Chapter 44: 42 – Proof of a Craftsman

With those parting words she walked upstairs and finally dropped off the groceries she had bought, mulling over her brief conversation with Sigmund. Makhus really wasn’t good in a fight with anything other than a sword. She had had more than enough time to notice that even if he didn’t use it, just having something like a war-knife made him a more capable fighter by degrees of magnitude. But then… Zefaris didn’t have a leg to stand on in that area. She, too, was far more confident in her knife-fighting skills when her other hand grasped a finger of the reaper embodied in singing metal.

Grocery-run done, she returned to her and Zel’s bedroom to drop off the box, but only after taking a look inside. The top of the box slid off after a little bit of finagling, varnished wood gave way to tightly-folded black fabric that glimmered with patterns rendered in golden thread. Pulling out the piece at the very top, she unwound it into a single long, wide strip of luxuriant fabric, and saw that the golden thread wasn’t just stitched into it, but woven through the fabric itself. The fabric itself felt… Strange.

Was it silk? Some sort of goat wool? Even just high-quality cotton wool? It… Didn’t matter, at least not to her, not beyond a passing curiosity. She was far more curious about the fabric’s real functionality - even if it hadn’t been intended for her, tailored to her, she was certain she could at least make it work. 

Indeed, when pressed to her skin and commanded with a spark of will, it adhered to the surface through its arcane function. It wasn’t really anything new, after all she had worn the Captain’s trousers a few times in the past, the very trousers that Zelsys had taken so readily to. They were utterly oversized for Zefaris, well beyond the fabric’s ability to adjust for size, but even their arcane properties were just… Inferior to this, on every level. 

No wonder - they were a piece of clothing issued to ranking officers in the Ikesian military, produced on a scale only held back from factories by the need for bespoke parameters and tailoring.

This… This was a whole nother level of quality. This should’ve cost five times what had been actually paid. The four other articles were much the same, their baseline black highlit by simplistic, yet striking patterns that called back to patterns found on the garments of ancient statues. It was like Bherad had wanted to invoke a sense of divinity with his work. Had Zel’s yanking at the strings of his pride really worked that well?

What she presumed to be the other chest-binding was… Well, not really a binding. It looked more like a bare-minimum sling, or more likely a second strap to help hold the first in place… Although the first thing that came to mind was an image of Zelsys wearing it. Both bottom pieces were the exact opposite of conservative, functionally a more refined version of the high-waisted design that Zel had worn up until now, both a single continuous piece of fabric without so much as a single stitch.

Of course, she couldn’t just fold the underwear back up and put it back in the box - not that she even knew how to put any of the four articles back the way they were. Out of curiosity - and frankly, lack of anything better to do - Zefaris decided to try some of them on. Besides, that bloodstain on her sundress would need some proper soaking before it could be washed out.

Having curtained the windows and made sure to close the door, the markswoman did indeed try on the undergarments intended for her counterpart. The chest-wraps came first, and made obvious the superiority of Fog-tailored clothing instantaneously, even without the added practical benefits. Its shape-changing properties combined with its ability to cling to skin made it so even the single narrow strip could effectively hold her breasts in place without the risk of any slip ups. Now she understood why those obnoxious nobles back in the academy bragged about their Fog-tailored clothes so much.

The bottoms were… Well, clearly intended for a two-meter amazon chiseled from solid bronze. It was even more impressive, then, that the pair she did try on actually shrunk enough to fit reasonably well, though the amount of skin it covered was obviously far beyond what it would cover for Zelsys.

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As she looked herself over in the bedside mirror, a couple thoughts came to her mind. This certainly felt a lot more practical than it looked, and she was infinitely less likely to wear this out in the open than Zel. It looked like something meant for a physique equal to an idealized statue rather than her own - physically fit though she was she couldn’t show muscle even if she tried, besides perhaps flexing her gun arm.

There sounded footsteps up the stairs and through the hallway, and the bedroom door opened. An amused, albeit overtly approving chuckle sounded. 

“What a nice way of finding out I don’t have to go pick up my order from Bherad,” Zel said facetiously.  

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A breath of change passed.

The cogs of history turned by another notch.

Makhus toiled away in the lab, finding his attention diverted by strange noises in the middle of the night. He chose not to investigate, only to find that it was Sigmund cooking when the historian snuck into the lab and left a heaping plate of pot-roast on the table that Makhus had come to use for his tea among other things.

Crovacus Estoras received a small bottle alongside two letters, and in turn bequeathed the messenger to dispatch someone to safeguard the scene of a foiled terrorist attack. Both letters promised both great and terrible things to come - two individuals with the means to exert great violence, both making demands of him that he could not fulfill without leveraging his personal connections. To strip an Inquisitor of their station, of their responsibilities, was a terribly grave action, even if it was entirely permissible within the letter and intent of the law. 

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