"Maybe I want to be a sage."

"Nope. You want to be a wizard. And that's not something a wizard wears."

"Is everyone really that put off by the balls?" he sighs.

"Oh who cares about the balls, I'm sure we can get you something that shows them off if you really want to, but not this."

...that sentence has so many parts. "'We'? I'm sorry, can we back up a step, hi, I'm Vallynn, I'm new here, you are...?"

"Evelin."

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Evelin. You say it's not the balls, so do you usually accost every new mage like this?"

She tsks and waves a hand near her face as if she's being harassed by an annoying mosquito. "Most mages have no raw material to work with. You, though... Do you know how rare fit mages are? And vain ones, too, even the ones that realise you gotta be able to keep up with your party to adventure tend to be so utilitarian about it. But you, clearly you want to show off your body, and you're handsome enough, and I'm sure whatever jungle you came from wouldn't mind this, this, whatever this is, but I do and you need to let me work on you."

He's being read to filth here but if he follows her... "You want to get me new clothes?"

"I charge," she says in a warning tone, lifting one finger up and finally looking him in the face. "It's a job as much as it's an art. But... I could accept a promise of payment, if you promise to wear whatever we create in public. With a face like yours... yes, yes, I do think, hmm..."

"How... expensive... are we talking, here?"

"Oh, not that expensive, I think we can settle here for about a million zeny?"

He makes a sharp hissing noise through his nose. "A million zeny isn't that expensive??"

"Oh that's nothing compared to the enchantments you'll need to buy if you want to amount to anything in life."

"That's later! Much later! I don't have that kind of money!"

"Oh fine, how about this, then, you don't have to pay at all if you don't like it or don't wear it, and I'll let you pay when you have the money."

"...okay that seems like pure upside to me but why do you care so much?"

"I have a vision! And yours is a face and body I can attach my vision to, I can feel that in my bones. ...hmm but on these terms I'll probably need to use the real good stuff, let's say two mil instead."

How is this woman throwing numbers like that around like they're nothing. "But I don't have to pay you a single zeny if I don't like it?"

"Or just don't want it, I'm not trying to work some kind of gotcha into it, I'm just that confident I'll make you something you'll want to wear."

"What if I flee with it and never pay you?"

"You won't," she says, confidently. "I've already got you, I know I have, so stop making this difficult for us and just follow me, hmm? I'm sure you didn't have anything planned."

Why does he feel like he's just signed his soul off? He nods and follows after her as she strides away.

The place she leads him to isn't her room in the guild building; rather, it's a small old building one block away in the direction of the city walls. It's dark by then but the rain's mostly let up, and she walks briskly enough that there isn't really enough time for the cold to set in before they're greeted by a blast of warm enchanted air when she opens the door.

She unclasps the neck of her robe and throws it in the vague direction of a coat rack then leads the way further inside.

"I'd have expected you to treat your clothes better," he says, as by now he has noticed that actually Evelin's robes do look really well-made and well-tailored. The style is completely different from Wizard Mara's but in a sense they're more reminiscent of them then Astrid's were.