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19 - New Skin
🕑 Added 2022-06-06 02:29:39 +0000 UTCThe Teacher opened it up with one hand, scanning the foreword. A moment later, the pamphlet emitted a wisp of Fog as its magickal text began to unravel beneath the Teacher’s gaze. Victor could see the gears turning behind his eyes for a moment, before the Teacher looked off to the side towards the main building, then back at Victor.
“...I think Duma will want to speak with you,” he said, returning the pamphlet. “Take this with you. Don’t worry about hurrying back, you’re excused.”
Victor did as told, putting on the mask of aloof self-assuredness as he walked across the courtyard, despite the fact he felt curious gazes on his back and heard gossiping whispers… At least until the Teacher quieted them by exaggeratedly clearing his throat.
A few knocks on the door, this time with no pattern, indicating no particular reason for the visit.
“Come in!” Resved’s voice echoed from beyond the door after a few seconds. The old man stepped out from behind the right-hand partition,
“Ah, Victor,” the old man said, briefly looking him up and down with a hint of amusement in his eyes. “Your fashion choices aren’t exactly sensible, but… I can’t say they surprise me either, all things considered. At least you look more comfortable in your own skin, but… I doubt new clothes alone would spark such a change. Ah, confound my rambling. Why are you here?”
Victor pulled out the pamphlet half-expecting the old man to give him a lecture about laying low and not provoking the occupationists with things like this, but instead, Duma’s eyes lit up and a slight smile upturned his lips.
“...That explains it. Did you happen to receive a package with two-dozen of these pamphlets?”
“Yes, how did you-” Victor blurted out, completely blindsided by the old man’s apparent clairvoyance.
Digging around in his robe for a moment, Duma pulled out his own copy of the pamphlet. “A certain Ms. Newman left me a copy when we met a short while ago, and since then, I have decided that this wonderful little booklet would be a fitting way to modernize our curriculum. She claimed that one of my own students would deliver the order, but I did not expect that it would be you. Did you happen to receive a brief message alongside the pamphlets, as well?”
“A calendar date, yes,” the younger man answered without pause. It was clear that Duma knew more than he did, especially given the old man’s satisfied nodding at the new knowledge.
“Hrm… That certainly explains the message she asked me to pass to the one who delivered the pamphlets: “Be ready on that day,” or so it went. Do you have the pamphlets with you?”
Victor shook his head. He’d left them at home, in the same box they’d arrived in.
“I suppose it is no issue. Bring them tomorrow, but do not be seen with them in public; I will have your instructor send you to me a little while after the free training period starts. You have an assistant tablet with Fog Storage, yes?”
Vic nodded again.
“Good,” the old man smiled. “How are your wounds? Healing well, I hope?”
Duma stared through Victor’s chest again as he asked those two questions, not even waiting for a verbal answer before he answered himself: “Looks like it. The surface scar tissue is already calcified, fascinating. Oh! Speaking of, I did manage to procure those bone growth supplements that… Oswald mentioned…”
A grim melancholy came over the old man, as if he already knew the Instructor to be dead. It went as quickly as it had come - or rather, Duma dispelled it that quickly - and the old man soon darted towards the door at the back. “Just a moment!” he yelled in the moment between him opening the door, slipping through, and shutting it. Victor, curious as he was, angled himself such that the next time the door opened, he would get at least a glimpse through. A short while passed, and he heard Duma’s footsteps at the other side. It opened slowly, and Victor felt something strange, as if his perception of time stretching the same way it very rarely had done before. He felt every extraneous sensation fading out of focus, every fiber of his being arrayed to the purpose of seeing what was at the other side of that door.
Through the gap, he could see a cabinet, and nothing more… But in its glass panes was the reflection of something further into the room. A spear upon an altar. He could just about make out that it nearly looked like a shortsword on a very long rod, possessing a crossguard and a double-edged head, affixed to a rod of dark, lacquered wood. The next heartbeat, the door had shut and Victor felt everything fade back in as Duma approached him with a small, metal box and metal bottle in one hand, and a bottle full of milky-white powder in the other. The bottle’s label extolled the virtues of crushed boar bones and their positive effects on sexual health. Snake oil, but useful to him. The box just had the word “BONEMELD” in stark military lettering. The metal bottle’s label was obscured by the old man’s fingers.
“There you are, took it out of your tuition. Only use the Bonemeld if you need to, it’ll constipate you like nothing else,” he said, moving the metal bottle such that its label became visible. Garish greens and reds popped out at him from the sheet metal. “And this uh… It should make cooking with actual bones more palatable. I’ll be honest, I just bought this because it looked interesting.”
The label of this one stated that it could make the unpalatable taste good, rehydrate dried meat, and bad meat safe to eat. It was named “Wonder-Sauce”, an appropriately kitschy name given the kitschy container.
“Er, about the tuition-” Vic began as he took the supplements, holding both between his right hand’s fingers as he reached under his armpit with his left to get his Tablet out of its carrying holster. Duma cut him off again, flatly stating: “We will see how things turn out. If you stay, you stay. If you leave, you leave. I do not intend to try keeping you here over a couple dozen gelt. Don’t bother asking why I think you will leave. I can read people… And I saw you and Reiner at Scarlet Silk Road with those three, besides. Go on now, I have work to do, for once.”
Victor did as was asked of him, mentally re-centering himself before he returned to the light of day, cockily striding into the midst of his classmates and making it obvious that Duma had not chastised him in the slightest. He did, however, twist the truth by making it seem that he had learned the old man had expressed interest in Sturmblitz Kunst, and Vic’s possession of the pamphlet happened to coincide with Duma wanting to check that his injury was healing properly. The rest of the training day passed uneventfully, and he returned home immediately afterwards. He had half a mind to visit the town bathhouse, but a gut feeling told him it would be a bad idea, so he dealt with the annoyance of using lukewarm water to wash the day’s sweat off instead. His legs and forearms both thumped with dull pain from a day spent on conditioning, and his hair had gotten to the point where it demanded a proper wash.
His mind dwelt on that date. It was only a few days out: Friday.
There was still time. He put these thoughts aside for the time being and cracked open the box from yesterday. Victor’s vanity made him prioritize making the most of this opportunity to stand out, and if he were to truly make this outrageous getup his own, he would have to actually wear it and get used to it beforehand. The absurdity of his own actions wasn’t lost on him, but he considered it no different from a knight having his armor polished before battle. In the end, Victor found a small bit of similarity between himself and Von Wickten, and it only intensified his desire to murder the man.
“At least I have actual tastes in fashion beyond gold, kitschy dragon imagery, and dozens of face-moulding surgeries to hide the inbred jaw,” he thought to himself, projecting his resentment of the high nobility that had looked down on his family onto Von Wickten.
Inside the box he found not just the drakeskin shorts, but also a snakeskin belt of nearly identical make to Zel’s, the buckle being more rectangular, but in the same general style. The drake’s leather made up a stronger, outer layer, with large scales taken from the beast’s back making up armored sections on the sides, while the inside was lined with a different, much more supple material. It tried to stick to his fingers when he touched it, a light thrum of pins-and-needles spreading through his skin at the point of contact, with the inner lining only letting go a moment after he pulled away. These were soaked with magic through and through, there was no doubt in his mind; he wagered the enchantment to make the garment shape itself to the wearer would be a tad more aggressive than usual to help compensate for the toughness of drake hide. Victor couldn’t stop himself from investigating the piece of clothing just as thoroughly as he had done to his new top, taking in the barely-noticeable smell of arcanely processed leather, running his fingers through the soft Sturmgrandr fur lining at the top, looking over the stitching and prying at the scales on the sides, until he realized that something wasn’t quite right.
They were bigger on the inside, specifically in the groin.
His first thought was that, maybe, that old man had taken his request literally when he said he wanted the garment to be like Zel’s trousers, in the sense of outward appearance. However, Victor was quite certain that it was the alternative: The old man must’ve been familiar with the fashions of city-dwelling nobility, and he must’ve decided to pull a small prank on Victor by incorporating a technique used by certain noblemen whose bodies had developed unsightly protuberances, or whose manhoods had swelled to superhuman proportions due to misuse of mutagens.
Victor wasn’t sure if it was supposed to be a joke about his androgynous appearance, the size of his manhood, or both.
Perhaps the most exasperating part of it all was that, when he put them on, he was made to consider whether it had been a purely practical choice. Familiar thrumming enveloped him as the enchanted garment interfaced with his being the same way any other arcane item would; the leather shrunk around him and contoured itself to his body with a zeal that left no doubt in his mind it would’ve been at best uncomfortable had the allowance not been made for the family jewels. Still… The discrepancy made it strange, even if he knew he’d get used to this. Everything was just sort-of smoothed out from the outside, with the feeling of padding between the outer layer and his own flesh. After moving around a bit, he came to the conclusion that it wasn’t quite padding. He curiously picked up a book and lightly hit himself between the legs, only to find the force dispersed across his entire pelvis. A vague memory in the back of his mind came to the fore: This was the same sort of kinetic dispersal magic that made Zel’s arm harness function, allowing it to disperse any force imparted to her left arm across her entire body. Clearly, this had to be a lesser form of that magic.
The boots were, for a welcome change, unremarkable as enchanted footwear went. They subtly molded themselves to better fit his feet and legs, and the belts at the top were vestigial in functionality due to the boots’ enchanted nature, but they were in the end just very nice boots.
Victor donned each new clothing-piece in turn, strapping on his Black Marble Tablet’s holster just under his hooded jacket so that it blended in. It was difficult to describe the feeling of wearing exclusively Fog-imbued clothing, compared to mundane garments; Victor thought best to describe it as not having new clothes, but as having new skin.
