Prismatic Spiral - Chapter II.XLVII (2.47) (Patreon)

Chapter II.XLVII (2.47)

Once inside the sad, dilapidated changing room, Mitsuko cast Mend on her damp clothing, instantly returning it to a dry state. She did the same with her soaked hair and Sterling’s wet fur.

Once comfortably returned to normal, she sat down on the half-rotted bench and took a moment to just breathe.

“This used to be a spot for changing into swim wear,” Sterling commented. “I actually have been here in my past life. There used to be a beach next to this spot. I’m not too surprised it’s been removed over the years. Especially since you mentioned there are no youths on the island any longer. If they’ve banned younger generations, then the artificial beach must have received significantly less use than in my time. The older residents on this island were always more of the sort to stay inside a dusty library than type to soak up the sunbeams.”

“This shack was around during your life?” Mitsuko glanced around. It fulfilled its purpose and blocked the view of on-lookers, but not much else could be said about the building. At least, not anything positive. If she didn’t have the ability to return herself to a healthy state of being at any given time, she wouldn’t have stepped foot in here for fear of contracting some disease. She thought a strong wind would threaten to collapse the entire building into a pile of rotten sticks.

“There are enchantments laced into the walls. They were powerful, created by decent wizards from my era. Not what you’ve got on this island in the modern age. As a result of their competence, the enchantments are still vaguely present and holding the building together.”

Mitsuko opened her mouth to reply, when the seat under her collapsed under her weight. She groaned, then Mended the wood. It pieced itself back together and deaged a fair bit.

While Mitsuko got the shack back into half-decent condition, Sterling trotted off to take care of an errand she’d requested.

There was an old, smeared and broken mirror in the corner of the shack. Mitsuko dragged it out and repaired it. It returned to a state of being from centuries earlier. Returned to new, the crisp image and fresh wooden frame looked out of place in the run-down building.

She next removed her now-dry clothes and tossed them in a pile on the bench.

Sterling returned, having nabbed a wizard robe for her. He clutched it in his mouth and it dragged against the ground. On the way here, she’d been fortunate enough to come across a street with a clothesline. She’d spotted a couple across the city in the last loop, but it had still been lucky to see one so close to the shack.

Mitsuko tossed on the robe and noted that it had four stripes of color. More than the tourist ones she’d used in her previous loops on the island, but not enough to get her access into the Azure library vault. It would do for now, though.

Next came the part of her plan she’d been dreading the most. Mitsuko took a deep breath, and then cast Deteriorate on herself.

Her body aged rapidly. Wrinkles formed, her joints ached, and her vision blurred. The world was just a mesh of colors. When she expressed this concern to Sterling, he instructed to focus solely on her eyes and Mend them exclusively. Once she completed that, her heart skipped a beat as she examined her image in the mirror.

If she had to guess her age, she’d put it at 70’s or 80’s. It appeared she hadn’t been blessed with graceful aging. Her hair now reached her feet where it piled up on the ground. Around her knee level it transitioned from black to gray. By the time it hit her shoulders it was white. Her ears were bigger than they had been moments earlier and her back now hunched. Just like when she’d reversed her aging, she lost several teeth. This time they fell out rather than retracting back into her body. Her gums felt sore and raw as she prodded them with her tongue.

She raised her gnarled hands to reveal spirals of fingernails.

“Why do I have these,” she asked, shaking her hands. Her voice was raspy and unpleasant. “When I went into a kid form my hair and nails didn’t change.”

“That’s because you targeted your body. As I explained previously, hair and nails are dead and not a part of your body any longer. However, that doesn’t stop your body from producing them as the years go on. With better control, you’d be able to stop that from growing out of you. For now, I recommend just cutting them.”

Misuko grunted her agreement. She flicked her wrist to create her ice sword. Nothing happened. She glared down at the crusty yellow loops of nails covering her hands. They got in the way of her wrist movement. It took five minutes of attempts until she finally successfully created one of her blades. By that time, her wrist ached fiercely from the effort.

“This body sucks,” she growled.

She first cut the nails, then her hair. Swords were not the ideal tool for cosmetology. Her manicure was jagged and her hair disgustingly crooked.

“I look like a witch,” she bemoaned. “A seriously ugly one too.”

“No boils, though,” Sterling pointed out. “Most witches have boils. I’ve always suspected they were a result of exposure to potion residue from their brewing. The one time I questioned a witch, she attempted to hex me, perceiving my curiosity as a slight. I, of course, removed the curse on myself with a cast of Mend; however, I believe it was quite rude of her to jump to such conclusions. While I have no intention of ever becoming one myself, I have nothing against visually unpleasant individuals.”

Sterling’s prattling did nothing to comfort her. Mitsuko sighed. She debated trying to Mend her crooked spine specifically, so she’d be able to at least walk standing straight. In the end, she decided not to mess with it for now. She wasn’t certain if she understood human anatomy well enough to properly target internal bone structures.

She hobbled out of the shack and into the city.

Every step was a chore. Her entire body ached constantly and she wanted nothing more than to collapse in the dirt. Mitsuko forced her legs forward. Step by step, she trundled onward.

“I am extremely grateful that I won’t ever have to live like this,” she said. Even speaking felt like a burden on her limited endurance. Her tongue was old and her mouth unfamiliar with its missing teeth. Everything sounded wrong.

“Yes. I personally never let myself exceed beyond the age of forty-five. That was when I realized that the respect aging deferred to me was far too off-set by my body’s failures. Usually I maintained an age of late thirties for optimal lifestyle.”

Nobody gave the old lady with the cat even a second glance. She was just a part of the scenery here. One old lady amongst a thousand others.

With this new cover helping her blend in, Mitsuko decided to head to the city center. She had a few doubloons to shop with and wanted to gather information about the election. If she found opportunities to ask Eisen in the process, she’d seize them.

The first few shops were a bust. The elderly wizard running the cauldron shop kept flirting with her and reaching for her hand. His memory was shot and he didn’t even understand there was an election going on. He was full of flowery language and little else. The next two shops she wandered into were barely more useful. Mitsuko discovered that there was a rally in a few hours for Deelina Zuinn, but very little else. She was about to give up hope on this method of information gathering when she entered the city’s pet shop.

A bell rang as she stepped into the smelly store. A big dog with golden fur jolted forward and Sterling leaped backward, digging his claws into Mitsuko’s robe as he scrambled up to her shoulder. He hissed at the canine from his perch.

Birds chirped and flapped their wings and swacked, dogs barked and rattled their cages, cats meowed loudly for attention, even the smaller gerbils and mice scurried and rustled about, adding to the noise. The only silent section of the shop was the wall of colorful fish in the aquarium off to the side.

“Vernan!” a deep voice called out. “Get back here, Vernan! You’re scaring the customers!”

The dog, who had been circling Mitsuko and sniffing her, recoiled back at the command. He then bounded off and disappeared around a pile of dog food sacks.

A man stumbled into sight. He wore the yellow robe all the other wizards wore in the city. What made him stand out was the massive red salmon currently latched onto his head. Its mouth covered his entire scalp and the fish’s tale flopped about his back, like a bizarre braid of hair.

“Is that… alive?” Mitsuko asked, in shock.

The fish’s eye rolled about and it flopped back and forth.

“Oh, don’t mind Dean,” the man said. “He’s been stuck on my head for a few years now. What can I do for you? Oh! That’s a cat? Looks like it’s a common breed from Hon. Interesting eyes though. Are they generating light? I suppose it must have a magical creature somewhere back in its lineage. Very interesting. Not too uncommon though, I have a five legged puppy if you’re collecting magically mutated housepets.”

“Mutated!” Sterling bristled.

“I’m not. I wanted to—”

“Oh! I forgot to introduce myself. My name is Apricot. I’m a wizard of Amber Island who specializes in studying druidic magic. Although, I’m sadly not a druid myself, I am quite the expert on the topic. If you have a question about them, feel free to ask me. I am competent.”

Mitsuko believed that competent people usually didn’t need to declare themselves as such, but she kept that opinion to herself.

“I’m here to ask—

“Xixi! Where you, you rascal?” Apricot shook his fist at the ceiling. “Don’t think that Dean is cutting off my ears. I hear you rattling around in the ventilation pipes! Get back down here or you won’t get any supper!”

Mitsuko heard a clang above her. A stone moved to the side and a brown monkey bashfully peeked out.

“Do you know anything about the election?” Mitsuko asked, finally able to get a word in, she let out all her questions at once. “Who are you voting for? Do you know anything about a young woman with a shaved head and piercings?’

“My vote?” Apricot scratched the fish on his head. “I’ll probably vote for Hazbaz. He’s an old friend of mine.”

“Hazbaz?” Mitsuko frowned and thought back to where she knew the name from. It was familiar but not one of the usual candidates. “Isn’t that the old man who likes rocks?”

“Old! Look who’s talking. You ain’t exactly a whippersnapper yourself! Ha! But yeah. No one else will vote for him but got to show my support for buddies.”

Mitsuko nodded. Hazbaz had been unpleasant and suspicious of her when she’d encountered him in a previous loop. Now that she considered it, it wasn’t like the old man was unjustified in his suspicions. Mitsuko wasn’t what she seemed. And she had been using a cart to smuggle a wizard hiding in a banana crate across the city at the time.

“As for a bald woman with piercings. Hm. Hazbaz mentioned someone like her just yesterday. Didn’t see her myself. Old fart was going off about the metal in her face. He’ll be by later today for tea if you want to join us. I got a fine shipment in last week. It’s a gnomish variety from a small colony of the folks in Tross. It’s good for digestion. And one of the monkeys here also needed some sprinkled on his food.”

“I’ll add it to my schedule,” Mitsuko replied. She wasn’t particularly eager to meet the grouchy old wizard Hazbaz again, but if it meant acquiring information on Eisen then she deemed it might be worth the unpleasantness.

The pet shop owner convinced her to buy a few cat accessories, including a bell on a collar. Sterling loudly protested, but he had nowhere to escape to while trapped on her shoulders. The floor wasn’t an option with the dog sniffing about and the nearby cages of birds all had sharp beaks that could poke through and peck anyone within a few centimeters of them.

“This is an outrage!” Sterling yowled, the bell under his chin jingling with his outburst. He attempted to remove the collar with a claw but it was enchanted to protect against mundane claws. “You have no idea the insult you’ve levied onto me for no sin of mine. This is unjust!”

“It’s so I can keep better track of you,” Mitsuko lied. She just thought his reaction was funny. If he hadn’t acted so obtusely aghast when the shop owner had presented the option, she wouldn’t have seen any reason to bother with a collar and bell.

They departed the pet shop and returned to scouring the streets for information.

Obviously realizing that Mitsuko took pleasure in his irritation, Sterling retaliated with a different strategy. Rather than continue to complain about the bell, the cat repeatedly rang the bell. Over and over.

Mitsuko attempted to continue gathering more information in her free time until their meeting with Hazbaz, but the constant jingle drove her up the wall. She eventually relented and dropped the bell and collar down a storm drain where it would be washed out to sea.

“The city’s drainage system is rather selfish,” Sterling commented, immediately returning to his normal self now that the bell had been removed. “Sending out litter to the sea like that is rather uncalled for. Especially when I know for a fact the wizards in the past knew how to set up incineration stations for junk.”

Mitsuko grunted uncommittedly, simply grateful the incessant jingling had finally ceased.

Sterling continued to yammer on about the city’s sewer system. Mitsuko wondered if it would be useful to listen. After a few minutes of attempting to parse Sterling’s lecture, she decided that if it was important to the loops, Sterling wouldn’t risk exposing it to her. One slip up could have him banished for all the remaining loops. There was no point in listening to him… unless, of course, he knew she’d think that way and purposefully inserted something useful in his soliloquy about where the nearby building’s gutter deposited its rain water. That would be just like him. To drop vital information only for it to be buried under a mountain of useless slop. He would consider it vengeance for the bell.

Mitsuko held back a sigh as she mentally sorted through the last few minutes of deluged information.