Suggested Listening

Once clean, the trio took the time to clean their clothes as well. Cali had it worse than Elruin and Lemia, since she couldn't avoid the close quarters fighting that saw blood and other fluid splatter on her clothes. In addition, she was the only one of the three who had normal clothing rather than the magically reinforced clothes that was required for training magic, and it showed after the week they'd been on the road.

"We'll need to do some shopping," Lemia said. "That is, if you're okay that most of our money is in the form of stolen gold and coins I doubt they accept here."

Cali held up the tattered remains of her shoes, victims of the hobgoblin attack. "I suppose if there was ever a time to learn to enjoy going barefoot. Pity that would be far too suspicious."

"You're welcome," Lemia said with a smile.

"I don't need shoes to drop-kick you."

"Don't fight." Elruin did her best to look commanding in her damp clothes. It worked as well as one might expect of a grumpy cat. Then she touched her stomach. "Umm, can we get something to eat, now?"

"Huh, somehow I completely forgot about food," Lemia said. "I haven't eaten since last night." She gave her stomach a pat with both hands. "On the plus side, this has been the best diet plan of my life. Well, goodbye flat tummy, hello feast. Think they'll let me have a whole hog?"

"Good luck finding a hog." Cali began walking down the path. "Silmid are insectivores and herbivores. The only meat you're gonna find here is dog food for the ghost hounds. If I recall, they farm rats."

"Couple more days and I might consider it." Lemia spotted a lone silmid on the path, heading toward the baths. "Do you know where we can get food?"

The presumable female, if the flat snout and small hands were an indication, only stood up to Elruin's shoulder. She cocked her head to the side and looked up at them with wide eyes. "Ek?"

"Umm," Cali stepped forward. "Ahtuhk?"

"Atuk." The silmid repeated with better annunciation. She glanced around, then pointed at the ground. "Atuk." Then she returned to walking up the path, wondering why foreigners were always so weird.

"... They eat the grass, don't they?"

"Grass, tree leaves, fruit, berries, bark and wood when they want something to chew on," Cali ran down the list of options. "Their teeth never stop growing, so they'll chew just about anything. Look, there's an apple tree up ahead. Best meal you're gonna find here. On the other hand, they have some of the best dried rations, which we need to stock up on."

"Guess that'll do."

Soon, they'd returned to their nest, where Elruin curled up with Mister Squishybones and went straight to sleep nuzzled against Cali. After the girl child was unconscious, Cali extracted herself and scooted out of the hole to take a seat outside.

"Was the cramped hole in the wall not spacious enough for you and your little sister?" Lemia didn't stop looking up into the soft glow of the leaves of the silmid tree home.

"I've had worse," Cali said. "But I slept like the dead all morning and into the afternoon."

"Hah." Lemia stretched her arms, then rolled to her feet. "This new strength thing is weird, but I'm not complaining. Say, wanna go check out the silmid night life? I need to find an alchemist."

"No, one of us needs to stay here. Go ahead and have fun." She waved Lemia off. "But, uh, keep an eye on your pouch. Silmid are notorious kleptomaniacs. I don't think they see anything wrong with it, they steal trinkets the way human kids play with swords and dolls. Normal kids, at any rate."

"Implying that Rin is normal."

By the time Elruin awoke, it was to the sour tang of acid in the air. Cali and Lemia both sat around the tiny campfire, where Lemia generated a burst of flame every so often to warm the kettle.

"What are you doing?" Aside from the bursts of flame, there was no magic involved in the alchemy that she could sense.

"Took all night, but I found a place that sells venomfire powder, and I got a weapon I can use." She patted the bracer on her arm. "Silmid design, adjusted for humans. With this baby, I can crack a man's skull with a rock from twenty yards. Or use alchemy pellets. The silmid know their alchemy, half their library is full of alchemy books."

"A library?" Elruin's face lit up and she gazed at Cali. "Can we go, please?"

"Sorry, I've got a date with a bunch of silmid leaders to explain what I know about Claron's activities," Cali said. "I doubt it will make much difference, but I can give more information on the scrying blocks, maybe we'll stumble across some clue. And maybe they'll stop eavesdropping once they know everything we know." She raised her voice for the last sentence.

"I'll take Rin to the library when I'm done," Lemia said. "When this mess is over, I might drop out of the College and move here to live in their library. Silmid alchemy couples mineral and herbal properties in ways I never imagined possible, let alone seen before. I don't think our teachers know half the stuff they do."

"Have fun studying while I talk to all the most important people of the city."

"Thank you!" Elruin gave Cali a hug, and a once-over with her senses to make sure all of her work remained functional. "I'm going to read all the books!"

"Have fun trying not to gouge your eyes out from boredom."

Helping Lemia with alchemy didn't require much other than to hand her older friend the right powders at the right time. She had no intrinsic talent for non-magical alchemy, but if Lemia believed it would let her do the same trick that let the silmids set goblins on fire, she approved. Goblins were mean and because of them she had to kill more of her dollies.

Soon they found themselves at what the silmid considered their library, a stout building near the center of the city. The silmid at the entrance gawked at them, but nobody stopped them from entering. "We're here for the human section," she told the scholar at the desk.

Said scholar, who understood not a word of what Lemia said other than 'human', pointed at a small side corner. Meanwhile, the silmid of the library were busy climbing up the walls to reach other sections of books intended for them. Stairs and ladders were things that happened to other species.

Suggested Listening

"I started on this corner," Lemia said. "You go to the other side, and we'll work our way to the middle. Let me know what you find." They stepped around a silmid boy who stared at them from the entrance.

So the pair spent their time in the library, hunting down books that offered the best alchemical bang for their buck. It was approaching midday when Lemia came across alchemy that might interest Elruin. "Hey, Rin, I think I have something for Esra."

Elruin all but jumped at the possibility. "What is it?"

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"Well, check this out, they have something here for treating leather, an alternate form of mageleather, but I don't think it was initially designed for that purpose. It looks an awful lot like it was made for funeral rights. If you look here, they're using it to harden the hide against both physical and magical forces, but it could also be used to fortify an entire body down to the bone."

It wasn't too far removed from being usable on living tissue, but life energy would build up within the bindings until it cooked the subject inside out.

The two sat down, reading over the alchemical processes that were meant to fuse fresh dead tissue with magical reactants, in order to protect the recipients from harm in the afterlife. Where the silmid found this book, neither could guess, but it would have been burned along with the author, if it were penned within any human city.

"No," Elruin said after they got about halfway through the book. "They're good ideas, but they're too blatant. They amplify and refine, which is great, but it's too visible. Besides, it's dangerous."

Lemia agreed, it would be almost impossible to hide Cali if they infused her flesh with these forms of alchemy, and there was no telling what effect it would have on the trickery used to protect her mind, but Elruin missed the obvious. "We don't use it on her, we use it on her clothes. It's still a good leather treatment technique." However, she wasn't the only member of their group which was undead. "And maybe on dolls?"

Elruin's eyes widened at the prospect. It would take time to craft the alchemical paste, longer still to find the proper ingredients, but given time she could coat any of her dollies with the substance, making them stronger and tougher than before by a significant amount. She would have to be extra-careful about which dollies to treat, however, because they would be expensive and stand out to magical senses.

"It's perfect," Elruin whispered. "We need to find some untreated leather right now."

"I know where we can start looking." Lemia set the book down next to some of her own paper and ink. "But first, we need this." She began the necessary vocalizations, then started to trace patterns of the spell that all scholars would learn with time. Tiny drops of ink lifted from its phial, then jumped to the blank paper, a perfect copy on white of the yellowed parchment containing such a brilliant spell.

She flipped through the book, finding methods to work runes that reminded her of the sarite protections build into walls of cities, powered by sapping energy from the very magic trying to bring down the walls. It was inferior to sarite defenses in some ways, but in a siege it beat anything she'd seen before.

Soon, she'd moved on to golem-crafting techniques, then into weapons techniques. It seemed like the whole book was built around using Negation magic as a replacement for Creation magic all wrapped in rituals exalting and worshiping the dead. Dozens of pages of notes, rituals, and techniques using knowledge that would turn magic society on its head. The trick would be to avoid getting her own head removed for possessing it.

She rolled it up with the other useful recipes she'd found, half a dozen methods to improve alchemy using what were not uncommon reagents in the wilderness, if one knew where to look. The mineral recipes were less useful, but she knew there'd be scholars back in Arila who'd clamor for the privilege of learning these new methods.

With a final glance back at the library, she swore to herself she'd return some day to all the glorious knowledge this place held.

Moments after they left, a silmid boy stood from where he sat next to the two human girls. Then he took a certain text from the shelves. A book which did not belong here, which did not belong anywhere, save for this brief moment to deliver information a certain young necromancer needed to survive her coming trials.

It had served its purpose, and so it returned to the aether from whence it came, along with the boy.

[placeholder suggested listening] (Seriously- I need something here and can't find anything fitting)

Meanwhile, Lemia and Elruin made their way to the shop where Lemia picked up her new weapon. It looked different in the day, now that dwarves had stocked the place.

Inside, Elruin came face to face with her first dwarves. Taller than the silmid, they were almost to Elruin's height, but so broad that their arms were thicker than her waist and hung down well past their knees. Each was coated in thick, silver, shield-shaped scales that covered their entire bodies, with longer and looser-hanging metal draped on all sides around their neck like a chain armor coif.

They seemed mostly to be moving stone out of the tunnels, along with various metalcrafts along a back wall. Signs in their language let Lemia and Elruin read the basics of what metal equipment and treasures could be purchased here, including all sorts of armor and weapons sized for men and women, with promises of custom designs for a modest fee.

A bulkier than usual dwarf walked over to them, using both fore and hind limbs. Unlike all the other dwarves in the building, he had scales of solid gold. "Do not be upset, but your hair? 'at is how humans display 'ey are 'emale, correct? I can get my wi'e, to put you at ease?"

"That would be appreciated," Lemia said.

The dwarf twisted his head further than a human could without breaking his neck, and literally barked toward the back. Soon, another dwarf that looked just like all the others came waddling into the room.

"Ah, human traders," she said. She kept her mouth closed as best she could, for long experience had taught her that humans did not appreciate the broad, toothy display of the dwarven mouth. "Tell me, what do you seek to trade? Or perhaps you seek more weapons?" She had also perfected the art of avoiding the sounds it was difficult for dwarven mouths to produce. It was difficult, but if she did not, some other dwarf would, such was the nature of competitive markets.

Lemia took the time to look sheepish. "Well, that is complicated. You see, we're alchemists who were studying some silmid techniques and we came across some interesting ideas. We were hoping to buy untreated leather. As well as natron and saltpeter, if you have any. Oh, and some ilmenite powder, that's for the venomfire I'm making."

Lemia hoped the mention of venomfire would get her a better deal; as much as these people hated goblins, they might be happy to learn outsiders were going to help remove a few from the forests.

"We can provide all you seek, except leather." She shrugged, a calculated gesture to look more human. Like most calculated gestures, it was ineffectual. "You see, we do not eat meat. We use spider silk."

Lemia thought about it for a moment. "Would spider silk work?"

Elruin shook her head; when it came to necromancy, she was the expert. "It must be from living animal tissue. Silk and fur aren't close enough." She chose not to mention that flesh was the ideal substance, that of sapient beings more than anything.

"Perhaps, spider shell? No charge." It was odd, but she'd come to expect oddity in dealing with humans. "Is not good quality, garbage, but you need experiment, so you do not need quality?"

"It should work," Elruin said.

"Better than going into the wilderness to hunt for supplies," Lemia said. "I'd rather we know it works, before risking our lives out there."

"Yes, and what quantities do you require?"

"Not much, for now," Lemia fished into her pocket for two of the coins taken from the centaur temple. "I hope these are acceptable."

The dwarf woman accepted a coin, then licked it. "I need to consult my husband." She barked at where the gold dwarf was speaking to another human, a man who looked to be part of a mercenary or merchant band. There wasn't much difference between the two, when on the road.

Soon, he waddled back over to the group, barking quick sounds at his wife while she barked back. He took the coin from his wife. "Odd coin." He stuck his tongue out, licking it as she had. "Centaur gold, you 'ound 'is in ruins, no?"

Lemia was taken aback that the dwarves knew of centaurs, but all of her books knew them only as 'demons'. She then thought about lying, but decided against deception on the cusp of a business deal with what might be the only merchants who could speak their language. "I hope you don't expect me to tell you where the ruins are located."

"No, you are welcome to them," the dwarf said. "Many centaur relics in your lands, more than any one could explore. Centaurs use almost pure gold, not but a small amount o' copper."

"So they're worth something to you." Lemia liked it when she had something others wanted, made life much easier.

"Yes, say, 'e equal o' twel' o' your billon coins?"

"Fourteen."

"Deal, but only i' you promise to remember my generosity next you return to our establishment."

"Oh, I swear I shall," Lemia said. She wondered just how much she got ripped off, but now was not the time to start arguing. The supplies would be expensive enough as is, and later she'd need to find a trustworthy appraiser.

"And is 'ere more you may desire, while here?"

"Uh, I have a question, please?" Elruin put her hands together, in request.

The dwarf regarded the child-human, as tall as he was though laughably skinny. It took him a moment to realize she wasn't going to say any more. "And your question is?"

"Why are you gold?"

The golden dwarf began to laugh, a deep, echoing sound that drew attention from all nearby people.

"Rin!" Lemia hissed. "I'm sorry, that was rude of her."

"Rude?" The woman-dwarf scoffed. "E'reyone asks him about his color. Some days, I'd almost suspect he hires people to come in, but I'm the one who tracks our spending."

"Pay her no mind," the dwarf said. "It is a simple, but important, story. See, dwarves eat metal." He held up the coin that came from Lemia, then tossed it in his mouth. "Stone, too, but metal is most important. Our bodies are natural 'orges, we absorb it and it grows out as our scales." He slapped his arm, eliciting a mighty metallic echo. A dwarven handprint was left in his shoulder plates. "I, a goldsmith, turn gold ore and alloy into pure gold. It is a prestigious position 'or our most success'ul."

"That... is quite the ability," Lemia admitted. "Hey, Rin, do you think a dwarf... uh... scale? Might work instead of the spider?" She had no desire to pay for a gold scale, but it looked like there were plenty of dwarves with iron or copper scales to draw from.

Elruin looked through her vision, then shook her head. "No, it's too much like hair, it won't work."

"Worth asking." If the spider shell worked, it wouldn't matter. "So, while we're here, let's see about your other supplies."