Beneath the Dragoneye Moons

I woke up to Iona bolting upright in bed, swearing up a storm. I jumped up, snapping my wings open, a flood of information entering my mind from [The World Around Me], looking for the fire, looking for the [Assassin].

Were the gnomes back to finish the job?!

After a few heart-pounding moments of adrenaline flooding my system, my fingers poised to catch a spellbook and [The First Rays of Dawn] on the tip of my tongue, and Iona slowed down a moment, shaking her head at me.

“Sorry love, didn’t mean to wake you up. Go back to sleep?” She offered weakly, knowing I wouldn’t accept.

I loved her for it anyway.

“I’ll literally die of curiosity if you don’t tell me. Not just a nightmare?” I asked.

Iona shook her head, throwing off the covers and slipping into her slippers. I used [Rapid Reshelving] to teleport her bathrobe on, and she stretched, cracking her neck.

“Appreciate it. Divine mission, urgent enough to wake me up now but not so important I need to dash out of the house this instant. I figure I can spend eight minutes freshening up, eight on breakfast, four on getting ready, then I need to leave.”

I shot Iona a distinctly Unamused glare, and she dished more details as she walked to the bathhouse.

In a spur of inspiration, I brought out a spellbook, cast three different horrendously complex spells out of it, then flipped around, walking on the ceiling backwards as Iona talked.

Gods, Magic would’ve laughed himself sick if he saw me.

Walking as annoyingly as I could, I quickly processed what Iona was saying. As we passed by the small kitchen on the other side of a wall, [The World Around Me] plus [Rapid Reshelving] got half of breakfast out on the table. Iona talked fast.

“A vampire’s messing with the fabric of reality in a big way.” She quickly explained. “I’m not the only one being tapped at the moment, but the gods would like them stopped sooner rather than later. They’re in Sanguino.”

“It’ll be a paladin party.” I joked, then got a little more serious. Iona stripped and stepped into the bath, and I used my magic to grab soap and a cloth, immediately getting to work on Iona’s back. Goddesses, she was so strong, it made my heart flutter and stuck a kaleidoscope of butterflies in my stomach. “I’m pretty sure Exterreri takes a dim view on people messing with reality, especially a vampire. Given how fresh the news is, should I talk with Night about maybe deploying a Ranger team?”

Hang on. It was a vampire messing with stuff, and they were usually the most successful mortals turned. Maybe it was a job for a Sentinel squad.

Iona pursed her lips then nodded.

“Sure. It’ll stop Susan from making pointed comments about ‘rogue vigilanties operating in Exterreri’ and giving me the stink eye next time we have dinner.”

Iona sounded genuinely frustrated, so I didn’t laugh at her. I knew better than to suggest other Valkyries go along with her - it just simply wasn’t how they operated.

“Can you meet a team at Castle Stormwatch?” I asked her.

She clicked her tongue, then nodded.

“Yes. I’m so sorry this is happening right before your trip, the timing’s awful.”

I shrugged.

“It’s a trip for fun. It’s not like I’m incurring huge expenses or anything. I can delay a day or two.”

Iona furiously shook her head.

“No, no, go. Shoo. I’ll be upset and disappointed in you if you stay. Have fun.”

I decided not to argue, and finishing her back, I sped off to the kitchen, finishing a quick breakfast for Iona, and buttering a slice of bread for myself. I popped into [Vault], speeding through but not too fast - haste makes waste - and grabbed a few moonstones already charged with [Universal Cure]. Was four gems enough for her, or should I add a couple more?

Better safe than sorry. I grabbed a second handful of the gems, then I teleported back into reality, dropping them by her plate. Running at an appreciable fraction of the speed of sound and eating at the same time wasn’t recommended, but I did it anyway as I sped off to Sanguino.

I hit a minor snag as I wasn’t an active-duty Sentinel, but I was able to get in front of Addolorata soon enough, and explained the situation.

“Known levels?” She asked.

“Unknown. We do know it’s a vampire.” I reported.

She asked a few more probing questions, then snapped her fingers.

“Right, let’s get this to Night.” She said, and in less than a minute we were in front of the ancient vampire. I had a mental clock ticking along for when Iona would arrive at the gates of Castle Stormwatch. I doubted she’d wait more than a few seconds before carrying on in her divinely-mandated quest to mete out justice.

Addolorata quickly explained the situation to Night.

“Mmm. A decisive call to action. Very well, this appears to be as good of a mission as any for us to remind ourselves how we work together. In addition, it will be a good opportunity for me to familiarize myself with how your wife fights, Elaine. Addolorata, would you be a dear and rouse Ranger Team Gale? We might need them for perimeter management if nothing else.” The devil nodded and vanished.

He shot me a cheeky wink as my jaw dropped. Night was going to personally go on the mission? I didn’t think I’d ever seen him deployed!

Night drew his sword from his shadow, and started to walk at a brisk but still mortal pace to the entrance, letting me keep up with him.

“If a vampire is tearing the fabric of reality, I am responsible.” He explained without me asking, the rest of his team falling in behind us as we walked. “All vampires spring from me, and while I am not so arrogant as to believe their every action is my responsibility, in either credit or blame, when something has gone this wrong with my systems and procedures, I am bound to intervene.” He lifted an eyebrow at me.

“Elaine,” He stressed my name, not my title. “To my understanding, you are on vacation. Why are you here? Please do not tell me that you are one of those Sentinels that we need to physically throw out in order for them to take a rest.”

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The medusa gave me a look.

I held my hands up.

“Well, when my wife wakes up swearing in the middle of the night and starts throwing on armor to handle a problem in the city, I kinda think the Rangers and Sentinels would like to know. Think of it as a concerned citizen thing.”

I rapidly saw excuses to tag along with Night and Iona vanishing. Iona wanted me to go on break, Night was heavily hinting that I wasn’t welcome… would it be the worst thing ever if I just… went?

We left the castle gates right as Iona rushed up. Night and Iona didn’t need to exchange a single word, she just turned while running at an unnatural angle, and Night and his team shot off behind her.

“Do you have the gems? All of them? Love you! See you in a few weeks!” I shouted as loudly as I could. In a deft display, Iona turned around, ran backwards, and used both hands to blow kisses at me.

“Love you! Enjoy your trip!” She shouted, not slowing down in the slightest as she ran backwards over a cart.

By Ciriel, Iona was getting to the point with her stats where she could do some really funky stuff. I bet she could’ve walked upside down on the ceiling without any spells!

Just like that, they were off. It was the middle of the night, but after all the excitement I wasn’t getting back to sleep anytime soon.

It wasn’t dramatic, there wasn’t a prolonged goodbye, I just… opened my wings, turned to the south-west, and took off with a blast of air.

I had some time to think while traveling to the Bhutai Provinces. The mountainous sorta-nation - they didn’t exactly have a centralized government or anything, just a bunch of giants with similar culture and background - was one of Exterreri’s neighbors, dominating most of the southern border.

The wonderful thing about living in a civilization was the easy access to books, and by extension, information. Not all books were created equal. There tended to be only one author and their particular point of view on a subject, and their experience, prejudice, and views colored everything they wrote. Nothing was perfect, not even my beloved Manuscripts.

A well regarded book was better than nothing, and it was almost as interesting to read what the detractors had to say. With all that in mind I’d spent 45 minutes at the library thoroughly reading three separate tomes about Bhutai. Amitabh, Traveler: Teachings of the Enlightened One, by Tsering Jigme; War of the Giants: Formation of the Bhutai Provinces by Ruindaer; and lastly, a critical piece, The Tragedy of the Atheist by Glowor.

There was endless bickering over the fine details, but everyone agreed on a few things. The [Monks] of Bhutai were literally gentle giants, who spent most of their days in quiet meditation when not performing some of the endless chores needed to live. They led simple lives in many ways, but at the same time their daily practice and meditation included basic quarterstaff moves.

A giant’s quarterstaff was literally a tree.

A few times their neighbors had tried to nibble at their borders, only to find that the giants were ferocious when it came to defending themselves.

There were villages of course, and the capital was a small town near the largest monastery. Giants, being roughly ten times the size of the typical human, required so much more space per person that large populations just weren’t a thing.

As for what they meditated on - existence. The great cycle of Samsara was well-known at this point. When people died, their soul reincarnated somewhere else to continue life, if they weren’t one of the extremely rare individuals recruited to become an angel, or somehow achieved divinity.

The [Monks] of Bhutai were seeking to escape the cycle, believing if they attained enlightenment that their souls would be free to… I wasn’t exactly clear on what they thought would happen to their souls after enlightenment and escaping the great cycle of Samsara.

Some gods - and from the tone of The Tragedy of the Atheist, Glowor - took an exceedingly dim view of the monks. Seemed to me it was a them problem. They weren’t hurting anyone, what did it matter that they didn’t worship a god?

Hey Ciriel! What do you think of the Bhutai [Monks]? I asked my new friend. At first I thought her silence meant she wasn’t going to answer.

A bit odd. She replied two minutes later. They don’t pray much, and I’m rarely interested in taking a look at what’s going on there. I do know almost all of them enter back into Samsara, so like… what was the point? Hope you’re not thinking of joining them! She joked.

Nope! Heading there on a trip, was thinking about them, figured I’d see what you knew. I said. Oh! Hang on! I think I’m there!

To the south of me rose the mighty Rimounan Mountains. They stood testament to the planet’s ancient majesty and the god’s abilities at Creation, a colossal range that whispered the secrets of the ages through its snow-capped peaks and shadowed valleys. It was a place where the earth reached up and kissed the sky, a land of gigantic proportions and equally large inhabitants. The rugged spires were like the spine of the world, cloaked in white. Forests of cedar and pine dotted the cliffs and released fresh scents into the air, only failing when the air got too thin.

The border of Exterreri and Bhutai was at almost the exact point where the rolling plains sharply turned into gigantic mountains, as the Legions of the era were able to win every engagement until they reached the mountains, then broke against them like an egg thrown at a cliff. Hopefully the engagement had been decisive enough that none of the giants involved carried a grudge to this day.

Weird how “ancient history” to me was someone’s current lived experience.

I could spot a few monasteries and villages from where I was, each one far larger than the mortal equivalent. Giants all had mostly standard elvenoid proportions, if a little thicker on the leg bones than normal, just scaled to ten times the size of a human. Ten times the size one way, ten times the size a second way, and suddenly a village was literally a hundred times the size of a human one.

I went so high up past the clouds that I needed a pair of spells to help me fly. An air bubble for oxygen, and a heating spell for comfort. Then I continued to fly through the Rimounan Mountains, still needing to navigate around the occasional extra-tall peak, waving to a pair of [Gurus] who were peacefully meditating high in the sky. One waved back, the other didn’t seem to notice me.

As I got deeper into Bhutai, half the plants changed. Cedars and pines still grew, but an ancient [Biomancer], [Horticulturalist], [Farmer], or related class had gotten to them and changed them. They were as gigantic as the inhabitants of the land, and I spun off a thought process with [Luminary Mind] to be impressed. There was some serious chops going on with the change to the trees. I’d learned quite a bit about trees thanks to needing to work on treants, and I ‘knew’ that most trees had a hard physical limit on how large they could be thanks to moving water from the roots to the top. Redwoods and the like were able to bypass the limitation by absorbing mist from the air, letting them become gigantic but stifling the environment in which they could grow. Whoever had modified the trees had to be some sort of genius - I couldn’t imagine a way to get it to work.

Then again, it wasn’t like I’d gone super deep on tree knowledge and modifications. I was willing to bet - no, scratch that, I simply hoped - whoever had worked on the trees and other flora to supersize them didn’t know how to make subdermal scales on a human. Or an elvenoid chimera, as it may be.

A few times I needed to stop, pull out a map I’d copied out of [Loremaster’s Library], try to match where I was to the map, then continue to navigate my way onward. The map wasn’t particularly good. I couldn’t tell if there was no commercial desire to properly map Bhutai, the [Mapmaker] hadn’t been that good, if it was ancient and out of date with how Classers - especially giants - could literally pick up mountains and move them around, or related but subtly different, if the mountains got moved around fairly frequently.

The last one felt unlikely, but what did I know? I’d seen a mountain literally stand up and be a giant. Which was something I hoped to ask about here. Giants didn’t seem to be that large - so what had I seen? Hopefully it wasn’t like asking a dwarf if they knew about gnomes…

Without significant difficulties, I found the huge, sweeping Valley of Echoing Prayers, and below me, the Giant’s Stairway leading up to the Jakhong Monastery.

Whoops. Slightly wrong direction.

I could just drop onto the Monastery with my letter from Night and go from there, but he’d suggested approaching with humility, and walking through the valley. I was asking one of their eldest [Monks] and [Rune Smiths] Kunchenjab for a huge favor, and if Night suggested that swimming in acid would be good for me, I’d probably make sure my clothes were in a safe spot before I took a dip.

I flew to the other side of the valley, then dropped like a great heron or angel descending from on high. I was tempted to see how deep of a crater I could leave when I hit, but that could be rude to everyone else.

The chants the valley was so famous for reached my ears before I landed, dozens, if not hundreds, of [Monks] chanting sutras that echoed beautifully through the valley. A single sutra could bounce around for minutes, giving time to contemplate the teachings within.

The ground just kept on coming and coming and coming, and I realized it was both further away and larger than I expected, a trick of perception when everything had been enlarged. It was almost like I was a gnome, living in the world of humans.

I hit the ground as another sutra started, and stared up at the path I needed to take.

It was miles long, and speeding it was probably only marginally better than flying straight to the place.

Three long roads wove through the Valley of Echoing Prayers. A golden one, a regular cobblestone road, and a broken game trail. If I was remembering my readings properly, there was a ‘right’ road to take and a wrong one, a symbolic measure of the path I should take.

Then again, perhaps I only had a juvenile understanding of the meaning, and any path, every path, was the correct one? Or did I need to keep switching which path I was on as they wove between each other?

Plenty of thought, plenty of contemplation, simply for selecting the road I was to walk on. Of course, the roads themselves were sized for a giant, far larger than I needed.

Well, better to be thought I was earnestly trying to understand as a novice than actively being rude.

With one sandaled foot, I took my first step on the cobblestone path, the one I metaphorically understood to be the middle way.

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