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This Used to be About Dungeons, ch 107, Testing
🕑 Added 2022-06-02 00:52:09 +0000 UTCI've always thought that the worst thing about having a body is the knowledge that it can just stop working for no reason, and there's pretty much nothing you can do about it aside from maybe some medicine, which is a crap shoot. I've been sick for like three weeks now, and it's just been because of a cold followed by a sinus infection, but it's been making me think that the glorious transhumanist future can't come quickly enough. I've been tired all the time and have had a headache nine out of the last nine days. Hopefully I'm at the end of things, and this is the last time I post a chapter late in the day, but who knows.
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“I think it was a creature,” said Isra. “That makes more sense than it being a property of the dungeon itself, doesn’t it?”
“Impossible to know,” said Alfric. “We didn’t capture any creature to test. And dungeons can have odd properties from time to time. There are essentially four categories of known phenomena: animals, plants, entads, and dungeon geography. But it would be exceptional if it was any one of those.”
“Too many exceptional dungeons, if you ask me,” said Hannah.
“I agree,” said Alfric. “But we want exceptional dungeons, don’t we?”
“No,” said Isra. “I think I’d rather have dungeons that are pretty normal, if I understand what a normal dungeon is supposed to be. If we could kill some monsters and then get out … that would be for the best.”
“Enough of this,” said Mizuki. “We’ve got some weapons to test, don’t we?”
“Are you sure you’re okay?” asked Hannah. She didn’t seem like she could have raised her eyebrow higher if she’d tried.
“I’m fine,” said Mizuki. “Honestly, I don’t get what the worry is.”
“Gut wound,” said Hannah, as though she’d been waiting to say it. “They’re notoriously awful and difficult to fix. You’ve had the healin’ of Oeyr, but there’s still a risk.”
“I was stabbed in the stomach,” said Isra. “It wasn’t that bad.”
Hannah sighed. “You’re both spoiled, that’s part of the problem. Clerics can heal most wounds, but we’re not perfect, even workin’ together as we so often have to.”
“Alright, would it be okay to say that I feel fine?” asked Mizuki. “Whatever happened, the clerics patched me up.”
“You were practically delirious from the poison in the air and the battle rush,” said Alfric. “You broke two bones and needed a cleric to remove the fire-damp from your body.”
“I don’t even understand what fire-damp is,” said Mizuki.
“It’s a noxious gas,” said Alfric. “Mostly found in swamps, I think, but also flammable if you have enough of it. I think it might have been why the sky was that color, but Filera couldn’t say off-hand.”
“Are we testing entads or not?” asked Mizuki.
“I’d rather not do it in the house,” said Verity. “Not after Mizuki cut up a bunch of those weapons.”
“We need to get started on dinner,” said Hannah. “I’m fine sittin’ out entad tests though, so go on ahead. And I’d agree that there should be some caution involved, especially since there’s no real point to the tests when Alfric can take them to Filera tomorrow.”
Hannah and Isra moved to the kitchen to work, while Mizuki and Alfric moved outside with the chest. For a moment, Verity was torn, but she followed to the backyard, in part to protect her garden from whatever shenanigans were about to happen.
Mizuki already had the bottle uncorked and was sniffing at it with her nose wrinkled. Most of the entads they’d taken were weapons, and Alfric was taking them out of the chest to set them to the side.
“Don’t drink that,” said Alfric in Mizuki’s direction.
“Why?” asked Mizuki. “It’s really unlikely that it’s poison, right?”
“It’s not that unlikely,” said Alfric.
Mizuki poured a bit of the liquid out onto the flagstones, then held the bottle up to look at it, and then down at the flagstones again. “Do you think I shouldn’t taste it either?” she asked.
“You almost died,” said Verity. “How are you still pressing your luck?”
“There’s not much that I can do with it then,” said Mizuki. “If I can smell it but not taste it or drink it —”
“You probably shouldn’t smell it either,” said Alfric.
“Oh come on,” said Mizuki. She turned to Verity. “I’m surprised you’re out here instead of helping in the kitchen.”
“I don’t know how to cook,” said Verity.
“Yeah, but,” said Mizuki, “you and Isra are usually inseparable.”
Verity shrugged.
“Was the outing everything you hoped?” asked Mizuki.
“Not really, no,” said Verity. “It was too short.”
“Plus the poison,” said Mizuki.
Verity laughed. “I wanted an adventure, and it wasn’t that,” said Verity. She shrugged. “We’ll do another in a few days, before I leave.”
“Er,” said Mizuki. “We will? Because as everyone keeps pointing out, I did almost die.”
“Won’t we?” asked Verity. She looked over at Alfric.
“We can bring it up with the group,” said Alfric. “Personally … I think if we run into bad air again, we need to get out right away.”
“Yeah,” said Mizuki. “For me, I guess if everyone else is up for it. But we should go poach some entads from Vertex for a bit and maybe get me some, I don’t know, armor or something.”
Alfric looked at her. “We’ll hold off discussion until tomorrow.”
Mizuki sniffed the bottle again. “The smell changed,” she said. She took another sniff. “Changed again. I think I can change the contents based on … smell?” She lifted it up as though to drink from it.
“Mizuki, no,” said Alfric.
“It smells good though,” said Mizuki. She looked at the bottle. “Like grapefruit. Have you ever had a grapefruit?”
“Can I just remind you that you picked up that bottle from what was either a perfumer’s shop or a candlemaker or … something? Meaning that it probably was used for oils or scents or something, maybe.” He was watching her to make sure that she didn’t drink it.
“So what’s your theory on what it does?” asked Mizuki. “You think that it doesn’t change the contents, just the smell of them?”
“I don’t know,” said Alfric. “That’s the point. It could be that it’s just changing the smell, or that it’s creating a brand new poison with whatever smell you pick, or it could just be toxic in some other way. All you know is that it’s changing the smell of whatever that is.”
“No,” said Mizuki, holding it up to look at it. “It’s changing color, see-throughness, and that other one.”
“Which one?” asked Verity. The bottle was practically flashing colors.
“Whether it’s thick or not,” said Mizuki. “Starts with a v?”
“Viscosity,” said Alfric. “I swear if you drink that I will reset the day just to stop you from being able to play with it.”
“Aw,” said Mizuki. She set the bottle down. “When did you become no fun?”
“You said I’m never any fun,” said Alfric.
“Right, it obviously predates us meeting, I was just wondering whether it was obvious to your parents when you were a baby, or whether it happened more around puberty.”
“If you’re done with that, there are plenty of weapons to check,” said Alfric. “All we’ll know for now is you can change the contents.”
“You can change the contents by thinking about the smell,” said Mizuki. “That’s a big difference.”
“Set it to the side,” said Alfric. “Here, have a halberd.”
To Verity this seemed like a massive step in the wrong direction when it came to safety, but Mizuki treated it delicately, and seemed to show the weapon a respect that she hadn’t been affording the bottle.
Verity picked up one of the swords, a nice weapon made of jade. It seemed incredibly impractical to her, but she moved away from the others and swung it through the air, trying to test whether it had some special property that could be discovered without a creature to use it against.
She became increasingly bold with her swings, but to no avail, and was on the verge of asking Mizuki whether she was sure that this was an entad when Mizuki went floating by on the halberd.
“Second flying thing!” she called. “Super slow though, and none too comfortable.”
She was sitting side saddle and hooking both her legs around the halberd, which was keeping up a fairly sedate pace as it traveled around the yard.
“Hurts my butt!” she called out, then hopped off and nearly fell. She walked over to Verity. “Do you want to try?”
Verity wasn’t a fan of the helm, and didn’t think that she would be all that much of a fan of the halberd either, but she was starting to get annoyed with the sword, so she set it down gently in the grass and took the halberd from Mizuki.
“I still want to figure out the sword,” said Verity as Mizuki went for the sword.
“Alright, fine,” said Mizuki.
“I think I was close,” said Verity, which wasn’t entirely a lie. She’d felt close, as one often did when solving a riddle, but there was no guarantee that she was close.
The halberd was a joy to ride. All the problems Verity had with the helm weren’t present in the halberd, and while it wasn’t exactly comfortable, Verity eventually found a way to sit where her weight was resting largely on her thighs, with her hands on either side of her. The halberd was sedate where the helm was quick, and there was no risk of ending up ten or twenty feet in the air without much warning. There was also a weightyness to it that Verity quite enjoyed, and a better feeling of control. The one time she’d used the helm, it had felt like she was flinging herself around, always at risk of smashing into the ground or having the helm slip off in mid-air.
Isra had been the only one that had really understood how terrifying the helm was, though she didn’t personally seem to have the same problems with it. Mizuki had said that being flung around was the whole point to it, aside from being able to fly at terrifying speeds. Mizuki enjoyed the feeling of her legs spinning out when she made a hard turn, and felt comfortable with the wobbly feeling of weightlessness.
It was immediately obvious that the halberd wasn’t practical. It could hover along at a fast walking speed, but it was awkward to sit on, and she didn’t think that they would ever end up using it.
“We could put a seat on it,” said Alfric. “Woodworking saves the day again?”
“I suppose,” said Verity. “And I guess we’ll test how much weight it can take, since it might have a good carrying capacity.”
“Might even be able to haul a wardrobe,” said Alfric with a smile. “Are you doing okay?”
“Fine,” said Verity.
“But it wasn’t what you wanted,” said Alfric.
“I don’t know,” said Verity. “I was hoping that I would be able to do what Mizuki does, to blast away every problem standing in front of me, but that’s never particularly been my forte.”
“No,” said Alfric. “It’s not something that a bard would ever be adept at unless there was some kind of cross-disciplinary thing going on. Which is a real possibility, if you want to take a few years to try picking up wizardry, or devote yourself to martial training.”
“Gods no,” laughed Verity. “The prospect of learning to use a bow, really learn it, is only attractive because Isra is my teacher.”
“The halberd is a decent get,” said Alfric. He looked at it. “Depending on how much we can load it down with. That’s always the trick though, what limitations there are.”
“Can I ask a question?” asked Verity.
“Of course,” said Alfric.
“When you went to Plenarch … was there a reason that Isra did her whole makeover?” The question just came out, but it had been on Verity’s mind.
“Uh, I think that’s a question for Isra, but I don’t think there was any particular impetus, no,” said Alfric. “It was sort of my understanding that she was going to get a makeover with you, unless I misheard some dinner conversation.”
“She came back different,” said Verity, though she wasn’t entirely sure that was true.
“That’s the path she’s been on,” said Alfric. “Better etiquette, better integration, all kinds of stuff like that. You’ve noticed that, right?”
“Yeah,” said Verity. “She’s making an effort to be … normal.”
Alfric nodded. “You’d rather she were blazing her own path.”
“I don’t know,” said Verity. “In the dungeon today, she looked like a killer. It was nice. And now she’s back in a sundress with a gracious smile on her face, making small talk. I just don’t understand it, I guess. If I could be like her …”
“You could,” said Alfric. “The only thing stopping you from slamming the door in your mother’s face and howling at the moon is you. You could live in the woods and hunt rabbits for dinner, only talking in grunts and scowling at nice old ladies who are only trying to help. We all get to choose what to do with our lives.”
“That’s a very nice sentiment,” Verity sighed.
“I don’t want to push you,” said Alfric. “But if you have this anger inside you, if you want to crack skulls, then it’s not the skulls in the dungeon that you really want to crack. Killing a dozen creatures in the dungeon was never going to satisfy that feeling. At least, in my opinion.”
“I can’t just throw away my family,” said Verity. “Family means something.”
“I’m not suggesting that you do,” said Alfric. “But when the next ask comes, and we all think that it will … crack skulls?”
Verity nodded. On impulse, she gave Alfric a hug. She wasn’t naturally a touchy person, and she knew that Alfric wasn’t either, but she appreciated the support, and had no other way to show it. Alfric was good at hugging, and they stood there together for a bit until Mizuki nearly cut a tree down with a sword.
“This one is good!” she called. Her hair was glowing golden, much longer than it had been before, and her eyes were like pools of gilded water.
“Don’t actually chop down a tree,” said Alfric.
“Well I didn’t think it would dig in so much,” said Mizuki. She spun the sword around in a way that seemed incredibly unsafe, especially with a weapon that had just cut part of the way through a tree. “This is awesome though. I wish it had bound to me.”
“Does it do anything interesting?” asked Alfric. “Aside from being super sharp and the cosmetics?”
“Cosmetics?” asked Mizuki.
“Your hair and eyes,” said Alfric.
Mizuki lifted a lock of hair to look at. “Oh, interesting, I’ve always wondered what I would look like if I were blonde.”
“It’s glowing,” said Alfric.
“Glowing blonde,” said Mizuki. She squinted at the hair. “Is my hair longer than it was?”
“Yes,” said Alfric. “It looks nice, though if you walk around with glowing golden hair, I’m not sure I can handle that.”
“Well I’m not even sure what activated this,” said Mizuki. “Hitting something, I guess. I think it’ll need to be identified.”
She set the sword down, but that didn’t change her hair or eyes, which was somewhat alarming.
“I think I’m going in,” said Verity. “I’d like to get some practice in before dinner.”
“Can I request that it’s an outdoor performance?” asked Mizuki.
“Because you want to hear?” asked Verity. “Or because you’ll be inside and it will be loud?”
“The latter,” said Mizuki. “I mean I love your music, but it’s really loud.”
“Fair,” shrugged Verity. “Then you’ll have to either wrap up or take the entad testing inside.”
Mizuki looked down at the jade sword.
“I called dibs,” said Verity. “And in this house, we respect dibs.”
“Technically we’re not in the house,” said Mizuki.
“You have until the witching hour,” said Alfric. “Then I’ll have gone to Filera and gotten it looked at.”
Verity nodded, though she wasn’t certain that she was going to do much more with it. With entads, it was entirely possible that there was some secret, obscure method of activation, and that was exactly what clerics of Qymmos were best at uncovering.
After a quick check in the kitchen, where the smell of garlic was quite enticing, Verity grabbed the entad her mother had sent and then walked out into the woods, grabbing the halberd on a whim and floating along. She was headed to the standing stone, some distance out, far enough away that she’d be playing for the forest creatures rather than the house. She decided that there was something nice about the halberd and the way it could float along. Having a weapon made her feel powerful, even if she wouldn’t have the first idea how to effectively use a halberd.
Ever since being shown the clearing, Verity had taken a liking to it. She came out with Isra sometimes, often with a blanket they could lay down on. It felt more secluded than it probably was, and it was part of Mizuki’s sprawling property, which meant that it was an extension of home, in a way.
The entad, once activated, set up a sphere of Dondrian in the middle of the clearing, always the same sphere, a piece of a manor with a chair, table, and the lute set on top of the table. The floor was marble, and the bit of the window that the sphere covered was well-made, with clear, clean glass that surely got a maid’s attention once or twice a day. The theme of the colors was blue, and on this occasion, there was a glass vase on the table with small blue flowers.
There was also a note, which Verity opened with some trepidation.
Verity,
You performed marvelously. With everything we had to get through, all the pressure, all the meetings, I simply didn’t get a chance to say that your ability with the lute has in no way diminished over your time away. I’m proud of you and all the hard work you’ve put in. That’s why it’s such a shame that you’ve been wasting your talents in Pucklechurch. I hope that the concert has helped to give you some perspective on your proper place in this world. Upon your return to Dondrian, there will be all sorts of correspondence for you to read and respond to, though I’ve handled the most urgent of them myself, and of course there are plenty of congratulations, flower arrangements, and other benefits that come from a well-received performance. I throw my own congratulations in as well, along with my love.
Your Guiding Star,
Edil Parson
Verity felt like crumpling the letter up, but set it down instead, because there was no way to remove the letter from that room, and someone would find it later. Instead, she made sure to make clear that it had been read, then picked up the lute and began to play.
The next pair of concerts were to focus around a suite by Marinischoff, capped on either end by pieces from other composers. The first was a shorter work of Perricul, an influence on Marinischoff, while the last was a piece by Fenster, a more modern arrangement that paid homage to Marinischoff.
It was fine. Marinischoff was one of the lesser names of the music world, well-known but not that well-known, which meant that there was still some novelty left to him. The music was unchallenging for a general audience, and in Verity’s opinion wouldn’t stay on anyone’s mind once the concert was over, but it was fine, just fine, the kind of thing that Verity could perform and get some applause for.
The suite was the primary piece of music, and she focused most of her practice on it. The lute, as ever, was draining. She was playing all the parts at once, dozens of them. The lute aided her enough that it took an otherwise impossible task down to one that was merely very difficult and demanding. The percussion in particular required a novel approach on the entad lute, given that they couldn’t be conceptualized as a single instrument.
She wasn’t too terribly far into the suite when she got a call on the party channel. Dinner, it seemed, was ready. Still, she did her best not to falter in her playing as she finished out the movement, and by the end of it, she was adding a bit of her own flair to the piece, which was a sign that she knew it on a deeper level than rote memorization.
Verity took her time going back to the house, floating along on the halberd. She’d have preferred to walk, but then she would have had to have carried the halberd, which was a heavy weapon. Floating felt like it gave her more time to think.
She was going to have to talk to Isra, that was clear. Everyone was saying it, aside from Mizuki, who never offered much in the way of relationship advice, despite having been in the most relationships. Hannah and Alfric both seemed to think that talking would be the cure-all, but Verity just wasn’t sure. Isra’s clothes, for example, seemed like they weren’t a good topic of conversation one way or another, because if Verity expressed disapproval, where was there for the discussion to go? Isra wouldn’t — shouldn’t — change what she wore just because Verity preferred the old look.
The house was filled with the smell of food, and Verity slipped into her seat, only slightly tardy. The meal was garlic pork over rice with all kinds of veggies, a Kiromon dish that Mizuki made with some regularity, but apparently Mizuki had some opinions on what they’d done.
“Why are the carrots like this?” asked Mizuki, holding one of them up. It was a thin slice with a star-shaped edge. Her hair and eyes were still glowing, and there was something ridiculous about how she looked at the carrot when she seemed like she was inhabited by some godly being.
“I thought it would look nice,” said Isra. “Doesn’t it?”
Mizuki frowned. “Carrots aren’t star-shaped,” she said. “What happened to the rest of the carrot then?”
“I fed them to the dragons,” said Isra. “You said that food should look nice?”
“It should look nice, we eat with our eyes,” said Mizuki. She looked down at her food. “But, I don’t know, it’s not natural. It’s the kind of food that’s had things made pretty at the expense of being practical. Food should be pretty and practical.”
“I didn’t mind doing it,” said Isra.
“She’s just grumpy because it wasn’t done her way,” said Hannah.
“It’s like cutting the crusts off a sandwich,” said Mizuki. “Sorry, I’m not being ungrateful, thank you for making dinner, though you really didn’t need to, it’s just … I like being the one to make dinner.”
“What’s wrong with cutting the crusts off sandwiches?” asked Verity.
“It wastes them,” said Mizuki.
“You can save the crusts for something else,” said Verity. “Like stuffing for hens.”
“Technically you can,” said Mizuki. “Or you can feed them to some animal that loves crusts or whatever. But I don’t like it.” She took her first bite of food. “It is good though.”
“Let me know what you’d change,” said Isra. She was eating slowly and delicately, in a way that she wouldn’t have a month ago. In a way it was impressive that she could pick up on so much, so quickly, but Isra had proven very aware of other people.
The food was good, though perhaps not quite up to Mizuki’s standards. The garlic was slightly undercooked for Verity’s tastes, and the vegetables had been cut long, making them difficult to eat in a single bite, which meant that they were difficult to consume with decorum. Verity ate slowly, as she wasn’t terribly hungry, and she let most of the conversation float by her.
“So,” said Alfric once he was finished with his meal. “How are we feeling about a second dungeon?”
“Are we keepin’ the day then?” asked Hannah. “Because Mizuki did lose my entad.”
“I’m greatly in favor of not having this be a reset,” said Alfric. “Not unless Mizuki felt like she didn’t want the memory of that dungeon.” He turned to her. “But you seem fine?”
“Um,” said Mizuki. “I was scared out of my mind when it happened, and then I did almost die. But I don’t really want to talk about it, and I’m fine keeping the day so long as I get some hot chocolate tonight, curl up with a good book, and sleep it off.”
“If I reset, I’d have to do the day over,” said Alfric in Hannah’s direction. “How much was the mapping entad worth? We can pay you out of the community fund, that would be fair.”
“It was a trifle,” said Hannah with a wave of her hand. “Somethin’ that I bought more to buy somethin’ than because it was useful. This was the first time we needed it, and it gave its life. Should be possible to replace it though, especially with all our rings from the theater sale.”
“Then on the question of a second dungeon this week?” asked Alfric. He looked around the table.
“I’m in,” said Verity. It felt weird to be the first to respond.
“Sure,” said Isra.
“Alright, fine,” said Hannah. “Though I’m hopin’ it’s better than this one was.”
Alfric looked at Mizuki.
“Why can’t I be last to answer?” she asked.
“You took the hardest hits and suffered the most,” said Alfric. “I’d understand if you needed time to recover, and I don’t want you to go along with it just because everyone else is.”
“The clerics patched me up,” said Mizuki. “I’m fine.”
“We should have done this as a blind vote,” said Alfric, shaking his head.
“I want to do the dungeon,” said Mizuki. “So are you going to veto?”
“No, I’m not,” said Alfric. “I’ll consult with Vertex and find a day that works, they’re doing three this week. We should also have a post mortem for the dungeon, but that can wait a bit.”
“Anythin’ good from the entads we pulled?” asked Hannah.
“Have you seen my hair?” asked Mizuki. She held it up to show it, as though they otherwise wouldn’t be aware of the golden glow. “Though I do wonder how long it’s going to last.”
“I think the bottle we got is probably good, but we can’t do much more testing on it without getting dangerous,” said Alfric.
“I’m going to test that sword, then practice some more,” said Verity. She pushed away from the table.
“Do you mind company?” asked Isra.
“Not at all,” said Verity.
They went out together after helping to clear the table, and Isra gave Verity a quick kiss once they were under one of the tabbith trees. The smell in the air from the bloom was lovely, and Verity reveled in it for a moment.
“Sorry for being off,” said Verity as she picked up her sword.
“Off?” asked Isra.
“I don’t know,” said Verity. She held out the sword in front of her. “Before everything with the concert series, I felt like we had it all figured out, and now … it’s all up in the air again.”
Isra slipped her arm around Verity’s waist and kissed her on the back of her neck. “We have each other.”
“We do,” said Verity. She was turning the sword over in her hands as Isra kept kissing her from behind. There was a temptation, a strong one, to drop the sword and just go up to their room. “I liked seeing you in your battle gear today.”
Isra withdrew and moved around to look Verity in the face. “You did?”
“Yes,” said Verity. “You looked fierce.”
“I don’t think I like looking fierce,” said Isra. “Fierce like an animal?”
“I don’t know,” said Verity. “No. Fierce like a person, someone who would break fingers and brawl if she had to. Someone who would be willing to set the world on fire to — to protect me.”
“I wouldn’t set the world on fire,” said Isra.
“What’s the most you’d set on fire?” asked Verity.
Isra laughed. “You’re being silly.”
“It’s just a feeling,” said Verity.
“You want me to drown someone for you?” asked Isra.
“What?” asked Verity. She let the sword hang down by her side.
“That feeling,” said Isra. She seemed exasperated. “You want to know that I would do anything for you, even, or especially if it's transgressive.”
“I — yes,” said Verity. “Or, I don’t know, I don’t expect that, or even want it, but when I imagine it, I like it. I have a fantasy where you threaten my mother with a bow and arrow, and that finally shuts her up.” She had never said that out loud before, that fantasy. It sounded insane, she knew that.
“I don’t think that would silence her,” said Isra. “I think she would talk to the city guards and I would be punished in some way.”
“Probably,” said Verity. “It’s just a fantasy. And it’s a fantasy that’s getting further away every day.”
“It is?” asked Isra.
“You’re changing,” said Verity. With her free hand she gestured at Isra.
Isra looked down. “You think that I couldn’t threaten your mother with a sundress on?”
“I don’t know,” said Verity.
“Do you think makeup makes me less strong?” asked Isra. She stepped closer, and Verity moved the sword to the side, worried that the weapon was still unsheathed. “Is that why you don’t like it?”
“I never said I didn’t like it,” said Verity, though she knew that was an incredibly weak denial.
“I don’t like being aggressive,” said Isra. “I don’t like being closed off.” She was moving closer, until she was so close that her hip pressed against Verity’s. “I want people to see me and think that I’m normal, that I know all the normal things to do, or better, that I know more than them, that I’m more normal than a normal person.” Her face was close and her breath was hot. “I want to know where all the forks go, and when to wear my hair in certain ways, and all kinds of other things that you think are silly or stupid or a waste of everyone’s time. I want to learn how to write letters and how to gossip.” She placed a finger on Verity’s chest, at the place where her blouse opened up, against the bare skin. “But if you want me to put my foot against your mother’s throat, I can do that for you.”
Verity swallowed. “I don’t know why this is working for me.” She could feel the heat in her cheeks.
“You don’t like when I’m ladylike,” said Isra. She leaned forward and kissed Verity on the cheek, but just barely to the side, so the edges of their mouths touched. “I think I understand that better now.” Her hand reached down and touched the sword, taking it from Verity’s grip.
In the moment they were both touching the sword, its magic of the entad finally revealed itself. They both transformed, each taking on a bit of the other, Verity’s skin darkening and Isra’s lightening, their features shifting and hair morphing. Isra grew slightly taller, and Verity grew slightly shorter, until they were exactly the same height.
Isra let go of the sword, but the changes stayed.
“Well let’s hope that’s not permanent,” said Isra. Her voice was different.
“Huh,” said Verity. She couldn’t help but stare at Isra. “It’s not … horrible.”
“No,” said Isra. She reached up with a hand and cupped Verity’s face, then gave her a tentative and experimental kiss. There was something different about the taste, a sweetness that hadn’t been there before. “Combat applications?”
“None that I can think of,” said Verity. Her breathing was slightly short. “Unless you blend with the monster you hit with the sword?”
“Sounds dangerous,” said Isra. She was still standing close.
“Let’s get some expert opinions,” said Verity with a sigh. “Unless … you wanted to see how far the blending goes?”
“I’m nervous that it’s forever,” said Isra.
“Well,” said Verity. “Let’s save that for later then.”
Mizuki stared at them, open-mouthed, when they came in, then turned to Alfric. “One of them must be evil. How do we decide which one to kill?” she asked. The glow in her hair and eyes still hadn’t left her.
“Funny,” said Verity, laying on the sarcasm as thick as she could.
“That one,” said Mizuki, pointing at her. “She’s the evil one.”
Verity stuck out her tongue. “Very funny. It’s the jade sword, by the way, it happened when we were both touching it at once.”
“Hmm,” said Alfric. “Doesn’t seem terribly useful at first blush.”
“Alfric, I want to try it with you,” said Mizuki. “So I can be part Alfric, and you can be part Mizuki!”
“That sounds awful,” said Alfric. “Besides, I don’t want to be a woman.”
“You wouldn’t be a woman,” said Mizuki. “You’d be a … huh. I mean, now I really want to try it.”
“Any advice?” asked Isra. “We’re hoping it’s temporary.”
“Full-body modifications almost always are,” said Alfric. “As in, it’s a ninety-nine percent chance that it will revert back, and if it doesn’t, it’ll be worth so much that it would almost be worth the inconvenience. This is a strong sign that we should put a stop to entad testing though.”
“If it’s still in place at the witching hour,” said Isra. “Possibly we could revert the day, out of an abundance of caution?”
“I’ll check in with you before you go to sleep,” said Alfric. “Or let me know over the party channel.”
“Wait,” said Hannah, who came in from the kitchen wiping her hands on her apron, apparently in the midst of baking something. “Let me see.”
She held out a hand, palm up, and Isra took it. It was the kind of thing that Hannah did often for diagnostic things, always offering, never laying a hand on someone without them being the one to come forward, and Verity always appreciated it.
“Surface level,” said Hannah. “The insides are all different, it’s just cosmetic. I’d still reset if it’s like that before the witching hour, since no one wants a permanent change, but —”
“No resets if my hair stays like this,” said Mizuki.
“Fine,” said Hannah with a roll of her eyes. “All I’m sayin’ is that the muscles and guts seem to be more or less the same, as much as these two look like twins.”
“You know us by our guts?” asked Verity.
“I symmetricalized Isra,” said Hannah. “I know her internals well enough. And I’ve done healin’ for all of you.”
“Well, we’ll be upstairs while we wait for this to wear off,” said Verity, taking Isra’s hand.
They spent some time together, looking at each other. The magic had made them identical, at least on the surface, with the same voice, and it seemed to have made some decisions when it did the blend. Isra had a freckle near her belly button, which both their bodies now shared, and their eyes were the same, possibly more toward Verity’s than Isra’s, though they were going off what they remembered and what they could see in mirrors.
It took a half hour to wear off, and once it did, Verity was a bit disappointed, while Isra felt relieved. They reported this to the party channel, then spent some time taking turns to look over their features in the hand mirror.
“I don’t necessarily want to be you,” said Verity, speaking into the empty air as though answering a question that hadn’t been asked. “But it was nice, for a moment, to be someone else.”
“I wouldn’t want to be you,” said Isra. “You’re beautiful, but you’re made to carry too much, and … I like myself. I’m a good Isra.”
“Maybe that’s the difference between us,” said Verity.
“There are lots of differences,” said Isra with a raised eyebrow.
“I just sometimes feel like … there’s a gulf between us,” said Verity. “More now than earlier.”
“I feel it too,” said Isra. “But it doesn’t make me sad, I don’t think.”
“No?” asked Verity. That hurt, in ways she had no idea how to express.
“It means that we have time to figure each other out,” said Isra. “We have more of each other to know. I like that.”
“I guess so,” said Verity, though it didn’t give her the feeling of relief she’d wanted. She took comfort in Isra’s arms though, and allowed herself to be cuddled into a state of contentment.
Comments
fbt
the longer this goes the more I'm starting to really dislike Mizuki. Not only (continuing to be) an irresponsible idiot, but when I&V are transformed and worried about needing a reset to not be permachanged M then sez "“No resets if my hair stays like this,” said Mizuki." Here she's acting more like toddler than an adult.
fbt
yeah, don't add burnout and stress on top of illness. Relax, get well. We'll be here.
Nick
Sorry you're feeling so ill for so long. Don't worry about getting the chapters out religiously - no one needs that stress on top of being so ill
