No Strings Attached - Chapter Forty-Eight 

Chapter Forty-Eight 

56th Day of Spring - Year 1758 of the Golden Era

Shorefarm, Yellowfield, Draya Calyrex

Lazur and Carnel were off to fetch their equipment from Tomas the smith, but Viridian had excused herself and told them that she had someone else she wanted to visit before they were off. That person was still parked on the edge of the town.

“Hello,” she said as she came up to the side of the carriage.

Three poked their head out, the clown looking slightly disheveled. They had been ‘undressed’ by Artificer Woodbone the day prior, in an act that felt inappropriate to look upon, and yet revealed nothing truly intimate. Beneath the bright clothes, Three was a frame with gears and pulleys. They weren’t designed to look like a pale wooden imitation of flesh the way Viridian and her companions were.

“Ah ah aha! Good morning, Viridian, dear!” the automaton said. They grabbed their blouse and tugged it on straighter. The artificer had been careful, delicate almost, when handling the small gears within, but had been brusque and fast with the clothes that were in his way.

“Good morning,” Viridian said. “My... friends and I will be leaving town today.”

“Oh?” the puppet asked.

“Yes. I was wondering... can you help me make clothes?” Viridian was carrying a small box with her. A crate she’d found in one of the abandoned stables. It was filled, at the moment, with clothes.

The night had been quiet, and with no need to sleep, she had scoured the town from top to bottom, looking into every home like a thief casing a mark. She’d found a few things. Worn shirts, old pants, a few belts. A lot she had discarded. Moth-eaten things weren’t her desire, she wanted something nice and that meant working with good materials.

The people of this village did, at one time, have some things that weren’t ratty work clothes. Their Sunday best, she supposed. A few dresses dyed in deeper hues and made of thicker wool and finer linen. The only silk she’d found was the scarf taken from the village’s mayor, a long white piece with some embroidery in red thread throughout.

“I’d love to help,” Three said. “Show me what you have. Do you know your measurements?”

“I don’t,” Viridian said, then she jumped as Three tossed her a cord with markers painted into it. “Oh. Thank you,” she said.

“So, what are we looking for? I’ve got costumes for all sorts! You’d look fantastic as a dragon princess of Wyrmspire!”

Viridian shook her head. “I don’t think I can be a princess. I just want clothes that fit. Being naked is... not right.” She couldn’t feel the cold against her bare legs, and it wasn’t as through her nakedness had anything to expose, but the pervasive sense of wrongness from it had never left her.

“Then let’s see what we can do! What’s this all for, anyway? Besides covering up?” Three asked.

Viridian only thought about it for a moment. “To better hide and be protected while we move. We’re heading out today. It’ll be a long walk in the woods.”

“Ah-hah!” the automaton said. “Then I might have what you need. Get me those measurements, and I’ll get you dressed up.”

It took the better part of an hour, and only some of the materials she’d brought were used up. The rest she left with Three. The automaton had nowhere to go at the moment, and other than watching over the locals, not very much to do. They promised that they’d put something together while Viridian was gone.

In the meantime, Viridian collected three outfits. Costumes, really. They’d fit over their gambesons, so it wouldn't be a waste.

“There you are,” Lazur said as she arrived before Tomas’s shop. Lazur had a short-sword in a sheath that she held out towards Viridian, and two pikes in her other hand. “Carnel kept the boarding axes. She wants to bring them too. Tell her no.”

“Why?” Viridian asked. She shifted what she held so that it was tucked under one arm and took the sword.

“Because it’s unreasonable. She doesn’t need five weapons.”

“Five?” Viridian asked.

“Two short swords, two axes, the pike,” Lazur said. “It’s too many.”

Viridian nodded slowly. “It is... a lot. Maybe just one axe and one sword?”

“That is still more weapons than she has hands,” Lazur complained, but Viridian shrugged and Lazur just grumbled before looking at the bundle of cloth Viridian had. “What is that?”

“This is clothes,” Viridian said. “For us. We won’t be naked anymore.”

“We don’t have genitals.”

“Even then,” Viridian said. “Pants.”

Lazur huffed. “A mage wears robes.”

“Magus Maldrak wears pants,” Viridian pointed out.

Lazur turned her head away, then back. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll wear pants too. But I’d rather have mage clothes.”

“Maybe once you learn how to use your new spell,” Viridian said.

Obviously, Lazur hadn’t gone two days without trying the new spell they’d been given. At some point they’d taken a short walk out of the village and tried the spells.

As Maldrak had promised, it was a more offensive spell than the light-creation spell they had already. It created a tiny ball of some sort of almost-invisible energy that travelled forwards at about the speed of a swift punch.

When Viridian’s hit a tree truck, it made a hollow thumping sound, then did little else. Sometimes a layer of bark would be peeled off, but that was it.

Carnel insisted on being hit, and she used one against Viridian’s arm in turn. The impact was hard enough to throw her arm back a little, but it was far from enough to cause injury. Magus Nocthorn had called it Kinetic Strike, and that was what it did. She hadn’t said that it wouldn’t be any stronger than a strike from a particularly weak old person.

Lazur, however, didn’t see it as so weak. She spent nearly an hour trying to speed up the process to cast the spell, then she tried to refine it, cast it with a curve, make it come out as a burst, or twist through the air.

It was mostly a waste of time. Her spell came out almost as slowly as Carnel or Viridian’s, and the best she managed after an hour’s practice was a slight curve to the spell, but it wasn’t consistent.

The spell disks they had came with baked-in limitations, and that meant that their casting of spells was far less organic than a real mage’s.

Lazur had been a little testy about it, but her mood improved, or at least returned to normal. It was more magic, and that was enough to make her happy.

Carnel stepped out of the forge just as Viridian was handing Lazur her clothes. “Ah... these are for you,” Viridian said.

Carnel eyed the bundle, then poked at it. “Red?” she asked.

“Dark red,” Viridian said. “It’ll blend in better than our skin...wood. The colour is... sombre. And it’s red.”

Carnel nodded, then took the bundle, placed it on the road, and started to dress herself.

“Here?” Viridian asked. “We can find a place to change.”

“You are too worried about things that don’t matter,” Carnel said as she pulled up her pants. They were simple trousers. Tough material, the kind worn by workers, but with a good cut to them. She cinched it at her waist, then took a moment to fit her sheath into the belt as well. Then she tossed on the jacket that Viridian had found. 

It wasn’t very long, stopping around the hip, but the jacket still looked decent on Carnel. It was a very deep, almost black red, with a paler lining on the interior and some simple embroidery along the hems.

“It won’t look bloody,” Carnel said with an approving nod.

“We’re not so hard to clean,” Lazur replied. Her own jacket was a deeper blue, with a few bits of silvery thread woven into a flowery pattern on the lapels. 

Viridian didn’t want to make it too obvious, but she was quite pleased to see her companions dressed like proper people. She grabbed her own things and darted into an alley to change. She had a blouse that was a little ill-fitting, but she didn’t care overly much. A black vest fit over that and her gambeson, pressing it in. It might have been uncomfortable if she could feel any amount of comfort, but as it was, she didn’t care. And overtop all of that, a longer greenish-brown coat, made of a leathery material that she imagined would do well in keeping the rain away.

“Ready,” she said as she stepped out. “Though... we still need shoes.”

“We do not,” Carnel said. “Toes are better for gripping the ground.”

“We’re wearing away at the wood under out feet every time we walk,” Lazur replied. “It heels when we use essence, but that healing could be more power.”

Carnel hummed, then nodded. “We will steal boots from the sailors.”

Viridian was against that idea, in theory, but she really had to weight it against her desire for nice boots.