Do not talk to me about Luzi Lake.

- Garner Shepard

I was going to be a maid.

A fucking maid.

That was Winters’ perfect fucking plan.

I admit that once he properly explained it, he had reason to believe that his plan would succeed. Of the Chosen Ones that washed up on the shore of Luzi Lake, which I still think is a stupid name for the vacation town on the shore of Lake Luzi, more than half of them got some form of amnesia. Their memories locked away until certain circumstances had been experienced, or the Chosen One fulfilled some other condition.

In fact, most of the Chosen Ones washing up needed to spend time recuperating, and only got their memories back once they were healthy enough to continue their quest. Thus, conniving nobles made a game of ‘sheltering’ such characters, and had these great and important figures serve them dinner while they had no idea that they were important. It was a kind of humour that I could enjoy- so long as I wasn’t the butt of the joke- and it made me wonder how many of my old neighbors had gone through such a thing.

So it was that once Winters was done debriefing me of what happened in Burden Bridge, and then briefing me on the larger picture, I was taken back out to Lake Luzi, knocked out again, this time with drugs, and left to wash up once more. I would be taken into some noble’s house to work as a maid, take refuge by blending in, ‘regain’ my memories once the refugees arrived, and vanish to rejoin my ‘charge’.

However, my pride has been wounded, and I therefore hated the plan. To work as a maid meant working at the beck and call someone else, cooking their food, washing their clothes, and generally cleaning up after them while being completely submissive.

It was erringly close to the fate I would find should Avien ‘rescue’ me. I had to believe this was All’s idea of a practical joke.

Or perhaps it was Serfle’s idea. As far as I was concerned, there was little difference there. I hadn’t even been given a healing potion because I needed to be in ‘recovery’.

It wasn’t like I was thinking about that angle of things too much anymore. I was tired to begin with, the attack had happened halfway through a night’s rest after all, I hadn't exactly had a proper sleep since, and Winters had given me a huge amount of information to sort through. Most of it had nothing to do with me, but my facade meant I had to nod along at the right times. I couldn’t just continue nodding until the end of time and assume that would be enough.

Getting the Vitorian Envoy to follow Avien and keep me updated as to his movements did occur to me, as did the fact that asking such would draw a connection between me and him. In the end, I kept my mouth shut. If I could track the organisations Left Ranks with the ease that I did, chances were, so could Avien, thus giving him another way to approach me when all he was relying on so far was blind luck.

His luck was only so good. If that was all Avien had, then that was all I would give him.

The first time I had the freedom and energy to actually centre myself and take stock was after I’d been taken in by some old guy with the surname Silvurium who told me he was rich and important. We had spoken over a passable meal and I had allowed myself to be talked into being his maid before being sent to bathe and rest in preparation of my duties. There were, as expected, a number of other maids who all but carried me to said bath, and then to a room with a bed in it. It was an extravagant room, but when you looked only at the things that weren’t gaudy to the point of uselessness, I’d described it aptly.

Being washed by others was a pleasing experience, one I hadn’t had before. It was likely compounded by the fact that I was immensely bruised from my fall off the bridge and how they were massaging said bruises with comforting healing salves. Yet it was difficult to ignore the fact that old man Silvurium would likely be asking me to do exactly this for someone else. Once the maids were done washing me, redressing me, and delivered me to my new room and closed the door, I put all that out of my mind.

The immediate first thing I did once the door swung softly closed was straighten my back and square my shoulders. Since waking up for the second or third time I’d done my best impression of the other me, which had been ideal for the ruse. Surrounded by extravagance and wealth, letting that identity wash from my shoulders was the most satisfying thing I’d experienced so far.

My cloak had been delivered to the bed and was folded up there, washed, dried, and neatly folded. I threw my bag next to it, which I’d stubbornly held on to since awakening, and from it I drew my dagger of fiendish steel. The first thing I really took a look at was my changed weapon. I wasn’t about to use it in a fight if I didn’t know what was different about it.

The black metal glared at me in the dim light of my room from the instant I pulled it from the scabbard. I hadn’t pulled it all the way out of the scabbard the last time on account of my manacles, and it wasn’t like doing that now revealed anything profound, but it did reveal how the dagger was now weighted differently. It was a subtle effect, one I don’t think I’d have noticed if I hadn’t spent as much time as I did becoming familiar with the blade.

Simply moving it felt different. The dagger wasn’t actually made for slashing, I only used it like so since I enjoyed making shallow cuts, Jevi always seemed to be asking for it, and the weapon did come to a point. In truth, the weapon was intended to stab as Casien had originally told me, and to catch other blades and use the near trident shape of the guard to disarm others of their own weapon, or to simply catch them.

That wasn’t to say it couldn’t slash, just that it wasn’t the best way to use the dagger. As I inspected the dagger, then moved to practice the movements Brynn had taught me. That was when I realised what had changed.

The weight of the dagger shifted to improve my practice swing as I was swinging it.

I stopped.

I wasn’t using Rezan.

I went through the motions of a stab at half speed. The dagger magically shifted to reduce the tremble as I thrust.

I imagined Waar swinging her oversized axe at me. As I dodged the invisible attack and countered, the dagger pierced a throat I wouldn’t have had in my sight.

I imagined Jevi attacking me with one of the many swords she had picked up and attempted to disarm her. The twist was executed flawlessly. It was my most practiced maneuver, courtesy of Brynn, but I still wasn’t able to perform it flawlessly every time.

That is, every time I wasn’t using Rezan. When I wasn’t using sheer force of will to convince All that I should be capable of such feats and was therefore able.

This all led to a tantalising thought. What would this dagger be like when I was using Rezan?

I sat with my back to my designated bed, overflowing with cushions as it was, and began to push my magic into my dagger. It did occur to me in the somewhat mindless effort that what I was doing wasn’t really meditation. I wasn’t really focusing on my breath, my attention was all over the place, and I was sprawling against the bed in a manner that no monk would ever use.

Still, after a timeless period I was done and ran through the motions I was familiar with, and this time my magic allowed me to perform them flawlessly.

But not any better than I had on the night the dragon attacked.

Disappointing.

Even the subtle nudge I had enjoyed before reinvesting my magic had vanished. Another close inspection revealed that nothing had seemingly changed. Swinging it around looked and felt exactly the same as it had before. Throwing it at a pillar in the corner had the weapon being buried to the hilt, and subsequently made me panic when I realised that might have just made three holes in the wall. The blade was more than long enough to penetrate any walls.

Pulling the dagger out revealed that yes, it had penetrated to the next room. Thankfully, only the proper blade made that accomplishment, and I quickly retrieved a silver piece from my bag and used it to plug the hole. I wasn’t about to just let people spy on me like that. Contrary to how I’d been acting, I actually enjoyed having some godsdamned privacy.

I went through all my practiced motions one more time before putting my dagger away. Nothing new revealed itself. Scout’s comment about the weapon being angry at her lingered in my mind, but I couldn’t think of any way to test that now. I wasn’t about to hand the dagger off to the next maid and ask her if it seemed irritated with her.

That left me to inspect the folded pile of clothes that had been left on something that might’ve been a stool. But to me it looked like a knee high, circular table with a velvet cover, but fluffy to the point it had give when I pressed on it.

Lifting the clothes made something in me stop.

It felt like my heart. But unfortunately, that kept beating.

This was… a shirt?

Where was the front?

It was a mix of bright and muted orange colours and had long sleeves, but the important part of the shirt, the part that covered my belly, thus keeping me warm, was short. It was as though the designer had attempted to make a short sleeved shirt, but had been drunk on ooze, and had thus made the short part long and the long part short.

In a stunned stupor, I pressed the abomination to my front to see how much it might cover.

It barely reached down past my bust. If I actually put it on, it may not even reach that far!

My stomach would be completely uncovered!

Perhaps I was too stunned by the absurd front of this abomination to realise, but the long sleeves weren’t even that long either. They wouldn’t reach much past my elbow, and had a pointless loop of fabric stitched to the end of the sleeve that was wider than the sleeve itself.

I also somehow missed the fact that the shirt had a deep collar. This would scarcely cover anything!

Showing cleavage was not a concept I was unfamiliar with. I came from a town where half the population was retired female adventurers. Not all of them flaunted their bodies, but enough of them did for me to ask the question of why they dressed differently from my mom. The answers didn’t make sense to me then, and they didn’t make sense to me now.

Why would I purposefully dress myself colder if all it did was make other people look at me more?

What about showing skin even made people want to look at me!?

It was a morbid fascination that made me eventually put down the fabric that could not be called a shirt and pick up the other piece of maybe clothes that had been delivered. Its colour matched the… other part, and it was long, made of the same material. At first I was relieved, but then I realised it wasn’t pants.

This was a long, pleated skirt.

I despised skirts. And dresses!

They were the garments of girls that wanted to be in a love story, and were used to add swishy movements with the intent of making the wearer more ‘cute’. These things had been the bane of my life when I was younger, just getting old enough for Avien’s and my ‘love story’ to start moving. Every. Single. Time we spoke there had been some swishing or swooshing from me and my swirling fucking dress.

I had managed to remove that from my life by burning all my dresses and skirts and refusing to wear anything but pants. Vests I could wear despite the exposed arms, since that involved no godsdamned swooshing and sometimes it was hot enough that I needed to dress down. And shorts were okay too. But I hated anything dress-like with no reservations. There was nothing in any existence that could change my mind on the matter.

Horrified, I dropped the skirt on the ground.

There it would stay. Hopefully forever.

Then the memory of the maids that washed me came to fore. These… I truly hesitated to call them clothes, but they were what the maids had been wearing.

I had agreed to be a maid for this noble Mister Silvurium.

Oh gods.

\V/

Upon awakening to someone knocking on my door and briefly panicking when I saw where I was, I realised I had a dilemma. The woman that woke me had told me to get dressed and ready. I would’ve been deceiving myself if I wanted to believe they weren’t talking about the pieces of fabric lying in the corner.

I really didn’t want to wear those things.

The other me would’ve been gushing over the hoops on the sleeves. To say nothing of the skirt.

She would’ve probably been so excited to help dear old Silvurium that she would’ve worn the damn thing to bed. That is, after finding a mirror to see herself in her vanity, and to practice the best ways to move in it.

Not for fighting, but for seducing… Avien. I felt sick at the very thought.

I had to take a breath and still my thoughts. HE wasn’t here. Or he shouldn’t be. Winters had mentioned a quirk of Luzi Lake, where Chosen Ones were only ever washed ashore one by one. He had Zap following him now, so he wouldn’t have come here the same way. To say nothing of any injuries he might have sustained fighting Sathteel.

“Amber?” The call came with more pounding at my door. A girlish yelp escaped me at the sudden noise despite myself, and my self loathing increased by a miniscule yet notable amount. “Master Silvurium has requested your presence so he can give you your duties for today. Are you ready? I’m coming in.”

“No!” I shouted, taken off guard. I leaped for the door and tried to hold it shut. Unfortunately, I had yet to meet anybody weaker than myself, and the door was pushed open without much issue.

The woman coming in was old, more so than even my mom, and had the wrinkles to match. She actually resembled my mom with how she tied up her lighter brown hair, but the stern expression I usually saw on Mary did away with that resemblance quite handily.

She took in my appearance, standing frozen and bewildered in the centre of wealth I clearly didn’t fit. Then she glanced over to where my clothes were. “Well that won’t do. You need to be dressed first.” Her eyes met mine, only to rise a little higher. “And you’ll need a brushing as well.”

“I never felt the need.” I quickly squeaked. Now that I was in front of somebody again, I was to act as ‘Amber’. How I hated every passing second. But that didn’t mean I needed to compromise on every front.

“A bird would need to do little to make a nest of your head.” The older maid stated, and I allowed myself to wilt instead of rage.

I needed to blend in until Jevi and the rest arrived. If I didn’t, the Vitorian Envoy would hunt me down and execute me. Or something else equally dramatic. Arving had come seconds away from doing something like that to me. Such were the thoughts I made sure to think repeatedly to maintain the act.

“Now strip.” The older maid commanded a mere instant after closing the door she had entered through. She said it so severely that I was already shrugging my arms out of their sleeves before realising that no magic had washed over me and that my glyphs were partially active. She paid me no mind as she retrieved the clothes I kicked to the corner and laid them out in front of me.

That was honestly scary.

Soon enough, I was left standing in only my undergarments, and she was helping me into my new clothes. I did not know how long I would be wearing them, but for the immediate future, these abominations would be the only thing I would be wearing. Then I was made to sit obediently as the older maid, who introduced herself as Lavenner, as well as the head maid at some point, brushed my hair.

She eventually announced me ‘presentable’ after staging a grand battle with my hair, causing me no small amount of discomfort and pain in the process. On the way out of the room, I found myself lingering. Lavenner was akin to a force of nature and nearly managed to sweep into my room, and then back out with me along for the ride, if not for the fact that I was not comfortable going anywhere without a weapon.

Both my sword and dagger had been in my bag the day before, so these people didn’t necessarily know that I had been armed at the time. They had treated me with a certain kind of respect, but not the careful kind dedicated to unstable characters capable of vast destruction.

Well… they did at first. As soon as I said hello while in character, the entirety of their caution was done away with.

From a certain point of view, that was kind of insulting. I could probably beat any of them in a sword fight.

“Amber, what is the problem?” Lavenner asked me after making it a certain distance away without me, and then returning to find me in the doorway.

“I-” How to articulate my desire for personal safety while still sounding ‘cute’? How to do it without telling this person that I wanted safety from them. “I’ve never- had my belly open like this before.”

“Truly?” The older maid asked without making the appropriate expression. “It is nothing special in these parts. It gets warm around here. I presume you are from the northern regions?” I nodded. “Understandable. Their fashion is… different from ours. More… Conservative.”

Why did you say that like it was a bad thing?

“You won’t be judged for it. Most everyone has an outfit like that in these regions.”

“I… understand.” I don’t, actually. But I didn’t say my true thoughts. That way led to a monologue ranting about how having my belly exposed was making my skin react in ways I didn’t enjoy, to say nothing of how aggravating I was finding this outfit’s breeziness. “I- It’s hard to adjust.”

Lavenner gasped a little. This time she seemed honest, even pressing the tips of her fingers to her bottom lip. “Did you never wear a dress before?”

Unfortunately. But this seemed like some decent drama. Good for my disguise. I nodded shyly. The fact that I had been paralyzed while she put that skirt on me helped the story.

“Oh, you poor thing!”

It took me a moment to remember exactly how dainty ‘Amber’ was, and I looked down with embarrassment when I did. It wasn’t just embarrassment that made the action honest. It was the sheer humiliation of letting someone fuss over me. To undersell my current state of mind, I fidgeted like I wasn’t having an internal war with myself, and was merely worried about my appearance.

“Well, we don’t have much time, but perhaps some advice can help you here.” Lavenner said after a moment’s thought. “Are you much good at pretending?”

I shook my head and felt pain.

“Hm, well that doesn’t matter. Look at me.” She placed one hand on my shoulder and used the other to lift up my chin. “You’re safe here.”

Ha! The many accounts of Chosen Ones in Luzi Lake, or more specifically villains that Winters had granted me access to spoke differently.

“Don’t think of it as something new, just think of it as wearing clothes. You’re wearing the same thing as every maid in this mansion, and soon enough you’ll blend right in. There’s safety in being part of a group. Focus on that.”

Yeah, but that’s not my problem. I averted my eyes and dropped my shoulders in a textbook shameful expression. My hands dropped also, with my left hand shifting to not hit where the pommel of my dagger should’ve been.

Lavenner sighed with disappointment. I was worried I’d have to play the kicked fairy, but the disappointment seemed to be directed at herself, not me. “I’m sorry. You’re different from the other Chosen Ones that come through so I forgot that some things hold true for all of you.”

I blinked and looked up in surprise.

She nudged my cheek in the manner ‘Amber’ liked to do to Avien. “You’re missing your weapons, aren’t you?”

Yes! “...yes.” I admitted bashfully.

“What do you use? Sword. Wand. Bow.” She said leadingly. “There are rules regarding maids and weapons, but we must start somewhere. With expediency, you’re already late.”

“Um.” Instead of answering I retreated back into my room and returned to the threshold with my dagger and scabbard in hand.

“Well, this isn’t too hard.” Lavenner held out her hand, silently asking to inspect my weapon. I gave it to her, and an intense frown crossed her expression for a moment. “You can hold onto this.” She said, quickly handing it back to me. I raised an eyebrow, barely stopping myself from asking if my dagger seemed angry to her. “But it’s best if you don’t wear that in a place that’s visible. Fortunately, we have the equipment around somewhere that will let you wear that in a concealed spot.”

It was hard to miss the way she exaggeratedly swirled her skirt as she turned and started walking away again. “Come.” She instructed.

Now that I had a weapon in hand, I was more than happy to. I put energy into following Lavenner with hunched shoulders while keeping my eyes cast down. I slumped a bit when I realised how exhausted keeping up the act was going to make me, but I had no other choice. In any case Lavenner was true to her word and after visiting the larger servant’s quarters we had acquired the necessary material to add comfortable straps to my dagger’s scabbard.

Those straps went around my left shin, and I was told that I would be spending some time getting used to the weight if I hadn’t worn it that way already. I nodded and made a show of being uncomfortable about my leg.

Of course, rezan meant that I was accustomed to it from the moment the straps were tightened around my shin.

Now that the head maid could reliably lead the Chosen One anywhere in the manor without forcing them, Lavenner led me to the back garden. Though we fell a little short of the garden, instead ending up on the edge of a courtyard in a pergoda separate from the manor itself. If you ignored the three other maids there were two people there.

One old man, surnamed Silvurium. I didn’t recall if his first name was ever mentioned in my presence but I'd scarcely been coherent the first time we spoke. The other person was a child. A young, little girl with silky, shiny, bouncy brown hair.

“Ah, Amber. So good to see you.” Silvurium said after Lavenner whispered in his ear, then left back towards the manor. It irked that he said that without looking back at me. Instead, he kept his eyes facing the girl, who had a number of painted dolls set out in front of her that she was playing with. “You spent quite the while in bed. I just had to send someone to wake you up.”

“I’m awake now…” I trailed off, unsure of how to address him. What was this guy’s title? He wasn’t a Duke, but that left Lord, Baron, Quis, and however many more fancy titles had been dreamed up since the dawn of time.

“No titles are necessary.” Silvurium said, a chuckle in his voice. “In any case, I can see that a more conservative attire should’ve been made available considering the extent of your injuries. My apologies.”

I frowned. He hadn’t looked at me, so how did he know what I looked like?

As if to respond to my silent question, one of Silvurium’s hands pointed up. I followed the indicated line to see a sheet of metal in the roof of his shelter, placed perfectly for him to see anyone approaching, but discretely enough that it was difficult to notice right away. The old man was making eye contact and giving me a mischievous smile.

I needed to get back in character, and thus wiped the frown from my face and waved back a little shyly

It was hard, since he just admitted he had other clothes for me to wear after I had spent so much time agonising over what was already on my body. The fact that pretty much my entire upper body was discoloured by ugly recovering bruises hadn’t actually registered until just now. I imagined I was quite the sight.

“Well, you seem comfortable, so you can keep wearing that.” Silvurium decided. It took everything I had to not shout in protest. “Still, you are recovering. I’m not a slave driver, and you appear delicate. I won’t ask you to do anything too extraneous. Simply look after my granddaughter for the time that you are here.”

What? I blinked, then directed my eyes to where the little girl was looking back at me with a toothy smile.

A shiver went up my spine for two reasons. The first was that kids reminded me of the fate All had planned out for me, and I therefore hated them. The second reason was the gleam I saw reflecting off of the little girl’s canine.

\V/