That Old Familiar Feeling

Chapter 98

With my discussion with Mina fresh on my mind, I considered what to do about the pair at the farmhouse. Mira and Hetcha had been enjoying a couple of days of peace to themselves, but it was time that I started making a legitimate effort to make a deal.

Mira and Hetcha,

I hope you've found the farm comfortable and have been able to rest. This evening I would like to speak with you more directly. I know little about either one of you and would like to correct that. Please turn out the lights after dinner if you agree to hear me out.

Regards,

42

The message was probably too simple, but it would have to do. It would have been easier to give them a communication stone sealed in a letter, but I felt a bit theatrical. It might help things go smoothly if I gave them a relatively non-threatening display of my powers. Coming across as friendly was good, but I couldn't make a contract without giving away what I was.

Since I couldn't get around the reveal, I might as well try and make it work in my favor. With that in mind, I started messing around with some environmental effects when I took breaks. I'd been working steadily to fill out the stub layers and had made decent progress. It would probably only be about two weeks until I felt comfortable taking a couple of days off to do the illusion of life upgrade.

I checked my day's allotment of mana with that on my mind. With plenty to spare, I decided some additional testing was in order. I texted Dawn and invited her to be my test guinea pig skeleton along with Icarus. It didn't take long for the pair to appear in the lounge.

My end of the process was simple enough. I just paid for the needed upgrades and enabled the illusion of life to add on. Gold sparks shimmered around Dawn for a moment while Icarus's were violet, both matching their eyes. Nothing else happened since they both needed to select their appearances and enable them.

"Don't forget, if you find it uncomfortable, you can disable your illusion," I reminded them. Chris had been turning his on and off at seeming random along with modifying it. He liked to keep his appearance rough, but he waffled about which horrific details he wanted to take. Something I wasn't about to get involved in for the moment.

"Mistress… Are there any rules or concerns I should be aware of?" Dawn asked.

"Just that there will be a waiting period to change things once people enter the valley," I replied, a brow-raising. Technically, until we had people in the valley and were carrying on some kind of charade, it didn't matter if he messed with his looks. He'd agreed to stop once that happened, and I was resolved to put my foot down on the matter. No sense in letting a plan be ruined by carelessness.

"I can take a look if you're worried about something specific," I added. Dawn nodded, and I went over to her side. Icarus eyed us both curiously but didn't say anything, intent on his appearance.

"So, as you can see," Dawn said, gesturing. I found myself looking at a woman who seemed like she'd been in her mid-thirties. She had a single gold tooth, missing eye, broken nose that healed wrong, and a random smattering of scars. That was in addition to an extensive amount of tattooing and what I suspected were holes for piercings.

Dawn definitely would have looked grim before I'd seen how Chris originally looked. By comparison, she seemed to have a fairly easy time of things. She might even have been rather fashionable if I got the chance to see her fully decked out.

"I'm not going to question you if you want to leave the damage. I mean, I can make you a gold tooth instead of depending on the illusion if that's something you'd like," I offered. I'd noticed a gap but hadn't considered if it had been filled in life or not. I also didn't know if she'd lost it, chosen to remove it, or her corpse had been robbed.

"You don't see an issue?" Dawn asked. From across the room, Icarus snorted. Dawn looked over sharply to glare at him, her jewels flaring.

"No?" I said, feeling lost. I looked over the image of her again in case I'd missed something.

"I could make you a glass eye or something too if you'd like. I'm not sure what would happen if we removed one of your jewels… Maybe we could put it inside?" I mused. It wouldn't take much for me to make a sweet-looking prosthetic or eyepatch.

"You're serious?" Dawn asked, clearly not believing me.

"She's from some daft place where they think women who look like her are demons and tattoos are evil," Icarus chimed in.

"Seriously? Well, I'm not from there, and I don't give a fuck what they think. Make yourself look how you want," I told Dawn firmly. Seriously, people who had a problem with someone for aesthetic reasons could go fuck themselves with a knife.

Though she looked reluctant, Dawn nodded and turned back to her task. Not surprisingly, Icarus was the first to finish. He was wearing a simple tunic with pants and boots. When his illusion activated, he looked odd to me for the first few moments.

I'd seen images of how living halflings looked but not one in the flesh, illusory though it was. Looking at Icarus, I felt like there was an almost cat-like element to his features. He had brown hair cut to a medium length and an impressive set of mutton chops to go with his goatee. With how his hair behaved, or rather refused to, it gave him a lion-ish appearance.

Icarus also seemed to be faintly smiling thanks to a nasty scar that pulled up the left side of his face a bit. I'd never really had an image in my head of what he'd look like living, but this felt correct on some level. He also seemed rather pleased with himself as he inspected his form in the mirror I'd had sitting around since I first added it.

Finally, Dawn was ready, and she stepped up to the mirror before activating it. She was wearing a simple red dress. I got the feeling they'd both begged something ready-made off Henry and ended up with things hardly begun by his standards. A moment later, the forcefield effect that created the physical bulk of a living body brought a tearing sound.

Dawn was about six and a half feet tall but not thin. Her body was solidly muscled, and the dress tore at the shoulder on the left side and right through the hips.

"Oh…" Dawn looked down. She regarded the dress with a fascinated kind of horror. I felt terrible that it was taking away from her moment.

"You look stunning," I said immediately, and I meant it. Dawn had a dark complexion, and her cloud-like coily hair was a dark chocolate brown with a complicated mixture of red and blonde highlights. Dawn's gaze snapped to me, full of uncertainty for a moment before an appreciative whistle had us both looking at Icarus.

"You look very much the wolf," Icarus said with a grin. Dawn looked flustered but not unhappy as he came forward to kiss her hand quite gallantly. They both froze.

"What's wrong?" I asked, immediately on alert. Unfortunately, Chris was worse than useless when it came to finding anything out about the user experience.

"I can feel her," Icarus said immediately.

"Right… Do you mean differently from normal?" I asked, feeling lost. The skeletons had a basic sense of touch—more than I used to have.

"She feels like a mortal," Icarus managed to get out. He was staring at Dawn, who was looking down at their joined hands. Not sure what Icarus meant, I decided to go with the "fuck around find out" method and put a hand on Dawn's shoulder.

I snatched my hand back like it had been burned. I could feel skin, texture, and temperature. I'd expected the illusion to give a basic kind of feeling but not that I'd be able to experience it so profoundly. This was like having a human normal sense of touchback. I immediately poked Icarus in the chop and found I could feel the hair too.

"Oh, shit," I said flatly, entirely overwhelmed.