Looking back now, I wish I had been able to make a "photograph" of my first three adventurers, getting ready for their first dungeon crawl.
If you don't know what a "photograph" is - I didn't, at the time - it allows you to capture an image from a moment in time, and then you can see the image any time you choose, even after the moment has changed. It's a truly amazing magic. Or, technically, a "technology" - that's what they call magic in this world, it seems.
"Wow," said Ramon. He gave his short sword an experimental swing, and grinned at the distinct noise of it slicing through the air. "What are they thinking? I mean, this is utterly cool, but it looks so realistic, any other convention would take this *away*! And this one is providing it free with admission?"
When he and his companions had first come in, he'd been clad in the durable trousers people of this world call "jeans", and the light tunic they call a "tea shirt". I'd equipped him as a starting fighter, so now he wore light leather armor over those clothes, a small shield on his left arm, and a beginner's sword, just slightly longer than his forearm. I didn't have a huge magic budget to work with, but I'd put a small spell on the blade to shield the edge at all other times than when fighting one of my summoned creatures.
I couldn't do anything about his footwear for now - producing that from the Library was apparently much more difficult than the other gear - but I still winced, looking at his bright orange "sneakers" and thinking of Shadow Rats. Nothing I could do about it just yet.
"Don't be looking a gifted horse in the mouth, is my advice," said the red-haired girl, Gillian. "We're fierce lucky that there even was a second convention in the neighborhood for us to stumble on."
Gillian was a bit of a puzzle to me. Of the three, she was the only one who'd come already dressed in adventurer gear - a sorceress's one-piece, cut high enough on the legs and low enough in the bustline to grant the wearer the Skyclad stat bonus, and an appropriately pointy hat. But the shiny purple material the one-piece was made of was unfamiliar to me. And the medallions that decorated her bustline - I would have thought they were the beneficent gods of this world, except did any world have gods who were exclusively young muscular males? Whose devotees depicted them doing nothing except kissing and entwining with each other? Somehow I doubted it.
Thankfully, her footwear was sensible for dungeon-crawling, being tough black leather with thick soles. I didn't have to spend any magic budget on that. Instead, I spared a little to reinforce the seams of her one-piece, which was - to put it delicately - trying to hold in a lot of body.
"S-s-s-s-sorry," said Kate. She seemed to shrink into her healer-mage robes, and nervously tucked her fingers into the pockets at the ends of her sleeves. "Ek-ek-ek-ex—"
"I know, right? Your bastard ex!" said Gillian. "And after the stupid tosser claimed he'd stay away!" She got on her tiptoes to put a comforting arm around the blonde girl's shoulders.
Given Kate's height and athletic physique, I'd automatically prepared a set of bikini armor for her, using a big chunk of magic budget to do so. She'd pulled aside the curtain of the 'dressing booth,' taken one look at it, and let out a disbelieving shriek through hands clapped over her mouth. The other two had rushed to her side, and hastily assured her that she didn't have to wear that, that if the convention didn't have any less "demeaning" costumes in her size they'd all leave together and find some other way to spend the weekend. At which point I hastily threw together blue robes styled after Luni's and set the arrangement up in another 'dressing booth,' one they believed they'd overlooked in the dim light. To their relief and mine, they found this more acceptable.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
And it could have been left at that, but was it? Of course not. I got to listen to several minutes of really rather unfair complaining about the tackiness of bikini armor - and its purported impractical nature, which I listened to with greater and greater bafflement. Hadn't these people ever looked at their status screens and seen the stat boosts Skyclad and Skyclad+ gave them??
"No reason you should be sorry," Ramon said. "To tell you the truth, I'm pretty sure I spotted exes in the crowd, too. I'm just as glad not to be dodging them all weekend."
The two girls stared at him. Kate held up a "V" of two fingers with a raised eyebrow. Gillian asked the same question in words. "Exes? Plural?"
He shrugged. "I only got glimpses, so I'm not sure. But there was a guy in the Registration line wearing a trenchcoat like the one Derek always thought made him look cool. And then as we were leaving, we passed an elf cosplayer who sure looked a lot like white-haired Heather."
Kate pulled her "phone" from her pocket and tapped at the windowpane set into the mysterious object. Ramon pulled out his own "phone," read the runes that appeared, and answered her question. "No, the one you met was brunette Heather. She was just dying her hair at that time."
"You went through way too many exes before deciding you were asexual," Gillian muttered.
"Discovering," Ramon retorted frostily.
"Whichever it is, I'm just saying..." Gillian waved her hand as Ramon's mouth tightened. Kate's fingers were tapping frantically at the little window of her phone. "Could've saved aggravation all 'round..."
A little bird chirped from inside Gillian's device; she and Ramon both looked down. Her brow wrinkled first; Ramon paused, re-read, then smirked. Then the redhead snorted and laughed, looking up at Kate. "Goose!" she said affectionately. "I meant 'gifted horse' as in one that's been gifted to you, not - not a horse that always solves the Daily Jumble or the like!"
The three friends laughed together. I studied Kate with interest. I had no idea if the others had believed her pretense to be a "goose", as Gillian had called her, but to me it was clear that she'd seen a threat to party unity, and acted decisively with the resources available to her to nullify the threat. She might be a better fit for the healer-mage role than I had thought.
And, I hoped, someone with a lot of brains, who frequently got underestimated or overlooked because of her speaking problem, might be a valuable resource for my own devious plan - nebulous as that plan was at the moment.
"Are we ready?" Ramon asked. Everyone checked their sword, shield, wand, vials. Nods all around. "All right, con-goers! Let's LARP us some monsters and treasure!"
Servitor? What does it mean to 'larp' something?
=Checking, checking... No matches found. Checking expanded slang dictionaries... No matches found. I suspect it may be a word without a fixed meaning.=
Ah. Well, keep the question as a background task. Whatever experience these folks are here for, I want to provide it as best I can.
=Acknowledged.=
"I'm just as glad we gave the other gather a good miss," Gillian said, as they headed down the short hallway to the curtained entrance of the "dungeon". "I didn't care to say much at the time, but I thought I saw my ex there too." She lifted her chin proudly and puffed her chest a bit.
The other two stopped short. Kate pointed a questioning finger downwards. "What, someone you dated here?" echoed Ramon, in disbelief.
"N- Naw," Gillian answered. "No, he was from Dublin, y'see?" A pause; she seized it and pressed. "See, I broke it off with him just before I came here, yeah? And that's actually why I haven't dated anyone here, 'cos dealing with that melter just made me fed up with the whole game!" She nodded decisively.
"What was he doing here from Dublin, then?" Ramon asked.
"You'd have to ask him that, then, wouldn't you?" she shot back, rather harriedly.
A bird chirped. Gillian read the message, and went very quiet. "Iain," she replied, a few moments later. "Yeh, that was his name. Iain." She shuffled her feet and avoided the eyes of the others.
Okay, so maybe they weren't the best allies I could possibly have in my revenge on the Demon Lord. But, beneficent Gods help me, they were what I had for a start.