Beneath the Dragoneye Moons

The Guardian vanished moments after I let the harpy die, and I shuddered at the thought of the Vorler running around loose. His title of ‘The Merciful’ didn’t exactly inspire pretty images either - I could only imagine what a vorler considered to be ‘mercy’.

I paced back and forth, considering my next moves, envying Raccoon’s ability to sleep through anything. Which was a bit of a surprise to me, I would’ve expected goblins to sleep with one eye open. Some of her ‘casual dinner side stories’ were downright harrowing, and I half expected to end up with a few more grey hairs. They looked great on Iona! A few thin strands of silver nestled among the gold.

“Brrrpt?” Auri asked.

“I mean, Iona should know… but sure, I’m feeling a little stuck here.” I said.

Auri threw me a one-winged salute, and buzzed off at high speed. A pair of goggles some [Couriers] used snapped onto her face before she left a burning afterimage.

I shook my head and went deep into [Astral Archives], trying to work out exactly where my healing radius overlapped with the map of the place. Being able to fly was a boon, I had a good mental map of the area, and thanks to my travels, I had a solid idea of my range.

It had just increased with all the levels I’d gotten, of course, but that was going to be my safety margin. I mentally overlayed my range with where we were and the map of the place. A lack of proper measuring tools was a hindrance on one end, but thanks to the careful work of Surveyor and the other Potentials, we had a strong grid I could work off of.

I mentally bit my tongue as I worked through it all, groaning a little at the end.

Everyone was inside my radius, with a solid amount of padding included. I wasn’t trapped on the farm for the foreseeable future while we diagnosed the plague and worked out countermeasures, or worst-case, waited eight years to let it all decay. At the same time, the furthest farms, the ones not designed by Skye and outside of Orthus Town’s mandate, were just barely inside. The farmers wouldn’t drop dead stepping outside their fields, but if they were patrolling the edges while I went the opposite direction, into the laid-out Orthus Town, they would be outside my protection.

I was soft-locked out of my [Tower]. Until we knew what the poison was, until we had a remedy or mitigation, it was entirely possible that leaving for a few seconds could cause people to die. It was unlikely, but possible. There could also be multiple poisons - it was rare for a substance to be both a herbicide and good for killing people - but it could be a single, powerful poison.

Cytotoxic venoms were fine, and most hemotoxins would take longer than I’d be gone to properly have an impact. Neurotoxins concerned me, but a contact neurotoxin should take more than a moment to penetrate skin, even if it was powdered on a child. Then there was the mechanism - any neurotoxin paralyzing nerves generally killed via respiratory distress, which took minutes before problems started to occur on a child, let alone the generous length of time I had to respond to an adult. It was the ones that traveled up nerves like fire, that rotted the brain from the inside that scared me.

Then there were magiatoxins, unusual concoctions entirely System-made and derived. The field of medicine collectively threw up their hands trying to classify all the different possible methods of transmission and mechanisms of action, and declared the entire thing to be in the realm of the System, where anything was possible. It was more expensive and much harder to brew up a magiatoxin, but it was like the plague in Perinthus - transmissible via eye contact, for example.

This was ignoring the fact that poisons could be promiscuous - whoever invented poison terminology was having fun - and work along multiple pathways. Then, of course, most Poison Classers weren’t just sprinkling botulism on people and calling it a day. They enhanced their poisons, made them deadlier in a variety of ways. From merging poisons together to increasing their potency, from finding new mechanisms of delivery to unusual methods of delivery, all studies of poison had the caveat of ‘... and a skill could change everything.’

Actually… speaking of Surveyor, there was the answer!

I debated waking up Raccoon to act as my messenger, but decided not to.

Everyone was going to wake up to a field of dead crops. Might as well let them tackle the problem on a full night’s sleep.

The shit never ended, and the ashes continued to fall.

Titania was up before Raccoon, and saw me pacing unhappily in the field.

“M’lady.” She respectfully curtseyed, nevermind that I was covered in dirt, her tunic wasn’t exactly the best, and our home was barely more than a hut. “What troubles you?”

I kicked at one of the dead carrots and filled her in on last night’s events. She kneeled down by one of the carrots and plucked it.

It had been sad and scrawny to begin with. Between the cold weather, low sunlight, and lack of any real skills on our part, its mere survival until now had proved it was scrappy. Whatever poison or plague had hit it had done it no favors. It was withered and blackened, more likely to be sold by a sketchy [Witch] promising it would find true love than any self-respecting [Grocer]. Titania eyed it critically, then took a bite.

I could’ve stopped her a thousand times over, but I implicitly trusted her with the decades we’d spent together. She chewed thoughtfully, swallowed, and shuddered.

“Poor fare, to be sure, and undoubtedly poisoned, yet still food.” She proclaimed. “I am reminded of the time you wished to try a selection of poisonous berries as a snack. You found the nightshade most agreeable, but elected the risks not worth regular additions to our plates. In the face of starvation, let us not discard valid options. Poisoned, rotted, or diseased, your healing prevents those issues, and while our bodies may object, the mind is the master in the end.”

I blinked and reframed how I was looking at things. When did a carrot die anyway? When it was pulled from the ground? Weeks later? I’d done a cursory study of plants, but the moment of death was tricky enough for people and animals, who had a distinct notification when the soul left the body. When it came to plants, it was far murkier.

A carrot was a carrot. A poisoned carrot, with me around, was a spicy carrot. I was in the habit of considering solutions that didn’t rest solely on my shoulders, on distributed self-sustaining systems, but Titania was right. We could still eat them.

“Thank you, Titania.” I nodded respectfully back. “That viewpoint does change things.”

She nodded, rolled up her sleeves, kneeled in the dirt, and started pulling up carrots. Always willing to get her hands dirty, always willing to work hard, it was part of why I liked her so much.

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That, and her cooking was almost literally divine. I was willing to bet she could make the blackened and diseased carrots taste good. With a wave of my hand, I [Teleported] all of the carrots in my range out of the ground, into a neat pile. All of us had to do our part.

“Hey Raccoon!” I shouted, sensing a very satisfying sequence as Raccoon smacked into the doorframe in her attempt to hurry out.

“Yes?” The little goblin scampered out, rubbing her head. The drama llama - it didn’t hurt, not with her living in my healing radius.

“I need you to go and fetch Surveyor for me, thank you.”

Raccoon tried a clumsy salute - military formality of a dead nation wasn’t a priority - and scampered off. She was quite far down the road before she muttered to herself.

“Don’t see why Elaine can’t walk herself…”

I summoned a feather from [Six Wings, Six Million Feathers] and zipped it past Racoon’s head, shaving off a few hairs.

“I heard that!” I hollered down the road to her retreating back.

I swear I could see Raccoon’s [Scampering] skill leveling.

“Black carrots again?” A child’s voice whined from three farms over. My hearing was way too good at times, and sometimes I was a terrible mix of bored and curious. I knew I shouldn’t eavesdrop, but… it was tempting. I wanted to know what people were saying about me.

I was lounging, waiting for Raccoon to finish the errand I’d sent her on, and the carrots were still brand-new. I wanted to know what people thought of them, and Iona was massaging me just so with a little carved wooden spider.

All hail the spider.

“If you’d like something else to eat, you’re welcome to go outside and find it.” A parent replied. Good head on his shoulders. I tuned the conversation out, focusing on the bliss that was Iona’s steady hands against the knots on my back.

“Brrpt?” Auri asked Iona.

“Yes, that’s an excellent temperature.” Iona shifted near the fire a bit.

The fire I couldn’t feel at all. Damn immunity to fire and flames, it was keeping me a little colder than normal.

Raccoon came over, proud as a half-feral cat who’d caught a mouse, Surveyor in tow.

“Hey, Surveyor! Come on over!” I waved the girl over. I’d already been impressed with her work helping lay out the town, now I was going to see if she was willing to make a leap with her classes.

“She’s at a class up.” Iona quietly told me in a language Surveyor didn’t speak.

“Excellent.” I responded in the same tongue. I waved Surveyor over, and restrained a whimper as Iona stopped massaging me. I knew it was a bad look to be fussed over in the situation, but it just felt so good. Dang looking nice for the neighbors.

“The goblin said you wanted to see me?” She eyed Raccoon suspiciously, like the goblin was going to rifle through her pockets. Which… I couldn’t entirely blame her for.

“Raccoon.” I corrected. Justified or not, the sooner we had everyone seeing each other as proper neighbors, the better. “And yes. As you know, we were recently hit with a poisonous attack. You might not know that I’m still keeping it at bay, and I’m hoping you’ll be willing to take a class dedicated to cleaning up the poison.”

Her face fell, and she was clearly struggling with herself a bit. Iona nudged me.

“We really should offer her something in return. Endlessly being asked to give up skills and selflessly move around for the good of the community would wear on anyone.” She pointed out.

“Good point. It should be Skye’s job to figure that out, but…” I trailed off, Iona picking up my thought where I put it down.

“But she’s only got so many resources, she’s backed hard by our support, and she doesn’t know the problem like we do. It probably would’ve been better for everyone long term if we had Skye summon Surveyor and make the request through her. But we didn’t know Surveyor would want something now. Live and learn.” Iona shrugged.

“I’ll open big.” I offered Surveyor. “When you get a little older, I’ll make you Immortal. You’ll never age, eventually joining the ranks of the elite by sheer virtue of time and effort. Anyone who’s consistently willing to do what’s needed for the good of the community is someone worth keeping around, and I don’t know how aware you are of the greater world and System, but my ability to grant Immortality to others was rare before the Immortal War. Now? There might be a dozen people left in the world with the skill.”

Surveyor looked interested, but wary.

“I want some specifics.” She said.

Iona and I traded a look, and I shrugged.

I was a bad negotiator. A worse haggler.

But I’d had over a century to practice.

I felt confident.n/ô/vel/b//jn dot c//om

[*ding!* [Everywoman] leveled up! 503 -> 504]

“I’m surprised that it actually went well.” Iona commented. I wanted to flip her off, but no, had to remain vaguely professional and put together in front of the neighbors. “I’m off to refill the barrels, good luck.” My wife quickly pecked me on the cheek, wiping away everything except a warm, happy glow inside.

“Brrrpt!” Auri declared she was going on a patrol, and Raccoon was clearly sticking with Iona.

Auri, unfortunately, couldn’t burn out poison and infection… yet. It required a specialized class, and she’d been offered it before but never took it. Why, when I was right there? In theory, she could blanket the area in an inferno and make sure the poison was burned out, but her inability to see and properly identify it meant she’d burn a lot of other things at the same time. Everything smaller than a speck of dust would be obliterated… and quite a few things larger than that would as well.

For some reason, my neighbors were a hair reluctant to watch their homes and fields go up in flames, even though it would mostly be alright in the end. Strange that.

“Now what?” Surveyor asked. “Should I just start classing up, or… what?”

“Now, I need to get in the right mindset for what I’m about to do.” I said.

I was pretty happy with my [Oath] and all aspects of it. I just needed to do some serious thinking about deliberately dropping healing on someone trying to help me. It was different from the harpy, who I thought was actively trying to kill me.

I was dropping the healing for a multitude of reasons. I needed to know the impact of the poison, if it was still persisting in the air or on skin, the effects it had on people, the timeline it acted on, and more.

Pure selfish knowledge wasn’t enough.

This was to help Surveyor. This was to carefully, in a controlled way, expose her to a lethal poison, such that she could get a class to help combat it. Helping people survive their current environment was like sparring. Except I was helping her spar the world, so to speak, and I was simply a ‘neutral’ observer, the medic on the sideline ready to step in and assist when the spar got out of hand, the arbiter who declared the bout at an end, the natural philosopher trying to learn more about the world.

There we go. That was the right mindset.

“I’m going to briefly, temporarily, drop my healing on you.” I explained to Surveyor. Her eyes widened.

“Is that why I didn’t get a bruise when I hit my shin jumping over the wall? I was sure I was going to get the biggest, ugliest bruise ever, but it just stopped hurting and nothing ever came of it. My brother said I was lying about hitting it! Except the rocks had still fallen over, and-”

I held up my hand.

“That’s right. Under my protective aegis, it’ll be nearly impossible for anyone to die of anything besides old age, hunger, or thirst.” I had a handle on suffocation these days.

I could see the teenage gears turning in her head, and I lightly chopped her head.

“No.” I said. “Whatever you’re thinking right now, just - no.”

Surveyor pouted, but didn’t argue. I continued on.

“Depending on the severity, the poison might start immediately ravaging your body, it might take some effort to rediscover it. It’s entirely possible that it’s gone, and nothing will happen. That would be ideal. Assuming the worst, I’ll let it go as far as I believe is safe, then heal you up.”

Surveyor was looking distinctly green at that explanation. “Then I class up?” She tentatively ventured. I shook my head.

“No, for a good class, you’ll have to be exposed quite a few times. Three times a day, then a long discussion on various types of poisons, plagues, and miasmas, how they work, and how they could potentially be countered or removed. Half a volume of the Medical Manuscripts, but honestly, you should probably read five more to get the proper foundational knowledge. Without the knowledge, you’d just get a [Poison Survivor] or [Miasma Resistor] class. We need to do this properly, and the knowledge will set you up for the future one way or another. Knowledge is power. We’ll repeat for about, oh, two weeks at a minimum, although two months would be best, then you’ll class up. Should be good for a light green class at minimum, but it’s possible I’ve got the weight to boost you to dark green for this, with a tiny, small, outside chance at blue if we’re extremely lucky and Exterreri was hit harder than I thought.”

Surveyor looked like she wanted to run away, and I flashed my teeth at her.

“Remember what you said - a deal’s a deal, no running away.”

She swallowed and gritted her teeth.

“Hit me.”

[*ding!* [Everywoman] leveled up! 504 -> 505]