Beneath the Dragoneye Moons

Nina shivered in the cold air, thankful it was at least spring and no longer the deep snows of winter Vollomond. Her feet crunched over an unplanted field, the first hint of weeds seizing the opportunity to grow and meeting a swift end against the late frost.

Her legs threatened to wobble. Nina had spent a single naive night believing since they were on a mission, daily sparring and exercise would be put on hold. Doing it ‘for real’ would replace the morning, afternoon, and evening drills and runs.

One night - not even a full night - was how long she’d held that belief, and come war, plague, or famine, her thrice daily drills would continue.

Even with Iona slowing herself waaaay down and using less strength than Nina, the kitsune just couldn’t beat the towering Valkyrie.

Iona and her squire approached a slightly broken down hut, something about it triggering Iona’s instincts to investigate further.

“What, exactly, makes you think there’s something worth looking at here?” Nina debated flashing [Phoenix Flame Armor] to warm herself up, but elected to use [Foxfire] to see a little better in the early light - and get some warmth! She missed Sanguino’s temperate climate, even Auri’s hellish bakery.

Too hot was far better than too cold. With all the confidence of a teenager, Nina was sure she’d never change her mind, even the next time she was baking alive.

Then again, apparently freezing her tails off first thing in the morning was what Valkyries did.

Iona pointed to a few parts of the hut.

“There’s a small hole in the roof. An intact one suggests someone lives there, a much larger one would imply there’d been significant time since there was a problem. A small one is new. Similar story with the top of the window starting to fall off.”

Nina noted the parts Iona pointed out, committing the details to memory and learning the broad strokes of the lesson.

“Would the slightly untended field also count?” She hesitantly asked, thinking it matched the pattern but unsure.

“Good!” Iona praised. “That’s another classic sign. Come on.”

The two opened the door, and the scent of death hit them like a sledgehammer to the nose. Iona barely blinked, but Nina had to step back outside for a moment to retch.

A family of bones were huddled in a corner, one adult with three children of various ages, the youngest just a babe. A knife was on the ground, and the flies and maggots had already finished with the bodies. The metallic skin had degraded, leaving piles of oxidized dust around them. Iona knelt next to them, closely looking at them all.

“Starvation.” She pronounced, and Nina knelt down, trying to figure out how Iona figured it out from scraps of cloth and bare bones. Up, down, over and around she looked, but all she saw were bones.

“How can you tell?” She finally admitted defeat and asked. Iona smiled at Nina, her mentor’s approval like the warm summer sun.

“Experience, mostly.” Iona explained. “Empty larder. Soldiers ‘foraging’. Winter. The knife here.” Iona pointed to a small blade. “The mother knew the cause was hopeless, and spring was too far away. Instead of slowly dragging it out, she probably had one last meal for everyone, then slit her children’s throat before turning the knife on herself.”

Iona didn’t believe in euphemisms or sugarcoating details when teaching Nina. The different cultural backgrounds made it too easy for them to draw different conclusions.

“This is what happens when we fail.” Iona continued. “This is what happens when armies take too much, and don’t leave enough behind.” She shook her head sadly. “It’s so fucking stupid. So short sighted. Now there’s four more bodies, and a field that’ll go untilled. Can’t they just see doing this harms themselves as well?”

Iona didn’t need to give her speech about the strong abusing the weak, and how enraged she got over it all. Nina had it permanently scarred into her memory, able to play it on demand. Able to hear Iona’s barely contained fury with each word she spat.

Nina privately thought that if she was mugging someone, she took everything she could, because they weren’t sheep. She couldn’t regularly mug the same person again and again, expecting them to not prepare or defend themselves. She didn’t even know if she’d be in the same part of town come next week, let alone next year!

Of course the ‘foraging’ soldiers would take as much as they could. Explaining all this to Iona wouldn’t help - Nina knew at this point that her mentor was just venting.

Iona stood up and looked around, clearly thinking, before shaking her head.

“Nothing to do but bury them. Come on.” She said.

Burying the bodies took no time at all. Iona wasn’t adverse to using her full capabilities to dig the graves, and was done with three of them before Nina had finished breaking the frosted ground on the fourth. The squire had never imagined when Iona had gifted her the mallium how often it would be turned into a tool, but the versatility couldn’t be beaten. First a pickaxe, then a shovel, her morphic weapon was in a class of its own.

Slowly, reverently, they lowered the bodies down, and buried them with simple markers.

Iona took a knee at the foot of the graves.

“Selene and Lunaris, great goddesses of the moons, I beg of you to let these souls pass on peacefully. May they find each other again in their new lives, and may it be in an era of peace and calm. Thank you.”

Nina definitely wasn’t crying, it was just the rain.

Nina had mixed feelings about the three of them following Elaine around. Yes, it was great that they were following her, able to step in if needed, and it was effectively a marauding army they were tracking. Much better to follow the source and be able to step in most of the time.

On the other, they were constantly getting into conflict with Wang Jian’s foragers and army, which meant they were half-starving them on one front as they got into fight after fight, conflict after conflict, and on another they were slowly bleeding and whittling the army down. If and when they got into a proper battle against someone else, they’d be weaker, which endangered Elaine.

Iona snorted when she brought up her concerns.

“That’s exactly why I didn’t want to be affiliated with the Sixth.” She explained. “Armies pull horrible shit all the time, and I don’t want to have my loyalties divided.”

Nina noticed a pebble slowly levitating off the ground out of the corner of her eye. She dove to the ground right as it zipped over her head.

“Good dodge, good awareness.” Iona praised.

Nina had half a second of feeling proud before a second rock stung her in the tails.

Fenrir hit the ground roaring, everyone fleeing from the wyvern’s massive presence. Soldier or villager, young and old, all fled before the terrifying beast.

“Go!” Iona ordered, and sprang off the wyvern’s back, in hot pursuit of the soldiers with their sacks of rice.

Nina took longer to get off Fenrir’s back, needing the help of the rope ‘ladder’ tied to his armor.

The village was practically deserted, nearly everyone fleeing from Fenrir. Nina briefly thought that Iona might’ve come in too hot, but maybe she’d planned on almost everyone fleeing, just the people too hurt and unable to move left behind. Less interference, less arguing for the first aid Nina was supposed to administer.

If this village was lucky enough to have a [Healer] Nina would be superfluous. Most small communities didn’t have anything more than a [Wise Woman], and nobody here was the silver of the Scholar class that healers came from.

Nina thought such a cultural distinction was unutterably stupid, but then again Exterreri cloaked their cities in Ash so she supposed she didn’t have a leg to stand on with stupid traditions.

The sounds of distress were always the best indicator of injuries, and Nina’s ears twitched as a few reached her. She went with the youngest one first, dashing into the hut.

A kid, five or six years old, was clutching a well-patched metal doll under one arm and had a tiny hammer in her other hand. She was banging on her mother’s chest, trying to close a nasty cut top to bottom.

Nina didn’t need a skill to know she was dead.

“Mommy, please, please wake up.” She banged the hammer on her mom, trying to force it closed, ignoring Nina. “Mommy, please, we fix like this. I fix. Wake up mommy.” She banged once more on her mom, moving to shake her arm. “Wake up.”

There was nothing Nina could do in that moment to help, and other cries of distress were starting to dim. She left, her heart breaking again, and left to tend another injury. A broken arm, and Nina felt odd relief at that.

She knew how to set an arm and make a splint. She could solve this one.

She didn’t have any way to get the steady plink plink plink of a tiny hammer out of her ears.

Nina caught a sword swinging at her head out of the corner of her eye, and dove forward to dodge it. A few hairs got sliced off her tail, but she was already up and turning at the [Laborer - 170], her morphic tool shaping itself into a mace.

It was the weapon Nina was most comfortable with, and this was a fight for her life.

The young soldier must’ve circled back, hoping to hit the village while Iona was chasing down the rest of the [Bandit-Soldiers]. He thrust again at Nina, and it was so poorly done she was sure it was a feint. Nina hopped back as the soldier over-extended, and she realized that, just maybe, he was that bad.

A quick swing of her mace to the back of his head had him crumble to the ground. Nina straddled him, grabbed her mace with two hands, and brought it down with all her strength. Three more bashes on his head got metal and brain flying around the street, and a massive puddle of blood pooling in the middle of the village.

[*ding!* You’ve slain a [Farmer of the Rice (Wood, 170)]//[Shepherd of Sheep and Goats (Earth, 128)]]

Nina shook her head sadly, the ease of the battle in spite of the relative level differences suddenly making a lot more sense. He hadn’t been a [Soldier], not really. Just another farm boy running off to join the army because all the alternatives were worse.

Shaking, Nina got up, and it took her a few tries to clean her mace. An approving snort from Fenrir made Nina jump, and reminded her that she’d been watched over in a sense. A [Lightning Bolt] from Fenrir could’ve bailed her out of any trouble.

Plink plink plink.

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