Beneath the Dragoneye Moons

The years drifted by, and we tried every profession.

Amber laughed at my attempts at opening a general store, and we got a thorough education in the intricacies of holding inventory. Why did it have to be so complicated?

Being a [Courier] was as fun as I imagined, but impossibly lonely. Iona hadn’t wanted to spend the entire time in [Manor] while I ran around the world, and it only took me four months before I cracked and spent time with the important people in my life.

I was Immortal, but life was too short to not spend it with the people I loved.

Iona’s brewing was far better than Aegion’s, and we did manage to eventually find out what became of my elven friends.

Awarthril had managed to find a way for Kiyaya to become Immortal, and spent a few good centuries together before dying in her sleep of a brain aneurysm. Quick, quiet, and peaceful, the only better end I could’ve wished for her was to ascend. I didn’t know what happened to Kiyaya, but I could only hope the best dog ever had joined her friend soon.

Serondes fought with distinction in the shimagu war, but eventually made one arrogant call too many and died. At least he hadn’t been captured.

Aegion ended up retreating to the woods with Cordamo, where the two of them inflicted bad brews on their neighbors, before dying in the first Immortal War.

Their names were already on the wall, but now I had closure as to what happened.

Running an auction house was a ton of fun. I’d been the one appraising and displaying the goods, while Iona’s silver tongue ran the price up. Anyone who tried to start nonsense was surprised at the stiff security the place had. Once in a while I was called up for Sentinel work. A particularly malignant Miasma-Spatial Classer spent years stashing thousands of nasty diseases into his specialized Spatial storage. When a hotheaded [Guard] killed the man, the diseases exploded everywhere in the worst loot pinata, and a stiff prevailing breeze had required rapid action on my part.

Wars came and went, some eras were shorter than others.

We had fun being the fairy godparents to random children here and there. We had a minor preference for orphans, but never let socioeconomic status prevent us from having a spot of fun in either direction.

It took me ages to get Iona interested in becoming ‘a damn lawyer’ - she thought her prohibition on lying would get too much in the way - but when she finally got her Juris Doctorate, she discovered a particular love for negotiating deals. ‘Like being a Valkyrie with a suit instead of a sword’.

Auri loved glassmaking, and the oversized magnifying glass she made for Fenrir gave all of us conniptions.

Pottery hadn’t been as fun as I’d hoped.

Stitching, sewing, weaving? Assembling my own wardrobe? Oh gods, why hadn’t I gotten into this in the first place?

We tried a year of crime. Fence, catburglar, pickpocket… we felt so terrible about it after the first day we gave even the tiny amount we took back, with huge amounts of extra. The look on everyone’s face was hilarious, to the point where we instead spent the year fucking with people. Coin left out on the counter or desk? Two coins there in the morning. A necklace in a locked room? A matching bracelet was left, along with a detailed breakdown of how we’d gotten in and the holes in the security.

Being the Fairy of Lyon only got stale when people started to expect we’d double their money.

Auri spent 40 years growing her dream flower field. I was the beekeeper, Iona sold the honey. Auri invited all her friends from the Phoenix Peaks to visit one day, and the local town had phoenix-related classes for the next decade.

People kept trying to tax us, and we kept having to explain that no, we weren’t subject to whatever random authority they thought they had. Like, when we moved into a place, yes, absolutely, but someone setting up shop down the road and trying to shake us down?

The smart ones had [Identify], the dumb ones usually had a grave.

Now, when they came in, built a ton of roads, schools, and other community services, then politely asked us to chip in for upkeep, we very happily opened up our coffers to them. It was the dumbass [Lords] that drew a big circle on the map and claimed we owed them that we strongly objected to.

Iona took her bard show on the road, leaving behind a string of broken hearts and black eyes in her wake.

We were very wanted in Ankhelt for ‘Tomb raiding’. We called it ‘cultural exploration’, and it wasn’t like we took anything, we just wanted to admire the pyramids. From the inside.

We all sucked horribly at being actors, as fun as it was. Being a stagehand was more entertaining, but there was nothing like being the producer. Money made things happen, and it was a delight to see shows and plays coming together because we made it possible.

Artemis, Amber, Sara, Nina and more were constant companions in our lives. We made it a point to visit Artemis and Sara every year, and only Amber was occasionally hard to find. They continued to survive, day after day, although Artemis’s leveling had stopped entirely. Well, her non-[Professor] leveling, but that type of civilian class leveled slowly. Far less often than she was used to.

She was a [Mage], and she was sick of killing.

I tried writing bodice-rippers under a penname, but Susan nearly killed me when she sent me a letter complimenting in detail my latest release. Nope, nope, a thousand times nope.

Iona quarried stone and I sculpted it. I mined ores and she tried her hand at being a [Blacksmith].

Dancer. Artist. Tailor. Model. Diver. Sailor. Captain. Singer. Shrine maiden. Oracle. Priestess. Lady. Tutor. Professor. Maid. Playwright. Perfumer. Tincturer. Lorekeeper. Tamer. Fletcher. Bowyer. Cobbler. Butcher. Baker. Candlestick maker. Miller. Cooper. Cook. Dinosaur Rancher. Laundry Worker. Shepherd. Fisher. Trapper. Herbalist. Scribe.

We lived life.

We did them all.

2258 Years after Elaine became a professor at the School of Sorcery and Spellcraft

Iona squinted next to me as we gazed upon the Inferno elemental. The runes in her silvery mask were vainly trying to keep her cool, but the sweat was pouring off her in buckets.

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“Moons blast it.” She cursed. “It’s got [From the First Flame]. It’s so hard to put down because it’ll reignite from the campfire that first spawned it.”

I wanted to rub my eyes, but I had my own silver mask blocking my hand. Auri was bouncing from claw to claw on my shoulder, agitated and ready to throw down with the elemental. Show them who was the true master of fire around here.

“Not only is it an advanced tier elemental, but it’s a lich-elemental?” I asked.

“Prey.” Fenrir snarled.

Elementals were relatively rare in the first place, and could only be born from their element. With how much wind, water, and earth there was in the first place, the fact that we weren’t drowning in elementals was a testament to how rare they were.

Fire was even rarer, and this was the first time I’d heard of an Inferno elemental outside of a textbook. It had scorched its way through the Ankhelt desert, a curiosity to the locals. An occasional oasis got scorched, and the [Pharaoh] had sent local forces against it. A typical comedy of escalation occurred, eventually resulting in the [Pharaoh’s] successor requesting aid from the Wardens. Quite far outside of our usual job description, and normally we’d decline it… except I was utterly immune to fire. We were politely asked if we wanted to come, discussed it, and accepted it.

“Yup.” Iona confirmed. “Here’s the plan, let’s see what you think of it…”

The four of us quickly hammered out the basics of a plan, none of which would survive first contact with the elemental. Nor would much of anything else. Fenrir’s armor was already stored away, which left one last consideration.

“How much do we want to avoid devastating the ecosystem?” I asked. “If Fenrir’s opening with [The Thousand-Year Blizzard] and liberally using [Ice Beam], the steam explosion is going to throw a huge amount of conjured moisture into the air. We’ve been through hurricanes with less energy in them.”

“The storm’s going to suck,” Iona agreed. “But the desert is just going to absorb it, and the standard distributed storm metrics should hold up.”

The Inferno elemental had noticed us, and started to barrel our way.

“Even when it’s half the reservoir?” I asked, not concerned about the being at all.

“If it ends up that bad, the Wardens have the Lantern. We can just do a sweep through the area and banish it. Let’s go!”

We split up.

Iona blurred as she went past hypersonic, following the Inferno elemental’s trail. Her tracking skill had only gotten better over the years, to an absurd extent, and it was completely reasonable for her to try and follow a decades-old trail back to the original source. Granted, that was only going to be a problem near the end of her trip - right now, the Inferno elemental was leaving a wide trail of glass on the scorching sands.

I mounted Fenrir and we took off. He was the most vulnerable one here, and I wanted the option of shielding him if needed, at least for the initial stages. I could feel the air currents start to stir as he began to channel a midsummer blizzard, one that we hoped to keep localized and that wouldn’t hurt too many people.

With a trilling warcry, Auri launched herself at the elemental.

Whoever said to fight fire with fire has never watched two fire elementals - or near enough - duke it out. They were both their own source of fuel and heat.

Auri opened up the fight with a solid bar of flames so white it lit up the desert like a sun. It vanished into the depths of the elemental, which grew a little bigger and glowed a little brighter. The elemental formed into the shape of a beastkin, drew its fist back, and punched Auri like he was a giant. She didn’t even try to dodge, simply stared at the elemental with a dead eye.

“Brrpt.” She disdainfully tried to flick some ashes off. Bloody mask wouldn’t let me cup my hands.

“I don’t think he can understand you!” I shouted to the bird.

“BRRPT!” She reprimanded me. Trash talking was an integral part of the fight, regardless if the elemental understood us or not. I mentally shrugged.

Anything to play for time. There was no sense in putting the elemental down before Iona ruined its origin. It would probably take hours either way, so letting Auri do her thing didn’t change the timeline.

The shimmering mirages of the desert chilled a bit with Auri’s next flame, picked up from a rare species near the pole.

Damn immunity to fire meant I couldn’t get cooled off by the flame.

The Inferno elemental shied back, and I traded a disbelieving look with Fenrir. It couldn’t be that easy, could it? Sometimes, it was all about finding the right answer to a problem, and - whoops, nope. The Inferno elemental was demonstrating a low cunning. It absorbed the flames, and the pointless back and forth was doing nothing but putting on a fantastic light show and glassing the desert.

We even started to attract some attention! A few strong fliers were pausing and watching the light show, and I was glad I hadn’t put my mask away. There was nothing quite like a Warden’s blank mask turning on people to keep them away. One elf started to charge in, but a quick [Radiance Lance] across his nose sent him skittering back.

Auri went through an entire rainbow of flames. As cunning as the elemental was, Auri was fascinating enough that he didn’t try to wander afar, or deliberately torch us. Which had half our plans thrown out the window - I was supposed to engage the elemental in hand to hand combat to keep it busy. If we were close to a major body of water, I would’ve considered trying to lure it over.

Once her ‘you don’t burn’ was done, Auri conjured the occasional meteor to slam down. She wasn’t using them particularly often, and she was working right at her mana regeneration. [Pyromancer] and ‘Extended battle’didn’t mix at all, but it wasn’t like the Inferno elemental had greater endurance.

As the sun started to lower, I patted Fenrir’s neck.

“Let’s get the storm going. Slowly at first, let’s give the peanut gallery a chance to leave.”

Fenrir muttered something about the peanut gallery being ‘excellent snacks’, but I shivered as the temperature plummeted and the winds started to pick up. There was no snow at first, simply wisps in the air that steadily grew thicker. I jumped down from Fenrir’s back, falling half a mile before landing on cracked glass. I withdrew a bar of metal from my practically endless storage, picking one that had the highest melting point we knew of. With a thought, [Solar Armaments] lit the blade with the fire of the sun - possibly less useful than keeping it as a club - and I smacked the elemental in the back of its head.

Which did predictably nothing, but it did irritate the being. It reformed its face backwards on its body, and while it was distracted, Auri buzzed out, rejoining Fenrir up in the gathering clouds. It had been long enough that Iona had probably found the elemental’s fire flame, and properly destroyed it.

We were going to try to pour enough chill and water in to kill an Inferno elemental, we didn’t want to accidentally kill Auri!

The elemental and I started to trade blows, for a given definition. It wanted to engulf me in flames, I wanted to be in the middle of his body to see what would happen, it was a little awkward fighting to get to the same position, but we managed it. Then I started swinging with my club. Back and forth, back and forth… I really wasn’t doing much, and the club was getting uncomfortably hot in my hands. I [Teleported] into the bathhouse inside of [Manor], mentally cringing at what putting a hot rod into a pool of water was going to do to the place.

Mopping up and scraping bits of metal out of walls might take longer than this fight.

The blizzard started to howl, and I had to backflip away from the burning heart of the elemental as an [Ice Beam] descended from the heavens. It was thicker than a large house, and the air screamed as it sheared through it.

There was an explosion as it hit the Inferno elemental dead-on. Fire and Ice mixed to volatile results, blanketing the entire area in superheated steam as a million shards of Ice blasted in every direction. Quite a few went through me, trailing organs, viscera, and rainbow-colored scales in their razor-sharp wake.

Damnit, and I liked that shirt! That’s what I get for taking the nice clothes into battle.

With Fenrir unleashing his draconic wrath on the elemental, I flew back up into the sky. My eyes were entirely useless, but [The World Around Me] let me pierce through the skin-prickling steam.

[*ding!* [The Elaine] leveled up! 3566 -> 3567! Only 529 levels to go! +767 Strength, +767 Dexterity, +3073 Speed, +3073 Vitality, +7684 Mana, +38417 Mana Regeneration, +15366 Magic Power, +15366 Magic Control per level!

We can do it!]

I was assuming that was from me healing all the idiots who strayed too close to an Immortal battle and got saved from flash par-boiling, and not Fenrir’s friendly fire. I could see a few people trying to escape, and of course there was the one idiot who was trying to run away… by getting closer. I flew over, grabbed him, and redirected him to safety, before I continued flying up.

It took a while for me to break out of the clouds, and they were weird clouds. Storm grey blizzard clouds… that literally had gouts of steam escaping from them. The thin air was doing some fine work crystalizing the steam, but that was pressure related, not temperature related.

The meteorology of the location was going absolutely wild, and I made a mental note to try and write this up for… whoever it was at the School right now. The occasional bright flash suggested Auri was continuing to drop [Meteor Strikes] on the elemental, for whatever good scattering its flames around would do. I understood, I wouldn’t want to stand still either.

Normally, trying to match conjured wizardry against sorcery was a terrible idea. ‘Horribly inefficient’ barely covered things. It was inefficient when I was using [Affinity], nevermind [Spirit]!

Oh wait, hang on, hmmm…

I was in the ironclad habit of using [Shield] only for defense or utility purposes. Sure, I’d trapped people inside of it often enough, but that was utility. I didn’t have razor-sharp edges on the side of my shield, may War Sentinel Legion rest in peace.

We did what we could to prevent ourselves from developing bad habits, and given our level and how we’d survived so long, I was willing to think we’d managed to avoid anything too terrible.

I had a new option on my plate. Like how The Witch in White simply turned a skinwalker into flowers, I could just try to brute-force things.

I dove back into the clouds, feeling a wave of cold on the tail end of another sky-scraper [Ice Beam]. The air shuddered as Inferno met Ice again, and waves of superheated steam turned the falling snowflakes into mist. The pressure made my flight plan wobble, and I landed near the elemental.

I conjured up a large [Shield] in the dusk, void form, and swept it straight through the elemental. I had to contend with its vitality defense, but had over 50 million Magic Power, and Inferno wasn’t particularly high in mass. The move dropped my mana in a way I hadn’t seen in centuries, but the elemental poofed out a moment later.

I held my breath, waiting for the notification. If we’d fucked this up, an enraged elemental was going to pop up somewhere in Ankhelt, possibly on top of Iona. She had all sorts of defenses and protections, but nothing like what Auri and I had.

[*ding!* Your party has slain a [Rage of the Fire (Inferno, 1273)]!]