“So. What were you doing last night?”
Sirena’s light tone was rather incongruous with her intent expression akin to that of a tiger going in for the kill, with the prey being the details of her best friend’s love life.
Fey found she completely lacked the ability to look nonchalant regarding this particular topic. Her eyes wandered around, looking everywhere except where they might meet Sirena’s piercing gaze. She could even feel her face heating up in a rare blush. “I – We’re moving in together!” she blurted out.
While this was an extremely noteworthy milestone in the development of Fey’s (previously non-existent) romantic life, Sirena was not about to be sidetracked by the lesser gossip. She shook Fey vigorously, jostling her assassin friend by an impressive amount given how little strength she had as a mage. “Damn it, just tell me what I want to know!”
Fey neither moved to defend herself nor divulged more information, her gaze continuing to wander in a way that could not look more suspicious if she had been doing it on purpose.
The Feypets conferred between themselves in squeaks. They had learned to generally stay out of it when it appeared their owner and their owner’s ‘crazy blue friend’, as they called Sirena, became afflicted with the madness debuff known as “romance”; however, it had never previously led the mermaid to actually attack their owner. Ultimately, they decided to move in and peacefully separate the two, Boris using his bulk to nudge Sirena aside.
Sirena’s expression was gradually morphing from calm hunter to desperate gossip addict. Her voice, naturally cheerfully high-pitched, became screechy. “You’re not getting out of this one! Tell me! Tell me!”
Blade watched the exchange with bemusement. “Uh, do I want to know what this is about?”
“No,” Fey said with certainty.
“Right. That’s what I thought.” Raising his voice slightly to be heard over the ongoing screeching (“Tell meeeeee”), he added, “So, what are we doing now?”
The team’s general plans in Fantasia had been completely derailed by the pet tournament and Fey only vaguely remembered that they had had plans in the first place. “We were going to head west or something, weren’t we?” she asked, seeming to remember that it was the only logical direction to explore given that they had already travelled the human lands to the east as well as the coastal waters of the eastern coast and the geography of the continent required that they cross the Oré Mountains before heading south. (Technically, they could also head straight north, but all of our Canadian characters have more than enough winter in real life, thankyouverymuch.)
“Yeah, I think so. Beth’s a sun elf, so she’s from the Sea of Sand, right?” Blade, said, seizing upon the normal topic of conversation with enthusiasm. “We can go ask her about any preparations we should make.”
After unsuccessfully trying to get around Boris for a while, Sirena settled into a sulk. “You know what? I’m just going to assume you did it,” she declared, crossing her arms.
“That’s fine,” Fey said, trying to sound as neutral as possible.
Something about her expression must have given it away because Sirena’s expression became gleeful and she squealed in excitement. “Oh my god! You really did it! You did it!”
Despite learning his lesson many times over and intellectually knowing the correct course of action, sometimes Blade’s curiosity overcame his better judgement. “Did what?” he asked.
Three pairs of eyes looked at him somewhat disapprovingly. (Yeah, Mimi’s there too. She’s really quiet.)
“Uh, I don’t think we’re close enough to talk about this kind of stuff,” Fey said, half grinning because she knew Blade had no idea what he was asking about. Meanwhile, the entirety of her face and neck continued to redden.
Blade quickly withdrew his question. “Right. Shouldn’t have asked. I knew that. Shouldn’t. Have. Asked,” he said with emphasis, trying to remind his future self from making more mistakes (*fruitless*).
Amethyst squeaked curiously. (“Did what? I don’t get it.”)
Fey covered her eyes with her hand. “Uh…Ask Boris.” Presumably, her only mammal-based pet would know.
Resolutely ignoring the involved squeaked discussion that followed, complete with fascinated questions from Amethyst and the glooms, Fey went ahead and opened the guild portal that would take them to Caleb’s shop in Mountaingate. The guild base allowed once daily teleportation from any place in the world to the base, then back to the original location, so they had been using it as a shortcut to the workshop rather than using the teleportation gate in town.
Entering the shop from the street, they found Beth in the front. The sun elf had cleared a small portion of one of Caleb’s tables for her sketchbook; that she had been allowed to do so was a testament to the great affection the demon smith held for her.
“Hi guys!” she greeted, “What’s up?”
“Fey and Leandriel didn’t log in last night,” Sirena announced in the most suggestive tone possible, deciding to embarrass her friend for all she was worth.
The attack landed, but not on the intended target. Beth turned bright red despite the golden tan of her sun elf skin. “Oh, that’s- that’s nice…?”
Fey casually hooked her elbow around Sirena’s neck, silently threatening to choke the mermaid to death. “I am so sorry for Sirena’s existence,” she apologized sincerely. “We’re actually planning on heading west towards the Sea of Sand and wanted your opinion on preparations we should make.”
“Oh,” Beth said, looking relieved at having a normal topic of conversation to seize upon. “Can any of you sail a ship?”
“…What?” Fey asked, confused.
“‘Sea’ is literal,” Mimi murmured, sneaking in an informational tidbit amidst the conversational chaos.
“Literal? Like, is there a large body of water in the middle of the desert?” Fey asked, trying to picture it.
“No, it’s more like a really large area of quicksand, except magical whales and fish and stuff live in it,” Beth explained. “And boats float. Don’t ask me about the physics of it.”
“Okay. Literal sea of sand. Got it. I don’t think any of us sail.”
“Then you’re going to want to book passage on one of the trader ships. You can get a pretty good deal if you help fend off any pirates or kraken that might attack.”
“…Kraken?”
“They’re very rare,” Beth assured them.
“Remind me why we can’t just fly the whole way?”
“It’s too far,” said Mimi.
“Right. Ship with very rare kraken it is.”
Beth got off her chair and dug through the storage cupboards. “You can have my desert gear… It must be around here somewhere,” she muttered, carefully working her way around the huge variety of crafting materials tucked away in an order that made sense only to Caleb. “Oh, here it is!”
Standing up, she handed Fey a hooded cloak made of flowy white cloth, ideal for fending off harsh sunlight while maintaining breathability. There was also a water bottle enchanted to always stay full of cool water, a mask to protect against sandstorms, and an enchantment that made it easier to walk on sand.
“This won’t let you walk on the Sea of Sand, of course, just regular sand,” Beth warned. “Once you cross the Sea – about a three-day trip – there’s a regular desert to the west.”
Caleb walked into the front room, shrugging on a shirt after presumably working in the furnace room with his bare hands.
“Hey, Caleb, Fey and Leandriel didn’t—”
“Interrupt!” Fey commanded, throwing Amethyst at Sirena’s face. Amethyst’s skill, meant to interrupt mages in the middle of spellcasting, had in fact reached level 3 solely while being used to keep the mermaid from spouting nonsense. Fey was sorely tempted to throw a gloom and use Suffocate instead, but had thus far resisted the urge to murder her friend.
Caleb, who had largely learned to completely ignore Sirena at this point, barely reacted. Instead, he looked at Beth, who had once again turned bright red. (She’s getting a lot of collateral damage here.)
“They’re, um, travelling out west,” Beth said, regaining her composure. “Do we have any equipment good for the desert?”
Caleb disappeared upstairs and came back with a handful of faceted onyxes that he dropped into Fey’s hand. She examined them curiously.
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“Oh, right, I forgot,” Beth said, recognizing the stones as a common commodity in the desert. “Sun elves and demons are immune to sunburn, but you guys will need those.
Indeed, moon elves’s entirely melanin-free skin would quickly burn lobster red in even moderate sunlight, and merfolk were probably the second most susceptible to sun damage, their skin easily drying and cracking in arid environments.
“Oh, nice, we don’t have to wear sunscreen?” Fey said, impressed. “How do you use these?”
“They should stick if you press them somewhere against your skin,” Beth explained.
Fey ended up placing hers amongst the decorative magical sigils outside her left eye. Blade hid his behind an ear. Sirena stuck hers prominently on her forehead, between her eyebrows, and surprisingly, Mimi did the same.[i]
“It’s normal,” the sniper said in response to Fey’s questioning look.
“That’s right, personal augmentation enchantments are a specialty in the Dunes, so people end up sporting quite elaborate forehead decorations,” Beth said, flipping through her sketchbook to show them players and NPCs of all different genders and species with clusters of gems arranged in pleasing configurations on their faces.
Precise geometries were especially important when it came to magical sigils and enchantments in the game, the developers having chosen to go with predictable patterns rather than make up a runic system. “Am I going to magically implode because I have all of this stuff on one side of my face?” she asked, belatedly realizing it might be a problem.
Caleb considered the markings, eyes narrowing in mental calculations. “Not as long as there are no conflicting effects,” he concluded.
“Oh good. I’ll definitely be able to tell what has conflicting effects and avoid implosion,” she said ironically.
“Just don’t get any more magical stuff,” Blade said.
“I didn’t actually choose to get most of these,” Fey lamented.
“It’ll be fiiiine,” Sirena said. “Look how long you’ve gone without imploding.”
In addition to the sunscreen stones, Caleb gave Fey a bunch more failed weapons attempts, the metal too brittle to withstand more than a few blows but very hard and sharp within that period. Fey dutifully stored them in her safety deposit box and set up Ex-quip shortcuts for all of them, but had not yet worked out the optimal way to use them in combat.
Sirena’s gear was reconfigured to de-emphasize water magic and improve wind and lightning to take advantage of the environmental effects of the desert, which applied a penalty to water magic and a bonus to wind magic, with lightning being neutral.
Blade was given a shield so large that it might be more accurate to call it a small wall with handles, complete with a window of transparent glassteel to allow vision through it, and gravity magic that made it even harder to budge when it was anchored in place.
“We really abuse Ex-quip, don’t we?” Fey observed as Blade made the shield disappear into his virtual inventory.
“Yup,” Blade agreed. “Now I have four shields equipped.”
Mimi, using Shifty as her crossbow, did not need a weapon upgrade, but Caleb provided her with a large set of bolts appropriately weighted to match the monstrous draw weight her weapon spirit could generate, designed for different effects such as armour penetration, explosions, and fire.
No money exchanged hands, but the equipment was not free; Caleb sent the party a list of materials he wanted to experiment with that they would be able to collect as they ventured west.
“Bye guys! We’ll pop back to Mountaingate whenever we hit a teleportation gate,” Sirena said, having temporarily forgotten her fixation on Fey’s personal life with the flood of cool killing gadgets they had been given.
“Bye!” said Beth, waving as the party bustled out, leaving the shop much quieter than before.
She looked over to see Caleb holding out a bundle of shiny cloth. “What’s this?” she asked, taking it.
Shaking it out, she gasped as it was revealed as a luxurious silk robe in a delicate cream, intricately embroidered with white gold thread in a sparse, wispy geometric pattern that gave it an understated beauty. She had no idea how many hundreds of hours such a garment would have taken, even if crafting skills did allow for a certain level of automatization of the more time-consuming parts of the creation process.
“It’s an invisibility robe,” Caleb stated in his usual matter-of-fact way. “It also dampens sound and smell.”
Beth was part of the minority of players who did not just have little interest in combat, but actively avoided fighting and killing monsters. She had reached level 30 solely on experience gains from completing quests, while her job-related skills as an artist were beyond level 30, meaning that they had evolved three times to become truly powerful outside the original use case.
She had done this with the help of an ability called Pacifism she had gained after reaching level 15 without killing anything, which gave her a buff to all her stats and experience proportionate to the time she spent without killing anything. It would reset if she ever did fight and kill something, but she had not yet been forced into such a situation.
The invisibility robe would be the perfect item to help her escape dangerous situations but she could not even begin to imagine its value on the player market, especially for assassin types like Fey.
She could not resist trying it on, removing her cotton robe and sliding on the silk garment. “Is it working?” she asked uncertainly, seeing Caleb’s gaze stay focused on her.
He removed one of the self-augmentation gemstones that lined his ears like stick-on earrings, the onyxes subtle glints of black-on-black against his ebon skin. “Yes,” he confirmed before replacing the enchantment, presumably one that let him see through invisibility.
“Caleb, it’s wonderful, but you know you don’t have to make me something just because you gave everyone else a gear upgrade, right?” Beth asked, having noticed the pattern.
His expression did not change. “There’s no reason they should receive more items than you do.”
“Well, they’re levelling up and fighting different monsters and all that. It’s functional.”
“This is functional,” he said, a touch of confusion in his expression.
“That’s true, but… What I’m trying to say is, if there are other projects you’d rather work on, you don’t need to make me things.”
They sometimes had trouble conveying the exact meaning they meant to each other and went through a lot of effort to communicate clearly. After a pause to think, he asked, “Do you like it?”
“Of course! It’s beautiful. I just… You don’t have to.”
“I want to,” he answered simply.
Beth did not have a counter to the statement. “Right. Thank you,” she said, feeling like the short conversation had taken more energy than it should have.
Caleb smiled a rare smile, the expression pulling his handsome features into an even more attractive arrangement. “You’re welcome,” he said. He headed back to his smithy without a further goodbye.
Beth let out a slow, quiet exhale. Caleb set all her nerves aflutter.
She left the invisibility robe on as she resumed her sketching.
◊◊◊
“Arwyn,” a smooth tenor voice murmured.
Arwyn removed the gaming helmet that allowed her to play Fantasia and was rewarded with the sight of Leander kneeling next to the bed, his face close enough that she could see him clearly without her glasses.
She smiled involuntarily. “Good morning,” she said, reaching for his hand.
He twined his fingers with hers and absentmindedly pressed a kiss to the back of her hand. “Good morning,” he said with his own smile. “Could you tell me where your coffee supplies are?”
Arwyn blinked, then sat up abruptly. “Oh! Oh, I’m sorry. I don’t drink coffee,” she said with a growing sense of having utterly failed in her guesting duties. She was one of the small minority who had made it to adulthood without developing a dependency on the caffeine-laden beverage, mainly because she hated all forms of bitterness, and given how she had expected to live alone all her life, she had never bought a coffee maker for someone else’s use.
Her scramble to get up was stopped by Leander’s ongoing grip on her hand. “No need to panic,” he said, eyes alight with amusement.
“I don’t want you to get a caffeine withdrawal headache,” she babbled. “I have black tea. There might be a packet of instant somewhere – but those are gross, right? Let’s just go to the store – No, wait, let’s go to a café first, and then go buy a coffeemaker.”
Leander could not help but find Arwyn adorably flustered in a way that made him smile. “Shall we go out for breakfast, then?” he proposed. It was Saturday and he was looking forward to spending the whole day together.
“Okay, give me thirty seconds get dressed.”
He reluctantly released her hand and she darted off into her closet.
Surprisingly, she exited in under half a minute, having changed into jeans and a dressy, asymmetrical top that was quite different from the business clothing she wore to work and the relaxed clothing she wore at home.
Hopping on one foot, then the other, to put on her socks, she rushed to the bathroom. “Give me two minutes to brush my teeth!”
Leander got himself moving, realizing with a grin that her time estimates were literal and if he did not start getting dressed, Fey would end up waiting for him.
He had only a small suitcase with him, not having yet moved most of his possessions in the day since they had agreed to move in together. He chose slacks and a shirt with a formal collar, not wanting to look underdressed next to Arwyn’s pretty outfit.
Arwyn came out of the bathroom, her long hair in a ponytail his fingers immediately itched to undo. She was rubbing what was presumably sunscreen over her face and neck. “Okay, I’m ready.”
She looked at him and stopped moving.
“What is it? Should I change into another outfit?” he asked.
She sighed. “Leander. Are you somehow unaware of how attractive you are?”
He shrugged. “Average?” he ventured.
Arwyn looked at him with an aghast expression. “Average??”
“I mean, I am taller than average, and I have to stay in shape for my job, but my face is just—”
Arwyn rushed across the room and put her hands on either side of his face to silence him. “No,” she said sternly, forbidding him to complete his sentence. “Absolutely not.”
He was shyly pleased that she was so vehemently defending his looks but not at all confident that her views were in line with what the general population might think.
“Okay, ‘fess up. Tell me what kind of weird trauma you went through to have such a twisted idea of your own looks,” she demanded, not moving her hands.
“There was no trauma,” he said. “It was just – when I was in high school…”
“Mmhmm,” she said knowingly as soon as “high school” slipped out.
“I told you before about the other students’ attitude towards me before my parents’ company went public and we became wealthy by their standards. I was certainly not given any indication I was attractive. The last day of the school term, I was a nobody, and the first day of the next year, everyone wanted to talk to me. It was certainly because of money,” he said, feeling a residual tightness in his chest; clearly, he had not fully gotten over the experience.
“Leander, did you happen to get your growth spurt late?” Arwyn asked gently.
“Yes,” he said, surprised. “It did not really get going until I was eighteen. How did you know?”
“It’s pretty common with tall people. Did you also have acne in high school?”
“Yes, fairly severe. I did go see a dermatologist about it, so I did not end up with any permanent scarring. Why?”
“Leander, that’s all gone now. You are legitimately so beautiful that I automatically assumed you were a computer-generated NPC the first time we met.”
Leander stared into her sincere gaze, not sure how to respond. Emotions swirled through him: surreal detachment, embarrassment at being called beautiful, and again, shy pleasure. “It was not because of the angel wings?”
“That certainly reinforced the assumption, but no.”
He stared for a while longer, then said, “Okay.” He was not quite sure what he was acknowledging.
She smiled. “Good. Let’s go get breakfast,” she said, leading the way to the front door.
Her small hand felt so warm in his. “You know,” he ventured, “You are—”
“No,” she interrupted resolutely. “Part of understanding how ludicrously good-looking you are is knowing how sarcastic it sounds whenever you compliment someone else.”
“But—”
“No.”
“Arwyn, I—”
“No, I know you’re not being sarcastic but it’s still not okay.”
“So I am forbidden from complimenting you?”
She thought about it for a second. “If I’ve gone through significant time and expense to dress up or something, you may. Once, and briefly.”
“It is not just your appearance I am referring to when I call you beautiful,” he murmured.
She turned pink with embarrassment as they put on their shoes. “Just find a different adjective,” she finally said.
“Wonderful? Adorable? Lovable?” he proposed, grinning as she blushed even more.
“Those are all acceptable,” she said, opening the front door without looking at him.
He stole a kiss before taking the lead and walking outside, her hand in his.
----------------------------------------
[i] Markings on the forehead between the eyebrows historically had the spiritual meaning of marking the third eye. It is best known in Western culture for being worn by Hindi women in India (bindi), especially to signify the married state, however are also seen in other parts of Asia in other contexts, for instance, in parts of Indonesia in both men and women as part of marriage ceremonies or on children in China as part of certain traditional ceremonies. A separate tradition known as huadian was popular in the Tang and Song dynasties in China, where decorative markings such as plum blossoms, butterflies, and birds were drawn in red paint, sometimes extending across the forehead to the temples and cheeks.