you’ll have any luck with her [Mugger] class, but the [Illusionist] one? You’ve spent a bunch of time around Mirage Classers, see what she can do, give her pointers and suggestions.”

“Yeah, I can do that.”

I reluctantly got up again, this time with the Ashen clouds much brighter, signifying a reasonable hour of the day.

I popped over to Nina’s room, where the kitsune was flopped on her bed. I dashed over and touched her with a finger, healing her entire body - but not infusing her with energy. Good for the muscles - instantly repaired for immediate strength gains, but her body needed to know how to process lactic acid out, and more importantly, she needed the mindset to push through physical exhaustion. That, or get a skill to handle it. She groaned and did her best to spring to her feet as I entered, wobbling slightly.

I grinned at her.

“Hey! Up for a day in town? I need a helping hand at my clinic.”

She visibly brightened up at that.

“Yes!”

I debated blasting her with water and throwing her a bar of soap, but decided against it. Honestly, Iona’s bad habits were already rubbing off. Or, more likely, she’d never gotten the chance to regularly bathe.

“Great! See you outside in ten. Clean up, we don’t want to scare everyone off.” I said as I left the room.

Nina shot a dark look at the door, and tried to mutter under her breath, vastly underestimating my hearing.

“Smellin’ all clean and proper is more likely to scare everyone off.”

Growing up, I’d always wondered about ‘building character’ exercises and the like. Why did we stand in line, when dad could just get us through the line in a flash?

I wasn’t the only one wondering about it.

“Beggin’ your pardon, but we could just skip all this nonsense, ya?” Nina asked me.

“Yup!” I cheerfully told her, staying right where I was in line.

“But we’re waiting anyway.” She asked.

“Yup!” I confirmed.

I was waiting to see if she’d muster up the courage to ask me directly or not. Another growth moment.

“If it’s not too much trouble, why are we waiting in line?” She finally asked.

I grinned.

“Glad you asked! Because you won’t always be able to skip the line, and it’s worth remembering that, and knowing how to.”

Nina groaned.

“That feels like the most useless skill.” She complained.

“Waiting in a line? Yes, absolutely. Handling disappointment and knowing how to be patient? I’ll disagree on that. Why don’t you work on your illusions?”

Nina shot me an outraged look.

“I’m standin’ here in my natural state, everyone’s starin’ at me, and now you want me to practice illusions!?”

“Yup! You need to have confidence in yourself. Trying to hide away behind an illusion works once you’re comfortable in your own skin. Plus, weren’t you planning on dropping both of your classes for basic elemental classes to merge into your [Squire] class? You’re going to be without illusions soon enough, better get practicing now.”

Nina grumbled more, but obediently started working on her illusions.

Lines were boring, and I wasn’t sure the valuable life lesson was worth the utter misery that queuing was. I let my mind drift away on the clouds, letting my thoughts bounce around from place to place.

I was brought back down to Pallos by shouting. Two men were shoving each other, a hair away from drawing knives, and Nina was grinning. A quick review of what had happened made me facepalm.

Nina had taken my directive to practice her illusions well, and applied them with trickster’s mischief, making it look like one man had tried to pick another one’s pockets, and gotten ‘caught’. The two were now a hair away from blows.

“No.” I reprimanded the kitsune, grabbing her ear, twisting it, and dragging her after me.

“Yeow yeow yeow!” She yipped after me as I dragged her along.

Children.

Several messes later - mostly having Nina explain herself, apologize, and try to talk her way out of trouble, with no Sentinel ‘get out of problems free’ badge flashes, and we were finally in the city.

Nina relaxed significantly once we were inside, but I could still see that she was tense, noting where guards were.

“You belong here now.” I quietly told her.

“Yea. I know that. I don’t feel that, or believe it.” She said.

Fairly astute.

“It takes time. The more you do it, the more you practice, the more natural it’ll feel. No substitute for experience.” I told her.

In a hilarious twist, she relaxed as we got to the bad parts of town, while I got tenser. She patted my arm with a vulpine grin.

“It takes time. The more you do it, the more you practice, the more natural it’ll feel. No substitute for experience.” She could barely keep her laughter in as she repeated the exact words I’d just said to her back.

I rolled my eyes at her.

“Yeah yeah smartass, let’s see you sass Iona the same way.”

Her grin vanished, replaced by a wide-eyed innocent look.

“Me? Sass? Never.”

I flicked her ear, and soon we were at my little healing business.

Or… where I was supposed to have my own little healing business. Several people had broken in, and had neatly settled into my space.

I sighed.

It never ended.

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