Beneath the Dragoneye Moons-Chapter 627: After Action Report I

“I don’t want my dinner to be mooing back at me.” I ribbed Iona a day later.

“It’s cooked! Rare is a thing!” She protested, turning the skewer.

“Yeah, it’s rare that the cows are still able to get up and walk away after you’re done cooking it.” I joked back.

There were seven of us on top of the mountain, the moons bright and full, casting all the light we’d need. Me, Iona, Auri, Fenrir, Nina, Raccoon, and Artemis. Sara was asleep, and the meeting wasn’t appropriate for her, and Amber was off on her next adventure. I half expected her to pop up with exactly the thing we needed, ready to sell at a modest discount.

And an even more modest profit.

Thank the goddesses - quite literally this time, they’d provided a nice beacon in the form of a flashing arrow for Fenrir - we didn’t need to feed the wyvern tonight. Buying an entire cow for the feast was one thing. Expensive as heck, and we were lucky there was even one for sale. Buying a dozen just to feed Fenrir?

Whooof. The current age of wilderness was good for his feeding habits.

We had butchered the cow, stored most of it away - not in [Manor], for once - and the leftovers were still enough for all of us to stuff ourselves and take home plenty. A pan was catching all the fat and grease dripping down, and Nina was slicing potatoes, ready to cook them in the fat. Auri was standing protectively on an oversized picnic basket, filled to the brim with cookies. Half of them had a little thumbprint from Sara baked onto them. The little rascal thought ‘marking’ each one before they went into the oven was the thing to do. Auri wanted them to be a surprise to everyone else, so she wasn’t letting anyone peek. Artemis had liberated a dozen bottles, and I was pretty sure she’d paid for them. Supposed to set a good example and all that. I was pretty sure Raccoon was pranking us. She was stirring a bubbling cauldron with evil-smelling blue fumes coming off it. There was no way that was edible… right?

I was logistics and taste testing. Mostly the second one. I bit down on my third cookie as Iona rolled her eyes.

“Salt and spices please?” She asked. A table with a wide selection of spices appeared next to my wife.

“Thank the elves back at Edhallon.” I said. “I was able to restock.”

They had spices from all over the world. Even Sanguino at its height hadn’t had such a rich and varied selection, and that had been in the crystalline era of the cycle. To my left was Orthus, a small scattering of fires across dozens of miles, and a larger cluster in the town proper. The flames barely got past their boundary, looking like a scattered set of fireflies on a summer night. A highly populated area for the time. The other side was pitch black, endless miles of rolling wilderness.

With the New Remus Empire gone, I could admit they had been building marvelous things. It had been on the backs of everyone else, yes, and they needed to go, but it didn’t change what had briefly been made.

“BRRRPT!”

I lifted an eyebrow.

“You just noticed I was eating the cookies?”

I barely managed to get the words out before Auri was pecking me to pieces, and I was rolling on the stone, laughing, trying to dodge her sharp beak.

“Traitors!” I gasped out as Auri found yet another ticklish spot. Iona lifted a single eyebrow at me.

“I’m not the one who got caught with their hand in the cookie jar.” She said.

Raspberries and tickles didn’t go together. Over 128 years old, and I could still learn new things.

Everyone finished cooking, plates were distributed, and the seven of us were settling around the fire. Good food and even better company. My ears twigged to a magical sound, and I bent my senses in that direction for a moment.

There was no road up to the mountaintop, but unicorns were their own special flavor of bullshit.

“Skye and Varuna are coming.” I said. We shuffled around a bit, making some more room for Skye on the log, and I summoned a small cask of mead for Varuna. I’d taken all the classes the School had on medicine, and I still wasn’t sure if unicorns and booze mixed well or not. The unicorn was still alive, and I hadn’t heard of any drunken rampages, so I wasn’t going to start complaining now.

“We gotta do it.” Artemis stage-whispered. We all rapidly nodded in agreement, sharp smiles all around. Raccoon was positively villainous as she rubbed her hands together. I held up my fingers in a silent countdown, hitting 0 as Varuna and Skye reached the top of the mountain. All of us, except Fenrir, got up, hoisting our drinks.

“All hail Queen Skye!” We shouted in unison, followed by a cacophony of random titles we added. Mine was ‘The Inkhanded!’ Fenrir’s was ‘Varuna’s Companion.’

She lifted a bunch of fresh bread, presliced.

“Sorry for being late!” Skye found the open spot we made for her and sat down. “Took longer than I expected to escape. Bread?”

“A slice for me, please!” Artemis said, and I teleported the requested vittles over with a thought.

“If you’re escaping that easily, we need a better gaol.” Raccoon muttered. “Hey Skye, wanna send more funding my way?”

Skye shot Raccoon a flat look and held up one fist. With her other hand, she mimed spinning a handle, slowly raising a single finger to the ornery goblin. Raccoon cackled madly. I grabbed two slices of bread myself, a jar of mustard, and soon had a ‘ready to moo’ steak sandwich.

Nina cleared her throat.

“As much as I’d love to watch the sunrise with all of you, we should probably get on with the after action reports. Who thinks they’re going to be short, and who thinks they’re going to be long?”

Iona, Nina, and I each indicated we thought we’d be on the longer side, while everyone else was on the shorter. Fenrir declined to share his stories, which I understood. While he understood us well enough, he had a terribly difficult time talking. His bond with Iona let him talk a little, but not quite in the deep story mode.

Auri started us off with a dozen brrrpts, which I dutifully translated.

“... decided to use a squad of fire-clones to rainbow-burn various fields.” I said. Artemis blew a raspberry.

“No! Auri, I’m going to sign you up for remedial Ranger lessons. You should’ve started several dozen slow, nearly invisible fires at the bottom of various granaries. They wouldn’t have noticed until it was too late, then you’d be in the same starting position, except with half the target infrastructure already gone! At which point, you could’ve hit all your targets!”

“Auri had mentioned she was working hard to prevent any collateral damage to elvenoid life.” Iona swiftly countered. “Dozens of uncontrolled fires in places she wasn’t near, especially in the heavily forested area she was working in, is the perfect way to initiate devastating wildfires. The Classers around could handle them before they caused anything like significant damage, you level them up dramatically against phoenix flames, potentially unlocking a skill that could kill Auri, you get the firefighting presence in the area, and that skips one of Auri’s stated goals to not kill anyone she didn’t need to.”

Artemis tsked.

“You’re right, I’m not used to thinking about the significantly higher standard of Classer in Immortal lands.”

“Brrrpt.”

“After that was Edhallon, which Auri would prefer to leave at ‘burned to the ground’. I was there, doing my own thing, so there was no loss of life. Just a lot of levels between the two of us.”

The screams occasionally echoed in my dreams. Auri on one side, myself on the other, it was a match made in hell for rapid leveling. Auri got quite a few looks from everyone from that.

“Wait, that was you?” Nina said.

“That might’ve been the second-largest event that led to the New Remus Empire collapsing.” Skye added.

The conversation briefly devolved before Nina cleared her throat.

“Sunrise?” She said.

“Brrrpt! Brpt.”

“From there, Auri joined Fenrir on raids. They identified the target, generally military outposts, and Fenrir amplified local storms to hide in. From there, the two engaged in rapid hit and runs from above. Swoop in from the storm, cast magic everywhere, then fly off before a response could be mounted.”

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Artemis was nodding right along, and Skye was staring suspiciously at Auri.

“She said all that in what, a syllable and a half?” Our most majestic queen asked. Auri bobbed her beak up and down, while I maintained a perfect poker face.

“How did you prevent retaliation? Overlapping hits? Hunters coming for you two?” Iona’s questions were mostly directed towards Fenrir. The big lug just shrugged, and started to tear into his third carcass, so mauled I couldn’t even begin to identify it. What in the world had feathers, scales, and fur?

“Besides chaos, death, and levels, what goals were you hoping to accomplish? I’m not trying to criticize too hard, I’m just wondering what you were aiming for.” Nina said.

We couldn’t troll people quite so hard with this set.

“Brrrpt, brrpt! BrrrrRRRrrpt!” Auri started to explain, and I translated.

“They were trying to accomplish a few different things. First, Auri had recently taken care of Edhallon, and Classers were after them. By staying both highly mobile and visible, she was taking a number of pieces off the board. Staying and fighting would’ve probably ended their hunt, and simply vanishing would’ve had them eventually give up and refocus their efforts elsewhere. By continuing to hit targets, they were forced to continuously commit resources to chasing them. Auri’s reluctant to hit civilians, and while nobody could simply walk up to the 512 and fight them, someone had to try and whittle down their forces. Death by a thousand cuts, and they were going to be one of them.”

The militaristic part of me entirely approved of the strategy. The healer inside me despaired at the death from above.

Artemis kicked back - how the fuck she did it while sitting on a log, I have no idea - and gestured with a steakbone.

“Do we want to discuss the best ways to hunt down a pair of marauding monsters, or should we have that conversation another day?” The Ranger looked around and read the mood. “Right, another day it is.”

“How did you select your targets?” Raccoon asked.

“Flew high. Eyes.” Fenrir rumbled out.

“Which would let disguises and illusions hide outposts. I don’t want to go deep on Artemis’s question, but that’s how I’d track down the marauding monsters. Figure out how they found their targets, then bait them into hitting a particular one and engage from there.” Nina said.

We continued the conversation on for far longer than I would’ve expected, breaking down Auri and Fenrir’s adventures from a dozen different angles. I was biased, but I thought Iona had the best point and the biggest gem of wisdom from it all.

“Something to keep in mind is how non-elvenoid Fenrir and Auri are. Fenrir’s a wyvern, and Auri’s a phoenix. It’s an entirely different world they live in, from biology to thought patterns. We’re trying to dissect it from an elvenoid perspective, when one of their greatest strengths is an entirely novel way of looking at problems and tackling them. We see a road and think how to walk down it, while Auri sees the trees by the side and thinks how well they burn.”

“Alright, Skye’s turn!” Nina said. “We could talk all night, but… Sunrise!”

A memory clicked, and I snorted my drink out through my nose as I tried not to laugh. Iona started to pound on my back.

“You alright?” She asked.

I nodded.

“Yeah, just a funny memory. Ha!” I laughed again. “You’re pounding my back. Pound, back, it’s perfect with sunrise.”

Iona just shook her head.

“Elaine moment.” She declared.

“You know you love me.” I said.

“You’re lucky you’re pretty.” She said.

Auri made some gagging noises.

“Are we doing an after action report, or are the two of you going to get a room?” Raccoon asked.

“Skye, your turn!” Nina said. Skye eyed us.

“You remember that I explicitly asked not to be involved, and I’ve got my own council I discuss decisions and reasoning with?” She said.

“Pffft, where’s the fun in that?” Artemis said. “You’ve got your own challenges and stuff. Hit us with tax code problems or something.”

Skye glared at Artemis, then smiled wickedly.

“Fine. I will. Let’s start with some basic taxation theory. Ideally, society is large and well educated, and has the necessary paperwork in place to properly tax people on their income. Currency exchanged and all that. Since Orthus is too small for a proper income tax, and the less said about the state of currency, the better, we need to look at other tax types. We started with a community day, which is helpful for a number of reasons, but has its own set of downsides. Without powerful physical Classers around,” Skye nodded to Iona. “We struggle to complete large scale projects that require some technical skills. Another aspect of taxation theory is incentives. Tax items we want to discourage, and give incentives on items we want to encourage. A community day removes that lever entirely. Which brings me to taxes on the sale of items, property taxes, and-“

“Have mercy on me, please.” Raccoon begged, miming a sword through her chest. “I’ve heard enough. You’ve leveled [Torture] plenty. Agony, oh agony. I know it’s possible to talk someone to death, but I want to learn the skill, not have it performed on me!”

Artemis wasn’t looking too happy either, good naturedly taking the prank on the chin. Nina was leaning forward.

“No no, this is fascinating. I want to know more.”

“Plus, the collection of taxes itself is a difficult exercise.” Iona pointed out, getting some surprised looks. She shrugged. “One of the earliest tasks we were given when I was a [Squire] myself was accompanying [Tax Collectors] as a small measure of security, and to remind people who they owed their security to.”

“Over my dead body.” Artemis loudly proclaimed before anyone could say something. “No way.”

“No, that’s my job.” Raccoon pointed out.

“This was supposed to be a joke, not trigger a spirited discussion.” Skye muttered.

I jumped in.

“There’s also taxation as necessary friction. Osengard had that whole thing with guild taxes on healers so they could actually make a living, remember that?”

“Ah yeah, you pulling me into a life of crime, how could I forget.” Iona joked.

“Brrrpt!” Auri suddenly realised That Damn Parrot was probably dead, and started to do a tapdance on her picnic basket. I stole two more cookies while she was distracted, one for me and one for Iona. Artemis gestured with a crooked finger and a significant look, blackmailing me into giving her two more.

“Sunrise.” Nina fake coughed.

Raccoon and Artemis traded looks.

“Is this your story, or mine?” The goblin asked.

“Oh, this is absolutely yours.” Artemis said. “Complete failure on my part, you did all the work on it.”

Skye groaned.

“That mess? Yeah, you know my thoughts on it.” The yuki-onna said, her voice practically frozen.

Raccoon nodded, and shedded her relaxed demeanor.

“Right then! Let’s talk about the Rangers. The current selection method works for mentality, or so Artemis vigorously tells me, but it’s not selecting for the right mentalities.”

Artemis folded her arms, glaring murder, then frowned a bit and tilted her head, conceding that Raccoon might have a point. The goblin continued on with her story.

It went a bit on the longer side. The initial problem, the investigation, then the crime and punishment aspect.

Rangers were selected for their mentality. Nearly everything could be taught, except for a tough mindset. That was the theory when I went through the Hell Months, and it had the added benefit of creating a powerful bond between us all.

It hadn’t quite worked out in one unfortunate case. He’d lorded his nearly-untouchable status cleverly, in a way that hadn’t been getting back to Artemis, and it wasn’t like we had Sentinels as an added check on the Rangers. I was the only one who could possibly claim that role, and I hadn’t been waltzing around as a Sentinel. It would’ve felt hollow… plus I wasn’t around. It had taken a complaint to Raccoon, followed by an extensive and deadly investigation by the goblin, to uncover the truth.

Law and order had been an added mess. By necessity, Rangers were held to a different code. Some laws were more relaxed, and others were stricter. Artemis had been horrifically torn. On one hand, she wanted to come down on the now-ex Ranger like a sack of bricks. On the other, she didn’t want to undermine the Rangers too hard. Raccoon wanted the Ranger to pay off his crimes, and Skye needed order to prevail. They’d worked out a compromise, and the ex-Ranger was no longer with us. ƒreewebηoveℓ.com

“It’s clear an independent check is needed on Rangers.” I said when Raccoon finished her story.

Skye immediately jumped in.

“I completely agree. The issue is one of size. We don’t even have a single full-strength Ranger Team, let alone the people needed to properly act as a check on them. Then we need people to act as a secondary check, who reports to the government. Orthus is barely 6000 people. It’s a lot, but it’s not nearly enough for what’s needed.”

It was clear Skye was thinking of the old command structure. Rangers acted as a check on the Legions. Sentinels were a check on the Rangers. Sentinels reported to Command, and Command reported to the Senate, which in theory reported to the people. We had no Legions, no Sentinels, and only a single beloved despot as our government.

“I’ve got three thoughts on this.” Iona said. “First. Work on your selection process. Offer more temptations. Second. Have a trial period after where you’re shadowing the new Rangers. Watch what they do. Have the Rangers watch the Rangers, make yourselves accountable to each other. Third. Other independent organizations. Raccoon being a [Constable] worked well here. It’s once again a manpower issue, but if a knightly order were based here, the two groups could check each other. As is, I believe we’re going to be sticking around for some time, and I’d be happy to be the check on the Rangers. My blessing plays in well, and by the time our feet get itchy and we start wandering, you’ll hopefully have the population for a proper set of checks and balances. I’d like to think I’m both well known and liked in the community, and my [Vow] is a strong check itself against corruption. Plus, if we want to go deep in that direction, Elaine’s a check on me, and very much on the Rangers’s side.” Iona jostled me with her elbow, and I floated up a bit to put my head on her shoulder.

“It’s a solid proposal.” Skye said. “Let’s meet in three days and hammer it out. Artemis, does that work for you?”

Artemis slowly nodded, looking thoughtful.

“It could work, yeah. That’s going to be more involved than a single night on a mountaintop to decide. Plus, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m a little tipsy. Not going to decide anything when drunk.”

“Betcha got some stories to tell though.” I said.

Artemis took another swing of her bottle, only to stare into it suspiciously. I hid my grin by raising my now-full bottle and taking a drink. She shrugged and put it down.

“Right. Monsters hunted, the first bandits nailed to the town walls, and endless drills ran. Also, Skye, I just gotta say. Bodies go off super fast, and you can’t tell who they are after like, three days. It’s super unhygienic to boot.”

Our most royal queen shrugged.

“Difference in the weather, I’ve learned my lesson. In Tuvan, the cold preserves the bodies well, and the display can go on for months. Too warm here for that, and we’re not going to repeat it.”

“Putting that aside. Pair of elves from the New Remus Empire were here, and they were fucking untouchable. It wasn’t them, it was the big stick that’d smack our fingers if we made a move against them. We started off engineering an ‘accident’ to take one of them out, with the other one being able to report back that it was a genuine accident, no need to retaliate. A bloody goat stepped in it, and ended up scattered across seven acres. Miserable shit.”

Part of me wanted to know more, the other part really, really didn’t. Maybe I’d ask Artemis another time for details.

“Once was happenstance, but twice was a conspiracy, and we had to back off the ‘accidents’ from there, all while keeping up with the usual Ranger issues. Which are only growing. I know I complained about Systemless creatures not giving kill notifications, but things out there are leveling fast. Finally, finally, we got a note saying weapons free.”

Artemis shook her head.

“Idiots let me waltz right up to them and get a hand on both of them. They never saw it coming. Who invades another country, then lets a high level mage touch them?”

“Did you use any disguises, tricks, anything?” Nina asked, leaning forward.

“Kinda? We went to a bar. I bought them drinks. We sang, we danced, and I electrocuted them in front of everyone. Good lesson for the rest of the Rangers as well.”

Hmmm. How would I have done it differently? One of Radiance’s strongest traits was the instantaneous element of it. As long as someone was in range, I immediately hit them. Projectile travel time wasn’t as much of a factor for me as it was for Earth mages. I would’ve tried to line them up for a single through-and-through beam.

“What’s your analysis on hitting the elves in a public setting, versus killing them in private?” I asked.

“Oh, that one’s easy.” Artemis said. “Their homes were well protected, so murdering them in their sleep would’ve been hard. I barely interacted with them, so asking to meet somewhere private would’ve put them on their guard. No, I get trying to avoid public takedowns, but you were with us often enough. We usually can’t avoid the public takedown, and there’s the whole ‘increases confidence in the Rangers’ to see us taking down large threats publicly. Granted, this one was a little unusual, and I’ve been banned from the bar, but all in all I think it was the right decision.”

“Brrrpt, brpt.” Auri’s complaint was good, and I translated.

“Not letting the other Rangers know what was going on was a huge mistake. It gave you no backup if anything went wrong, it didn’t let them know the situation properly. Team Leaders don’t hide secrets like that from everyone else. They went into the bar thinking the elves were nominal allies. What if one of them had reacted poorly? What if the takedown had failed? The hesitation would’ve killed.”

Artemis nodded, her face set in serious lines.

“Yeah, that was a fuckup on my part. My thinking at the time had been to keep everything natural. Give no reason for them to suspect me. I love the Rangers, but [Acting] isn’t one of our trained skills. We don’t usually need to run an assassination, and you’ll forgive me for skipping those lessons. I should’ve explained what was going on, then picked out the people who I could trust to play it cool to come inside with me, and had the rest stationed nearby, geared to go. Thankfully, nobody died this time because of my mistake, and…”

I heard the unsaid words about Julius, and didn’t push more.

We continued to dissect Artemis’s plan as the fire burned down. I went to add some logs, but Auri lit it back up with a twitch of her beak.

The moons had passed their zenith, and we still had three long after-action reports to go.