Beneath the Dragoneye Moons

The rest of the Saturnalia went by with… no incidents at all. Nope. None. The mess at the feast didn’t count, I’m the Sentinel and everyone loved it.

There were chariot races and wrestling contests, gladiatorial games against vicious dinosaurs, a mage tournament that hastily had to go back to the original rules after my healing proved too powerful, dancing, singing, the dreaded alchemy contest.

Tribune Hazel insisted that this year, we all drink the potions.

“We are the alchemy Legion.” She insisted. “I’m in charge of the specialists, including the alchemists. Optio Maxlin has repeatedly complained about command’s habit of judging on inane criteria. What message does it send if Command is unwilling to even try?”

“If any of them poison us, I can just heal it.” I muttered.

Legata Katerina narrowed her eyes.

“This was the sort of thing that should’ve been discussed before the event!” She hissed at Hazel, plastering a smile on her face and downing the first potion to shocked gasps.

I drank as well, and being a bird was a surreal experience. Somehow, I knew how to fly with the wings I was granted, and the world was so much bigger and stranger.

Auri was the same size as me, for one.

[*ding!* Congratulations! [Butterfly Mystic] has leveled up to level 498->499! +8 Strength, +8 Dexterity, +70 Speed, +70 Vitality, +70 Mana, +70 Mana Regen, +70 Magic power, +70 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 Strength, +1 Mana Regen from your Element per level!]

I got the level as I returned to normal.

“Sixteen out of eight!” I declared. “It got me a level, best potion possible.”

My announcement basically killed the rest of the contest. Katerina and Hazel were all too happy to declare the potion that leveled up the Legion’s War Sentinel as perfect, and while a few of the alchemists were bummed - only fair when their potion hadn’t even been tried yet before someone got a perfect score with brownie points on top - most were excited to congratulate the winner.

Who’d gotten three levels of his own.

All in all, a rousing success of an event.

The feast was fine. Nothing to say about it. Food was eaten, yes. Drinking occurred. Some bawdy songs were sung, and gripping tales told. Yes. That is what happened. Oh, and entertainment! There was lots of entertainment. For a loose definition of entertainment.

I slept with the Legion - wait, phrasing - and woke up bright and early the next day to meet Nike. It wasn’t hard - Nike and the rest of her line had been transferred to the Sixth Legion explicitly because of me. They’d had a few days to settle in, and we were now ready to meet. Leonidus was able to direct me right to them.

I took the long route, walking slowly towards them while [Parallel Thoughts] let me greet the various soldiers pleased to see me, while also mulling on the nature of command and my role.

What was the best way to approach this? There were several competing methodologies, all of which applied.

The first and most obvious one was to lean on ‘I’m Sentinel Dawn, here’s what I need.’ It was the expected chain of command, the ‘right’ way for an officer of the Legion to interact with the rank and file soldiers. It was distant, it was aloof, but it made a necessary distance. I’d be making calls and decisions that imperiled their lives. Space was required.

It’d be all too easy to get off on the wrong foot. All too easy to step on toes and quickly develop resentment and dislike. The last thing I wanted was for the troops I was trusting to have my back to be plotting how best to stick a knife into it.

The counterpoint was I’d been trained as the leader of a Ranger Team. I’d taken command of, and primarily handled, situations where we were all close. Where I could be, should be familiar. I hadn’t been trained as a Legion Officer, with the proper ways of maintaining distance, and a few of my initial plots and plans involved me effectively blending in as ‘just another soldier’. I couldn’t dress like a legionnaire and act like a Tribune. It came with its own set of issues, ones that I couldn’t quite properly articulate, but I could just broadly point to ‘nobody else does it this way and there’s got to be a reason for it’ as the source of my discomfort.

I decided it was easier to start off with the distance, so to speak, and slowly ‘come down to Pallos’, as opposed to starting off close, then try to establish distance later.

I knocked on the wooden door of the barracks room, where Nike and her line were assigned. I hadn’t quite considered when I’d been planning out my improved senses how it’d let me spy like crazy on everything. Half of the line was missing, and the other half had partners sharing their narrow cots. No privacy in the Legion, and yesterday had been one heck of a party.

At least, that’s what I assumed was going on, and it wasn’t the entire line shacking up with each other.

Welp, yesterday’s partying was over, and there were enough soldiers moving around that going up to the door in my full Sentinel gear, hesitating, then turning around would be remarked on. Plus, this was at my convenience, not Nike’s.

“Legionnaire Nike!” I bellowed with my best impression of Quintus, my Ranger Academy drill instructor, making sure I focused on my presence as well. “Report!”

I kept my face stony no matter how hard I was laughing inside at the sheer chaos unleashed by my statement. Everyone woke up, one woman I assumed was Nike was running around furiously, other people getting up were getting in her way, and one couple had an utterly horrified look at waking up in each other’s arms.

Ahh, beautiful, hilarious chaos.

It was clear that Nike wasn’t a physical Classer, and she spent a moment straightening out her hastily-thrown-on tunic before opening the door and paling.

“Sentinel Dawn!” She shouted, throwing a hasty salute. I could see her muscles twitching as she thought of and dismissed several more things to say, before settling on a simple “Reporting as ordered!”

[Mage - 311].

“Walk with me.” It wouldn’t do to have the conversation right here, and now I could see why it was such a favorite.

“What have you been told about your assignment to the Sixth?” I asked Nike once we were out of the barracks.

“Sentinel Ma’am. I haven’t been told much, but I’m a [Battery]. Simple enough to figure it out, ‘specially after you came knocking at my door. You need people with my class. I have the class you need. Does it get much more complicated than that?”

She wasn’t wrong.

“Not particularly. There are some layers of complexity in the execution. How have you done this previously?” I asked.

She gave me a puzzled look. “Yes? I was assigned to the siege and artillery century.” She answered. “Keeping the artillery [Mages] topped off. Simple stuff.”

I was mentally cursing Leonidus. I was getting the vibe that I was going to need to be in a number of miscellaneous meetings I didn’t want to be in, because Nike might not be up to the job. Too much to ask for hyper competence from everyone I met. If she was that good, she should be a Ranger.

Still, I didn’t need her to be a one woman wonder. Just good at her job.

Also, my question had been a little dumb.

“Right. Going to be a little different with me. I’m going to be healing the Legion. We’re not sure quite what it’s going to look like. Something that’ll help me shape the look of this all - how, exactly, does a [Battery] transfer mana?” I asked. I had a vague inkling, but I knew it required an element I didn’t have, and there was just so much endless magic to learn about. I didn’t know every niche, no matter how hard I tried. Maybe in a few centuries I’d have a better grip on it all… but at that point, the old stuff might be obsolete, and there could be a ton of new magic to learn.

I caught Nike’s flash of concern on her face before she smoothed it over.

“Arcanite rods.” She answered. “All [Batteries] have Arcanite as an element, letting us refill the crystals. You drain the rods as fast as we fill them up.”

Hmmm. Alright.

“What’s your mana pool and regeneration look like?” I asked.

“Mana pool’s pretty small. I can give you about 140 mana per second, and a normal entire line can do just under a thousand mana per second. Zeus though, he’s got a [Promise], and our line can do closer to 1500 mana per second as a result.” Nike was clearly proud of the boost that one dude was providing, and I was personally impressed. He was worth almost an entire line on his own!

I mentally translated the numbers. I wasn’t used to working in mana per second, but it was clear [Batteries] were. I had about 800 mana per second of regeneration, so the entire line would be almost tripling my regeneration. In a protracted battle, it was going to be all about the regeneration.

“Is the small mana pool typical of a [Battery]?” I asked.

“Yes ma’am. If storage is needed, we generally will fill up a large arcanite crystal. We’re fantastic at keeping arrays up.”

I had my doubts about how viable a massive arcanite crystal would be to lug around, and the sheer impracticality of needing to constantly run or fly back to it to top off, then jump back into the battle. It was a prime target, a huge amount of money, and it painted a target on my back as ‘that one healer that keeps running out of mana and going to the huge crystal while this Legion seems to have unlimited healing’. I wasn’t even partially trained in intelligence and counterintelligence on the field and in battles, but even I could make the obvious connections.

It also killed the idea of having them disguise themselves as a typical line, and I’d run back to them when I needed to be refilled. They were a continuous supply of mana, bolstering my regeneration, not a pool I could tap for a top off.

“Do [Batteries] fight at all, or are you purely supportive?” I asked.

“We fight.” Nike gave me an eyeroll. “Everyone and their sister seems to think [Batteries] can’t fight. We can! It’s just different. We focus on low-cost, high-regeneration spells. Wands are typical, and we can fuel far, far more enchantments than any other class, bar none. None of our attacks are particularly powerful, but like.” Nike looked around shiftily for a moment. “Imagine, pretend, for a moment, about a wand that could spray a deadly contact poison. Low cost, high impact, deadly. The blowback would be fatal to most people, but a second set of enchantments acts as an antidote. I gotta say that the more mana we put into our enchantments and spells, the less we have to give away, so we don’t fight lots. We just can.”

I stopped and stared at Nike.

“Do you have a wand that sprays deadly contact poison?” I asked. She shook her head furiously.

“No ma’am! They’re highly illegal, and against Legion regulation. It was just an example.”

I lifted an eyebrow. I didn’t believe her at all, but my liedar was terrible on the best of days.

“Thank you, Nike.” I told the woman. “Now, you’ve probably heard most of this, so forgive me for going on a bit. I just want to make sure we’re on the same page. See, I’m good at healing people, and…”

“Legata.” I entered her office when it was clear she was between tasks.

[*ding!* [The World Around Me] leveled up! 86 -> 87]

Spying was occasionally useful.

“Dawn. Good timing. What can I do for you?”

“Well, I’ve got some initial thoughts how my team and I should operate in the Han Empire…”

I explained my plan to her, along with the questions I had to see if it was possible. She leaned back thoughtfully.

“That would work.” She said. “But we’d need more people to do it. There’s going to be some grumbling, most people will think it’s useless, but it’ll be excellent cover…” She trailed off thoughtfully, absent-mindedly chewing on the end of a quill.

“Yesssss.” She slowly drew the word out. “Yes, I think that would work beautifully. You don’t mind getting dirty, do you? How are you with makeup to change your facial structure?”

Well, after being challenged like that, I had to say no.

“If getting dirty saves lives, throw me into the pig pen. I don’t know much about changing my facial structure, but I’m more than willing to learn anything and everything about makeup!”

Katerina grinned, and we got to plotting.

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