Beneath the Dragoneye Moons

I’d been on the edge of the cliff for less than a minute, a tenth of my mana already gone. It had been sheer hubris to imagine that I’d defy death entirely for the entire army for any length of time, although my mana wasn’t dropping as hard as it used to. I’d fixed everyone’s problems, and now I was only curing people who were still in range and getting new injuries. Even then, my range wasn’t large enough to hit the entire army. I didn’t exactly have the ability to measure distances at a glance, let alone also calculate how high up I was and then run the sphere calculation to figure out exactly what my radiuses were, but [Wheel of Sun and Moon] had a roughly 60-meter radius, while [Cosmic Presence] was clear over a kilometer. That was to the ground, so the true radius was larger.

When I ran out of mana, I’d be running off of regeneration and [Cosmic Presence], my presence no longer staying Black Crow entirely.

The drums continued to bang, banners moved, and a bright spotlight of Radiance flew from one of the command posts, a perfect circle highlighting me and stripping away my invisibility.

Uh oh.

That couldn’t be good.

I threw myself back as Iona hefted her shield, but no blows immediately followed up the spotlight. I crawled forward, peeking my head over the cliff to see what was going on.

“Incoming.” Iona tersely reported. I could feel and see the ground around me starting to crumble as Iona dramatically increased her weight, preparing for a fight.

I didn’t need the ‘incoming’ pointed out to me. One of the [Great Generals] was barreling towards us, his entire entourage following. I didn’t point out to Iona that there was an entire cliff between us and them - the System made all things possible, and if the general didn’t believe that the cliff was going to stop them, I wasn’t going to be an idiot and assume it would.

“Fenrir! Get Nina out of here!” Iona shouted.

Fenrir roared his disapproval on leaving his bonded companion behind, and Nina equally protested that she was being left out of things again.

I [Identified] the general and his entourage, and my blood went cold.

[Warrior - 809] The [Great General] wasn’t a [Leader], he was a full-blown [Warrior], and had nearly 300 levels on us. He was a classically tall, broad, and muscular fighter, with interesting metal tattoos melted onto his arms. He was wielding a sword and a small round shield. He vaguely looked like he could be Pang Nuan from the dossiers I’d read, but it wasn’t terribly easy sticking a name to the face when I only had a poor description to work with. The streaks were distinctive. Knowing he was part of the Yan helped narrow it down a bit, but for all I knew he was a general who’d recently swapped sides.

[Warrior - 385] He had a hundred men in his escort, nearly all of them pushing 400, and a few random ones having their third class already.

Countless years of massive bloodshed, of living and dying by the sword, had resulted in a powerful core of mortal soldiers that would make Exterreri jealous. Arguably, it had made them jealous enough to send the Sixth out here to get a fraction of the levels and power that the average Han soldier enjoyed.

Fenrir and Nina took off, although I saw Fenrir summoning Ice javelins for Nina, who was eyeing up the charging soldiers. I couldn’t spare any more attention for them though; I could only hope they stayed relatively safe.

I debated my next actions. Should I step back into a more defensible position? Was that turning my back on people?

I’d come to the belief during the Guardian fight that I’d die because of my [Oath]. That it’d place me in an untenable situation, forcing me to expose myself to certain death to save others.

I was still at peace with that decision. I could, with great sophistry, make an excellent case that I should go be bundled up in a city somewhere, only seeing people under the safest of conditions and circumstances.

Indeed, if I looked at the shape of the world, it was clear that most [Healers] had come to a similar conclusion.

Stay out of the fight. Stay out of danger. Heal the people who made it to you safely.

That… wasn’t me. It wasn’t how I saw my [Oath]. It wasn’t how I saw my calling.

At the same time, there was a massive gulf between ‘stay off the battlefield’ and ‘paint myself bright colors and dance in front of a ballista’. I was already on the battlefield, and the fact that I wasn’t flying over the center, pouring healing out until I turned into a pincushion, implied that I wasn’t going to be utterly moronic about it.

I wasn’t going to leave the battlefield until all had been healed. But I was going to take some basic, sensible precautions, like stepping back behind my shield, making it a bit easier for those who wanted to protect me to do their job.

The [Great General’s] troops hit the cliff wall, and their horses kept charging up like it was nothing. The archers from the other side suddenly pivoted, all of them moving so perfectly it had to be a skill, and unleashed hell in our direction.

I scrambled back from the edge, glad that the lethal hail wasn’t aimed at us. The Chu army was taking its shot at decapitating - wait, dullahans, poor phrasing - the Yan general, the man and his entourage having perfectly painted themselves as targets on the cliff.

The general himself turned and smacked all the arrows going for him away with a contemptuous backhand of his shield. A huge radius of arrows, far larger than his shield, fell out of the air.

“Can you take him?” I was worried, and made sure I was back on my feet. There was no question that he was coming for us, or more likely, me.

“Brrpt!” Auri thought it wouldn’t be a problem, although with the way she was shifting from foot to foot told me she wasn’t nearly as confident as she felt. Iona nodded slowly.

“He’s higher level than I am, and running boosting skills. [Conqueror’s Might], [Gale of Guile], [Graceful Decimation], and [Godly Guard].” Iona paused, her eyes flickering as she read words visible only to her. “He’s got some nasty skills. Pure fighter it looks like, he’s no [Noble]. Levels don’t matter in the end. I’ve got more stats when boosted.”

I’d trust her on that. We were speaking rapidly, and didn’t have time for Iona to give me the full dump of all his skills.

“Brrpt!” Auri flew off the edge of the cliff as Iona and I hopped back. She split into dozens of clones with [I am the Brrrettiest], and a thousand blazing Infernos erupted under and around the [Great General]. Flames every color of the rainbow, red, green, orange, yellow, pink, black, white, clear, teal and more erupted in mighty explosions. Flaming comets erupted and descended, magic burned, and even the very air caught on fire. My clothes started to crinkle in the heat.

Nina tried to throw a few javelins, but they melted as they reached Auri’s furnace.

Pang Nuan’s blade blurred as it sliced and circled around him, slicing Auri’s fireballs in half. His horse and most of his escort weren’t as skilled.

“BRRPT!” Auri fluttered back up towards us, shrieking in outrage at how dare he survive and other impolite curses. Her [Mage Hands] grabbed a few rocks and she lifted them up, her little eyes screwed up in concentration as flames bathed the rock. As soon as she melted them she threw them at the general, who easily blocked with his shield.

His horse wasn’t so lucky, but that didn’t stop the man. He somersaulted off his now two-legged horse, letting it scream the rest of the way down the cliff before it ended in an ugly crunch, killing another soldier who’d survived the fall down - but not the equine rain.

The Chu weren’t missing their chance, and volley after volley of arrows were aimed at Pang Nuan, the cliffside shuddering as the artillery mages turned their full firepower upon us. Boulders reshaped the landscape as they crashed down on top of the cliff, while tiny high-speed flecks of obsidian ripped through the air, promising death to anyone they hit.

I was starting to get an idea why people weren’t grabbing the high ground. Yeah, it looked like it was a fantastic place to shoot down, but with how powerful the return fire was, it felt like we were just getting a target painted on us instead. It didn’t feel like that was the whole story, but it felt like part of it.

Then he blew past Auri like a tempest, and was upon us.

Pang Nuan tried to skip Iona entirely, charging straight for me, but he was forced to block a vicious side-swipe of Iona’s glaive, skidding back at the sheer power behind the blow. The two rapidly engaged, majestic sword arts meeting a savage glaive.

I could track the motions of both combatants, and even got a sense when various skills were used to try and gain an edge on each other. Iona’s [Telekinesis] threw rocks from all angles at vulnerable parts, and Pang Nuan’s sword moved in mystic and profound ways.

The actual swordplay and weapon mastery though? I was far, far out of my depth. I barely managed to track that an apparent ‘mistake’ was actually a setup for a counterblow three moves later, and the two were fighting at a level beyond my ken.

I naturally excluded him from the healing I was doing, frowning as I worked through some quick calculations.

Keeping Iona alive while Pang Nuan was trying to kill her was going to be an unknown drain on my mana. Sure, she saw the numbers. She knew she was faster, tougher, and stronger, and the Valkyrie had my biomancy additions. However, she’d take hits. Blows. The longer the fight dragged out, the more healing I might need to spend on Iona. The early stages of the battle weren’t super promising either, with Pang Nuan clearly having more experience than Iona.

Did I throw some of my Radiance skills into the mix? Should I try to [Nova Lance] Pang Nuan? Would I spend more mana on [Nova Lance] to tip the fight an unknown amount than I would healing Iona?

It was tricky, and there was no easy, obvious answer. Iona hadn’t had the time to share all his skills, everything moved so quickly. I spread my hand out, aimed in his direction, and waited.

If a great opportunity came up, I’d take it. Maybe fry an eyeball, or see if I could burn a hole through a joint or a ligament. I had no belief in being able to kill someone that many levels above me, not when they’d spent longer than I’d been alive fighting on battlefields, but if I could land a crippling blow, it’d make Iona’s job that much easier.

An exhausted Auri fluttered back to my shoulder. It felt like a lifetime since she’d blown the cliff up, but practically speaking, it’d been under a minute. We were starting to get to speeds where things were getting ridiculous.

“Brrpt…” She could barely get the words out, and I cursed at how inopportune of a time this was. She was entirely out of mana, but her mana regeneration would eventually get her back in the fight. A better allocation of resources than [Nova Lance] to be sure.

“We’ll get you some juice in a minute.” I muttered. Auri’s size and metabolism demanded near-constant food, and that was before the gigantic amount of firepower she’d just thrown around. “Can you do a small, lethal flame?” I asked.

Auri had some truly nasty types of fire in her arsenal. She couldn’t make a lot of it, but even a lick of dragonfire in the right spot could be devastating.

“Brrpt.” Auri was tired, but she knew what I was saying and thinking. She started to look for an opening - Iona and the general were a blur to her, and we all wanted to avoid friendly fire.

I was torn. On one hand, I wanted to reserve some mana for Iona, to make sure she survived the fight. I didn’t know what I’d do with myself if she died.

On the other, I had no strong ethical framework to justify holding off on healing people who needed my help and mana right now otherwise they’ll die, versus a single person who might need some eventually.

At the same time, my prior logic came back to haunt me. An old aphorism.

There is no such thing as an emergency in a pandemic.

There was only one Elaine. One me. If I died, if I was taken out, there were thousands, if not tens of thousands, of people who wouldn’t be able to get help. In that respect, there was a justification to being stingy with my mana. To ensure my own continued survival.

To put my mask on before I helped others.

There had to be a line somewhere though. A point where I said ‘okay, I’ve taken my reasonable precautions, time to put myself out there’. I wasn’t sure exactly where the line was, but I was continuing to work on its placement.

Reserving some mana to heal the person actively protecting me in the moment was… probably fine. A reasonable precaution. If and when I no longer needed the active protection, that’s when I couldn’t justify continuing to reserve mana.

Yeah. That sounded about right.

‘I’ll help people, but only if someone I really really like doesn’t need some potentially theoretical help in the near future’ didn’t-

One moment Pang Nuan was fighting Iona, the next he was right in front of me. A ghostly image flickered where he had been, but that didn’t matter nearly as much as the sword tip pressed against my head, the bulging muscles promising violence.

Iona started to turn, rushing to intercept and save me. She was too far away, the [Great General’s] skill too good.

I had good reflexes. I instantly twisted myself in ways that would be utterly impossible without my dexterity and modified joints, turning my head to deflect the sword off my scales and away from me.

I wasn’t the only one with skills, and the sword unerringly followed me, stabbing deep into my head. I found myself with the hilt of a sword sticking out of my eye, the back of the sword protruding from my skull. Part of my brain was impaled on it, and shards of bone, bits of skin, and bloody bits of hair coated the rocks behind me.

Pang Nuan ‘snapped back’ to his original location right as Iona started to slice into the ‘ghost’, getting a beautiful shot off.

My vision of the rest of her duel faded.

Ow I wanted to say, but the words wouldn’t come. I tried to reach for the blade, but my hands and arms refused to move.

I could thin-

I could th-

I co-

I-

Reality snapped back as the pommel clattered to the ground in front of me, the bit of the blade sticking out the back falling down. I realized I’d ended up on the ground with no idea how that’d happened.

“BRRPT! BRRRRRRPT!” Auri was shaking me with her little wings as crystalized tears flew off her face. I didn’t have brainfog or anything, although [Parallel Thoughts] had turned off. I guess because I hadn’t been thinking? I quickly recreated my various thought processes, and figured out what had happened.

One of the minor perks I’d added to [Dance with the Heavens] when I’d built the skill included a way to dissolve material that was trapped in my head or chest. Didn’t bother with the rest of my body, but they weren’t that important.

Pang Nuan had clearly found an opening. I thought I was fairly hot stuff when it came to my speed and vitality, but clearly I wasn’t nearly good enough. His attack had been good, reinforced by a powerful skill or three, and his sword must’ve severed a whole mess of things in my brain, which was why I couldn’t move, could barely think.

But I hadn’t been dead, and [Persistent Casting] was still on. I’d healed.

I got better.

I’d earned the [Undying Cockroach] class back in the day.

“It’s alright, Auri.” I said as I got up, rapidly increasing my distance between Iona and the [Great General], then activated my Greater Invisibility rune in my chest.

Knowing that it had already been dispelled once, I also activated a number of other runes engraved on my bones. The ones that made me stronger and faster. Tougher and more flexible. If there was a follow-up strike, I’d be ready for it.

Iona had gotten something of the upper hand on Pang Nuan, his blow on me creating a beautiful opening for the Valkyrie. She was busy biting off his fingers, and broadly seemed to have the situation under control.

I glanced down at the battlefield.

The Yan forces were in a controlled retreat, and the Chu were pressing them hard. The Chu’s general was carving a path of destruction towards the command post. Hopefully they wouldn’t be as much of a dick as Pang Nuan.

Fenrir was still around, and he was no idiot. He knew which side was causing Iona and I grief, and in his own way, he came up with his own solution to keeping Iona safe.

My heart went into my throat as Fenrir dropped into a strafing run, keeping well outside of my healing range.

Fenrir was a wyvern. A goddamn big wyvern.

An army killer.

He opened his mouth as he flew just above the Yan soldiers, and a solid beam of Ice with vicious trails of Lightning blazing around it descended upon the troops, the whole thing so bright it was like a second sun had erupted on the battlefield, so loud I wanted to clap my hands over my ears, and so cold I felt the temperature drop.

The lucky soldiers were the ones in the middle.

And next to those soldiers.

And next to those soldiers.

Lightning jumped from soldier to soldier, the dullahan’s metal a living part of their body, a perfect conductor.

Iona got noticeably faster as Fenrir carved through the troops, her blows that much heavier. The general’s face contorted as she broke the balance, then started to drive him back.

Fenrir carved a path of certain death 10 troops wide, and most of the troops near them were dead or critically injured. He swept back up, arrows and spells bouncing off his plated armor, nevermind piercing through his scales underneath. Nina was holding on with tight-fisted fury, her mouth opened in a scream.

Fenrir finished his run, turned, and went back for a second one. The coven of witches streaked out to intercept him, firing dozens of spells at the beast.

His neck twisted at an impossible angle, and his jaw snapped shut on one of the [Witches], only a pair of red shoes and broken parts of a broom falling to the ground far below. The witches broke and scattered, retreating faster than the rest of the army.

Fenrir chewed a few times and swallowed. Good boy.

The Yan soldiers broke, all while Iona and the [Great General] continued to duke it out. Iona’s surprise momentum at her increased stats in the fight was starting to wear off, and the general was starting to recover with the clever application of skills.

“Fight like a berserker!” I roared at Iona, hoping that my words would get to her through the endless clashing of metal on metal. “Trade blows!”

Iona clearly heard me, and traced a bloody blow across Pang Nuan’s chest. Her arm was left exposed, and the warrior took his chance, hacking it off at the elbow.

It instantly reformed of course, and Iona used the moment of surprise to punch him in the face with her spiked gauntlet. The man used the momentum of the blow to flip back, glanced down at his retreating army, then spat at us.

“Next time.” He swore, narrowing his eyes at me. Before we could do anything else, he dashed off down the cliff, and tore into the vulnerable side of the Chu army, throwing it in disarray.

A panting Iona collapsed next to me.

“Goddesses.” She swore. “I don’t think I’ve ever fought someone so damn good. I think he could give Sigrun a run for her money. There’s nothing I want to do more than to drag you to some bushes and blow off some energy.” A guilty look flashed over her face. “Are you alright?”

I patted her.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” I crept back to the edge of the cliff, focusing my attention on the people below. “When this is done, find me a comfortable bush.”

The battle was over, but my work was only just beginning.

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