“[Charm].” Vey casts the spell, and sees Sera’s face flinch for a moment, before she opens her eyes. He verifies that he can indeed see that Sera is listed as a charmed creature in his status, and promptly terminates the spell. “What did it feel like?”
“It felt pretty much the same as I always feel, except you looked… friendly? I guess? If you’d asked me to do something physically safe for me to do, I don’t think I’d have been able to refuse, at the very least.” Sera’s statement proves that the [Charm] spell works as intended, at least. He’d only started working on it since Sera asked why he was avoiding enchantment magic, and now he has his answer.
“I don’t like the idea of forcing you or… anyone else for that matter, to act how I want with magic… I don’t like this spell.” He tells her honestly, and takes his seat at the lab’s table as Sera walks up to hers as well.
“I know, but we both agreed it's probably for the best that you at least try and make spells like that, for research purposes only.” Sera’s face practically glows with excitement as she begins talking again. “Besides, do you remember what today is? You sure you don’t want to ‘charm’ me?”
“I know what day it is, and I told you that I don’t know how I feel about that type of thing. I know I’m male, but that's about the extent of it right now.” Vey wishes he had flesh to ‘deflate’ the way Sera does when making statements like his just now.
“I know, I know, it just feels funny to tease you since you asked me for-”
“Please, you and I both know that’s not what I meant by it.” Vey recalls the time from two days ago with slight shame. How was he supposed to know that asking if it was ok to watch her change her clothes or wash herself meant something, when Sera hadn’t explained that yet. He just wanted to update his notes on her anatomy without having to poke at her like before. Still, by now, Vey feels about as confident it understands most of the sexual connotations and what Sera calls ‘innuendo’ now, as well as plenty more than he thinks will ever apply to it about sex acts themselves.
“Alright, alright.” With her teasing interrupted, Sera shrinks back a little into her seat, and Vey starts working on transposing the [Charm] spell from the test paper into his spellbook proper. “Vey, do you think it’s gonna work? This, I mean? Like, regardless of a pactbond or how we feel about it, do you think a living elf and an undead skeleton can live together like this?”
“It’s worked so far, hasn’t it? We made it until today without breaking the terms, and I don’t plan on being the one to break the less binding rules we made.” Vey responds without even looking up, and he mentally smiles, confident that Sera is probably blushing at that, something he’s come to find ‘cute’ as Sera claimed when he described the feeling.
“Ok, so then, what are you going to do for today? Don’t you need to give me a gift worthy of keeping me, o’ magic skeleton?” Sera lets a decidedly unsubtle amount of sarcasm(another thing Vey now understands, and has begun to use himself) into her voice. Vey looks up at her, and tilts his head slightly to the right, a gesture he and Sera agreed on meaning that Vey is ‘smiling’.
“Later, after your dinner.” Vey leaves her with that hint of information before returning to his work. He lets his mind drift to various things as he works, trying not to let them return to distraction-aka Sera-as he does.
Sera, noticing Vey’s intense focus, switches to her second favorite activity since they made the pact, well, second to annoying Vey because she can. She grabs the bastard sword Vey had fished out of the storeroom for her. She’s not strong enough to properly wield it yet, but Sera thinks that’s fine for now, she still needs to build that strength, after all. The reason she has it with her is because every time she thought about fighting with a weapon, the only ones that felt right to her were swords like this, and bows(though she’s pretty sure all elves would be ok with using bows, so that’s besides her point).
She takes a stance that best imitates the ones she remembers some of the knights and soldiers she saw once upon a time using, except she holds the sword in both hands for now. She tries her best to mimic the way the melee skeletons use their weapons, mimicking the same strikes, movements, and other things she doesn’t know the names of. Admittedly this ‘training’ probably isn’t very effective, but it feels great to exercise like this, and it cures her boredom in the quiet periods where Vey can’t do that for her. Sera feels that just aimlessly practicing with a sword far too big with her like this is oddly… meditative.
After at least an hour of her tranced state, her mind finally focuses back into reality enough to wander as she goes through the motions of parrying invisible strikes, and launching counters against nothing, truly the signs that she’s running out of things to try and practice. She’d been half-joking when she asked if Vey had a birthday present for her, she honestly didn’t think he needed to do something like that at this point. Their pact was something… special. As far as she knew, her parents don’t even have one, and they’ve been together for a hundred years, at least. Honestly, she didn’t know that what they were agreeing to was a pactbond when she’d done it, and when she asked Vey, he didn’t realize that either.
That was probably a good thing, since now, that bond is probably her favorite thing to look at, and she’s spent multiple nights now falling asleep reading it. Sera recognizes that such things probably aren’t healthy, and she wasn’t that type of person before coming here. Sera also doesn’t care. She feels purposed, wanted, and happy, or at least, happier than she’d been on the surface, that’s for sure. More than that, she knows with absolute confidence that Vey also feels the same way, too. She’d asked him, after all, and she’d know instantly if he lied.
Is this romance? She asks herself as she starts to feel her arms growing tired. I know I love him, but… do I love him like… that? He understands that now, but would he be able to reciprocate? She sets the sword down by the table, and absently tells Vey that she’s going to wash the sweat off of herself. She spots him tilt that bony head of his up at her for a moment, but he puts it back to work wordlessly, so she keeps walking. What would romance even mean for us, if it was possible? It’s not like we could… He doesn’t even have any organs at all, nevermind lips or… that!
She undresses quickly, and starts on cleaning herself off with the same rag and same cold water as always. Absently, she stops and examines herself in the water, and strikes a variety of poses, some of which are rather… ridiculous, like standing on her toes and making a bridge with her body, or squatting over the edge of the bucket, with one foot in and one foot out, to view her… parts… in full. She does this to examine as much of her own body as possible in her reflection, scientifically, the same way Vey used to. After she’s satisfied with her understanding of her appearance, she pulls up her status.
Level and Hit Die:
0, 1
Current HP/MHP
6/6
Armor Class
12
MP
N/A(Non-caster)
Class:
None
Name:
Sera Eranda Eclir Luvil
Race:
Elf
Subrace:
High Elf
Age:
16
Alignment:
Neutral Evil
Height
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5’2 ft
Attributes:
MHP
STR
CON
DEX
INT
WIS
CHA
SPD
LCK
NAC
Base:
6
10
10
10
11
10
15
30ft
-4
10
Race:
0
0
0
4
0
0
0
0
0
0
Training:
0
1
1
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
Study:
0
NA
NA
NA
1
3
0
NA
NA
NA
Total:
6
11
11
15
12
13
15
30ft
-4
10
Proficiencies
Skills(Passive)
Skills(Active)
Magic Effects
Pacts and Curses
Simple Tool Proficiency
Elven Dexterity
Pactbound(Vey)
Simple Weapon Proficiency
Lifetime Achievements
Titles
Near-Death Experiences: 1
Monsters Tamed[Error]: 1
Sera thinks she definitely feels and looks like her stats imply, but she still feels like examining herself without it first is… better, somehow. Despite what she said to herself back when Vey had been poking at her to learn more about anatomy and how she’d been growing, that does feel more natural. Her stats have also grown far faster than she ever expected them to. 4 points for each physical stat in what… 4ish months? Sera doesn’t think that it’s possible, but then again, 10 is the average for a healthy humanoid, that's why the system has the number at a modifier of 0, after all, so maybe it’s just that as she approached the ‘adulthood’ age, along with her being fed far more than ever before, caused her to grow into that average faster.
She doesn’t really think it’s worth caring about just yet, but it's definitely something to tell Vey later. Vey… She wonders what her companion has in store for her present, since he apparently both has one, and wants her to wait until right before she would ordinarily be sleeping to give it to her. If she had to guess, she’d say he’d give her something like another set of clothes, or show her a new cool spell he designed, or maybe just take her for a walk outside, and she’d be ok with all of those things… Except it doesn’t feel like that right now. Sera decides to shake the thoughts out of her head, but doesn’t do so physically on account of her now quite overlong and currently very soaked hair. Maybe I should ask Vey to try and cut my hair… Or not, he seems to like touching it whenever he thinks I’ve fallen asleep…
Vey had packed up all of his research notes immediately once Sera left the room, using as much haste as he could. He silently thanked her for getting herself so tired and sweaty from her workout, since it means she’ll be washing herself off for at least another half an hour. Plenty of time. Vey pulls out a second, more secret stash of magical research he’d been sort of half-heartedly attempting to hide by stuffing them in between books on the bookshelf when he wasn’t working on them.
He scans his work from the day before, progress he’d managed to make in the short time Sera had decided to take a nap that day, and starts to work again. Ink is becoming a scarce resource, the veritable hoard of it Vey once had now reduced to a mere twelve ounces, but that also served as a way to cover up what the spell he’s currently working on is actually for. In short, the spell produces magical writing, as in, turning mana into ink on a page. Or, that’s what it would look like to anyone but Vey. When rearranged, the papers made a different spell entirely, and one that would, hopefully, actually work, since the magical writing concept still needs a bit more effort before it will.
Vey, despite not having finished the spell yet, has already decided on a name for it. [Mark]. He thinks it’s quite a simple, elegant name, but also unassuming enough that Sera still wouldn’t be able to guess what it was for if she’d somehow found it. Well, given that Sera was the one that taught him the concept of ‘marking’ things, in all three ways she’d done so, maybe she could put it together, but the actual truth of the spell isn’t about putting wax seals, signatures, or bruises on something or someone.
Finding a way to control what the mark would actually look like had been the hardest part of designing this otherwise useless spell. Seriously, the only thing it does is look like something, why is it so difficult to program that? Vey thinks, well, using yet another piece of paper for an overcomplicated spell matrix filled with every parameter he currently knows of that would go into something’s appearance. He knows he could just brute force it with magic at some point, but he’s gotten much better at figuring out when that point is by now, and it’s current state isn’t it.
He scratches the symbols he imagines using for the first mark into the air, trying to grasp what it is about the parameters that he’s missing, when he stumbles upon an idea he probably should’ve tried first. He wouldn’t need to set the exact parameters if he just made physically drawing the mark part of the spell. Granted, that’s very annoying if he wants to use this spell for anything other than this ‘birthday present’ idea, but it will make it work, and given that he’s already at his deadline for having a present, that will be good enough for now. The present is supposed to be something of a joke, anyways.
As he finishes the spell a few minutes later, he doesn’t add it to his spellbook, simply preparing it for casting on the spot and hiding the papers away again. Vey knows Sera will be back soon, probably wanting to either eat and then talk, or talk and then eat. Either way, food will be involved, so he pulls out his spellbook and swaps out the charm spell they were testing earlier for [Conjure Simple Meal]. Vey remembers that Sera had finally started to complain about a lack of variety in her food again, which is something Vey still doesn’t know how to fix, but it’s something he definitely wants to.
--
Sera finishes eating the dinner she and Vey had made together. ‘Cooking’ had been one of the things she’d asked him to do with her. Despite their limited ingredient pool of salted pork, salted fish, steamed(but not seasoned) vegetables that Vey can conjure, and last but certainly least, the very last of the hard tack Sera has refused to eat since vegetables became an option, the two have managed to engineer a meal Sera actually enjoys wholeheartedly. Using Vey’s [Lesser Transmutive Crafting], a little bit of water to soak some of the meat in, and some fire produced by Vey’s magic, Sera managed to craft a meal of unsalted pork, with salted steamed vegetables, finally putting the seasonings in the proper place for the food, as well as having the proper amount of salt.
Plus, she’d managed to convince Vey to let her have a little bit of ale, just for this night, since even if she doesn’t like the idea of drinking it over the pure water of the fountain, having something to dip her hard tack in that isn’t water has actually encouraged her to eat a little bit more of it. Vey seemed to enjoy helping her cook, at least from her perspective. He’d been actively curious about how cooking worked, what other ingredients she’d like, and that sort of thing, which Sera felt very proud of him for. Being proud of a skeleton for wanting to know how cooking food works is dumb, and she’s probably an idiot for it, regardless of what her intelligence stat is, but the idea of Vey, a skeleton capable of tearing men apart with its bare hands, wearing a chef’s hat is adorable to her.
Eating a meal like this while making Vey just sit there and watch doesn’t sit right with her, so she’d started making Vey sit next to her, right next to her, and encouraged him to ask questions about how the pork tastes, ‘what does tasting feel like’, so on and so forth, and Sera feels minorly delighted whenever Vey decides her hair is too close to her food and brushes some of it away. The meal passes peacefully, and Sera feels legitimately satisfied with it, the same way she used to feel about having feasts at the harvest festival or at the parties some human families would host for weddings.
“If you’re ready, I can give you your present now… If you want to stay here…” Sera snaps out of her food induced trance as Vey vocalizes apparent anxiety about her desire to be here.
“I’m not going anywhere. Now what is it you have for me?” Sera pauses as she realizes Vey isn’t looking at her anymore, but at the space in front of him at the table. She stands, and as she does, she plants both of her hands on either side of Vey’s skull, forcing him to look at her. “I’ll say it again. I’m. Not. Leaving. That’s final. We have… look, I didn’t tell you this earlier, but people with pactbonds… they don’t usually ‘leave’ each other unless one of them is dead.”
“I understand. I don’t know what you actually want, but I made something for you. Ahh… what was it you said the humans do?” Vey looks at her, and she searches her mind for the answer Vey is looking for, but apparently doesn’t need to find it, as he pulls his head away from her and steps back. “Right, I remember. Sit on the bed, and close your eyes.”
Sera does as instructed, wondering exactly where Vey could have have hidden something here without her knowing about it. She closes her eyes, and lets the mixed feeling of anticipation, anxiety, fear, and expectancy fill her mind, and she hears Vey step closer to her. She hears something that sounds like Vey bending over, and the telltale feeling of the skeleton brushing her hair back behind her ear. Sera feels the skeleton grab her left hand, and hold it out, as well as the gentle tingling of his claws drawing something on her hand.
“[Mark].” Vey’s voice ripples with the magical incantation, and Sera opens her eyes immediately, looking down at her hand in shock at first, but an overwhelming sensation of confusion when she sees it. “It’s the symbol for-”
“For branding an animal or monster as tamed, I know… We used to have to put these on all of the cows and pigs, back in the village… So this is your way of declaring me your pet, once and for all?” Sera looks down at the glowing [Mark] in astonishment. She honestly can’t believe Vey would actually pull a prank on her. Or maybe it isn’t a prank? Her mind drifts somewhere… confusing, but only briefly, before she settles on a response to Vey’s apparent sense of humor. She wraps her arms around the skeleton’s chest, and drags him close for a hug, banging her cheek against his jaw in the process. “Ow! Why is your jaw so damn hard?”
“... Because it’s bone…” Vey responds flatly, but returns the embrace all the same.