Beneath the Dragoneye Moons

My healing snapped me back to the picture of health, but that was the only thing that looked good about the situation.

[*ding!* [The Arbiter of Life and Death] has leveled up! 910-> 911. +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!]

Not now.

It was like the hand of a god had descended and smacked me like a fly, and there’d been so little ‘me’ left that the healing had explosively scattered the remains of my body all over the shuttle, painting the entire inside in gore. It was almost entirely red, but dozens of tiny bone shards stuck up from everywhere, and the occasional rainbow serpent scale shimmered in the light. My old hands were still dangling from the gauntlets, my radius poking out like an accusing finger. Iona blinked, the white of her eyes in comical relief against the rest of her red face, and she spoke urgently. One hand was up and shielding the candle, the protective casing on it entirely broken.

“Elaine? Elaine! Speak to me, what’s wrong, what’s going on?” She was at the edge of her seat, brimming with the primal need to get up and rush over to me, to tend and care for me. Only our drilled discipline kept her in her seat - we needed her skill running to preserve the hull, especially if this was going to happen again.

“I’m alright.” I automatically said as I scanned around, [Luminary Mind] splitting into a number of different thought processes. I slowly replayed the scene in my mind, trying to work out what had happened.

I’d been flying along one moment, then violently jerked away the next. None of my senses had picked up anything, [The World Around Me] didn’t have anything unusual in the picture.

I went cold as the part replaying my injuries and cataloging them started to roll in with the complete damage report. I’d been entirely pasted, from head to toe. My brains were scattered in a 300 degree cone.

I shouldn’t have survived that. This was exactly the type of injury that should’ve done me in entirely. The only thing I could imagine was the complex interplay between my vitality, healing, and biology, combined with ‘only’ getting squashed on one side, not both. I’d been hit by a hammer, not a hammer and anvil. I shivered and unsteadily pushed myself off the wall, letting me slowly float across the shuttle.

There was a me-sized and shaped dent in the wall where I’d ended up that deformed the skill-reinforced steel. My spacesuit was ruined. The weakest seam had come undone, unzipping me from head to crotch, giving an avenue for everything to escape through. My helmet had shattered, and there were shards of bloody glass embedded in the ceiling. A piece fell out of Iona’s cheek, my permanent healing throwing it out.

“Good thing we didn’t make the whole thing out of glass.” I joked poorly, trying to bleed off some of the tension.

“Elaine.” Iona said more urgently. I wriggled out of the ruined remains of my spacesuit, one part of my parallel thoughts noting that biological functions were about to become so much harder, then pushed away. I held up my hand, letting it slowly flip me through the shuttle, then pushed away an eyeball that was getting a little too close.

“I know, I know, I’m sorry, I’m still trying to work out what happened. I’m coming up with nothing.” Technically, I wasn’t coming up with nothing, but my brain was coming up with wildly outlandish theories. Like attack by an invisible dragon - we wouldn’t be alive if that was the case, plus it made no sense. The list only got more absurd from there. The biggest part I worried over was it looked like I was the only one impacted. Vitality defense excluded an external attacker, so the problem was me. Somehow. I worried over the problem more, continuing to scan everything.

Our current set of supplies were ruined, but I had more in my [Tower]. They looked like they’d had blood and bone explosively sprayed all over them, but not like they’d been pasted by massive forces. It had only been me.

“We’ve been thrown quite a bit off course, and we’re currently in a deep spin.” Iona said. “The sooner we can work this all out, the better.”

I nodded. This deep in space, the risk wasn’t returning to Pallos and burning up in the atmosphere, it was the harshness of space itself. Speaking of, one of Iona’s big concerns was her candle. I cast a quick spell to resecure it. I’d cast a better set of spells later.

“Going to get some cleaning done before we resume. Maybe refresh our supplies.” I said. I opened my wings to-

I was alert, I was aware, and feeling myself suddenly jerked the wrong way had me stopping my flight. Didn’t stop me from getting pasted a second time, this time from the legs-up, but it wasn’t as bad. I ‘stopped’ about halfway up my body before I reformed. I pulled myself up and out of the large dent I’d made in the ship, only for everything not strapped down suddenly trying to escape.

[*ding!* [The Arbiter of Life and Death] has leveled up! 911-> 912. +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!]

“Breach!” I yelled, lowering myself back into the hole. Iona swore, and moved like she was going to get up.

“Stay! Still!” I yelled, reminding her. “Whatever’s going on, the last thing we need is to lose the armor on the shuttle!”

“Fuck!” She swore again, her knuckles going white on her seat. My body was still plugging the hole, and my mind raced as I tried to figure out a solution. We had gems to handle breaches, but most of them assumed small ‘punch in’ breaches, not an Elaine-sized hole. Fortunately our redundancies had redundancies, because I’d knocked out one of our repair gems in my hurtling around.

“Should I teleport to-” My teeth clicked together as Night’s letter slammed back into my mind.

…only read it in case everything should go wrong. With that being said, and this is of critical importance - READ BEFORE YOU TELEPORT.

“Night knew this was going to happen.” I whispered. Iona took one hand and wiped her face off, nodding at me.

“The letter he sent. Should we read it now?” She asked.

Our ship was coated in gore, we were spinning out of control, my flight was fucked up, and my body was physically plugging a hole. My breathing was getting heavier in the thin air, like I’d been launched from sea level to the top of a mountain in a single go.

My training and practicality demanded I pull the letter out now, weight and levels be damned. There was no sense in trying to solo the monster as a Ranger when we had an entire team to back us up. I felt it was time to tag Night in.

“We could try to see if we can solve this ourselves.” I hazarded. “It’d be more levels, and possibly more weight?” I was trying to make some concessions to Iona and her goals.

Iona shook her head.

“No, let’s get the letter now.” She insisted, worry etched in her face.

I cautiously teleported it out of [Repository], breathing a little mental sigh of relief as it stayed still. I read it outloud.

Elaine,

I hope you’re reading this due to your eternal curiosity getting the better of you, rather than encountering a problem in deep space.

Skills are interesting things, and as you know, no two skills work exactly the same. From what I have seen and observed of your flight skill, it is a RELATIVE skill, and not an absolute skill. That is to say, your flight depends on Pallos itself, not upon your body. This has a number of advantages and disadvantages, one of which you are encountering now.

As you are flying towards the moon, your skill’s frame of reference has abruptly shifted from Pallos-local to Moon-local. Your current velocity is far, far faster in Moon-local than it is on Pallos-local, and I suspect at this point that you have been violently shoved into the side of your craft, possibly repeatedly as I hope you’ve tried a number of things before reading this letter. The experience is good for you.

If you teleport, your relative velocity will be set to Moon-local, and the shuttle will be barreling away from you too quickly for you to ever catch up, barring a literal miracle. Selene and Lunaris may deign to intervene, given the nature of the mission, but gods can be fickle. I would not rely on them to bail you out, a paladin of theirs onboard or not.

The solution is relatively simple, and I’m a bit disappointed that you were not able to solve it yourself, as other pioneers who’ve visited the moons before and returned to tell me their tales have. At the same time, your classes are not [Explorer] or [Celestnaut], but a [Healer] and a [Paladin], so you can be forgiven the shortcut. Iona must use her skills to slow the Argo II down to a Moon-local speed. Then you should brace your legs against the hull, and fly at top speed as hard as you can away from the direction you’re trying to push. This will cause you to attempt to match the speed of the Argo II, making the relative speed difference one that your body and the grand ship you are upon small enough to effect a change. From there, you can regain control, and continue on your journey.

Do note the same thing will happen on the way back. Forewarned, you should not have nearly as many problems.

I hope we are able to laugh over this missive in approximately four weeks, when I expect you back.

All the best,

Night

The letter was soothing, and I felt a calm come over me.

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“Okay, okay, this is all fixable.” I said. “Night even made it sound easy!”

Iona nodded.

“Agreed. What he’s not mentioning is the deadline we’re on. I need to fix the shuttle, blind, with our current supplies, and we’ve lost a decent amount of air.”

I gestured to the gems we had.

“This is literally what half of our gems are for. I don’t think we want to use a set of liftoff gems, but the rest? Here’s my plan…”

Iona and I pushed our speed stats to the limit, knowing we were on a timer but a wrong move now could make things so much worse. We plotted out a few flowcharts, a couple of branching decisions, and got ready.

“Three, two, one, go!” I said, and we sprang into action.

The first thing was resecuring Iona’s candle. Not strictly needed for survival, but there was a little bit of wiggle room. It took barely any time or mana to do, and a quick gem activation by a fleck-sized emerald gave it a wooden shell, breathing life and air into the guttering flame.

Iona let her candle go, hovering it in front of her while her hands jabbed out, pressing various gems and telekinetically moving things around. I lifted myself up and out of the second hole I’d made as she hit one of the ‘repair’ gems, solid steel replacing only part of the hole. I grabbed some of our supplies that were trying to fly away, and slapped [Event Horizon] over the hole, ‘sucking up’ a body and a half’s worth of gore before it could plug the hole and prevent the repair gems from working.

Upon seeing the first repair gem not getting things done, Iona rapidly activated two more citrine repair gemstones while I activated one of the atmosphere restoring aquamarines. It wasn’t good for our long-term health, but we wouldn’t be around to worry about long-term health problems without using it. Our most pressing need - air - fixed, we quickly moved on.

“Skill up?” I asked, getting confirmation.

“Aye, skill up.” Iona rapidly confirmed.

I [Teleported] what little supplies I could, then swept the inside of the shuttle with [Event Horizon]. It was supposed to be a protective shield spell, but it worked fantastically well as a cleaner in a pinch. Iona then furrowed her eyebrows, the only hint at the sheer amount of [Telekinesis] she was throwing around.

[*ding!* [Event Horizon] leveled up! 700 -> 701]

It was a subtle skill in many ways, but I felt a slight pull on my body as she started to de-spin us and change our velocity.

Gravity was the enemy, and the reason why I had to push, instead of Iona doing most of it in the first place. However, we were pretty far from Pallos… I reviewed a few numbers mentally and snapped my fingers.

“I’ve got it!” I said. “I think we’re closer to the moon’s gravity than Pallos’s gravity, which is why we’re now Moon-local instead of Pallos-local.”

[*ding!* [Luminary Mind] leveled up! 803 -> 804]

It was one of the System’s most insidious traps to assume I’d leveled because of a correct assumption. Working complex things out in dangerous situations is what caused the experience and the levels, not the accuracy of the results.

Iona hummed a bit, still focusing on her task. No [Luminary Mind] for her.

“Thought we passed that point a day ago.” She said. I let myself gently rest against the side of the shuttle, unable to hover in the middle with Iona constantly ‘pushing’ the entire structure.

“Our estimates on how heavy everything is could be off.” I said. “We had estimates for Pallos, but the moons? Could just be lighter than we imagined.”

There was a whole THING there with the Goddesses knowing the proper mass of their moons or not, but I hadn’t gotten the vibe that they were the most technical. Or maybe our gravity formula or math were flat-out wrong. Or… there were any number of possibilities that could explain us being wrong on the gravity midway point.

Heck - it was only wild speculation that it had been the gravity midway point that caused it! Maybe we were right about the gravity point, and it was exactly 8 units of an arbitrary measurement - either time or distance - from the gravity point, and there was some ‘stickiness’ to the local frame of reference. I was speculating wildly without enough information, and given how painful finding out was, I wasn’t eager to experiment.

Or… there was the intercept course to consider. We were rushing to meet the moon at a particular point, but we were both moving. The moon wasn’t static. That would also change the calculations, and…

I split off part of [Luminary Mind] and started to review a number of calculations, most in the GRAV series, and a few TRAJs.

Either way - gravity didn’t have a tyrannical grasp on us right now, given how we were being pulled between the moon and Pallos, giving Iona enough time to bring her skills to bear. She didn’t need to actively fight gravity every step of the way the way I needed to near Pallos.

I felt useless in the moment, and I mentally shifted gears. What could I do right here, right now, that would improve our chances for success? What resource had we run out of, what could I make to help things?

Well, our two big limiters right now were Iona’s mana, and repair gems. I couldn’t do much about the first one - Arcanite was too heavy and bulky to reasonably bring along, and while I had some sketches for my [Tower] involving huge quantities of the stuff, I hadn’t executed on those yet, and I couldn’t bring it out for Iona. I also wasn’t an Arcanite Classer, so I couldn’t transfer mana like that.

Writing more [Repair] spells though - that was something I could manage. I pulled out my ‘bootstrap’ spellbook and a blank spellbook, summoned ink, and got writing. Given the situation, I was favoring sticky Ooze disks that didn’t want to separate, figuring I could quickly write the spell, and they worked as a stop-gap measure for any small holes.

I had a few ‘big’ repair spells prepared and ready, but with the demise of all our gems relating to it, we needed more. I also mentally shifted and rearranged my notes on who did what in various situations - I was the only person who could repair the Argo II at this point.

[Luminary Mind] pinged with another issue.

“We’re going to need to switch from BUILD-08-v14.03.107 to BUILD-10-v2.01.801” I said. Iona swore.

“Fuck, you’re right. Your suit’s completely dead. No hope of repairing it?” She asked hopefully. I shook my head.

“No, and it gets worse. Build time’s going to get gated hard by my mana regeneration, unless we want to test exactly how long I can survive in space effectively naked.”

Unsaid, of course, was a divine miracle fixing all our problems. I wasn’t holding my breath. They definitely were willing to put their thumbs on the scale for Iona, but the gods had never stepped down and solved my problems.

Priest Demos and the Formorians were more of an ‘All of humanity’ issue than one of mine. And the Moon Goddesses had laid out a neat trail for me to follow…

STILL.

“Or we just, you know, traded suits for the unloading part.” Iona pointed out. I facepalmed.

“Or if we just traded suits, yeah.”

We continued to work in furious silence, the only sound the scritching of my quill on parchment.

[*ding!* [Reality, Writ As You Will] leveled up! 610-> 620]

After the second level I started writing a little faster, seizing the chance for quick levels while restoring our buffer of backup spells.

The slow acceleration we were under had the ink drops slowly drift away and hit the side, and I occasionally swept them away with [Event Horizon].

[*ding!* [Event Horizon] leveled up! 701 -> 702]

I ran the numbers on a ‘reinforcement’ platform, to see if I needed to make anything to ‘stand’ on when I tried to fly, but the hull of the ship was the single strongest thing around. I’d just destroy anything I could quickly and easily make, then all my weight would be crashing directly onto the hull, and…

It was no good.

“I think we’re ready for you again.” Iona announced.

“Point to where I should go.” I said. Iona tapped two spots right over her shoulders, and I lifted an eyebrow. That was a lot of faith in me and my abilities - if something went wrong, her head would be between a hard place and a rock quite quickly. I didn’t offend her by asking if she was sure, instead grabbing and floating into position. I was basically squatting over her face, but not in a fun way. Iona let go of her candle, and grabbed my rear. I could see all of her muscles flexing under her suit.

“Ready?” She asked.

“Just confirming, because this still feels a bit weird to me - I’m flying away from you, right? As fast as I can?”

I took out Night’s letter again and we both reread it.

“It makes sense to me.” Iona said. It took me a few moments later for the picture to click once again.

“Alright, yeah.” I agreed. “It makes sense to me as well. Just confirming, I doubt we have any planned TRAJs for where we’re going to end up, yeah?”

“Ish?” Iona agreed. “We’re not so far off that existing TRAJs won’t work. We’re well within the margin of error. Or… fuck, no we’re not. Our velocity’s completely changed. Yeah, we’re completely off. Let’s get into position, then discuss how we’re getting there.”

“Alright. Countdown from three?” I proposed.

“Three. Two. One. GO!” We counted in unison, then I spread my wings and tried to fly as fast as I could forwards.

My knees bent at the sheer force, protesting the amount of effort and complaining that my joints weren’t made for this. Iona’s hands pushed up, helping support all the forces rumbling through my body and spreading out the impact on the Argo II. My mana dropped hard as I pushed it into the skill, getting myself just a little bit more speed. I cut it off with only a sliver of mana left in my pool, and quickly returned back to ‘normal’ speeds. Thank dexterity I didn’t overdo it and shoot across the Argo II again. That would’ve been awkward.

I almost wanted to complain about the lack of [Seraph] levels for the stunt, but I’d gotten a little spoiled recently with how easily levels came.

We had a few minutes of calm while my mana regenerated. My stomach rumbled and my mouth was dry. While I was in a blessed position to normally not worry about the physical demands of extensive spellcasting on the body, we were on a bit of a crunch. I couldn’t go into [Tower] and retrieve any of my supplies before ‘syncing’ my speed with Iona’s. Or in other words, getting the Argo II’s local speed close to Moon-local.

“Are you as hungry as I am?” I asked Iona. She licked her dry lips.

“I’m fairly certain that talking about anything else is a smarter decision.” The blonde said.

“Good point.”

We drifted for a bit, then I circled back to position.

“Ready to push?” I asked, getting back into the over communication cadence.

“Aye, confirm ready to push.” Iona said.

“Three, two, ones, go!” We shouted in unison, and I flung myself forward again.

The hardest part of the move was when the relative speed was the greatest, and our first efforts had blunted the bulk of the edge. I gritted my teeth as my knees bent again, but slowly, surely, was able to bring the Argo II back under control.

“I think I’ve got it.” I said as I flew forward, almost hovering in the middle as I flew at top speed. Iona snorted and pulled a hair with [Telekinesis], and I twisted slightly to slot myself into the gauntlets again.

It felt like I was getting ripped apart again, but gentler. The difference in velocities between what I could ‘push’ the Argo II at and what I was currently going wasn’t that large, the only difference being what I was trying to push. My muscles screamed at me, then were soothed by a combination of [Universal Cure] and [Zenith Everlasting], and we were soon flying along at a good speed.

[*ding!* [Zenith Everlasting] leveled up! 888 -> 889]

I almost wanted to see how long I could stay awake under the skill’s influence to level it up as hard as I could, but it was a bad idea.

“Supply run in eight minutes, then let’s recalculate the course.” I suggested.

“Agreed.” My wife said.

I spent an immortal moment looking outside, once again reveling in the sheer beauty of the vast cosmos. For all that we were on a mission, there was no sense in missing out on this once in a lifetime opportunity to stare at the stars.

Goddess, they were beautiful. They didn’t twinkle out here. They burned brightly and defiantly, sending their light for untold billions of miles before it reached my eyes.

I was Immortal. I had all of eternity. Would I someday board another ship like the Argo II, and go deeper into the vastness of space? Were there new worlds to explore?

Suddenly I didn’t feel like I was forever confined to the surface of a single planet. I rotated around, and took a look at Pallos.

It was a tiny blue marble in the vastness of space. Everyone I’d ever known, every single man, woman and child, every monster, beast, and dinosaur, was on that tiny dot. I felt my mind expand at the sheer profoundness of it all, words utterly failing to describe how tiny and insignificant it all was. From the smallest ant to Jormungandr, from level 1 to level 4096, that was it. That tiny fleck of blue, only a little larger than the boundless expanse of stars all around it.

I don’t know how long I stared for before Iona coughed, and I was reminded about Earth as well. There were even more people on their own blue marbles.

“About that supply run?” She suggested, and I snapped back to reality, the here and the now.

“Oh! Right!” I said, looking around and evaluating, then shrugging.

We needed everything.

I vanished into [Tower of Knowledge] and zipped to the third floor, thankful I didn’t need to drop off anything on this run. I grabbed more air canisters, a picnic basket, and a small barrel of water, before grabbing two victory mangos. I then teleported back into reality, my scales and healing fending off the harsh vacuum of space. It felt like thousands of pinpricks under my skin, in my eyeballs. Pressure trying to escape, but being healed just as quickly as it was damaged. My scales were doing good work, helping keep everything inside, but I didn’t want to see what happened when it failed on me. I sped towards the Argo II, [Teleporting] back in and shivering as the sensation dropped.

[*ding!* [Teleportation] leveled up! 411-> 412]

“Victory mangos!” I told Iona as I bit into mine, skin and all, like a totally normal and civilized person.

“I thought those were for after the mission.” She started to peel hers like a… well, I loved her very much, mango-waste or not.

Eh, who was I kidding, we both knew I was going to eat it.

“We have lots of victory mangos.” I primly told her. “For situations just like this.”

Iona smiled, and we ate the mangos together, made all the sweeter by floating through space, drifting through the void.

Three days later, we gently landed on the blue moon.

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