Chương 72: Cinderella

Sixthday was a cruel joke. The classes are out of session, and students can do whatever they want! Except leave campus or do anything that would be prohibited during normal class days, such as fraternizing or making a scene or misusing the facilities. If what you really need is quiet and contemplation, then Hearstcliff Academy's Sixthday schedule is perfect for you. On the other hand if you want some option other than "nothing at all", then it leaves a lot to be desired.

Sure, you can sit out in the quad and stare up at the twinkling stars, but I can't picture doing that for a full day out of every week for the next three years. I just got out of prison, but I've got standards. Fortunately I've also got the ability to curve and crease the void itself and transport myself from place to place. Unfortunately, I've promised Elica that I'd drop her off for some shopping. I came out of my shower dry and refreshed, ready to get out of here. Five days. Five days in one place.

Under the same fake geode sky. It sure was scenic as hell when I'm playing a video game! So thematic and dramatic and visually interesting! But also a full week with no sunlight is a surefire way to get really fucking depressed. And I'm genuinely weirded out that nobody else seems to be feeling it but me, they're all acting like this could not be more natural and normal. Anyway! Time to go! To roam! See stuff and go!

I had the wind bring me my dress from off my bed, and got dressed in the bathroom, checking myself in the angled mirrors that Elica had painstakingly set up in there. I stepped out with a light heart and light feet, half-floating as I went, and then I froze. My face fell, and then I fell. My feet thudded to the ground.

"Elica, you just can't," I said.

"I know we were working out a deal about this, but you really can not bring them all." She looked startled.

"What? Why? What's the matter?"

"Elica, I can only manage so much. This is made for just myself, and passengers are hard on me." She stood from her seat, waving my concerns away with a lace-gloved hand. Eyelets and beads ringed her wrist.

"No no no, I'm the passenger, these are the entourage! Rinnie is here as my assistant, Venn is the lookout, those three are bodyguards, and the rest are all porters."

"You can't bring all these... porters," I said. She rocked back.

"Well, I certainly can't carry my own bags!"

"No, I mean.. Elica, you do understand that porters are people too, right?"

"You're darling, Natalie, never change. But really, we should get off to a start. Hup now." I rolled my eyes, and opened a massive white door for them. The light did not pour into the room, it pounded at us all like a physical force.

"When the strain is too much, I cut it off, and anyone outside stays outside." Elica placed her hand over her face and marched into the light. Rinnie glanced at me, nervous. I sighed, shrugged, and nodded. She followed. And then some of the others started filing in. I don't know what Elica was paying them, but some of these students definitely had concerns that it might not be enough for them to march into this mysterious magic door that was impossible to look at.

I kept waiting for that sand-in-the-gut feeling, but... it didn't come? I was feeling sluggish, and I could feel my emotions being eroded away by the raw scouring need that the void embodied... but person after person trooped through, and their weight was not too much. I could feel them in there, the way their mass pressed against my affinity to the void, but it did not destroy me. Huh. My Strength stat has almost tripled since then, so... that must be it? I guess? Whatever.

Time to conjure the goggles, leather and steel. I was the last one in, and I could feel the weight of myself, and the way it dragged me nearer to that lethal gravity. I closed the portal, sealed us inside. The other end opened, and I stepped back out.

"All right then," I said, bored.

"Follow my voice. Walk on out. Find your feet. Get out here." And one by one the extended retinue of Earl Elica Dandston came stumbling or lurching out, some falling to their knees. They drove their palms against their eye sockets as if that could scrub out the dazzling light. I dispelled the goggles, and started using a brush of sorcery to nudge people out of the portal and back to the real world.

Lady Elica came out almost last, and she fell flat onto the ground, with tears streaming out from behind her lace-gloved hand.

"Oh, gods, so bright," she moaned. I on the other hand was only sighing in relief as the pocket dimension began to empty out. I stepped away from the door so that I could look at something besides it, and actually see something. When the last person stumbled away, I let the door slam shut, leaving the Skyside street back to its normal lighting style- just a little bit dimmer than is comfortable for me. Well, there was a little extra light. It was coming from me.

White whorls and beads like fiddle-head trails traced across my skin in void-white light, fading now. I stared at my hands, tried to convince myself that I'd imagined this. It was not working. What I needed was a distraction.

"Natalie!" Elica screamed.

"What was that!" Oh, her makeup was a mess. And none of it was on her frilly eyelet-edged lace gloves. She had walked into that void with her hand held up in front of her face like she was blocking the glare of a sharp twinkle and not staring down the barrel of a million exploding suns. She may as well have had her eyes open. And right in that moment I was not feeling sympathetic. Most of her retinue were doing at least somewhat better, they had been in less time and had taken better precautions.

But as I crouched next to her, the void ate away every emotion I did not need, and compassion was not on the guest list.

"Elica, that was the void. It is a region so empty that it does not contain space, and so there is no room for darkness because nothing in there has anywhere to go. The magic of my sorcery shields you from every harm in there except for light. That is the wave I surf on a dozen times a day, the tunnel that takes me from city to city. And the more weight you put into the tunnel, the less well I control it." She was sobbing. I was incapable of caring. I was pretty sure I was making the situation worse.

I was aware that later i would care about this. My future satisfaction does register for me. So not making things difficult for future-me is not a zero-priority. By that reasoning, I should try not to make things worse.

"I will be back at the sixteenth bell to bring things back to the school," I assured her. Something was missing. I patted her shoulder. Perfect. I left her surrounded by her entourage, and I walked away to a reasonably respectful distance before I took to the air. Up over rooftops I flew, angling into the momentum. I moved with a serene speed, no wind whipping my hair or fluttering my clothes, the air itself was carrying me. And as I went, I changed clothes.

First a fitted silk underlayer, something very Black Widow. I put a black silk cloak over the top, conjured from essence itself, and then I discorporated the stylish dress that everyone had seen me in earlier. I replaced it with a leather-and-silk gown, kind of Square-Enix but not too much. The entire look came together in a basic Adventurer Chic. I headed north at first, flying deeper inside the immense cavern gallery that is Skyside.

Slowly, the glowing white whorls and luminescent freckles on my skin were fading away, slowly.

"Hmm," I mused aloud, since there was nobody to hear me, "I probably pushed a lot closer to my limits than I thought I did. Maybe overloading an affinity means something different at Strength 8 than it does at Strength 4. Sorcery does play by very woolly rules." I saw the buildings below start to shift, from the conventional architectural styles to something weirder and more alien looking. Older, with large ovoid windows and floors that all slanted away from the doorways.

I picked out the dividing line, oriented to it, and started flying to the west. I did not stop until I saw the sign of the phoenix, glowing like neon on top of a signpost. I floated down, and checked street signs for the right place. And then I squared my shoulders and pulled my cloak's hood up over my hair. I conjured a pair of glasses, steel and smoked quartz, to hide my eyes. Nothing to see here. Just some overly-goth girl approaching the local adventurer's hangout.

I had to remind myself that fifteen is adult: I'm allowed in bars. I just can not get married until I'm twenty. There was a strong-looking man with scars sitting on a stool at the door.

"Not yer bar, lassy," he said.

"Guh somewheres else."

"This isn't even my final form," I told him. He blinked at me, but accepted the password. He scooted out of the way of the door, and I walked myself in. [Quest Checkpoint Complete: Slings and Roustabouts. 10 XP. Advancement: The Wealthy] Finding The Final Form is a vital part of the storyline that Nathan can pursue with Dizzy Capstan if he reaches Valedictorian. Not bad, ten xp just for walking in the door.

I'm trying to start with the plotlines that Nathan is never going to find, so we're not treading on each other. It's weird that I'm doing this story with Kurimi Lautan instead, but she's my math partner after all. Fortunately I don't need to do all the progression stuff in the same order, and I don't need to dig through all the market dialogue before I'm even allowed to know this place exists, let alone the BS you gotta swerve just to find the password.

I can just walk in, get my advancement rewards, and then talk to the bartender. The interior of the place was a cliche wrapped in a stereotype drizzled with tropes and baked to a warm pastiche. Firelight instead of magic candles, warm wood-toned construction, buxom waitresses, tables full of seething veterans and robed magisters and mysterious cutthroats. Magic weapons could be seen on belts and tabletops, and everyone here looked dangerous, and they looked dangerously at me.

You know the trope, stranger walks into the saloon and everyone stops talking to stare at them. I ignored the stares; you can't get involved in a barroom brawl here until after the Berry Blight is over, so I was perfectly safe. I walked to the bartop, where the tapman was industriously polishing some impressively-large steins with a conspicuously-clean rag, his sleeves rolled up over his massive beefy forearms.

"Milk?" he offered, with a wry smile.

"Grapefruit juice," I said, setting a silver coin on the bartop.

"Also, have someone on staff check your cranberry stocks for necromantic tampering." He stiffened at that warning, and stepped in a little closer.

"You know something about necromancy?" His hand slapped down on the lacquered wood and my coin vanished, either magic or impressive sleight-of-hand.

"I know something about the future," I answered.

"But not enough. Just enough to know that if I want to talk to Digger Jdim I need to talk to you first."

"Then you already know enough to get yourself in trouble," he said, and turned his back to me to pour out a glass of milk. He turned and set it in front of me, his broad mustache twitching absently.

"Yeah," I acknowledged, and picked up the glass.

"I need to meet him soon. The job isn't for another ten months. We take our time in prep." Because every week you give Digger to prep gives him another RNG proc to get some valuable gear. The tapman scoffed a laugh while I drank.

"Ten months? That's not a long prep, that's a retirement!"

"Retirement's after," I said.

"It's a vault run. Tell him we're going after Keikthagorus. There's no team this time. He takes a half-share for his help." The barman shook his head.

"Digger's not gonna take a job like that. A half-share? For Jdim? Never. No team? Unheard of. And... what was the name?"

"Keikthagorus," I said.

"He'll take the job. I'll be back here in a week to take a meeting with him." I started to turn away, and paused.

"Good milk. Don't forget the cranberries." [Quest Checkpoint Complete: Slings and Roustabouts. 5 XP. Advancement: The Wealthy] And like that, I've got my gear-man lined up for the dungeon run at the end of the school year. I'm not taking any chances that Kurumi and I fail this project. It's a major grade. This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. Fifteen XP is good enough for now.

I left the Final Form and teleported myself up to Cliffside to save myself another hour of flight. I don't mind flying, but I'd rather do it in the daylight. Stepping out of the void and into sunlight felt good. I hovered around and just soaked up the rays for a while, twirling slow-motion in mid-air. I lowered myself to the street and stopped by a pleasant outdoor cafe on the side of the lane, sitting in the sunlight at a whitewashed cast-iron table.

The scent of flowers and bees filled the air, and I happily lazed like a cat in a beam while I waited for the servers to bring me an overpriced lunch and a tall glass of hot cocoa. I adjusted the air temperature enough to be cozy but cool enough to justify the cocoa.

"Would you like marshmallows in your cocoa, milady?"

"Lots."

"And how many would that be, milady?" I cracked an eye and fixed him with a stern glare.

"Only the gods may judge me."

"Understood, milady." He did too, he had stacked tiny puffed marshmallows up to the rafters for me, and I tipped accordingly. The lunch special was something very much like a cordon bleu but beer-battered and dashed through with little pops of peppers, and a serving of pasta to the side. I took my time, just enjoying the day. When the sun scooted and shadows fell across me, I made a gesture that rearranged the furniture to put me back in the warm yellow light.

I basked like a lizard, and drank hot cocoa, and then I paid the tab with clinking coins and headed away. There was a city to enjoy! I deserved it! I was riding way too close to a dangerous depression, I could feel it. When I paid too much attention to my emotions it felt like I was walking in the dark near a hole in the ground, and needed to be very careful where I put my steps. And that's a terrible thing to think about your own thoughts! I walked down colorful streets to see what there was.

I looked in shop windows.

I looked at toy stores that seemed too juvenile for me, and toy stores that seemed too adult for me, and I considered going shopping for clothes but (a) I'm capable of making my own clothes from scratch (b) I'm not nearly ready to spend time around Lady Hanje right now, (c) I think Lady Hanje would kill me if she found out I've been cheating on her with another tailor, and (d) even if I'm the princess daughter of a duke I'm just not nearly a frilly enough personality to feel all restored from buying clothes.

And as wandered shop windows, I did not feel like buying weapons, knickknacks, decorations, pets, paints, pottery or stationery. I saw a book store that was really tempting... but my days are totally full right now and if I bought new books they'd just make me feel guilty for not having any time to read them! So what am I in the mood for? I asked myself. I am delighted to report that the answer was sweets. I pushed open the door of the brown-fronted building and stared in awe at their chocolate fountain.

This was not just a candy store, this was an emporium. a palace, a spectacle, a glamour. I walked in and lights drew up, wreathed in gold and splendor. The rest of the store and shelves arced out around me, a backdrop to the Willy-Wonka wonderland. The spotlight beamed onto the rippling tumult of splashing confection, and with it all my focus and attention. It was magical. I wanted to eat the whole damn thing. I pulled myself away a bit, and looked around.

The walls are lined in jars, with nuts, berries, barks, fruits, dippers, dispensers, rock candy, twists of sugar and fudge and powdered sugars. And there was music, a stage held a minstrel who played a tinkling lute rendition of Coldplay. This was the first time that I had run across my music in the wild. A beaming clerk appeared at my side.

"May I help you miss?" he said easily and affably. I dispelled my outer cloak, it was too warm in here for that.

"I have a line of credit at the Tawes Dome exchange care of the Tarratan House, in the name of Natalie Harigold," I said to him, careless of who might overhear.

"And I think I'm going to embarrass my family name in here, I fear." I spent the afternoon pacing myself as best I could. I would try a treat, and either move to browse around for the next, or order up a bag to be sent to my rooms at the Academy. Some days it's my sorcery that opens doors for me, sometimes it's my knowledge of this world and its timeline. But this is the most fun, the easiest, the most rewarding: when just my name itself is enough to open doors for me.

I had a clerk trotting at my side, taking down orders on his notepad, or bringing around the library ladder to climb up to higher shelves and fetch down the honey-glazed pretzel sticks or the seared almonds. I would use chopsticks to grab one sample from a jar, and skip over to swipe it through the waterfall of ganache chocolate, then pop it into my mouth. I offered a verdict, we moved on. Sometimes I paid for a single sample, sometimes for a jar.

The minstrel played until his hands were tired, and then regaled with stories. He had a brand new one that was burning through the collective imagination: Cinderella, the gripping tale of an aristocrat brought low but rescued by the intervention of a fairy godmother and a prince's gala. I couldn't stop myself embracing a little chaos.

"Glass slippers? The last time I heard this it was squirrel fur."

"I'm confused, did they give up gracefully or cut off their toes to fit the glass slipper?"

"Just happily ever after? The godmother didn't send birds to peck out the stepmother's eyes?" The minstrel got more and more excited, picking up different ways to tell the story. This culture was still getting used to the idea that there was more than one way to tell a story. That's basically what the minstrel's guild does: it standardizes material, teaches it rigorously to chosen people who perform it exactly as taught.

I drizzled chocolate onto ginger and found to my surprise that I loved it, I was scampering all about, and loving life. And then the bells began. Dong.

"Blast!" I fumed. Dong. I turned to the clerk.

"You've got my information?" Dong.

"Yes miss." I conjured glass and curved void. I stepped into the glaring white doorway, and vanished. Leaving only a small glass slipper. Ding.