Beneath the Dragoneye Moons

I poked Iona with my toe.

“Come on, we’re just getting started.”

Iona rolled up onto her feet, and quickly scanned the battlefield. Seemingly content at what she saw, she took a knee and started a quick prayer up to her goddesses.

It was good timing. I viewed the battlefield.

The bulk of the fighting was over, and the Chu didn’t seem terribly interested in pursuing the Yan, who were retreating in good order, not routing. They looked experienced at it.

I pursed my lips as I tried to work out my next move. Iona was in good shape. I needed to take care of Auri, but retrieving her juice from my [Vault] would blow a huge amount of mana that I didn’t want to lose right this very moment.

Battles weren’t clean. Death was rarely quick. It was why my presence was such a boon. A spear through the gut and spine was incapacitating, and eventually lethal. That ‘eventually’ could be anywhere from minutes to days, depending on a thousand different factors.

Arrows were a particularly nasty culprit. Arrows in… almost anything really… weren’t quickly lethal. Debilitating, sure. Painful as hell, yes. But unless it was a heart, neck, or good headshot, it was an extended death by slow blood loss.

A soldier was being carried off the battlefield by his buddies, the shaft of an arrow sticking firmly out of his head. It must not’ve hit anything instantly lethal, and he had a slim chance of living if he was seen by a healer quickly enough.

It was too much to ask that every injured soldier got dragged out of the fighting. That they got medical care and assistance. Far too many troops were just… left there on the battlefield. In the mud, puke, and gore, surrounded by the glassy-eyed stares of those whose souls had already left.

Some of the debatably lucky ones had gotten trampled into the mud, their heads stepped on and forced into the mud time and time again, bringing their head back up for a gasp of air only for another foot or hoof to come down on them, forcing their heads under once again until they choked, suffocated, and died. It was a slow way to go, a miserable way to go, but they were gone, unlike some other debatably lucky fellows with mortal injuries that had even slower, more agonizing deaths.

The sounds changed as the fighting died. Some soldiers got louder, begging for aid from their victorious side, while those on the losing team got real quiet and pretended to be dead.

If they didn’t get any aid soon, they’d be dead for real. It was a gamble born out of sheer desperation, a way to kick the can down the road. A poor scarecrow erected to stave off the final bird.

An idle part of me wondered about their perspective. Crippled, abandoned, slowly going colder in the mud as I bled out. Would I find the peace to accept White Dove in those final moments? Would the inevitability get to me? Would I accept my fate, my end?

Or would I rage? Rage against the dying light, rage against the fading embers? Would I dig my nails into the dirt until they cracked and bled? Would I bite down, breaking my teeth, just for another second?

A detachment of the Chu soldiers had something to say about that. While the vast majority of the army was retreating and regrouping, a few squads were heading out onto the battlefield with spears, thoroughly going through and stabbing everyone to make sure they were dead. They were skipping over people from their own side who were clutching to their pants, begging for aid and help.

“Sorry Auri, going to have to wait a bit on that juice.” I jumped down from the small cliff, Auri’s claws reflexively digging into my shoulder.

“Brrpt…” The phoenix didn’t have the energy to complain more.

Iona got up from her prayer and stepped off the cliff with me.

I readjusted my healing again to include everyone, and landed on the soft pile of charred horses at the bottom of the cliff. My eyes widened, and Iona landed next to me with a loud thump.

“Iona! Someone’s still alive in here!” I jumped off the heap and pointed to the pile.

Without any hesitation, without any consideration for the fact that they’d just been trying to kill us a few minutes ago, Iona tore into the pile like a whirlwind, throwing bodies out of the way with no concern for where they’d land.

I tapped my foot and made my decision. I ripped a few rocks out of the cliffside and delicately placed Auri in the little nest I made for her.

“You’ll be fine here. Rest.” I told her, then dashed down the battlefield, my area of effect moving with me.

I sprinted as fast as I could until my mana dropped to nothing, then slowed way down until I found the ‘sweet spot’ where I was healing as much as I was regenerating.

It was far, far slower than I wanted. Too slow.

A pair, a man and a woman, looked around, then got up and started to sprint off the battlefield, holding hands with each other. Clearly members of the Yan army.

I mentally wished them luck.

Orders were shouted, and a cloudburst of arrows rained down on the unlucky couple.

“No!” I shouted, throwing [Mantle of the Stars] in the way, trying to intercept the arrows.

[Mantle] promptly shattered on the first arrow reaching it. I was keeping my mana practically at 0 with all the healing I was doing, and I just didn’t have the fuel to keep it up. My heart broke as the couple was pincushioned, falling again.

I walked a little closer, confirming they were dead-dead, and not just wounded by arrows.

They were dead. Perfect targets like that were too easy to hit something vital.

So close. I had been so close to saving them. They weren’t my patients anymore though, and picking a fight with the Chu soldiers who’d shot them down was just asking to endlessly escalate the fight. I couldn’t beat an entire army. Not when I had no mana.

I clenched my hands so hard my nails bit into my palms, and I wanted to trudge slowly towards Iona. Drag my feet, kick rocks and curse at the unfairness of it all. Instead I jogged over to her, keeping my head up high, hoping I could save the member of the [Honor Guard] from a similar fate.

The soldiers who’d ran weren’t hurting anyone. They weren’t fighting. The Chu didn’t have to shoot them down.

It brought up another question, one I didn’t have an easy answer to.

With the massive power disparity, was I just wasting my time and mana saving the Yan soldiers? If the Chu who’d claimed the battlefield would simply strike down any healed Yan soldiers before they could escape, weren’t they practically dead enough? Should I focus my efforts first on the Chu, because they’d live?

Healing 64 Chu soldiers and 64 Yan soldiers, only for the Yan to get viciously cut down moments later was only 64 lives saved. If I ignored the Yan entirely, only healing the Chu, I could heal 128 Chu fallen with the same amount of mana. They wouldn’t be cut down, and more total lives would be saved.

I was all about saving lives. I’d run cold calculations in the heat of battle, choosing to ignore one person in the favor of saving five more.

That was a ‘spare one to save many’ calculation though. Here, each one was more one to one. Only healing the ‘winner’s’ side also sat uncomfortably with me. It didn’t feel right. It didn’t feel good.

I had a soft heart. I couldn’t step over someone begging and crying, calling out for someone, anyone, to save them, when I could do just that with a thought. It was too close to ignoring someone in pain, someone in need. It was too close to using philosophy and creed to discriminate.

It didn’t make perfect sense with the rest of my philosophy, but who had an entirely perfect and coherent outlook on life? Who didn’t have lines in unusual places? I’d called Iona out on her occasional oddness; I’d be the worst sort of hypocrite to ignore the fact that I also had quirks in my beliefs and how I acted on them.

My actions had clearly attracted attention, and a detachment of cavalry was sent trotting out on an intercept course. They arrived right as Iona hauled the practically-dead dullahan out of the pile. The sun had moved in such a way that we were in the shade now. I laid my hands on the warrior, pulling her from the brink of death. Iona stepped forward as the cavalry arrived, and started barking orders at us.

“You! Healer! Drop that filthy Yan right now. We are taking her as a prisoner. And rejoice! You are being conscripted into the glorious army of Biao Gong! Healers are always welcome, as are those who can stand toe to toe with the cruel Pang Nuan.”

One of the soldiers elbowed the commander and gave a significant look at Iona’s helmet.

Not unexpected, but there was a lot to process. Thank goodness [Parallel Thoughts] let me process multiple things at once.

The first question was easy. The Yan soldier I’d just healed up wasn’t under immediate threat to life and limb, not unless she did something monumentally stupid. The soldiers weren’t trying to cut her down where she stood, and my entire thinking about ‘who to heal’ needed to be radically adjusted.

It was possible that the Yan should be prioritized. I could understand wanting healers in an army to primarily fix up their own troops, and there was no sense in taking almost-dead captives. A fully healed soldier was a different question, and if the Chu would receive aid regardless of my actions, focusing on the ones who’d be left for dead felt much more in line with my own morals.

The second question was also blessedly easy. I wasn’t letting myself get conscripted by the army, although I did want to pop around and see who needed help. I didn’t want to lie, but hopefully they’d understand. My worst-case scenarios involved extensive use of my SERE training, but between my relatively low displayed level, wizardry, improved biomancy, and all my skills, I had complete faith I could escape any capture they tried. Unless a powerful Canceler was brought into the mix, I’d be fine, and who tried to mix ‘conscripted healer’ with ‘canceler’? It was a moronic combination.

The third was hard.

I’d sworn to protect my patients from harm andinjustice.

Harm I’d defined for myself as physical injuries. There were all sorts of harms out there in life - poverty being an easy one, debt, poor living conditions, poor access to water, etc - that I simply didn’t see or feel the call to defend my patients from.

Injustice was a trickier one, and one I’d rarely had a need to delve deep into. Often I was healing people and moving on so quickly that it never came into play. I’d never been asked to hand over one of my patients.

I did still consider her a patient. I wasn’t going with some weak-ass copout of saying ‘welp, back to full health, my job here is done, I’m out!’ Sure, the strict letter of my [Oath] suggested I could do something like that, and I imagined that some healers interpreted things that way.

That wasn’t me.

The big question came down to - was this an injustice?

Part of me took the outrage at the situation - she’d just been trying to murder me and all my friends, and here I was defending her - and stuffed it into a crate, banged it shut, and shoved it into a closet. Yeah, it wasn’t fair or nice. Tough shit. I’d signed up knowing that things would be awkward and unpleasant, and this was the least of it. Right now, she was my patient, with all that entailed.

A simplistic analysis said no. The nameless honor guard was a soldier, a warrior. Being defeated on the field of battle and captured by the enemy was no injustice. It was what she’d signed up for! It was the exact same thing she was trying to do to others. She who lived by the sword, died by the sword. There was no injustice there.

The analysis was far too simple for my tastes. What happened after she was captured? If I was handing her over to the Chu to be slowly tortured to death over the course of weeks, that was a violent injustice. Did they rape their prisoners? Did they make game and sport out of them? Was there a spinning death wheel that they threw darts at? Or did they just not bother feeding their prisoners, letting them slowly starve while a prisoner trade was negotiated?

Or was the member of the honor guard in a different class entirely? Expected to be captured and ransomed back, part of an elite class that was able to treat warfare as a grand old game, similar to the nobility of Rolland? I had my doubts that it was the case, civil wars didn’t get this bloody and ugly without all the rules of decorum going out the window, but the bare bone truth of the matter was I didn’t know.

All these thoughts flashed through my mind in an instant, [Parallel Thoughts] being a beautiful combination with the improved thinking speed from [Companion Bond].

“I surrender.” The [Honor Guard] said, dropping to her knees and bowing her head, looking utterly defeated.

Well, shit. That made all my thinking and philosophizing completely moot, although I’d need to work it out before the next time this situation came up. Picking fights with entire armies was a fantastic way to end up very dead.

Her surrender didn’t seem to matter too much to the soldiers, who were starting to form up in a half-arc around us, drawing their weapons. Iona banged the butt of her glaive once against a dead body, the ringing of metal on metal sounding like a gong.

“As you said, I just fought Pang Nuan to a standstill.” She declared, part of her helmet peeling away to reveal her face. Hope she didn’t catch an arrow in the mouth with her armor down. “Do you believe you can even lay a scratch on me? When I am performing my famed calling?”

She slowly looked at each one of them, smirking the whole time.

Ahhh, that’s why. The intimidation factor.

They shifted uncomfortably, and I left to let Iona do Iona things, continuing to cross the battlefield, shooing off the vultures.

Both literal and metaphorical.

Vultures were already descending down onto the field, and I [Nova Lanced] one that was ripping out guts and eating them from a still-alive soldier who wasn’t able to defend themselves from being eaten alive. A conspiracy of ravens cawed unhappily at a murder of crows that descended down onto the field, helping themselves to dinner, and a small flock of dinosaurs was wheeling on high, eyeing all the easy, fresh food but not quite willing to commit themselves yet.

I was moving through the battlefield as quickly as I could, fixing people up as soon as I had the mana for it, but there were just so many bodies. I found it was far easier to walk on the metal-clad backs of the dead, than to try and be respectful and leap from isolated patch of goo to isolated patch.

The dead were dead. They could be put to use in service of the living.

Looters were slowly creeping onto the battlefield, avoiding the heavily-armed troops continuing their grisly work but not being stopped by them either. I was unsure if they were associated with the army, or simply camp followers seizing an opportunity. Shields were collected, spears were stacked, and some bodies were dragged off.

If only all looters were so kind.

A pair of looters were tugging the boots off a soldier’s feet, and when the soldier happened to be still alive and protested his treatment, a quick pair of spears to the chest ended the argument.

Murdered. Over a pair of boots.

Nobody else even blinked at it.

I was so far away. There were so many people that needed help. I couldn’t do it all.

All I could do was watch. Watch a man get murdered for his boots. Memorize the faces of those who’d done it, to know. To remember. To possibly have a quiet word with Iona.

I was still listening in on her conversation. She wasn’t backing down, but the soldiers couldn’t either. The [Great General] from the Chu - Biao Gong - slowly trotted out onto the field. Iona tilted her glaive a bit, and Fenrir came sweeping by overhead.

I continued my work.

I couldn’t perfectly fix everyone. The System granted countless number of skills and abilities. I could fix the cooled Lava that had sprayed through a shoulder and hardened behind, but I couldn’t break metal bars wrapped around a body. I fixed countless soldiers screaming with Acid having partially melted their body, but the lady trapped in the slime was on her own.

Actually, no. I could do better than that. I could be better than that. It didn’t cost any mana, and I’d be able to just move a little faster to finish going back to 0.

She looked up at me with fear as I approached. I bent over and grabbed a severed hand and a broken shield, tossing them onto the Ooze as footholds.

“It’s fine.” I leaned over, digging my fingers into her armor. “And UP!” I yelled with exertion, my pathetic strength against the Ooze.

It was tough, but with a little bit of help from me, the warrior was able to get enough leverage to bring her strength to bear, and with a squelchy pop, she was freed from her slimy prison.

I wanted to puke at what I saw next.

A team of scavengers had dragged out a set of beams in a square. One by one, they took a dead body and tied it to the beams, the end of the limbs being tied to the corners.

Then a few of them took out a strange tool that looked like an urumi, a bunch of metal whips. They started to flay the body, stripping all the metal off, collecting it into a pan below. Harvesting the valuable metal before anyone else could, in the least humane fashion.

I had no doubts that they wouldn’t care if the person they strapped in was still alive or not.

I looked out at the battlefield, the scavengers, crows, looters.

The killers, the people trying to discreetly leave.

Fenrir up in the sky, Iona staring down another [Great General].

500 people saved.

5000 more to go.

And this was only my first battle.

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