Beneath the Dragoneye Moons

The scorpion stopped.

Then it reached out with an impossibly large claw, and with the speed, power, size, and surprise factor, suddenly targeted the bright glowing angel in the sky. Its claw tightened around my neck, and decapitated me with a snip.

My head tumbled through the sky, end over end, no longer having long hair to get in my way. All my biomancy modifications were good for keeping me awake and conscious.

Heal. HEAL! I screamed to myself, trying to activate the skill, not knowing why I couldn’t do it or feel it. I caught a glimpse of a glowing six-winged angel high up in the sky, head intact, flying fast towards Fenrir and Iona.

Heal!

All my powers had deserted me. The System was gone. The ground was rushing up at me. I-

I love you Iona, Auri.

I shuddered as memories poured into [Astral Archives], pushing aside and compartmentalizing dozens of unpleasant thoughts. Fenrir slowed down enough for me to catch up, and I slammed into Iona’s arms, pulling my knees up to my chest, full-body shudders having nothing to do with the cold.

“What’s wrong?” Iona instantly caught on.

Only the extremely well-trained part of - I hesitated to call it me, not with the revelations battering my mind - was able to stay vaguely vigilant and aware of the world around me. I was scanning for additional threats and attacks, ready to respond but unsure if I should.

I was in a bit of a daze as Iona landed in muddy tundra, in the heart of an old growth forest. I reached out for an old set of runes, instantly summoning a half-dome of metal around me to act as an instant, temporary shelter. I continued to hold my knees, gently rocking myself as Fenrir and Iona busied themselves around me, securing the shelter.

I’d died. I had the memories of being decapitated, of seeing a scared head falling to the ground. I - no, Elaine, the true one - had been in there. My stream of consciousness hadn’t continued uninterrupted. I’d come into existence the moment the head had been fully separated and a new one regrown.

Tears threatened to freeze on my face as I dragged my fingers down my cheeks, almost like I was trying to peel my face off.

From my point of view, I’d been flying along, decapitated, then I regrew my head and carried on.

Was that truly ‘me’ though?

I felt like an imposter. The clone who’d supplanted the original.

The chain of events were clear. I had lost my head, my mind and consciousness falling to the ground to burst open like an overripe grape. That was the real ‘Elaine’.

Who was I now? A mewling babe with multiple lifetimes of experience? Just…

My mind circled over it again and again, going over the events, my horror mounting. I don’t know how long I stayed there, the sun doing the weird sunrise-actually-sunset thing that higher longitudes experienced. The nausea and disorientation were intense. I threw myself forward and threw up, barely avoiding backsplash from the wind.

Iona sat with me and caressed me the whole time, murmuring in my ear.

“What’s wrong? I’m here for you. I love you. It’s alright. Everything’s okay. Everyone’s alive.”

I shuddered at her touch, felt warmed by her love.

It was fake. False. How would she react when she knew I wasn’t Elaine, her Elaine, but an imposter? One wearing a skin suit so perfect her divine blessing couldn’t pierce it?

Goddess.

Auri.

It wasn’t fair to her. She’d destroy herself out of guilt. Elaine had gone to rescue her, and had died for it.

I had to tell Iona. I had to confess. But her love, her warmth, was like a bonfire in a blizzard. I wanted to stay with her just a little longer. Enjoy her love just a moment more.

For a moment the idea flashed through my mind.

Just never tell Iona. Carry on like nothing had happened. Live a double life like a changeling.

The guilt would destroy me. It would eat me up alive from the inside out.

“I’m… I’m not Elaine.” I stammered out, waiting for the inevitable blow. Iona leaned back - still hugging me - took a long look at me, and pressed back in.

“Yes you are.” She insisted.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No!”

“Of course you are.” Iona’s hug was stickier than an octopus.

A shrunk-down Fenrir came over and sniffed me.

“Elaine.” He concluded, nodding with the certainty of a detective who’d closed the easiest case in the world.

“What makes you think you’re not Elaine?” Iona asked.

“Because she was in the head! It got chopped off! She fell, and… and I grew back in her place.”

“Why does that matter?” Iona asked. I shot her a confused, betrayed look. She hugged me more.

“No, seriously, I’m trying to understand here what the issue is. I get it’s disturbing you, I want to know why.”

Ah.

“Because I am my consciousness?” I said. “Her uninterrupted perspective of the world went that way?”

“So everytime you go to sleep you die?” Iona asked with significant skepticism.

“No! Not like that. You wake up in the same body, as the same person. There’s some pausing, but it’s not interrupted. It’s continuous.”

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Teleporting.” Iona answered. “Isn’t that the same thing?”

I shook my head, knowing the answer to that one. The theory classes and the mathematics were quite clear.

“Teleportation is a constant flow. I move into another dimension for a fraction of a moment, then immediately return to a new position.”

I was developing a snotscicle at the end of my nose.

Iona went silent, her lips occasionally twitching as she got into a long conversation with her goddesses. Her face brightened up.

“Ahha! Okay, this one’s easy. Are you the same Elaine from Earth?” She asked. “The same Elaine that was in the realm of the gods? And the same Elaine that woke up?”

I thought about it. Iona flicked my nose.

“Less thinking, more instinct on that question. Well?”

I nodded.

“Yeah, she was the same person all the way through.”

Iona narrowed her eyes dangerously at me, and poked me with a finger.

“You are the same person.” She said. “Why didn’t you have a crisis before?”

“Well, because I was the same soul.” I answered. The Valkyrie’s face lit up.

“Exactly!” She triumphantly said. “The same soul. The very soul that the System is attached to. You’ve got all your stats, skills, and classes, yeah?”

[Name: Elaine]

The name stared at me like a baleful accusation, the skin of a dead woman.

Or… or was it really me? There wasn’t anything else I could think of calling myself. For most of my life I’d been called ‘Elaine’, and ‘Dawn’ was an assumption just as hard as ‘Elaine’ would be.

I slowly nodded my agreement, and tried it out.

“My name’s Elaine.” I said. “I’m [The Arbiter of Life and Death]. The [Seraph of the Dawn]. And the [Erudite Archmage].”

Iona hugged me again, gently kissing my cheek. I didn’t flinch.

“And the love of my life.” She breathed into my ear. “The one I’ve woken up next to every day. My muse. My inspiration. Trust me to know. You are you.”

I frowned, going deep into [Astral Archives], reviewing the heck out of everything I could. From my earliest memories to Ranger training, from my prior decapitation to the School, to all the times I’d touched the divine and played with Auri, all the way up to my most recent crisis.

A few items percolated to the top.

Hey Ciriel, can you tell if I’m still me? I asked the goddess.

Yes? I’m not sure why this is a question. She answered back.

I’d also suspected during my biomancy modifications that I’d regrow from the neck up if I ever got decapitated again. I’d had exactly that happen.

According to some theories, the brain was the seat of the soul. It hadn’t been extensively tested or anything, but I had quite a few more brains in my body than in my head. They were less-functional, but designed to be ‘me’ enough that, even if my head was obliterated, I’d live and heal back. It was possible that design had saved me during the Han Civil War, when Elaine ended up with a sword through her head, but it wasn’t like I could experiment and confirm it.

Well, it had happened. Elaine’s planning - no, that was all wrong, wasn’t it?

My planning, preparation, and improvements had made this possible.

I guess if I ever grew a second head things would get even weirder. Thank Marcelle none of that had happened.

Okay. Fine. I was still Elaine. One set of trauma processed. I took in a deep, shuddering breath.

“Alright. I’m-”

Fenrir snapped over to us, a frozen finger of Ice over his mouth in a silent shhhh. I instantly shut up, both Iona and I going on high alert.

412 days later, I woke up with a start, my jaw aching from grinding it all night long. I wanted to angrily throw off the covers and stomp around without a care in the world, but I held myself back. Iona would end up bearing the brunt of my bad mood, and that wasn’t fair to her.

That was it. It was going to be six years and a day tomorrow, the moment the sun crested the horizon, and Auri wasn’t back. She was obviously still alive and doing fantastically well for herself - the never-ending levels she fed back clearly indicated she was alive and active - but I knew her. We’d promised, and no matter how bird-brained she could be at times, I didn’t believe for one second that she’d forgotten. Even if Auri had decided to stay at the Phoenix Peaks, it was entirely unlike her not to come back and at least say something, and our companion bond existed and was strong.

No, something was wrong, and I’d spent the last three months preparing for the eventuality that I’d need to go to the Phoenix Peaks personally to figure it out and fix things.

I started to stomp-sneak over to the kitchen when Auri came screaming in through the door.

“Auri! You made it! I was so worried about you!”

“BRRRPT!”

“Oh Selene and Lunaris. By right of gift-giving, of offering, of possession, I offer you this blade. Take it, if you should have use of it.”

In a sparkle of divine energy, the blade vanished, little motes of blue and yellow scattering and dancing around Iona in a non-existent wind.

Arachne took a deep breath in and out, then asked her question.

“Is Lun’Kat also behind the Moon Cult?”

I paled at the question, at the invocation. Iona’s eyes flew open.

“Run!” She yelled.

We didn’t make it to the door. Dragonfire descended upon us, scouring Sanguino off the face off the planet, boiling off the entirety of Bloodmoon Bay. I stood in the falling ashes of all my friends and family, embers glowing at my feet. I shook a fist at the sky, utterly immune to the dragonfire.

“Curse you! I swear I’ll-”

Splat

I was not immune to dragontail.

A familiar blue-robed demon was at the front.

“Martin! How are you?” I asked him.

“Elaine.” He didn’t miss a beat. I was guessing being a [Librarian] included supercharged versions of my memory skills, among other things. “Welcome back. Are you here to return the books you checked out?”

I froze, my mind racing. Wait. What books? Had I checked something out and committed the cardinal sin of not returning it? Oh gods, how high were the fees? Wait a minute…

Martin grinned.

“Just messing with you! Here for anything special, or just looking around?”

I leaned in with Iona and dropped my voice to a conspiratorial whisper.

“Ah, well, you see, while I was here, there was a certain book in the section that doesn’t exist that I saw, but never ended up reading. I was wondering if I could be allowed to take a look at it?”

Martin went from affable and friendly to on-guard in a heartbeat. He glanced at Iona and back to me.

“It’s going to strongly depend on which book and why.” He said. “Follow me to my office.”

We found ourselves in his sealed stronghold a while later, Martin sitting behind his desk with his hands folded on his desk.

“Now. Make your case.” He said. “You are not here as one of the [Students] working in the library, but as an outsider requesting access to otherwise forbidden knowledge.”

I straightened up, silently communicating with Iona. I was taking point on this.

“I’m a [Loremaster] now, although I’m unsure for how much longer.” I started. “I’ve got access to vast quantities of information, knowledge, and dangers already. I’ve already been trusted to read the contents of the library in the past. We’re looking to read The Secret of the Pekari, to better fight them.”

Martin looked like he wanted to laugh when he heard the title. Instead, he shook his head.

“I’m not going to flat-out deny you, but please trust me when I say this. Reading that book will harm your ability to combat the Pekari. If you wish to learn all about them, there’s a section dedicated to the Pekari in the library, which I will be happy to guide you to. However, if you insist, I will let you read it.”

Iona and I traded another look. Knowledge was power.

But listening to people who knew stuff, and was strongly suggesting against it was wisdom. No amount of power mattered if it wasn’t wisely applied, and there had to be a good reason Martin was warning us off it.

“Alright, we’ll skip that for now. Let’s go hit the section about the Pekari in the library?” I suggested to Iona.

She waggled her eyebrows. That wasn’t all Iona wanted to hit in the library.

A coatl shot out of the sky, aiming for Moxie. Iona started to react, reaching out to strangle it single-handedly, but was too slow. Its jaws extended comically large, and it ate Moxie in a single bite before flying off into the sunset.

Wait! I recognized that coatl!

I shook a fist after the feathered serpent.

“CORDAMOOOOOO!”

I couldn’t tell what the other Warden was thinking, not with their mask and lack of expressive body language, but I’d guess he wasn’t too amused.

“Divine blessing. I see. Many thanks to you. I will pass the information along. What did you want to meet for?” He completely ignored the elf passed out on the floor. Must not be a fan.

Medically, he was fine.

Iona smiled winningly, and I was confident in her silver tongue.

“Well! One of our friends, a phoenix, bonded companion to Sentinel Dawn here, went to the North Continent. She was supposed to be back by now, but hasn’t arrived. We’d like permission to go there and bring her back.”

“Sure, that’s a perfectly good reason to head up there.”

A day later we were drinking with Sasha, looking at the Dungeon.

A great clashing of steel rang out through the temple, killing the music, and that was my signal to go. I slowly walked through the steel arch, keeping an impressed half-eye on Iona.

The Valkyries did things a little more… violently.

The Sixth presented arms, letting me walk through them.

The Valkyries had a complex and intricate weaving of flashing blades moving at superhuman speeds and strength. If Iona walked at exactly the right pace, she’d pass through them all without a single nick.

Worst case, she’d lose her head entirely. Literally.

In their tradition, it was a test of resolve, commitment, and bravery. Anyone could pass through, and the idea was simple. If they weren’t willing to test their lives against the steel, if they weren’t committed or brave enough to weather the storm, what sort of spouse would they make?

It was impressive, watching them-

My hands flew up into my face in horror as one of the Valkyries slipped, their blade going straight through Iona’s chest. She went down with a gurgle.

“Medic!”

The Dragon was deep in her lair, stirring. Layers upon layers of plots and plans were slowly ripening, coming to fruiting. It was time to reactivate one of her oldest assets.

With careful deliberation, she crafted a fine illusion, breathing life into it. She set it to walk free, seeing how it walked, ran, and jumped. How it would try to use skills.

Test after test it passed, and she was just about ready to unleash it upon the world again, a deadly agent to further her aims. Last was the voice test, trying out the name it had the last time it walked the world.

“Hi! I’m Sentinel Magic!”

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