"He might take the excuse but any tailor worth the name wouldn't need to more than look at you," she giggles.

"Well, I wouldn't want to impugn his pride as a tailor, but... as exactly the kind of girl this set was made for, I wouldn't want to spoil his fun either."

"Oh, if you encourage him I bet he'll make lame jokes about deft fingers. After his pride demands adjusting all four outfits perfectly."

Martin, while kind of round-faced and pasty with curly blonde hair, is wearing clothes that somehow scream 'suave artiste', ruffles and lines just so. He chats cheerfully with the party and does a finger-trick with a needle idly in his off hand as he asks Elizabeth if this or that is better for half a dozen things and makes dozens of lame jokes, but it all seems to be a performance. He's barely actually attracted to Ame.

His work seems to be quite good, at least. And here, finally, they are told an amount of money to pay, written in small print on a smooth cream-colored card. 3 silvers in all. Isodore says with a slight grimace that it's a bit higher than she would have expected, but the outfits are good work.

Attracted, maybe not, but getting to see (and play with) his creation being worn for real by someone suited? Ame can empathize with that mood.

Ame hides a sigh of relief that the price isn't higher, and also finally explicitly notices the don't-talk-about-prices thing everyone including her has been doing. She hands over three silver, tucks her fishnets and skirt into her pack, and does one last twirl to show herself off. With the rostgold shield on her back, the matching gilding really pops.

"That looks honestly amazing. Great job, Ame. You can be the shiny one, and Bys can be a wall of metal and muscle while us support types don't stand out so much, hopefully. All it's missing is..." Her eyes track over to Isodore.

"It's high time I give you the weapon you bought," the goat girl sighs and unhooks the leather sheath from her belt, solemnly presenting it with both hands. "Use it bravely."

"I will, thank you."

Ame takes it and attaches it to her new belt, the hilt framed by the golden chain-mesh on her left hip.

She hands ten of the remaining eleven silver to Isodore with a smile. "Alright, next stop, matching boots for me, or the Big Aesthetic Wizard Tome for Theo. Let's go."

There is a fine selection of boots in the area in designs ranging from extremely practical to excessively gilded to 'why this' (purple and orange frills with green ribbons! possibly kept as a joke). For a large Tome they'll have to go to elsewhere.

Ame shakes her head at the 'why this' boots, but quickly spots a sleek black knee-high pair with golden trim, armored toes, and a stack of five separate buckles. ((Imagine these but as running flats instead of heeled.))

She gets the basic three enchantments as well as Weightless out of her own money, since that's actually important. Her old boots are much lighter and without that enchantment the new ones would slow her down noticeably.

Once enchanted and paid for, Ame dons the boots. New slutty-but-professional adventurer look, complete.

Now where can they find a large Tome for Theo?

"Bookstores in the rich part of town will have books that aren't magically useful but are especially designed to look impressive on shelves?"

"Useless stuff that exists just for rich people to show off isn't going to cost less than a prop with actual useful functionality, is it?"

"I don't know where to get an impressive looking book that's actually useful, either. Maybe if it has an indexing system, I saw one like that once. For seven gold, with a maintenance subscription. I guess just a mistake-eraser would be better. Is there an actual stationary shop somewhere?" He asks Isodore.

"I don't know, but if we ask around we should get pointed in the correct direction." Isodore shrugs and proceeds to ask the next guy they pass, who says they probably want to try near the school, it's on the east side.

Eastward they stroll.

They cross a couple of blocks with more wooden and less stone construction, and tons of aerial walkways and planks strewn around, heavily patrolled by bird-morph demihumans. Few of them seem to actually be able to fly, but they're good at jumping.

The school is apparently a white cathedral on a small rise just inside the far wall, with some buildings dotted in the rolling hills around it. It's not all that large, objectively speaking, but manages to give off an impression of a grand and slightly sprawling place. The surrounding streets' shops do seem to cater to academics, with everything from books to magical tools to an Adventurer's Guild sub-office advertising escorted levelling runs to trendy cafes and bars.

Promising! Can they find a nice big rostgold-colored Tome in any of these bookshops?

It takes a bit of hunting, but there are indeed only moderately pretentious shops who explicitly offer good-looking books. He picks one with an erase function and more pages than it would appear from the outside and will tell anyone who objects that it'll make developing and reading spells faster.

Ame doesn't object.

As they leave the shop, she mutters, "All we need now is a rousing leitmotif and an explosion to walk away from in slow motion."

To Isodore, "Alright, this is your show now. What's the plan?"

"Mmh. Sleep and relax. Be well rested and ready tomorrow. Do what you wish for the morning, in the afternoon go to Domino Petrocles and ask for an appointment for me in a few days acting as my intermediary - I'll have a sheet of references and sketches and a certified skill report for you to present to him. I designed and did most of the detail work on that hilltop wall, which is trickier than it looks, among other work. I'll be going to popular bars and restaurants and socializing. If he hears about me from his circle in any way, it will be a boon... Your three companions perhaps let me drill you on Ilsos sufficiently to get their first language level - depending on intelligence it should be doable in a day or two. It's practically a favor since you'll likely need it anyway. And after that, simply escorting me to the place for the interview. At that point... I'm on my own to impress him."

Ame nods.

"Solid plan."

To her party, "Anything else youall wanna do before we head back to the inn?"

"I'm going to find a temple." Theo says. "Alone. Preferably."

"I want to find a tattoo parlor, but that's not urgent." She glances between Ameron and Theo, frowning.

Ame peers at Theo closely.

"How preferably?"

Siiiiiigh.

Ame carefully doesn't close her eyes as she briefly opens her windsight to its new fullness. Theo is still glowing with dhar. Ame could probably spot him from half a mile away if she needed to.

"Meet us back at the rooms before sunset," Ame finally says. "And remember, us trusting you means that if you don't show up we're going to assume you fell down a well and you need us to come rescue you, so."

Ame boops him with a quick heal.

Whatever. Theo adjusts his shiny new book under one arm and heads in a different direction.

He's probably not going to actually talk to a priest about it. They do religion differently up here, and he doesn't really believe in the Grail Church or the Reformed Trigrams or the Ten Shapers or the One Level or even Universal Love's creed.

He's going to keep thinking of them for the rest of his life. Ben, his asshole of a brother. Who was still his brother, and would have helped him if he needed it. Jane, a bit vain but his mother, who loved him. Samuel, his dad. Who wanted Theo to become a bureaucrat instead of a wizard, but found him wizard books anyway. Viera. His... Love? He doesn't know. His friend, certainly. She studied with him. Listened to him ramble about spell structure. Encouraged him to experiment. Was learning more, herself, bright and happy at the notion of speaking magic into the world.

Mom would have had fashion advice. Gone. Ben would have given a slightly backhanded compliment at the new look, that wasn't meant as a backhand, he's just like that. Gone. Viera would ha

He shudders. He doesn't really want to go get sermon'd at. But priests have skills for... Therapy, more or less. Moral guidance. And they'd be so cheerfully smug about soothing the pain of a repentant evildoer and tugging him back onto the ""right path"". Ugh. Even though that's exactly what he wants, intellectually, it feels gross and wrong to hope to be gaslit into caring about things properly again. Why the fuck should he. What's the point of doing anything, except that Ameron will kill him if he goes off the deep end again, which is at least better than something inside him snapping and going on a grave-digging spree that kills more people and desecrates more bodies and traditions-

-He can talk to them about grief, anyway. That's. A thing that lots of people do, probably. And if he admits he regrets sins without specifying what, exactly, those are- Well. Maybe.

He arrives at the temple, and goes in. He doesn't come back out for a couple of hours. But he's back at the inn at sunset.

Meanwhile-

"Trouble in paradise?" Isodore asks. "Ah, I apologize. Not my business, exactly. I think I'll leave you be for now. Good day." Isodore bows and turns away as well, leaving just Ameron, Abyssia, and Elizabeth.

"I kind of want to walk by the beach, that counts as relaxing, right?" Elizabeth comments. "The winds are good here. A nice, strong ghyran is wafting in from the ocean, it's lovely."