I had a million things to do, and extremely limited time.
“Let’s go talk with Katerina.” I split my mind again into several processes, doing a dozen different things at once.
The ‘simplest’ one was designing multiple spells that could help handle all this ash and smoke in the air. We were all breathing through masks - a perfectly serviceable solution - but if this state of affairs were to persist, I wanted a dozen different solutions. Hopefully I wouldn’t need them, but I’d done my reading. I knew how long ash and smoke could linger from a large wildfire, and it seemed like this was one to dwarf them all.
The next part the still-named [Luminary Mind] focused on were the details of all the new skills. I hadn’t read them all in-depth in the world of my soul, and given how my ‘as quickly as possible’ class up had turned into half a day, I was glad I hadn’t tried. I’d probably still be out of it even now.
A Drop of Eternity in a Sea of Starlight: Immortality skill. Turn back the hourglass of time, then shatter it.
Oh nice! I was more than familiar with my skill at this point, and the upgrade strongly implied that people would stop aging as well as becoming younger. No more would they still need to seek out their own Immortality skill, or find further ways to fend off White Dove.
Also… I could totally turn someone into a child, then they’d be stuck there. Something to keep in my back pocket if I was ever being extorted heavily over it.
Domain of the Healer: Rapid regeneration of everyone in range. All who cry out your name in request of succor will find your touch lands upon them. -32,752 mana regeneration.
Oh hey! The ‘call my name’ skill got merged into my healing aura! On one hand, there was a strong ‘educate people on what they needed to do to make it work’ aspect, on the other, my name was literally healer. Anyone who called out for a healer would miraculously find their prayer granted.
Just as long as they didn’t call for a medic, doctor, or nurse though. They’d be plain out of luck.
Goddess. How weird was it that this made complete and total sense to me!? No more questioning it, no more finding it weird, just complete and total ‘yup, that’s exactly the way it should be’. I was finding the acceptance odd, not the phenomenon.
Clad in Twilight: Harness the ethereal essence of twilight, the fleeting moment between day and night, to reinforce your gear. -8192 mana regeneration.
The ‘low’ - and how far I’d come that 8000 was low - mana regeneration indicated that this wasn’t the strongest of armor skills. Such was life - simply being able to reinforce my gear and prevent hostile Classers from directly manipulating it was enough for me, and the real bonus was my vitality being added, not from the skill itself.
The Mantle of Dusk and Dawn: Dawn and dusk. Protection and destruction. Aegis and shield. A flipping coin, one side of absolute void and the other shining with the brilliance of every star in the sky. Shield and protect with both, granting succor to all those who wish to shelter in your broad shadow. -131,008 mana regeneration.
That was a terrible skill description, and I’d have to do extensive testing to see what, exactly, it meant. It wasn’t like skills came with a second set of instincts that automatically let me know exactly how to use it and what it did.
A tiny, childish part of me was squeeing with joy that I might have both types of shields - the protective starry mantle that I’d had when I was young, and the destructive [Event Horizon] skill I’d eventually evolved it into.
Elaine Eternal: Neither exhaustion, weariness or fatigue, nor gloom of night, can keep you from swift completion of your duty. -512 mana regeneration.
There was a slim part of me that hoped it would merge into my domain skill. The overlap was there - but I was in no position to start to try and figure out a brand new skill.
Iona and I didn’t bother being subtle about moving through the city. We went to the rooftops and sprinted over to where Katerina and the rest of her command structure was located.
The dragoneye moons were rising in their full crimson glory, an ominous nimbus radiating off them. Lun’kat was in a bad mood, and letting the world know about it.
The moons weren’t supposed to be full tonight.
The city was in bad shape.
When the first city-destroying strike had hit Massa, it had shaken but not fallen. People were still looking out for one another, lending a helping hand. The community came together in face of the disaster, pooled their resources, and did their level best to help each other.
Oh, sure, there were pricks the world over, and I wouldn’t pretend Massa or even Exterreri were any different. Selfish hoarders who wouldn’t lift a finger to help their neighbors, criminals taking advantage of the chaos, and low lifes who took the moment to take advantage of people.
Even… even adventurers tended to only be lowlifes who took advantage of people when they could about half the time. When adventurers had the moral advantage, it was bad.
The second hit, the Decay elf rippling caustic destruction through the city, was more than the fine citizens of Massa could tolerate. No longer were they lending a helping hand to their neighbor, sharing what little they had. The very real possibility of starvation was rearing its ugly head as the news that almost all food had been rotted away ripped through the city like wildfire.
Whoever said civilization was only three meals away from collapse got it wrong. It was an overestimate - the cracks were rapidly expanding at one missed meal, and it was all going to go to hell by the second one. The guard was gone, probably gone home to their families. What was the point of maintaining law and order if that simply resulted in starvation? Already the seeds of various riots were forming, and full centuries of steel-clad [Legionaries] hustled down the streets to break them up.
“This is going to get bad.” I said.
“Brrpt.” Auri agreed. “... Brrrrrpt?”
Iona eyed the walls.
“Burning the walls down might unironically help the situation if you can do it in a controlled way.” She said. “You’d be causing a panic, and I assume you can not burn people out or suck out all their air, but preventing people from getting trapped would be a boon.”
“If Katerina agrees, sure.” I said. Fenrir snorted doubtfully at the whole thing, but didn’t comment. Auri started to burn brighter in her excitement, but wasn’t quite able to zip around me - we were going too quickly.
Iona and I hammered out what I was going to say to Katerina and how we were going to frame things.
She groaned at my initial presentation. I had a whole speech about Sentinels being for all the people of Exterreri, not just the Sixth. It followed all the rules in my big book of social rules! I double checked! I imagined she’d break out some mention of ‘abandoning us in our hour of need’ or something.
“No, no, that’s way too blunt. You can’t tell her that in front of everyone! The Sixth will end up deserting! She’ll have to try to arrest you, we all know how well that will work. Here, let’s do it like this.” My wife suggested.
We arrived at the bristling wall of shields and spears that was Katerina’s headquarters, a large number of citizens muttering darkly out of reach of the weapons. Torches were held high for light, and I’d be surprised if there were no confrontations. Everyone’s hair was going white under the relentless ashfall, and one of the civilians was busy scooping out ashes from the top of an open rain barrel.
We strode in like we owned the place.
“Dawn. Excellent. We’re hoping to move out tonight.” Katerina said without preamble. I saluted, hyper-aware that it might be the last time I ever saluted.
“Legata. We’re happy to join the Sixth out to their final destination, but after that point, my team’s going back to Sanguino to evaluate the situation, and possibly bring back news from High Command or the Senate. There’s a chance we will be basing ourselves near Sanguino, and continue to act as War Sentinel for the Sixth, or the founded town.”
Perfect! Hit all the points Iona suggested. Phrased it as ‘we’re doing this for the Sixth’, while still clearly communicating ‘we’re breaking off’.
Legata Katerina shot us the stink-eye, and Leona, the second-in-command, made a noise of visible disgust. Fenrir’s hackles went up, the shrunken wyvern curled around Iona’s shoulders like a scaled scarf.
“Good. None of the scouts we’ve sent towards Sanguino have returned, and at this point I suspect foul play.” Katerina’s response came a few seconds later. “Fenrir being based out of Sanguino will relieve our logistics. We plan to march out of here at midnight, and do a forced march all the way.”
Whoof, that was going to be rough.
“Dismissed.” Katerina said.
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I saluted again and left the tent.
“Let’s see what we can do.” Iona suggested, and I was all for it.
“Brrrpt…” Auri was a little sad that she hadn’t been able to talk with Katerina about Operation: BURN IT ALL, and I shrugged.
“Why don’t you carefully make a number of gates in the wall?” I suggested. “You don’t get to burn everything, but clearly marking what’s going on and keeping the flames contained should manage to get it done.”
Iona nodded.
“Take Fenrir with you. If something happens, Elaine, light up with your skill. Fenrir, get large and throw Lightning around. Understood?”
I had a nostalgic flashback to my time as a Ranger, where we had to go around in pairs.
Iona and I took off, both of us able to fly with skills, and we kept a half-eye on Auri and Fenrir as the two worked on reconfiguring the walls, so to speak. The mask across my face reminded me again of the eternally falling ashes, and what it heralded was enough to make me shudder.
In the end, I doubted it would be Immortals fighting each other that would kill the most people. Starvation would do that. A single season of poor light conditions could be enough to starve a large portion of the population, nevermind if it went on for several years. Stats and skills could only do so much against such an all-encompassing enemy.
At the same time, another aspect of Exterreri’s brilliance glimmered through. By shadowing the major cities in Ash - presumably for the vampires - people got used to living in the shade. Got and developed skills for handling it. Those skills would serve people well in the coming months or years.
The sky briefly turned to Lightning from horizon to horizon, and Iona and I both braced ourselves before a bone-rattling shockwave passed over and through us. It was ‘only’ a loud boom, a tertiary effect of a battle between two Immortals, and we looked down in silent unison as it rattled Massa.
A great cry of surprise went up at the sudden Lightning, but everything that could be rattled loose already had been. It was a reminder that there was a war going on, one that maybe Iona and I could participate in, but most of the people here had no power to do anything but put their heads down and try to survive.
I half expected a riot to break out, but after seeing the sky wasn’t going to literally fall on their heads, people started to move.
No level. Drat. No wait, good, nobody got hurt.
“Let’s go there.” Iona pointed out a knot of people. Several were loading up a cart with furniture, but they were callously blocking the entire narrow road as they did, which was causing problems.
“Sure.” I agreed, the two of us diving down.
My mana wasn’t flickering at all, and my healing was set to maximum range and ability. I needed to check and see if my range had increased significantly. It went without a question that it had gone up, the only question was ‘how much’.
Iona landed near the cart, and I remained hovering overhead, [A Light Shining in the Darkness], six wings splayed out. I remembered the halo effect the skill had, and I flicked it on, an intimidating, yet reassuring presence.
The angel of mercy is paying attention, but is here for YOU.
With a half-dozen words, Iona had calmed people down, and she single-handedly lifted the filled cart up over her head, keeping everything perfectly balanced. People surged around her as the Valkyrie used [Telekinesis] to float the rest of the family’s supplies up into the cart, rapidly loading it up.
Several people approached Iona.
“Pardon me miss Sentinel,” One of the middle-aged ladies said. I wanted to facepalm… but Iona was wearing my sigil, and it wasn’t utter insanity to get it wrong, especially this far from the heart of Sanguino. “Is there a chance you could give me a hand? My husband, bless his soul, passed a few years ago, and these old bones aren’t what they used to be.”
By the stricken look on Iona’s face, and the eager looks of the people around her, waiting for an answer, I knew what her answer would be.
“Of course, give me a minute to finish here and I’ll see what I can do.” She said.
Goddesses. I loved her generous heart so much. Even though it was digging us into a hole, I couldn’t say a thing. My [Oath] had dug us into endless holes, and I was more than willing to participate here.
Person after person, cart after bag, Iona and I did whatever we could, helped however we could reach a hand out. With the number of tears being shed over empty pantries, I was feeling extremely guilty over the massive stash of food stored away in my [Tower], and with the looks Iona was not so subtly shooting my way, I knew she was thinking about it as well.
It was an agonizing decision.
“The library! Give me a quick moment.” I dove down, Iona close behind me. I didn’t bother knocking, I just tore through the building, searching for any books.
To my great displeasure, quite a few books were being turned into kindling, and uniformly had been hit with the Decay skill. There were no books worth preserving, and I supposed kindling was the best thing they could be at this point.
I mean, technically, I could grab as many as possible and hope I encountered someone with exactly the right skills one day to undo the damage on them, but the shot was long and as much as I hated to admit it, I had better things to do.
“Hey, look what’s going on there.” I pointed out a high-level vampire [Smith - 1121] with a long line of people. The crowd was starting to look a little unhappy, and only the vampire’s level and the innate violence promised by his species was keeping them off him.
Iona nodded and the two of us landed near the vampire.
“Nope.” He said, gesturing the next person forward.
“Crowd control.” Iona immediately retorted. The vampire paused a moment, eyes flickering over our uniforms and badges.
“Sentinel.” He scrambled to his feet and saluted. “I’d be honored to have you and your team on crowd control, but are you sure this is the best use of your time?”
“It’s not, but I’m going to stick around while Iona here grabs a line to take over.” I twitched my head in the direction Katerina was in.
“Just as long as you’re not trying to cut the line.” The vampire refocused on the woman who’d stepped forward with a half-dozen pots stacked in her hands. He gestured to a wide variety of tools on his walls. “Tell me which ones you’d like.”
“Hatchet. Saw. Sickle. Hoe.” She said. The vampire frowned, clicking his tongue.
“You don’t have enough metal for all that, and no stick for a hoe.” He said. “I can do the other three. Do you have a spare pot? Losing your last one is a fatal mistake.”
The woman hesitated, the answer clear.
“No, these are all of them.”
The vampire hummed a moment, and the pots transformed. The metal flowed like a liquid, rapidly reassembling themselves into new shapes.
I wasn’t an expert on tool creation, but to my modest eye, each tool he’d just made looked exactly custom-fitted to the lady, up to a grip designed explicitly for her hands. He waved her off, calling the next person forward.
I didn’t know his name, but I thought he was on track to save more lives in the coming years by this single night of work than I had when the explosion had rocked Massa. Keeping him up and working seemed like it was worth more than running around and helping random people - and that’s what the line or two I’d sent Iona off to get would hopefully accomplish.
Katerina might be sour on our presence right now, but she was no idiot. While I hovered intimidatingly, a clear message of ‘fuck around and find out’, I let [Luminary Mind] work through the ethics of the food question.
The easy, level 1 analysis was to ‘just do it’. People were hungry. I had food. They didn’t. Easy enough to give them what I had, stave off hunger another day.
When I started going deeper, it wasn’t that simple. It was like my old problem in Perinthus. I had a limited, life-saving resource. What was the best way to distribute it to do the most good?
I was ignoring the cost to teleport in and out of my [Tower]. Gone were the days where I needed to channel to get in, and the days of needing to be judicious of my use of teleporting in and out of it were pretty much over. Both [The Arbiter of Life and Death] and [The Elaine] had focused hard on mana regeneration, and while I couldn’t endlessly flicker in and out, I was confident in my ability to haul everything out if needed.
The question became - would it do any good here? The lady who just left, who was trekking out on her own with a backpack, minimum relevant skills, a new set of tools and the bare bones of a plan - was she the best person to throw three meals at? The young couple, both of them at 128, were a good bet, but what about the old [Mage]? Could he hack it, would his skills and levels give him an edge, would he turn out to be the protector of a small village, or have a heart attack within the week?
Actually - that was an idea. Fuck selling Immortality, [A Drop of Eternity in a Sea of Starlight] was off cooldown, and it was unknown if it even had a cooldown anymore. I give it to an aged Classer, give them a second lease on life, and a strong chance for whatever community they were a part of. If the skill had no cooldown, I could hand it out like candy, improving everyone’s odds.
The third level of analysis centered around distribution. If I started chucking loaves of bread out here? Riot, fights, and the good work the [Smith] was doing utterly ruined. Distribution was tricky, and when it came to be that it was ‘There’s a hyper limited quantity, the Sentinel is judging if you get anything or not’, that caused its own massive can of worms. The title of Sentinel had weight, it had lasted literally all of the Immortal wars and throughout history, I’d be torching our reputation in an evening with nothing to show for it.
Then there was the question of ‘wait, what about later?’
If I gave away all my food now, Iona would be over the moons with my actions. It’d be a little less impressive next week, when we’d struck out for Orthus Village and our bowls were empty. It’d be even worse if we got there and their food stores had been burned or decayed. It was a little selfish, but I’d rather look after the people I’d known over the last few decades than complete strangers.
Did my [Oath] come into play with this logic? Was letting people starve acceptable?
… it was a narrow yes, and I suspected a short conversation with Iona would push my understanding of the spirit of [Oath] to say no, I had to do everything I could.
There was no good answer, and I wanted to give away what I had. To freely throw food into the crowd, to host a great banquet with tables creaking with food, to use a dozen cauldrons and Auri to cook soup for the entire city. I didn’t have to help and feed people, I wanted to. Only the knowledge that I’d cause a riot and a half stayed my hand, the knowledge that I’d cause more harm than good by my actions.
When we got out of here, when we saw the thousand trickles of life dispersing across the countryside, then I might turn into the magic food fairy.
Iona soon returned with two whole lines of [Legionaries] hustling behind her, a [Centurion] heading up the whole operation. The rows of gleaming spears and polished helmets, along with my prior ruminations, added a final aspect to my analysis, the reason I was utterly unconcerned with the Legion and their food supply.
Men with spears never starved.
[Name: Elaine]
[Race: Chimera (Elvenoid)]
[Age: 112]
[Mana: 15,541,730/15,541,730]
[Mana Regeneration: 52,526,131 +(165,273,822)]
Stats
[Free Stats: 0]
[Strength: 135,674 (Effectively: 1,085,392)]
[Dexterity: 160,008 (Effectively: 1,703,765)]
[Vitality: 566,922 (Effectively: 8,858,156)]
[Speed: 554,154 (Effectively: 10,907,413)]
[Mana: 1,554,173]
[Mana Regeneration: 5,537,971 (+ 16,527,382)]
[Magic Power: 2,283,963 (+ 144,574,858)]
[Magic Control: 2,282,950 (+ 144,510,735)]
[Class 1: [The Elaine- Celestial: Lv 1266]]
[Celestial Spirit: 1266]
[Domain of the Healer: 1266]
[A Drop of Eternity in a Sea of Starlight: 558]
[Luminary Mind: 1266]
[Universal Cure: 1266]
[Clad in Twilight: 513]
[The Mantle of Dusk and Dawn: 860]
[Elaine Eternal: 1266]
[Class 2: [Seraph of the Dawn - Radiance: Lv 982]]
[Radiance Mastery: 982]
[A Light Shining in the Darkness: 851]
[The Rays of the First Dawn: 982]
[Radiant Angel's Spear of Obliteration: 430]
[Celestial Dew: 982]
[Sunrise Halo: 982]
[Wings of the Seraphim: 982]
[Six Wings, Six Million Feathers: 982]
[Class 3: [Sage of Tomes - Spatial: Lv 909]]
[Spatial Authority: 909]
[Scripture Savant: 909]
[Teleportation: 840]
[The Library of Infinite Wonder: 909]
[Tower of Knowledge: 434]
[Reality, Writ As You Will: 701]
[Astral Archives: 909]
[Endless Pursuit of Knowledge: 909]
General Skills
[Long-Range Identify: 624]
[Dexterous and Handy: 500]
[Companion Bond between Elaine and Auri: 1266]
[The World Around Me: 533]
[Oath of Elaine to Lyra: 1266]
[Sentinel's Superiority: 1266]
[Persistent Casting: 1266]
[Tender Gardening: 627]