TVisTV Book 3: Chapter 31 (RAW)

Chapter 31 - Fashionista

I dress for the image. Not for myself, not for the public, not for fashion, not for men.

- Marlene Dietrich.

With the tumult of recent days, the twists and counter-twists of fate, Seraphina’s patience had been worn down to its last thread. Even her iron composure had started to creak worryingly at the seams, making her even crankier than usual. She needed a respite, yes, but like most relentless leaders of society who drag the world along at their pace, her idea of a “break” was suspect at best. One might argue it would be no break at all.

Instead of spending another exorbitant amount hiring the services of Adventurers to capture her some monsters for slaughter, she intended to slaughter a few opponents that could at least put up at least a vague struggle. To get the blood running and to work out the stress that had been building around her neck and shoulders.

On a crisp winter morning, a heavy, iron-bound crate arrived for her, frost still silvering the rope. It was large, promising, and very much to her taste. Inside, cushioned in oiled felt and straw, lay the “goodies”: her new equipment wrought from Cornelia’s scales, made by the Dwarves on her father’s lands.

The dwarven craftsmen of Undertown had truly created excellence. Hydra scale—pale as bone and faintly rose-blushed—had been planished thin, beveled, and lapped into panels that moved like water and held harder than stone. Along every edge ran bands of Runed bronze, the letters bitten deep to turn aside witchwork and foul sorcery. A fitted cuirass married a solid plate over the chest to a more yielding fall of scales at the waist; broad spaulders nested over rerebraces; the vambraces hinged true at the wrist. A close gorget locked at the throat. From the fauld the plates fed in ordered tongues to the tassets at her thighs, and the greaves carried her down into neat sabatons. 

With Eloise’s help, Seraphina set each piece in its place, buckle after buckle, knot after knot, and the bundle of negative emotion deep in her heart eased by the only prayer she allowed herself: to be harder, steadier, stronger.

The helm was the centerpiece. A close helm, narrow of visor, the face chased in the sleek lines of a serpent. From the back spilled a fire-red mane that reached to the waist—Goblin hair from the southern jungle that drank the air’s stray Mana and bled it back slow, filling the wearer’s own reserves. It made a banner of her spine and a promise of her temper. The suit did not merely guard; it made a statement. Here is the aspect of the warrior, fierce and unyielding.

A suit of armor fit for a queen.

And this armor held yet another secret.

Layered between and across each plate ran a living skin of mycelium—fine hyphal filaments that had bonded to the harness and would, given time, to its wearer as well. The Hydra scales, formidable on their own, were thus made stronger still, their natural properties enhanced manifold. When the plates were fitted and the seams brought into contact, the threads sought one another, knitting a lattice that mimicked muscle and sinew. Joined so, they lent the wearer Strength and speed: a mortal becoming a hero; a hero, a god. Such craft was born of the Dwarves’ singular mastery of the mushrooms of the Deep Places, a secret art that belonged to them alone. In short, the Dwarves had given her a a suit of her own “primitive” power armor, artifacts that were usually reserved for only their elite warriors.

Lore of the game held that this line of work drew breath from tales of armor that magnified its bearer in an age long gone. The Nex Suits, Seraphina suspected, were the seed of that inspiration.

She would have Miriam make discreet inquiries, and hire a few “trustworthy” adventurers to hunt down where her Ballista had crash landed. That armored suit was a treasure-house of potential. However, whether or not the denizens of this age could reverse engineer it was another matter entirely..

“Are you sure this is altogether wise, Lady Seraphina? The Palipula Barrows have resisted exorcism from the Church for decades… there is simply no need for this!” Eloise warned, snapping Seraphina’s attention sharply back to the present. “I should at least go with you.”

“You’re frightened of ghost-and-ghoul stories, Eloise. I would spare you the horrors of that place,” Seraphina said with a token smile.

In truth, what she wanted was to smash a few things where no one could see—and, if the fates were kind, gain a level or two. The Barrows would serve as a proving ground for her new equipment.

She flexed her fingers and felt the Strength in them. Far from weighing her down, the suit made her feel light; as if she could run for days or leap clean over rooftops.

“But without escort, I do not think your knights will allow such a thing,” de Laney persisted.

Seraphina pressed an armored finger to the doll-like girl’s lips. “Shush now,” she said sweetly. “They will take me to the Barrows, but what I do within, I must do alone. Don’t forget to check on Miss Finleigh while I’m gone—can’t have her having too much fun at my expense. I’m leaving Sir Gravens with you,” she added, teasing.

From atop the desk, Seraphina took up a satchel of “special” leather and tucked in a few necessities. She had instructed Frest long ago to commission her a bag—secretly wishing for something small and cute—and had received this big thing instead. Further proof, she thought with a long-suffering sigh, that those below always found a way to thwart your wishes when given the chance.

Another item for her to-do list: make handbags fashionable. Hopefully, unlike her old home country of Korea, in this world they they would remain in the realm of women’s fashion. She was not a fan of feminine men appropriating them.

Seraphina patted Eloise’s cheek, left the room, and went down the stairs, already composing a brace of half-lies for her escort. They had not yet learned to obey without question; some part of them remained more beholden to their oaths to her father, and to the threat of her mother’s ire, than to her.

She would have to fix that, one careful step at a time.

***

They had grumbled, men always grumbled, but they had obeyed when she threatened to go all by herself if necessary. They were her honor guard, nothing more, she reminded them sternly.

Seraphina’s party cantered along, breath from the horses pluming in the winter air. The Palipula Barrows lay perhaps a fast two hours from Meridian’s gates; but distance, she reflected, could be measured in other ways too. The road had surrendered itself first to a rutted track, then to a deer path threading through gorse and frost-bitten heather, and now to nothing more than a suggestion: a bruise-colored seam through low, tumbling hills. 

Few came here by choice. The city kept a patrol to placate conscience and the concerned citizenry alike, yet no one truly believed a handful of armed men with lanterns could make old curses behave. Still, there had been no true rising from the Barrows in nearly five decades—long enough for courage for many to forget the horrors that lurked within.

The ground grew mean and the way was now frost-slick. The small company were forced to throttle their pace to a brisk trot, then a walk. Leather creaked, horses snorted, but there were none of the sounds of nature that you would associate with these environs. No birds, no trilling animals, no calls of the fox or wolf.

“This place gives me the shivers… never felt anything quite like it,” Sir Smith ventured, voice low. This sudden outburst was unexpected, for he was one of the more taciturn and unobtrusive member of her Knights.

Sir Hadraine snorted, that comfortable contempt he wore like mail. “You afraid a little ghostie’s going to come for you?”

“Mock it if you must,” Smith muttered, eyes flicking to the grey sky. “It’s as if something is watching and doesn’t need eyes to do it.”

Even the sanguine Sir Gascoigne could find no cheer this day. “There is definitely something off about this place…” he added somberly.

Filippe only shrugged, his gaze turned inward, wearing the absent smile of a man replaying a conversation that had gone better in the privacy of his skull—one that featured a certain noblewoman saying yes. 

“Less talk. Keep things sharp,” Sir Frest ordered briskly. “There’s more than the unquiet dead in these hills. Bandits and desperate men have been known to take residence and these parts.”

Loosening her grip on the reins, Seraphina turned a look on him. Was it her imagination, or had Frest’s voice become, for lack of a better word, more refined? Miss Templeton’s influence, then, she concluded swiftly. Frest had been shaving more recently, too; the stubborn black stubble gone, his jawline suddenly remembering it was meant to be one. In a certain light—bad light, with some artifice—he might even pass for a true Knight of the realm.

Men do change for women, Seraphina thought, amused despite the bleak surroundings. 

The trick is finding one smitten enough to change for you.

“Why’d they choose to put their dead here in the first place?” Smith asked, and the faintest tremor dressed the words. “And why do dead things keep popping up around here?”

Nina, Seraphina’s palfrey, answered for her with a small, miserable whinny. Seraphina reached forward and laid an armored palm on the mare’s neck. Even through the Hydra-scale plates of her gloves she could feel the whispered fear that was threading itself through her loyal mount. 

“The Palipula buried their dead here,” she said, letting her voice carry like a flame in a dark room, “because they believed this is a nexus of Ley Lines. A crossroads where the world is thin. They thought their souls would have an easier path to the underworld.”

Gascoigne snorted, more bravado than belief. “Ley Lines! Foolishness. Everyone knows you cross the Shallow River when you pass.”

“And you’ve died once already, Gascoigne?” Seraphina’s smile had thorns. “Walked the other side? Or perhaps did you negotiate your ferry fee with weeds in your hair?”

Color rose in his cheeks, but he took it with a square chin. “Who were the Palipula, anyway, my lady?”

For the barest heartbeat she felt the prickle of challenge, but his plain, open curiosity disarmed her. Seraphina could be gracious. She had been bred for it after all.

“They were here first,” she said. “Before the tribes of Aran came west with iron and hunger for battle. The Palipula fought with bronze against iron and lost, as such stories go. They made their last stand in the graveyards of their ancestors—chose to die where the ground remembered their names. Or so the romances sing.”

“Which means…” Sir Hadraine waved a hand. “What? Ghosts of vengeance?”

“Ghosts, Ghouls, Zombies,” Seraphina ticked off, as if reciting a menu. “If I were a betting woman…”

Frest coughed at this, shaking his head.

“And, I am on occasion, I would wager a Liche has made this place its home—fattening on the Death that pools when centuries of the dead’s resentment stack. The residue here is… thick with it. There is a sadness…” She felt it on her tongue: the tale of something sweet gone badly wrong. “That’s what was in the game, anyway.”

“Game? A Liche?” Smith blinked. “You would venture deeper here with such a creature about?”

“A turn of phrase,” she said lightly, too quickly, waving him off. “Don’t think too hard on it. As for the Liche, in truth, I doubt it. Still, it serves one best to be prepared for all things.”

The track bent around a knoll mantled in brown winter grass and exposed dogtooth stones and ended in a broken crown of earth. Before them a ring of standing stones lifted like old teeth from the gums of the world. Between them yawned mouths carved into the hills—barrow doors squatting low and black, lintels scored with spirals and suns and the long, patient lines of a language that liked to be read by the long, unquiet dead.

The wind flared dramatically for a moment then died. 

Seraphina breathed in and tasted winter and rot and the delicate ash-scent of wards burned out a lifetime ago. Her Knights shifted behind her, steel whispering, leather harness creaking, men making themselves small without knowing how.

She straightened in the saddle and set her helm’s chin to the horizon. The plumes of her breath rose and tore.

“I believe,” she said, and even her voice came back to her changed as it bounced off stone, “we are here. Where I go now, I will go alone. I fear you will only get in my way.”

It was time to get a little stress relief.