What Little Remains Of Terpsichore Ironheart

I woke up at an unreasonable hour for someone in my condition, which was... about seven in the morning. Well, more precisely, I knew that it was currently 7:03:28 AM, because as it turns out, the God of Time thought his clerics should all know exactly what time it was at all times.

I wondered, briefly, how exactly he determined what the appropriate time was; as someone who had built a working mechanical clock as a hobby project, I had been forced to learn an absolutely tedious amount about horology and timekeeping, and one thing I'd learned that would always be relevant was the slight difference in length between a solar day and a sidereal day, but another thing I'd learned is that, in the Hikaano Imperium, the construction of a train network forced the development of standardized time zones. Previously, every town and city simply kept their own local solar time, but now, everyone had to put up with the fact that their clocks were up to a half hour off of the 'real' solar time, which... honestly, was not a huge deal.

I blinked a few times as the instinct telling me precisely what time it was changed, informing me that it was 7:03:56 AM local solar time, and 7:15:56 AM Rosewood Standard Time.

"Penny for your thoughts?" Emily asked, having noticed I was awake, but still just lying there.

"Time zones," I said. "Can you help me up? I'm hungry."

"Of course," Emily said, sitting upright and moving to help me do the same.

"Is there a reason you always wear Healer robes?" I asked. "I was told you weren't supposed to do that, or that you're only supposed to wear them while on duty as a Healer."

"Oh. Um... I'm... I'm always on duty as a Healer," she said weakly.

"...Is it because the Healer robes are the only clothes you have that aren't uncomfortable, fancy Noble Lady outfits?"

Emily winced.

"...yes..." she admitted.

"Alright, well... We'll get you some casualwear that doesn't suck," I said. "Don't sweat it."

"Thank you," Emily said. "Talia and Faith are already downstairs, so hopefully they've made breakfast."

"Hopefully Faith made breakfast," I corrected her. "If I put a gun to Talia's head and told her she had to cook something that actually tasted good, she'd tell me I don't have the balls to pull the trigger."

"Well... Fair enough."

---

"Oh my- Talia!" Emily nearly shrieked, covering her poor, scandalized eyes. "Clothes!"

"Oh please, like you don't see tits bigger than these every time you take a shower," Talia said, planting her hands on her hips.

In Talia's defense, she wasn't actually naked, but in Emily's defense, Talia was only technically not naked, by virtue of wearing a godawful novelty apron that was not only offensive to the educated eye on the face of it, but dragged my poor, hypoxia-addled brain through an awful chain of memories that constituted the story of why we even had that stupid thing to begin with.

"I should've burned that stupid apron," I muttered darkly, before staggering over to the table and sitting down.

Faith came in with a big plate laden with breakfast sandwiches, stuffed with sausage, egg, and melted cheese, and smirked at the sight of a fat, curvy elf wearing only an apron.

"Well I think it looks cute on her," Faith said primly.

"That's because you can't read High Elven," I said. "Emily can, though."

"It- oh god, it says something, doesn't it?" Emily muttered, still refusing to look at Talia.

"Sausage for dessert," Talia said, grinning.

"I hate everyone involved in the creation of this moment," I said dryly.

"Is that-" Faith began.

"That is, in fact, a dick joke in High Elven," I said, nodding. "It is technically a family heirloom, but really it's just an elaborate practical joke that Grandma Terpsichore pulled on her kids, and which her firstborn son refused to throw away or bury with his mother, and instead, he inflicted it on me when I came of age, along with the realization that, technically, this thing is a family heirloom, and therefore I would feel guilty about throwing it away like the worthless garbage it actually is."

"Wait, wouldn't that- wouldn't that make this a pre-War elven artifact?" Faith asked.

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"Well, yes, but-"

"I know, I know, you don't want it, but museums will pay top dollar for this sort of thing," Faith said. "I mean, they don't have to know it's worthless garbage."

"The last time someone tried to put my family's property in a museum, I killed a man in the streets over it. The Hikaano can pry my heritage out of my cold, dead hands, if I don't manage to kill them first."

That killed the mood for a good few moments, before Talia gracefully revived it.

"So, you think this was mage-woven?" Talia asked, looking down and pulling lightly at the apron that was surprisingly successful at keeping her tits contained- but then, it had been made by Terpsichore Ironheart, presumably to fit Terpsichore Ironheart, and Terpsichore Ironheart had been shaped like Talia Jones- which is to say, fat and busty.

"Probably, yeah," I said, shrugging. "People back then were more patient than we are today, sure, but weaving by hand was still a tedious and time-consuming process. For an experienced Bard like Terpsichore, learning enough Wizardry to cast a mage-weaving spell would've taken less time than weaving all the fabric she needed to make this apron by hand. And that's assuming she didn't just get the fabric from someone else."

"Wait, mage-woven?" Faith asked. "Do you mean, like, enchanted?"

"Nah, just woven by magic," I said, shaking my head. "So- y'know how, these days, pretty much all fabric is woven by machines? Y'know, power looms that go through the simple, repetitive steps of weaving through clockwork mechanisms without requiring much human intervention? Well, before those machines, most humans made fabric by hand with non-powered looms, and elves made fabric automatically with enchanted looms, unless they really, really liked weaving."

"Huh."

"It was a common learning milestone for elven Wizards," I added. "I learned how to do it, myself, although Mom didn't drill me on it too hard. Said that it was more for the sake of a cute tradition than because it was actually practical." I hummed quietly. "...Honestly, though? I think I should probably just use a mage-weaving spell to make those straw hats I was thinking about, instead of a braiding machine. Straw isn't continuous fiber, and trying to feed it through a braiding machine sounds like a recipe for frustration."

"You know," Faith said, leaning back in her chair. "When I read comic books and dime novels, and they portrayed Wizards as these strange people who rambled endlessly about the strangest, most esoteric things, I always thought to myself, 'That's not realistic, Wizards can't actually be like that, they're just making things up.' And then I met you."

"He's not like that because he's a Wizard, he's like that because he's a High Elf," Talia said. "None of us can shut the fuck up."

"Wizardry isn't just a skillset I have, it's the main lens through which I observe the world," I said. "There are so many possible things you can do with Wizardry, but Wizardry alone isn't enough to understand most of them. As such, you need to be well-educated on a broad variety of subjects, so that you can actually do useful magic about them. This is, incidentally, why most Wizards are specialists who are only well-educated on two subjects, and why an Archmage is such an impressive thing."

"Okay, pretend I wasn't raised by a Wizard, and only know that 'Archmage' means 'really strong Wizard,'" Faith said, pinching the bridge of her nose.

"Well..." I hummed quietly. "...So, like I said, most Wizards are specialists, who only really do a small subset of Arcane magic. An Archmage, however, is a Wizard who has learned multiple specialties, which requires either an absolutely tedious amount of education or that the Archmage be a genuine genius who's capable of teaching themselves complex subjects in a short timeframe. Now, this is muddled a bit by the fact that both Helen Rosewood and, uh... fuck, what's that guy's name... Right, Mason Orvo, both call themselves The Archmage of the Adventurer's and Mage's Guilds. Which of course gets into historical context where Archmage used to mean 'a mage who is in charge of a bunch of other mages,' but I can tell from the look in your eye that I'm starting to lose you."

"Yeah, let's... Take another swing at that, but shorter," Faith said.

"An Archmage is a polymath."

"Don't know that word."

"...An Archmage is a jack-of-all-trades, except he's just as good at anything as most specialists are."

"Okay, got it."

"And Archmage also sometimes just means 'a mage who's in charge of other mages,' in the same sense that 'master' sometimes means 'someone with an apprentice.'"

"So, Archmage means two different things, and those two definitions are different," Faith surmised.

"That is correct, yes," I said, nodding.

"I think," Faith said, "that if you try to tell me anything else about Arcane Magic, I'm going to jump over the table and kick you in the face."

"Please don't," Emily said wearily.

"I'm just gonna eat my breakfast, then," I said, picking up my breakfast sandwich and taking a big bite. "...Mmf. This is really good. Faith, I am really glad you actually know how to cook."

"I had some help, but... Thanks."

We ate our breakfast without too much more chatter, and then Volex strutted back in from the cab.

"Good news, everyone," Volex said. "We're making good time, and we'll be at Mount Fate in time for an early lunch. Gods willing, we'll be done with this stupid road trip before the sun goes down."

A cheer went up, until Faith made an excellent point:

"Hang on, nothing's gonna change," Faith said. "We're still gonna be sleeping in a van."

"Yeah, but now you can go outside," I pointed out.

"...Oh yeah..."

And just like that, all was right again.