TVisTV Book 4: Chapter 10 (RAW) (Patreon)

Chapter 10 - Honing Skills

“Practice meant to perform, over and over again in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desire. Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.”

- Martha Graham.

Mistress Vey gave them both an appraising stare. For a moment, Seraphina felt rather like a heifer brought to market, though she refused to shift, fidget, or otherwise betray discomfort beneath that measuring gaze.

Her new tutor gave an approving sniff, then closed her fan with a sharp snap.

“First,” she commanded, “you will learn how to wear civilized clothes.”

She clicked her fingers. At once, several servants entered, each carrying bundles of folded cloth in their arms. Miriam was among them. None of them looked up. None of them spoke. They simply crossed the hall in silence and placed the bundles upon a low table near the center of the room.

As she withdrew, Miriam cast Seraphina a sidelong glance, but Seraphina chose not to dignify it with a response.

Mistress Lianor Vey stepped toward the table and ran one hand across the folded fabrics, her fingers moving with the light, practiced touch, judging their quality. One by one, she opened the bundles, making small sounds of approval as layers of silk, brocade, and embroidered cloth were revealed.

“Yes,” she murmured to herself. “This will do.”

Then she turned back to the girls, her fan tucked neatly against one palm, and regarded them as though the true work had only just begun.

“Take off your clothes,” Lianor demanded.

Desdemona stared at her. “I do beg your pardon?”

“You heard me the first time, Lady Desdemona. I do not enjoy repeating myself.” Mistress Vey’s fan tapped once against her palm. “You cannot learn how a garment is worn while hiding beneath another one. Down to your underclothes, both of you.”

For a moment, Desdemona looked as though she might argue on principle alone. Seraphina, however, had already begun unfastening the outer layers of her dress. An invisible Tia had even helped with one of the more difficult buttons. Desdemona shot her friend a betrayed look, then muttered something unladylike beneath her breath and followed.

“We would have servants for this,” Desdemona complained as she loosened the ties at her back. “Surely women at court are not expected to dress themselves.”

Mistress Vey’s tilted eyes narrowed by the smallest degree. “A woman at court is expected to know these things.”

The older, elegant woman lifted one of the folded garments and shook it out with a practiced motion. Silk unfurled like water catching the light. “Servants and slaves are useful, but if you cannot dress yourself when necessary, then you have placed your dignity, your safety, and your schedule into another person’s hands.”

Desdemona opened her mouth, but Lianor steamed on. “They say a good swordsmith knows the weapons he makes. He understands the metal, the weight, the balance, the purpose of every curve. Court dress is no different. These garments are not decoration alone. They are language. They are armor. They are weapons. If you do not understand how they are made, how they move, and how they fail, then they will be wasted on you.”

That, Seraphina admitted, was a better argument than she had expected.

The first layer was light and close-fitting, a soft inner robe that crossed neatly over her chest and tied at the side. The fabric was thinner than Aranthian linen, but not fragile. It clung and shifted with the body too much, though Seraphina immediately noted that they were most definitely not designed for rapid movement. Mistress Vey corrected the angle of Desdemona’s collar with a flick of two fingers, then did the same to Seraphina’s with far less need for adjustment.

“Left over right,” she instructed. “Always. Right over left is for the dead.”

Desdemona went very still and looked down at herself with sudden alarm. Seraphina hid a smile for this was known to her.

The next layer was more beautiful, a sweeping robe of pale silk embroidered with subtle patterns that revealed themselves when the light struck them from different angles. The wide sleeves fell like soft banners from the arms, elegant enough to make Desdemona’s eyes brighten despite herself. Over that came a high-waisted skirt, tied beneath the bust with long ribbons that Mistress Vey insisted must fall at precisely the correct length.

In Seraphina’s mind, the comparison formed almost at once. Korean traditional dress, she thought. Not identical, of course. The lines were different, the layering more intricate in some ways, the sleeves more theatrical. But the general pattern and cut gave her the same impression: high waist, long fall of fabric, elegance built from restraint, color, and proportion.

Desdemona turned slightly, watching the silk ripple around her with open delight. For all her earlier complaints, she was clearly losing the battle against this new infatuation. Her friend was a creature of passion, yet the colors suited her: soft blue and silver, with fine cloudwork stitched near the hem. She looked younger in it, not childish, but also more mature in a way Aranthian gowns rarely allowed. Less like a noblewoman prepared to endure a feast and more like some painted court beauty from a storybook scroll.

“Oh,” Desdemona said, despite herself. “It is rather lovely.”

Mistress Vey’s expression did not change. “Of course it is. The Empire has many faults. Ugliness is not usually one of them.”

Seraphina’s own garments were richer but more restrained, gold-threaded ivory layered beneath a darker outer robe that deepened toward amber near the hem that matched the gold of her hair. The fabric was beautiful, yes, and the craftsmanship exquisite, but her reaction remained more measured than Desdemona’s.

The sleeves were wide enough to hide a hand, a message, a blade, or an expression. The sash could be tightened to alter posture. The trailing lines of fabric forced one to move with patience unless one wished to look like a tangled fool.

Yes, Seraphina thought as Mistress Vey began adjusting the fall of her outer robe. Armor and weapons both.

Desdemona admired herself in the polished bronze mirror, looking almost embarrassed by how much she liked what she saw.

Seraphina merely lifted one sleeve, studied the drape, and let it fall.

Mistress Vey noticed, of course. “You are unimpressed, Lady Seraphina?”

“Not unimpressed,” Seraphina replied. “Merely thinking. They are beautiful, truly. My grandmother must have gone to considerable expense. This silk is spun from spider, not worm.”

“Yes,” Mistress Vey answered evenly. “She did.”

Seraphina took a moment to glance at Desdemona, who was still standing before the mirror, admiring the fall of her sleeves and the shimmer of the embroidered hem. Then she looked back at their tutor.

“Why are you helping us?”

“It is my duty,” Lianor replied simply.

“No,” Seraphina retorted. “That is part of it. But not the whole of it.” Her gaze fixed on the older woman’s eyes, searching for the truth hidden beneath that careful composure. “Tell me the truth.”

For the first time, Mistress Vey looked away. Only for a moment, but it was enough. Her almond-shaped eyes seemed to settle on some distant place that was not the hall.

“Because,” she said at last, her voice quieter than before, “this may be the only way anything different comes of it, Lady Seraphina.”

Silence followed, then Mistress Vey closed her fan with a soft, final click. “But that is neither here nor there. Next, I must teach you both how to move in your new robes with suitable grace.”

There was a story behind Mistress Vey’s words. Seraphina could feel it, as surely as she could feel the weight of the expensive silk across her shoulders.

But instinct told her this was not the moment to press.

***

While her grandmother arranged the details for her extended sojourn into the Empire to find her fated one, Seraphina and Desdemona spent their days sharpening both hard and soft skills.

The mornings belonged to Mistress Vey, which as expected, garnered the girl an increase to her Charisma attribute. The afternoons, for the most part, were left to the girls to spend as they wished.

Seraphina made steady progress in her magic, namely Mana Regeneration, Wail of Judgment, and, after no small amount of repetition, successfully maxed out her Crystal Spear spell. This achievement was due partly to her single-minded determination, and partly to the fact that she possessed more than enough money from the sale of Cronir products, as well as a generous line of credit with the local branch of Lehman’s Bank, to buy Mana and Stamina potions of the highest available quality.

This, in turn, allowed her to cast Heal repeatedly to alleviate the unpleasant effects of drinking too many potions, namely the fact that they could cause long term illnesses such as various cancers.

Unfortunately, it did not grant her the next tier of Holy magic.

She also trained with Desdemona, who, unsurprisingly, possessed physical attributes that nearly rivalled Seraphina’s own, as an Identify spell revealed one afternoon. Though Desdemona greatly preferred to fight without a weapon at all, they still fenced with blunted blades, wore full armor, and worked through a variety of practice weapons until their arms ached and their tempers frayed.

The men-at-arms and household knights did not laugh behind their eyes at them. They knew full well what the women of both their bloodlines were capable of. Besides, the tale of Seraphina killing an Ice Drake and humbling a tribal war party had only grown wilder among their ranks with each retelling.

When the passion took her, Seraphina would also go hunting. She slaughtered Cronir, and the occasional Ice Drake, for experience  points. She used her Spiral Fury skill with her two swords to great effect, spinning a crimson and white death through the unfortunate herds and managed to get an increase in the skill. For the Ice Drakes she preferred a more physical approach, stunning them first with her Wail of Judgment before braining them with her fists and feet.

This resulted in considerable gains to her next level, and in her mind she was already planning on how to spend her bonus points.

Desdemona, however, had her own opinion on the matter of hunting and their rivalry. Of that, Seraphina was quite certain.

After the night of the full moon, the keep awoke to find the corpse of a very large male Ice Drake lying in the courtyard. Her rival, as always, had a habit of making statements.

Well, if she wished to be proposed to by a tribal warleader, that was her prerogative, Seraphina had thought ruefully.

As for the Cronir, Seraphina persuaded her grandmother to send the meat south in carriages packed with blocks of ice. It was winter, which made perishables easier to transport, and she knew the southern nobility would appreciate rarer, more exotic fare during the colder months. But the true killing would come from the Ice Drake meat and hides. There was something about the forbidden that always seemed to appeal to the elite of society.

That was not to say, however, that everything went entirely the young noblewoman’s way.

Since she had been calling upon the power of Heal rather regularly, Seraphina had begun to feel herself being subtly twisted by the vile magic. Why, on one particularly alarming occasion, she even found herself offering a kind word to one of the serving staff. Worse still, she had briefly wondered whether her orders and demands might be placing too great a burden upon the servants.

Magic, it seemed, could be most insidious indeed.

The girl decided that she needed to balance the scales somewhat if she was to remain Seraphina, philosophical ship-of-Theseus dilemma aside.

One day, returning to the keep from one of her forays into town, she had a rather fortunate encounter. Or unfortunate, depending on one’s perspective. A rambling drunk stumbled from one of the alleys of Carcaronne and promptly vomited all over her boots. Her boots. Boots worth more than the unfortunate man’s life.

In a fit of entirely justified pique, she grabbed him by the collar and quickly made sure there were no immediate witnesses. Then, she threw him. He flew a considerable distance, sailing through the air like a stone loosed from a trebuchet over the rooftops, before a notification declared that he had died and rewarded Seraphina with a modest amount of experience.

With that random act of violence, balance was restored. At least for the moment.

The following afternoon, after instruction from Mistress Vey on Imperial court etiquette, proper forms of address, and the delicate matter of who ranked above whom, Seraphina stood in a quiet place just outside the town. It was a relatively empty clearing surrounded by old trees, where the snow lay thin upon the ground and the wind moved softly through bare branches.

Tia, her pixie, floated nearby, bundled in several warm layers. On a branch overhead, Kiwi the crow kept watch over the pair of them with all the grim seriousness of a tiny feathered sentinel.

“No, Seraphina, not like that,” Tia declared, her voice bright with an almost insistent, trilling joy. “Don’t just push. You must also pull!”

Don’t just push, but also pull. What cryptic nonsense was that?

Seraphina gave a small, dismissive shake of her head.

The young noblewoman downed her tenth Mana potion of the day, the aftertaste growing steadily more bitter as she approached her limit. The liquid stirred hot and unpleasantly in her belly, urging her body to forcibly draw in more of the ambient energy around her. The whole process was as exhausting as it was restorative, which struck her as profoundly unfair.

She had tried using Identify on the spell itself, attempting to optimize the flow. A little more power here. A sharper edge there. A cleaner shape. A more efficient path. It helped, but only fractionally.

The young magical aspirant desperately needed a skill that Crystal could provide. Due to its logical nature, Crystal magic would offer it much faster than the other elements in the game. That had been one of the main reasons she had chosen Crystal in the first place, along with its rather impressive array of higher-tier spells in the late game.

Her hands moved through the familiar gestures, shaping the spell as the silent words that would summon Crystal flowed from her fingers for what felt like the thousandth time that day. Grinding skills and abilities in this fashion was an exercise in patience that would have tested a saint.

Then it happened. A snap and it came all at once, as if a dam had burst or a river had finally broken its banks.

You have learned Crystal Spear (1vl.5)

You have learned Crystal Pillar (lvl.1)

You have learned Silent Casting (lvl.4)

You have learned Mana Manipulation (lvl.1)

You have gained 1 Intelligence.

“Perfect, Seraphina!” Tia clapped her tiny hands together in delight. “That is the way to push the pull!”

Beautiful. Just beautiful.

Seraphina allowed herself the smallest, most self-satisfied smile as she downed yet another Mana potion to replenish her reserves. The rush that followed was sharp and exhilarating, a bright surge of power spreading through her veins. This, she was beginning to discover, could become rather addictive.