Daniel unfurled another rolled up wolf pelt, marveling once more at the work that had been put into processing it. While there wasn’t a leather-specific Craftsman sub-class, Aurus had a few with enough relevant powers to produce a very satisfying product. They’d fixed the gritty texture without harming the enchanting properties, leaving him with something he’d like to wear once he turned it into armor.
Not every wolf’s pelt had been returned intact since cat Daniel hadn’t killed all of them with minimal damage. The extra material produced by the Craftsman power was also not an entire duplicate of what they’d worked on, but smaller sections of fur in flawless squares. Temir’s word had been reliable, and what he’d asked for had been delivered the next day.
The other arrangement with the Craftsmen was going to take some work since neither he nor the other professionals wanted to have him there every time a new body came in from a hunting team. Most of them weren’t intact enough to use with Encyclopedia, but once established, it promised to be a passive if slow source of new formulae. Temir was able to talk him down to one month of access, starting after his first visit, but it could be extended if he continued putting in work for the city. The official was really good at his job.
Now with his bounty in hand and the first half of the day making good on his promise to the city, Daniel was ready to fulfill the one to his friend.
“So I just, uhm, stand here?”
“Yeah!” Daniel said encouragingly as Khiat, out of her armor, stood in the common room. The curtains to her ‘room’ were also open revealing the stand supporting her bow, the makeshift collection of blankets and pillows that made her bed, and a slightly messy side table that she ate all her midnight snacks on.
He needed her here, and her armor in front of him, because this was going to be one of the most difficult pieces of enchanting he’d ever done. For one, it all had to be one piece, and he had to make the armor elastic enough to accommodate how Khiat’s body moved. Most torturous was that every section had to perfectly cover the gaps in her carapace no matter how it was stretched.
It would have been impossible to do without a lot of trial and error if he didn’t have her current armor to use as a model, but even still he’d be faced with a challenge. Altering the elasticity of the fur was possible, but it added complexity to what would already be a long enchantment process. That he was aiming for level 2 armor with level 3 material would help, but the disparity was offset by all the added difficulty.
“Just to go over this again before I get into it,” he said, handing Khiat one of the fur squares as he did, “I’m going to have to use patchwork to make this possible, but I’m also giving this self-repair. It’ll be basic level 2 armor since the only armor-specific formulae I have isn’t good for general purpose use, but as long as it isn’t completely destroyed it should keep you from being exposed for too long.”
“This is, just, thank you!”
“You left your parents behind to help me bring Hunter back. It’s the least I can do.”
“Think I could get some armor too for all those times I healed you, Guy?” Thomas asked from the side. He’d come from the church of the Hand after hearing Daniel would have to skip his meeting with Quala today. The Cleric would no doubt be one of the watchers to grow bored after the first hour, but for now everyone in the house was in the common area to watch Daniel start the process. Tlara was even stalking around, glaring in from various windows and exposing her teeth in a grin whenever someone noticed her and jumped.
“Later. Hunters get priority,” Daniel answered with a good-natured shake of his head, though he also threw one of the smaller pelts toward Thomas. “You could wear that as a helmet for now.”
The Cleric put it on his head and hunted around for a mirror. “I just might, thanks Guy!”
“Don’t mention it,” Daniel laughed, not even caring if he didn’t get that back. He knew how many bodies there’d been originally, but even so, the sheer amount of material he had to work with now was insane. Part of him, probably the latent cat part, wanted to dump it all in a pile and lie on top of it. There wasn’t enough space in the house to do that if they took out all the interior walls.
His focus returned to Khiat. “I can’t promise I’ll have this ready by morning, and if I fail I’ll have to sleep before I try again. I will need to ask everyone to be quiet while I do this. I think I can talk through most of it, but when I’m in the final stage I’ll need to be locked into this. Every section’s going to be a pain to do.”
“It doesn’t have to be exactly the same,” Khiat offered, but Daniel shook his head.
“That’s what works for you. And don’t worry, I’ll figure out how to add flying to it retroactively like I did Hunter’s armor. Temir’s catalog’s given me a few ideas.”
“And just like that the gawpers get you to sign on,” Thomas sighed, half in appreciation as he tugged the fur square in various ways, no doubt imagining how it would look after being tailored. “Have to admit, the birds have a better way of doing things so long as you can handle their faults.”
“Like what?”
“Like the fact that you shouldn’t use the word ‘gawper’ in public,” Willow chastised. “Or in private. It’s a racial slur.”
“No it’s not!” Thomas protested, but he backed down as everyone gave him an odd look. Well, besides Khare, who was still lurking on the ceiling like a proper plant monster. “Hey, at least I’m not one of those people that just uses it for avianoids. In Aughal it just means someone pretentious. Tell ‘em Guy, the first person I called a gawper in front of you was Gadriel.”
“And who’s he?”
“The Hero that helped us save Aughal,” Daniel replied a little distantly. “The one that’s missing.”
The mood darkened, just a little. “I can’t believe they haven’t found them yet,” Thomas said, taking the fur off his head and putting it in his bag of holding. “I’ve been asking whenever I visit where they’re helping Silora set up, but none of the Fates in the region can find them.”
“Yet,” Daniel said firmly. “But we will find them.”
“Sure, Guy.”
Daniel sighed at Thomas’ lukewarm response and gathered all the fur in front of him into a pile, adding a few pieces from one of the storage bags to make up for what he’d thrown away. “I’m going to get started. This will take at least 12 hours, so I hope everyone’s comfortable.”
…
By the time he was halfway through, he had already dismissed Khiat to allow her to continue exploring the city’s nightlife. This was truly difficult compared to the waiting game enchanting with the heliorite had been, but in a way that helped. The challenge kept him alert without completely overwhelming him, though he had a sinking feeling he’d have failed already if he’d used level 2 material. Oh well, he’d get better.
Willow was asleep upstairs and Khare had gone to ground, so the house was otherwise dark. Daniel had borrowed Night Eyes from Hunter’s list to give himself darkvision, and while color was slightly distorted, he could still see just fine. Tlara occasionally poked her snout in to mess with him, but his work otherwise went uninterrupted.
That was until he faintly sensed a disturbance in the normal scents in the room from Keen Sense. He was trying to keep that on for as long as possible in the hopes of making taking over Hunter’s body easier when they got him back. “Cloak?” Daniel asked, not looking up.
“Is this a bad time?” the god asked.
“Yes.”
“Fitting, then.” There was a sullenness to the immortal man’s voice that surprised Daniel. It didn’t go into surliness, but was more an agitated depression that implied Cloak had had his own troubles as of late. “Easy to see why you have the friendship archetype, going through this much trouble. I’d say it’s your most defining one even if your powers don’t reflect that. It is the only one you keep when you transform.”
“Are you alright?” Are the defenses of Aurus that good?
“Do you know what you’re doing?”
“Enchanting?” Daniel asked quizzically. He had a guess at what Cloak meant but wasn’t feeling too charitable towards him right now. That he’d chosen a time to appear when Daniel had so much riding on a successful enchant didn’t help. “What were you doing for the past week?”
“Trying to save every mortal soul in the Octyrrum. Unless you’ve forgotten, there is an apocalypse on the way.” Cloak picked up a loose square of fur, copies of which littered the common room like the aftermath of a fashion show turned bloodless slasher movie, and scoffed. “Star would be happy, at least.”
“The enchanting god? Did I meet them?”
Cloak closely watched Daniel for a few moments before he shook his head. “Yes. I won’t go into details, obviously, but I’d hoped that would shake something loose. You haven’t recovered any more memories?”
“No.”
“It is important. In fact, it should be your priority to-“
“You lied to me,” Daniel suddenly cut in, the earlier anger he’d let out with Quala finding a better target. She hadn’t given him any advice on how to handle the illusion god the next time he showed up given her internal conflicts. Even so, he could feel her disapproval as he continued, “I talked with the air gestalt you mentioned. They got their voice from a Bard power, not a bond. Why give me false hope? You know, I don’t have any reason to believe you are who you say you are. You could just be…” he trailed off and almost looked away from the pile of fur in front of him as the god let out a frustrated sigh and put his head in both of his hands. It was such a human, or mortal, rather, expression that he wondered for a moment if his rhetorical accusation that Cloak wasn’t a god was true.Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.
“He must have known it would be like this.” Daniel didn’t ask for clarification as he sensed this was a reference to the lost week. “There isn’t a Bard power that can give a gestalt a true voice. Well, there is one now, yes. I didn’t find it worth mentioning given your friend’s class. It’s only become available after the Octyrrum reverted to its backup state, but this Soraso has been talking for years. He shouldn’t have it.”
“How do you know? Also, why does it even have a backup state?” He couldn’t help his curiosity as the repository of all this world’s lore showed a moment of weakness.
“My people looked into this kingdom when I was investigating what turned out to be your effect on the Octyrrum. That was my primary role, when my strength wasn’t needed to confront a level 9 monster.” He shrugged, as if taking on kaiju while wearing a deerstalker hat was just another day at the office. “We had a backup version for the Octyrrum, as otherwise we couldn’t easily revert changes if turned out the gradual shifts we made were taking us down the wrong path. Our goal has always been to resolve the issue of the Crest, and that requires an Octyrrum that produces mortals capable of pushing in and beating it back. There’s simply too much risk and space for us to do it ourselves.”
Something in that monologue triggered a sense of deja vu, but it was weak. Daniel was a little grateful since he’d have to curtail his enchantment and lose all of the fur he was working on to focus on a real one, but that was still another closed off path to his hidden memories. “Alright. So Soraso could have glitched into a restricted power, sure, but they, he?” Daniel raised an eyebrow as he remembered how the god had addressed the Regent. Cloak just shrugged in response. “He said a bond wouldn’t work with Khare.”
Cloak fixed him with an incredulous look. “Whose knowledge do you trust more, a level 4 Bard or a god of this world?”
“I’m just saying, what you’ve been doing hasn’t given me many reasons to trust you. Especially when you can just change my memories on a whim. That’s almost as… no, that’s worse than Hammer changing my body without my permission. That’s a fucking insidious power and you used it on my friends without a second thought.”
“It’s necessary!” Cloak replied defensively. “Do you know what happens if these secrets get out? All that I’ve done since I- nevermind that. All that I’ve done has been to save this world, and I have to work with what I have. You know about our domain restrictions now. Knowledge is dangerous. You aren’t going around telling everyone about your origins, are you?”
There’s more to this than he’s telling me. “What happened when you got to Aurus?”
“I went to my church,” Cloak replied after a few moments, defeat in his voice.
“They didn’t believe you?”
“I didn’t just walk up to them and say, ‘Hey everyone, it’s the big man.’ I sought out the head of the church in private and revealed myself.”
“And?”
Cloak’s dower look further soured. “The public head of the church is a fake. They do that sometimes as an inside joke I’ve been trying to have ironed out of church culture. We don’t know everything that goes on in our churches for the same reason we don’t arbitrate every power someone gets. There is a connection between us and the clergy but it’s not, that’s not the point. Instead of mobilizing the Divine Quarter, I was patted on the head and told how promising a Cleric I was, but that I needed to work on my insight.”
“Ouch.” Daniel couldn’t help but chuckle. “I guess it sucks to be the kind of person no one can trust. Hey!” The god threw a piece of the fur at him in frustration and it almost broke his concentration.
“This is serious! Without the direct support of the churches I have to fully rely on you, at least until I can resolve this misunderstanding.”
“I guess you should have worked harder on not being such a manipulative bastard,” Daniel said, with a little bit of venom. He knew provoking the god wasn’t the smartest idea, but there was justified anger in him even without the rage power active. In a way, it was also good to push Cloak. If he could take this kind of ‘impudence’ without resorting to punitive mind wipes it was a good sign.
The god didn’t respond initially, instead going to one of the windows that looked out over the skies of Threst. “I change my mind, friendship isn’t the archetype you’re closest to.”
“That’s just being petty.” Daniel threw the stray piece of fur back, though with enchanting locking his other abilities he couldn’t use Snap Shot to hit the god. “How are you and Hammer in the same pantheon anyway? You two are completely different. Is it because you’re possessing a Proxy?”
“I’m pretty sure Star tells you about that. If you focused on recovering your memories you might know already.”
Daniel didn’t answer the repeated reminder, letting a few minutes pass as he refocused on his enchanting and Cloak continued doing whatever he was doing at the window. Talking had sapped some of his ‘enchanting durability’, to put it in simple terms, but he could regain it so long as he removed the distractions. It was fine so long as it didn’t hit zero, but at that point the pile of fur in front of him would turn to dust.
“If you want me to trust you, then reveal what it says in the Astral entry.”
“That is about the worst topic you could ask about,” Cloak replied hesitantly. “Haven’t I answered everything else honestly?”
“I don’t know, have you?” The contention lingered between them until Daniel decided there was something else Cloak could do. “I know my Spoke’s affecting how the Octyrrum works to some degree. Can you tell me specifics?”
“No. Not because I won’t, because I can’t.” Cloak’s answer had that careful tone he used whenever he had to dance around restricted topics. “I suppose I should tell you that gods and sufficiently advanced mortals can read the powers of others by assessing their mana flow. It’s difficult, and you need to know how the pattern looks for a power beforehand to recognize it. Even I’ve seen a few new ones in recent days, thanks to you.”
“That works for archetypes too, right?” Cloak nodded in his peripheral vision. It was an easy guess to make since both he and the Assassin had been able to do it.
“Spokes are something different. It’s not in your mana structure, the interface of your physical, magical, and spiritual elements, since they aren’t designed to be used by living creatures. You are a body and soul wrapped around one, disguising it from even us. If I’d been able to read your Spoke that easily, I’d never have needed to spend so much time in Aughal locating the source of the glitch, as you put it.”
“Darn. Ok, look, Willow might be going for a class soon. She has some advancement potential she saved though it’s not a lot. I want to make sure she gets the right one.” He would have looked expectantly at the god if that wouldn’t have ruined the armor. “Since a bunch just got unlocked and I affected Khiat’s, I want to make sure there isn’t a repeat of the Assassin incident.”
“Hmm.” Cloak stroked his chin, sensing that an olive branch was being offered. “Alright, if it makes you feel better about this arrangement, I suppose I could just expose millennia of history of class development so your girlfriend doesn’t end up as a Martialist.”
“We’re not like that,” Daniel said instantly and firmly, wondering if Cloak had seen the hug yesterday and gotten the wrong impression. “I’m not going to date anyone after… look, that’s not important and I don’t want to get too distracted from Khiat’s armor. Do you know what she wants?”
“Yes,” Cloak said simply, confirming his fears. “There was a class that was restricted when we had to remove the astral domain from the Octyrrum, and any questions on that are as taboo as the Astral itself. It would be fitting, though. Both for her and her bond. Class assignment still works off of fuzzy logic in the backup state, but I could try and see if my knowledge and your influence can guide her, even if you can’t directly control it.”
“Ok. So what’s it called?” Cloak told him and Daniel had to nod in appreciation. It did sound appropriate. There might be hope for their relationship yet, assuming this paid off.
…
“It’s not too loose, is it? I don’t think I was able to match the other armor exactly,” Daniel warned as he held his breath. He’d done it, creating a huge set of armor on his first try while under difficult circumstances. By mass, Murdon’s old armor had been bigger, but the heliorite had made that easy. It was this armor that he now looked at with concern and pride.
The sections that covered the gaps in Khiat’s carapace were the same, thanks to his ability to copy the form of her old armor, but they adjusted slightly slower and didn’t seem as stretched. Exposure to the sun wouldn’t kill her but he knew it was still painful, and he’d hate for the dusker to be randomly shocked every time she shifted because he’d done a poor job.
“No, it’s perfect!” Khiat exclaimed, rubbing at one of her arms. The effect of the fur and carapace together was certainly… something. The gray did compliment the sandstone color of her shell, though the combination of textures was off to his eyes. “It’s so soft. Like, like he was.”
Daniel’s eyes sharpened. “We’re getting him back.” Khiat shrank slightly and he winced. Cool it on the oath stuff, he thought. Hunter is out there, he’s coming back. This is about Khiat. You can be happy, if only for her. “This won’t let you fly. I think I’ve got a few things to figure out with that, but it should make your life easier. Ready to test it?”
“Ready,” Khiat nodded, trying to avoid backing away from Khare. She’d been almost helpless when the wolf had pinned her, even though she’d been stronger. It was some kind of fear reaction to being close to something hostile, though to be fair that had also kept her from killing anyone as an Assassin. If she’d ever given in to that impulse things might have turned out far differently.
The gestalt wielded one of their prized heliorite daggers. They only had less than ten left after various unfortunate occurrences had dwindled their supply. One of Daniel’s many ongoing projects was looking into making good replacements from the pile of bones he had built up across several bags. The gestalt didn’t need those now, as they only wielded one against the dusker.
The dagger met some resistance when trying to tear through the armor, and Khare was careful to only target that. Khiat’s outer shell was tougher than the skin of a standard level 1 individual, and she didn’t exactly fit on the normal power gradient anymore, but the level 2 weapon in the hands of Khare would be enough to damage the carapace.
The slash along the front of the armor quickly began to close as the self-repair aspect kicked in. It wasn’t instantaneous and that section of armor was weakened until fully repaired, but it was better than leaving Khiat exposed until she could make repairs herself. Then, there was the material bonus. It wasn’t obvious, but Daniel was about to confirm that it was active with Identify Item.
<hr>
Dusker Travel Armor (Armor, Domain: Enchantment, Quality: Enhanced, Level: 2)
Armor made for Race: Dusker to protect from both Damage and Racial Weakness: Sunlight. This armor can only be made from materials pliable enough to match the natural flexibility of the duskers.
Added Affixes:
- Patchwork
- Self-repair
Material Bonus: Use of Special Item: Gray Wastewolf Fur has imparted Ability: Dust Cloud to the wearer of the armor. This ability has a one hour Cooldown once used, and this cooldown is shared between any wearers of the Item during this period.
<hr>
To summarize the simple explanation in the ability entry, it was a smoke bomb. That bonus aside, Khiat had gotten a major upgrade and could now at least try to escape an enemy that got too close.
First goal down, Daniel thought, letting the cheer Khiat raised as her armor fixed itself infect him. Now, we make them fly.