The next morning Koyl dragged me out with him to a local bazaar to help find the items I had requested. He asked me what I wanted them for multiple times, but I didn't elaborate since I wasn't sure if anyone was listening and reporting what we said to each other back to Yaavtey or the Steelheart Company. The list on its own wouldn't be sensitive information because if Koyl couldn't figure out what it was for it was unlikely that the procedure I had planned was common. This way I can examine the quality of the items as well, I thought. I had to correct Koyl's choice of drill multiple times, since I had failed to specify the diameter I was looking for. It would help if they had anything approaching standardized measurements, I grumbled.

The last item we were looking for was a knife with sufficient sharpness. Despite Koyl's protestations, I hadn't yet found one to my satisfaction. Dragging the blade along my fingertip was more than enough to tell if a knife would leave a large scar, and every knife at every seller that looked sharp was not to my liking. The steel that the humans were working with simply couldn't hold a surgical edge for any length of time. It wasn't strong enough, and it wasn't tempered well enough.

By pure chance, while we were walking by a gemstone seller I noticed a bucket filled with dull gray rocks that had a strange texture on the ground to her left. The woman noticed my eyes drifting to the bucket and called out to us. She explained that the rocks were something called eyngzoyjhaoeyl, a truly difficult word to pronounce, and that they were often cut into beautiful speckled black stones. After some back and forth about the locations of the rocks and the price, I brought the entire bucket with us after purchasing it for cheap. It turned out that pure black obsidian, as well as other solid colors, had no significant value. Since all the cheap types were much more common than the white speckled variant, the rocks were seen as something of a gamble.

“Stop,” I said before Koyl entered the inn, “we're going around the back so I can explain this.”

“Finally,” Koyl sighed, “why don't we just go inside?”

“People could be listening,” I said, and I walked around the side of the inn expecting Koyl to follow. Once I was sufficiently sure that we were alone and that we would not be overheard, I beckoned Koyl to a point roughly equidistant from each of the nearby buildings and leaned in towards him.

“Don’t lean in too far or people might get the wrong idea,” Koyl joked.

“Be quiet,” I whispered. “Someone in that inn has been overhearing what we talk about, it's the only way some of the information that was leaked about us could have been found. We're going to execute this next step inside my room away from prying eyes after preparation out here.”

“Okay, but what are we doing?” Koyl hissed. He looked around nervously, making the fact that we wanted privacy very obvious if anyone was observing us. Well the whispering would have done that already, I sighed.

“We're going to change my face,” I explained, “all the things we picked up today are going to be used to alter the apparent bone structure of my face so that I look like a different person.”

“Oh...” Koyl grunted. He glanced at the supplies, mentally putting things together, then frowned. “How?” he whispered.

“How would you describe the shape of my face, as it is currently?” I asked Koyl quietly. He looked at me, then thought about it.

“A bit round,” he shrugged, “also a bit flat. Jawline is average for a Gwahlaob, but would look strange on a Luwahriy. Why? You know that just giving yourself a bunch of scars isn't going to work right? Besides, some of this was expensive.” Koyl's low voice sounded concerned.

“We're not doing that,” I said, “the ivory is going to be carved by me into attachments, and then we're going to put them under my skin. If done correctly I will look like a different person to anyone who is not observing me closely.”

“But your whole face will be scarred to shit around wherever you put them in,” Koyl said. “It's going to be obvious, especially considering that, well, you don't have many facial scars at all. You're not the first person to have this idea you know.” I smiled deviously, and my body felt a rush of enjoyment, somehow comprehending what I was planning enough to be happy about it.

“Leave that to me,” I said, “also we need to break these rocks into knives. The edge will be sharper than a typical steel knife if done properly.” I gestured to the bucket of obsidian, then looked back at Koyl. “I can do it if you aren't sure how to,” I added.

“A-ha,” Koyl enunciated, “you do that, I'll bring the rest of this up to my room and we can shift it across the hall once you're ready.”

“Don't say anything to anyone,” I commanded, becoming very serious. “Someone in that inn is reporting us to either the Hatchet Crew or Steelheart Company, and if it's the latter then the Hatchet Crew may have someone feeding them information. It's better if they either think we have no plan, or are just confused.”

“I got it, I got it,” Koyl assured me. I took the bucket and sat down on the rough ground, beginning the process of knapping while Koyl started to bring the rest of our goods inside. I had knapped rock knives before, even recently, but obsidian was not a material that I had a large amount of experience with. The previous operation zones I had worked in did not have high volcanism, and as such flint was much more common than obsidian. I was pleasantly surprised when the first strike split the rock I was holding in two against the brick we had picked up, creating the first vestiges of an edge. Unfortunately, the remaining strikes were not so lucky, and I failed to create any edge of significant length before the rock was little more than unusable splinters.

After what felt like at least two hours of work I finally created an obsidian knife that looked to be both sharp enough to leave little scarring and large enough that it could be worked with for rough surgery. Obsidian was a notoriously fickle material and the experience of knapping it had made me thankful I hadn't needed to use it much in the past. I left the shards of junk glass on the ground, put the knife in my pants pocket, and picked up the brick and remaining obsidian before going back inside. Yehpweyl was nowhere to be seen, thankfully, so I simply headed up to my room and put everything inside near the bed.

“Koyl,” I said once I exited into the hallway, “bring it over now.” I heard shuffling coming from Koyl's room so I knew he had heard me, and I headed back into my own. A minute later Koyl entered carrying a mirror, the ivory, the hammer and nails, a tool for cutting the nails to size, and the glue. He closed the door and set out the materials, then dashed back out and fetched the drill. I set the obsidian knife down very gently on the bed so it wouldn't break.

“Sorry,” he said, “I knew I was forgetting something. So how is this going to work?”

“Give me the ivory,” I said, and Koyl tossed me a fist-sized chunk of some unknown animal's tooth. I pulled out my utility knife and began cutting a piece off. “I'm going to need you to help me compare my own jawline and cheekbones to yours,” I explained, “I'm going to make some ivory pieces which will add to them.”

“But how will you-” Koyl began.

“Don't worry about it, just help me with that mirror,” I said.

I spent the next hour carving up some pieces of ivory carefully while Koyl shifted his head around to match my reflection at various angles. It wasn't overly difficult work, but it was time-consuming simply because the bronze mirror that Koyl had purchased wasn't exactly crystal clear, making seeing my face properly difficult at points. For good measure, I also made two more pieces, one for my chin and one for my nose, in case the cheekbones and jawline weren't sufficient.

“Okay, so is that it?” Koyl asked, looking at the ivory pieces. “How are we going to do this?”

“Firstly, you drill some holes in those pieces,” I instructed, “two holes each. Those are where the nails are going to go in.” Koyl winced, but reached out for the hand drill and started to get to work. While he did his own task I used my knife to remove some small amounts of my own body hair, gathering it into a pile. There wasn’t much on my chest or arms, so I had to use my lower legs.

“What are you doing that for?” Koyl asked.

“Pay attention to where you're drilling,” I said, “it's part of the disguise. As I'm sure you've noticed, I can't grow a beard.” Koyl paused and looked at me, disgusted, then resumed his slow drilling. “It's what the glue is for,” I added.

“Oh I figured that out,” Koyl chuckled, “it's just... I don't know. Can you really not grow a beard? I thought you were just shaving every morning.”

“For some reason, I have no facial hair besides eyebrows and eyelashes,” I said. The pile of body hair was growing enough that I felt it was sufficient for a goatee, so I stopped and put my knife away. With a deep sigh, I picked up the brick and sat in a relaxed position, then started the process of using force magic to move it. Strangely, even though I found it challenging to move it I didn't use a large amount of magic. I even tried putting the point of force outside my normal range, I thought, why doesn't that work? Why did it still move?

“What are you doing that for?” Koyl asked. I looked over and saw that his drilling had finished. A quick visual examination showed that he had done a decent job.

“Need to slow down my healing,” I said simply. Koyl laughed quietly.

“And... shifting a brick around with force magic will do that?” he asked. I suppose I can explain it to pass the time, I thought.

“What do you know about magic?” I asked.

“I know fire magic-” Koyl began.

“No,” I interrupted, “I mean about the topic of magic. The subject itself. The phenomena.” I wasn't sure about the final word I used but from context I assumed it meant something similar to what I meant.

“What's there to know?” Koyl asked. “They say it comes from spirits that are everywhere. People can ask them to do things and they'll do them. Some people are better at it than others.” I've heard that one before, I thought.

“It uses energy,” I stated.

“Yes,” Koyl agreed, “spirits use the caster's bodily energy because they're normally too weak to act on their own. They can only take it with permission.”

“So does healing,” I said simply. I expected Koyl to reply, but he was silent. I managed to levitate the brick, then move it up to the edge of my range, then I nearly dropped it as a sharp pain wracked my whole body. After setting the brick down I checked my heads-up display and saw that the top blue bar was almost empty, and the bottom three were slowly draining to replenish it. Good, I thought.

“Are you saying that spirits heal people?” Koyl finally asked. “That doesn't make sense. Everyone can heal, even people who can't even manage a twinge of magic.” I looked at Koyl, then grunted in amusement.

“The energy used to heal your body rapidly is the same energy used to perform magic,” I said, “nothing makes sense otherwise.” Technically all I had to prove that point was conjecture based on torturing several rats to death as well as my own ambiguous heads-up display values after battles, but my knowledge of biology made it clear that it was probably at least partially correct.

“No, that doesn't make sense at all,” Koyl disagreed, “healing isn't magic, it's something your body does naturally. If it was magic you could be able to control it, stop it, or even speed it up.”

“Tell me, do you have to choose to make your heart beat?” I asked. Koyl frowned oddly. “Living things have a powerful urge to remain alive,” I continued. “Fundamentally, there is no major difference between the muscle in your heart and that in the rest of you, but the heart beats regardless of whether or not you desire it to.” It wasn't a perfect analogy of course, since there was a difference between the autonomic and somatic nervous systems, but it got Koyl thinking. “Either way, we'll see if I'm right before the day is over,” I said, “and if I'm not, you'll be breaking my legs with that hammer until they stop healing so we can move to the next step.”