Chapter ??? - Dragoneye Mortis 1.3_Beneath the Dragoneye Moons

Chapter ??? - Dragoneye Mortis 1.3

 As they traveled, making small talk,paring notes about the two, three worlds they knew about, Vita’s undead horde grew. Zombie raptors jumped and tore apart other, lesser creatures, bringing the kills to Vita like a particrly proud gaggle of cats. Vita didn’t even seem to nce at the bodies, but each one brought to her was soon reanimated into her service. Monkeys and snakes, raptors and the asional crocodile, beasts from the paleozoic to cambrian era all joined Vita’s ever-growing swarm.

 I could totally get used to not having to do all the heavy lifting for once. ine thought with wide eyes, seeing the numbers grow. At the same time - should I be stopping this? If Vita turns on me, I can’t handle that many monsters at once. Especially since I’m pinned to the ground.

 I should totally ask her to cook another raptor for me, Vita thought.

 “Hey, can you cook another raptor for me?" she then asked, hardly one to let anything get between thoughts of food and the potential acquisition of food.

 “Suuuuure… but can it start off dead-dead? Like, not moving dead? And not ripping its own arm off?” ine shuddered.

 “Sure, I guess,” Vita answered, shrugging slightly. “Stop moving.”

 At Vita’s order, the entire raptor horde promptly froze like someone had taken a photograph and made it reality. ine nearly flew off her mount at the sudden halt, but held on. ssy-eyed frozen raptors surrounded her in every direction.

 “Take your pick!” Vita told her happily.

 ine facepalmed, but figured this was the best she was going to get, not without another long, awkward conversation.“Raptor or something else?” ine asked, noting the wide variety of animals in the horde. Raptors were the dominant species, but there was enough variety if Vita was feeling spicy.

 “I’m the furthest thing from picky,” Vita answered. “I’ll eat anything you cook.”

 ine was getting ideas. Terrible, terrible ideas.

 “How hungry are you…?”

 “Yes,” Vita answered, without a hint of humor.

 “Mind if we eat more than one of your- um - one of the, um, ah… creatures?”

 ine was still struggling with “zombie”

 “I will eat. Anything. You cook for me.”

 ine had a brilliant grin split her face.

 “Right! One jungle smorgasbording right up!” she said, deftly navigating through the horde, ying discount Noah.

 Instead of two of each animal for an ark, it was one of each animal for the firepit. Vita watched with enraptured attention, a grin widening on her face with each animal ine selected.

 “How hungry are you, exactly?” Vita asked. “You like eating monsters too? My team always thought it was gross.”

 ine shrugged.

 “Using mana - well, technically, regenerating mana - is hungry, hungry work. I’ve been away from towns, in the wilderness often enough to just not be picky. When it’s do or die, eat or starve? Everything looks like food.”

 “Huh. Most of my experience starving has been in the towns.”

 ine patted Vita in what she imagined was aforting way, though Vita mostly just stiffened up at the touch.

 “Well, don’t worry about it. I’ll make sure you’re well-fed here.” She said, expertly burning through dino-joints and roasting each piece one-handedly, then handing it off to Vita. The other hand already had a hot, greasy raptor-wing, as ine tore into it between words.

 “We’re friends now,” Vita dered, and immediately started tearing into the food with startling speed.

 The impromptu barbeque continued until the pain orb - err, sun - fell, both young women disying appetites far outside their weight ss. Vita watched with awe at the growing sunset, her childlike face morphing into the greatest disy of emotion ine had seen on her since they met.

 “What is that? Oh, wow. It’s like… like giant blotches of flower colors in the sky!” she announces, raising a grasping hand as if trying to touch one.

 ine nced over, and with azy wave, summoned a [Mantle of the Stars] next to Vita.

 “For closer looking.” ine said, eyes up at the endlessly spiraling stars above winking into view as the sun finishes passing over the horizon.

 “Woah. You’re right, the sky is just… going dark,” Vita whispered, idly pawing at the mantle. “Where’s that thing you talked about? Your kinda-sky-ind? The moon?”

 Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the vition.

 “It’lle. Just give it time.”

 “This is so cool. I still can’t believe all the light in your worldes from such a tiny ball! And now all these white dots…”

 Vita stared open-mouthed at the sky, for once her hidden, inner eye being the one of her three incapable of seeing an otherworldly beauty. Utterly entranced, a look of childlike joy and wonder on her face as she tried to trace the stars above, count them, understand them via any sort of equivalent from her world yeting up empty.

 And then she saw the moon.

 Moons.

 Two full moons rose above the horizon, washing thend in their baleful red light. Two moons, with crimson irises and slitted pupils, looking anything like a pair of eyes, overlords of the world looking down upon all the puny mortals below them. A snake, freezing a mouse in its gaze. A dragon, watching the world she owned from above.

 The Dragoneye Moons.

 For a fraction of an instant, Vita froze, her breath gone. Then an overwhelming terror consumed her features, and she bolted, trying to hide from the sky behind a tree.

 “Oh fuck, it’s here!” Vita hisses. “I don’t think it saw me! ine, we can’t let it see me, we can’t. The raptors aren’t fast enough to… oh shit, oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck…”

 “Calm down! Calm down! Breathe!” ine said, sliding next to Vita. “Okay, talk to me. What’s wrong? What’s here? They’re just the moons. They’re not going to hurt you.”

 ine mentally had a dozen asterisks on that particr statement, but the general idea was correct. Like, if some crazy high level Gravity mage decided to pull them into the, yeah, they could hurt, and it could be possible to do…

 But that was for another day.

 ine was struck with inspiration as Vita continued to freak out. Sheyered [Mantle of the Stars] over her gourmetpanion, then lit up with [Shine].

 “See? It can’t see you now. Just stars and light here.” ine tried to soothe Vita.

 “That’s the eye the Mistwatcher used to look at me!” Vita squeaked, her tone suggesting not only terror but the revtion of some grand secret. “If it nces my way again I might cause another perception event!”

 “What’s a perception event, and the Mistwatcher is the big thing from your world, right?” ine asked.

 She didn’t wait for an answer.

 “Look, I have it on good authority that those moons have been there for over four thousand years. They’re just rocks, created by mad gods and goddesses.”

 “Yes! The Mistwatcher is a god! It’s the god! And it has at least one eye which looks like that!”

 ine debated telling Vita about her experiences with gods and being in the realm of the gods, and how gods tended to stay there, and not really go to Pallos. Not unless a divine miracle was requested.

 She skipped all that, and thought about how Vita described the ce she lived.

 “You normally avoid its eye? Eyes? By being on the ind, right?” ine asked to confirm.

 “Yes, but now it’s in the fucking sky!” Vita screeched.

 “Sure, but I have an easy solution. Let’s bury you in dirt and mud. Then it can’t see you.” ine said matter-of-factly.

 There was no reasoning someone out of a position they hadn’t reasoned themself into, and ine wasn’t about to try and y therapist to Vita, and convince her that the moons were harmless. For all ine knew, they weren’t actually harmless, given their unnatural state andplete and total not-how-moons-should-be-ness, but that was neither here nor there. She just needed Vita to get through the night, and one night at a time she’de round - or they’d be done with whatever bullshit the fae wanted them to do this time.

 “I… have no idea if that will work,” Vita said hesitantly, “and if it doesn’t work, you, me, and everything remotely nearby is gonna get annihted by a ten thousand mile long tentacle.”

 “Okay, do you have any other ideas how to not get annihted?”

 “I… no. I don’t know. It’s in the sky! It’s not supposed to be in the sky! Maybe a cave? I don’t know if ayer of dirt will do much, but I’d feel safer with solid rock between us.”

 ine frowned, then brightened up.

 “I’ve got an idea!” She said. “Can you let memand the zombies?”

 Vita nodded.

 “[Queen’s Commander],” she murmured, uncurling slightly and poking ine in the thigh.

 [Necromancer] ine in the house! Not where I expected to be a day ago, but hey, that’s life.

 “Right. You, you, and you - I need those three trees cut down and moved to the side. You, you, and you. Bring back wood. You and you - find stone. You four - cover Vita, don’t let the eyes see her. You-...”

 ine started to efficiently bark out orders, like she’d been trained to do it for years.

 She was used to intelligent Rangers though, not the near-mindless Dregs. Some of hermands were interpreted in interesting ways.

 “No, not like that!” ine cried out, grabbing her hair in frustration as a raptor brought her a stick the size of her finger. “Big wood! Like the trees!”

 Still, with much frustration, grumbling, ordering and reordering, ine’s vision started toe to un-life.

 Charitably, it could be called ‘A giant pile of logs and sticks.’

 “Here. Crawl inside.” ine said, as it started toe together. “It’ll shield you from the eyes in the sky, and we’ll keep making it bigger and thicker while you’re inside. Keep you safe.”

 inesered the leg off of one particrly bad-at-followingmands raptor, fried it, and passed it to Vita.

 “Here, have a bite while you wait,” ine offered.

 I am getting way too used tosering meat off of moving creatures.

 Vita, for her part, just grabbed the food between her teeth, nodding a quick thank-you before scurrying into shelter. From her perspective, hiding behind a tree hadn’t gotten her killed yet, so hiding behind a structure of trees should hopefully work the same.

 ine kept working for hours, building the fortrger andrger, hoping that it wouldn’t all copse on itself. She asionally threw in more pieces of the unhelpful raptor into the center, where a scrawny arm would dart out to grab it and drag it into its maw.

 Finally, ine felt like she’d done enough. She roasted thest few pieces of the raptor, told the rest to “Guard”, and crawled in herself.

 “Hey. It’s going to be okay,” ine said, lying down next to Vita. “It’s all going to be okay.” ine closed her eyes.

 Vita nodded numbly.

 “Well, if it isn’t, at least we’ll probably die instantly before getting our souls eaten,” she muttered.

 ine didn’t hear her. She was fast asleep.

 “Wow. She… passed out fast,” Vita mumbled to herself.

MillionNovel

Chapter ??? - Dragoneye Mortis 1.3