Following our departure from Odissi, Grandpa Lich assumed his perch behind the sky serpent's head to brood while I sat next to my vassals, chattering amongst themselves about shared desires to try out their newly acquired gear.
An inevitability as far as I was concerned. So I instead sat and thought about my Grandfather's logic in having me choose this horrid set of armor until the conversations died down, and I butted my way in.
"Were there any other purchases you happened to make?" I asked. "Any grimoires or tomes?"
"None." Jonet shook her head. "I didn't feel the need for any potions or enchantments. And I felt that your teachings would be far better than any old grimoire sitting in an overpriced market."
"They're wastes of money." Toril chortled. "I have no interest in copying another's spells anyway."
"Fair enough." I laughed. "What about you, Jaimess?"
He pulled the neck of a bottle partway out from his satchel as he meekly said. "Only a couple of pens, some ink, and a potion."
"A potion!?" Toril turned to him with furrowed brows.
"Yes. A potion." Jaimess sneered back at him. "I happen to be curious about how they work. About what their limitations are."
"As am I," I said. "You should take the alchemy class sometime."
"If my schedule ever lets up, I will." He sighed.
"In that case." I paused as the sky serpent began its descent towards the edge of Corvus Tower's dead zone and gave him a reassuring pat on the shoulder once we settled on solid ground. "I'll transcribe what I've learned in Urda's class and relay it to you."
"Thank you, Your Grace." Jaimess bowed. And bowed again as my Grandfather's towering figure loomed before us.
"How wholesome." He spat, turned, and gestured towards the Tower. "You three take some time to get accustomed to your gear. Your training resumes on Unsday. And Amun." He scowled at me. "You see me tomorrow night."
I wordlessly bowed in tune with my vassals as they acknowledged his orders and watched him step into a nearby shadow. Once he was gone, the four of us practically sprinted to an open patch of forest to rip our belongings from our storage devices and in some cases, try them on.
"Who wants to go first?" I excitedly asked.
"I will!" Toril practically shouted as he ripped his axe from his pack and frivolously scanned the accompanying pamphlets. "Its name is Storm Thief." He declared, tossing the papers aside.
"Show us what it can do," I said.
Without a word, Toril stood, wound back his arm, and hurled the axe at a distant tree. With a dull, anticlimactic thud, the axe slammed to a halt in the tree, carving a deep wedge in the bark.
Almost hesitantly, Toril then reached out his hand, and the axe sort of budged. Wrenched in the tree before it broke free and hurtled through the air back to Toril's palm.
'Haven't seen that before.' I chuckled to myself as Toril's awed eyes turned back to the rest of us.
"Is it heavy?" Jaimess asked.
"A little." Toril shrugged. "But, I'll get used to it."
"And what about that?" Jonet pointed to the brace around Toril's arm.
Held in place by leather straps around his arm and back, the brace consisted of a large, circular pad of armor around his heart. Tucked under a pauldron with the roaring face of some divine lion or another beast on the head of his shoulder. From there, a matching black-bronze rerebrace, couter, and a thick, wedge-shaped vambrace covered the remainder of his arm; up to a curved plate that shrouded the back of his hand.
Without a word, Toril curled up his arm as if he were flexing his bicep and poured a bit of mana into the sleeve and the wedge on his forearm sprung to life, unfolding a series of pie-like plates until a circular shield was formed.
"That's not all!" Toril beamed. Charging electricity into the arm and creating a field of plasma around the shield that veritably doubled its radius.
"Impressive!" I nodded as Toril killed and folded his plasma shield back into its closed position.
"Other than that, there's an unprimed enchantment in the head of Storm Thief for after our awakening. And the armor is said to be both physically and magically resistant." With a prideful smile still plastered on his face, Toril sat under a tree and gestured for one of the other two to show and tell.
Following Jaimess passing along the torch, Jonet cheekily held up her jumpsuit and giggled out. "I was given a onesie and needles!"
Forcing a bit chuckle out of my lungs, I admit. 'It seems she's taking her acting quite seriously.' I pinched the bridge of my nose as she continued.
"It says the onesie will silence my movements and if it's the only thing I'm wearing, I'll turn invisible in the darkness." She paused to beam a 'just like you!' gaze in my direction before holding up a pair of needles for all of us to see.
They looked like thin hairpins or super-thin wands with the subtlest, shallowest handles of wood or ivory and a thin, tapering blade made of an ice-like metal that menacingly stretched from her palm like the long, crude, stiff fingers of a which hag.
"The ice enchantment allows me to control the size of the needles. Anything from a javelin, to a needle too small to see; according to this." She waved the pamphlet beside her head. "And the shadow enchantment allows me to throw a…" She paused to bring the paper over her eyes before tossing it aside again. "A phantom needle." She smiled. "I can throw out the needle's shadow and blind someone. How cool is that?" She turned to Jaimess.
"Do you have to talk like that?" Toril groaned. "It's weird."
"Yes." She bluntly nodded, still beaming at Jaimess. "Your turn."
"Ugh." Jaimess groaned to his feet and stepped around his armor, displayed neatly on a paper mannequin he'd conjured; or rather, a paper version of my Doppelganger spell. On top of it was a polished set of black, light armor with tan trim. Though, the set itself appeared more like a modern set of body armor, rather than the plated set that it truly was.
Set atop a chainmail shirt, a small and compact plate hung from overall-like straps atop the shoulders; covering the chests, abs, back, and nothing more with a shining piece of contoured armor. Much was the same for the arms and legs, which consisted of leather-bound, metal straps secured along the upper and lower limbs. Coupled with plated minimalist boots and a kabuto helmet of the same color scheme.
"The armor, shield, and mace all have three, unprimed enchantments." Jaimess meekly continued after making an orbit around the set. "I assume once they've been imbued with my paper magic, they'll behave like Toril's shield. Well." He sighed. "The armor and shield will, at least."
"And, you'll be able to form any mace-head you want with your weapons," Toril added. "Why don't you show us."
"Because." Jaimess sighed, turning to me. "I'm far more interested in what His Grace's gear has in store.
"You and me both." I huffed out a laugh through my nose as I spawned my doppelganger to have him arrange my gear while I recalled the information from my Eye. "The boots are primarily made from vulcanox leather; giving them an innate fire resistance, as well as being enchanted with the Shadow Step spell. The sleeves, on the other hand, were originally imbued with Shadow Pockets for the needles the set came with. I have no use for needles, however, so…" I shrugged.
"The only other enchantments are located within the mask." I paused so that my umbral clone could turn the piece about for them all to see. "One pulls my mouth and nose into the Shadowfell, allowing me to breathe if I otherwise couldn't. And the other two allow me to exhale shadow or necrotic mana respectively. Other than that." My clone gestured to the pants, sash, and monk-like half-robe. "The clothes are said to be made from a variety of silks, fibers, and leathers that give it both physical and magical resistances. As well as the obligatory self-mending and temperature regulating enchantments."
"Of course, of course." Toril nodded slowly while squinting closely at the mask. "What do you mean, though?" He turned his gaze to me. "Exhale energy?"
"I can imagine using it for Poison Mimicry." I amiably shrugged.
"Poison?" Jaimess blinked his shocked, confused gaze at me. "Mimicry."
"Yeah." I nodded. "I've sampled around a hundred poisons, venoms, and toxins and can mimic the effects of them all."
"Death magic makes you immune to poison," Toril muttered to himself. "That's reassuring to hear."
"Resistant, according to my Grandfather." I corrected. "Though he implied and I assume that it's my mother's blood that gives me immunity.
"Anyway." I turned to pull my daggers from my Shadow pocket and lay them on the ground before me. As I saw before, the finely curved, double-edged blades were layered beautifully in the two-tone tiger-stripe pattern of wootz steel with a prominent ridge running down the center. With the enchanted hilt of Stone-Mammoth Ivory, the overall length was around 36 centimeters; making the pair of Jambiya the perfect accessories for my sash. "These are called…" I paused to reread the name. "Shade Splitters."
'How cringe.' I groaned before monotonously continuing. "The shadow enchantment is called, Dimensional Splitter. In short, it can cut into the physical plane from the Shadowfell, and vise versa. The other enchantment is similar to my Leech Hand spell. It drains the vitality of whoever it cuts."
A few moments of silence followed, curiously enough. Looking up, I saw only mortified gazes staring back at me.
For the most part.
"You can do that?" Jonet asked with equal parts horror and astonishment.
"I can. It's how I heal." I slowly nodded while retrieving my other weapon from the shade of a nearby tree.
"Damn." Toril whistled low. "Now that, is a nice spear."
"Thank you." I grinned, looking it over again. "Its name is…" I groaned, cringed again as I recalled the name. "The Shadowsteel Reaper."
"Badass." Toril grinned in satisfaction.
'Ugh, goddammit.' I sighed, then continued. "Like all royal weapons, the Reaper's blade is made of pure adamantine; whatever that is." I shrugged. "And the haft is made from stone-mammoth ivory and the wood of a divine tree; giving the weapon exceptional durability. Lastly, the collar is made from… Night Ave feathers, powdered with gold dust. Giving it a higher sensitivity to my shadow mana and increased aerodynamics; but more importantly, the collar hides a hidden mechanism. And lastly." I quickly skimmed through the rest of the page. "There are five enchantments, with one of them being unprimed: Shadow Link; Spectral Blade; Shade Extension, and Touch of Darkness."
'Jeez. Who names these things.' I scoffed, taking the spear in hand and stepping away from the others.
I first looked around until I saw a shadow cast by a large tree before looking down to my own shadow and thrusting the spear into it. Seamlessly, the blade dipped into my shadow and emerged from the darkened ground a few meters away, where it grounded itself into the trunk with a loud knock.
Retracting the spear through the linked shadows, I held the weapon overhead and began funneling death magic into the collar around the base of the blade.
A sudden and sharp click rang through the weapon just before the spearhead snapped to a ninety-degree angle and the blade began filling, thickening as more and more necrotic energy flowed into it until I finally resembled its namesake.
"Apparently." I nodded to the curved, spectral blade. "Anything impaled by this will have its soul ripped out. Allowing me to either absorb it or turn it into either a specter, wraith, or ghost."
Ignoring their horrid expressions, I recalled the death mana; snapping the Reaper back into its spear configuration before I harshly swung downward, pouring shadow mana into the haft while doing so. And as it fell, the polearm elongated, removing any possibility of me controlling the now meters long spear and rendering it to fall in front of me like a felled tree. Smacking loudly against the distant shoreline and splattering water and cakes of sand every which way.
After retracting the spear to its original length, I moved under the canopy; into the dense shroud of darkness that permeated the dead zone and casually tossed my beloved weapon aside like a fish released back into the water.
As if it never left my hand, the spear arced and curved unnaturally through the air above me as I stood entirely still. Like it was grasped by my Umbral Hand, the spear swung and thrashed around over my head, cutting into the wind and trees with loud swooshes and knocks that sent a gentle breeze over the four of us.
"As for the last enchantment," I said, returning to my vassals. "I'm going to fill it with void magic, at some point."
"It's like my axe, but far better." Toril gasped before quickly shaking his head and baring his palms. "Not that I'm complaining. You're royalty, after all."
"Yeah." I sighed, looking down at my shadow. "And then there's the matter of that armor."
"His Imperial Majesty seemed adamant that you take it," Jonet commented.
"He didn't seem adamant." I corrected. "He was adamant. For what reason, I have no clue."
"Well, why don't you want it, Your Grace?" Toril asked.
"Look at me!" I raised my arms. "I'm small and frail. I'd hardly be able to move in a full set of armor. Besides." My hands fell as my shoulders shrugged. "Plate armor isn't my style."
"Yeah." Jaimess concurred. "It doesn't really fit you."
"Maybe His Imperial Majesty thinks you'll grow into it?" Jonet cheekily added.
"Who knows," I muttered. Tossing my belongings back into my shadow. 'But I fully intend to find out.'