Such was the morose mood of the old man, until a pair of women walked into his establishment.

One an Ikesian, hale and hearty, of fair hair and possessing a single piercing Homunculus Eye. She wore strong, practical soldier’s boots under her sundress, these and the obvious gun on her hip bulging the fabric overtly betraying that she was no civilian.

The other was a barefoot, half-naked - no, make that three-quarters naked - monstrosity of a woman. The mishmash of visible traits that she displayed rendered her place of origin impossible to place, almost as if on purpose, and yet the demands she made would make her his favorite customer for a long time.

“I need new boots, quickly. Boots that can survive their wearer fighting one of the Divine Emperor’s generals, so to speak… And trousers to match. Name your price.”

“Any details on what you’d want out of these articles besides, well, durability?” he asked, already reaching for one of the ledgers wherein he meticulously detailed every remotely notable project. “I can show you some of my previous works if that’d make choosing easier.”

And so the selection process went. It was clear the woman knew what she wanted, as she swiftly narrowed down her selection to a few key features. The trousers would have to be skin-tight and Fog-permeable, both features inherent to Fog-infused materials, after which point secondary choices narrowed it down.

They would be a slight modification of a design popular amongst Iron Brotherhood officers, foregoing the spikes and chains, as well as the standard solid armor inserts. Instead, the inner lining would be made of Sturmgandr Leather, an immensely popular material among Kargarians for its aid in directing Fulguric magicks. It perhaps helped that, despite their dangerous and usually reclusive nature, Sturmgandr hunts were nearly as deeply-rooted in the culture as lightning itself.

From there he would add a further layer of Serpent-tree Scalebark on the outsides of the legs, both for additional protection and visual flare. It was harvested from World Serpent Trees, which themselves were grown by Imperial remnants out of cuttings taken from the arborized, still-living bodies of World Serpents that now stood as one of the Imperial heartland’s notable landmarks. It was said that even now they slithered through the earth and sought to encompass it, just in a different way.

Scalebark was… Well, undying, much like its progenitors. It would slowly grow throughout anything made with it, feeding from ambient aether, growing and becoming attuned to its wearer, even developing something akin to a soul, closer to those of trees than those of other soul-possessing objects. Any piece of clothing made with it was thusly a long-term investment.

Indeed, these trousers were certainly an eccentric choice; brightly coloured, tenuously anchored in normalcy, an article of clothing fit for some… Swaggering, violent egoist.

She couldn’t have picked anything more appropriate.

When it came to the boots, the choices were… Similar, though without the demand for Fog-permeability.

Up to the knee, heavily armor-plated, Sturmgandr Leather lining, et cetera et cetera. It was boring, until they reached the actual details of the armor. This was the part that he most looked forward to, as he’d spent a lifetime perfecting a system of interlocking, modularized armor plates so that he could create nearly any specific armor design from his extensive collection of parts.

Not only did she pick out climbing claws, but also for a particular modification that would allow one of the boots to act as a scaffold for Fulguric constructs, this being the right boot. It would demand additional reinforcement, additional work, work that he was frankly giddy to do, and the inevitable question came.

“Is there any particular reason why it can only be one of them?” asked the blonde curiously whilst the Kargarian tailor took measurements of Zelsys.

Without raising his gaze or slowing down in noting down the massive woman’s proportions he answered, “Well, besides acting as a scaffold, the boot will act as a rudimentary focus, an antenna of sorts. If two of them - two near-identical ones - are in such close proximity, the risk of aetheric resonance rises geometrically with the amount of essentia involved. I’ve seen a man’s legs get ripped from their sockets by a sudden magnetic repulsion, another’s feet turned to uncontrollable lightning-coils, all sorts of unpleasantness. Perfect symmetry is just a bad idea when it comes to lightning magic.”

“How long will it take you to get these done, by the way? I’ll need something as quickly as possible, for uh… Well, obvious reasons.”

“Considering how many other customers I’ve had today, I’d say come by in three days, but I can tailor something basic in twenty, thirty minutes once I’ve got your measurements,” said the tailor with rather obvious pride.

“I certainly hope you don’t sacrifice quality for speed,” Zel chuckled.

“You get quite fast when you’ve been doing this for centuries…” he said, gesturing to the towering mass of metal and stone that took up the back corner of the room. “The Needle Empress over there definitely helps.”

Some forty minutes later, Zel walked out of the establishment lighter by a surprisingly moderate sum, wearing pants of mundane fabric and boots of mundane leather, and carrying a promissory ticket for the next day. More and more she realized that the sum she’d paid for Pentacle had had even less to do with its real value than she’d initially thought.

They returned to the sect, finding that Ozmir had not returned yet, and continued where they left off exploring the elder’s quarters. All throughout, Zelsys continuously couldn’t help noticing the lackluster flexibility of this mundane, navy-blue fabric. Perhaps she’d grown spoiled, but she didn’t particularly care.

The door to the right from the entryway turned out to be an impressive bathing chamber, partly mimicking the design of the bathhouse’s private suites. Or, what was more likely, the private suites in the bathhouse mimicked this one.

Unsurprisingly, the other room was the bedroom, just as relatively modest as the rest of the elder’s quarters. Sure, it had a massive bed and a human-sized storage glyph, among several other notable features, but it was still… Plain, so to speak. It wasn’t stuffed with displays of wealth and status, like the hub room was.