On the day that followed their ritual, Lasutro returned to the routines of their classes, occasionally assisting the Princess in avoiding the variety of students who sought to attend the coming winter solstice ball with her. Though she did so not with their voice, which was far too scratchy to be intimidating, but through a method she hadn’t had to apply since their time bartending at the Impaled Lupine. A method which ultimately amounted to leaning into last vestiges of the roguish air that remained in Lasutro’s appearance and a glare that told the approaching nobleman or aristocrat’s son that bothering them will end violently. Which seemed to do the trick, though the reaction the Princess gave to them during their more private moments together made them reconsider.
As naturally as the Princess always was with the flow conversation, especially so thanks to Lasutro’s strained voice, she furtively brought up the topic of the imperial ball, which due to the nature of the pair’s budding friendship, drew an exaggerated but dry groan from Lasutro. A sort of reaction the Princess had begun to recognize in Lasutro as a sign of their general disinterest in a subject but nevertheless she continued her mostly one sided conversation.
“Now, Iz, have you ordered something from the tailor I recommended you or should I just have him make adjustments to one of his more experimental works?”
Ryea asked with the innocent tone she was prone to slip into whenever she threw a pointed question at Lasutro. A type of jest she had gotten used to, though only in terms of its format.
“No your Highness, I haven’t.” she replied, the strain in their voice making the response sound far more like that of a long time smoker.
“So would you prefer a dress, or a suit?”
A provocation of sorts which drew a glare from Lasutro, despite their attempts to maintain a somewhat formal relationship with the royal. Efforts that were consistently thwarted by the Princess with her playful jests and friendly speech. Though Lasutro had managed to shut down her ongoing endeavor to refer to her less formally, which had become a near daily insistence to call the Princess by name. A request that Lasutro knew the troubles of giving into even without consulting their roommate.
Eventually after she taking a deep breath to calm the still fresh anger she felt toward Professor Zyciv, that had plagued their mind throughout their classes, Lasutro replied in a quiet but harsh whisper that only further strained their throat despite the several cups of honey lemon tea and other simple treatments she had managed to get.
“Suit. Now can we get back to Professor Murtomult’s assignment? ”
A response that was met with a short but playful giggle before the Princess returned their attention back to the array of open texts which laid upon the table the two had taken to using more often than not. Largely due to the rather secluded placement of the table within the Citadel’s library despite being on the ground floor.
When the agreed time to end their shared studies finally came to an end, after several hours following their last class of the day, Lasutro walked the Princess back to the Imperial Villa. After which she made their way to Gallina house and into their room where she gave a weak greeting to a tired Henry. Who gave a tired grunt in response as he went about his own studies while Lasutro prepared themselves for the night, before she rushed through the last of their own studies. Which included a brief study on the third spell she had provided in the most recent chapter of their red tome.
A spell which quickly became the basis of their plan to retrieve their bracelet, though their plans came to an abrupt end for the night when she remembered that the fake bracelet, which Professor Zyciv had left in place of the authentic one, had been consumed by their ritual. A loss that Lasutro had neglected to consider while she rested and reflected upon the betrayal she felt despite knowing of the possibility before she had cast the spell.
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The next morning, when Lasutro woke from another dreamless sleep, she found themselves in a brief panic as it occurred to them that the potential understanding that she had discovered the reality of their fake bracelet might result in a recasting of Rotyuck’s Object Seeker. A recasting Lasutro was uninterested in repeating unless it became absolutely necessary to reclaim their stolen bracelet. With some assistance from the rush that came with their moment of panic and the early hour, she managed to concoct a plan to fool the Professor if he happened to be keeping an eye on them while also solving the problem with their spell she was going to use to retrieve their bracelet with.
After making a mental note as well as a physical one for the first step of their plan, which she quickly decided to leave until the end of their classes for the day, she went about preparing themselves for the day. During which she made the choice to don the largest set of robes she had, a set which all but covered their arms with the exception of their hands.
By the time she finished getting ready for their own classes, their roommate stirred from their sleep and gave them a quick greeting before hurrying through his own morning routine. While he went about preparing his own things, Lasutro spent the time eating some of the rations she had prepared and skimming through one of their last unread books.
When Henry finished, the roommates got together and quickly joined the regular swarm of fellow students towards their first classes. Despite the weight of both their coming plan to effectively rob Professor Zyciv and their more generalized anger toward the man, Lasutro maintained their focus through their various classes.
After their classes ended and successfully convincing the Princess to let Henry take her back to the Imperial Villa in their place, Lasutro headed out into the city, where she found a suitably well managed restaurant hidden amongst some of the more shady alleys Udriaph was home to. From which she ordered a quick but light meal before attempting to make the subtlest analysis of their surroundings she could. Following which she once again tapped into their somewhat rusty roguish skillset to slip away into the shadowed alley that surrounded the restaurant. There, after a near effortless change to their outfit, Lasutro quickly cast Rotyuck’s Mask of the Changeling, which allowed their appearance when she finally stepped out of the shadows of the alley to be completely unrecognizable.
With a new face, one which Lasutro had shaped to give themselves a particularly serious look, which she paired with a visibly muscular body, she made their way out of the almost eerie alley out to one of the other streets it fed into. From which she walked with the maximum speed she could while remaining inconspicuous toward a particular subsection of the market district of the city. A district which like the others that made up the city had a proper name, which Lasutro as well as the majority of the non local students hadn’t bothered to learn.
Nearly half an hour after she cast their spell Lasutro stepped into the second jewelry store she found having been politely pushed out of the first a few minutes prior. However, immediately after she entered, she was sure that it had been the best, something she didn’t attribute to just the lack of perfumed air but also the sheer variety of metalwork the humble shop displayed.
From a glance, despite their lack of expertise in the craft, Lasutro could tell that the most of the works that the owner had chosen to display were experimental pieces that had been reworked for a more general purpose if not a more marketable one. While she considered the implications of such items, she couldn’t help but give a small chuckle in admiration which gradually bled into a small grin. And though the grin didn’t suit their disguise, Lasutro made no attempt to hide it, displaying their admiration for the individual who crafted the various pieces she had seen as she stepped towards what was obviously the door to the place's workshop.
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Just as she went to knock on the seemingly plain, though polished metallic door, it shot open quickly knocking Lasutro onto the floor, and putting an end to their momentary grin. Following a moment lamenting the newfound pain in their tailbone, a scrawny, but rough green hand reached out to help them back up. Without even a glance at the owner of the hand, Lasutro accepted the assistance before brushing off the fresh dirt that had suddenly made its home on their clothes.
“Sir? Was there something I can help you with?”
After a brief delay in response, having forgotten the masculine form she had taken on, Lasutro made eye contact with the half orc who posed the question, his expression a mix of annoyance, curiosity and worry, with only the smallest tint of greed.
“Yes, there is. Do you mind?”
Lasutro asked the man, just managing to brace themselves for the change their spell had on their voice, giving the half orc their best pantomime of casting a simple spell. To which she received, following a brief moment of consideration, a reserved nod of approval.
With the approval of the half orc, who Lasutro assumed to be the store’s owner, she began casting one of the more complex simplified somatic spells she had learned from The Life’s Work of Paydaego Freesill. As she went through the motions for the spell she focused their mind on every detail she could remember about their stolen bracelet, drawing forth their mana until the vision she had held flickered into existence above their palm.
After a few seconds passed, the illusion solidified, and it became indistinguishable to the real thing, at least to anyone unfamiliar with the arcane or magic in general. A category that Lasutro firmly believed, the half orc didn’t fall into if only based on the inquisitive reaction he had.
“I need two near perfect reproductions of this bracelet, in silver as soon as possible.”
Their words hung in the air for a moment, before the half orc took a step closer to the slow spinning illusion that hung in the air above Lasutro’s palm, and began to inspect it intently. After a minute, he stepped back, rubbing his short,partially burnt, ill-fitting beard in consideration as he did so before asking several questions of their own. Some of which Lasutro had no answer to simply because she had not studied its construction nearly as much as the origin of its magical properties, which ultimately added up to very little.
When he finished asking his questions, Lasutro chose to drop the minor illusion in effort to maintain some mystery to the sum of their casting ability, though she wasn’t sure if the act served any purpose in front of the half orc who now sat in front of them.
Following another minute of contemplation, the half orc led Lasutro into their workshop proper revealing the nature of his expertise and brought them to one of the more organized corners of the room, rest being filled with a variety of yet to be completed and partially disassembled projects. After a quick glance at the various labels that marked each drawer of the patchwork cabinet that took up the majority of the corner Lasutro had been led to, the half orc, who she now knew to be an artificer of some sort, pulled open one of the larger drawers near the bottom of the cabinet revealing several stacks of ingots.
Although Lasutro saw no difference between the stacks she could see, she guessed that each stack was different from the other based on not only the fact that the drawer had several cuts of wood to separate them but also the thoughtful manner in which the half orc removed them. He then quickly brought several of them over to the nearby workbench where he had invited his rather intimidating looking customer to sit and placed the three ingots in front of them.
Immediately after the young artificer set the ingots down and before Lasutro could ask the purpose of what she assumed be a question as to which of the three pieces of silver metal most resembled the bracelet she had previously shown. Something that Lasutro had failed to consider in their planning, and as a result she was forced to use the little knowledge she had on the actual material their bracelet was made of as well as what she could remember about the fake their professor had left in place of the actual artifact.
After spending several minutes reflecting on their memory of the bracelet and inspecting under the partially distracted supervision of Erutonk, who apologized for their late introduction during Lasutro’s evaluation of the ingots, eventually she came to a decision. When she finally voiced their choice to Erutonk, he simply nodded his with a satisfied expression before taking the other two ingots and returning them to their place in his patchwork cabinet.
Following the completion of Lasutro’s analysis of the metal ingots, and their choice of silver, which Erutonk referred to as Fluktuss silver, the two began to discuss the financial aspect of the request. A discussion that had gone smoothly in the sense Lasutro had managed to not only get what she had come into the city for but also several small arcane constructs she thought would be useful in an emergency both in and outside their plans reclaiming their bracelet. However, the deal she ultimately made with Erutonk, despite the satisfaction it’s conclusion brought them closer to their most pressing goals, ended with a far greater cost then she hoped. A cost that she knew was partially due to the arcane devices Erutonk had convinced them to
When their deal was finished and Lasutro got the accelerated timeline for their order, which was to be completed by the following day, she exited the shop but instead of making their way back to the academy like she had initially planned.She found themselves wandering to another district in the city, the district that she happened to be the most familiar with, if only due to the several visits she had taken there to purchase the various spell components she couldn’t get from the Academy without removing more time from their personal studies.
When Lasutro arrived in the familiar streets in their unfamiliar form, several thoughts crossed their mind. The first thought being that she had to remember to act unfamiliar with the various store workers, if only to avoid the risk of being memorable, which wasn't a great risk in their mind but the circumstances of Gorv’s death had inclined Lasutro to avoid actions that put things to chance.
After preparing themselves for the act she had decided to put on, she entered one of the magical goods stores she was largely unfamiliar with, and began browsing the wares as she had seen some adventurers do. While she did so, despite the attention their performance as the intimidating adventurer took from them, she found their mind unable to stop their curiosity from inspecting the systems of the variety of small enchanted items which were scattered through the store.
Eventually, following several minutes of mundane study on a peculiar pair of ornate wooden boxes held together by a rather solid looking link of an iron chain, Lasutro felt a light, almost nervous tap on their shoulder. To which she turned to face the individual that had broken them from their study and found before them a youthful looking hochling woman dressed in some combination of what Lasutro had learned to be traditional Tuersunian merchant garb and imperial mage robes. A bit of fashion that took them by surprise for a moment before their attention was drawn back to shopkeep in front of them.
The shopkeep who approached them did so in the same polite manner that Lasutro had adopted when she attended to guards, roguish individuals and the few adventurers she knew to be prone violence at the slightest provocation. Though unlike Lasutro, the hochling that stood in front of them was nervous due to the nature of her personality which didn’t fit the hellish appearance she kept, the deep scarlet ram like horns that protruded from her head, the long black hair that covered most of her pointed ears and their pupiless eyes that seemed to contain a reflection of the wealth that could be obtained from simply striking a deal with a devil.
After a couple minutes of the shopkeep attempting to sell at least one of the variety of goods Lasutro had been inspecting and finding no success, she asked if they were looking for something specific, at which point Lasutro began to clarify what she was hoping to buy. Shifting from the vagaries that they often saw more shrewd customers reply in, to the more direct speech she preferred when she shopped.
Although Lasutro spoke directly to the youthful shopkeep in regards to what kind of item she was seeking, they did their best to make the purchase seem far less suspicious than she believed it to be. Instead of describing the item she hoped to find if not pay for the creation of in terms of the use she had in mind for it, Lasutro described the item in a manner that highlighted a specific, inconspicuous function that distracted from the other potential use. And while she did so Lasutro made sure to paint themselves as not only a smart adventurer but an adventurer who liked to be practical and blend in amongst the crowd wherever “he” went.
While in the end their ruse was successful, the polite hochling woman, had to search for several minutes through a section of the store that was clearly restricted to customers,before she decided that there was nothing like what Lasutro wanted. When the shopkeep realized that, she quickly went to work helping Lasutro write out the functions they wanted in the item and the like following which she folded the parchment and placed it within a box that was similar to the one Lasutro had seen while she had been browsing, if more larger and simplified.
A few moments passed uneventfully, during which Maqine, as the hochling had originally introduced herself as, took to some nervous fiddling with their hands until the box briefly emanated a small arcane light at which point Maqine opened it once more revealing a series of papers. As soon as they arrived Maqine hastily removed the papers from the box and began reading through them, when she finally finished returned their attention to Lasutro and handed over a portion of the papers.
While Lasutro made their way through the papers, Maqine set aside another portion of their papers and readed her quill to fill out a series of blank spaces in her portion of papers. Following a minute of reading the papers Maqine handed over, which amounted to a re-explanation of Lasutro’s requested functions with additional flourishes and the various prices Maqine’s boss had set for the enchantments, Lasutro turned their attention to Maqine. At which point, using the various descriptions of the enchantments the papers had provided them, Lasutro explained the options she wanted for what would be a set of robes, to Maqine, who dutifully noted them down on her own papers.
Eventually, the specifics for their order was finished, even the payment, which ended up being the rest of the gold Lasutro had brought with them, a price that she had only managed to negotiate as just a part of the total sum she would ultimately pay. Though thanks to the practice in hiding their true thoughts on the matter she had with the Princess, she managed to maintain the adventure persona she had adopted, if at the cost of revealing themselves to be not entirely suited for their appearance.
After their deal was completed and she got the date for expedited enchantment, Lasutro rushed back to the Academy, remembering to return to their natural appearance before doing so. However as she made their way back, despite the delay their item placed on their planned reclamation of their bracelet, and how understandable said delay was, she couldn’t help but feel frustrated, the knowledge of its location fueling an impatience she didn’t know she had. An impatience which kept Lasutro from sleep and their studies, instead pushing them to focus on their coming heist.