Chapter 21 Always So Bright.
Isaac and Lenna arrived at a two and a half story tall building that took up a quarter of the city block that it resided on. The building’s streetside walls were almost entirely made of glass and everything, inside and out, was lit by dozens of glowing stones. The ambient light was still too much for Lenna even though the sun had just set. Inside the building there was a clerk who sat with a bored expression on her face at a plain but well made wooden desk. A few feet away from her desk there was a small lineup of chairs for people to sit and wait in during the day. Behind her, there was a long curtain that went from support beam to support beam across the entire building.
Just inside the door of the building there was a glass figure of a woman with floating hair and a chilling gaze as she seemed to be leaping off of a cloud filled with snowflakes. On the other side of the door there was a man being held up by a wave of water with a lightning bolt in one hand in a position like he was about to hurl it at someone. Both figures looked like they could have been twins with their sharp, almost elf-like, features and hair that looked almost like it was made of seaweed and icicles.
The momentary pause to gaze at the seven foot tall glass figures let the duo notice a slight whooshing of air coming and going in resonance all across the building. It was soon obvious that via magic or mechanics air was being continuously brought in and pumped out of the building in relatively high volumes. The building was not made of brick like most of the other buildings around but out of sapphire blue painted stone. The tiles on the building’s roof were all sapphire crystals like most of the other buildings the duo had seen.
Isaac got the glass door for Lenna and the duo walked, mildly covered in dust and still in full battlegear. A soft crystal bell chimed at their entrance and the clerk jolted as she noticed them. “Hello, we are going to close soon, would it be possible for you to come in the morning?” She greeted them.
“We are just picking up a small order.” Isaac replied and pulled the letter Lucius had given them out of a plate of shadows.
The clerk seemed to both brighten and resign herself to her fate of having one last customer who would hopefully at least be an easy one. “If that is all, then I can definitely help you.” The clerk assured him and took the offered paper. She hadn’t even hesitated at the show of magic and simply rolled with it. She opened the latter and nodded a few times to herself. “The order for Lucius Von Arbencroft, heir apparent, I see.” She spoke more to herself than to Isaac or Lenna. She looked back up from the paper to focus on Isaac once more. “Please just wait a moment and I will get it and everything ready for you.”
Isaac nodded and prepared to wait. The clerk flipped through a ledger until she found the order mentioned and slid her finger along the page until she spotted where the order was being kept. She got up from her seat and gave Isaac and Lenna a quick smile and nod as she disappeared behind the curtain to go and fetch their order. The sounds of glass work being done could be heard faintly through the curtain and the duo got a look at a cold furnace when the clerk had opened the curtain enough to leave. “Glass work is interesting.” Isaac commented. “A lot of fine control. I can’t imagine how long it took them to make the statues.”
“Probably hundreds of man-hours.” Lenna replied. “I do not think those beings were just thought up by a sculptor, they seem too… real.”
Isaac eyed the statues again more carefully. There did seem to be something about them that made them almost seem to have a presence. “I think you are probably right.” He told her.
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Just then the clerk returned with a small wooden box. She set the box in front of Isaac and Lenna and then set the ledger next to it. “Please, take a look at the product and then, if it is satisfactory, sign here and it is all yours.” She told Isaac.
Isaac did as he was instructed and easily picked the lid off of the top of the box and looked at a pair of rectangles with two rounded corners diagonal from each other. They looked like they would fit well, inside of Lenna’s helmet, right inside the eyeholes. The glass that they were made of almost immediately went from clear to nearly completely an opaque black. “I think they’ll work. Lenna, can I have your helmet for a moment?” He spoke to both women separately in the same breath.
Lenna took off her helmet and was met by an audible gasp from the clerk. Lenna had closed her eyes to slip the helmet off of her head but then struggled to open them in bright interior light. Her eyes fluttered a few times before she managed to keep them open in a squint as she handed her helmet to Isaac. “I hope they work, the surface is always so bright.” Lenna told him.
Isaac hadn’t been looking at her but at the clerk whose mouth was actually hanging open in shock at Lenna’s face. At first Isaac wasn’t sure how to react to her reaction but a moment later the woman seemed to get a hold of herself and blushed heavily. “I, I know this is horribly unprofessional of me, but, would it be possible to paint you- I mean to paint your portrait, not to put paint on you. I’m so sorry you just took me by complete surprise.” The clerk rambled on. She was fanning herself with her hand by the end of her apology.
With the clerk’s internal thoughts now out in the open, Isaac relaxed and turned away from her to try and fit the lenses in the helmet. “I hope they work too, my dear, I would hate to make you suffer on our honeymoon any longer than necessary.” He told his mate to which Lenna just nodded.
The clerk looked around frantically for a moment before she seemed to notice the two sets of three metal plates with the word ‘LIGHTS’ written over top of them. She ran over to the light controls and tapped the middle plate in one of the sets of three with a small pendant. The lights in the front section of the building dropped down to a dim light that would have been at home in Safeharbor. “Is that better?” The clerk asked Lenna.
“Yes, much better.” Lenna replied while blinking away any residual strain from her face as her eyes were actually able to take in all of their surroundings.
“Clare!” A man’s voice yelled from the back. “We aren’t closed yet! Why is the front dark?!”
The clerk, Clare, ran towards the curtain and peaked her head through before yelling back: “One of our customers is light sensitive, I’ll fix them later!” She then returned to her desk but remained standing as she stared at Lenna through the dim light. “Will those work for you?” She asked the woman made of colors that Clare had only dreamed could exist naturally on a person.
“They fit.” Isaac replied for Lenna. “We just need to cement them in place.”
“I think we can do that here.” Clare told him. “We make stained glass windows and the glass is cemented in place so it doesn’t fall out during our summer storms.”
Isaac nodded. “That would be appreciated.” Isaac stated. “How long will it take?”
“We get our cement from an alchemist, so not only does it take a mere five minutes to set, but we can guarantee that it will not fail.” Clare replied proudly.
“Does that mean ‘tonight’ or ‘come back in the morning’?” Isaac asked her.
Clare seemed to hesitate and then looked at Lenna. The sight of the foreign beauty must have won out over her desire to go home as she said: “I can get it done within the next ten minutes if you are willing to wait?”
Isaac nodded. “We can wait.” He replied.
A moment later, Clare was hurrying off with Lenna’s helmet and the lenses behind the curtain. Isaac and Lenna caught snippets of a conversation between Clare and the man that had yelled at her previously. What parts they did get was something about ‘seeing who’s up front’ and ‘real quick. I can’t let her…’ which got a ‘Fine but you owe me.’ in reply.
“She’s head over heels for you.” Isaac joked.
Lenna shook her head. “She’s never seen a drow before. Everyone’s reactions are always extreme, aren’t they?” She replied.
Isaac chuckled. “I’d rather have to scare off a bunch of heart-eyed fools than fight some ignorant bastards.” He told her. “She probably thinks you are a direct descendant of Lua because we walked in at night.”
“I’m clothed.” Lenna replied flatly. “And I don’t know how Lua would feel about you saying that. She is a deity, one who could actually have descendants, I think it’s a bit rude.”
“With the amount of times she has called you ‘child’, I don’t think she’d mind but yeah, I don’t think it’s a good idea to actually go around claiming that.” Isaac agreed and took a seat. Lenna joined him and they settled down to wait until her helmet was ready.