Beneath the Dragoneye Moons

I had a lot of images in my mind of how this was going to go. Papilion had removed quite a lot from my mind, and I hadn’t spent much time over the years thinking about it - I’d gone fully native - but the space shuttle launches, the vibe and the feel of them, were one memory that had been preserved. Roaring flames underneath, rattling sensations, and a whole lot of force and energy being applied.

I had no idea past that how any of it worked - that had been surgically removed with a sledgehammer - but there was a certain feel, a certain expectation I had coming into this on what launch day would be like.

We’d practiced launches, Fenrir lifting us all up, so it wasn’t entirely unexpected, simply… dissonant. He was a powerful Classer in his own right on top of being a bloody wyvern, and the ride up was smooth as a washed mango’s peel. There was a small jerk as Fenrir lifted us up, and then it was a smooth trip up.

I looked down, and watched Sanguino rapidly drop away from us. First the colosseum became a tiny dot, then the city, and suddenly I realized I was looking at a solid fraction of the world. The moons were far off to our right, their light glimmering off the Bloodmoon Bay. The Sea of Stars once again proved why it had that name, as the hundred thousand stars in the sky were reflected in the water. That was the top of Fenrir’s flight ceiling, and it was our turn.

“Ready to disengage.” Iona said.

“Aye, ready to disengage.” I confirmed, bracing my arms and muscles against the gauntlets, plagued by sudden doubt. Could I seriously push the spaceship for 11 days? Was my wrist strong enough? I could heal through breaks and fix muscle fatigue, but what about the mental fatigue?

I reassured myself again that it couldn’t be worse than Ranger Academy. I’d done worse for longer. At the same time, I didn’t have the same driving impetus. It wasn’t my entire future for me.

I glanced back at Iona, and doubled my resolve.

It was important for her. It was huge, and I’d walk over burning broken glass for her. Pushing for a few days? Bah, that was easy.

I flapped my wings at full force, effectively trying to push the entire spaceship plus Fenrir. I’d honestly have more luck trying to move a mountain.

Fenrir disengaged his Ice, smoothly peeling back as it all came with him. Dropping that much Ice straight down onto Sanguino would probably kill quite a few people, and he peeled off. Iona quickly waved, but the sudden weight of everything crashed over me, and we started to fall.

Wasn’t the first time we’d practiced, and I fought down the usual surge of panic as we began to slowly spin, flapping my wings and straining against the sheer weight of everything. Iona was doing her part and more - [Flight of the Valkyries] plus [Telekinesis] was doing some of the lifting, but her magic power, mana, and regeneration paled in comparison to mine.

I grunted and strained as I pushed against gravity, blessing how many times we’d practiced and Iona’s [Star-Forged] armor skill preventing any little bits from getting damaged.

In a gale and flurry of feathers and wings, I righted the ship, ignoring how backwards it was for my wings to successfully ‘push’ air while trapped in an airtight container. Magic was weird and awesome that way.

“I’ve got control, accelerating.” I popped my mana bar in front of my face, watching it rapidly dwindle as I accelerated us.

[*ding!* [Seraph of the Dawn] leveled up! 888-> 889. +512 Speed, +512 Vitality, +1024 Mana, +1024 Mana Regeneration, +1024 Magic Power, +1024 Magic Control per level from your class per level! +1 Strength, +1 Dexterity, +1 Speed, +1 Vitality, +1 Mana, +1 Mana Regeneration, +1 Magic Power, +1 Magic Control for being Chimera (Elvenoid) per level! +1 Strength +1 Mana Regeneration from your Element per level!]

I hadn’t gotten any levels on test flights. The ‘real’ flight had enough weight that the levels were starting to slowly roll in.

I was a hair disappointed that [Celestial Mastery] didn’t upgrade to [Celestial Spirit]. What was more Celestial than visiting space? I had some hopes when we landed on the moon.

This was where the fine calculations came in. I’d worked out exactly how much mana I needed to keep in reserve if everything went to shit, how much mana I’d need to spend effectively accelerating, and when I was at max speed. Iona had a number of tools and instruments that helped her estimate and double-check my work.

This wasn’t a disaster of a launch, and I rapidly gained speed as we left Pallos behind us. At a certain point, it seemed like we just weren’t moving at all, thanks to the distances involved. I carefully tilted the spaceship around until all the stars were lined up, noting that my head was just ever-so-slightly in an uncomfortable position to be in the right spot.

Damnit. This had been a comfortable spot when I calibrated it! I had to wonder if something went wrong somewhere, if there was a minuscule tolerance adjustment, if things had shifted, or if it was pure biology.

I sighed.

“Liftoff successful?” I questioned, wanting Iona’s confirmation. I could see everything she was doing and could read her well enough to guess the answer, but we weren’t doing something that could easily operate on ‘guesses’ and ‘I’m pretty sure I know.’

“Liftoff successful.” Iona confirmed.

I kept an eye on my mana, making small adjustments to how hard I was flying until I was regenerating ‘only’ about 1000 mana/second. Iona stretched awkwardly in her seat, making sure not to leave too much of it at any point. I was trying not to push [Etheric Aegis] too hard, since our skills would ‘clash’ if both tried to reinforce the hull, instead of ‘overlap.’ Some skills DID work that way, but for whatever reason, one of our skills didn’t want to play nicely.

I was willing to bet it was both of our skills. Both Sentinels and Valkyries tended towards ‘lone operative’.

“Hey, what’s that over there?” Iona nodded in a direction. “Roughly… ugh these degrees, hang on…”

My eyes zeroed in on the target Iona pointed out. An elf was meditating in space, a dozen portals around her with a solid bar of metal in each one.

Wait, no. Not solid metal bars - they were spheres moving so damn fast it looked solid. A moment later she’d zoomed off the horizon, and my mouth went dry as I realized just how ridiculous of an attack was being channeled.

I couldn’t imagine going through all that effort if it wasn’t an attack.

“Someone’s going to have a really bad day.” I said.

“Should talk with Arachne at the end of this.” Iona said.

I was starting to make a noise of agreement, but my stomach decided to rumble, protesting and demanding to be fed.

“Feed me captain!” I jokingly demanded.

“Aye aye, feeding!” Iona dramatically flicked a finger, and the only bag we’d brought on board opened up, a mashed sandwich floating out. She hovered it in front of my face, and I snapped out like a crocodile, grabbing the whole sandwich in my jaws and trying to eat the whole thing fingerless.

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“You know, if you choke on that, it’s going to derail our plans something fierce.” Iona said.

My response was muffled by turkey and mustard.

“Drink?” Iona asked when I’d finished, offering to share the rest of the water she’d gotten out while I was eating.

“Yeah, sure.” I said.

Iona watered me - our continued acceleration meant we weren’t weightless, nor did we have any fun of weightlessness yet - and we carried on.

I got real bored real fast.

“Book time?” I asked. Iona shook her head and verbally denied it.

“No. We should do our first supply run first.” She said.

I eyed my mana and blew a raspberry.

“Ugh, I need to wait until it finishes regenerating.” I complained. “Boooooooooooring.”

I blinked at the stars, noticing I wasn’t exactly aligned. Somewhere in my food and water break I’d drifted slightly off-course.

“Hold on, adjusting.” I said.

“Aye, adjusting.” Iona confirmed, and I repositioned my head and tweaked the entire spaceship a little ‘down’. Direction was now all relative, but given that I was pseudo-fixed…

We spent thirty some minutes chatting, and I was discovering that it was much harder than I thought to keep exactly on-course. I thought I flew straight as an arrow… but maybe that was exactly the problem, arrows didn’t fly exactly straight. None of my drifting was so severe that I thought I needed to readjust and recalculate my course.

“Alright, full enough mana.” I announced. “Ready for a supply run?” I asked.

Iona took a deep breath, and explosively let it out. This was the single largest point of failure we’d identified. If this went wrong, we were all in for a really, really bad time, which likely led to Iona punching her way out of the spaceship then free-falling to Pallos, trying to mix flying down quickly enough to hit atmosphere with not going so quickly that she’d burn up on one-woman reentry and her flight skill could save her.

Of course, I’d be nowhere nearby to help or heal.

“Aye, supply run is a go.” She confirmed.

“Close helmet.” I announced.

“Aye, close helmet.” Iona confirmed, using [Telekinesis] to lift and twist my clear helmet onto my head, sealing me into my space suit.

I mentally visualized each step of the process, what I wanted to grab and where it was, then vanished into [Tower of Knowledge].

My anchor point was static in reference to the largest local landmass. On the School, that was the island I was on. Up in space? Pallos itself was my mark. My exit was stationary with respect to Pallos, spin and all, while the Argo II was merrily blasting off to the depths of space without me.

I tore up the tower to the fourth floor, quickly grabbing compressed air canisters - turned out they were super easy to make when the ‘exit mechanism’ was ‘break it’, and skills could easily stuff them full - a small barrel of water, and a large sack of food, then silently teleported back into existence. The lack of a pop was weird.

All in all, the process had taken me about a second, and I instantly located the Argo II, blasting away at a merry 400 meters per second. I unfurled my wings and sped after it, not needing anything as mundane as ‘air’ to move with. My personal max speed was quite a bit higher than my max speed ‘pushing’ the Argo II - before the minor effects of gravity trying to mess with things came into play - and I was able to catch up, [Teleporting] the supplies in before slipping through the metal shell myself. I positioned myself such that my hands were almost already in the gauntlets when I got back, and Iona promptly unscrewed my helmet without being prompted.

[*ding!* [Seraph of the Dawn] leveled up! 889-> 890. +512 Speed, +512 Vitality, +1024 Mana, +1024 Mana Regeneration, +1024 Magic Power, +1024 Magic Control per level from your class per level! +1 Strength, +1 Dexterity, +1 Speed, +1 Vitality, +1 Mana, +1 Mana Regeneration, +1 Magic Power, +1 Magic Control for being Chimera (Elvenoid) per level! +1 Strength +1 Mana Regeneration from your Element per level!]

I hadn’t leveled like this in years. Then again, so much of my time had been spent planning for this trip.

[*ding!* [Tower of Knowledge] leveled up! 280 -> 285]

[*ding!* [Teleportation] leveled up! 380-> 382]

Oooh, nice. I got an extra floor from that! It was empty for now, but bigger was better when it came to… towers. Shame my wings were capped, I just liked to fly around too much.

“Whooooooooo!” I shouted. “IT WORKS! We! Are! Going! To! The! MOON!” I settled in, making sure we were aligned and pushing the Argo II back to its top speed.

Iona was all smiles and grins, her gigantic fat candle pulsing with divine light.

“You did it!” She shouted.

“We did it.” I corrected. “I literally can’t do this without you. Speaking of… I’m hungry.” I gnashed my teeth comically, like I was a shark chasing minnows, or like someone had dangled mangos on a hook in front of me.

In my defense, that had happened, and I’d only fallen for it once.

Iona simply smiled, choosing not to argue.

“Books are good?” I asked, boredom rapidly setting in. I had eleven whole days of nonstop flying to go before reaching the moon, and after the initial excitement I wasn’t exactly jumping for joy.

“Books are good.” Iona confirmed. I let out a little happy noise - we were in space, nobody cared about ‘dignified’ here - and grabbed the first book Skye had prepared for me to read - Legacy of the Lifebringer - then settled in and paced myself. Iona’s eyes drifted slightly, talking to her patron deities.

The twin goddesses of the moons were very invested in our mission - Lunaris especially. It was ‘her’ moon we were going to.

I was halfway through my first book when Iona’s eyes flew open.

“Fuck!” She swore.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, guiltily adjusting my flight pattern again. Must’ve drifted a hair when I was reading, I needed to split my attention better with [Luminary Minds].

“That fucking lizard’s been screwing with our flight!” She said.

It took me a moment of thinking before my jaw dropped open. Only long-honed instinct and the deep impression Julius had made - Don’t say their name - stopped me from saying Lun’Kat’s name.

I blasted [A Light Shining in the Darkness] all around us, the clear steel hull letting the light through. I expected some levels, possibly for the stars around us to shift or even reveal that we were hurtling straight towards Pallos, but nothing happened. Iona tsked at the whole situation, clearly getting live updates from her goddesses.

“Illusion’s too far away.” She said. “Hang on, we’re going to get a correction.”

A pair of orbs appeared in front of me, looking scarred and pitted like I imagined the true surfaces of the moons looked like. Iona clicked her tongue as her eyes flickered, and the moons rapidly readjusted their position. The paladin shook her head with a rueful chuckle.

“Goddesses of the Moons, yes. Orbits, gravity, and tides, they’re great at. Intercept courses? Not so much. Follow those.”

I eyed the moons skeptically, unsure at the precision I was being offered and exactly how I was supposed to use it.

“I’ve got no idea how to use this.” I said.

“Yeah, hang on…. Get me TRAJ-17-v24.11.311, TRAJ-17-v24.6.781, and TRAJ-17-v24.3.123.” Iona said.

I flicked the three over from [Repository of the Magus] and floated them over to Iona, who frowned as she looked over them, getting into a deep, silent discussion with the goddesses. Now and then she called out for more trajectory charts and star charts, flicking some back my way to store in my storage. I continued flying ‘straight’, not bothering to line up the dots on my… it wasn’t exactly a windshield with no wind, was it? - with the stars.

[*ding!* [Repository of the Magus] leveled up! 652-> 653]

The weight involved was making everythingding! freely.

Finally, Iona and the goddesses seemed to reach a conclusion, and a bunch of tiny moons, alternating blue and yellow, appeared in front of me in a line, like tiny dots.

“Just follow the path!” Iona said.

Well… alrighty then.

It wasn’t what we’d planned, but I trusted that Iona and the goddesses had figured out the correct path. I imagined I was eating a mango, then getting a drink of water or eating a blueberry. Mango, water, mango, blueberry, mango, water… I got bored fast, and after the alright from Iona, went back to reading.

[*ding!* [The Arbiter of Life and Death] has leveled up! 908-> 910. +400 Strength, +400 Dexterity, +800 Speed, +800 Vitality, +1600 Magic Power, +1600 Magic Control, +1000 Mana, +9000 Mana Regeneration from your Class per level! +1 Strength, +1 Dexterity, +1 Speed, +1 Vitality, +1 Mana, +1 Mana Regeneration, +1 Magic Power, +1 Magic Control for being Chimera (Elvenoid) per level! +1 Mana, +1 Mana Regeneration from your Element per level!]

Hello levels, what the heck are you for? I doubted that was Auri - she’d need to be doing something gigantic to get those levels, and the experience should be enough for [Seraph] to also level, but I didn’t think following divine tic tacs was worth two levels.

I split my attention with [Luminary Mind] and was a little outraged that I’d been right! I’d followed the stars exactly, and I did fly straight! Lun’Kat had been slowly shifting the stars on me to throw me off!

It was tiny, it was petty, but it pissed me off. My mind was my sanctuary. Causing me to doubt myself like this lit a deep flame of burning anger at the dragon. A flame I could do nothing about.

I amended that thought.

This entire mission was a huge boon to the Moon Goddesses should we pull it off, and it was clear they were in conflict with Lun’Kat. I could do nothing about it, except help Iona and the goddesses succeed. I pushed forward with renewed determination, wanting nothing more than to stick it to the dragon.

Spite was one hell of a drug.

[Persistent Casting] worked with [Wings of the Seraphim], and I was able to continue flying while I slept. An unusual combination - normally I’d end up way off I-don’t-know-where if I tried to sleep and fly at the same time, but here it worked, only needing the smallest course corrections every time I woke up. The days rapidly blurred together, the suits thankfully doing their job when it came to managing waste, and I’d relaxed a few days ago.

Levels continued to slowly roll in while we traveled.

On the eighth day I was flying along like normal, when I was suddenly ripped so hard from my spot that my bloody hands and wrists were left in the gauntlets, then slammed into the side of the Argo II so hard I was turned into a paste.

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