NOVEL NEXT 85 - “The earliest references to lanyards date from 15th century France”
"Why bother with any of this loot?" Beatrice said. "It's probably worthless. Those hats are totally unfashionable, and those ropes seem way too short to be useful for anything."
Ignoring her parochial noble sensibilities, Archmund grabbed a cap next. There was no crystal lattice latent within it, and it was more like the dead rubber he'd harvested from the Seven-Fingered Starbeasts.
He pulled out his Ruby of Energy and gave it a light tap with his Infrared Lance. The cap didn't burn.
"Heat resistance," he said, "at the very least. Probably a weak level. Might block energy? Either way, it's not useless."
He puled out his Gemstone Rapier, kicked the hat to the floor, and stabbed at it. The material bent around the tip of the blade, preventing it from piercing. Perhaps, once enforced with the magic of the living, it would prevent injury as well.
"Looks like it might be half-decent armor."
Gelias shook his head. "You humans and your willingness to wear the shells of the dead. On your heads, even. Doesn't it bother you at all?"
Archmund looked at the cap in his hands. Yes, perhaps it might be a bad idea to put a hat with a weird logo on it on his head. Even if magic flowed evenly through the circuit of self, from that ineffable place beyond all dreaming, even if it didn't strictly flow from the head, at the very least the symbolism was foreboding.
He stabbed at it again. He still failed to pierce.
"I'll take one, then," Beatrice said, reaching for the pile. "They look rather durable."
So much for it all being junk.
"Are you sure?" Archmund said. "It might not look it, but I'm pretty sure these are basically Gemgear. And they go right on your head?"
Her hand faltered right as she was about to grab one.
"Right. Well. I'll keep my options open."
"What role would this put you in?" Mary said.
"Mary?"
"Young master," she said, bowing her head slightly in unnecessary deference, wrapping her words in unneeded formality, "when I spoke with Lady Raehel, she said that a handfan is good for making wind, and so my Skill gives me the power of wind, and leaves me suitable to act as your attendant. By analogy, how might these hats shape their wearers?"
"Please just talk normally."
Rory chuckled. "She sounds like my Gramps. Betty's grandpa begs him to talk normally, but he also just goes full formal all the time."
"Yeah, well, sometimes I wish you'd be as deferential as him," Beatrice muttered. "Or her, for that matter."
"Beat me in a fight and I'll consider it."
"You utter brute."
Archmund tuned them out. He wondered, because he was an overthinker, if they were going to end up married or whether there was too little of a social class differential for that to be of any benefit for the either of them. They were both nobles in the exact same place.
A hat that gave some level of protection, but with a strange sigil or logo on it.
Well, he had an analogy, didn't he.
On earth, corporate merch meant that you were aligned with that company. You bought a company's merch because you liked them, or you got it for free because you worked for them.
But regardless of whether you truly believed or not in everything the company did, whether you were aligned with its corporate actions and its practices, wearing their merch signaled acquiescence. You turned your very body into a billboard for that corporation's existence, a walking emanation of those entities of law and process into the physical world. To wear a company's "merch" was to "stan" that company.
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Beyond the utility of head protection, wearing one of these hats might associate the wearer with whatever hellish simulacrum of a corporation this place was. A corporate drone of the Gates of Hell.
Decidedly worse than being a regular corporate drone.
He was overthinking for sure, though. Seeing patterns where there were none. He was haunted by his past working for a corporation, so he was seeing this place as a corporate office when it was probably something native to this world. These were no more corporate merch than the Second Tier was an office.
"This place is pretty weird overall, though," he said, cutting through Beatrice and Rory's bickering. "What do you make of it?"
Rory, Gelias, and Mary shrugged. They saw it as just a quirk of the Dungeon.
"You mean you don't know?" Beatrice said, her voice genuinely surprised.
Then she turned mocking. "What, for once the prodigy doesn't know something? It's obviously an administrative office. There are hundreds of places like this in the Imperial City to keep track of shipments and taxes and whatever. They put the clerks in these boxes in all these rows so they only see the taxes they need to care about and not anyone else's. You really didn't know?"
He knew. But he didn't want to let on how he knew.
"Your father took me to one of these once, when I visited, actually," Beatrice said. "I thought for sure…"
He'd been reclusive in this life. A normal amount of reclusive. Really. Not a weird amount of reclusive. The Crylaxan Plague and his dead mom had justified him staying isolated with his books. It wasn't weird that he'd never gone to the Imperial City at all.
Anyways, there was still another perfectly normal piece of office gear for him to investigate.
He grabbed a lanyard and twined it through his fingers. It felt like cloth, the usual sort of lanyard that was used for ID badges. There was no clip, but he suspected there might not be a need. It had remarkably little capacity for Attunement — his magic slipped through it, changed ever so slightly, but returning to him almost perfectly with full fidelity.
"Not sure what those are for, though," Beatrice said. "They seem rather wasteful.
He had a hunch.
He pulled out his Gemstone Keycard and touched it to the lanyard. The lanyard annealed, Gem fusing with cloth, until the two were inseparable — indistinguishable from an ID card on a lanyard, which was what it was. When he pulled at it gingerly, it stood firm. With a bit more force, he could tear them apart — but he didn't see the need.
"What is that supposed to do?"
Archmund wasn't sure himself.
"It's a modification," Gelias said.
Everyone turned to him expectantly.
"In elven traditions, our artifacts grow with each generation. Each wielder adds their techniques and imprints upon their weapons, passed down from master to student. Sometimes, our weapons grow as if they were living wood in response to our development."
His face scrunched up. "Mannish magic and weapons are all… well, they're dead. Exoskeletons, if I'm being charitable. They don't grow easily and naturally. You can either put in the immense amount of work to learn your techniques well enough to modify them on the fly, which I know you've managed, Archmund, or you can take shortcuts."
"I don't follow."
"Your Rapier. It lets you use a Deflection-type Skill, similar to Rory's Blocking skills. But when Rory started out, he could only block strikes. It took him almost a year to be able to block arrows. And now he can just barely block magical projectiles."
Archmund was surprised to hear that. It had taken him hours, if not minutes, to do the same with his Rapier. Maybe he was unusually skilled and talented.
"Come on, you're making me look uncool," Rory said.
"Learning, trying your hardest, and growing is never uncool," Gelias said. What a tryhard. "And yet human magics lean towards taking shortcuts. By attaching accouterments and Gemstone trinkets, the add-ons and implements that have no conceivable use in combat, humans modify the Skills and powers they draw from their Gemstone."
Archmund thought he got the gist. Gems and Gemstone Gear gave their users Skills. Attaching other artifacts with a Gemstone basis modified those Skills. Elves disapproved of this.
"No conceivable use in combat is right," Beatrice said.
"I'm sure you could garrote someone with these," Archmund said. "Bash in someone's head with a tankard, stuff a hat down their throat."
"Why bother when you have a sword?"
"Young master—"
"Betty, chill out—"
Rory and Mary looked at each other, at their simultaneous outbursts, before they both started suppressing laughter.
"I really hate you sometimes," Beatrice said.
"Oh, yeah. Blame me for them laughing at us."
"You're just— ugh! I hate how clearly we're related. But I mean you see how these trinkets are useless, don't you?"
Archmund wasn't so sure. He had a inkling, from how his magic had flowed through the lanyard. He'd thought it had flowed back to him freely and easily, but it was different from the Storage Gem he'd received from Raehel. That Storage Gem had pooled his magic and let it flow back to him, but this lanyard almost bounced the magic back to him, as if along a cord.
He threw his Gemstone Keycard across the table. The other four watched him tentatively.
He held out his hand, feeling immensely stupid. He didn't strictly need to do this, since magic responded to thought, but, well, he needed a landing point.
He could feel his magic in the Gemstone Keycard — he should be more suspicious, he thought, of any magic that cleaved to his soul so quickly — but his control over that magic was fumbling, unrefined, nothing like his natural intuitive grasp over the magic of his Ruby Tetrahedron, which floated passively around his head like a pet hummingbird. But draw on that magic, tense it, allow it to dance along the woven coil of the Gemstone Lanyard, and—
The Gemstone, lanyard and keycard both, flew into his hand.
"I want that," Rory said, after a second. "You think it'll work on my Quarterstaff?"