Beneath the Dragoneye Moons

As I looked at the little token that would grant us permission to visit Artemis’s sub-island - I couldn’t believe Artemis had an entire island - I realized a little problem.

“Wait. How do we get to the islands?” I asked the [Clerk]. I mean, I supposed I could probably fly over there, but with the School’s defenses and a token implying the island had additional protections, it was possible there was a special method.

I hadn’t heard any concrete information about the islands when I’d been a student here, just crazy rumors. Like if someone flew upside-down on the night of no moons in the sky, while singing a particular rowdy song and drinking, they’d be able to get in.

Watching someone try it and epically fail had been the highlight of that month.

“There’s a ferry when the weather is good.” The [Clerk] said.

“Thank you for your time, we appreciate it.” Iona said.

Getting to Artemis’s little island was an adventure in and of itself, but we finally made it. I eyed the villa built on the edge of the lake that dominated the place, seeing some people swimming in the water.

“Do you think they copied our villa?” I asked Iona. “They did spend quite a few years there, maybe they liked the layout.”

She squinted at the place as we approached.

“Maybe? On one hand, we had a really good [Architect] build the place, and I’m not sure I’d trust the students here on their first real project, best school in the world or not. On the other, the people teaching the classes are unparalleled, and the two of you could’ve drawn similar inspiration from Remus. I think we’d need to go inside to see, but the swimming dock is new at least.”

“Let’s go find Artemis!” I tore through the air towards the compound, only to hear a high-pitched whine a moment later.

“Heeeeeeeeealy buuuuug!” Artemis tore out of her home, surfing on some rocks up into the air. “You finally made it!”

My senses and significantly higher speed and vitality made it trivial to get a good look at Artemis as she was flying towards me.

She was looking great! A few more laugh lines around her eyes and mouth suggested that time was taking a slow toll on her, but the time was filled with joy. She had a relaxed appearance, a far cry from the utterly paranoid Artemis I’d grown up with, the one who was looking for danger behind every bush - and, to be fair, usually finding it. A pair of orbs hovered over each shoulder, one solid Earth and the other made of swirling Darkness. My old mentor hadn’t bothered to wear a school robe, instead having a tunic with an apron over it, handprints made out of flour all over it. She hadn’t gained too many levels, a strong indicator that her life had been peaceful, and she wasn’t constantly throwing around [Lightning Bolts] to stay alive.

I slowed down and grabbed my hat as Artemis tackled me, letting her carry us to the ground. Iona followed behind us.

Artemis put me down, and dusted off my shoulders and arms, looking delighted like she’d just won the biggest pot at cards. A few black-robed students peeked out curiously.

“Look at you! You don’t look like you’ve aged a day since I last saw you!”

An awkward look froze on my face, and Artemis shot me a cheeky wink. She twisted her head around at the gawkers.

“Oi! This is my friend, Elaine, and there’s nothing interesting going on here!”

I mean. Saying there was nothing interesting was a guarantee that they’d all be eavesdropping like mad… but maybe Artemis was aware of that.

“Artemis! I’m so glad to see you again. How’s life at the School treating you?” Iona asked, confidently holding out a hand for Artemis. They shook, and Artemis looked thrilled.

“Fantastically! I-”

“Hey love! Is that Elaine!?” Julius emerged from the house, dusting flour off his hands. He traded a curt respectful nod with Iona.

Artemis whirled with me.

“Yes! Our little healy-bug’s back!”

Julius cracked a grin.

“Excellent! Cookies are in the oven. I swear keeping this lot fed and happy is harder than any Ranger tour. Everything alright with Auri?”

My former Ranger leader still had his sharp eyes.

“Weeeeell, that’s part of why we’re here. She-”

Julius flashed me the ancient Ranger hand-signal for quiet, and I shut up. Artemis clapped her hands together, a massive skill-based thunderclap roiling throughout the miniature island. Students spilled out of the villa, assembling poorly in the field.

“Alright all of you! I’ve got some friends over, and we’d like some private time to catch up together. Today’s lesson! When the teacher has old friends swing by, sometimes she wants to chat with them! Get out of here, see you all tomorrow.”

There were no complaints or grumbles, although the looks on their faces suggested they wanted to. A few envious looks were shot our way, and a few eyes widened as they caught the notation on my robe.

“Thank you for your teachings, instructor.”

“Thank you for today.”

“Appreciate it.”

Most of the students had some variation of a courtesy they extended Artemis as they filed past us, towards the edge of the island where there was a ferry waiting for them.

I froze as they passed me.

Two of them had eaten apples recently, and the full force of their healer-repelling field hit me. Trying to run, dodge, flee, or otherwise act would simply draw dramatic amounts of attention to me, attention I could mostly avoid just by standing very still.

Artemis narrowed her eyes and shouted, her voice magically amplified.

“Roofus! I can fucking count, you ingrate! Don’t make me fucking drag you out!”

One last black-robed student came sprinting out of Artemis’s home, trying to shove his way into the crowd like it would disguise him from Artemis’s wrath.

“What’s the story with them?” Iona asked. Artemis laughed, like a grandmother amused by the antics of her small grandchildren.

“Oh, it’s quite the tale, let me tell you! Here, come on in, we’ve got milk, cookies, and good beer. Come on in!” Artemis said.

“Not as good as Auri’s cookies, but we’re working on it!”

Three hours later, Iona and I were stuffed to bursting with delicious cookies. Sugar, peanut butter, chocolate chip, lemon, snickerdoodles - I swear, Artemis had gone from ‘hardened killer’ to ‘industrial-scale cookie maker’.

“... and now I live here. I carefully select which students I let ‘work’ here, aiming for the newer ones that still have a [Student] class evolution in the future. Being here, working for me, and letting me teach them a little every day supercharges their class offerings, setting them up for the future nicely. Now and then I’ll teach a practical combat class, and that Shirayuki keeps trying to recruit me as a coach for the combat team. Bah! No offense to you two, I know you were on it, but the little kiddy games called ‘combat’ here aren’t for me. Lining up, knowing your opponent, and getting told when to start, it’s so unrealistic!” We didn’t bother correcting Artemis about Iona’s participation on the combat team.

Artemis’s story was a wild one.

The short version was hard for me to wrap my head around. Artemis and Julius had, upon leaving Exterreri and wanting to check out the School, gotten into their fair share of trouble, mischief, and mayhem. Once they’d gotten here, after extensive poking around and a frankly unbelievable sequence of events, Artemis had managed to prove to herself that this was the same ‘legacy’ of the School she’d initially founded back in Remus - with some twists about it being burnt to the ground a few dozen times and rebuilt, prompting interesting philosophical ‘School of Theseus’ questions - and then managed to prove it to the School itself.

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Which had been accomplished via a bizarre mix of Artemis personally mentoring a dozen promising young students from the low-level children educational facility to demonstrate it via potent class offerings, a divine blessing, and a dragon.

With how Julius flinched at the mention of the dragon, I wasn’t sure if Artemis was pulling my leg, or dramatically underplaying the whole thing.

I wordlessly offered Iona the last cookie. It was one of my favorites, but I wanted her to have a chance at it. Artemis shamelessly stole it before Iona could grab it.

“Surely it’s better practice than nothing.” I defended my participation on the team, believing what I said. “Yeah, it’s not ‘real’, but it’s the closest thing you can get to throwing abilities at other people to get some training in before needing to do it for real for the first time. Is it that different than sparring?”

Julius rolled his eyes, the subject clearly one of long discussion.

“What Artemis isn’t saying is she offered to coach under certain conditions that they found unreasonable.” He added in.

“Three hours a day of real combat training with those oh-so-fancy shields was reasonable!” She protested.

“Why not train the free-for-all segment?” I asked.

“Not enough dedication.” Artemis and Julius chimed together, one indignant, one resigned.

Iona leaned forward, using [Telekinesis] to snap half the cookie back to her hand, staring Artemis in the eyes as she bit down on it.

“Julius! What have you been up to?” She asked.

He stretched languidly, like a feral cat that had been domesticated, an old, loyal dog laying out by the fire.

“Frankly? Enjoying life, mentoring a few of the students Artemis has running around, and generally being actually retired. On one hand, there’s a part of me that itches to go out and fight monsters, but the other knows I’m in the rarest company. Rangers retiring? We don’t get to retire. The School is fantastic though. I’ve got as many challenges as I want to engage in, the answers to any question I might have at my fingertips. My biggest worries in life are you lot, and a few of my proteges that have graduated and are busy making their mark on the world. You? I got the sense that Elaine was about to say you two were up to something highly illegal before I shut her up.”

“It’s not highly illegal!” I protested. “Only one organization thinks it’s illegal!”

Julius cocked an eyebrow at me.

“I know Ranger training went over laws, legalities, and enforcement of them. What’s the only part that actually matters?” He grilled me, like I was 18 again instead of 38. I sighed.

“Their ability to enforce the rules.”

Iona looked less than thrilled at the explanation, but had the practicality and experience to recognize it as a valid way of thinking.

Artemis leaned forward.

“So! Tell me more, and more importantly, tell me how we can help.”

I explained the situation with Auri, our agreement, the Phoenix Peaks, and the rest. Artemis looked thoughtful.

“You’re going to struggle with the shields and protection around the School.” She said. “They perform multiple functions. There’s obviously the barriers and protections, both passive and active. There’s the nets, which stop idiots from jumping off the School. They also make it difficult for people to leave the island while it’s over the North, given how easy it’d be to smuggle people with the island.”

We got a pair of pointed looks.

“Any easy ways around the protections?” I asked.

“Your [Blink] should do it.” Artemis said. “I’m unsure about Iona, and I assume Fenrir’s here as well, yeah? Yeah, I literally can’t imagine them letting him go… unless…” Artemis got a devious look on her face. “Unless you were ‘returning him home’ to the north pole. Releasing a wyvern like that ‘back where he belongs’ would be allowed, and I seem to recall a certain story about someone being swallowed whole by a wyvern.”

I wanted a funny look on Iona’s face, but she was serene.

“If that’s what I have to do, that’s what I have to do.”

I didn’t know it was possible to fall more in love with her, but I did.

Artemis clapped her hands.

“Great! Fantastic! Onto the next subject! Elaine, I’m almost disappointed in you. You haven’t asked about lefty and righty at all! Where’s your sense of curiosity? Where’s the inquisitive brat that wouldn’t stop pestering us?”

I opened my mouth in outrage.

“Wait! It’s a crime to be polite?! It’s a crime to listen to your story without interrupting!? It’s a crime to wait for the right time and place?! Yes, I’m curious about righty and lefty, assuming you mean those two orbs! Goddess forbid I wait a bit!”

Artemis mimed wiping a tear away.

“Julius!” She mock-sobbed. “They grow up so quickly! Where did the time go!”

“I’m 38!” I protested. Iona patted my arm, slowly shaking her head, then viciously ganged up on me like the rest.

“I know you’re 38, but Artemis, Julius, I think we should consider the alternative: With all the messing around Elaine’s done with her body and her age, maybe she’s just gone senile early?”

There were no cookies left to steal, so I just crossed my arms and pouted.

“I hate you all. Artemis, be careful, if I ever get the chance to make you Immortal I’m also going to make you eight.”

Threatening to turn someone eight wasn’t something I’d ever imagined before, but it was a potent threat.

“Is that any way to treat the person who’s going to teach you cool new magic?” Artemis asked with her impish grin. I blew a raspberry at her, knowing I’d lost the battle of words, but knowing I could still be petty.

“I think Elaine’s had enough.” Iona said. “Anymore and she’ll break.”

“These orbs are great.” Artemis pointed to them. “It’s a passive-active skill with a modest mana drain, but any attacks coming my way are automatically intercepted.”

“It’s done wonders for her mental state.” Julius said. “She’s not throwing Lightning bolts every time someone drops a plate.”

Artemis socked Julius in the arm.

“That was once!” She protested.

“Fine. Once on a plate, three times on cups, four soup bowls…”

Artemis shot him a look that promised he’d be sleeping in another room if he continued the list, and he shut up.

“Go on! Try something!” Artemis said. Iona flicked a plate at her. A bolt of Darkness shot out from the Dark orb at the same time a shield of Earth materialized in front of the plate. The bolt annihilated the plate before it could even reach the earth, which flew around Artemis three times before merging back with the Earth sphere.

“Tada!” Artemis said. “Elaine, speaking of shields, have you managed to upgrade your skill yet?”

“No.” I frowned. It hadn’t been for a lack of trying, but all these years later and I still hadn’t succeeded. I didn’t know if I was doing something wrong, if it wasn’t a ‘natural’ evolution it wanted to go through, or if it just plain wasn’t in [The Arbiter of Life and Death’s] skillset.

“Alright, alright, cool! I want to show you another neat trick! Come on, follow me!” Artemis bounded out of her chair, Julius sighing at the table.

“I got this.” Iona said.

“No, no, you’re a guest, don’t bother.” Julius tried to wave Iona off. She arched a single eyebrow at him, and all the plates, dishes, and cups lifted themselves up, flying over to the kitchen. Julius stared after them and shrugged.

“Alright, that was easy enough, thank you Iona. Let’s go see what Artemis has in store.”

We found Artemis on a scarred and scorched field. I was intimately familiar with Lightning strikes, and the field screamed Artemis. She drew herself up to her full height as we entered.

“I, Artemis, Founder of the School of Sorcery and Spellcraft, will now teach Elaine how to properly use a Darkness shield. Block.”

Artemis giving me enough warning before she attacked almost stunned me enough that I didn’t throw up my shield. I recovered in time, throwing up [Shroud of the Stellar Sea] in a protective bubble around us all.

A narrow, focused bolt of Lightning crashed against my shields, somehow entirely silent.

The System’s blue box appeared in front of me.

[*ding!* Would you like to upgrade [Shroud of the Stellar Sea] to [Event Horizon]? Y/N]

Event Horizon: The black hole. The absolute finality of nature, the great gravitational well of the vast cosmos. Nothing that passes the event horizon can ever come back, utterly annihilated for all practical purposes. -32,752 mana regeneration.

I blinked at the notification, then refocused on Artemis, who looked as smug as a [Mage] who’d just used [Chain Lightning] on a goblin horde.

[Luminary Mind] let me think about the choice while the rest of me thanked Artemis and explained the skill, getting some light feedback.

I wasn’t completely sure I wanted to take the skill, just that I wanted it offered so I could compare. There were pros and cons to the two different styles of shields, and the exact analysis would depend on the details.

The details that were staggeringly light on the skill description.

The words and imagery used were powerful. Short, sweet, to the point. ‘Utter annihilation’ was direct and to the point. The mana regeneration rate was lower, which was both a pro and a con. It implied it was weaker than [Shroud], but at the same time, destruction-type shields didn’t need to have quite the same amount of power as blocking-type shields. At the same time, it would free up a modest amount of mana regeneration for myself.

The downside to destruction-style shields was the complete weakness against vitality-reinforced attacks. Then again, most of those happened at close range, and a physical Classer whaling on my shield was a great way to rapidly drain my mana and break the shield. It was the classic counter to instant shields like [Shroud].

There was utility to consider. [Shroud] could, at a continuous cost depending on what it was holding, be any tool I needed, any shape I wanted. I’d done things like make a food funnel for a hatchling Auri, or wrapped myself up like it was clothes.

I suppose [Event Horizon] also worked for clothes. Speaking of…

[Shroud] was just so pretty as a skill!

The decision might not be reversible though. If I went to [Event Horizon] and didn’t like it, I might not be able to get [Shroud] back.

Plus, starry fields…

“How’d you do that?” I asked. “I’ve been trying for literal years, and you made it happen in a single go?”

Artemis looked way too smug, and I doubted I’d hear the end of it. She’d earned it though.

“Well! The biggest part is, frankly, the island we’re on. It’s an Oddity. I don’t know if you heard the rumors or if students know for a fact, but the property of this Oddity is skill development and acquisition. It's incredibly easy to pick things up. I’ve got a [Teaching] skill which helps, and I’ve got a ton of weight to throw around System-wise. I’ve figured out how to put it all together and get people skills like that.” Artemis snapped her fingers to demonstrate.

“Speaking of weight - I was wondering about the potency effect. Isn’t helping people all the time diluting the quality of classes you’re upgrading, and making skills harder to teach?”

Artemis scoffed loudly.

“Bullshit. Yeah, maybe I could get someone a better class if I taught one person every decade, but bully to that! I’d rather spread a thousand promising seeds than go all-in on one student. It lets me spread the love, and if the System isn’t rewarding as hard, so what? Just being my student shouldn’t be a treat, a reward with no effort put into it. They want good classes? They can earn it themselves.”

I explained the details of my skill to them, along with what I thought.

Everyone gave me their opinions, most of which was a rehash of things I’d already thought of. Julius had the most interesting take.

“You know, it’s possible that you weren’t able to get the skill to evolve like that because it’s normally too far outside of what a [Healer] class, and your class, is supposed to do. The School lets you stretch further, but I’d expect a shield skill like that to be the domain of a more dedicated barrier classer. I’d consider what holes you currently have in your kit, and if it fills them or not.”

Julius had a good point.

I had a lot of tools in my arsenal. I literally carried around multiple warehouses worth of goods and equipment. Kinda… the need for extensive passageways between the different rooms in [Vault]significantly cut down how much I could store and carry around. I didn’t need to shape [Shroud of the Stellar Sea] into a food funnel for hungry phoenix hatchlings, I had a room filled to the brim with kitchen supplies already.

Thinking about it - I should absolutely start building storage units inside of [Vault].

I had tons of tools. It was a little worse against vitality-based attacks, better against everything else. It wasn’t going to stop a tidal wave, but then again, [Shroud] would instantly shatter against one as well.

In the end, I took [Event Horizon].

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