Taking a quick look at the group in front of him, he didn’t only see Lysander in his flabby glory, but he thought he also saw the same knight from before. It’s been a few hours since they ran off. At least this explained what he did with his time. He also sensed some weak magic on Lysander, something that wasn’t there before.
“You fucking piece of shit!” He shouted, pointing accusingly at Gilliam. “Daring to leave a duel and steal my slave!”
He shouted it with the blaming tone, and volume, to paint Gilliam as the evil person in this situation.
Gilliam pondered this for a second, and realistically he did have a point; There was no admittance of defeat and the knight didn’t go unconscious or die... This argument of semantics, though technically correct, pissed Gilliam off a little.
“So you run away from the duel, and claim technicalities, claiming that I’m the one that left?”
His words didn’t seem to even come close to landing. Lysander’s anger was this time almost covered by a satisfied smile. “Having voided the duel, and stolen my slave, as the ruling house in Yar’i, I want that man arrested!”
Gilliam sighed, this was Garend all over again, though he wasn’t surprised that the world had more of these people.
“Well, I intend to hold my side of the case. I won that duel as you ran away with your tail between your legs, your knight followed you and I won your slave.”
Wanting to make a point out of things, he manifested a source of light which he hovered above his head, he then produced flame in his right hand and ice in his left, this should at the very least mark him as a two-element mage, a Line-class mage.
“Now, I might not have graduated officially, but I will defend myself.”
As he dismissed the spells he was using to demonstrate, he overheard some murmurs among the guards and soldiers that since he was a mage this complicated things. He now understood the value of that fucking student badge... It could have solved the whole thing before it started.
“So, what do we do with this? I count... What.. 20 of you? Do I need to kill you all? Should I just take care of Mr. Noble here, or should I just leave?” He wanted to both clarify the situation and threaten them.
Having fought much more than 20 when invading the Fractured Lands, this didn’t even feel like a challenge. However, it would cause some collateral damage, which was dumb when just one person was being an issue.
It seemed that the threat worked, there was great hesitation all around.
“To mend this, why don’t we do this? I challenge you, specifically you; Lysander, to a duel. No stand-ins, no bullshit, just me and you.”
This seemingly caught him off guard, he was looking back and forth almost as if looking for a way out of an invisible box.
In the end, he seemed to find his response in his personality. “You don’t fucking decide what to do, coward. You will surrender, return my slave and rot in a dungeon!” Almost leaning a little forward and pointing at Gilliam, like this was a predefined matter of fact, had him again smiling.
“You know what, fuck this shit. I tried my best, I got places to be. Though I probably won’t get anyone to admit it I have the whole street of witnesses, your knight dude knows he lost and accepted it. I will go about my business and ignore you. If you attack me I will defend myself.”
Ignoring the lot of them he started walking down the street, and he only got as far as next to Lysander before the man pulled out what looked like a heavily engraved and embroidered dagger, lunging for Gilliam.
Gilliam couldn’t pretend that he didn’t expect this, he sensed the unknown magic from before in the dagger, it was fire-attuned but weak. Though Gilliam didn’t want to let the attack land, just in case, he had to do so to make it transparently clear that his next action was self-defence.
The dagger landed and engulfed Gilliam in fire, it lasted several seconds and looked quite hot outside his multiple barriers. The outer level wasn’t even damaged that much by the time the flames stopped, at least giving Gilliam a glorious sight of Lysander’s maniac grin fading into horror and regret.
“Oh good, you are now upgraded to a threat. Goodbye.” Gilliam had a flat expression, he didn’t take joy in this, or rather; he took a tiny bit of joy in this specific case, but he didn’t directly enjoy killing.
Reaching his left hand towards Lysander a yellow magic circle blinked in, and out of existence, the rune barely reading Telekinesis before it collapsed into Gilliam’s hand. He closed his hand into a fist and in the same moment Lysander’s head crunched up like squishing a tomato. His whole head, bone and brain were liquified and spread across a small area in a sickening crunch. Gilliam’s barriers stopped any of it from hitting him, but the same could not be said for the poor guards who were too close to them.
Gilliam continued walking like nothing had happened, the sludge sliding off his outer barrier like mud on a hydrophobic surface.
The guards didn’t say or do anything to him, moving out of the way and letting him pass without problems. He ignored the sound of vomiting and chaos that followed the death of a local noble, the only thing he could consider was that he hoped whoever took over was better than him, and that he wondered what kind of clothing he would end up with for Cera.
Following the instructions he was given, he found the plaza easily enough, it was the size of several large Inns, so it wasn’t exactly hard to see. Entering it and following the building to the left he soon came to a store with the name on raised letters along the top of the front wall.
Entering it a small bell fastened to the doorframe was hit by the door, letting out a tiny chime when it opened and closed. The store itself was decently ventilated and didn’t have any stagnant air, lots of clothing was either on longer sticks or wooden coat hangers. The vast majority of premade outfits were folded and placed on shelves. The layout of the store itself was simple, it was quite the cubical building, after all. Some testing rooms in the back, a counter on one side between shelves and the rest was open with some moveable stands with clothes hanging off them.
A man turned towards Gilliam as he entered. He was dressed in a perfectly fitted suit, the material looking smooth and barely glossy, combed back hair and a well-maintained moustache. Just looked all around perfectly dapper.
“Welcome, how can I help you today?”
“This might sound odd, but I’m after some simple clothing for a young beastfolk girl. She’s about this tall-” Gilliam used his hand to approximate her height. “-quite slender...”
Realising that he should at least have approximated some dimensions, compared to his arm length or something, would most likely have helped a lot.
“That makes things a bit complicated, I’m afraid. If you can’t bring her with you I think the best might be to err on the larger side and rather have options to tighten things up. What kind of beastfolk is she?” He toned this like it’s a common question.
Gilliam had no idea if it counted as racist, but the modern world he came from was much more touchy on that subject, in this case since there were all kinds of beastfolk it probably made a lot of sense.
“She’s a fox, a big bushy tail if that matters.” Using his hands to almost show how big the fish he caught was, he approximated the diameter and length of her tail.
“Oh, that’s not a problem. We just need to have a two-piece outfit and the tail can simply stick out between them.” He smiled
“That... makes sense...” Looking back, the only experience with this he had was with Petal. And that was handled in a similar case. Either not having pants and just a slit on the black that the tail stuck through, or a two-piece logic.
Though Petal’s tail had a claw-like hand on the end, it was much more slender than Cera’s.
“Well, I just want something simple, just so she doesn’t have to be uncovered.” Gilliam added.
“Understood, in that case, we have some pre-made outfits over here.” Gesturing to the side he moved over to some shelves with various clothing folded. He looked through them and took out two pieces of cloth seeming of linen, with a grey-beige kind of colour, unfolding them and showing them to Gilliam.
“These are the simplest we have, pants with a string you can tighten around the waist and ankles, and a wrappable shirt, the shit is held in place with this sash.” He placed both pieces of clothing on a table and picked out a very simple sash in the same colour.
Gilliam looked at them, they felt like normal linen clothing and should be plenty for now. They looked loose fitting with simple ways of tightening or fastening them, meaning it shouldn’t be an issue to get something a little bit bigger and just tighten it up.
“These seem fine, I assume I can trade them back in if they are too wrong in size?”
“That is fine, as long as they aren’t used more than for testing.” He nodded during his confirmation.
“And how much are they?” Gilliam asked, not having any doubt that they were probably expensive this close to the main street, but at the same time he hadn’t learned the value of money yet, so he just expected everything to be expensive.
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“These three pieces of clothing will cost you a total of 4 silver.” He started folding the clothing as he spoke.
“That’s fine, I don’t have any silver but I assume gold is fine?” Gilliam realised that he might need to simplify some of his money, currently, he had thousands of gold but no lesser-valued coins.
“Not a problem.” He motioned for them to walk over to the little counter alongside one wall after he had folded the clothing.
Gilliam followed him over and did the same that he did in the Inn, putting his hand in his pocket and taking out a single gold coin from the ring in there.
He placed it on the counter as the man walked around it.
The process from there was simple enough, the man took the coin, counted the six silver coins and gave them all to Gilliam.
“Thank you for your purchase.” He smiled honestly.
Gilliam took the money, fake-putting that in the pocket when he put it back in the ring. “Thanks for the help.” He smiled at the man and left the store.
As soon as he had rounded the corner and was out of sight he fake-put the clothing in under his coat and just put them into the ring as well. It looked more natural and was easier for him.
Walking back to the Inn was luckily not a problem, the soldiers were gone, as was the corpse of Lysander, only some uncleaned streets remained. People gave him some looks and hushed murmuring as he went past them back into the Inn, he ignored them all as they left him alone.
Likewise, when he entered the Inn, though people looked in his general direction, there wasn’t much change to the atmosphere this time. Something he found a bit odd. Either they had already forgotten him, everyone had rotated and the people here now weren’t the same as when he fought Lysander, or they just didn’t care.
It wasn’t too important, the important bit was that they left him alone.
Walking towards the stairs the Innkeeper woman saw him and gave him a low-volume shout, just enough to overpower the talking volume in the room.
“She hasn’t come down as far as I know.”
Gilliam gave her a thanking nod and walked upstairs.
Knocking on the door he gave her a few seconds to react before he unlocked and entered, closing the door behind him. He was a bit surprised to see Cera sitting in the bed with the covers still over her. Savia was sleeping on the table next to her and didn’t seem to have a care in the world.
“How are you feeling?” Gilliam asked her. “I hope Savia gave you my message?”
He pulled the chair from the table and sat down, not going too close to her. It felt inappropriate all things considered.
“Wh... w.. Why did you do that?” She stammered out, sounding like she was holding herself back from speaking.
Given what he expected her life to have been so far, he wasn’t surprised she had problems asking anything.
“Do what?” He had done many things today alone. He wanted to answer her but had to know exactly what she meant.
“Why did you kill him?” She didn’t seem to dare look at Gilliam and rather opted to stare at her feet under the cover.
“Oh, well. He came back with soldiers, I tried to talk my way out of it and just leave the situation. But then he tried to stab me and I retaliated.” There wasn’t a hint of remorse or animosity in his voice, just a simple answer to a simple question.
“And... Your little friend... She said... You.. you said I... that... I’m...” She seemed to struggle to even ask.
Gilliam could see how hard this question was for her, he wasn’t perfectly certain what she was asking but he had a feeling it was regarding her freedom. She had probably been a slave her whole life, and considering the... personality... of Lysander, he had probably taunted her with freedom before.
“Free? Yes.” As he replied he took the clothing out of the ring, placing it on the bed near her feet. “I got you some simple clothing as well. It’s not special but they are at least whole and clean.”
Turning around to at least give her some semblance of privacy, not that he could see anything on her by just looking, but he still felt that it was better to just do the simple thing.
“You can put them on now if you want. Or not, up to you, really.” He gave her the choice and it seemed to have landed hard.
He heard her sniffling as she got out of bed. Taking several minutes to get dressed but in the end let him know. “You can turn around now.”
Turning around he was glad to see that the clothing fit, quite baggy, naturally, but that was to be expected. It looked very contrasting with the beige-grey clothing against her russet and white fur, but that didn’t matter, the important part was that she was dressed in actual clothing.
“It looks good on you.” He smiled at her. Though he didn’t mind nudity... he had gotten his share of it in the Fractured Lands, he also didn’t mind the natural fur look. But it just felt more civilized.
It seemed that this landed harder than he expected, her large blue eyes overflowed and she couldn’t hold back anymore. As she broke down in tears, Gilliam couldn’t do more than just look at her. He wanted to hug her but he wasn’t sure how she would handle intimacy. Instead, he took the awkward moment and let her control the moment.
This didn’t last too long until she regained control. He could see the doubt in her eyes as she looked at the door before looking back at him. “So... I... I can just leave... And you won’t punish me or chase me?” Her voice was hopeful.
“Absolutely, you can leave if you want. We won’t chase you, you can live your life as you want. I’m going to claim that I own you simply to make sure that nobody tries to catch you, but in reality, you can do whatever you want. Just... don’t go doing something illegal that causes problems for me.” He smiled as a dumb joke. Kind of for his own sake to lighten the atmosphere.
“I’ll be here until tomorrow, you’re free to come with me if you want. I’ll be travelling east to join a guild and play around as an adventurer, it’s going to take a few weeks and might be dangerous. But if you prefer to just leave and live your own life, that is entirely fine.” He smiled honestly at her.
He felt good about this, he didn’t know what she’d do, she might have some problems for several reasons, having lived as a slave she might lack real-world skills... On the other hand, she has probably been doing all sorts of errands, so she might also be better at this than he was.
“But for now, I think I’ll go to bed, I have a long day ahead of myself.”
As he got up from the chair, she was a little startled, though he did his best to walk around her she had to move around a little. It was a single-person room, after all. And though she was small, Gilliam was still a regular Human.
Ending up in the bed, fully clothed, he laid down and scooped up Savia as he did so, picking her up like a doll and lifting her in the air over his face. She squealed in glee and looked happy for even something as simple as this.
He spent some more time playing with Savia, letting Cera take her time. A short while after, when Savia had fallen asleep, Gilliam started drifting off as well. Though still pseudo-half awake as he heard the door open. Barely opening his eyes he could see Cera exiting and closing the door after herself.
He mentally wished her the best of luck as he closed his eyes properly and went to sleep.
The sun woke him up, having risen enough to, though not directly, shine through his window. It was bright enough that he woke from that alone. It was warm in there, not surprising given that he went to bed fully dressed, but there was also a strange surprise. Against his hips laid a bundle of fur in a familiar attire. It seemed that Cera had come back during the night and snuggled up to him in bed. He didn’t have a problem with this but the more concerning thing was that she looked wounded.
Her shoulder closest to him had a cut, it had gone through the clothing and looked surprisingly deep. The wound had stopped bleeding but there seemed to have been a lot of blood before it got to that point.
Trying not to move, he focused healing energy in his hand and tried to direct it towards her shoulder, it wasn’t that he couldn’t reach her but he didn’t know how she’d react to him touching her just like that.
As soon as he reached for her she seemed to have sensed it, opening her eyes and locking them onto him in a swift motion she jumped out of bed before collapsing on the floor with a long string of repeated apologies.
“No, wait... Don’t worry. Relax. I only wanted to heal you.” Gilliam tried to explain as he sat up quickly.
She had fallen to her knees, grasping her right shoulder with her left hand and was facing the floor like a deep bow as she apologized. Her voice was stressed and crying.