>>3069367
Twitter: https://twitter.com/OuroQM
Ask: https://ask.fm/OuroQM

Archives: http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive.html?tags=Court%20of%20Swords%20Quest

File: Sofia_sword.jpg (20 KB, 1025x200)

20 KB JPG

>>3069367
Your sabre, tinted blue and dressed in gold, sat atop the workshop bench in a vice. One vice clamped around the handle, the other around the end of the debole, holding it up so that it’s edge was facing you. The polisher pulls a small sheet of silk from a pocket in his apron and, after a moment’s calibration, lets it fall.
It hits the table in two seperate pieces.

“You’ve been keeping it sharp,” he notes. He’s a large man, shaggy haired and well, hairy all over. And beneath that, his olive skin is bronzed in a way that suggests he spends a lot of time in the sun. This suggestion would be a lie. His name is, as far as you’re concerned, Signore Selvaggi and he’s the only man you’d trust your sword to.

“I’ve been sharpening it on the dawn, just as you said!”
And then there’s you, looking as out of place in this workshop as ever. Your name is Sofia Pseudonym and you are a duellist by trade. You live by the sword but you can’t be expected to actually maintain the bloody thing. That’s the job for an expert and for you, this man has always been that expert. He once sold you this very sword, back when you had a different name.

“Exemplary, as can only be expected of you. But you’ve picked up a lot of chips down the edge. That’ll cost you.”

This is your fault presumably, probably for using the edge to parry so many times. You don’t try to dispute the price or haggle. Not that it would be rude, in fact it’s rather expected around here. You don’t haggle because you don’t want to force him to give it to you for free. And in exchange, he doesn’t lead off with the absurd prices he does for others. You feel, or at least you hope, that the two of you have an understanding, even if your curse means that neither of you can ever say what it is.
“Are any of them serious?”

“No. Give me a day with this girl and I’ll have her edge smoothed down to perfection again. Was there anything else?”

“Ah, yes actually. It’s about the decoration. The gold inlay down the forte? It’s gotten very scratched since I started my career.”


“Hrmph. The entire purpose of making it an inlay was that so it wouldn’t get scratched.”

“Well it has! Can’t explain it. Can you touch it up?”

“Easily. Are you willing to supply the gold?”

You pull a gold coin from your handbag and flip it over. He catches it out of the air and inspects it, rubbing his thumb over the faint image of some foreign despot.
“That’ll do. Have you been to visit a coiner lately, Sofia? Not often you see someone with a gold coin.”

1/2

>>3069370
“Something very like that, yes.”
Due to certain circumstances, you’d come into possession of a large stock of gold coins. And while Signor Selvaggi is right to be surprised, since gold coins are inconvenient, soft, heavy and mostly only useful for trade with foreigners (who value the stuff stupidly high for some reason), it is still coin. Beggars can’t be choosers.
“Will it be ready by the day’s end?”

“Yes. But come back before I close, alright? Otherwise I’ll have to reopen the workshop especially for you.”
As you said, Signor Selvaggi understands you. He knows how pointless it is to threaten you with something as mundane as ‘business hours’.

With that settled, you step out of the polisher’s workshop and back onto the canal, surrounded by the omnipresent hustle and bustle of Il Grande Mercato. A rather simple name for a rather unsimple place but it lives up to it. One of the largest marketplaces in the City, this massive square grid of crisscrossing canals in the middle of Somn has been all but taken over by what could only be called some kind of urban cyst of mercantile achievement.
They say you can buy just about anything here and while that’s a vast overstatement, it’s still more true than not.

And you’re not just here to get your sword maintained, though that was well overdue. Recently...things haven’t been great for you. Your last duel was an embarrassment and you can’t even distract yourself with puzzles anymore. The joy in that is gone.
So instead you’ve come to drown yourself in the tawdry joys of consumerism. You’ve got money, the gold coins you liberated from a client who turned out to be guilty of theft all along. When you took them, you told yourself that you were going to spend them on you.

And how best are you going to go about doing that first?

>Dresses and fancy outfits! Maybe not dresses actually.

> Books, puzzles and other sorely needed entertainment.

>Shop around for a new hobby that contains slightly less existential guilt.

>Body treatment. When you said you were spending it on you, you were being very literal. Don't you deserve to feel good for once?

>Humours and other devices that entertain and entrap the mind.

>Nothing. This was a mistake. You should just save it in case you need it later.

>>3069383
>Body treatment. When you said you were spending it on you, you were being very literal. Don't you deserve to feel good for once?

>>3069383
>>Body treatment. When you said you were spending it on you, you were being very literal. Don't you deserve to feel good for once?

Hey, (Fae) Court of Swords is back. Neat.

Vote called, writing.

>>3069383
>Shop around for a new hobby that contains slightly less existential guilt.
we need more games to challenge people with

>Body treatment. When you said you were spending it on you, you were being very literal. Don't you deserve to feel good for once?

To tell the truth, you can’t think of many of your hobbies that feel right to you right now. What would buying those or shopping around for new clothes really do for you? No, instead, you’ve decided to be extremely literal. And don’t you deserve to just feel good every once and a while? So that’s what you’ll do. You’ll find a good body tailor or masseuse and have them remove all the stress and the frustration that’s been coiling up inside of you.
There’s nothing wrong with taking a little time and money to be nice to yourself every now and then.

Your travel through the Mercato is slow, hindered by the flows of people going every which way all around you. It is crowded with stalls and people of every possible kind. Not just the olive tanned skin of Cityfolk, oh no, not here. Amidst them you catch the occasional glimpse of what can only be foreigners, be they unnaturally pale or unnaturally dark. Some of them are dressed in local styles, others prefer to be barbarians. All are accompanied by local guides and many of them are wearing lenses of smoked glass and paper masks across their mouths.
A lot of foreigners will do anything to stop themselves from taking in the City. That’s how much they fear it. They say the colours here blind them and to eat or drink to lose yourself. That the air itself is sickly sweet and enchants the mind. And maybe it is for them, who live in the Lesser Realms, further away from the Truth of things. It must be like travelling to the Wake.

You wonder if they know how laughable people find their absurd caution here, how many jokes foreign merchants like them are the brunt of. Why cling to their old way of things if their lives back home are so pale that the City’s mere existence can shred them? They should strip themselves of their glasses and their masks and partake freely and in doing so, be liberated. And once done, they will never go home again.

And rarer still, there are things in the crowd that are less human than even the denizens of the Lesser Realms. Living sculptures not unlike the the peacocks around the Magisterium can be seen darting here and there, running errands and messages. Urchins too, little tatterdemalion bundles without substance, tumbleweeds of urban detritus with glinting black eyes. And everywhere, probably outnumbering the actual people, the Mercato is full of the painted.

1/2

>>3069592
Every available surface is home to some mural, some painting, some crude sketch or other splash of colour. Most of them are purely ornamental but a few have been recruited into business. You pass a painted wall with a stand and a paintbrush sitting next to it. Painted on the side is a beautiful woman at a desk, fidgeting and staring at a blank white square positioned next to the stand. It’s an ordering system. Using the little paintbrush and the black paint provided, people can paint their order for a stall further down the wall and the painted woman, seeing it materialize from nowhere, will run it down and display it for the stallowner to see. Useful, though you have to wonder how she feels, receiving and running commands from something she can’t even perceive.

Later you pass a similar setup only this one has been vandalized and not yet repaired. The woman’s face has been covered over in crude black paint and instead of dutifully attending the orders, she just lies in a corner perpetually struggling to breathe through a face that no longer exists.

But none of this is what you’re looking for. What you’re looking for is...ah! There! The bathhouses and body tailors. An apt enough place to spend your money on.

You choose one of the more luxurious looking ones and walk in, your handbag full of stolen coin. You nod at the woman at the desk. She's tall and dark-haired and the way she wears her robe, almost tantalisingly close to open, hints that this establishment offers services beyond 'massage'.
“I’d like a proper treatment thanks. Clothes and body. I’ve got time too, it can take a while.”

You slap a good dozen coins upon the table and she curtsies, more to them than you.
“Right this way signorina. And what treatment would you like exactly?”

“Huh?”
You haven’t been to one of these places since you were just a girl, due to them being expensive as all fuck. And back then your parents had arranged everything for you.

“Would you just liked to be bathed and relaxed in the skin-deep treatment or would you prefer the extensive body massage treatment? And if so, would you like any alterations? And furthermore, which attendants would you prefer?”


>Just skin-deep, thanks. You have other things you want to do.

>Extensive! You’re here to treat yourself. If you just wanted a bath, you could do that at home.

And

>No alterations to either clothes or body. If you’re going for skin-deep, you have to choose this.

>Some physical alterations while you’re here.

>You’d like them to work on your duelling outfit.

And

>Male attendants.

>Female attendants.

>”Can I ask for you, specifically?”

>>3069604
>>Extensive! You’re here to treat yourself. If you just wanted a bath, you could do that at home.
>Some physical alterations while you’re here.
>You’d like them to work on your duelling outfit.
>mix of both attendants

>>3069604
>Extensive! You’re here to treat yourself. If you just wanted a bath, you could do that at home.

>No alterations to either clothes or body. If you’re going for skin-deep, you have to choose this.

>”Can I ask for you, specifically?”

>>3069604
>Extensive! You’re here to treat yourself. If you just wanted a bath, you could do that at home.
>You’d like them to work on your duelling outfit.

>Mix of both

>Casual fleshwarping
I need an adult

>>3069604
>Extensive! You’re here to treat yourself. If you just wanted a bath, you could do that at home.

>You’d like them to work on your duelling outfit.

>mix of both

>>3069760
Fae care about appearance only as far as they can magnify it.

>>3069604
>Extensive! You’re here to treat yourself. If you just wanted a bath, you could do that at home.
>You’d like them to work on your duelling outfit.
>"Both, both is good."

I'll reign in the temptation to both get a three number measurement for Sofia and adjust it to suit a decidedly unsubtle taste. I'm not against it if anyone else gets excited over it though.

Vote called, writing.

>>3069604


>>3069816

I'm going to second with this, if only because if we feel the need to bolster our... presence, I specifically want it in the form of one last ribbon.

>>3069604
>>Extensive! You’re here to treat yourself. If you just wanted a bath, you could do that at home.
>You’d like them to work on your duelling outfit.
>Either/both. If not both, female.

>Extensive! You’re here to treat yourself. If you just wanted a bath, you could do that at home.
>You’d like them to work on your duelling outfit.
>A mix of both.

“Extensive, please! I want to feel like a princess, you know. Not that that should be hard. So I’ll take the deep bath and massage. All the way down. But I don’t want any alterations while you’re all working there, I’m pretty happy with my body is it is.”
A lie but one you are forced to tell.
“But hey, could you do some work on my outfit while I’m being serviced? Thanks.”

“Of course. And what attendants would you prefer?”

“For what?”

“Men or women? We offer an array of specialists of either gender.”

“Can I get a mix of both? It won’t make me uncomfortable.”

“Very well. Right this way then.”
She takes a key off the wall behind her and opens the door to a small wooden hallway.
“This key is for Chamber 43. It’s down the hallway, past the first five corners, on the right. Please enter when you are ready.”

“Thanks!”
You pad down the hall, following her directions. The chambers are not numbered sequentially and each stretch of hall seems to be the exact same length and each corner the exact same angle. Logic would thus dictate that you’d arrive back where you started after just three corners but you are in the presence of some obscure architecture. They must have paid a lot for this.

You find Chamber 43 and without waiting, you unlock the door and throw it open. The room beyond is small but airy and most of the floor is hollowed out to form a tub full of steaming hot water. The air is thick with the steam and it’s not just from your own. The walls don’t go all the way up to the ceiling, allowing the smells, sounds and vapors from the adjacent chambers to mix decadently in the space above.
Waiting for you are two men and two women, all absolutely adorable and all dressed in the same scanty bathrobe that ends mid-thigh.

“I’m not here for small talk,” you announce, spreading your arms. “Let’s get to work.”

Your clothes are quickly stripped from you, roaming hands removing your jacket, unbuttoning your waistcoat, pulling off your boots, tugging at your pants...well, you’ll spare the exact details. They are stolen from you in less than a minute, without you even having to lift a finger, bundled up and carried through a side-door. You are offered a bathrobe of a similar cut to your attendants but you don’t need it for now. Because, for now, you are lead into the bath by gentle hands.

What follows is actually surprisingly unerotic. The scrubbing is extensive, thorough and pleasurable purely in an ascetic sense. They don’t have the time to waste being gentle with your mere skin, do they? You paid for the deep treatment.

1/2

>>3069990
Your attendants rescue you from the bath shortly afterwards and lay you out upon a bench, face-down. The massage that follows is as pleasurable as the bath wasn’t. Strict fingers knead your flesh and rip your muscles and though it may be painful, it comes with a sense of euphoric delight that easily matches any humour Leonarda has ever given you, any puzzle or tempting book. It must be like what you imagine sex is like.
You’re unable to stay quiet but it’s fine. There’s a joyous buzz in your ears that makes you unable to even hear your own moans.

After an unknowable amount of time has passed, you are flipped over and introduced to a whole new world of joy.

*****

You are drowsily lying in your bath some time later, still being worked on, when the receptionist enters the room. High in the clouds of bliss, you slur out a greeting.

“They told me you were lucid. How would you like your outfit to be tailored?”

You drag yourself up into some approximation of consciousness as you consider your question. You don’t want to move too much though. Your arms are skinless, bloody apparitions of raw meat and muscle. One of your legs is the same, being kneaded by bloody hands. The other leg is still being stripped, the skin being pulled away from a seam high in your inner thigh. They’ve degloved it to the knee but they haven’t worked it all the way off yet.
The bathwater runs red with your sanguine essence and you don’t dare disturb the process too much. Not when it feels this good.


>Just clean it and make it look a bit fancier. Nothing too different. Practicality is important.

>Lacier! Frillier!

>Perhaps it could be cut to be a little more daring…?

>You’d like to make a significant change to how the entire thing is shaped.

>Other (Specify)

>>3069998
>Just clean it and make it look a bit fancier. Nothing too different. Practicality is important.

...ew.

File: 1469144833007.jpg (28 KB, 781x501)

28 KB JPG

I'm not even surprised

>>3069998
Make it a little more daring, but also make it more impressive and powerful. All while allowing it to be accessorized easily.

>>3069998

>Daring

I'm not sure if I hate this city, or if I'm simply too simple to appreciate the finer points of therapeutic flaying.

>>3069998
>Other

We've taken on a tendency to borrow other people's clothes and I don't see that changing any time soon; I recommend a more versatile coat that can be worn on either shoulder, draped, tied or worn neatly may be a tall order, but nevertheless may be vital for better coordination with trophies.

Secondarily? I I vote for lace, but not TOO much lace.

>>3070058
this was sort of what I was wanting with my vote too.

Cept more daring than lacy.

>>3070080

Changing my vote to mirror this tasteful gentleman.

Vote called, writing.

>Other

“Hrmm,” you say slowly, sounding out the words with a barely responding tongue. “I think I need a few practical changes. I have a habit of taking other people’s clothes, you see? So can you make my coat a little more versatile?”

“Of course. How so?”

“Give it loops or something, I don’t know. I leave the details to you. But it needs to be able to worn on either shoulder, draped, tied and be easy to affix various tokens to. I collect a lot of those. And..and could you make it a little more daring?”

“Daring? How-”

Her voice fades out as you sink once more back down into bliss. It’s not your fault. How can you possibly keep your head in the face of such a deep massage? Probing fingers reach into every inch of your being. Anything as shallow as skin is no obstacle.

You are dimly aware of them degloving you. With your limbs done, they are free to move up, to pass their hands over your loosened skin and to pull it free. For a moment you are blind as they drag up the skin from your torso and your face. It’s like having your shirt pulled up over your head.
And then it is off and you are unclothed both in fabric and in skin.

Still deep in your stupor, you watch them fold your skin up and set it aside. And then to get to work upon your musculature, kneading it free from your body in long crooked ropes. They don’t break any of it, nor do they tear anything free. It just dissociates from you in beautiful streamers of flesh. It’s like pulling a thread free from a ball of yarn.
Little by little, they untangle you. Far upon the mountaintops of euphoria, you watch them scoop out your internals with gentle hands. They have a knack for it and things come free that shouldn’t. Your teeth are scooped out without resistance, your skinned lipless mouth hanging open helplessly. Even if you wanted to shut it, you couldn't. They pulled those ligaments free a while ago.

Your teeth are left to float in a little glass tube of saline fluid. Your nails join them soonly afterwards. Then they come for your eyes…

When your eyes move, so do ‘you’. That is to say, the ‘you’ from which you see. You get a good look at the beautiful palms of your attendants as they pull your eyes out and leave them to float in another tube. From here, eyes swivelling freely without a skull to constrain them, you can get a good look at the whole situation.

The bathchamber has become a slaughterhouse. Resting in the bloody water is a skeleton and nothing more, a skeleton wrapped in free-floating veins and nerves. And as you watch, they begin to even spool those way, veins and nerves being wrapped up in spindles.
1/2

>>3070304
And all around, there is you. Your skin is stretched out in great sheets where two of the attendants are massaging it, loosening it, cleaning it from both sides. The third attendant, a woman, has your hair spread out on a rack and is vigorously combing it, running it through her hands until it is far straighter and brighter than it ever could be on a human head. The last attendant is polishing your errant fingernails one by one.

After the skin is cleansed to their satisfaction, it is stretched out upon a rack and left to dry. The two that had been washing it turn their attention to your skeleton instead, the only part of you still left sitting in the bath. You watch from a distance as they start to scrub it.
You half expect for the stripping to continue. For them to pull the skeleton apart as well. For them to take off every single aspect of your physicality until the only thing in the bath is the very essence of Sofia. But that would be silly.

This is...this is not unlike ego death. You are no longer yourself. You are a disparate being, a drifting network staring at herself through eyes that are literally several feet away from the rest of you. This entire room is full of you and your substance. Your skin and bone and muscle and fat, all being washed and massaged and in the case of the little vat that contains the sum total of all your body fat, being dissolved.
You are something so much more and so much less. And it is all beautiful. You are being made beautiful, across every inch. Inside and out.

But you are not one who is prone to ego death. So despite your body being so thoroughly dismantled, the ‘I’ of you still bellows strong. From your heart? From your brain? Can’t be, both of those are being tended to separately and away from you. But still!

And because of that, you return to yourself. You return to higher thought, a brief island in a sea of pleasure. And sitting upon that shore, beholding the blood and bile and unrestrained meat that is you, you have one thought.

Fuck. you didn’t get to tell her what kind of ‘daring’ alteration you wanted to be made to your outfit.


>To the waistcoat’s neckline, obviously.

>To how low your trousers go.

>To how high your stockings reach.

>Other (Specify)

>>3070313
>>To how low your trousers go.

Our chest is nothing special, but our legs are pretty damn good from what I hear.


Also ouro this is fucked up.

>>3070253
Thanks! This is a really cool pic.

>>3070313
>To how low your trousers go.
Maybe we can hang streamer trophies from them like a false skirt/tasset

>>3070313
>To how low your trousers go.
>To how high your stockings reach.

File: ZR.jpg (45 KB, 216x394)

45 KB JPG

>>3070313
>Other (Specify)

>>3070387
>>3070313
+1

>>3070387

This man gets it. Seconded..

Trousers and Stockings should work in tandem.

>>3070326
I'm not joking when I say 'I think of her and everyone in this city as Fae creatures and explicitly NOT human.' It REALLY helps with calming your head down about it all. They're alien creatures, despite their looks.

Vote called, writing.

File: sofia_ceg_sketch2.jpg (77 KB, 800x608)

77 KB JPG

This update is late for stupid reasons.

>Trousers and stockings.

Yeah, you could get away with a little something like that, couldn’t you? Make the stockings just an inch lower and your pants perhaps just an inch higher? It’d certainly help people remember you! And if you’re going to be looking so radiant after this massage, you’ll want to show off at least a little.
And if you don’t like it, it won’t be such a big deal. You have a spare ensemble back home.

So, after you’ve recovered a little more, and they’ve put you back together enough that you have lips, teeth, a tongue, vocal cords and conscious control over all four, you request the required change.

That done, you just relax and let them slowly reassemble you. There’s no pain. You watch with detached fascination as your innards are all rewound back within you, your eyes popped back in their sockets just in time for you to look down into your own exposed ribcage. They’ve put back your heart and your lungs but not the rest of the meat so for now the ribcage cavity is packed with straw to ensure that they stay in place.

“You have a very strong heart,” one of the women says flirtatiously.

“Thanks.”
You can watch your lungs swell and deflate as you talk.

“Now hold still. We need to put your veins back. Where are the nerves?”

“I’ve got them right here,” a man says, hefting something that looks like a bundle of wires. “Very loose, very supple, very sexy.”

They keep putting you back together, piece by piece. Wrapping your intestines back together, now clean and vacant, clipping your fingernails back into place, thoroughly de-strawing you and filling your cavities with the appropriate meat.
When your skin comes, it is like a shroud, wrapped around you and tightened, adjusted along various seams. And it is unblemished and unmarked.

*****

You spend the next hour or so in pure relaxation, being waited on hand and foot as your massage is continued, this time on a body now conditioned to be perfect for it. Those hands have touched every inch of you and you mean that in the cubic sense.

But you can’t just sit around forever, you know! You paid for a certain amount of time and that time is up. And so you find yourself out on the street once more, wearing a body that feels so refreshed and powerful that it practically feels brand new! All the little knots, the little issues and imperfections, they’ve been ironed out in an extremely thorough sense. You feel like you’ve got iron muscle and elastic bones but in a good way. Full of vim and vigor!
And your clothes are much the same way. They’ve been cleaned, fixed up and altered just slightly to now show two inches of skin on your legs. Not a very respectable look, you know but since when have you had to care about that anyway? You’ll be fine.

You feel too good to worry about anything right now.

1/2

>>3070716
And on top of all that, you’ve still got time before your sword should be ready. Odd to think that you can be disassembled and put back together before a sword can get some nicks done but life is a curious thing.
So when musing on how best to spend your time, you happen upon an idea. There’s a person you haven’t seen for a few days, since at least the Handprint incident that left you so distraught and paranoid. Why don’t you go see how they’re doing? Impose yourself on them?


>Leonarda

>Maccio

>Vesper and Adriana.

>Giuseppina.

>Sabino.

>Lanzo

>Gloriana

>Someone else (More options)

>>3070722
>Vesper and Adriana.
See how she is settling in.

Oh whoops, that's Vespa not Vesper. My bad.

>>3070722
>Vesper and Adriana.

>>3070763
>>3070722

>Vespa and Adriana

2nded.

Vote called, writing.

>Maccio

>Vespa and Adriana

Apocalypsis isn’t too far from the Somn, is it? It’s one of its neighboring districts. You’ll be able to head there and back with plenty of time left before you begin to bother Signore Selvaggi. You head off with a spring in your step, a spring in your heart and just about everywhere else throughout your entire body. It’s a good day, the clouds are mostly unreadable and you’re off to visit some friends. What more could you want?

Coming here was the right choice. You feel reborn.

*****

Apocalypsis is as queer as ever, perhaps more so considering its new inhabitant. The eyes painted on the walls still stare blindly, oddities and fascina things are on display on the street and people dressed like Lapo are commonplace. This is, after all, the district of fascination and revelation. It is steeped in fascina.

But despite that, they’re not all bad. It’s a fascina whom you’re going to visit now. Vespa. The former wasp turned woman and sole survivor of her people. This had left her with an entire empty neighborhood that everyone else just seems to ignore. An excellent place, don’t you think, to hide a person with nine bodies?
You hope everything has gone well between the two of them. If you show up and Adriana has ten bodies...well, that better not happen. You trust her.

The little row of houses are as dreary as ever, disconnected from the main canal. But there’s obvious signs of activity and, most noticeably, the dust is gone. The street is sparkling clean, the house’s facades have all been repainted and the windows cleaned. It looks like a place for humans to live instead of a place for wasps to die.
As you walk down the street, you notice the curtains of a house on the left flick, someone watching you through them. A moment later, the door to a house on the right opens and Adriana steps out. She’s still the same, though her dress is now a little more practical. Her pale blonde hair is done up in a bun behind her head. You don’t meet her piercing green eyes and you hope she doesn’t judge you for it.

“Good afternoon,” you say cheerily. “That you up in the windows too?”

“Yes. Good day, Sofia. You are looking particularly radiant.”

“Aw thanks! How can you tell?”

“It’s obvious to anyone with eyes and I have a great many. How are you?”

“Like you don’t already know how I am, Adriana.”

She smiles and tilts her head to the side just a little in acquiescence. You guess she isn’t used to having her condition referred to openly. Not used to it being something that can be spoken of with a smile.
“That is true. But I don’t know why you’re here.”


>”Do I even need a reason? I just want to see how you’re settling in.”

>”I want to return that kiss you gave me before.”

>”Just making sure that you haven’t killed Vespa, haha. Where is she by the way?”

>”Sabino invited me to his Ring acceptance. Do you want to come too?”

>Other (Specify)

>>3070912
>>”Do I even need a reason? I just want to see how you’re settling in.”
>How is your neighbor treating you?

>>3070912
>>”I want to return that kiss you gave me before.”

>>3070912
>”Do I even need a reason? I just want to see how you’re settling in.”
>How is your neighbor treating you?

>>3070912

>”Do I even need a reason? I just want to see how you’re settling in.”
>How is your neighbor treating you?

>>3070912
>”Do I even need a reason? I just want to see how you’re settling in.”

>>3070912
>”Do I even need a reason? I just want to see how you’re settling in.”
>>How is your neighbor treating you?
>Any of the police drop by to harass you?

Vote called, writing.

>”Do I even need a reason? I just want to see how you’re settling in.”
>”How is your neighbour treating you?”

“Blunt, I like it. But do I even need a reason? I just want to see how you’re settling in. How’s that going?”

“Ah, it’s been going splendidly. I’ve never had so much space all to myself before.”

“I can see you’ve been cleaning. A lot. It’s only been a few days!”
You realise how stupid of an observation that is a moment after you say it.

“I like to clean. Some part of me has been cleaning continuously since I arrived. Fortunately, I am very good at multitasking.”

“...Was that a joke?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, good. And it’s all gone well?”
Hopefully all this has distracted her from thinking about Eduardo’s death.

“Not in that sense, no. Some thoughts are inescapable, Sofia. Fortunately I am also very good at compartmentalizing. I’ve dedicated one body to mourning.”

“Oh. And uh, how are you in that regard?”
You don’t want to think about one part of Adriana left in an attic anywhere, constantly crying and freaking out. You’d say it’s not healthy for her to do that but to be frank, you have no fucking clue what is and isn’t ‘healthy’ for a person like her.

“Inconsolable.”

“Right. And uh, how is your neighbour treating you? Looks like you got her permission.”

“I think we’re getting along pretty good.”
This voice is new, startling you just a little as you spin around. Standing behind you is Vespa, her blonde hair somehow conspiring to be an even brighter yellow in comparison to Adriana’s ash-blonde shade. She’s clad in her work overalls though as usual, that hasn’t stopped her from painting her lips and fingernails black. And of course, she’s still wearing her black glasses. A girl with compound eyes has needs, after all.
Beside her, another of Adriana’s bodies is walking. She puts her hands over her mouth as she approaches.
“She told me her business. And I don’t have a problem with it, not really. It’s...it’s pretty nice to see lights in these windows again, you know?”

Adriana nods two heads.
“Signorina Delicato has been exceptionally gracious for letting me stay here, considering the circumstances. I’ve been doing my best not to disrespect the dead.”

“It’s fine,” Vespa says and then gives you a look. “After all, the disease is long gone. She’ll be perfectly safe.”

Disease? Has Vespa told Adriana that a disease is what cleared out these homes? Has she not told Adriana the truth?


>”Haven’t you told her yet?”

>”Adriana, could Vespa and I speak in private for a moment?”


>It’s none of your business anymore.

>Other (Specify)

>>3071071
>>It’s none of your business anymore.

Because it isn't.

>>3071071
>It’s none of your business anymore.

No need digging it up I guess.

>>3071071
>Remind Vespa that Adriana might attract a lawyer to come visit, so some details may get....revealed.

>>3071071

>It's none of your business anymore.

The only possible hangup is if Vespa and Adriana become an item, which doesn't seem to be an immediate concern. Hopefully one of them would contact us before that ends poorly.

>>3071103
Adriana won't get intimate with anyone I imagine due to the fact she'd kill them on accident.

>>3071109

I'm more concerned with Vespa dying of her circumstances than Adriana harming her.

Vote called, writing

>It's none of your business anymore.

You do your best to drive the thought from your head before Adriana can see it. It’s none of your business anymore what Vespa does and it’s her right to tell or not tell whoever she wants. She’s certainly not obligated to do so. It’s her life that’s on the line here after all, not yours.

“Oh right,” you say, “that old thing. It’s not a threat anymore, Adriana. You’ll not get infected with anything.”

Adriana just clamps her hands over her mouth. Well used to this by now, both you and Vespa turn to where she’s standing behind you. That body is the next to speak.
“I put some tea on when I saw you arrive so it should be ready very soon. If the two of you would like…”

“Oh sure!”
“Thank you Adriana.”

Adriana beckons you towards one of the houses, whose front door opens seemingly of its own accord.
“Right this way please.”

“She certainly seems to have settled in quickly,” you say to Vespa as the two of you walk across the street. “And you’re okay with it?”

“How could I not? She’s so nice and helpful. I’d never be able to get this place clean and she always lends a hand or four to help me weave and she even makes tea...it’s like I’ve picked up my own personal maidstaff.”

“That’s a good observation. She used to be a maid up until recently. Or...a housekeeper I guess. Same thing almost. I think she genuinely enjoys the work.”

“Of course,” Adriana says as the two of you go through the door. She’s standing in the entry with a tray in her hands. It has a large teapot and five cups on it. “I have never enjoyed idle hands and I have so many hands to be idle with.”
Adriana is also standing behind you. Twice. Judging by the number of cups, it looks like she’s pretty thirsty.

“It’s good to see you can be so open about yourself,” you say, following her to a table and sitting down.

“It’s good to…”

“...be so open,” she replies, using two mouths by accident.

“Where did all this stuff come from, by the way?”
You wave your hands to encompass the teapot, cups and table.

“She’s very good at shopping,” Vespa says. “I don’t even know where she got the money from.”

“I have my ways.”

You try to think of how Adriana might be able to afford enough to furnish nine small houses but give up. Truth be told, there’s too many possibilities. Having nine bodies and nine minds opens up a lot of avenues for revenue.
You take a sip from the cup and you can’t stop yourself from smiling. Of course she makes fantastic tea. Why would you ever think otherwise?

“Thank you.”

“Hey, I thought I told you not to go that deep into me again.”

“I didn’t. I just had to look at your face.”

“I’ve yet to find anything she’s particularly bad at,” Vespa says. “Can you believe it? It’s like she knows how to do everything.”

1/2

>>3071207

“That’s not true,” Adriana says. “I certainly can’t knit as well as you.”

“Oh stop, you’ve helped plenty.”

“As for what you’ve said, it’s true and I can’t be humble about it. I am a very quick learner.”
Her three bodies sit down all at once, raising a cup to their lips in perfect synchronicity.
“That is to say,” she says after lowering the cup and covering the mouths of two of her bodies, “I learn as fast as anyone else. I just have a lot more time to do it in.”

Huh. You hadn’t thought of it that way. She probably won’t live any longer than anyone else but for every second that passes for all of you, she experiences it in nine different ways. She could learn nine things in the time it takes you to learn one.

Vespa finishes her tea.
“It’s kind of scary actually and don’t worry Adriana, I’m joking, I’m joking. You have all this power that makes everyone so scared but even under all of that, I’m constantly discovering extraordinary new things about you. She’s absolutely unique, Sofia.”

“Yes,” the former housekeeper replies. “After all, how many people do you know that have a certificate saying they’re human? Hahaha.”
You get the feeling she is becoming uncomfortable about being under so much scrutiny in the conversation. It’s just an inkling, based on that brittle remark and what you know of her but it makes sense. After all, wouldn’t she want you all to act as if she was normal?


>Ask Vespa about her job.

>Ask Vespa about her old relationship.

>Ask Vespa about ambisilk specifically.

>”Do you mind if we talk in private, Adriana?” This might give her an excuse to excuse herself.

>Affectionately embarrass Adriana a little more.

>Ask if either of them want to accompany you to Sabino’s ceremony.

>Talk about yourself. The best subject.

>Other (Specify)

>>3071208
>Ask if either of them are getting up to anything in the near future, then talk about what we'll be doing, test the waters and see if they want to come before asking.

>>3071208
>>Affectionately embarrass Adriana a little more.

File: fleksnek.png (13 KB, 400x400)

13 KB PNG

I'm going to rest for a few hours or so. Vote will remain open until I return.

>>3071208
>>3071231
Plus this
>>Ask if either of them want to accompany you to Sabino’s ceremony.

>>3071208
>>Ask Vespa about her job.
>>Ask Vespa about ambisilk specifically.

>>3071208
>Ask Vespa about her job.
Let's not invite Vespa to the ceremony. She might end up falling for Sabino, and that's dangerous.

Alright I'm back. Vote called and writing!

Actually wait nevermind I didn't notice it was a tie. The vote continues.

>>3071208
>Ask Vespa about her job.
I still haven't caught up with my Ouro backlog (still stuck on last thread or maybe even two, sheeeit) but here's a tiebreaker for you

>>3071208
>>Ask Vespa about her job.

Vote called, writing.

>>3070304
>>3070313
Jeez ouro, what the fuck did I just read

>>3071444
Lighter tone slice-of-life shenanigans.

>Ask Vespa about her job.

Responding to what may or may not be Adriana’s silent plea, you decide to shift the conversation away from her. For a moment you consider inviting them to Sabino’s little ceremony but ultimately decline. You know Adriana detests crowds and the less people Vespa meets, the better. Thanks to your godmother, love can be all but fatal to her.
So instead, you fish around for another topic, staring idly at the living crowd and the former wasp. What else is there to talk about? Former client or not, you don’t really have much common ground with Vespa. You both got fucked over by the same lawyer, you suppose.

Oh!

Should you tell her that you know the lawyer responsible for her predicament? When you and Vespa first spoke of it you didn’t know but your meeting with Giuseppina after the duel over the stolen gold confirmed to you that you and Vespa share a godmother in common. It is by Giuseppina’s hand that Vespa exists at all and yet it is also thanks to her that she is forever close to death. And while Vespa has never seemed particularly spiteful about it, would she change if she knew that you could arrange a meeting between her and her creator?
That’s a heavy thought. Too heavy to throw around without thinking about it further.

“So Vespa, how’s work been going? Have you still been getting commissions after all that ugliness with the contract?”
You take refuge in a safe harbour.

“Well enough to live by,” she says. “My reputation’s been hurt but some customers stay loyal. There’s a lot of dedicated cloudreaders around these parts and they’re always in need of a good pattern. I’ve even got in a request for ambisilk, would you believe it?”

“Oh?”

“Just a little purse with an ambisilk bottom, barely more than a scrap. Fairly simple pattern too so it won’t hold much. Why the sudden interest?”

“Oh it’s nothing much. I don’t know what Adriana’s told you but we recently shared an escapade involving the stuff.”

“I, among other things, was briefly trapped in a pair of drapes,” Adriana supplies.

“Do go on.”
Vespa reaches for the teapot only to find it empty. Wordlessly, Adriana picks it up and walks off into the kitchen to brew some more. As she does this, Adriana stays behind to answer Vespa’s questions about the curtains.
You are interested in the conversation at first but it quickly becomes apparent that Vespa’s interest in the pattern is wholly that of a craftsman, asking questions about the particular style and material of the ambisilk pattern. Questions that you can’t follow.

1/2

>>3071482
But this all stops when Adriana holds up a hand.
“Something has come up. The kitchen was out of water so I was pulling some up out of the well in order to brew the tea. And...it would appear Sofia has a message.”

You groan and then, as Adriana walks out of the kitchen with a bucket in one hand and a scroll in the other, you groan louder. But you reserve the third and final groan for when the scroll wriggles its way out of her hands and flies straight in for your face!

You catch it in mid-air before it can strike you, breaking the seal and unrolling it in a single motion. You give it a quick scan to confirm that it is what you think it is and you shrug.
“Well, at least it’s a good time for it. My sword’s probably done by now and I’m still feeling pretty great. Sorry ladies.”

Vespa frowns.
“Do you have to leave right now?”
It is a testament to how good the deep treatment has left you feeling that someone expressing, unprompted, a desire to be in your company doesn't render you desperately, pathetically happy.


>”Yes. The official time for negotiations isn’t for a while but it’s best to be there early. Don’t want anyone talking to my client beforehand.”

>”It can wait a little while. Another cup please Adriana.”

>”No, I can keep this waiting until dusk. Shall we talk some more?”

>Other (Specify)

>>3071485
>”Yes. The official time for negotiations isn’t for a while but it’s best to be there early. Don’t want anyone talking to my client beforehand.”

>I always try to get there ahead of time, and I still need to pick up my sword. Point of professional pride and all that. Sorry the visit was cut short maybe we can catch up again later.

>>3071485
>”Yes. The official time for negotiations isn’t for a while but it’s best to be there early. Don’t want anyone talking to my client beforehand.”
Also we want enough time to properly research our next opponent. No more going in blind and getting our ass handed to us.

>>3071485
>>”Yes. The official time for negotiations isn’t for a while but it’s best to be there early. Don’t want anyone talking to my client beforehand.”
>Oh, how so many more things could go wrong the past few days if I didn't come early....

Vote called, writing.

>”Yes. The official time for negotiations isn’t for a while but it’s best to be there early. Don’t want anyone talking to my client beforehand.”

“I’m afraid so. The official time for negotiating isn’t for a while but it’s still best to be there early. The more time the better, eh?”
And maybe this time you won’t have your own ass served to you on a silver platter.
“Not to mention that this address is right out on the other side of town. It’s going to take me a while to just get over there. So I’ll be off. I was just stopping by to make sure you two were doing alright anyway. Ciao!”

You walk out and make your way down the street, only to find Adriana waiting for you by the corner.
“Goodbye again, Adriana! Didn’t know you were out here also.”

“I know you didn’t. I have a question, Sofia, if you have the time.”

“Shoot.”

“What isn’t Signorina Delicato telling me?”

“Eh?”

“I thought I could see it in her but I wasn’t sure, I didn’t want to trespass. But when you spoke to her earlier, I could tell. You were surprised about something that hasn’t been said.”

You ponder the futility of secrecy for a moment.


>”It’s not mine to give. Don’t ask about it.”

>”Are you implying that I would do such a thing? That I am a liar?”

>Maybe you can distract her with a decoy secret that is also true. “There’s something about my godmother that I’m still thinking about. It’s really not something you need to know.”

>Tell her the truth.

>Other (Specify)

>>3071537
>”It’s not mine to give. If she chooses not to tell, then it is with your sake in mind. Try not to broach the subject if a Lawyer comes by.”

>>3071537
>"It's not my secret to give Adriana. She may tell you someday, but until then don't let it eat at you."

File: flaaaaaaake.png (5 KB, 400x400)

5 KB PNG

I'm gonna go to sleep. I'll call the vote and resume updating when I wake.

>>3071537
>If she isn't telling you, then I won't either. Please don't even try to obtain this knowledge. There's lawyer shenanigans involved, and Vespa will literally die if a wrong person somehow finds out.
Because of your employer, you should know how information has its ways to spread even unintentionally. Me knowing is already a liability. It's better if you don't even let anyone infer that Vespa has a secret.

>>3071537
>Not my secret to tell. It’s something to do with lawyers and won’t harm you, only her.

>Make very sure to think of something else so she can’t suss it out.

I'm awake. Vote called and writing!

Whoops, sorry about the delay.

>”It’s not my secret to give.”

“If she won’t tell you, I’m not going to to either. That’s just how it is because it’s not my secret to give. And don’t ask her about it either. If she wants to say, she will. And if she doesn’t, that’s her choice.”

“Right.”

“Try not to be so forceful about it, eh? You could stand to respect other people’s privacy a bit more. But I can tell you that it has nothing to do with you so you don’t have to worry about it.”

“I can’t help but do it.”

“Okay I’ll give you that but just because you know it’s there doesn’t mean you have to follow up on it so directly. Or at all.”

She has the good grace to look ashamed. She looks like she’s been scolded, which was not your intention.
“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not that bad. Now if you don’t mind, I have to go poke my nose in someone else’s business and fight a stranger for a stranger.

******

The Suffitus District is not one you’ve ever stepped foot in before. And why would you? The only reason you’d come here is for a client. It’s one of the outermost districts, adjacent to the Foreign Quarter. It has two main features of note: Slums and industry. And of course, the industry is all about making and preparing things for people much richer than anyone actually living or working here.

The canal here is crowded with impromptu shelters and the buildings, while as colourful as the rest of the City, are faded and cracked. The usual murals are cracked into incomprehensibility and have been replaced by neon graffiti, most of which blinked owlishly or made rude gestures at passersby.
And the canal is thick with a flow of urchins, so many that they practically outnumber the residents, the animate detritus of the City itself.

You keep a hand on your sabre as you walk but not because you fear for your safety. The people of this District aren’t bad people. If anything, they’re victims. It’s people like this that you became a public defender to help. But urchins are another matter and you don’t want any of them grabbing hold of your sword as they seep past you. They’re always on the lookout for something shiny to incorporate into themselves.
Knowing your luck, you’ll probably be called on to defend one next week.

You didn’t have any trouble retrieving your sword and you hope that Signore Selvaggi is grateful for you arriving before he closed. But the detour back to the Somn District to do so had cost you a lot of time.

Your client’s home actually reminds you a good deal of yours. A tall purple townhouse, paint cracked and peeling, subdivided into a dozen different homes. You get the feeling that everything here is smaller and shittier though. That’s just the way of things.

1/2

File: Sofia_ceg.jpg (267 KB, 1500x1037)

267 KB JPG

>>3072291

You use your reflection in the canal to inspect yourself briefly before entering. You look great. Your outfit is still almost the same but the coat has become much more adaptable and you now have those daring two inches of skin on your legs. And thanks to the deep treatment, you look absolutely fantastic. They didn’t change anything about you, per se, but every aspect of you has been refreshed, cleaned, purged of minor impurities. For once you actually look pretty presentable.

With that in mind, you head inside. Your client is up on the top floor and when you arrive you can tell that it used to be the roof but someone had then constructed walls and a rickety ceiling atop it. The floor is unfurnished brick and the walls and roof are flimsy wood. There are holes in the walls.
This ‘floor’ has been split into at least seven different homes, all connected by a snaking little corridor between them. And the part set aside for your client is...rather busy. Too busy. Who are all these people?

You watch for a moment, looking at the people crowding in and around the doorway. Some of them are constables. Oh dear. Whatever this is, it doesn’t bode well.


>Approach and ask a few questions of the crowd. What’s going on here exactly?

>Wade in hard and fast. This is your client and whatever it is they’re doing, they’re not allowed to do it!

>Just hang back and wait for a moment. See if everything dies down a little.

>Other (Specify)

>>3072294
>>Approach and ask a few questions of the crowd. What’s going on here exactly?

>>3072294
>Approach and ask a few questions of the crowd. What’s going on here exactly?

>>3072294
>>Approach and ask a few questions of the crowd. What’s going on here exactly?

Vote called, writing.

>Approach and ask a few questions of the crowd. What’s going on here exactly?

Well, there’s no need to be forceful just yet. But why the presence of the constabulary? Sword Law governs purely civil matters, peer-to-peer from one citizen from another. Crimes of honour aren’t the jurisdiction of the police. And this can’t be a Sword-over-Street jurisdiction error like with the case of the stolen gold...if it was, your client would have already been arrested. \
So what the fuck are they doing here?

You sidle up to one of the peripheral members of the crowd, a man who doesn’t look like he belongs here. He’s tall and well-built, his sleeves rolled up to display an impressively well-defined set of arms. He’s got his legs on display as well, that sly dog, with those tight leggings. They’re somewhat of an outdated fashion these days but you wish they weren’t. With all that, you have trouble looking him in the face for almost a few minute. When you do, you discover that he’s looking down at you sternly. The droopy black moustache sort of ruins the effect.
“...Can I help you, signorina?”

“Don’t mind me, don’t mind me. What’s going on here?”

“Now I can’t just be saying that-”

“Yes you can. What, are you going to tell me that I don’t deserve to know? ...I’m a duellist, public defender. My client lives here.”
Oh dear. You jumped ahead into leaning on him with your curse before you even knew what you were doing. Hopefully the bit about being a duellist that you appended lamely onto your sentence afterwards is enough to give you actual legitimacy. Be nice, Sofia.

“Your client? Would that be one Frederigo Porcero?”

“The very same.”

“You do deserve it then. I mean, you would have deserved it regardless, I’m sure.”
He leans back against the rickety wall. He probably thinks it makes him look cool.
“Do you know your client’s job? Former job?”

“No. Look buddy, that’s not how public defenders work. Their job doesn’t matter.”

“He worked over at the abattoir, the pighouse.”

“He does have the surname for it. Something to be proud of. But what of it?”
Working with pork, huh? You’ve heard that meat like pork and beef is commonplace down below in the Lesser Realms but up here, with barely any land to keep animals that don’t fly or swim, it’s quite the luxury good. Of course, as you noted earlier, the people in this district who work the slaughterhouses aren’t actually the people who buy the product. That’s much too expensive for them.
The pighouses are part sty and part abbatoir, the animals spending their whole lives in little cages and enclosures in the shadow of the building where they go to die. It’s a grim place and the constant smell and flow of waste into the canals means they can only be kept in Suffitus.

“What of it? What do you think? If he was just filching pork or something you wouldn’t be here. We’ve got a quickpig situation.”

1/2

>>3072389

“Oh fuck. Really?”

“Really. Some fascina cult, they reckon, infiltrated the pighouse and started feeding them quicksilver. They’ve destroyed most of the results, thankfully, but this one got away.”

A quickpig would certainly explain the crowd and the constables.
“What’s this got to do with my client exactly?”

“He sheltered the thing.”

“He did?”
Your immediate reflex is to say ‘you can’t prove that’ but he’d be forced to agree and you wouldn’t learn the actual truth. You bite your lip.

“Got evidence for it and everything. He’s going to trial for that, believe you me. That’s a settled matter.”

“That’s not right. It can’t be! If it was, I wouldn’t be here!”

“Beats me. I’ve got no idea why you’re here, signorina.”


>”Whatever. Let me through, I’m going to speak to the client myself.”

>A quickpig? Maybe it’d be best for you to take your time, come back later…

>”Who are you? You’re strangely knowledgeable about all this, signore.”

>Other (Specify)

>>3072390
>”Who are you? You’re strangely knowledgeable about all this, signore.”

>>3072390

Hang on, if this situation is true who challenged our client to a duel?

>”Who are you? You’re strangely knowledgeable about all this, signore.”

Requesting details on what a quickpig situation is before I vote.

>>3072390

>”Who are you? You’re strangely knowledgeable about all this, signore.”
And
>"With all this, who would challenge my client for a duel then?"

>>3072401
also like to know this.

>>3072401
It's very gross. Quickpigs are malfunctioning pigs.

>>3072405
Okay? Malfunctioning HOW? Like, just crapping everywhere 24/7, or is it a unique "Ouro-brand" gross that defies innate understanding?

>>3072405
Man if you say it's gross it must be incredibly disgusting for the rest of us.

;^)

>>3072408
Quickpigs are pigs that have been fed quicksilver. This is a bad idea as it stains the inside of a pig and grants them increased intellect and capacity. Quickpigs rapidly mutate and change and can quickly be far smarter than actual people. Their final form is inimical to all life.

>>3072418
Ah. Thank you.

fucking fae, man...

>>3072390
>”Who are you? You’re strangely knowledgeable about all this, signore.”

I don't know if risking going to talk to him is smart right this second.

Vote called, writing.

We're here for the fucking pig aren't we.

>>3072433
Probably

>>3072433
...No.

NO.

If we are, fuck that, I REFUSE. It's one thing to fight for something that theoretically has life similar to another human fae.

It's another to fight for fucking BREAKFAST. Nah son, hunny ain't 'bout that.

>”Who are you? You’re strangely knowledgeable about all this, signore.”

“Hrm. You’re strangely knowledgeable about all this, Signore. Just who are you?”
He doesn’t strike you as just a regular bystander.

“I’m off-duty right now so I’m not wearing anything that’d give me away. But I still wanted to get a looksee, no?”

“Off-duty? Are you a constable?.”

He smiles laconically.
“Guilty as charged. Senior Sergeant Terenzi at your service.”

Fuck. You can’t believe you were scoping out a constable. They’re your enemy! What’s he really doing here?
“At my service, huh?,” you say coldly, “Then step aside. I’m going to speak to my client.”

“Just remember, he’s going to be arrested no matter what. Whatever this Sword Law dispute is, he can’t be saved.”

“I can do what I want. Try and say I can’t.”
And with those words, you step past him and start working your way through the crowd. The sight of your sheathed sword does wonders for clearing people out of your way.

The apartment beyond is, as you expected, rather small and dilapidated. There’s two rooms, one of which has a closed door and is clustered with huddled constables. Off to the side is the man who can only be your client. He’s short but thick, leathery skin bunched up around fatty muscle. His head’s shaved, a choice that makes him look like a particularly stubbled potato.
“Signore Porcero, I assume?”

“Aye that’s me. Just call me Frederigo.”
His voice is dull, dead even. He doesn’t lift his eyes.

“My name is Sofia Pseudonym. I’m your public defender.”

“I thought so.”

“So…”

“So?”

“So what’s wrong? What am I here to address? I heard about the quickpig but that’s not really in my area of expertise. What are you being challenged about?”

“It’s Signore d’Lalla. The boss.”

“Ah, the owner of the abbatoir?”
d’Lalla? The name doesn’t ring a bell. Considering the circumstances, it’s likely just one merchant prince whose bought a d’ to his name. Certainly no noble family you’ve ever heard of. But owning a few pighouses would make one rather wealthy…

“What is it about? The quickpig?”

“No. I’m already going to be arrested for that.”
Ah, so that prick outside was right. No wonder Frederigo looks so down.

“So it’s about your job then?”

“I’ve already been fired just a few hours ago. But the boss wants me to pay him for it.”

“What?”

1/2

>>3072498
“He reckons I was part of those fuckwits going around with the ‘silver. But I wasn’t! And he can’t prove it!”

“So instead he’s insisting that you pay for the damages caused by this fascina? The loss of production and all that?”
Well, this man did shelter one of the ensuing...products.

“I can’t afford it. I don’t even have the job anymore, how’m I expected to have the coin?”

The hopelessness of your client’s situation takes a moment to settle in. He’s already going to face punishment for sheltering the quickpig, he’s already lost his job and any respectability he might have had and they want him to pay more?
What could they hope to get from this, to squeeze blood from a stone? Why aren’t they trying to extract compensation from the fascina involved?

But none of those questions actually concern you. You’re here to fight and you shall fight.


>”Sounds like baseless harassment to me. I’ll have them paying for the privilege!”

>”You don’t have to worry about this, at least. I never lose.”

>”I realise this has little to do with me but...can I see it? The pig in question?”

>”Why did you do it? Why shelter such a thing?”

>Other (Specify)

File: theflakearcana.png (237 KB, 1009x761)

237 KB PNG

Sorry for being so slow with the updates today guys, it's just been rather hot and lethargic. And unfortunately I have work now so I'm going to be absent for a few hours.
The vote will remain open until I get back from work, at which point the session will resume.

>>3072501
>”Sounds like baseless harassment to me. I’ll have them paying for the privilege!”

>>3072501

>>”Sounds like baseless harassment to me. I’ll have them paying for the privilege!”

although

>>”Why did you do it? Why shelter such a thing?”

>>3072501
>>”Sounds like baseless harassment to me. I’ll have them paying for the privilege!”

>>3072501
>”Sounds like baseless harassment to me. I’ll have them paying for the privilege!”

>”Why did you do it? Why shelter such a thing?”

Alright I'm back and writing. Vote called.

>”Sounds like baseless harassment to me. I’ll have them paying for the privilege!”

“Frederigo, to me it sounds like you’re the victim of textbook duel harassment. They’re just trying to recoup whatever they can to make up for all the business they must have lost.”
After all, not only will this incident have slowed productivity, people are likely going to be wary buying from a pighouse known to be tainted.
“I doubt they actually think you had anything to do with it. You’re just an easy target ‘cause of what you’ve done. Does that make sense?”

“Aye.”
Your explanation has not lifted his spirits.

“Don’t worry, this is good. Come the negotiation, I’ll slap them with some terms for recompense. This kind of harassment never flies!”
Unless you lose. Again.
“I’ll admit though, you’ve made it easy for them with this. Why did you do it?”

“Do what?”

“You know what I’m talking about. The pig. You’ve got it in that other room, right? I’ve been told that you sheltered it. Tried to hide it.”

“I’m sure there’s no issue telling such a nice girl,” he says, a quizzical look on his face. “I smuggled her out because I didn’t want her to die. That’s all there is to it.”

“But it’s a quickpig. It has to die.”

“I don’t know why. She whispered, you know, back when I was tending to the slops. And then she spoke. And sung. She’s just as smart as we are.”

You can’t help but frown.
“She?”

“It’s a breeding sow. We name all the pigs, you know. Even before she was quick, we called her Crocetta.”

“And it spoke to you?”

“Yes? Everyone knows they can do that if they’re quick. And I just couldn’t see why she deserved to die.”
He slumps back down.
“Of course, now it’s going to happen anyway. All I did was get myself in trouble.”


>”Well, it’s none of my business.”

>”Could I see it?”

>”What kind of things did it say?”

>Other (Specify)

>>3072791
>”Could I see it?”

>>3072791
>”Well, it’s none of my business.”
We'll only get ourselves in trouble. We already have to care for three reflections.

>>3072498
>Shabby ghetto communal shack
>Inhabitant still has two rooms
This highlights the alienness of the City at least as much as the deep massage.
Fucking Fae.

>>3072791
>Tell him why she deserves to die.

>>3072791
>>”Could I see it?”

Alright I'm back. Vote called and writing.

>”Could I see it?”

“Could I see it?”

“What? Sure. But why would you want to?”

You’re not entirely sure yourself. It probably has nothing to do with you. You’re just here to defend him from the challenge, all this quickpig business is the jurisdiction of constables and later, lawyers. You wonder, will it get its own trial in High Court? You don’t actually know how things work for quickpigs. Maybe they’ll just destroy it.
But fuck, you’ve got little else to do since you arrived so early. You suppose you can go stare at a crime against nature.
“What did you say its name was? Crocetta? Well believe it or not Frederigo, I actually have a bit of a tradition of nonhuman clients. And even if it isn’t my client, it’s related. I’d just like know all the facts.”

“I was hoping you’d understand. Just because it’s not human doesn’t mean it’s not a person, right?”

“I’m afraid it does.”
You see him look confused so you explain.
“I have a little grounding in High Law and that’s one of the most fundamental laws. Only humans are people. It doesn’t seem too useful but it’s not really a practicing law as a foundational one, written in the very Founding. If we didn’t have that legal definition, how we would go on to classify stuff like citizenship or the value of a person’s life? So maybe you’re right and this Crocetta really is a person. Don’t you get what that means? It’s very existence is illegal. It’s better this way. It just is.”

With those words, you leave him alone to ponder his ruined life. You’ve got the other room in mind. You worm your way in amongst the constables and, brandishing the sheath, declare that everything here is relevant to your duel. You need to be allowed time to inspect everything without interruption. Get out!

Unsurprisingly, nobody objects.

******

You sit in one corner of the room. Crocetta covers the other three. Despite what your client said, it doesn’t look either in the mood or condition to exchange words. This is...this is a pretty late-stage quickpig.

How to describe it? It’s as if most of the room has been painted with pig. And not in a gory sense, not in the way you painted the walls of the bathhouse earlier today. There’s just...pig. And while you’ve never actually seen a pig in the flesh before, you’re pretty sure they’re not supposed to look like this.
It’s as if you’d asked an artist who could only paint landscapes to design an animal.

You can still identify the head, crowned by the nineteen eerily human eyes circling around its throat. Fine bristling hairs cover the snout, sprouting from the eyes and from the inside of the mouth. The whole head projects up from some sort of...flange? ...Ruff?
1/2

>>3072996
Much like the rest of it, the head swells and deflates as the creature breathes, all internal structure lost as it deflates into a crumpled nub periodically. Said breaths also don’t seem to be from the mouth. You’d wager that it’s from the massive set of gills set halfway down the thing’s bulk, opening and shutting like vents.

There’s very little light in here, Crocetta is blocking most of the windows. But even if it was pitchblack you would still be able to see. The transparent flesh of the quickpig is shot through with flecks of glowing silver, mere motes of the larger mineral deposits that can be seen clustered up within the pig’s core.

You idly try to count the legs but give up when you realise that you can’t tell what is a leg anymore.

“Hello? I can’t help but notice that you’re not talking. I thought you things were supposed to talk.”

The quickpig shifts a little, moving in the same way a plant would grow, exposing a vast and pallid belly bristling with stubby hairs and strange little ridges of flesh. Upon closer inspection, those ridges are human lips. Not attached to a mouth or paired properly or anything. Just...sprouting there.

This pig is definitely malfunctioning.

A vast seam, longer than you are tall, runs down the massive belly. It widens as you watch, becoming a crescent moon slit into the deeper workings of the quickpig. It opens and closes like a mouth, exposing a cavity from which looping intestines hang like tongues. And as you watch, Crocetta begins to speak, its words coming out several seconds after the appropriate movements of the pseudomouth.

It’s voice is light and breathy and sounds like it is from very far away.
“Another visitor? Another slaughter-man? I’ve nothing to say.”

“I’m not a slaughter-man! And if that was to stop you, why did you talk to Frederigo? He works for an abattoir.”

“That place is small, too small, I refer to the City. I escaped the butcher’s knife and for my efforts I am here, in the largest of all pighouses. The knives are still being sharpened.”

“The City is not a pighouse. We actually have very few pigs.”

“If that is what you think.”

“What.”

“You are still in your sty. Still being fattened. You have yet to enter the slaughterhouse.”


>”...I’m not a constable, if that’s what you mean by slaughter-man in this context. I’m not here to destroy you.”

>”Look buddy I’m just here to help your friend. Can you stop being so cryptic?”

>”So...uh...what’s it like?”

>”What does that mean? What does any of this mean?”

>”I heard you could sing.”

>Leave. You do not like this thing.

>Other (Specify)

>>3072999
>>”What does that mean? What does any of this mean?”

>>3072999
>”Look buddy I’m just here to help your friend. Can you stop being so cryptic?”

Goddammit Ouro. How do you come up with this stuff?

>>3072999
>”Look buddy I’m just here to help your friend. Can you stop being so cryptic?”

>>3072999
>And so? Are you going to ask me for help, or do you have a plan to save yourself?

Vote called, writing.

>”Look buddy I’m just here to help your friend. Can you stop being so cryptic?”

You cross your arms.
“Look buddy, I’m just here to help your friend. Can you stop being so cryptic?”

The pseudomouth yawns wide. The inside of the quickpig is wholly devoid of blood. Or any bodily fluid in fact. It looks completely dry inside.
“What can I have to say? I was born to die.”

“That’s…”
Well actually, you suppose that’s entirely true. That’s the life of any pig, quick or not.
“So you know then?”

“Yes.”

“...It if it helps, I haven’t eaten pork for a long time.”

“They call me Crocetta. I am mother, grandmother and further. I have fed more children then I could count back then. I can count them now. Over and over, I have brought life into the world. I didn’t know what it was for. I existed to give babies to knives.”

“You can be more cryptic again, if you want. I really am here just to try and help Frederigo though. You know him, don’t you? He tried to hide you.”

“He rescued me from one slaughterhouse and unwittingly brought me to another. And I am still grateful. And what help am I supposed to offer?”

“I don’t know. Knowing that is your job. You things are supposed to be so bloody smart..”
You don’t sound like yourself. In truth, you’re feeling pretty off-balance. Words are just sliding off your brain without impact. What were you hoping to get out of this again?

“You came seeking commonality.”

“...No I didn’t.”

“You wanted to put a face to the meat. Does it suit you? I have grown beyond faces. Have you ever supplied the knives?”

“Pardon?”

“Have you ever been a mother?”

“N-no. Isn’t that obvious?”

A single gooey rope of quicksilver slowly dangles down from the upper ‘jaw’ of the ever-distorting maw, pooling into the quickpig’s amorphous body cavity.
“Why not?”

“That’s a bit of a personal question…”

“Why hasn’t anything made you?”

“Why the fuck would anything do that? I-I’m not some pig like you!”
Except, that’s not entirely true, is it? Somebody did try to make you. You spent a good portion of your life defined by...breeding. The memories rise to the surface unbidden, summoned up by the heady smell of mercury.


>”It’s not a choice of mine or anyone else, not anymore. I can’t.”

>”I got free of it.”

>”That’s none of your business. Is breeding the only thing you can think of? Is it your only deal?”

>”No seriously, explain what you meant about slaughterhouses.”

>”I’m sorry for, well, your life. You couldn’t have known what those babies were for.”

>Stop.

>Other (Specify)

>>3073068
>”No seriously, explain what you meant about slaughterhouses.”

>>3073068
>>”I got free of it.”
Are same sex babies possible in City?

>>3073068
>”It’s not a choice of mine or anyone else, not anymore. I can’t.”
>”No seriously, explain what you meant about slaughterhouses.”
>”I’m sorry for, well, your life. You couldn’t have known what those babies were for.”

>>3073097
Given she’s Bloodless with a capital B I doubt she can have kids at all in anyway whatsoever.

>>3073068
>”I got free of it.”
>....free-er. It's a work in progress.

>>3073068
>Can't, I'm Bloodless.

>>3073097
>>3073115
You do realize this is implied she’s bloodless because she never wanted kids.

>>3073126
sure? "got free of it" implies that being a mother is restricting

Vote called, writing.

>>3073127
>>3073126
She got 'free of it' means she got free of being a breeder like her parents wanted.

>Bloodless

The air is thick with fumes. It smells like...pig sweat, you suppose, not that you know what that is. You don’t know where it’s coming from though. It smells like metal, like hot tin or something. There’s a fecund warmth here, radiating from the thing spread out across the room. You can see clouds of vapor but only ever at the corner of your eyes.
You feel a little weak but thankfully you’re already sitting down. There’s a prickling in your hands and feets that doesn’t want to leave.

But you can talk. You’re good at that.
“And I’ll never know either. I got free of that. Because we’re not like you. Some of us have a choice.”
A choice to scar yourself forever. Though to tell the truth, you’ve never much regretted it yet.

“The machine is ever wanting more,” the quickpig says, like the asshole it is. “What did it think of that choice.”

You feel light-headed.
“I-It’s really none of your business but fine, if you must know, I don’t think they approved. Of course they never told me as such but…”
It had gotten very bad after your parents had found out what you’d done. They’d learned, you know. After years of having a tyrant as a daughter, they knew all the tricks. Though ‘trick’ might be gifting the title with a little more subtlety than it deserved. ‘Trick’ makes it sound cunning. There’s nothing cunning about a grown man belting his fifteen year old daughter across the face and locking her up in the ‘special’ bedroom, the only room in the whole mansion with bars across the windows.
The day they’d found out about the bloodlessness had been the worst of them.

But for some reason, even here half-added by the quickpig’s presence, none of those memories of fists and silence hurt as much as just recalling the one time you’d broken down and cried alone in a market because the vendor didn’t have any Imma novels left. You couldn’t tell them it was because your mother had thrown your entire collection into the fireplace.
Maybe that sounds silly but it had been important at the time.

“So maybe you were right,” you say, words beginning to slush together. “Some folks were really intent on me being a mother. It was kind of what they made me to do, you know? But not because I was a pig but because I was a noble. Same thing maybe. ‘Cause bloodline and doing the right marriage is soooo important. They wanted me to be their way back up. But I wasn’t and I didn’t. I took it away from them. I took me away from them.”
Everyone knows what the best use of a noble daughter is. Everyone but the daughter herself, apparently. And you had been wilful, arrogant and defiant, drunk on your own tyranny. You’d refused to be anything but who you’d wanted to be and fuck, you don’t regret it. Your younger self had been a cruel idiot but at least she hadn’t been weak.

1/2

>>3073183

You’re a bloodless woman and one of the many benefits of your curse is that you don’t catch any of the shit other people typically sling at them. Becoming one had been easy enough. Everyone knows about the Sangadonna, the black fountain with the water that stilled the woman’s blood.
For you, it had started as merely a form of relief. You had been young and unused to the monthly pain that the blood had brought about. But drink from the Sangadonna and for the rest of that month, you will be inhospitable. The blood is stilled, the cramps never happen and no child can grow within you. At first it had just been occasional trips for you. It’s not the easiest fountain for young women to drink from, there are a lot of ‘concerned citizens’ patrolling around it at odd hours. But you had been both unable and unwilling to deal with the pain and you’d found excuses to drink more and more, to spend more months with your blood stilled and your body barren than it was in its natural state.

But therein lay the issue. What the Sangadonna is most famous and most controversial for is a certain side-effect it can have on those who overdose, who drink too deep. Nobody is sure what amount it needs or how regular and it seems to differ from woman to woman but still, it is known. Return to the Sangadonna often enough and its water will seep into your very bones and become permanent. You become a bloodless woman, incurably free of both the monthly blood and pregnancy.
There are some who’d say that you stop being a woman at all. Needless to say, none of those people would ever say that to you.

That invisible line of no return marked the day that, in your parents eyes, you’d stopped being a flawed prospect with potential to a downright bad investment.

Crocetta groans something inaudible for a moment. You wonder if it envies you. You know, for a reason besides the fact that you will continue to live while it will not.
“Why?”


>”It’d had been an accident but who cares? I’m not depriving myself of anything I WANT.”

>”I did it on purpose. And the main reason was well, fuck, it really hurts. Any month that goes past without me being stabbed in the gut by my own body is a blessed one.”

>”I didn’t want to have children and I really, really wanted to stick it to my parents. Had to show them who wore the pants here. And it’s me. It’s my pants.”

>”Look, it’s surprisingly practical for being a duellist. I can’t expect a quickpig to understand but when they tell you that any sort of bleeding can disqualify you, they mean it.”

>”I didn’t mean to. But I’ve gotten used to it.”

>Other (Specify)

>>3073184
>”I didn’t mean to. But I’ve gotten used to it.”
>"It's the hand I dealt myself, no choice but to play it. It got me my freedom in a sense so I can't complain too much. The alternative my parents had in store for me probably would have been much worse."

>>3073184
>”I didn’t want to have children and I really, really wanted to stick it to my parents. Had to show them who wore the pants here. And it’s me. It’s my pants.”

File: flakingflek.png (10 KB, 501x440)

10 KB PNG

Alright, I'm off to bed. Again, very sorry about how sporadic updates have been.
Vote will be called when I wake up!

>>3073184
>It was an accident. Periods hurt a lot and I kept drinking to keep them gone, and at some point I had just taken too much.

>>3073184
>”I didn’t want to have children and I really, really wanted to stick it to my parents. Had to show them who wore the pants here. And it’s me. It’s my pants.”

Liiighteeer toooooone!

Actually nevermind, I'm here and I'm still awake. It's too hot for even me to sleep. The heat binds me to this wretched waking world for at least one more update.

Vote called, writing.

>”I didn’t want to have children and I really, really wanted to stick it to my parents. Had to show them who wore the pants here. And it’s me. It’s my pants.”

“Believe it or not, getting rid of the pain and the inconvenience was entirely secondary. I just really wanted to not be what my parents wanted me to be. Had to show them who wore the pants around there, you know? And it’s me. It’s my pants. And since it’s my pants, I better well be the one deciding what goes on inside them!”
The vapor is rising. You can see it with your regular vision now. You feel rather heavy.
“So nah, I’ve never offered up a baby to the knife or wherever you’re going with your metaphor. Never will. And as long as I get to be the person I choose to be, I don’t really mind. Sorry about, well, your whole life I guess. You didn’t know what they were going to do with your children.”

“And yet,” the thing gurgles, “I do not regret even a single one. Even if they were all meant for the knife.”

“Oh?”
It might be the delirium talking but you feel an odd sense of kinship with this gross flesh monster.
“I think I’ve got a minute or so before I pass out so go ahead and tell me.”
Why are you fine with this? Why is your brain dying and why aren’t you even stressed about it a little? Why can’t you do anything? Why do none of these thoughts disturb you?

“Each got to live and though it was all for slaughter’s sake, none of them knew it. I wish I too could be unaware.”

“We all die.”

“I wish it were not so now. It may seem trivial to you but I wish I will live one more day, that I will bring forth one more life. I want to hoard every second of existence.”

“There’s not much I can do about that. They’ll drag you up to High Court probably. Your existence violates some pretty important laws.”

“In the end, nobody can escape the abattoir.”

“Yeah alright you keep saying that but you’ve yet to actually explain it. Is there a practical thing here or is it purely an existential statement? The City is not literally or metaphorically a slaughterhouse.”

“I once thought the same of the other place. We didn’t know. None in the stys ever know. There is only ever one truth.”

“What truth?”
Your head is swimming. You’re finding it hard to think, let alone talk.

“That the inhabitants of the pighouse never know that they live within a pighouse.”

And with that baffling statement that fails to explain shit, you fall over and strike your head on the ground like a puppet whose strings have been cut. Everything goes black immediately.

******

When you come to, you’re lying on the floor of Frederigo’s dilapidated apartment. You’re back in the other room. As you open your eyes, the first thing you see is the not entirely unpleasant face of Senior Sergeant Terenzi, off-duty. You groan.
“Wha?”

1/2

>>3073335

“Are you alright? A late-stage quickpig will do that to you if you spend too much time in an enclosed space with it. It’s what’s making it such a pain to move it.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Helping you, of course.”

“No, I mean, what are you doing? You just told me you were off-duty. Are you some kind of quickpig specialist for the constabulary or something?”

“Not even remotely.”

You think briefly about the other factors in the situation.
“Some kind of duel specialist?”

“That’s much more accurate.”

You stop, take a deep breath and then consider the worst possible scenario. Yep. That’s it alright.
“Are you, somehow, despite also being a constable, the representative of Signore d’Lallo and my upcoming opponent?”

“Oh, not just lucid but perceptive. You’ve got it exactly right.”

“It wasn’t hard. Now take your hand off my arm.”
You sit up groggily.

“How did you like your time with the quickpig? You’ll probably not see a thing like it again.”


>”No comment.”

>”I can only hope. It’s awful and I hate it.”

>”They’re supposed to be smart, aren’t they? So what does it mean that I understood nothing about what it said?”

>”It’s a person. That’s all there is to it. You can’t say it isn’t.”

>”Found some common ground in the weirdest place. Don’t ask.”

>”Don’t care enough about you to answer that. How are you a duellist?”

>Other (Specify)

>>3073336
>>”Don’t care enough about you to answer that. How are you a duellist?”

>>3073336
>>”Found some common ground in the weirdest place. Don’t ask.”

File: sleep.jpg (114 KB, 577x515)

114 KB JPG

alright i have to sleep for reals now or else i will die

>>3073101
Probably because she renounced her family name, losing ownership of her blood.

>>3073355
It literally just got explained.

>>3073355
Keep reading.

>>3073336
>”Don’t care enough about you to answer that. How are you a duellist?”

>>3073355
Guess not.

>>3073364
>>3073343
>inb4 he says he doesn't care enough about us to answer that.

Act like a cunt, be treated like one.

>>3073336
>"It's a person. That's all there is to it."

>>3073380
Birthright. He can't say that. We can treat others like shit and they have to be perfectly polite back.

>>3073336
>”Found some common ground in the weirdest place. Don’t ask.”
>How are you a duellist?”

>>3073336
>”Found some common ground in the weirdest place. Don’t ask.”
>How are you a duellist?”

Sorry guys, I just woke up after a few hours sleep and I feel like shit. No questing right now, alright?

>>3073650
That's okay. Go get some help while you aren't questing, okay?

>>3073650
Your continued existence is a miracle dude. I tried to run a quest once and it was hell even though I was a literal no-responsibilities neet living with my parents.

>>3073336
>>”No comment.”
Seriously don't want to run into it again

Also, is it me or does Sophia kind of look like Touko Aozaki from Kara No Kyoukai a bit?

>>3074070
Just you, also the fact the quest pic involves her being in the wake which makes colors weird.

>>3074070
I can see it

File: touko.jpg (651 KB, 1280x1024)

651 KB JPG

>>3074077
It's probably the red hair the pony tail but I can't help but imagine she sort of looks like Touko

>>3074126
I don't remember her being blonde

>>3074133
Does it matter? we had some relaxing massage flaying. I bet we could purchase different hair at the same time if we were tired of the color and wanted a change.
This fucking fae city.

File: sketch.jpg (61 KB, 800x608)

61 KB JPG

>>3074146
>>3074126
First colored portrait of her in the first thread. She's a redhead

Sorry about being absent a day. Vote called, writing.

>”Found some common ground in the weirdest place. Don’t ask.”
>How are you a duellist?”

Your head hurts but you suppose you should have expected that. You’d just been breathing in quickpig fumes, after all. Your eyes refocus on Terenzi and you frown.
“I found some common ground in the weirdest place. Don’t ask. Anyway, how the fuck are you a duellist?”

“What, a man can’t have two jobs?”

“Not like that, no!”
Anyone can be a professional duellist of course but it’s not...a hobby. To be the kind of duellist who’d get hired by this ‘d’Lallo’, you’d have have some serious record. And as much as you personally dislike them, you must admit that being a constable carries with it some hectic hours. Both of these describe jobs that’d eat away your entire life if you let them.

“I put in the effort. It’s not that hard. Now, have you spoken with your client?”

You spare a glance for Frederigo, still sitting gloomily off in the corner, and feel a little embarrassed. You haven’t exactly made a good showing for yourself. And even if nobody else can ever say anything about it, you know.
“Yes. But where’s yours? This can’t start until Signore d’Lallo deigns to visit us, you know. You’re not good enough by yourself.”

“I’ve been given the right to fully represent him. Do you think a gentleman like him is going to come here? He has better things to do with his time.”

Huh. That’s unusual. And it’s also a little aggravating. Your client has spent his life producing something that he’s not even wealthy enough to partake in and while he ruined his own life, his boss is trying to dig their heels in and make it worse for a quick profit...and they won’t even meet him face to face to do so. When was the last time d’Lallo was even in Suffitus?


>”That’s fine. Let’s just get this over with.”

>”Unacceptable. Tell him that unless he comes down here personally, he can’t pursue the duel. I have the right to refuse proxies.”

>Other (Specify)

>>3075209
>>”Unacceptable. Tell him that unless he comes down here personally, he can’t pursue the duel. I have the right to refuse proxies.”

>>3075209
>>”That’s fine. Let’s just get this over with.”
Whatever

>>3075209
>That’s fine. Let’s just get this over with.”
We can fuck up this d'Lallo perfectly fine through a proxy.

Vote called, writing.

>”That’s fine. Let’s just get this over with.”

Maybe a little aggravating but not enough to deter you. If this idiot wants to lend all of his legal rights to an agent, he can. And you can still hold him just as accountable. No doubt d’Lallo thinks that he’s sure to win, that whatever public defender your client got would be no match against an actual professional.
And considering your last duel...maybe he’s right.
“Well then, let’s just get this over with.”

“How gracious of you, Signorina. Frederigo! My client has made the following demands-”

“I didn’t do it,” your client bellows. “Aren’t I fucked enough? Why doesn’t he go after the people who did it?”

Acting quickly, you put a hand on his shoulder.
“Just calm down Signore. Let me handle this. At the very least, this won’t be something you have to worry about.”

“Clients are to stay silent,” Terenzi adds. “That’s just how it is. Now, these are the demands. You are to pay recompense to equal a day’s loss of production at the facility you helped sabotage. There will also be an additional fee to cover the damage to commercial repute that you have caused. Failure to pay will lead to additional charges being levied against you in High Court.”

“But I can’t-”

“Please be quiet,” you say. “It won’t come to that. I accept your client’s terms, Signore Terenzi. Now hear my own. This is blatant duel harassment and a stronger example of a bull challenger I’ve not seen since my debut case! As recompense, when I win, I demand the following from your client…”


>”He must pay my client financial recompense, equal to the amount of pay lost by his firing and the days spent sorting this situation out.”

>”He must pay my client’s legal fees for his other charges, namely quickpig possession, including any potential release funds.”

>”He will surrender a small portion of his slaughterhouse, namely three living, untainted pigs, to my client as recompense.”

>”He will refrain from contacting or approaching my client, whether personally or through proxy, for the rest of his natural life.”

>Other (Specify)

>>3075325
>>>”He must pay my client’s legal fees for his other charges, namely quickpig possession, including any potential release funds.”

For the record, 'release funds' are for when the High Court judges you basically undeserving of punishment but still more or less guilty. You have to pay up to make up for wasting the Court's time.

>>3075336

Seconding.

If you want to nail our client for the whole slaughter house, we're going to nail you for the whole trial.

If repute is on the line as well, then perhaps a public apology and recompense from D'Lallo would be in order? Despite his other circumstances, blaming him for the sabotage is slanderous.

>>3075325
>”He must pay my client’s legal fees for his other charges, namely quickpig possession, including any potential release funds.”

>>3075325
>"Pay all legal fees and potential release funds."

>>3075325
>”He must pay my client’s legal fees for his other charges, namely quickpig possession, including any potential release funds.”

Vote called, writing.

>”He must pay my client’s legal fees for his other charges, namely quickpig possession, including any potential release funds.”

“As recompense, when I win, I demand the following from your client: He will pay my client’s legal fees for his other charges, namely quickpig possession, including any potential release funds. Is that fair? Is that adequate? If you’re intent on sticking my client with the blame for the entire pighouse, I’ll do the same with his upcoming trial.”

He gives it just a moment’s thought. But you already know his answer. If he wants to squeeze in any more terms he’s going to have a hard time. Your terms are extremely equivalent.
“That’s acceptable,” he eventually says. “There’s certainly very little value in trying to extract anything else from this man. He’s got nothing. ”

“If you know that, why are you trying to do it?”

“It’s not me doing it, it’s my client. I’m just doing my job. And getting paid quite well for it, I might add. So when’s the place and time?”

You wish you could have found someone else’s legs to ogle. Something about this man just rubs you the wrong way. And it’s not just because he’s apparently a constable.


>”Right now. I don’t see a sword on you but you better get one quick.”

>”After the second sunset.” That should give both of you a bit of time to prepare.

>”Tomorrow morning.” This will give you a lot of time to prepare but it’ll be the same for him.

>Other (Specify)

>>3075514
>>”After the second sunset.” That should give both of you a bit of time to prepare.

>>3075514
>>”After the second sunset.” That should give both of you a bit of time to prepare.

>>3075514
>>”After the second sunset.” That should give both of you a bit of time to prepare.

Vote called, writing.

>”After the second sunset.” That should give both of you a bit of time to prepare.

“Let’s say...after the sun goes down a second time. Shouldn’t need longer than that. We’ll meet on the canal outside. Will your client at least deign to visit that?”

“Can’t rightly say. Well I’m done here. But don’t get too comfortable, Frederigo. There’s some constables out in the hall that want to talk to you. You’ll be staying in the Magisterium tonight.”
And with that, he’s gone.

Your client just sighs.
“It’s no good. You’ll win but nothing else will go right.”

“Don’t say that. You could easily get off with nothing but release fees, right? It’s not like they can prove you did anything more than harbour the thing for a day. You didn’t create it and you didn’t try to spread it. They’ll just destroy Crocetta and charge you for taking their time, which d’Lallo will be paying for!”

“She’s still going to die.”

You’re not sure what to think of the quickpig. It’s...it’s probably a person. But other than that it’s a little hard to empathize with something so grotesque.
“Yes. There’s nothing either of us can do about that. Right now, you just need to focus on surviving and getting yourself back together. You’ve got a life that survives past your work, you just need to find it. I’m sure you’ll find another job.”

And no matter how awkward your attempt at advice is, they can’t tell you it’s wrong.
“Thanks.”

*****

And with that, you’re back out on the streets. Surrounded by dilapidated houses, creaking shelters and a crowd of people who must be painfully aware you don’t belong here. The water of the canal runs turgid beneath your feet, cloudy with...something. This district is where everything that nobody else wants near their homes winds up. Facilities that spit filth into the water, consume labour like a man dying of thirst and churn out products that the people they dirty mostly can’t afford. Slaughterhouses, tanners, dye-makers and waxers.
But it could be worse. They’re still better off here than they are in the Lesser Realms. To some foreigners, even the least and filthiest part of the City must still be a paradise. You’d do well to remember that.

Now, through your own design, you have some time to prepare. How are you going to go about that?


>Follow your prospective opponent and ask around. Ask him even, you can make him answer.

>Visit the Court of Swords to peruse his record.

>Visit Lanzo again, ask if he knows anything about this strange confluence of jobs and the man who holds them.

>Do you have anyone who might have polizia contacts enough to find about Terenzi?

>Other (Specify)

>>3075625
which is closest Lanzo or the court?

>>3075631
Lanzo. You have the time to travel though.

>>3075625
>>Visit the Court of Swords to peruse his record.

>>3075633
Hit lanzo first then.

>>3075643
>first
Do we even have time to do both

>>3075651
we might, and frankly I would rather know about how he fights than his record.

>>3075653
Uh, we can watch how he fights.

>>3075657
assuming the court will let us access that level of info,

>>3075659
>The Court of Swords stores the record of every duellist to ever fight. Throw a coin in and say a name and you will receive a scroll with that duellist’s record. But it goes deeper than that. Throw a coin and name a specific duel and you will, to a limited extent, be able to spectate that duel itself. How you do it depends on your actions. Either you gaze into the basin’s surface or you collect or drink the water itself. The duel can be played out in the form of a reflection upon the surface of the water. But drinking water from the Court will plunge you into a dream-state, placing you directly into the duel itself.
Needless to say, this kind of hallucination is rather popular. A lot of people partake occasionally and of course, you have the fanatics who probably spend more time in Court-induced dreams than they do in the waking world.
It sounds like anyone can see them. Where are you getting this idea from?

>>3075663
Sofia being poor.

>>3075665
Thread literally started with
>Due to certain circumstances, you’d come into possession of a large stock of gold coins.
Try a little harder.

>>3075671
We spent most if not all of them on casual flaying dude.

>>3075625
>>Visit Lanzo again, ask if he knows anything about this strange confluence of jobs and the man who holds them.

>>3075674
Are you just straight up making stuff up now

>>3075678
No, we spent a lot of our money on that, it was expensive.

>>3075682
So you're making shit up, got it.

Vote called, writing.

>Visit Lanzo again, ask if he knows anything about this strange confluence of jobs and the man who holds them.

You briefly entertain asking Adriana to shadow him and to get into his head but that’d be rather hypocritical of you, wouldn’t it? And you likely don’t have the time to do so. So instead, you should just head down to the Court of Swords or your old instructor.
After a moment’s thought, you choose Lanzo. Imago isn’t too far from here, after all.

And while he’s just a public defender now thanks to his injury, he was a bit of a bigshot back in the day and he knew all kinds of duellists. It’s possible that he might know exactly how Terenzi fights. And to be honest? You need the info. The last time you went into a duel without appropriate study you got your own ass served to you on a silver platter.
Now to be fair, you didn’t have the opportunity to really do any study but still…

It won’t happen again.

*****

Lanzo lives out in a little island in the end of a cul de sac, not too far from your own lodgings. His house is small and humble and in danger of overflowing into the canal but it’s well kept and clean at all times. He’s a fastidious man or at least, he is whenever his condition allows it. He’d have to be, considering that he’s one of the very few people who actually successfully taught you anything.

You knock on the door.
“Signore Croce? Lanzo? It’s me, Sofia!”

Lanzo is a little better dressed this time than he was the last time you visited. He’s actually wearing clothes, for one. As soon as he opens the door you, with the ease of long practice, look him straight in his pale yellow eyes and don’t even glance at his leg-stump.
He really hates being reminded about that, especially since his phantom limb stops working the moment he remembers. You have a suspicion that you earned more than a few smacks with the measuring stick during your training because of that.

“Hello! It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”
You pull him into an embrace. He doesn’t struggle or push you away. He’s learned.

“Good evening, Sofia. Is it another duel?”

“Huh? You don’t know that! What if I’m just here to chat to my dear old instructor?”
You owe Lanzo Croce a lot. If it hadn’t been for him...you might never have existed. Or at least, not the you that stands here today. Not Sofia, the you you chose to be. And yet you rarely visit him. Ever since that certain awkward moment...well, that and because you have a suspicion that you cost him his career as a private swordsmanship instructor for noble families. You don’t like to think about that so you don’t visit often.
And he seems to feel the same way, though the void your curse has dropped you in prevents you from ever knowing the truth. Why else would he never come to see you duel?

“Sorry,” he says, forced to apologize. “It was crude of me to say that. You’re welcome anytime.”

1/2

>>3075799
>”I am here about a duellist though.”

>”I don’t know if you’ve heard but, through no fault of my own, random chance really, I allowed my opponent to win my last duel.”

>Reminisce with him for a while.

>”Notice anything different about me? Huh?”

>Other (Specify)

>>3075802
>Reminisce with him for a while.
>”I am here about a duellist though.”

>>3075802
>>Reminisce with him for a while.
>”I am here about a duellist though.”
>Given he's an officer too, could he stop me from using the court of blades?

Vote called, writing.

>>3075802
>>Reminisce with him for a while.
>”I don’t know if you’ve heard but, through no fault of my own, random chance really, I allowed my opponent to win my last duel.”
>”I am here about a duellist though.”

Sorry about the delay on this one.

>Reminisce with him for a while.
>”I am here about a duellist though.

“Maybe I just wanted to see how you were doing. I haven’t spoken to you since...my duel for Signorina Delicato, wasn’t it? And that was just a sparring session. When was the last time we really just hung out?”

He is silent for a long moment.
“Never. It’s always been sword this, duel that with you. Not that that’s anything bad, it was my job. And your job now too.”

Well there was that other time...But you guess that he doesn’t want to bring it up. And that’s fine, because you sure as fuck don’t. That had been an awful moment for you and, you can only presume, him as well.
Maybe it was because of that that you never really tried to spend time outside of training with him again.
“Can I come in?”

You step inside before he can say yes. You already knew he was going to say, you were just giving him advance warning to step aside. You follow him to a small table and, after you sit, he starts to busy himself with a dented tin teapot.
“As luck would have it, I just had this on the boil already. Would you like some tea?”

“Please.”
You gratefully accept the hot mug but don’t actually drink any. Your old instructor has some odd ideas about what constitutes ‘tea’. As far as you’ve ever been able to tell, this is just hot water with salt in it.

He takes a long sip of his own and, as usual, somehow seems to enjoy it. But that’s just his way. You’ve never seen him to eat or drink anything that wasn’t supremely bland. You still remember his boiled chicken, the kind he’d near-exclusively cooked for you during your training. It had been the most tasteless thing you’d ever experienced.
“Do you want anything to eat?”

“No thanks. Say, have you noticed anything different about me? I just splurged on myself, went for a deep tailoring this morning. Doesn’t it show?”

“You’re as beautiful as ever.”

“Hrmph.”
What’s the point of having a treatment like that if everyone says that to you anyway?

“It’s a good practice, though. A good masseuse can get your muscles into prime and proper order. Perfect after a good workout. Not that it was anything I could afford back then, let alone now.”

1/3

>>3075997
When you first met Lanzo Croce, his glory days had already been behind him. An aging cripple, he’d left his professional duellist career behind him to become a public defender and had supplemented that meagre income by trading on his formerly impressive name to teach swordcraft to the sons of minor nobles. He’d been your brother’s teacher.
But you suppose he’s just a public defender now. It was because of the whole debacle over you that he’d been forced to stop teaching. And even after you’d disowned yourself, he still taught you. And more importantly, he gave you the tools to teach yourself. Every single aspect of your exercise regime, for example, came from him. And even though you’ve begun to diversify your combat style, how often do you still try to mimic the same Elegance that had once been his signature?
“It was worth it for the feeling, honestly. I won’t be able to afford another for some time I’d say. So how have you been? Had any good duels lately?”

“A few. I lost my last however, even though it was against some surly amateur less than half my age. No, don’t look like that. I’ve gotten well and truly used to it by now. Take good care of your body while you can, that’s all I can say.”

The idea of your old master struggling in the Wake, supported by a leg that’s only sometimes there just makes you feel bad. You want to apologize to him, to tell him that you’re sorry for making him retire from being an instructor. But you can’t. You just have to hope that deep within his heart, he’s being charitable to you and knows you feel it.
“That’s too bad.”
Now you just sound insincere.

“It’s the life we chose. Public defenders don’t get to pick and choose their battles. To tell the truth, I mostly just feel worse for the poor fools who were assigned me.”

“Were they innocent?”

“No. My last client was obviously guilty of what he was accused of. But I still regret not being able to give my all to fight for him.”

You think back to your own reaction to a guilty client, back in the duel over the stolen gold, and sigh. Lanzo is so much more a pure duellist than you are, even now. You bet he wouldn’t have felt bad or if he did, he wouldn’t have complained. Maybe it theoretically makes you a better person but you’re a worse duellist.
“But you’ve got to keep going, right?”

“Not me. I’m thinking it might be finally time to sheathe the sabre. It might not look like it but I do have some coin saved away. Old funds and suchlike. It’s just not fair to the people who need public defenders to have me in the system anymore.”

“And that’d be enough to support you?”

“...Maybe.”

Jumping on the chance to offer a pseudo-apology, you speak quickly.
“What if you could start teaching people again?”

“No. I don’t think I’d be very good at that. My lessons were just me playing with pampered brats.”

2/3

>>3075998

“You taught me just fine!”

He chuckles.
“Yes but that method isn’t anything people would want to buy. I was cruel to you.”

You think back to his training regime, the exercise, the sparring, the constant pain of the stick…
“I don’t think it was cruel, it was just discipline. I didn’t think it was back then either. I barely noticed it!”
That’s true enough. It wasn’t until you accidentally said too much to Maccio that you realised that, obviously, most people learned swordcraft without being beaten.

“With all due respect Sofia, you didn’t notice it because...of unfortunate circumstances. Most of my students aren’t so used to being beaten.”

“I know you had to do it. How else could tell me that I was doing something wrong?”

He looks away.
“It wasn’t just because of that.”

“Huh?”

“That was an easy lie to tell myself. I’m glad you thought the best of me but in truth…”
His fingers tighten around the mug.
“Your instructor is a cruel man with a lot of problems. Problems that aren’t anything to do with you or anyone else. And I knew that. But I still took it out on people like you. Most of it wasn’t training, it just a...a temper. A loss of control on my part. And when you came and threw yourself at my mercy...and accepted every task and hardship I put on you, it was just too easy to forget myself. You never complained no matter what I did because you were so desperate to be like me. But I’m not anything to emulate. I even came to the defence life late and only because I was forced to. That’s why I knew I couldn’t teach again. It wasn’t because of your family. It was because training you showed me that I wasn’t anyone suited to to have anyone in their care.”

“But none of that ever mattered to me!”

“...You’re a girl with an amazing set of priorities. But most people aren’t like that and shouldn’t be.”


>”Well, what’s so wrong with babysitting pampered brats?”

>Respect his wishes.

>”I believe in you! You don’t have to do to them what you did to me. I think you should give it another try.”

>”What if I said I might have a customer?” Surely there’s someone you know who’d be interested in this kind of stuff.

>Other (Specify)

File: flake.png (25 KB, 1009x761)

25 KB PNG

I know I only got a few updates in but I've got work and I still feel like garbage. I'll be back later tonight.

>>3076000
>You may lack faith in your ability to be a good person, and I will staunchly disagree on that count. However despite the unfortunate injury, you are still one of the best swordsmen I know. You trained someone most would, due to their own inadequacies, consider untrainable.

Instead of trying to train a bunch of hoity toity snot nosed noble brats, why not have a class en masse for the working man and woman. Not every can afford to hire a duelist, but you might be able tot rain them into defending themselves.

>>3076014

lets leave him some fucking agency.

>Respect his Wishes.

>>3076020
…. this won't take away any agency.

>>3076024

look me in the eye and say Sofia doesn't have a 40% chance of pinning him to a "great" idea.

>>3076020
Those who know about the curse are aware of their mind being manipulated and won't believe it's 'their' idea. He might say 'That's a good idea' but won't act on it unlike someone who is unaware of the curse and believes their change of mind.

>>3076028
She does not have a 40% chance to pinning him to a great idea.

>>3076000
>>Respect his wishes.

>>3076000
> Other
Offer him some of our leftover gold

>>3076000
This >>3076014, but without mass training. Those who can't afford to hire a duelist get a public one, like us. And even though public defenders are generally shit, they're still better than part-time trained amateurs.

Alright I'm feeling good enough to do some late-night updates. But it seems we have a tie. Evens for respect, odds for the training plan.

Rolled 5 (1d6)

>>3076607
One day I will remember to roll the goddamn dice.