Beneath the Dragoneye Moons

The bigger thug reacted at the same time Nina was kneeing the disarmed thug in the face, hand whipping to his waist where he had a sword.

I jammed a finger under his chin.

“I’m [Oathbound].” I calmly told him. “I can only strike when someone is threatening me or a patient.”

I gave his sword a significant look, his hand still on it.

“Do you want to draw that? Do you think your vitality is that much higher than your friends? Do you really want to test if I’m a War Sentinel or not?”

His friend finally realized that he was a quadra amputee, and started screaming. The [Thug’s] eyes flickered down.

“Leave, and I’m happy to heal him. Then fuck off, and leave us alone. Yeah?”

With another thought process, I teleported one of my spellbooks out of storage, and snapped a silencing spell in the general direction of Sir Screamer.

Honestly, limbs grew back. No need to make so much noise about it.

The brute looked like he was going to say something, and I jammed my finger deeper into the fleshy part.

I didn’t have nearly enough strength to actually do anything - but the message, along with the obvious display of a third element was clear. His teeth clicked shut and he did his best impression of a nod, while not actually moving his head down.

I was still unfamiliar with [Rapid Reshelving]. It just wasn’t the first thing I thought of in situations. However, seeing Nina nab a fallen coin bag made me think of the skill, and I snatched the brute’s purse off his hip.

Hopefully Nina leveled from that, and I hoped the financial sting would be a reminder to the [Thugs] not to try it again. I had no sympathy for people trying to extort us in the first place - turnabout was fair play.

“Restitution.” I said, dangling the pouches in front of the two. “Now shoo.” I stepped back, swooping down to grab Nina’s hand and hauling her back with me.

The ambulatory member of the Dragon Triad grabbed his friend around the waist, and hauled him out, leaving the limbs behind.

I shot out a healing-[Imbued] lance after the two of them, neatly hitting the gang member between the eyes and restoring his limbs. Maybe, just maybe, they’d realize I had a level of accuracy, and I’d taken it easy on them.

Nina finally spoke, absentmindedly rubbing her throat.

“Thank you. And, uh, wow.”

I tossed her the pouch with a grin.

“Your allowance. Don’t spend it all in one place!”

Nina beamed at me, and I gestured at the severed limbs still lying in the doorway.

“By the way. Can you figure out how to dispose of those?”

Nina bounced to the task with an almost suspicious amount of enthusiasm.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to know how to best dispose of bodies in Sanguino - and I didn’t want to know why Nina knew how.

As much as I wished for the Dragon Triad to simply go away and leave us alone, we weren’t that lucky. I was getting ready to close up for the day and head back to the inn when we were disturbed yet again.

Four guards practically burst through my front door, the sniveling coward I’d de-limbed earlier following behind them.

“Her! She’s the one that attacked me!” He said in a quavering voice, pointing me out.

My eyes narrowed.

[The World Around Me] let me see in pockets, and while I couldn’t see color, I could see that two of the guards had headbands in their pockets.

Well. That was an interesting, although not entirely unexpected twist. I doubted I could talk my way out of this. I’d try, but I wasn’t sure.

The guards snapped their attention to me.

“Miss, you’re under arrest for attempted murder.” One of the guards with a headband said, as they drew their lashes.

They rapidly strode over to me, and I threw a [Mantle of the Stars] barrier up across the room, cutting us off. I turned to the wall, Arachne’s omnipresent threads climbing up it.

I left a little hole for speaking, and drew my Sentinel badge, along with my personal one.

“Sentinel Dawn here. Do we really have to do this the hard way?”

The same guard spoke up.

“Impersonating a Sentinel? They’re going to give you the death penalty. Might as well execute it now, save us a load of issues.”

The second guard with a headband in his pocket loudly agreed, followed soon by the other two.

And I had Nina to defend as well.

“Arachne. I’m trying real hard here not to make a large pile of bodies, and we’re going to have a serious problem one way or another. Step in before I start dropping people.” I spoke directly to the wall.

One of her threads slapped my hand as a dozen more sprang up from the ground, wrapping the guards up in silken cocoons. They fought and struggled, a dozen different skills fighting against Arachne.

It was futile.

I knew from firsthand experience.

I did stop a few rocks thrown my way with [Mantle of the Stars], glaring at the offender.

“We’ll get you for this!” One of the possibly-not-totally-corrupt guards yelled. He was quickly silenced by a mass of threads covering his mouth.

Nina was practically trembling in terror.

“He’s real.” She whispered. “The Spider is real.”

“She.” I absentmindedly corrected, getting another thwack on my hand. I tried to slap the thread back. My speed was laughable before Arachne’s control. “Arachne is wonderful once you get to know her. Also, technically my boss. So, your boss’s boss’s boss. Boss cubed.”

Nina’s knees continued to shake, and I put a hand on her shoulder.

“Courage. Breathe. We’re fine.”

“But the Spider…”

She reached out and grabbed my arm for support. I started to walk out when a little tendril snaked around my ankle.

Please stay. Arachne wrote out with her tiny threads. She knew I could read them.

I shrugged.

No skin off my back.

Nina looked back and forth from the tied up guards to me.

“Now what?” She asked.

“Now, we wait.”

I crossed my arms and tapped my foot. I was no good at waiting like this, but I had to.

I also had to move. Staying still like this was causing me to itch deep inside, like something was wrong by me staying still. I paced back and forth in the unoccupied half, probably driving Nina nuts.

A familiar face, a familiar team finally showed up, like a million years later. Or six minutes later, given how often I’d paced back and forth and how long it took me to pace the room.

“Livia!” I cheerily greeted the head of Ranger Team Gale, waving her over. “So glad to see you!”

She and the rest of her team piled into the room, absorbing the situation in a heartbeat. They were armed to the teeth, full armor on, shield up and weapons in hand. She saluted.

“Sentinel Dawn. We were alerted that our presence was urgently required here. Ranger Team Gale reporting.”

I nodded and straightened my back.

“Ranger Livia. I’ve gotten in a bit of a pickle.”

I gave the full explanation of what had happened, start to finish. Three of the guards were getting very, very still, perhaps starting to realize just how badly they’d fucked up. The last one was squirming and fighting even harder than before.

The Ranger looked sour at the end of my explanation.

“This a corruption in the guard case then?” She asked, striking right to the heart of the matter. I nodded.

“Probably among other things.”

She sighed, the weight of a thousand things to do crashing over her.

“Do you need my assistance for anything else?” She asked.

“No. Didn’t want to make an ever-expanding pile of bodies.”

Livia saluted, and started barking out orders.

“Vipon! You’re in charge of interrogation and containment protocols. Stone Tower. Decimus, Chandilon, you’re with him. Helea. Take Justina, set up camp at site Water. Make it nice, eight out of eight, max luxury. We’re not going to be sleeping in town for a few weeks. Radagos, Meritor, you’re with me. Let’s move it people! We need to hit hard and fast, before they figure out what’s going on and close ranks. Go go go!”

The Ranger team sprang into action. The first three grabbed the wrapped-up guards, added a few extra bindings before hustling out. Stone Tower was one of the codewords that could refer to, among other things, Stormwatch Castle. Made sense to base an operation out of there.

As for the rest of it?

It wasn’t my wheelhouse. It wasn’t my job. Unless they came back to bother me more, my part here was done.

“Let’s close up shop for the night.” I told Nina.

She was out the door like a red shot.

We walked through the streets of Sanguino, the Ashen skies above starting to darken as the sun set. Nina had a bunch of questions about what just happened.

“Wait, we’re just… walking away?” She asked, glancing back, all confused.

“Yup!”

“I thought we were going somewhere. Like, working on the investigation, smashing the Three Dragon Triad, all that good stuff. Why not? Isn’t this, like, your job?”

I shook my head.

“Sentinels aren’t Rangers, and vice-versa. I’m slowly coming round to what Arachne was telling me before. Let people at the right level handle the problem. First, a corruption investigation is far, far outside of my skillset. I’d bungle it, hard. Iona would be decent at it, but she’s got no experience with systemic corruption, and rooting people out. That’s my team out. Second, none of us have the right classes or skills. Not only do we have nothing to lean on to help us out, we’d get almost no experience for it. Livia’s team does. This is the sort of thing that’ll make them stronger. If I handled every single medical problem in the city, there’d be no second generation of healers. Nobody to rise up.”

Nina was thinking hard on it, and I decided to give it in blunter terms.

“Imagine if Iona slew every single monster she came across. Would you ever get a chance to level? To practice your craft? How could you become a fearsome Valkyrie if you’re never given the chance to grow?”

That connected hard.

“Ah.” She said.

A panting messenger ran up to us, and squinted at the two of us.

“Dawn…?” She tentatively asked me.

I stopped and looked at her.

“Yup. What’s up?”

“Can… can you prove it?” She asked, between great gulps of breath.

Well. She’d asked for Dawn, so I subtly flashed my two badges.

“Thank the gods. Letter for you.” She handed me a scroll, staggered over to a nearby bench, and collapsed onto it.

I’d finished reading the letter before the second word was out of her mouth.

Sentinel Dawn,

Your armor and other gear is finished. Please come by Castle Stormwatch at your earliest convenience to retrieve it.

Yours faithfully,

Quartermaster Harper

I eyed the letter suspiciously.

This was nothing like how Harper talked. Not at all. Not in the slightest. I couldn’t imagine the bubbly personality writing this. Maybe she had an assistant pen it or something.

I handed the letter to Nina, while absently tagging the exhausted runner with [Sunrise]. She perked right up.

“Thanks!” She yelled as she was off on her next run.

“Time to take a detour.” I said, heading off towards Stormwatch Castle.

“Prepare yourself.” I muttered to Nina as I knocked on the [Quartermaster's] door. I could see Harper practically sprinting from the other side.

“Ohmygosh it’s Dawn! Like, hi darling! I’ve missed your fab face sooooo much, and I’ve, like, been totally dying to tell you this. You’re just, like, so hard to get in touch with! Sit, sit! I know you’ve been, like, super anxious and all? Not having your epic armor and all? Well, guess what! It’s totally glammed up, and, like, ready for you!”

Harper seized both of us by the hands and dragged us inside, more by force of personality than her strength.

“Seriously babe, I’ve been working my fingers. To. The. Bone. And getting my nails done right? Sooooooooo hard. But! I’ve been fueled by my dedication to my bestest BFF ever, and, like, gallons of coffee, and it is DONE. You will totally eat your heart out when you see it. Tada!”

Harper made it to my gear on a stand, and threw off the covers with a flourish.

She wasn’t kidding. It was a work of art. Deadly efficiency was married to beautiful lines and swooping structures.

The bulk of the armor was scale, like most of the Exterreri elites I’d seen so far. The scales only went to my biceps, but the waist flowed all the way down, turning into a split skirt as it ended at my knees. Void-black, as dark as could be, with tasteful red trimmings around each scale.

My personal Sentinel symbol, the eagle in sunburst, was embedded in the scales on my left breast, while the bat sigil of the Sentinel organization was on my right.

The helmet was a mean looking thing, all sleek angles to deflect blows, along with a generous neck strap to protect that region. The pauldrons were on the shorter, smaller end, designed to take a blow deflected from the helmet and continue deflecting it away from my body.

Heavy gauntlets would go all the way up to my elbows, and small ridges on the knuckles suggested they could be used as a weapon. The boots were equally heavy, with extremely generous padding at the bottom.

They looked both deadly, and insanely comfortable.

There was no cape.

Harper pulled out what looked like a jumpsuit.

“Okay, so, like, you were a real challenge. No armor skill? Girl, you’re going to, like, get yourself killed! It’s totally not cool. Finally, I thought ‘Wait, Harper, what are you doing!? If she doesn’t have an armor skill, like, give her one!’ So all the runes work together to make a totally neat armor skill. A self repairing armor skill. Like, it’ll never break from being overloaded! Took most of the time to work that little puzzle out! Be totes careful, the mana costs are way high, and someone, like, totally stronger than you can just rip through it, but it’s better than going out practically naked! This underlayer’s made out of basilisk scales, and should totally help with the joints. Don’t, like, try to take hits on it, but it’s better than nothing. Boots and gloves use peryton hide, and we were, like, so lucky that the Hunter’s Guild had some for sale! It’s totally sweet, half the Sentinels are jealous that you were next in line for gear!”

Harper continued to give me the rundown of my gear while I studied it closely. I picked each piece up, articulating the joints on the gauntlets, studying the runes on the vest, becoming intimately familiar with each part.

I tried to point some things out to Nina here and there when I thought of it, but primarily this was the stuff that was keeping me alive - and I had no idea what Nina’s frame of reference was to even begin to explain the intricate runes that made up the enchantments on the pieces.

“Okay! Do you want to try it on?” Harper asked.

I looked at Nina.

“Want to help me with this?” I asked her.

“Uh. Sure. Do you need help?” She asked, furiously looking over the armor and trying to figure out which piece she needed to hand to me first.

“The underlayer first.” I gently directed her as Harper backed up, biting her painted nails to stop herself from squealing.

Much.

I could hear a high pitched whine of excitement coming from her direction.

I guided Nina through what I needed, her face looking more and more perplexed.

It clicked for me why she was so confused.

“One of a squire’s normal duties is to help arm and armor their knight, or in your case, Valkyrie.” I explained to her, pointing to the strap on the gauntlet that needed adjusting. “Tighter! Try to make it hurt! There you go. Now, while Iona’s your knight, and I’m a Sentinel, I’m working on improving your class quality here, and giving you a bit of practice. Iona’s got some special armor. It’s pure mallium, so it flows on her mental command. Also means she doesn’t need help suiting up.”

“A full suit of mallium!?” Harper shrieked from her corner before slapping her hands over her mouth. “Like, sorry! Don’t mind me!” She took one hand off her mouth and waved at us.

Nina continued to help me into my stuff, getting her first good look at how intricate armor could be. Getting practice for when she’d one day get her own suit.

“Harper, if you really need something to think about… Nina here’s going to need a full suit of her own one day. Ever designed a Valkyrie’s helmet before?”

Nina looked utterly poleaxed at the thought, stopping what she was doing entirely. I wiggled my boot in front of her, reminding her of her task.

“You, girl, are absolutely my best friend for-ever! Yes, I would die to design a Valkyrie set! And for a kitsune! Ooooh, dish, I need to know everything to make a perfect set!”

She paused, thinking.

“Oh! And I’ll even give you a totally sweet discount! Only 250,000 arcs!”

I blanched at the number, while Nina looked pale and unsteady.

I shook my head.

I was ridiculously well compensated, and a large part of that was because I was expected to gear up my team personally. This was exactly what my funds were for, and it wasn’t like Nina was going to be geared up tomorrow. It’d be a few years.

Nina stepped back.

“I think I’m done?” She said, offering me my helmet.

That piece I did myself.

Harper hadn’t mentioned there was an enchantment to help with my hair, but the helmet flawlessly wrapped my long hair up into a neat bun as I put it on, preventing it from simply blowing in the wind.

I rolled my shoulders and flexed, feeling a half-dozen places where it wasn’t quite done right. Rather than potentially embarrass Nina to death correcting her in front of Harper, I moved at top speed to fix all the minor issues myself.

I paused and looked in the mirror.

I looked amazing. A little too ‘dark soldier of the Empire’, but damn me if it didn’t have style.

“Ehhh! Okay, okay! Weapons and shields now!” Harper bounded over, grabbed my hand, and dragged me deeper into the armory.

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