Beneath the Dragoneye Moons-Chapter 629: After Action Report III

“If all of you could believe Iona’s story of ruling over a city and change, I think you’ll believe mine, no matter how outlandish it is.”

Artemis promptly took a deep swing of her drink, and I magnanimously allowed it. Raccoon shot me the ‘hurry up’ sign, and I rolled my eyes at the scoundrel.

Amber, Nina, Raccoon… Sara was going to give me a ton of sass in about a decade, wasn’t she? I never did anything like that to Artemis. This week. Apart from the barrel prank. And stealing her drink.

Okay, fine, perhaps karma was catching up to me.

“I was the last one to leave, and I didn’t have a great plan of action. Mostly ‘find patients, heal them.’ I was going to go to Draakveld and see what I could find out. In the roughly three second window between Iona leaving and taking off myself, a voice called out to me.”

I paused for dramatic effect.

“I followed the voice, only to find a small enchantment tied to a rock and a slim shard of arcanite. As I was looking around, another voice called out to me. Like a child getting candy dangled in front of them, I merrily followed the voices deeper into the woods.”

Beer went flying everywhere as Iona choke-snorted on the last sentence. I caught it all with [Mantle], preventing us from all getting soaked. Nina pounded Iona’s back with an amused grin, the kitsune trying hard not to laugh. Artemis was holding her head in her hands, moaning to herself.

“Where? Where did I go so wrong? How did I fail her?”

Auri slapped a wing over her eyes, Fenrir looked at me as if to say ‘easy prey’. Varuna and Skye were shaking their heads in unison, her long hair melding with the unicorn’s flowing mane perfectly.

Huh. When had their hair become the exact same shade? Must be part of their bond.

“Oh, stop being dramatic you lot. Our resident spider wanted a talk, and knew us well enough to exactly time when I’d be alone, and how quickly I’d move from place to place.”

Nina shuddered. She got it. Artemis curled her hand, and three rocks floated up from the ground, then started to twist like a [Sculptor] was working on them. They rapidly reformed into three six-sided dice, and Artemis tossed them up and down experimentally a few times before nodding at herself.

Iona frowned a bit, Fenrir looked alarmed, and Skye just rolled her eyes.

“Brrrpt!” Auri was indignant.

“No, I don’t know why she didn’t come and say hi to everyone. That would’ve been the nicer thing to do.” I agreed. Auri nodded once, like she’d given a great proclamation to the land.

“Moving on, so we’re not here until sunrise.” I winked at Nina. “Arachne had some ideas for me and my talents. In short, she wanted to train me in spycraft, then insert me as a spy into the New Remus Empire. I’ll skip all the boring training, although it was in a cool spot, and move right into the spywork. Oh! Amber showed up. It was complete bullshit, as expected. We were, uh, riding along, and she just popped into a seat from a pocket dimension she’d been hiding out in. Almost literally fell right into my lap.”

“Wait, where was it?” Iona innocently asked.

“It - uh.”

Shit.

Less than half of us knew the secret of the Pekari, and Artemis, Nina, and Raccoon were all in a perfect position to take advantage of the lich’s deadly game. Heck, even Skye was. Pekari raiding local villages was a fantastic test of her abilities as a leader, a neat challenge designed to test her leadership skills. Anurak was careful not to go too far, and I didn’t want to ruin the opportunity.

“I can’t say. It’s a secret, and I shouldn’t have mentioned it was in a neat spot. I kinda buried half the spycraft in my memory skill, which included the part about properly keeping my mouth shut on things. MOVING ON.”

“How DID you pass Ranger training?” Artemis asked. I answered with a single finger and kept talking.

“Books and plays love to glamorize spywork. Nippon-koku plays do fun things with ninjas and stagehands, there are endless stories of suave spies grabbing secret documents and kissing pretty girls, but the truth of the matter, spying is dead boring.”

Nina was nodding along in perfect understanding and complete agreement.

“So you didn’t kiss any pretty girls or handsome boys behind my back? Ah, what a waste of a good chance!” Iona teased, knowing how monogamous I was.

I dramatically put my hand on my forehead.

“Alas! I’m taken by the fairest maiden in the world. None can compare to your radiant beauty. Your smile is the sun that melts my snow. In your eyes, I find galaxies, and in your arms, I find home. Your laughter is the sweet melody that dances through my soul; you’re the dream I never want to wake from. You-”

Auri slapped one of her [Mage Hands] over my mouth, making retching noises. Everyone else had various looks on their face that all said ‘get a room’, and Artemis looked vaguely disturbed.

Why yes Artemis, I had grown up. I was only over a hundred years old. Honestly.

I’d written way too much sappy poetry when I was missing Iona, and I’d been able to get the tip of the iceberg out just now. Iona was glowing happily, and I’d share the rest with her later.

“Moving on. Spywork. Boring. Go into work. Smile at coworkers. Do the job the pointy-haired boss wants. Read the papers. Teleport select ones into a cache. Go back home. Repeat.” I pulled at my hair. “It was PURE TORTURE. It sucked. It was miserable. I’m never working as a [Scribe] or related job again.”

“Not even as a [Librarian]?” Iona teased.

“That’s completely different.” I said with a haughty sniff. For some reason, that sent half the mountaintop into peals of laughter.

“I’m honestly impressed. [Writers] managed to take one of the most boring jobs in the world, and turn it into this fantastical career. I suppose the counterintelligence side of it is more interesting, and it’d be a completely different discussion if I couldn’t easily [Teleport] things around. No need for dead drops, sneaking off in the night, signals… I just moved paperwork from this one jerk’s desk in particular straight to the source.”

My wife was less than impressed at that.

“You framed him?” She asked.

“Blatantly! Obviously! Except, nobody ever came knocking to see what was going on! Nobody ever noticed! I seriously wonder if we were actually doing anything productive in that building.” I shook my head and muttered under my breath. “Office work.”

I got Looks from everyone else.

“I find it perfectly engaging, and we’d have endless problems without it.” Skye sniffed.

“Chance to sit down in the shade all day? I dream about it on the hottest summer days.” Raccoon said.

“Or the winter. I love my job, I love being outside, but when it’s pouring snow out and we’re trying to find the buried prints? Now and then I wish I was inside with a warm fire.” Artemis said.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Iona wisely said nothing.

I threw my hands up in the air.

“Fine! Next time, you all can do it! Skye, I hear you’ve just gotten a new batch of recruits.”

The yuki-onna grinned.

“I heard the same thing! I think I’ll have the two of you report, oh, an hour after sunrise. We can discuss a schedule. I’m thinking two days a week. You need to be familiar with the paperwork to be of any use anyway.”

“I, er, have a patrol route then. Sorry, can’t miss it.” Raccoon stammered out.

“I’m illiterate.” Artemis blatantly lied. Skye’s perfect composure cracked at that.

“Illiterate!? You!? I’ve got a dozen poorly filled out requisition forms on my desk just from you!”

“Yeah, exactly. Poorly filled out, illiterate, you’re proving my point for me.” Artemis let the complaint slide off her back.

“That reminds me! I didn’t go straight to spying, I spent a good amount of time flitting between battlefields. I’d go to a fight, utterly deny any and all deaths, and when the two sides separated, I’d skedaddle. I’ll admit to some creative, ah, foraging, for dinner now and then, but it was great for my levels, and I got to see SO MUCH MAGIC, it was great! The first interesting one was an elemental transformation into rocks. Managed to get injured, if you’d believe it, and it came at a large penalty to heal it up. Next up was a titan of trees. Not a treant, although it looked like one at first blush…”

It took me around an hour to go over the various magic and tactics I’d seen. Most of us hadn’t gotten a chance to fight at the levels I’d been in, and hopefully, none of us would.

I’d be lying to myself if I thought none of us would ever be in a fight like that. Immortality was available to us all, and the slow but steady progression of levels would have us all enter that arena some day.

We dissected the various tactics I’d seen, bandied around various interesting skills and wondered if it was worth aiming for them, and debated the merits of large-scale battles versus small skirmishes.

“All I’m saying, anything with swords should be mergeable into a super-sword skill.” Raccoon argued.

“Not cross-element.” Iona pointed out. “And it can be worth having two specialized skills. We carry more than one weapon.”

“You carry more than one weapon.” Raccoon tapped her baton. “Some of us only have one.”

“You have a knife.” Nina pointed out.

“And everything near you.” Artemis said. I nodded in agreement with her. Raccoon’s eyes went shiny, like she’d just discovered the elegant essence of murder.

“We haven’t trained you on it yet, because we had a million other things to do.” Iona was preemptively backpedaling.

“How have I never heard of this before!?” The goblin demanded, then pointed to Artemis. “You, especially, have been holding out on me! I gotta learn. Maybe now?”

Auri bonked Raccoon on the head with one of her flaming fists.

“Brrrpt!” She scolded. I flicked her myself.

“Just because Raccoon doesn’t understand you, doesn’t mean it’s nice to brrrpt at her. You’ve got words, use them.”

“Brrpt.” Auri sulked, opening up her picnic basket. I hastily emptied the last few cookies out.

“BRPT!” She screamed, looking at her empty basket.

By Ciriel, it was absolutely worth it to see her stunned look of disbelief. She looked around the dwindling fire, her eyes narrowing as she looked at me. I used all my acting skills to put on an innocent face.

Thanks Susan!

“BRPT!” I was promptly attacked by an enraged phoenix pecking at my face, my disguise insufficient.

Thanks Susan.

I fell over in a tangle of limbs, trying to brush Auri off. Everyone else just stood around and watched.

“Traitors!” I gasped out.

Artemis took another sip.

“You did stuff me in a barrel earlier today.” She said.

“And stole all of Auri’s cookies.” We’d barely gotten back together, and already Iona was stabbing me in the back.

Skye was asleep, leaning against the unicorn. Fenrir had joined them in dreamland… although it was hard to tell at times.

Nina coughed something that sounded suspiciously like ‘sunrise’, and it broke the fight up.

“Moving on! Auri came around and burned Edhallon to the ground, which she’s already explained to you. From there, I once again found myself at odd ends. What to do, where to go? I decided to try and make a map of the world, and mark down population centers. From there, I decided to be the weight on the scales that the Wardens had previously provided. The Treaty of Kyowa is basically a historical document at this point, one that’ll be built on later, and nobody is stopping powerful Immortals from moving into mortal lands and doing what they want. There aren’t too many people who have though. Inertia from almost a thousand years of history and tradition, combined with the New Remus Empire causing a fuss. Might change soon. Iona, I’m pretty sure you’ll want to take a look into that in a few years.”

My wife grimly nodded.

“There’s not too much to say about that. I made a poor map, gained some levels, then just flew around in various loops, hitting places and moving on.”

Iona snapped her fingers.

“Wait, is it possible you flew past Sahel right before the riots broke out? A sudden purge of the drug would’ve caused the explosion of riots.”

I tilted my head.

“Maybe? Do we want to pull out the map and compare dates right now, or - okay, right now it is.” I hastily amended the end of my sentence as I saw the burning look in Iona’s eyes.

We all crowded around the map I made, and rapidly started discussing dates. As well as we could, it wasn’t like I’d been looking at a calendar. I did have a perfect memory.

“Seven days after the fifth full moons of the year. Do you know where you were?” Iona asked.

“I was flying around then. Let’s see… anchor points… I remember the sixth full moons, let me count backwards from there…” I mumbled under my breath, counting backwards on my fingers before shaking my head.

“I was on a strong southern loop then. Modu, Bhutai, and Dairalt. Nowhere near Sahel.”

A bar of tension went out of Iona’s shoulders, and I found myself relaxing as well. I hadn’t made things worse. I hadn’t caused massive harm and deaths with my healing. I… doubted I’d be punished by my [Oath], but I didn’t need magical reinforcement to feel bad.

“Next up, the sack of Ithil. There’s quite a few annoyed Classers in… basically every Immortal nation or proto-nation… now. I think I’m going to keep my head down for a few years at least. Right, onto it! I can’t give nearly as good of an analysis, there were too many moving parts. Let me tell you what I can remember…”

I told my tale the best I could, finding I needed to censor it extensively. We didn’t need the gruesome depiction of what had occurred. Although… that did raise a good point.

“... at which point, I got Sara into [Manor] so she’d be safe. With that being said, I’m realizing I’m in fairly dire need of a [Mind Healer] again, and Sara should visit one as well.” The sky was starting to lighten up all around us.

“Everyone who needs a [Mind Healer], raise your hands.” Artemis said without a single hint of a joke, putting both her hands up in the air. Almost all of us still awake raised our hands, only Raccoon keeping hers down.

“What?” She protested. “I’m fine!”

“For now…” Artemis threatened. “Elaine, can you leave a note somewhere awkward on Skye asking her to look into luring one over here?”

“I’ll put it in her hand.” I primly replied.

“Spoilsport.”

“Do your own dirty work!”

I did write a little note on it on a tiny square of paper, reluctantly carving it out of one of my blank spellbooks. [Featherstorm] was nice for that. I conjured up a single sharp feather, and used it as a knife. Then I finished my story of Ithil.

“... after finishing the library raid, I zipped back here as quickly as I could, and waited for the rest of you. Thank you, all.”

I choked up at my final thanks.

Bless my friends, bless my family. They knew what I was thanking them for.

For being here. For being alive. For coming back, as so many hadn’t.

Auri snuggled up to my cheek, and Iona drew me into a warm hug.

Nina coughed after a few minutes, and we broke apart.

“Your turn?” I suggested to the kitsune.

“NOPE!” Artemis shouted, jumping to her feet. Fenrir opened up an eye and rumbled unhappily at being woken up. The Ranger pointed to the horizon with a wild grin.

“Sunrise!”

Nina swore.

[Name: Elaine]

[Race: Chimera (Elvenoid)]

[Age: 134]

[Mana: 45,190,330/45,190,330]

[Mana Regeneration: 101,437,065 +(582,705,295)]

Stats

[Free Stats: 0]

[Strength: 282,385 (Effectively: 2,259,080)]

[Dexterity: 306,641 (Effectively: 3,265,113)]

[Vitality: 922,241 (Effectively: 14,410,016)]

[Speed: 909,473 (Effectively: 17,901,157)]

[Mana: 4,519,033]

[Mana Regeneration: 10,534,785 (+ 58,270,530)]

[Magic Power: 5,802,624 (+ 440,999,424)]

[Magic Control: 5,801,481 (+ 440,912,556)]

[Class 1: [The Elaine- Celestial: Lv 1520]]

[Celestial Spirit: 1520]

[Domain of the Healer: 1520]

[A Drop of Eternity in a Sea of Starlight: 610]

[Luminary Mind: 1520]

[Universal Cure: 1520]

[Clad in Twilight: 585]

[The Mantle of Dusk and Dawn: 950]

[Elaine Eternal: 1520]

[Class 2: [Dawnbringer - Radiance: Lv 1475]]

[Radiance Mastery: 1475]

[A Light Shining in the Darkness: 945]

[Radiance Beams: 1475]

[Sun Blades: 505]

[Celestial Dew: 1475]

[Sunrise Halo: 1475]

[Essence of Flight: 1475]

[Featherstorm: 1475]

[Class 3: [Sage of Eternity - Spatial: Lv 1470]]

[Spatial Mastery: 1470]

[Scripture Savant: 1470]

[Teleportation: 1470]

[Timeless Manor of the Eternally Curious Sage: 1470]

[Portcullis: 70]

[Reality, Writ As You Will: 1470]

[Astral Archives: 1470]

[Endless Pursuit of Knowledge: 1470]

General Skills

[Long-Range Identify: 700]

[Everywoman: 640]

[Companion Bond between Elaine and Auri: 1520]

[The World Around Me: 741]

[Oath of Elaine to Lyra: 1520]

[Sentinel's Superiority: 1520]

[Persistent Casting: 1520]

[Tender Gardening; Industrial Farming: 901]