Xander Quest Chapter 335: Another Magical Summer 7, a private fanfic

It has been about three weeks since the raid on Silbern, and you've had a great pile of loot undergoing sorting and assessment for most of that time, courtesy of Ambrose, Balthazar, and Arthur Drake's staff and contacts. As there is still the matter of deciding who among you gets the final claim on which portions of the plunder, nothing will have been sold off as of yet, and even once that does get started, you've been warned that it will take some time - months at least, possibly years - for all the spoils to be liquidated in a manner that doesn't lead the Wandenreich to your allies' doors, while keeping the profit margins up.

You're fine with that part of things, but you WOULD prefer that said profit started flowing sooner rather than later, and so you've arranged to meet with your fellow arch-arcanists to get the matter of ownership of the various magical items and other more interesting ill-gotten gains finalized.

So it is that you call it a night early on Saturday, putting yourself under with a Sleep Spell so that you can wake up a bit before one in the morning and still feel fully rested. After some quiet exercise, the earliest breakfast you can recall having - at least without dragging other time zones into it - and a quick clean-up and dressing, you head down to your Mirror Hideaway and open a Gate to Tokyo, stepping through to the Tower in the form of a Japanese teenager - a reasonable choice for the late afternoon/early evening.

Teleporting to Karakura and making your way to Urahara Shop, you pick up the man himself as previously arranged, and then teleport to Ambrose's travel-closet in Wales.

The wizard and Balthazar are both there waiting for you, and they offer the usual greetings before getting down to business.

"At this point, we have all the enchanted or otherwise explicitly supernatural items separated out from the rest," Ambrose states. "Only about three-fifths of those have had their purpose and powers identified, however."

"Quincy stuff giving you some trouble?" you guess.

"Working out the function of their rarer or more recent creations has been something of a challenge," the wizard admits, "at least since I've been avoiding the use of Planar Binding rituals to just call up someone who could give me the answers."

You consider that for a moment, and then nod, seeing the problem. Even with the loss of Silbern, the Wandenreich should still have at least some means of accessing the Spirit Realms, so it's not impossible that casting Planar Binding might drag in a living Quincy who was scouting out the Soul Society or Hueco Mundo - and if Ambrose DIDN'T call a Quincy, he'd probably get a Shinigami instead. Either way, getting such a person to talk to "a strange human magic-user" about Quincy relics and then NOT inform their superiors about it would almost certainly require outright mind-control, memory modification, and/or murder.

You can't really blame Ambrose for not wanting to go down those roads if he's got reasonable alternatives - and being a wizard, he no doubt does, just more time-consuming ones. Hence the delay in getting everything tested and tagged.

Also, this way Urahara can potentially contribute something.

"It's not just the Quincy-made items, though," the old man goes on. "The Wandenreich have been operating all over the world for centuries, if not the entire millennium since their old empire fell, and they picked up quite a lot of other people's stuff in the process, some of it far enough outside my field of expertise that it's almost as hard to figure out."

"But only almost," Balthazar observes.

"I'd be a poor wizard if I'd lived this long and stayed completely ignorant of how they did things in other parts of the world," Ambrose replies. "Cultural differences aside, the other big delay has been dealing with the demonic, cursed, or otherwise nasty bits."

"Any problems there?" you ask.

"Mostly just finding secure space to stash it so all the dark magic doesn't start interacting."

Yeah, that would be ugly.

The loot has been divided among different chambers by approximate type and required level of security. Which category of magic items do you want to inspect first?

While the collection of written materials is very, very tempting to your sensibilities, you feel that it is probably (slightly) more important to get the assorted pieces of dark magic sorted out as soon as possible.

Even without digging into them in any detail, Ganondorf's memories offer entirely too many examples of evil or just inherently hazardous stuff being left around unsupervised - and him subsequently taking advantage of it, more often than not - for you to be comfortable with the idea of a bunch of similar items sitting around the Drake residence in the long term.

"I am relieved to hear that," Ambrose says, when you state your preference for getting the bad stuff out of the way. "This way."

Due to the potential risks of housing too many cursed, demonic, and/or otherwise evil magic items in close proximity to one another, Ambrose and the Drakes ended up splitting the items in question between a number of different holding rooms. The room that Ambrose guides you to first contains, in his words, "Most of the problematic stuff that you or your proxies were responsible for grabbing."

Considering that you only noticed the one evil-feeling book, that statement is a little ominous. In your defense, curses are subtle, there was a LOT of loot being moved around, and you were taking a page from Captain Zaraki's book and focusing on speed and quantity of plunder, rather than spending time studying your gains in detail. Still...

After Ambrose unlocks and unbars the door to the room in question, the very first thing you see when you enter is actually NOT that Corrupted Tome - though that IS on a stand, off to the left. Instead, you are a bit dismayed to see that gemstone-studded Magic Rod being held up by an iron stand. True, your Shadow had some trouble reading its aura back in Silbern, and he DID have an Unseen Servant move it just to be sure, but he also handled the thing himself, to no ill effect.

"So, what's wrong with the rod?" you ask, nodding towards the scepter without getting any closer. "Is it cursed? Because my Shadow picked it up briefly, and nothing seemed to come of it."

"Not surprising," Ambrose replies. "It IS cursed, but it's not the sort that kicks in just because someone picked up the shiny thing. You'd have to actually try to USE the thing, first."

"And what does it do?"

"It appears to be a Magus-crafted version of a Rod of Splendor," Balthazar replies. Reading your expression, he continues smoothly, "A normal Rod of this sort makes its bearer more charming, outgoing, and strong-willed for as long as it's carried, and can instantaneously dress them in very fine, very old-fashioned clothes and jewelry."

"How fine and how old?" you ask.

"The sort of outfits most nobles and a fair number of kings from four or five centuries back wouldn't have turned their noses up at," the Merlinean Master answers readily. "That said, the outfit can normally only be conjured once per day, and if any part of it is given or taken away or used for any purpose other than being worn, it all immediately vanishes."

You blink at that.

"The other standard power of a Rod of Splendor is to conjure a pavilion with the size, furnishings, and food to support up to a hundred people for a day," Balthazar continues. "At the end of that time, everything it conjured disappears, although the food was stable enough to be safe to eat. It could only be used that way a few times per month."

"Alright," you say slowly, while comparing that last power to your Spell to Create a Magnificent Mansion and finding the magic item to come up a bit short. "I'm with you so far... and I noticed you kept emphasizing the words 'normal' and 'standard' when you described the Rod's powers; does it have other functions, besides the curse?"

"There are a few low-level Abjuration, Augmentation, Divination, and Illusion effects worked into it," Ambrose takes over. "They're all oriented around social interaction, making the Rod's owner more perceptive of others' expressions and moods, but harder to read accurately in turn. There is ALSO an Enchantment based on the Spell to Charm a Person, refined to the point where it would stand a reasonable chance of working on a fairly strong-willed individual, such as, oh, your average Quincy."

"And the curse?" you ask.

"Seems set to turn that Enchantment on the USER, if they aren't a member of the Magus bloodline the Rod was created by," the wizard says. "We haven't gotten around to determining just which family that is yet, just so you know, though I can tell you from the spellwork that it's not any of the big names."

Okay.

Moving on to the Corrupted Tome, Ambrose tells you that the bits of Sylvan-like language you couldn't recognize are a dialect of Gnomish, and don't really add much to the comprehensibility of the madman's scrawl even when you can read them. Mostly, they describe the practices and patrons of certain cults that it was really better not to get mixed up with, as "Members and witnesses to their ceremonies have a distressing tendency to wind up insane, eaten, and dead, usually in that order."

Lovely. "Does the book do anything?"

"As foul as it feels, it's not DIRECTLY harmful," Ambrose grudgingly admits, "and those summoning diagrams it describes are set up in such a way that the Book as a whole could be used to extend the duration of spells of summoning and calling - but only for the minions of the abominations described in those pages."

"...do you mean that the minions would be what was summoned, or that the person employing the Tome would have to be a servant?" you ask, seeking clarity.

"Yes," comes the unhelpful reply.

Aside from the two items you recognize, there are four other unpleasant odds and ends in the room. One is a pair of silver bracelets that look like they were shaped to resemble "chains" of bones- at least until Ambrose advises you that the bones are very real, and that they were dipped in the metal while it was molten. The ghoulish things function like standard Bracers of Armor, except that they cause the wearer's skin to gradually take on the pallid hue and waxy texture of a corpse, and also make their joints and tendons stiffen slightly, so that smooth, quick movement becomes more difficult.

"Which wouldn't be a problem for an undead wearer or certain practitioners of Necromancy," Ambrose notes. "As for the rest of us..."

From what the older spellcasters have said, there's nothing the Rod of Splendor does that you aren't capable of reproducing on your own, which reduces its potential value to you. Under different circumstances, you might be willing to do a few tests of your own and then hand it back to its proper owners for favors to be negotiated later - but its maker was evidently a Magus, which makes that option somewhat unappealing.

You've been warned off from revealing yourself to the Clock Tower in the past, and returning an obviously expensive and fairly powerful magic item to a family that may or may not have been shamed by its loss is the sort of thing that could draw attention. Especially in light of how shiny the Rod is, and the potential for making "friends" and influencing people that it would grant a user.

"Did you use a Vision Spell to investigate its history, Ambrose?" you inquire.

"As I didn't feel like wearing myself out for a whole day with all this other work in need of doing, no," the wizard answers. "Going to cut to the chase and find out who made the thing, then?"

"If that's alright with you," you state.

"The room is warded enough to be safe, and I'll admit to being curious." Ambrose backs up a step and waves you forward. "Knock yourself out."

You get out your Conjured Book and set up your ivory statuettes of the Goddesses around the stand holding the Rod. Then you make with the magic and read the results.

"...does the name 'Delgado' ring any bells?" you say a moment later.

"Not off the top of my head," Ambrose replies, glancing at Balthazar.

"Not in the context of it being a Magus family," the sorcerer answers.

And then the two of them turn to Urahara.

"It's not a name I've ever heard in person."

That tracks; from what your magic has revealed, the Delgado family were a lower-mid-ranked Magus clan about six centuries back, which was when their then-current head created the "Scepter of Delgado" as a symbol of his office, a focus for the family's Mysteries, and because "a traveler from a distant realm" had showed off a similar device among his panoply of strange Mystic Codes, which the family had been determinedly striving to reproduce for a few centuries.

The Scepter was the Delgados' first big success, as the basic functionality of a Rod of Splendor - making the wielder more impressive to his fellow man, and better able to influence them - was compatible with the family's traditions, which focused on the concept of "charm."

"Does it say if that's meant to be 'charm' as in 'personal magnetism', or 'charm' as in 'outright mind-control'?" Ambrose wonders.

"It doesn't specify," you admit.

The wizard looks bemused. "I'm always tempted to believe the worst of Magi, of course, and the addition of an actual Charm Spell to that Rod suggests I'd be right to in this case, and yet I have this delightful image of this family trying to reach the Root by making themselves as charismatic as humanly possible, and then just ASKING to be let in for a moment and out again."

"Do you think that would work?" Balthazar asks.

"It hasn't YET, obviously, or we both would have heard of these folks - but if it DOES turn out to be a valid angle, I'll have to take my wizard hat off to them."

You make a mental note to Commune with the Goddesses for information about the Delgado family, but later. You may have other loot-related questions by then...

...though they probably won't be about THESE two items. The Book of Cults is decidedly unappealing to you now that you know just what it does, and the limits on its usefulness. For all that it has some functionality as a metamagic item, you would really rather not try to pattern any work of your own on it, just in case you included some prayer to a mind-shattering horror from beyond by accident.

As for the Bone Armor Bracers, you've already turned out a product that is at least competitive with them, in the form of the Warrior-Princess Bracers, and those didn't come with unpleasant drawbacks like making the wearer look like a walking corpse.

Three other pieces occupy this room of hazardous items.

One of these is a ring, a gold band set with a cluster of small diamonds that seem clear when you look at them directly, but then shift to a dark red if you're looking at them out of the corner of one eye. You don't detect any enchantments worked into the piece, nor any corruption, but the way the color of the stones changes like that is concerning, especially given how close the hue is to that of blood.

"An otherwise non-magical man's ring, anchoring a straightforward curse of misfortune," Balthazar observes. "Mind you, it's not the result of a spell; this is the sort of curse where the ring was exposed to enough tragedy over an extended period of time to take some of that suffering into itself."

Concerning, to be sure, but if you can break the curse and cleanse those diamonds, you would have a number of potential uses for them...

Next up is...

"That's a zanpakuto," Urahara notes mildly, shifting his grip on his cane slightly.

The two halves of the broken blade have been suspended inside another iron stand, the portion still attached to the hilt at the top and aimed down, with the other piece below it; the scabbard, meanwhile, is lined up alongside the weapon. Magically and spiritually, the weapon feels... semi-dormant, but also wreathed in anger, hatred, and demonic essence.

Not the spiritual energy of a Hollow and not the similarly dark and wild but more physically oriented energies of a youkai, but full-blown demonic corruption. It's actually sunk into the broken halves of the blade, pitting and darkening the spiritual steel.

What the hell happened THERE?

Finally - at least for this room - there is an iron-bound chest of Quincy design just large enough for you to stick your head inside. When Balthazar cracks the lid open, an aura of undirected malice radiates from the disturbingly life-like black skull that is revealed to be within the box. Speaking as someone with experience in the field of Necromancy and a certain (inherited) history of raising the dead for fun and profit, you can tell right away that this skull could have belonged to a human, Hylian, or similar-shaped and -sized creature; the only reason you're sure it doesn't is because the entire thing is carved from one large piece of ebony.

"This is a Darkskull," Balthazar states. "It's a portable anchor for the sort of unhallowed energy field that demon lords and other evil Powers set on places they consider sacred or important enough to be worth protecting. This particular one has an Invisibility Purge worked into it."

You glance at Briar, but she doesn't really look any different in your eyes, and everybody else in here could already see her, too.

"And the Wandenreich had this?" Urahara wonders.

"I think I remember seeing that chest in the research area," you say, thinking back.

"It included some documentation," Ambrose confirms. "The Quincy took the Darkskull from a necromancer they put down in Eastern Europe during the interregnum between the World Wars. He'd been experimenting to see what new sorts of horrors he could animate from victims of poison gas, whether he could raise soldiers that retained modern fighting skills, and how the environment affected 'ordinary' zombies and skeletons."

...charming. Really.

"Indeed," Ambrose agrees. "In any case, the Wandenreich shot him very dead, made sure of his phylactery, and then dragged this cheerful conversation piece back to their own labs to try and make sense of it, and maybe adapt it for their use."

"A field like this seems like it would suit Hollows very well," Urahara says. "Even the part where it made them visible to regular humans would have a certain... appeal." Sourly, he explains, "Some of them like the taste of fear."

Knowing the creatures' feeding habits, you know the shopkeeper is being quite literal. At first glance, the functions of the Darkskull would not seem to benefit the Quincy, but Balthazar compared to a mobile Unhallow effect - and you know that the Hallow Spell has almost the exact opposite effects. A field that weakened Hollows and other undead seems like the sort of thing that would have been RIGHT up the Quincies' alley.

"Did the Wandenreich make any progress with that project?" you ask.

Ambrose shakes his head. "If they did, it wasn't in the notes we've read."

Well, then.

"If you're asking whether I can get it back to Soul Society without bringing any heat down on you, that's easy enough," the shopkeeper replies. "I can just tell them that your minions looted it, and you didn't realize what you had until later - after which you handed it over to me."

Sometimes, you reflect, it's amazing just how much time and trouble can be saved by simply telling the truth.

"Now, if you're asking me what to do about the corruption clinging to the sword," Urahara goes on, peering at the broken blade with an expression that is half revolted grimace and half fascinated stare, "I have to admit to some uncertainty. Seeing a zanpakuto corrupted like this is rare, to say the least; for all that they're weapons, they're also fundamentally tools of purification, and of divine manufacture besides. That makes them pretty resistant to curses, demonic taint, and similarly nasty forces."

"And yet, here we are," Balthazar notes.

Urahara bobs his bucket-hat in admission of the facts, and then turns to you. "Can you cast that book-spell of yours again?"

"I can," you reply. "You're thinking it might be easier to work out a course of action if we know what happened to the sword?"

"At the very least, it should identify the cause of the corruption," he answers.

You really don't need a capital-E Evil conversation piece like the Darkskull sitting on a counter in your lab or your bedroom table, and you ESPECIALLY don't need the sort of problems that could ensue if you brought a mobile field of unholy energy to the Hellmouth. Oh, sure, the chest does seem to block those emanations, Ambrose's wards on your house repel Sunnydale's ambient corruption, and you could limit your experimentation to your Mirror Hideaway - but Evil begets Evil, and you can't be entirely certain that bringing something consecrated to a Dark Power into your home wouldn't weaken your defenses.

At the very least, the fact that the Darkskull IS sanctified suggests that who- or whatever it's dedicated to could look in on its location whenever they felt like it. Ambrose is evidently confident enough in his wards to let the skull be revealed - briefly, anyway - but the defenses he has on his corner of the Drake Estate are more powerful and much longer established than the work he did on your place.

The idea of having an evil god spying on your home, or even just your Mirror Hideaway, does not appeal in the slightest.

Issues of potential unholy eavesdropping aside, the Darkskull is a potent enough relic that you don't fancy the idea of selling it, either. The odds that it'll end up in the hands of another necromancer or similarly ill-intentioned individual just seem too high for your peace of mind. With that in mind, unless one of your associates wants the thing-

"Not particularly," Ambrose replies.

"Maybe as an object lesson for Dave," Balthazar muses.

"I definitely don't need Soul Society coming around asking why there's an energy field capable of strengthening Hollows emanating from my shop," Urahara admits. "Though if I could get a copy of the Wandenreich's research notes..."

-you're going to "keep" the Darkskull just long enough to disenchant it.

You'll do the same with the Cursed Diamond Ring, although in this case, it'll be less "disenchantment" and more "curse-breaking." You don't think these diamonds are valuable enough to serve as fodder for a Limited Wish, but once you've cleansed them of the malignant energy that clings to them, they should make for excellent reagents for at least some level of Restoration.

No time like the present, right?

You relocate your Ivory Statuettes, set up fresh Gold Incense, and repeat your spell.

The tale that inks itself into the pages of your Conjured Book tells of a Shinigami of the Seventh Division from seventy years back, a Fifteenth Seat by the name of Kita Yudai-

You pause and glance at Urahara, who shakes his head, clearly not recognizing the name.

-who encountered a warlock that was harvesting human souls to trade with his demonic patron. Such were the mortal's power and protections that he was able to face off against a single, relatively low-ranking Shinigami officer and not die, but as he had no interest in warring with a death god over the souls he'd acquired, the warlock attempted to flee by means of a Plane Shift.

Subsequently, the Shinigami found himself standing in a fortress in an unfamiliar Hell-dimension with a dead body on the end of his blade, a cursed pouch containing several innocent souls in desperate need of protection, and one warlock's damned spirit screaming in fury and horror to find himself paying his final dues to his patron so suddenly.

Taking advantage of his ghostly nature and an entirely unexpected arrival, Fifteenth Seat Kita took to the shadows-

"Unusual for one of the Seventh Division," Urahara notes. "They're usually more about bold defiance and stand-up fights."

"Like the Eleventh?" you guess.

"Oh, they're not THAT bad... mostly, anyway."

-and stayed there for a time as he tried to determine where he was and how he might return to the Soul Society.

Then, in his exploration of the demonic stronghold, he discovered an "angelic warrior" being held in the dungeons - a Quincy by the name of Genevieve Beaufort.

Seeing a living, uncorrupted human woman being held prisoner by the demons for what was sure to be a horrible fate, Kita Yudai decided he was honor-bound to break her out and get her back to Earth.

"Now THAT sounds more like one of the Seventh," Urahara sighs. "And also more than a little like Isshin..."

Miss Beaufort, who'd managed to hide a backup Quincy Cross when the demons caught her, nearly shot the Shinigami's head off when he "rescued" her.

"Didn't Masaki shoot at Isshin when they first met?" you say, thinking back to what you were told about the Kurosakis' first meeting.

"It's an amusing similarity, isn't it?" Urahara says with a faint smile. "A shame that we have evidence that this story doesn't have such a happy ending." He gestures at the corroded zanpakuto.

Continuing to read, you learn that the jailbreak-turned-attempted homicide was interrupted by the arrival of some of the demon guards, and that Kita and Beaufort found common ground in the destruction of their mutual enemy, agreeing to stop trying to kill each other and work together until they were both out of the Hell-dimension and - preferably - back on Earth.

They eventually succeeded in their quest, but it took them an entire year, during which time they survived in the wilds of the Lower Plane. Unlike the sort of demon realms you're used to, this wasn't one of the ash-choked volcanic wastelands, but a lush and vital region that wouldn't have looked too out of place in Earth's jungles or the tropical parts of Faerie - especially the latter, given the abundance of hideously mutated animals, horrifying monsters, and general nastiness that could be found there.

The book describes the task of figuring out what was edible in that place as "an adventure all its own."

This is also where you get a clue as to the source of the zanpakuto's corruption. While the soul-cutting swords are, as Urahara said, designed to purify souls, they're meant for a specific KIND of purification, not a general-purpose "cleanse all evil" effect. Spending a year trapped in a Hell-dimension that apparently never had contact with the Shinigami before - or vice-versa - and killing its denizens on a sometimes hourly basis kept exposing the weapon to more and corruption of a sort that it just hadn't been designed to cope with, and while Fifteenth Seat Kita did his best to care for his weapon, scrubbing away spiritual taint is harder than just getting rid of dirt - especially when everything you might use as a cleaning agent is to some extent corrupted itself.

To his credit, the Shinigami realized the problem after a month and did his best to avoid using his zanpakuto from thereon out, relying instead on kido and hakuda in combat, but sometimes that just wasn't an option. A good blade is simply faster than most Shinigami spell-chants, at least at the skill-level of a Fifteenth Seat, and it enjoys advantages of reach and pure lethality over unarmed strikes besides.

Miss Beaufort ran into a similar issue with her Quincy Crosses - having managed to steal her normal medallion back from her captors in the break-out from the fortress - as they hadn't exactly been designed to channel so much corrupted spiritual energy, either. That said, the Crosses WERE designed to filter unpleasant energies out of what they gathered, Genevieve DID have two of them, and she COULD eventually get them replaced if she stayed alive long enough, so the issue wasn't quite so serious for her.

Ultimately, the unlikely allies ended up storming the citadel of that Hell-dimension's ruler, after confirming from various untrustworthy sources that had no reason to agree with each other that it contained a portal to Earth. This led to a somewhat amusing inversion of the classic fantasy battle, where instead of a band of plucky heroes striving to prevent a demon lord from crossing into the Mortal Plane, it was the DEMON trying to prevent the HEROES from fighting their way past him to freedom.

Against an opponent of that caliber, Kita had little choice but to draw his blade, and such was the demon's power and sheer noxious evil that the zanpakuto finally gave up and broke - though not, it must be said, without striking a fatal blow.

Or at least one that WOULD have been fatal, if Miss Beaufort hadn't used the demon lord's agonized distraction to put a soul-destroying arrow right through his brain. Which was... actually in his stomach?

Meh, demons.

In any case, while Shinigami and Quincy were triumphant, they hadn't come out of that battle unscathed. There'd been a running fight through the lord's fortress and most of its present guards before they ever laid eyes on the unholy tyrant, and the demon hadn't fought alone or died easily. Both victors were seriously injured, but Kita had taken the worst of it, trusting a little too much to his Shinigami resilience and letting his manly pride get ahead of him.

So it was that Genevieve Beaufort half-dragged and half-carried a dying Soul Reaper back to Earth - specifically, somewhere in the lady's native France - where he was able to complete his original goal by performing a Soul Burial on the stolen (or kidnapped) Japanese ghosts, which he'd amazingly managed to keep safe and mostly pure the entire time. Having long since lost his communicator and lacking knowledge of the kido that would enable him to make contact with or return to the Soul Society without such a device, Kita chose to go down "fighting," as it were, and expended the last of his strength calling up and then overpowering the most destructive kido he knew, which he turned on the demonic gateway after a protesting Genevieve had moved to a safe distance.

The ensuing detonation of spiritual power caught the attention of the local branch of the Wandenreich, who retrieved their missing sister-in-arms and escorted her back to Silbern, taking Kita's zanpakuto with them and putting it on public display (albeit behind heavy spiritual shielding that contained the demonic taint).

"'As a reminder to us all that, though the institution of the Thirteen Divisions and the nobility they serve are corrupt and self-serving, individual Shinigami may at times prove themselves worthy of the mantle of honorable, righteous guardians of souls they would claim'," you read off, quoting the Grandmaster himself.

High praise, but you have to wonder if Jugram would have spoken so well of Kita Yudai if he'd been found alive, or if Genevieve Beaufort hadn't come home in one piece.

Closing the Conjured Book for the moment, you ask Urahara if the Shinigami would like Kita's zanpakuto back-

"They would," he replies. "And even if that weren't the case, it could be risky for you to keep the sword."

"How so?"

"I can't say too much without getting myself into trouble by giving up state secrets of the Soul Society," Urahara says with a smile and a wave of his fan, "but I can probably get away with telling you that the capability to determine the location of any given zanpakuto exists."

You look at Kita Yudai's broken sword, think about where it was for the last half a century and more - and of the other zanpakuto you saw being retrieved by the Shinigami during the raid on Silbern - and then look at Urahara again. "Does this... capability... have some particular limitations, or did the Wandenreich manage to stumble upon a way to block it?"

"I honestly don't know," the scientist answers, looking and sounded rather frustrated by that.

This new information is unhelpful, but you suppose it would be worse if you weren't aware of the risk. Speaking of which...

"Your wards are up, right, Ambrose?"

"They've been on high alert since we started looting the castle," the wizard replies mildly. "I HAVE done this sort of thing a time or two before, you know."

Oh, good.

Anyway, since continued fairly positive relations with the Soul Society are much preferable to having a potential Shinigami-magnet on your person or in your home, you will most likely NOT be keeping Kita Yudai's zanpakuto.

On that note, you ask Urahara if the Thirteen Divisions would like the sword cleansed and repaired before you return it to them.

"It could go either way," the shopkeeper admits. "Handing the blade over as-is would help verify the story, and I know that Captain Kurotsuchi would love the chance to examine a zanpakuto tainted by demonic energy." He frowns, adding, "So would Aizen. Then again, if you DID purify the sword before giving it back, either of them could pull more data about your magic from the zanpakuto's condition."

That is an unfortunately true point. Oh, you yourself won't be directly detectable as long as you have Mind Blank up when you work on the sword, and you could easily erase any lingering physical or magical traces, but the state of the purified zanpakuto itself would still hold some clues to your capabilities.

Granted, in order to make full sense of those clues, the Shinigami might have to forcibly contaminate a few zanpakuto with demonic energy to see what a corrupted soul-cutter looks like BEFORE it's purified - but given what you've heard about Kurotsuchi Mayuri and Aizen Sousuke, you doubt they'd hesitate to arrange for a few low-ranking reapers to get "lost" in a Hell-dimension, or something similar.

"You should also be aware that it's too late to really fix this zanpakuto," Urahara says then. "Repairing the physical form is one thing, but a zanpakuto lives and dies with its wielder. When Kita Yudai passed, the spirit of his sword went with him."

Ah. And here you are, not yet having learned how to raise the dead, much less dead sword-spirits. If that's even possible...?

Perhaps it's just as well, though. If the captains' reaction to life-extension magic and the summoning of dead souls was any indication, they probably wouldn't be happy about you bringing the dead back to life.

On that note...

Also, do you want to send a copy of your Literary Vision with the blade?

On the one hand, you don't like the idea of leaving a cursed item laying around any longer than you really need to.

On the other hand, you're leery of giving certain elements of Soul Society any more information about your capabilities than you absolutely have to.

Back to the first hand, whatever long-overdue funerary ceremony Kita Yudai is due from his comrades would probably go over better if his zanpakuto were neat and clean - and the man himself definitely deserves that memorial.

Returning to the second hand, the current state of the broken blade adds a certain awful something to the story your Literary Vision revealed, making it - and by extension, Kita's actions - more real and memorable.

But then again...

You weigh the pros and cons of both courses of actions, and finally decide that the most acceptable course of action is to purify the zanpakuto.

You don't do this right away, however. You'll be borrowing Ambrose's spellcasting chamber before the day is out regardless; best to know just how MUCH additional spellwork is needed, before you go negotiating the rental price.

This decision is much more easily made. Kita Yudai's story is one that deserves to be told, just to honor the man's courage, honor, and self-sacrifice - to say nothing of potentially clearing his name if he's down in the Thirteen Divisions' records as a deserter or something. Not only that, but given how long-lived Shinigami can be, it's not impossible that the former Fifteenth Seat of the Seventh Division has fellow officers, friends, and family who are still alive and still wondering about what happened to him.

They deserve to hear what became of him.

There are a few other cursed, corrupted, and/or evil items in this room, but you're informed that these were collected by the other members of the raid, so now is not the time for you to stake a claim on any of them.

"They're in here partly because of the order we fished them out of the pile," Ambrose says, as he leads the way out of the room, "and partly because we didn't want people handling the obvious black magic any more than they absolutely had to."

Fair enough.

"The rest of your contribution to our collection of cursed clutter is in here," the wizard adds, directing you across the hall.

A casual gesture from the master of the suite has the door unlocking and opening itself automatically - just as the entryway to the room behind you seals itself once everyone is out - and once the way is clear, you step inside to take a look around-

-and promptly stop and stare at an item hanging on the right-hand wall.

"What's wrong?" Briar asks, as she flies in. "What do you- oh."

"Which one are you...?" Ambrose wonders as he comes in. "Oh, that. That's actually NOT one of the things your lot grabbed."

"But it's a Skull Mask," you say.

And indeed, it is - and not just one of those masks carved or sewn in the shape of various monsters that you dimly recall Ganondorf seeing in one store in Hyrule Castletown, but an ACTUAL made-of-bone mask worn by a Skull Kid.

It's also rather cursed, which is worrying.

Ambrose starts to say something as he glances at the Mask, then catches himself, looks back at you, and says, "You're NOT simply stating what it's made of, are you."

It's not really a question, but you answer it anyway, explaining about Skull Kids.

This has all three of the older men in the room looking at the Mask.

"Now how do you suppose it got into Quincy hands?" Urahara muses.

As you already decided, Kita Yudai's story deserves to be told - and there's nothing in the version of said story, as revealed to you by your Literary Vision, that seems like it might be dangerous to share with the Soul Society at large, even with the amoral to outright evil individuals within the Shinigami ranks.

The knowledge that a zanpakuto can be corrupted by overexposure to demonic essence is something the Thirteen Divisions should definitely be made aware of, if they didn't already know, so that they can look into the matter and start developing countermeasures or refining their existing ones. Such a project is likely to be time- and effort-intensive; best for them to get on it as soon as possible, and preferably at a time when they aren't engaged in open hostilities with any demonic powers - or anyone else, for that matter - so that there's no pressure to take "shortcuts" and they can afford to do the thing right.

True, you'd be giving the troublemakers ideas, but returning Kita's purified sword would have done that anyway. At least THIS way, you might be able to focus the bad guys' attention on identifying and working with a source of demonic taint that they KNOW can affect zanpakuto, rather than inspiring them to throw all kinds of random corruption at the swords until they find something that sticks. And the other captains, at least, will know what to be on the lookout for.

Likewise, the risks of an extended stay in a Hell-dimension - or at least that PARTICULAR demonic plane - are something that the Shinigami deserve to be warned about, if they were previously ignorant. The fact that only two means of accessing the realm in question were mentioned, and that both of them were destroyed by Kita decades ago, should limit the trouble Aizen and Kurotsuchi can get up to... or Zaraki, for that matter.

An entire plane full of of savage warriors, monstrous beasts, and aggressive plants just seems like the sort of place the Captain of the Eleventh Division would REALLY like to visit.

Jugram's little commendation/condemnation isn't likely to make the Shinigami think any worse of him than they already did - indeed, the fact that he recognized the valor of one of their own will probably be appreciated, in that stoic, respectful, "I'm still going to kill you" manner of proud warriors - and the only other member of the Wandenreich who's directly named in the tale is Miss Beaufort, who spent a whole year fighting alongside Kita, kept the letter and the spirit of her promise not to double-cross him, and helped him to save half a dozen souls from damnation.

Once again, Quincy or not, that just seems like the sort of thing the Shinigami are more likely to approve of than to take umbrage over.

So, yeah, full disclosure should be safe.

Nobody objects, and you once again set up for the spell. You are a little concerned that it might not work; ultimately being derived from the Spell of Legend Lore, there is a certain lower limit of significance - a "legendaryness," if you will - that objects, creatures, and locations must clear before the magic will lock on to them, and while your mastery of Divination Magic gives you some leeway with that, Skull Kids are still not all that important in the greater scheme of Hyrulean things, much less on other worlds.

That said, a Skull Kid whose mask made it into the Wandenreich's hands, with a moderately strong curse attached? There's definitely a story there, which improves your odds of getting a response.

And so, you cast.

And so, words once again appear in your Conjured Book.

And so, you read.

You learn of Termina, a land "adjacent" to Hyrule, which was once protected by a quartet of guardian deities. Long ago, these Four Giants lived together with the people of Termina at the heart of the land, uniting and blessing all with their presence, but one day the Giants decreed that they would separate and travel to the far corners of the land to sleep. They reassured the people that they would continue to watch over them even in slumber, telling them that if ever the Four Giants were needed to protect Termina, they could be called upon with "a great shout." Then the Giants parted ways, each taking one hundred great strides in a different cardinal direction: one to the Southern Swamp; one to the northern peak of Snowhead; one to the Great Bay on the western coast; the last to Ikana Canyon in the east; and in those places, they lay down to rest.

Though all the people of Termina missed their protectors, none mourned their absence more than their best friend, the Skull Kid. Misunderstanding the Giants' intentions and believing himself abandoned, the little mischief's sorrow soon turned to anger, and his once-harmless pranks became cruel and painful. After a time, the imp had caused such misery to the people that they could bear no more and called upon their gods to aid them. Upon discovering what their little friend had done, such was the Giants' anger that they commanded the Skull Kid to leave Termina, on pain of death. Shocked and frightened, he did as he was told.

"Seems like a bit of extreme reaction for a group of friends," you note.

"None of them are human," Balthazar notes. "Death threats may not hold quite the same finality as they would for us."

"From the sound of things, this prankster also woke his friends up while they were trying to sleep after the equivalent of a very long and busy day," Ambrose adds. "They may have been cranky."

The story continues that, sometime after fleeing Termina, the Skull Kid came to Hyrule and encountered the young Hero of Time, who befriended him and gave him "a new face" - this very Skull Mask - after learning that the Skull Kid had been overheard complaining about his own face (or lack thereof).

And then came the night when the King of Evil seized the Triforce and called his armies to invade Hyrule Castletown. Among those who managed to flee the assault was a merchant known as the Happy Mask Salesman, a collector and seller and sometimes guardian of masks both new and old, mundane and magical - and sometimes dangerous. Carrying the most precious and perilous of his wares as he fled the sack of the capital, the Salesman's desperation to find refuge from the Gerudo army and their monstrous allies drove him to seek shelter under the fringes of the Lost Woods. Thus, he too would meet the Skull Kid.

As a rule, Skull Kids have little love for adults, and this particular example of the breed was inclined to be especially nasty. He attacked the Salesman and stole one of his wares, an ancient relic known as Majora's Mask, which a long-vanished tribe had used as a focus for many rituals of dark magic, until the Mask's own power grew so great and wicked that it had to be sealed away to prevent a catastrophe. This was why the Happy Mask Salesman took it with him when he fled his shop, for even if the Gerudo did not find the Mask themselves, the violence and slaughter they had wrought at their King's command could weaken the seals upon it, perhaps enough to awaken its evil once more.

But in his attempt to protect Majora's Mask from Ganondorf, the Salesman took it straight to another with darkness in their soul - a lesser darkness, perhaps, born of loneliness and pain rather than greed and pride, but darkness all the same.

Like calls to like, Darkness to Darkness - and so the Skull Kid took Majora's Mask, and donned it, and was greatly empowered by the malicious magic inside.

With his baser desires encouraged by the Mask's dark will, the Skull Kid returned to Termina to take revenge on his former friends and the people who had never appreciated him. He cursed each of the Four Giants in turn, to prevent them from being awoken again, and then spread chaos across the length and breadth of the land - and as the people suffered, their pain and fear fed Majora's Mask, enabling it to take greater control of its unwitting host and perform greater and more terrible feats of dark magic.

And then, when its power reached its peak-!

You pause and re-read the line in question, because that CAN'T be right.

"What does it say?" Urahara asks.

"It says the Mask dropped the MOON on them."

There is a long pause.

"Does it say how big this moon was?" Ambrose ventures.

You read again. "...big enough to completely crush the central town, apparently."

"...okay. So, NOT nearly the size of EARTH'S Moon. That's... something, I suppose..."

Okay.

O. Kay.

Deep breaths, now.

Whatever its actual size, the "Moon" in question was apparently a hunk of rock that satisfied whatever local qualifiers for a natural satellite the people of Termina used. To wit, it was presumably in orbit around their world beforehand - and it MUST have been another world, there's no way you'd have missed the fallout of an impact like THAT happening on the planet where Hyrule stands, whether in your memories or through the accounts you've read and heard. From this, you can infer that the Moon was far enough out from said planet to not get dragged down by gravity and/or atmospheric drag millennia or eons earlier, meaning a distance of thousands of miles at LEAST. More likely many TENS of thousands.

You're trying to calculate just how much power it would take to move, at a conservative estimate, a mountain-sized mass of solid rock out of a stable orbit and onto a precise target THAT FAR from its original position.

You are also trying VERY hard not to feel panicked by the numbers that you keep arriving at.

...or for that matter, to feel envious, because that would be almost as bad a response, just in a different way.

As it happens, there is a ninth-circle spell whose workings are at least broadly similar to the phenomenon you're morbidly contemplating: namely, Meteor Swarm. And while you haven't studied the spell itself and thus can't precisely nail down the physical or magical values involved, the fact that it IS a known ninth-level spell does give you a starting point for estimates - at least if you assume it's a BATTLE SPELL, as opposed to a RITUAL.

Which you have to admit - or hope? - is doubtful, because you REALLY can't see "Moon Fall" as being anything LESS than an eleventh-tier battle magic, if it's even THAT low. More likely it would blow past even YOUR considerable potential upper limits, which would say Very Concerning Things about the kind of power Majora's Mask can bring to bear.

IF you were dealing with a combat spell.

If the Terminan Moon's descent was accomplished via a ritual instead, preferably of the sort that took days or weeks to build up to, that would significantly cut down on the amount of raw power the Mask could access at any given moment. You probably can't hope for the magic to have taken any longer to invoke than that, though; if Termina was so close to Hyrule in planar terms - and you try not to emphasize that past tense too much, even in your own head - you can't see how Past-You or his evil mothers WOULDN'T have noticed something on that scale going down OCCURRING, and subsequently investigating. Which, clearly, did not happen.

Shuddering at the thought of what might have been, you resume reading.

Unsurprisingly, the annihilation of Termina was total, with even the Four Giants being consumed by the flaming destruction unleashed by their "little friend." And yet there WAS a survivor - the Skull Kid himself, who awoke not at the bottom of some hellish crater or drifting in space among the wreckage of a world, but back in the Lost Woods, Majora's Mask still affixed to his face. As the host of the Mask, the imp was to some extent protected from the consequences of its magic, and he had proven such a useful vessel that the thing's evil spirit wished to preserve him, partly out of dark gratitude for his assistance in its terrible triumph, and partly so that it might use him to wreak further havoc.

But with its power exhausted by its final, grim ritual-

Hopeful terminology!

-the Mask's influence over the Skull Kid was reduced to almost nothing. In that moment, the Skull Kid was himself again for the first time since donning the Mask, with full knowledge of what he had done, and why, and what the consequences of those actions had been.

With a scream of horror beyond words and agony beyong imagining, Skull Kid ripped Majora's Mask from his face and cast it away, before fleeing deep into the Lost Woods, shrieking in misery.

What became of Majora's Mask after that is not said, for your Divination was aimed at the Skull Mask - and that Mask continued on its way with its owner, whose flight carried him through the Lost Woods and into Faerie. Skull Kid found no respite or relief, for few would offer aid to one who bore the marks of such terrible crimes, and those that did soon regretted and rescinded their aid, for some dark force pursued Skull Kid, wreaking havoc upon any and all that stood between it and him.

The angry ghosts of the Terminan people?

The wrath of the Four Giants?

The dying curse of a world entire?

Whatever its nature, the mysterious darkness was relentless and remorseless in its pursuit, and knowledge of its existence - and its target - spread quickly among the denizens of Faerie. Soon, not even the kindest, bravest, or most foolish of the Little Folk would allow Skull Kid to remain in their territories, while the borders of the domains of the greater Fae were closed to him entirely. A time or two, the desperate outcast found refuge with the cruel, the arrogant, and the untrustworthy, but such arrangements were brief and left both sides ruing their decisions, for the stalking nightmare brooked no interference, accepted no compromise, and respected no deals.

And so, the Skull Kid was forced from the Fae Realm altogether, fleeing instead into the Plane of Shadows - and there his trail was lost, his fate unknown to any mortal and many an immortal.

The Legend of the Skull (Kid's) Mask ends there... but there is an addendum, written in a different hand and with a different tone.

Reading like your conception of an after-action report, this "legend" describes how, as part of an "ongoing effort" to identify the source of "the disturbance" within the local Shadow Plane, elements of something called the Jagdarmee encountered and did battle with an undead creature they had initially considered to be an aberrant Menos Grande. Several lives were lost due to the misidentification, but the creature was ultimately destroyed, leaving behind the strangely intact bone mask and various fragments of its body, all of which were secured and brought back to Silbern for analysis.

Beyond that, there's nothing - nothing but the Skull Mask, which doesn't seem to be NEARLY cursed enough, now that you know more about its history.

Gained Hyrulean History D

Given its connection to a proven apocalyptic threat that was last seen in Hyrule, you're definitely going to have to investigate the Skull Mask in more detail later - say, as part of that Communion with the Goddesses that you were planning.

None of your current companions have any objection to this. Quite the contrary, there is a general agreement that the Skull Mask needs to go into a new category of loot - call it, "Stuff that Needs to be Investigated for EVERYBODY'S Safety."

On a related note, Ambrose and Balthazar are both impressed by how much easier the Spell of the Literary Vision is to use than its predecessor. A single Vision typically leaves the recipient worn out for the rest of the day, or at least until they get a good night's sleep, but you've cast your variant of the magic twice in relatively close succession to no ill effect.

Considering the sheer number of items that they've been working to identify, and those that yet remain, wizard and sorcerer are both interested in securing copies of your spell for study and adaptation.

You've really got no problem with this, as long as you are duly compensated for your priceless valuable mystical lore. You weren't exactly looking forward to casting Literary Visions over the whole spread-out loot-pile for the next few days...

Scrolls and analysis can wait for a while, though; you've still got other items to look through.

On that note, Ambrose directs your attention to the objects in this room that were collected by your efforts and those of your summoned workforce.

One of these is a suit of dull black armor of a style that combines a breastplate, bracers, greaves, and reinforced boots with an exposed layer of something akin to leather - tough but flexible and light. It has an oddly high "collar" rising up behind and around where the wearer's head would be, while in the front it's just high enough to cover the "chin," but the most distinctive thing about the armor is that it appears to be entirely organic in nature, as though somebody carved up the shells of a few giant bugs - or maybe just one, if it was about as big as an adult Gohma - to make the heavier armored parts. Then again, from the way those bits seem to be fused directly into the underlayer, it's possible that the whole thing was just... grown, as-is.

For some reason, there's no helmet, and you see no symbols of allegiance anywhere. Between its unsettling construction and the moderate aura of evil you pick up - and which you think may have been stronger when this armor was still in use, if not alive - the thing is so obviously of demonic origin that it's only your sense of professionalism and thoroughness that has you scanning it for corruption.

When that scan comes back negative, you're at once startled and very curious. If this ISN'T a suit of demonic armor, then where DID it come from?

The next item on the block is an axe, a single half-moon blade counterbalanced by a thick spike on the back end, and metal reinforcement of the butt of the handle. It's not a particularly large weapon - certainly not like those you've seen in some video games or in use by assorted supernatural creatures of greater-than-human size - but it looks entirely useable. There's some fairly detailed design work on the faces of the blade as well, interweaving lines that, when you look closer, resemble thorny vines.

Said thorns appear to be bloodstained, and the wood of the haft is dark enough to suggest that it saw particularly messy use at some point in the past and was not properly cleaned at the time. The actual sharp and spiky parts seem spotless, but if you look closely at them for a few moments, a faint sense of danger, anger, and eagerness starts to register.

The axe also bears a straightforward boost to accuracy and damage, as well as some Enchantment Magic that you don't immediately recognize, but which Ambrose states is meant to draw upon the wielder's anger to make the weapon even strike faster and harder.

"I'm not sure if that's a consequence of the curse of bloodlust running through the thing, or the CAUSE," the wizard admits.

None of the other items in this room are currently yours to claim.

Urahara would, in fact, be willing to pay for a copy of your spell. It might take him a while to work out how to adapt sorcery to kido - particularly when he's starting with a high-end example of the former, as opposed to something more entry-level - and a one-to-one "translation" might not be possible, but it'll be interesting to see what comes of the attempt.

"And as a bonus," he adds, "it won't cost enough to risk Tessai getting upset with me!"

As for Ambrose and Balthazar, your request to be paid in kind, with knowledge of Simulacra-

"Hmmm, let me think," the wizard muses. "Should I do the responsible adult thing and not give the boy overachiever the means to create ANOTHER copy of his trouble-seeking self? Or should I be true to myself, give him the spell, and sit back and watch what happens?"

Balthazar sighs. "You're not fooling anybody, old man."

-and Greater Shadow Conjuration, is accepted.

You don't have any particular interest in putting a whole bunch of time and effort towards learning how to swing a mean axe. Even if you did, you would prefer not to start learning with a weapon that would probably try to drive you into a homicidal frenzy the first time you swung it in battle, if not as soon as you picked it up.

As for the Black Armor, you want more information. So it is that you once again make the preparations for your Spell of Literary Vision, invoke the words...

...and then blink in surprise as nothing happens.

It would seem that, however it was actually made and wherever it came from, the Armor isn't important enough in and of itself to engender a Vision, even with the leeway your command of Divination Magic allows.

With the inherently nastier stuff out of the way, you move on to the most immediately promising source of power.

The room Ambrose leads you to next is more organized and contains more individual items than the closets of malignant magic, though it's still some way from being as crowded as a mundane library. As you've seen at the Arcana Cabana, the more active sort of magical writings need a certain amount of space - and occasionally, restraints - and Ambrose seems to have leaned towards the same degree of caution with the looted books.

"It will get easier to store these once they've gotten to know their new owners and homes," he observes, looking at certain fidgety or sparking members of the collection. "In the meantime, I don't need any literary dominance displays."

"Oh?" Urahara inquires. "What do those look like?"

"Depends on the book," Balthazar says. "The milder ones typically re-shelve themselves when you aren't looking, whether because they're trying to hide or because they don't like their neighbors. More playful sorts fly around to force you to chase them, or occasionally dive-bomb you. The ones that are actually aggressive will just hit you any way they can, give you paper cuts, or unleash what magic they can muster on their own."

The Shinigami scientist looks a bit taken aback by this. "And this is... normal magical book behavior?"

"Until they settle in and get used to you," Balthazar replies with a nod. "Well, and as long as we're not talking about any of the really nasty tomes. The Necronomicon, for example, has an annoying tendency to try and raise an army of darkness..."

From the look on Urahara's face, he's not sure if Balthazar is having him on, or being perfectly serious.

You're a little unsure of that yourself...

Anyway, books!

First in your (handily alphabetized!) collection of rightfully stolen tomes are the Bestiary of Earth and Sky, two-thirds of a (presumable) trilogy. As you already knew, Volume One of the magically warded but otherwise mundane set described a wide selection of animals, monsters, and demons, ranging from the mundane but misunderstood to the somewhat supernatural to the downright demonic, whose primary habitats were terrestrial. Volume Three covered creatures of the air, whether they flew, levitated, or otherwise locomoted in defiance of gravity, and Ambrose and his helpers have yet to find Volume Two, so your assumption that it covers aquatic life-forms remains unverified.

The good news is that the household librarian has had a chance to review the books, and has declared them to be in fine condition, although they're several centuries out of date; while this makes them largely worthless as references about the mundane beasts inside, much of the information about the demonic ones is amusingly still current, whereas the monsters are a bit hit-and-miss.

Regardless, if you don't wish to keep these books, they'd surely find a place on some collector's shelf.

Next on the docket is the Book of Demons, another mostly mundane tome with magical protections, which discusses various notorious individuals of demonic origins. This one has also been assessed and found to be MUCH more current than the Bestiaries, being an edition that saw print less than twenty years ago. While it's far from complete - there are far, FAR too many powerful demons for any single book with this paltry level of power to accomplish such a thing - and the information contained within is strictly common knowledge and "likely ways to probably not die if you ever meet this demon in person," it's still good for what it is.

Sadly, it won't give you any tips on binding, banishing, or destroying the entities in question.

Then there is the Book of Stars, which has been clarified as being about astrology AND astronomy. It would be a useful reference for certain forms of Divination Magic, as well as a much broader range of rituals that rely on times and places where the Stars Are Right, but it does not seem too special beyond that.

Your scholar's soul cries out in protest at leaving a mystery unsolved and a potential avenue of magical - or at least supernatural - research unexplored, but the fact of the matter is that you have too many demands on your time as it is, and by the time this day is over, you'll undoubtedly have added a great many more. If you load yourself down with new research projects, study materials, and quests for knowledge, all of your academic work is likely to suffer, and the stress will probably spill over into your less-intellectual pursuits, besides - and none of that is really acceptable.

There is also the matter of you not really wanting to keep a suit of alien-looking armor that radiates an aura of evil in your family home, or even in your dimensional pocket. Dumping it in the storage rooms on Bali Ha'i doesn't strike you as a great alternative, given the island's history and somewhat malleable nature-

Thinking on that and recent events, you briefly wonder if your experiences in the Dream Realm would be of any use on Bali Ha'i, before mentally dragging yourself back to the matter at hand.

-and you don't really have anywhere else to keep the thing at the moment, unless you were to rent some space from Ambrose. Which you'd kind of prefer not to do, if you could help it.

You're also not inclined to try wearing that armor. Even setting aside the fact that you don't know where the Black Armor has been or who - or what - was previously using it, Tall, Dark, and Evil is not a look you want to embrace again, and bugshells don't really appeal to your sense of aesthetics.

Absent some compelling reason to devote your attention to investigating the Black Armor's nature, history, and ultimate origins - like, for example, an obvious link between it and some world-threatening or even just region-menacing force - your only remaining motive to study the suit at this time would be to satisfy personal curiosity. And while that's not nothing, by any means, it's also not enough for you to really justify keeping the thing.

While you don't really NEED an incomplete set of outdated bestiaries, there is something to be said for their historical value. There are plenty of other similarly aged and inaccurate texts that people continue to read to this day, in order to gain a more complete understanding of the topic and those who have contributed to its evolution into its modern form, and it's not like the Bestiaries' information is ENTIRELY incorrect. At least half of it should still be useable, if not more, you'll just have to be careful to use more recent sources to verify your findings.

And if the books are valuable enough to be collectors' items? That's just another reason to keep them for yourself. Especially if the missing volume is found.

(Re-)Gained Bestiaries of Earth and Sky

It may not be the demon-slaying tactical manual you would have preferred, but just as there are too many fiends around for the Book to cover more than a select few, there are also too many for you to be certain that you have even "common" knowledge on the ones you're likely to run into here on Earth. And that's not even getting into the fact that knowing how NOT to give such offense to a major demon that he, she, or it would feel the need to kill you in response is still pretty darn valuable!

(Re-)Gained the Book of Demons

Divination is one of your most well-understood, reliable, and frequently used schools of magic, and your skills within the field have reached the point where further advancement is hard to come by. For all those reasons, even a chance of improvement is worth taking - and you think that a tome of mystical stargazing offers rather more than just a "chance," as you've never really studied that aspect of the art in any great detail.

(Re-)Gained the Book of Stars

As you pocket your latest reclaimed bit of literary loot, a thought occurs, and is expressed: would your three associates be interested in copies of any of the mundane or mostly mundane books that catch their interest?

"It's a thought to keep in mind," Ambrose admits, "especially where the Quincies' own writings and works from more obscure sources are concerned. Keep in mind, though, lad, Balthazar and I had likely already read anything that's remotely mainstream, and quite a few of the more selective works besides - and this one," he adds, gesturing at Urahara, "suffers from budgetary limitations."

"Sad but true."

"You may also find making copies to be harder than you think," Balthazar says then. "When somebody feels that the information contained in an otherwise mundane text is worth protecting with wards, it's not uncommon for them to include anti-copying spells as well. That only gets more likely the older the book in question is."

"Bit of a legacy of the old days of magic, when the worth of even low-tier spells could be measured in lives," the wizard reminisces sadly. "Lives saved by a spell, lives lost to it, a living made from it or spent learning it, and that's not even getting into idiot warlocks and sorcerers with demonic pacts. Most practitioners these days reserve the shedding of blood for the big-name grimoires and personal spellbooks, but we all still agree that there ARE books worth killing over."

On the next shelf is the Creased Cookbook.

"There was a bit of a scare over this one," Ambrose chuckles. "At first, it seemed to be a simple collection of recipes, albeit some of them exotic, but as the librarian read through the menu, as it were, he started getting hungry. That's when the book started visibly re-writing itself to display recipes for the meals he was thinking of."

Okay, while the subject matter was innocent enough, you can see why someone experienced in dealing with enchanted books might have freaked out if one suddenly seemed to be reading his mind. Similarly, if that power is programmed to require mental input from the user before it will activate, the fact that you and your Shadow are constantly using Mind Blank would explain why you didn't notice it before.

With the Cookbook's nature as an actively magical item revealed, Ambrose took over the inspection, eventually determining that it could provide complete instructions for preparing any meal that was not magical in and of itself. In addition, the tome instilled its reader with a degree of enhanced cooking skill. Some assistance from members of the household confirmed that: this only worked for ONE reader at a time, even if two or more people were working on the same dish together; pre-existing culinary talent was not required for this effect to work, although those who were trained beforehand still tended to get significantly better results; and the mystical insight into the mysteries of stove and counter did not persist past the serving of the meal in question.

Ambrose was also able to determine that the Cookbook has one other power, which allows it to enrich and empower a meal it is being used to prepare, so that consuming it grants the same effects as a Heroes' Feast. This power only works once per day, but otherwise doesn't appear to have any limit on how much it can be used, or which meal it is applied to.

Well, then.

The next book you are directed to is the Iron-Bound Tome.

"This one, I recognized almost immediately," the wizard says as he takes it down from its shelf and hands it to you. "Place your finger on the lock, and command it to open - in Latin."

"Recludo."

Magic thrums, the silver glyphs lining the bars on the cover glow blue, and there is a faint click, after which the cover of the Tome opens on its own. Eagerly opening it up the rest of the way, you find...!

"...blank pages?" you say in disappointment, flipping through the book.

To be fair, said pages are made of VERY high-quality paper, finer even than the stuff you borrowed from Cordelia's father and templated for your own use. Still, you were hoping for a lot more.

"What you have there is known as a Blessed Book," Ambrose explains. "Various gods of magic claim to have created the original, whether personally or by empowering the magic-user that did so, but I have yet to hear an account that I would consider completely honest. In any case, the Book has three outstanding qualities that make it valuable to wizards like myself: first, it is much more durable than any mundane book; secondly, it contains a thousand pages at a very convenient size and weight; and finally, it costs nothing to inscribe the instructions for casting a spell into the Book."

You can see the value of that - for a wizard, that is. For yourself? Not so much. Especially when-

"But it's blank," you protest. "It's a spellbook with no spells."

-that.

"Yes, there is that," Ambrose notes. "For some reason, no one has ever found a Blessed Book with so much as a cantrip already written inside - or at least they've never admitted to it. This has given rise to a theory that the Books have a fourth ability, namely that, when a fully-bonded owner dies, any spells he has entered into his Book vanish as well, not to return unless or until their master does - thus preventing who- or whatever slew the wizard in question from stealing his knowledge for themselves. Given the rarity of resurrection magic in this day and age, I've been leery of trying to confirm or debunk that one."

Interesting piece of trivia, but it still doesn't make up for the absence of any spells!

Fortunately, the next item on the docket is the Journal of Spells.

Most of the contents of the "public library" that Grandmaster Haschwalth maintained next to his trophy gallery were either mundane books, or tomes protected only by modest magical defenses. The Book of Marvelous Recipes has turned out to be a rather potent magical item in its own right, and the nature of its power is such that you have to wonder just where it came from and how it ended up in the hands of the Wandenreich.

From where you found the Book, you can assume with fair certainty that it was either given to them by an ally or taken from a defeated opponent, but anything more detailed than that currently escapes you - and it's a COOKBOOK. A cookbook! Who gives out something like that to a political ally, or carries it into combat? Do they have other books of this nature? If so, why was the cookbook given over or taken away? If not... well, you'd still like to know who devotes this much magic to making a really good cookbook!

And so, you set up for another Literary Vision, trusting that the strength of the enchantments on the Book of Marvelous Recipes is sufficient for your spell to latch on to.

Sure enough, new words begin to appear in your Conjured Book.

As it happens, the creased cookbook was neither a spoil of battle, nor a political token - at least not exactly. Rather, it was the creation of a witch who resided in New York City during the 1800s and the early part of the Twentieth Century-

Balthazar looks interested.

-who claimed descent from a line of witches that dated back to the 1620s, when the first Dutch settlers came to New Amsterdam, or what is now Lower Manhattan-

Balthazar smiles faintly.

-and who called herself "Miss Manhattan."

Ambrose groans. "Really?"

"'That's MISTRESS Manhattan to you, good sir'," Balthazar murmurs with a note of fond reminiscence. Then he shrugs. "She said she was ten when she started working as a 'professional witch,' and thought the name was cute. By the time she was old enough to regret it, she'd been using the name long enough to be stuck with it, so she did her best to own it."

Your Vision claims that the lady in question derived her powers not from a deal with a god or demon or some other mystical entity, but what she called a "contract with the city." Initially a minor practitioner, her direct ancestress took advantage of being present at the foundation of a new settlement to link her magic to the colony and the health and security of its people, such that as the town grew and prospered under her care, so too would her magic.

That first witch and her successors held up their end of the bargain for almost two centuries, but New York's growth into a city put more and more pressure on the successors of the lineage. Little problems that had been comfortably manageable for one witch in a settlement of a few dozen souls had grown out of control well before the population hit the four-digit mark, and a singular magical authority which was easily maintained in the absence of any serious challengers required more and greater efforts to defend as more and stranger supernatural beings passed through and settled in the city with each passing year. The witch's descendants were not all born with the gift or even the aptitude to learn, and as the difficulties and dangers of the job mounted, fewer found the will to try. Over time, the ensuing failures to keep up their deal with the city resulted in a loss of trust, greater difficulty in making future bargains, and eventual forfeiture of the secrets and powers they'd been granted, both personally and in future generations.

"By the time Hattie was born, the only member of her family still genuinely practicing the craft was her great-aunt," Balthazar recounts, giving you information that your spell didn't reveal. "The age gap was great enough that Hattie only got a few years of practical lessons from her aunt, and a fair bit of that time was lost dealing with Hattie's mother, who Did Not Approve. Fortunately, Hattie's aunt recognized the problem and was able to arrange for 'continuing lessons' before she passed."

"What sort of lessons?" you venture.

"Making sure Hattie's familiar knew spells that would let the child seek out information on her own, even if they were too powerful for her just then, a few deals with trustworthy tutors, and making Hattie the sole inheritor of her house and everything in it," Balthazar answers. "Which included HERSELF, when the old girl came back as a ghost."

Urahara was already paying attention to the story, but mention of ghostly activity can't help but draw his professional interest.

"I never actually met the woman, living, dead, or otherwise," your fellow sorcerer says with a gesture of mild apology. "Once Hattie had 'learned everything Auntie had to teach', it was apparently enough to lay her to rest."

You have to laugh at that. "Leave it to a witch to ACTUALLY haunt her student."

"Oh, yes," the wizard agrees. "Though if she didn't keep hanging around after that, she can't have been one of the GENUINELY wicked ones."

The way the old man kind of took the words out of your head has you momentarily checking to make sure your Spell of Mind Blank is still functioning normally - and it is, so you must just be on a similar wavelength.

...maybe you should worry? A little?

Getting back to what your magic had to say, Mistress Manhattan came into contact with the Wandenreich when they first started looking to set up a permanent outpost in New York, helping them to locate a site which had the necessary spiritual conditions to build a stable Gate, make it through the necessary negotiations to join the local supernatural community in a peaceful and timely manner, and even get a good price on the building they wanted. In the process of providing that assistance, the witch struck up a firm friendship with the only female member of the mission, which continued for the rest of their lives and led to her being known as "Auntie M" to the Quincy woman's kids.

Ambrose eyes Balthazar suspiciously. "Was this before or after Baum published?"

"A long while before," Balthazar says. "Hattie never mentioned meeting him, but we didn't exactly spend a lot of time discussing the merits of children's books, and she passed before The Wizard of Oz was even in production."

Perhaps because of the strained relationship with her own family-

Seeing that the legend doesn't go into further detail, you pause and glance at Balthazar for clarification.

"You'll recall that I said Mother Did Not Approve?" he asks rhetorically. "Well, that only got worse as Hattie got better at magic, especially after her great-aunt passed and she kept on practicing. It certainly didn't help that Hattie's mother spent a couple of years trying to sell the old woman's house and running into the consequences of the binding that made it HATTIE'S property and ensured that it STAYED that way."

Oooh, ouch. You can just imagine the sort of tricks a witch might tie into something like that.

"I don't know the specifics, but Hattie finally left her parents' house and took up residence in her aunt's place when she was thirteen. She said that was when she started using her assumed name full-time. She never made up with her mother or her youngest sister, and she wasn't able to spend much time with her father and other siblings because of it."

-perhaps because of THAT, Miss Manhattan latched on to her role as an honorary aunt with gusto. She was one of those relatives who kids loved to visit, in no small part because she always had tasty treats and wonderful meals ready and waiting for them - like magic, one might say.

"Does it actually say that?" Urahara wonders, peering at your book.

Shuffling away from the man in the hat, you continue to read that it was that impulse to feed her adopted nieces and nephews which ultimately led Auntie M to write and enchant the Book of Marvelous Recipes, which she made a somewhat teasing gift of to her Quincy friend.

"With this book, one day, maybe your kids will like your cooking almost as much as they do mine!" or words to that effect.

The Book stayed in that particular family's private collection for decades, until after its author's passing by old age. Given that most of her Quincy foster-family were still alive and had been forced to watch the witch grow old and tired so much faster, the once cherished gift became a painful reminder of their loss. Rather than lock it away in some dark storage room in Silbern or discard it entirely, they asked the Grandmaster if he might have a place for it in his gallery. It was, after all, technically a gift from a mortal ally.

Judging from where you got it, it would seem that Jugram agreed with that reasoning, and also that nobody in that family ever got around to reclaiming their aunt's book.

Do you have any special thoughts on this tale? Or perhaps a question for Balthazar, concerning the Witch of Manhattan?

You do feel a little bad about swiping the Book but, given that leaving it behind would have resulted in its destruction, that the family in question clearly weren't using it for its intended purpose, and that you very much mean to use it, you think you can get over any lingering sense of guilt.

And who knows? Miss Manhattan might even approve.

...actually, just to be sure of that, you check with Balthazar.

"I think Hattie would be alright with you using it, at least for a while," he replies.

Good enough.

Maybe you can revisit the idea of sending the Book of Marvelous Recipes back to its original intended owners when you've made a copy of it for yourself, or something...

(Re-)Gained Book of Marvelous Recipes

While you are curious as to what became of Mistress Manhattan's inherited house and the magical treasures within, to say nothing of her familial responsibility for the Big Apple, Balthazar did just mention that she died before The Wizard of Oz came to the big screen. If the lady has been gone for THAT long, then either the matter has long since been sorted out, or it can keep for another time.

Whichever is the case, you have plunder that needs your attention.

On that note, you aren't going to be keeping the Blessed Book. It would be an entirely different matter if there were spells to be learned from it, but as it stands, the item's most significant properties are simply wasted on a sorcerer, not to mention that, if you need a well-protected book with an abundance of empty pages, you can always make one. Against that, you can probably turn a very nice profit from selling the thing - that is, unless one of the other gentlemen with you wants it?

"I already have a few copies," Ambrose says, "and the latest one still has plenty of space for my needs."

"Dave and I have the Encantus," Balthazar adds.

"I don't need it," Urahara says, "and unless it comes fairly cheaply...?"

At a guess, you'd say the production cost of this particular Book would be in the neighborhood of six or seven thousand dollars. Actual market price would be roughly twice that.

"Yeah, that's definitely too expensive for a simple curiosity."

Ah. Well, then; one more for the "Sale" pile!

Updated Iron-Bound Tome

Pass up a source of new spells? Never happen.

That said, you'd like to know where this book came from, and so you swap it for Mistress Manhattan's Book of Marvelous Recipes in the circle of ivory figurines set up for your Spell of Literary Vision.

Incense is consumed, the magic takes hold, and another tale is written upon the pages of your Conjured Book - which is, you note, starting to run out of room. You had a few things written in it to begin with, and these legends are eating up space...

Anyway, the story that your magic spins for you this time is a bit of an ugly one, telling of one Erich Gruber, a German wizard of the later Nineteenth Century, who read about the Lichtreich in his master's books as an apprentice and became obsessed with the idea of an ancient magical German empire that nearly conquered the world-

Ambrose sighs. "This is a Nazi spellbook, isn't it?"

-which led to him spending the rest of his life hunting for its secrets and the power that knowledge of them would surely grant him. He fell in with the Thule Society-

"Called it."

-and was one of their "advisors" on matters arcane, opposite the Magus Darnic Prestone Yggdmillennia, who you've heard about before. Emphasis on "opposite," too; the tale claims that the two men, coming from different magical traditions and social backgrounds, did not like or trust one another. Consequently, when Yggdmillennia and a bunch of his supporters departed for Japan and the Third Grail War, Gruber remained in Germany, idly marginalizing or eliminating his rival's remaining allies while pursuing his own agenda.

Said agenda being to hunt for Quincy bloodlines, whose inherited lore and relics he sought to plunder for their "ancient magic." Gruber and his allies became fairly proficient at identifying and subduing Quincy, using methods effectively identical to an assassin's, save that the targets almost never died right away, being kept alive for... questioning.

Your spell doesn't go into detail but, given what else was going on in Germany at that time, you can guess.

The German Quincy weren't idiots, and when members of their extended family started disappearing in the political climate of the day, they called for help - and being some of the oldest and most respected of the Earthbound Quincy bloodlines, the Wandenreich answered and investigated the situation.

Gruber and his minions were NOT prepared to meet a squad of war-trained Soldats led by a Sternritter, and their story ends there, although their bodies were taken away for examination. Familiar enough with magic to recognize a wizard's spellbook for what it was, the Wandenreich took it as a trophy and to keep it out of the hands of anyone else who might use its information against their people - and that is all your spell has to say.

So, maybe not a NAZI spellbook, exactly, but definitely Nazi-adjacent.

Does this affect your decision to keep it?

(Re-)Gained Journal of Spells

"You're sure about that?" Ambrose asks, as you take the Journal off of its shelf. "I mean, Nazi spellbook. Could be some eeeevil stuff in there."

The hand-wiggling and syllable-wavering wasn't needed.

"There could be," you admit, "but from the look of things, it's also a traveling spellbook. Now, I admit I don't USE spellbooks, but from what I've gathered, doesn't the traveling version usually only contain a few spells that the owner considers essential for when he's in the field?"

"Blessed Books aside, that IS generally how it works," Ambrose admits. "Going to bet on this Gruber fellow having left all his particularly nasty research notes in his actual workshop, then?"

"It seems like a fairly safe bet. Sure, there might be a few things in here that'll give me second thoughts, but if that happens, I can just not learn them."

"Hmmm." Ambrose doesn't seem entirely convinced by your reasoning, but he doesn't speak further on the matter.

Concerning other books looted from Silbern, Grandmaster Haschwalth's personal Journals are back in Sunnydale along with the files - digital and hard copy - that you grabbed from his office, awaiting full translation and notation of any points that might be of interest to Soul Society or your other contacts. The hoard of ordinary books taken from the man's private library have been collated and stored in a different room, away from the magical volumes, and the mundane volumes that were on display in the public collection are in a third chamber.

A couple of magical volumes were found in that latter group, however, and you turn your attention to these.

The first of them is about the size of a telephone book and has a heavy wooden cover, upon which are scrawled unremarkable patterns in plain black ink and a curious lack of any words of identification. When you reach out to open the thing - checking with Ambrose and Balthazar first - you find the cover to be astonishingly heavy for its size.

"The interior of the cover is lined with lead," Balthazar states. "Not quite enough on its own to disrupt the magical senses of an experienced practitioner, but when combined with the actual wards on the book..."

Yeah, as soon as you opened the thing, it began to emanate a moderate aura of Abjuration that feels a lot like the Spell of Nondetection, though there's other stuff mixed in - Illusion Magic, primarily. Between that and the lead-lined cover, it would explain how your Shadow missed the thing on his looting spree.

Paging through, you see obviously enchanted writings that aren't spells in and of themselves, but appear instead to be an oddly religious-sounding dissertation on how to avoid attention, be it mundane or supernatural. The information is all fairly basic stuff, and yet...

"The book has the ability to render its bearer 'undetectable'," Ambrose informs you, making air quotes. "That is to say, it generates a combination of Invisibility, Nondetection, Silence, and even a scent-blocking effect I'm pretty sure has druidic origins, all of which are capable of affecting a small group."

Fairly comprehensive stealth support, and for an entire group? That's kind of impressive. One issue, though.

"If it's meant for stealth, why is it so heavy?" you wonder.

Ambrose snorts. "You think that's bad, wait until you hear how it's activated."

Oh, this should be good.

"You have to read from the book aloud to trigger its power, and then keep doing so to sustain the effect," the wizard says. "And it's not just the reader; everyone you want to be covered by the spell has to chant along, which seems to be the reason for the verse and chorus arrangement."

That... would probably be easier to deal with than trying to commit the whole thing to memory, yes, but...

"Why would anyone DO that?"

There are shrugs all around.

"For the irony?" Ambrose offers.

You would like to cast Literary Vision to get some answers about this weird tome, but unfortunately, it's not powerful enough for the spell to properly affect.

Turning to the other book, you find that it, too, has wards of Nondetection, and of a fairly high level that didn't require a sympathetic anchor like lead-lined covers to keep it running. When you crack this one open, you are relieved and pleased to see another wizard's traveling spellbook, this time written in Latin.

While you can kind of see how the Litany of Stealth might be situationally useful for an individual or group who lacked significant magical and/or stealth ability, the fact that most of the spells that Ambrose compared the enchanted book's effects to are ones you know well enough to cast on the fly - and that you are capable of replicating that scent-removing element with a little work - means that the heavy tome is frankly unnecessary for you.

Also, you're not going to lie: the idea of having to read aloud from the book while trying to sneak past someone or something is just... weird.

You've already found one not-exactly-Nazi spellbook in the Wandenreich's trophy library, so the precedent for magical writings of questionable or downright unacceptable origins being in the collection has been set. With that in mind, it's probably for the best that you vet the spellbooks as thoroughly as possible, and since this one bears an aura strong enough for Literary Vision to pull information out of, you go ahead and set it down in the circle.

Shortly thereafter, you are reading about a female necromancer who went by the moniker of "Corpse Dancer," on account of a talent for creating and maintaining unusually agile undead, a personal fondness and skill for dancing, and a habit of combining those traits.

Trying not to picture Michael Jackson's Thriller music video, which you caught on TV once, you look to the older arcanists in the room, to see if they've heard of her.

"Before my time, but yes," Ambrose replies. "She was active in Brazil from the late Eighteenth to mid-Nineteenth Century."

"I attended one of her parties," Balthazar notes. "It was... impressive, in a morbid and disturbing sort of way. Waltzing corpses are one thing, but once you've seen a couple of zombies perform master-class capoeira, you can never look at the lesser undead in quite the same way."

"I wonder how she dealt with rigor mortis," Urahara wonders.

Anyway, while Corpse Dancer specialized in corporeal undead, she was fully versed in the immaterial aspects of her art, which eventually led her to discover the existence of Hollows and begin controlling and experimenting with them-

Balthazar frowns, such information clearly being news to him.

-and that in turn drew the attention of the Brazilian Quincy. When they found what appeared to be an organized group of undead ranging from martial artist zombies to abnormally disciplined Hollows, the Quincy realized that they might be dealing with something beyond their means. Fortunately, some of them had "foreign cousins" who were better suited for facing an army of the dead than a bunch of mostly civilian families, who would be willing to look into the matter.

For their part, the Wandenreich saw considerable potential in the ability to control Hollows and did not really object to the idea of someone enslaving the cannibalistic spirits, so they initially went with a diplomatic approach. That resolution didn't survive the first meeting between Corpse Dancer and the agents of the Hidden Empire, as a series of unpleasant discoveries had the Quincy drawing their weapons.

Like many another necromancer before and since, Corpse Dancer did not confine her research to undead bodies, and as slavery was common in the region at the time, she had a ready supply of fresh test subjects AND raw materials for making new undead. Once she started making use of Hollows, she found that it was easier to control the mad spirits if they were fed and relatively docile, which the slaves again were used to provide for.

The final kicker, though, was that Corpse Dancer herself had recently completed her transformation into a lich. As soon as the Wandenreich representatives realized that they were dealing with a soulless undead thing instead of a merely very objectionable human, they opened fire.

Corpse Dancer's hacienda burned to the ground that day, but the lich herself revived, rebuilt, and sought revenge on the Quincy. The spellbook now before you was taken from what was left of her corpse the second time the Wandenreich "killed" her, with the legend stating that it "would not be the last" before ending on a suitably ominous cliffhanger.

Gained Corpse Dancer's Spellbook

First a near-Nazi, now a dark necromancer who practiced an especially thorough form of slavery. What's the owner of the next spellbook going to be like, a demonic cult leader?

There weren't any scrolls in any of Jugram's trophy rooms, but your Shadow's summoned looters did find a number of the things in other places. From some of the items the scroll-cases have been found next to or even inside - such as secondary weapons, field equipment, and the containers for such - the Wandenreich had not only figured out what they had with these items, but also had at least a few members who were capable of activating the things.

This makes sense. Enchanted scrolls are pretty much the cheapest sort of magic item out there, and if they're not so easy to use as potions, they're still relatively easy for those lacking actual spellcasting abilities to learn how to employ - plus, as long as they're protected from the elements, they don't spoil with time, as you know some potions can.

Even if that might take centuries.

In total, your looting recovered twenty-two scrolls whose contents range from first- to fourth-circle, mixing arcane and divine sources across most of the standard schools. There are some duplicate and even triplicate examples in the mix, you already know several of the spells besides, and the magic is weaker than anything you could conjure up, but having copies of these spells that you can invoke at a moment's notice without having to spend your own mana is still useful, especially if you hand them off to other people.

And that's before getting into the spells you DON'T know.

Gained Spell Scrolls x22

Pocketing all of those, you gather up your Divination materials and move on to the next room - a more literal sort of closet, given it contains the pieces of enchanted clothing pulled out of the Wandenreich fortress. "Enchanted" is perhaps a slightly broad term, as you see a considerable number of Quincy uniforms hung up and awaiting their fate.

The more "traditional" sorts of magic clothing is much more limited in number and rather more diverse in style.

One that quickly catches your eye is what appears to be a modern wrestler's mask, such as a luchadore might wear. It's made of dark leather and has patterns stitched or dyed into the material around the holes left for the eyes and mouth, which lack only wildly glaring eyeballs and a tooth-gritted grimace to complete the image of menace. A faint aura of Augmentation Magic clings to it, which Ambrose says will enhance the wearer's abilities in the clinch, making them harder to keep from checking or grabbing an opponent.

Another headpiece that calls attention to itself is a hat such as any stereotypical witch or wizard should be proud to wear: a conical peak with a leather strip "belted" around the base; a wide circular brim; and a fine, dark sheen suggesting that the material has been waterproofed. The magic surrounding this one doesn't seem to belong to any one school, and isn't very strong, but Ambrose says not to overlook it for all that.

"The crafter got a bit clever with this one," the wizard explains. "If you're familiar with the Headband of Vast Intelligence-"

You've heard of it, at any rate.

"-you'll know that items meant to enhance mental prowess are generally worn on the brow, as close to the brain and the 'third eye' as is reasonable. And of course, you can generally only wear one enchanted item on or over any given part of the body at a time, unless you're willing to sink the time and resources into combining multiple enchantments. This Hat works around that by letting you bind an enchanted headband or similar article around itself, and then conveying the effect to you. You essentially give up the ability to wear a magic hat in exchange for the ability to wear two enchanted headbands."

Huh.

Speaking of magic headbands, there's one in the collection, although sadly, it isn't one of the highly prized mind-enhancing ones. Covered in swirling patterns of red, blue, and green crystal and radiating a strong aura of Elementalism, it is presented to you as a Headband of Arcane Energy.

"Pour some of your mana in, and it converts to either a destructive blast of cold, electricity, or fire, or an emergency force-field," Ambrose sums up. "In both cases, the effect is proportionate to the amount of energy you expend, although if you DO keep it, I would STRONGLY recommend that you NEVER attempt to use more power than the equivalent of a ninth-circle spell."

Whether it's working out the standard defenses of a known unfriendly force or determining one method of infusing spiritual power into physical items in a useful form, an in-depth examination of the Wandenreich uniforms stands to be informative. With that in mind, you set aside a few of the Soldat Uniforms: one for purely destructive testing, to determine just how much of what sort of punishment these outfits can take; a second in case you get too enthusiastic trying to damage the first, or - if you're careful or lucky with the former - for more delicate examination of the underlying enhancements; a third as a spare to the spare, and perhaps for use as a scrying focus...

Actually, you'd better test all the uniforms you take for their suitability in that regard, before you start breaking any of them down - because who knows? The looters might have picked up somebody's hardly-ever-worn spare uniforms, or perhaps raided a supply closet full of reserve gear that had never been issued to anyone. Not to mention that you have no real way of knowing at a glance just which Soldats these uniforms belonged to, and some of those guys would make for more valuable targets than others.

Gained Soldat Uniforms

You turn to Urahara and gesture back at the rack of dazzlingly white longcoats. "Are you going to want one or two of these for your own studies?"

"I'll find room in the budget somewhere," the shopkeeper replies with a nod. "Tessai will understand."

Yeah, given the bad blood that exists between the Wandenreich and the Soul Society, there's undoubtedly going to be another clash at some point in the future, and it would behoove any and all Shinigami to prepare for that. Not to mention how the Wandenreich survivors got dumped into the Living World en masse - the same world where Urahara Shop is located, even if it IS in the one country on the planet where the Quincy extremists can't easily go.

"But if you could also set a few others aside," Urahara continues, "I might be able to get Soul Society to pay for samples - assuming that Captain Kurotsuchi didn't think to grab any while he was having his underlings pillage the labs."

"Do you think that's likely?"

"Mayuri is usually pretty thorough, but between the time crunch he was under, the fact that he was operating without official sanction, and the lure of the labs, workshops, and filing rooms, it's possible he decided to pass on something as 'common' as uniforms for the Quincy rank-and-file."

Ambrose and Balthazar have no issue with putting earmarking a dozen of the uniforms for potential sale to the Soul Society. After all, even if they take as many as you did for testing purposes, you'd still have twenty of the things taking up closet space, and not a whole a lot of places you could realistically or safely sell them.

They're distinctive, to say the least.

You have nothing against masked wrestlers, but you don't really see a need to claim this particular mask.

Besides, isn't there some kind of tradition about designing your own?

The Hat, on the other hand, you take without hesitation. The ability to wear an additional magic item is quite valuable, especially if you can reverse-engineer the effect and work out how to apply it to other locations. Even if you can't, being able to wear a couple of magical headbands at once would be worth it.

Gained Banded Hat

"You do remember that each of us already agreed to buy copies of that spell off you, right, lad?" Ambrose notes as you're setting the Headband of Arcane Energy into the ring of ivory Goddess-figurines. "You don't have to keep showing it off to convince us."

"But the stories, Ambrose!" you reply innocently. "The stories!"

He snorts at that but makes no move to stop you as you work your magic once again.

Shortly thereafter, you learn that the Headband was created and used by a sorcerer who went by the name of Hong and had a particular affinity for the Element of Light - specifically for its more "physical" applications, such as actual illumination, optical illusions, and various uses of focused and directed light, as opposed to more conceptual effects like purification and healing. Born in China in the late Nineteenth Century, Hong grew up believing he had been destined to wield his power in the service of the failing Qing Dynasty, but he was still only a minor talent when the Xinhai Revolution of 1911 brought an end to imperial rule and forced the sorcerer to flee his homeland. He would spend the next few decades wandering the globe, seeking ways to increase his personal power and bring down those that had betrayed and usurped the rightful rulers of China.

"He missed the Manchu Restoration of 1917," Balthazar notes. "Not that surprising, though; it didn't even last two weeks."

Somewhere along the way, the sorcerer's goal changed from "restore the Emperor" to "become the Emperor," and for all that he was becoming a walking wellspring of Light Magic as he developed and mastered his powers, his methods and demeanor became increasingly dark and cruel. The Headband of Arcane Energy was one of numerous magical devices Hong created, acquired, or was seeking to obtain for the purpose of destroying all that stood between him and his throne, as well as those that would try to topple him once he had claimed power.

For all the personal power and wealth that he managed to accumulate, Hong had few allies. His egotism, ambition, and viciousness were bad enough, but the advancement of his powers had given him the ability to "become as light, radiant and immaterial" - a state that some whispered was a sign of his becoming an evil spirit, if he had not truly been one all along. These rumors of a "mad Chinese ghost" of continually increasing power eventually reached the Wandenreich, who would send a force to confront Hong in Taiwan in 1958. The purpose of the Quincy attack was to either capture Hong for study or to destroy him outright, as Taiwan was close enough to Japan to be within reach of the Shinigami, should they have a reason to venture that far.

"'It is difficult to say who was the more surprised'," you read aloud. "'Hong, at being attacked unprovoked by 'fellow beings of light'; the Quincy, upon discovering that they were indeed fighting a mortal man; or the locals, who suddenly found themselves in the middle of an apparent battle between the spirits.'"

In any case, Hong did not survive that encounter, and his body and what possessions it carried were taken back to Silbern for study, with the Headband of Arcane Energy ending up on permanent display.

Gained Chinese History E
Gained Headband of Arcane Energy

"Done and done," Urahara agrees. "I thank you, my budget thanks you, and Tessai will certainly thank you."

"And the rest of the Shop residents?" you ask idly.

"Yoruichi and Ginta would laugh and say you should have stuck with payment in cash," Urahara admits. "Ururu probably wouldn't have an opinion one way or another, if she said anything at all."

Yeah, you don't really WEAR hats, as a rule - at least not when you aren't visiting somewhere wintry - and certainly not great big wizard's hats.

Part of your mind wanders off on its own, considering the best method of altering the Banded Hat's appearance - weighing the merits of Illusion versus Transformation and temporary spells versus permanent enhancement versus making a new hat altogether - but the rest keeps on track.

"One minor question," you venture to the room, as you pocket the Headband of Arcane Energy. "Do the Quincy have an actual Light affinity, like Hong apparently thought, or is it just that the glowing energy weapons and white-on-white uniforms make it LOOK like they do?"

"Some individual Quincy likely do have that affinity," Balthazar says, "but collectively? No, they don't. Their spirit weapons and various techniques may generate illumination and they may be very swift, but virtually all other traits associated with Light are absent, including what's easily the most critical one: purification. While it is possible to damage a soul through excessive purification-"

You try not to wince as you recall your experience getting some of the spiritual crud cleared out of your soul at the Hakuba Shrine, and the time you bleached some of your uncle's taxidermy collection while purging them of possessing spirits.

"-that typically takes regular, intensive sessions over an extended period of time, which add up to a considerable amount of power. Yet almost any trained Quincy can damage and potentially destroy a soul in a single moment, regardless of their actual strength."

"The sad thing," Ambrose says then, "is that even if Quincy powers DID have an inherent affinity for Light, that probably wouldn't have changed their history."

Urahara looks thoughtful for a moment, and then grimaces. "I can see it," he admits.

"I don't quite follow?" you admit.

"Just purifying a ghost doesn't automatically make it cross over," the scientist states. "A lot of them WILL cross over in the moment, just as a consequence of having their grudges and corruption stripped away, but others have been known to stay around. One in a dozen doesn't sound like much, but when you're talking about events on a GLOBAL scale, that would add up to a lot of lingering ghosts and a BIG increase in the spiritual energies of the Living World."

Which is one of those Matters of Cosmic Spiritual Balance that the Shinigami are supposed to keep an eye on, you gather. Yeah, that could be a problem-

"Not only that," Urahara goes on, "the purified souls that DID move on wouldn't necessarily be headed to the Soul Society, even if they were Japanese. Zanpakuto and kido are designed to call Hell butterflies and provide the necessary 'push' to get a freshly cleansed Hollow or konso'd Plus moving in the right direction; other methods of purification wouldn't have that. Without a steady influx of new arrivals, the population of the Rukongai would gradually decrease, the flow of goods and manpower to the Seireitei would follow suit, and the noble families would start getting cranky. Not to mention there'd be fewer Shinigami trainees, and then fewer Shinigami in general."

Meaning that even FEWER souls would be getting into the Soul Society, and the cycle would accelerate, you conclude. So even if Yhwach's ambitions somehow weren't a factor in that scenario, the Shinigami would have had to get the Quincy to stop purifying Hollows, not just in Japan but all over the world.

Considering how... resilient... wielders of Light can be-

Memories of (a) certain princess(es) flash past your mind's eye.

-you doubt that a culture of Light-powered Quincy would be any easier to talk out of their traditional ways than the sort you're used to.

And then it would be war.

What a depressing line of thought that's turned out to be. Fortunately, you know just what will make you feel better: MORE LOOT!

The next item you check is a shining circlet inset with a number of bright stones. At first glance, you'd say it was made of gold and gems, the former engraved with delicate designs and the latter clear and bright, but when you look closer using your magical senses, you realize that the appearance of wealth is an artifact of Illusion Magic - and at that point, a lot of the shine goes out of the metal and the jewels lose their sparkle. What's left is a band of plain brass and some pieces of common crystal, run through with an aura of Augmentation and Enchantment.

"It's got some similarities to a Circlet of Persuasion," Ambrose notes, "but instead of providing a boost to interpersonal skills in general, it just seems to make the wearer a better liar."

"How much better?" Briar wonders.

"I had five different members of the staff wearing the thing and trying to lie to their peers by turns, while using an Illusion of my own to hide the circlet altogether," the wizard replies. "The lad who normally can't lie to save his life actually managed to fool a couple of people, while that one maid who keeps tricking people even when they should know better only got caught when she tried to bluff my Simulacrum of Sir Kay."

Okay, so a reasonably large boost, if perhaps not a superhuman one. Still, do you really want to claim an item that encourages dishonesty?

After that come a series of necklaces and medallions. The first of these that is presented for your consideration is an octagonal disc of platinum on a heavy chain, which Balthazar identifies as a Necklace of Adaptation. Its magic is rooted in Transformation and Wind Elementalism and creates a shell of breathable air around its wearer, protecting them from airborne vapors and toxins and allowing them to breathe in essentially any environment, whether that is underwater, superheated, or even a vacuum.

The part of your brain that has been working on the Spell of Interplanetary Teleportation for some months now takes interest, if not so much as it might have before you learned the Spell to Create a Life Bubble. "When you say 'vacuum', Balthazar, does that include the void of space?"

Urahara blinks.

"Actually, it does, although there are other hazards in that environment that the Necklace won't protect against," the Merlinean Master adds with a cautionary note.

"Radiation, I suppose?" That's one that even Life Bubble doesn't deal with, unfortunately.

"That's one, yes. Others include differences in gravity - or the lack thereof - excessive light, issues with debris, and of course, the temperature."

You nod. Life Bubble can cover temperature issues, anyway, and it will work on a group of travelers, so this Necklace isn't as useful to you now as it once would have been. That said, it would be an air supply that didn't crowd your aura, so that could be worth something - maybe as a backup air supply?

The second neck-piece that you're shown is a large green scale, almost big enough to fill the palm of your hand, set into a wooden frame with a leather cord looped through the top. Augmentation Magic is plainly apparent in its makeup, as is an underlying essence that reminds you of a forest in Faerie - more for the sense of wild danger than anything else - and also teases your nose and mouth with the phantom sensation of something sharp and bitter.

"Green dragon scale?" you guess.

"From a young specimen, but yes," Ambrose agrees. "I'm not sure if the beast was on the losing end of a disagreement with a druid or if they made a deal, but either way, this is a modest Amulet of Natural Armor - nothing special, but effective in its way."

You're not big on straight-up dishonesty. You have told the occasional lie of omission or shaded the truth, but out-and-out bold-faced lying is something you prefer to avoid when given the chance. It's also not a habit you'd like to encourage in anybody that you know.

And then there's the matter of how that Circlet is really just kind of... tacky.

Even if it isn't an instant answer to your desire to boldly go where few if any men have gone with magic before, the Necklace is worth taking. It'd work perfectly well underwater, as long as you didn't venture too far down, and the protection against toxic gases is something you'll be very glad of if you ever run into certain kinds of dragons, or if there's a fire that...

Hang on a moment.

"Would this thing work against car exhaust fumes?" you ask the other two arcane experts, as you hold the Necklace up. "Because I know a lot of spells can have issues working against 'new' things..."

"In this case, it's fine," Balthazar says. "The Necklace doesn't make you immune to poison gas DIRECTLY, it makes a shell of air around you that displaces the surrounding atmosphere and whatever gases would otherwise be occupying it. It doesn't need to be able to recognize anything, it just has to keep pushing whatever's there away."

"Even if it did work the other way," Ambrose follows up, "there's a fair chance you'd still be safe. Petroleum has been known for millennia, and people have probably been burning it since shortly after it was first discovered - if only by accident - to say nothing of how badly some deposits of the stuff can reek. Modern fuel refining processes shouldn't change the stuff so much as to make it qualify as an entirely new substance... at least I don't think so."

...and he was doing so well, right up until that last bit.

Gained Ancient Earth History D (Plus)

Anyway, you'll take Balthazar at his word.

Gained Necklace of-

"Will that thing work for both of us at once?" Briar asks.

Freezing halfway to tucking the Necklace into your pocket, you take it back out, loop the chain around your neck, and wait a moment as the air around you stirs. It doesn't suddenly start smelling minty fresh or anything like that, but the feeling of the faintest breeze instead of dead air is pleasant all on its own.

Once the magic is well and truly working, Briar lands on your shoulder.

...

"Well, I can definitely feel the air moving around the two of us," she says, "but as to whether or not we're both protected against suffocation and gas attacks, I dunno."

Even if you can make a superior version of this same item, having this one to serve as raw material for the work - whether as the base for the enchantment or as a sacrifice to empower a different design - would save you a fair amount of time and funds. Or, alternately, you could leave this one as-is, make another, and have two defensive Amulets.

Regardless, it's worth keeping.

Gained Amulet of Natural Armor

"Ambrose, may we borrow your spellcasting chamber for a moment?"

The wizard arches an eyebrow at the request but agrees and accompanies you to open the room. Balthazar and Urahara remain behind, the sorcerer starting to describe some of the other items on display for the Shinigami.

Once you're in the chamber, you spend a few minutes casting the Spell to Create a Fog Cloud, trying to apply elements of Prestidigitation to give the vapor a scent, while also comparing it carefully to the Spell to Create a Stinking Cloud so that your results aren't too similar.

You complete the spell, filling the room with a visually impenetrable mist-

"Marco," Ambrose calls from his position near the door.

"Polo," Briar returns.

-and then try to scent the air.

You don't smell anything unusual, but that might be your new Necklace getting in the way.

"Briar, can you smell anything unusual?"

"Nope, but just a second." She launches from your shoulder and comes to a stop about a foot above your head. "...oooh, minty."

Well, good to know that worked.

Your partner returns to her perch and inhales through her nose. "Hmmm."

"Hmmm?"

"It doesn't seem to- wait, wait." A tiny hand is held up towards your face, palm first, as Briar takes another deep breath. "Ah, there we go. Must have still had a fog in my throat... okay, yeah, it seems to be working."

Gained Necklace of-

"Now the only question is, will providing for two sets of lungs at once wear out the Necklace, or does my tininess just not register next to your bigness."

...

That's a question you can't really think of an easy way to test, except via time and observation.

"Want me to ride along for the rest of the day, then?" Briar guesses.

"At least for the length of this visit," you agree, as the intentionally short-lived Fog Cloud begins to break up, revealing Ambrose still over by the door.

He sniffs the air a few times, and then shrugs. "Thank you for not leaving the reek of rotten eggs or something similarly unpleasant, I suppose."

"You're welcome," you answer, before heading back to the room with the clothes and jewelry.

Another necklace which catches your eye and is yours to take or leave consists of a series of jewels, each a different color of the rainbow, which hang from a silver chain that reflects some of the hues of the stones as the light of the room is refracted through them. The effect is not as dazzling as it once must have been, for most of the gems are visibly clouded or cracked, and the second from the farthest to your right - which would probably be indigo, judging by the colors of the others - is missing entirely. Magic clings to the piece, but only dully and fitfully.

"This was in the same part of the pile as the Headband of Arcane Energy," Ambrose says, "so it probably belonged to Hong as well, and the obvious damage would then likely be the result of his encounter with the Wandenreich. I do have people keeping an eye open for an indigo-colored gemstone, but it hasn't turned up thus far."

And until it does or is properly replaced, the Spell to Make Whole won't be able to repair the item, assuming it can do the job even then.

If Ambrose is correct about this being one of Hong's possessions, it would have enough history for the Spell to Invoke a Literary Vision to function properly, but if by some chance it DIDN'T belong to the self-proclaimed Emperor of Light, then it's anybody's guess as to whether the spell will work - and you're running low on book-space and conjured incense.

As you're looking over the remaining items, you notice a certain deficiency of clothes that are worn over the shoulders and/or torso, but when you consider that the Wandenreich got a lot of this stuff in combat, that does make an unfortunate amount of sense.

That said, there are a couple of pieces that are either intact or lightly damaged that they could be salvaged. One of these is an Oriental-style silk robe in an elegant, dark purple hue, threaded with gold in patterns that suggest a night sky where stars waver in and out of visibility through an aurora. Somebody cleaned and stitched it up neatly enough that the only reason you can tell its last wearer was shot through the heart is because the Necromancy and Augmentation imbued into the material were disrupted there, putting the rest of the Robe into a dormant state.

"Hong's again?" you guess.

"Same pile of stuff, at least," Balthazar says. "The overall design and the nature of the enhancements make me think it's a Robe of Arcane Heritage."

"I don't recognize the name," you admit.

"Sorcerers who derive their magic from supernatural ancestry wear them to enhance the various traits and secondary abilities that can arise from such a mixed heritage," he explains. "As an example, it's common for descendants of dragons to have stronger, more pronounced fingernails that they can channel energy through to turn into functional claws for a short period of time; they'll also be more resistant to fire or whatever elemental force their ancestor was aligned with, and gradually develop tougher flesh with scale-like patterns that get sturdier and more pronounced over time. Wearing a Robe of Arcane Heritage would make those abilities somewhat stronger and might also allow the wearer to use a limited version of their progenitor's breath weapon, or even grow a functional set of wings."

Sounds handy. Unfortunately, your brand of sorcery doesn't come from your ancestry, at least not in the usual, physical sense of the term, so there's a fair chance that this Robe wouldn't do anything for you even if it was repaired. And even if it COULD work, most of the "traits and secondary abilities" you've noticed arising from the source of your magic involve you looking more like Ganondorf, which is something you are not exactly keen on. ESPECIALLY if that extends to what the Thief-King eventually turned into...

There's also a mostly intact and magically functional cloak that is... not the same shade of green it was when you first came in. Now that you're looking closer, it's much more blue, with only hints of green remaining, but the aura of Illusion Magic behind that effect is very minor, easily overlooked against the aura of Abjuration Magic that runs through the thing.

"Despite its unusual appearance, which we can likely attribute to Hong's aesthetic preferences, it functions like a regular Cloak of Resistance," Ambrose informs you. "A decently strong one, at that."

Once again, you expend incense and pages.

The Broken Rainbow Necklace was indeed part of the Sorcerer Hong's "Imperial regalia," and while most of its legend proves to be a rehash of the tale you got off of the Headband of Arcane Energy, you do get some insights into what the item was used for.

While the Necklace proper is infused with Light, each of the major gems is attuned to a separate form of energy - Fire for the red stone, Ice for the blue, and so on - and each previously served as a modest reservoir of its associated element that the Necklace could channel to produce a few related effects: a single-target energy blast; an area-affecting explosion; and a Spell to Resist Energy.

On a side note, Hong seems to have liked Elemental blasts and barriers.

As Ambrose guessed, the current state of the Broken Rainbow is indeed the consequence of Hong's final battle, with him having depleted a significant portion of the item's stored power as he attempted to first "show the impertinent angels the depth of their error," and then later to simply save his own skin. The indigo gemstone was severed at some point in the battle, cut loose by a Quincy Spirit Weapon wielded in melee (but not shattered by said weapon, you note, or at least not then and there), and its subsequent fate is not recorded. The rest of the damage is mostly due to Hong pushing too hard, particularly after the Necklace had already lost one part of its complex matrix and been stressed by having its defensive measures pitted against the Wandenreich's firepower.

While you want to see what this Robe can do, you're rather concerned by the possibility of it waking up your spiritual heritage, be it Gerudo, Warlock, Demon, or Curse, so you can't justify putting it on yourself.

Fortunately, you have a workaround.

"I summon you, my Shadow!"

*Poof*

Shadow Alex looks at you, then over at the Robe, and then back to you.

"For the record," he says flatly, "if this has any unpleasant effects, I WILL be taking them out on you."

"Ah, before you go donning that thing," Ambrose ventures, suddenly cautious, "perhaps we should adjourn to the spellcasting chamber again?"

You and your Dark Self trade glances and silently acknowledge that it's a good point. After all, if the Robe DOES turn Shadow Alex into Mini-Ganon, where would you want him? In the middle of a room full of breakable loot, some of it with magical properties yet to be determined? Or in the middle of a room that was designed, built, and then reinforced to handle things like sudden explosions and called entities run amuck?

This time, Balthazar and Urahara tag along, both curious and a bit concerned as to the possibility that your Shadow - and by extension, you - might have a physically dangerous reaction to wearing this particular item.

Before you leave the room, you grab the Cloak. Its defensive powers may be about to come in handy...

Gained Color-Shifting Cloak of Resistance

Are there any preparations you want to make before Shadow Alex gets dressed?

If the Rainbow Necklace were not Broken, you'd take it in a heartbeat. Possibly not to wear - you're pretty well set up as far as elemental energy blasts and Emergency Force Shields go, and rainbow patterns are difficult to match with anything - but it'd be an entirely worthwhile subject of study and experimentation, and perhaps eventual disenchantment.

As it stands, however, the damage the Necklace sustained has rendered it largely useless for those purposes, and if the absence of the indigo gem can't be resolved with a lucky find, it'll be impossible to fully repair the thing unless you craft a replacement stone. Your power and skills are such that you're confident you COULD do the job, but when you consider how many other crafting projects you have to deal with in the coming months, you can't really call restoring a magic item you're unlikely to wear a worthwhile use of your time.

Somewhat regretfully, you pass on this part of Hong's legacy.

While you don't feel the need to layer yourself in defenses, some precautions should probably be taken, just in case Shadow Alex does turn into an underaged version of Ganon or something.

With that in mind, you suggest that he turn on his Ki Sight, start Projecting as much ki as he can, throw in some Body Flickers, and then spam eighth- or ninth-circle spells - all without restraining how much energy he uses.

"Ah," your duplicate says with some approval. "I get it. Wear me down so that if I do explode or go crazy, I'm less dangerous. Right, well, guess it's time for Time to Stop-"

"Please do not attempt to spam imperfect high-end manipulations of the space-time continuum in my workshop," Ambrose interrupts with a sigh.

...okay, that's a fair request, although...

"We DID actually perfect the spell," you note mildly.

"I can verify that," Urahara says. "Or at least I've seen him cast it and not had anything bad happen as a result."

"Ah. Well, even so, please don't spam it here. Any day where I don't have to deal with some Power's temporal enforcer showing up is a good day."

Er, wait, what?

"'Temporal enforcer'?" you repeat with some concern.

"Yes, various Powers keep certain creatures on their staff who can sense, travel to, operate within, and by assorted means undo temporal manipulations even on the level of a Time Stop," Ambrose states. "I'm not terribly surprised you haven't heard of them, they're not often encountered, and most of those individuals that DO earn the attention of such things tend not to be in a position to speak of it afterwards."

"...do they show up often?"

"Oh, not for singular Time Stops, or we'd never be able to use the spell," the wizard says. "It's just when people get lazy or arrogant and start throwing the magic around on a whim that the so-called higher beings get their immortal noses out of joint. Stick to only using the spell when you genuinely NEED it and you should be fine."

"...just one, then?" you inquire, index finger raised in query.

"One," Ambrose allows, returning the gesture firmly. "No more than that."

"Right," Shadow Alex says. "Oh, and would anybody mind if I were to cast Foresight and Mind Blank on you?"

Nobody has any objections to that, the spells being purely benefical and entirely temporary, and Shadow gets to work. While he's bouncing around the room at Flickering speeds and dropping the aforementioned spells on everyone, one person at a time, you perform a quick Augury to see what Fate and the Goddesses have to say about this experiment.

...

Signs point to "weal," which at the very least you can safely assume means no Young Demon Kings.

Shadow Alex has already finished by then, looking at once invigorated and enervated by the sudden, massive expenditure of energy.

You hand over the Robe of Arcane Heritage and, with a showy twirl, he spins it onto his shoulders. For a moment, nothing happens, but as your Dark Self slips his arms into the sleeves, the golden symbols on the purple fabric change shape and position. The new look is a mix of Hyrulean and Gerudo writing-

Gained Gerudo F (Plus)

-the latter of which you are careful not to look at too closely. There are other symbols in the mix-

Gained Abyssal F (Plus)

-which give you a rather unpleasant feeling that has your gaze quickly skipping past them as well. Shadow Alex himself does not immediately grow a foot taller or develop those pronounced Gerudo features you used to sport, but when you take his darker, Shadow-tinted complexion into account, his skin and hair do seem to be gaining more Gerudo-like coloration.

And when he turns around, naturally, you find the Triforce emblem across his back.

"How do you feel?" Briar asks.

"No internal burning or feelings of pressure, which is a plus," the Shadow answers. "My skin feels awfully tingly, though, and most of my body aches a bit, like after a hard workout."

Possible hints that he's about to have a sudden growth spurt to go with the changing looks?

While you have confirmed that using the Robe of Arcane Heritage would not be a good idea for you, there remains the question of just how far the changes induced by its power can reach - and by extension, what sort of side-effects you might have to look forward to as you continue to develop your powers as a sorcerer.

You've been aware of - and busily suppressing - your tendency to look more like Ganondorf for some time now, but could there be other aspects to that gradual transformation of which you're currently unaware? Being huge for your age is honestly more advantageous than not, and while simply looking more like a Gerudo doesn't bring any particular advantages, its only detriments are entirely social in nature and rather easily dealt with via some Augmentation, Illusion, or Transformation Magic.

The possibility of turning GREEN is somewhat more concerning, mainly because you're pretty sure that there had to be additional stuff going on under the skin to explain that bizarre change in pigmentation, and you honestly have no idea what that might involve.

It also bears repeating that you would really prefer not to grow tusks or turn into a pig-man.

With all of that in mind, you wait and watch as Shadow Alex is gradually altered by the power of the Robe.

Over the course of the next minute or so, his skin darkens to a greyish brown, his eyes to a yellow too dull to be properly golden, and his hair to a dark shade of red bordering on black. As you guessed from his mention of aching bones, your Shadow puts on a certain amount of muscle and even some height, adding a couple of inches of the latter and enough of the former to stretch his shirt and make him fidget in now less-than-completely comfortable pairs of pants and shoes.

But that is as far as it seems to go, and when you look him over with your enhanced senses again, the gradual magically enabled shifting has stopped.

"And how do you feel now?" Briar asks.

"I'm not tingly anymore," comes the answer. "Still kind of sore, though that's fading... and I don't feel any more evil than when I started, so, yay?"

"Yay," you and Briar agree. Then, leaning to one side and glancing at his ears, you add, "Your ears don't seem to have changed."

Shadow Alex tries to wiggle his ears at you, but mostly just ends up flexing the muscles along the top and sides of his head. "Yeah, my hearing doesn't seem to be any sharper than before. I guess a familiar bond doesn't count as a bloodline?" he asks of the other two experts in the room.

"No," Ambrose agrees. "There are plenty of sorcerers whose choice in familiars is dictated BY their bloodline, but the reverse situation that you're suggesting doesn't really work. After all, a familiar bond CAN be broken with a very simple ritual that brings no harm to either participant; trying to get rid of a bloodline is... rather more difficult."

Yeah, you would have to go in and... edit out parts of the subject's body and soul, while also making sure to break their connection to whatever the ultimate source of their mystical heritage was. That's not only a heck of a lot more difficult, it could easily kill somebody - and NOT just the bloodline-bearer.

Back on topic, once it's clear that the changes have halted and your Dark Self isn't about to go insane on you, Shadow Alex runs through some of his exercises, using what little energy he has left to spare to see if there have been any significant changes in his abilities. He runs critically low before he can check everything, however.

At that point, your Shadow removes the Robe and passes it back to you-

-and then doesn't return to his normal appearance.

"...um," he says after a moment, looking down at himself.

Yeah, you're DEFINITELY not wearing that Robe yourself. Kind of a shame, the Hyrulean design is pretty snazzy... still, you can always study its power and its effects, and maybe it'll fit one of your friends or more distant acquaintances well?

Gained Robe of Arcane Heritage

Do you have any further need for Bigger Shadow Alex?

"Would you be comfortable hanging around for a while longer, to keep testing yourself and seeing if the changes will fade away on their own?" you ask your Shadow.

"...well, I'm still not feeling any unexpected evil impulses," he replies.

"As opposed to EXPECTED evil impulses?" Urahara comments.

"I am an embodiment of his repressed thoughts and feelings," your Dark Self reminds the Shinigami, while indicating you with a tilt of his head, "and considering that he doesn't exactly go around kicking puppies and stealing candy from babies..."

What a stirring character endorsement.

Anyway, even if he is kind of unsettled by his persisting change of appearance, your Shadow doesn't see a problem with continuing to exist for a while. As you point out, if he hangs around long enough, the changes might fade-

"And then again, they might not," he replies.

-and even if they don't, then at least you'll know that. Also, there's plenty of tests of his abilities that you could still attempt, such as a quick comparison of physical strength and speed...?

Ambrose doesn't exactly have a set of free weights or a treadmill in his quarters, and while the Drakes do have a training room, you ARE kind of in the middle of something already - not to mention that showing yourselves would prompt questions about what happened to your Shadow, WHY his appearance changed the way it did, and what exactly your little group of mystical force manipulators has been up to.

Then there's the fact that you haven't directly introduced Urahara to the Drakes yet and would prefer to avoid springing such a meeting on them without prior warning and agreement.

After all, Urahara HAS met Ambrose's Simulacrum of King Arthur, and could not fail to see the resemblance to Altria and Lucia.

Still, you can do some direct comparisons of ability. Pushing hands, for instance, lets you test strength to a certain extent - although your Shadow's increased mass gives him a bit of an edge there as well - while some quick drills and a spar allow for speed and reflexes to be investigated. Simple stuff.

On the whole - and once you've accounted for his somewhat greater size - you would say that your Dark Self is currently a bit stronger than you are. This is supported by the fact that his speed and reaction times are about the same, as even with a comparatively minor increase in size, it would still take more power for him to move at the same speed. Shadow Alex is also slightly tougher than you are, but you think that might simply be an artifact of his greater mass.

"How often do sorcerers get physical benefits like that?" Urahara wonders.

"They're pretty common," Balthazar answers. "Increased strength or vigor; sharper reflexes; enhanced senses; natural armor; claws, fangs, or horns; the odd extra limb; supernatural resistance to physical harm - I could go on. Granted, you generally won't see a bloodline that bestows more than two or three such traits, unless the ultimate source of the magic is a creature that's defined by its physical abilities rather than more exotic powers that magic might have an easier time reproducing. Even then, the changes don't come in all at once, only as the sorcerer's power grows over time and his nature becomes more like his ancestor or patron - or when he experiments with something like this."

Speaking of "more exotic powers," after conferring with Ambrose and getting one of the knight-Simulacra to come keep an eye on things, you leave your Shadow to keep experimenting to see if he did unlock any interesting tricks.

Given the sheer range of possibilities and your distinct lack of any prior cases of an awakening "Ganondorf bloodline" to use as precedent, he may be at that for a while...

Back to the oversized closet, there are a few more Cloaks of Resistance up for grabs. This isn't very surprising, as the things are quite common in the wider supernatural community, but of the two that you have first claim on, neither comes near to being as potent as the Color-Shifting Cloak. You don't think that their weakness was due to damage, either, although they do show some signs of having been punctured by Quincy arrows and subsequently stitched up.

Speaking of common magical items, there are a few belts in your collection as well. One of these, whose brightly polished golden sunburst buckle positively drips with multicolored jewels, is another likely piece of Hong's regalia. Ambrose identifies it as a Belt of Physical Might, a useful creation that enhances several of the wearer's overall physical abilities, although not quite as completely as a Belt of Physical Perfection.

"This particular model focuses on honing reflexes and endurance," the wizard states, "but it's also one of the weaker models. Not sure if that was Hong's lack of affinity for Augmentation Magic showing through or the result of him focusing on form over function."

It IS rather shiny, isn't it?

There is also a suspiciously plain-looking black leather belt whose aura is carefully hidden behind a layer of Illusion Magic, but proves to be somewhat stronger than the power bound up in Hong's work once you've looked past that deception.

"A mid-tier Belt of Incredible Dexterity," Ambrose informs you, "with a rather good ward against magical detection worked into it, besides."

"A ward for the wearer, or just for the belt?" you ask.

"The latter. It was part of another full set, along with those boots there, that set of goggles, and those clothes, as well as a suit of leather armor and some daggers I've got in the temporary armory, plus a kit of some absolutely fascinating little tools."

The items in question - or at least the ones you can lay eyes on - are all curiously nondescript, and the passing description of the others gives you a very strong sense that you're looking at parts of a thief's, spy's, or assassin's equipment.

You make a note to check those items in a moment, but first...

You compare the Cloaks for a moment, but you can't make out any significant differences in the strength or style of the enchantments worked into them. Seeing that their powers are basically identical, you go ahead and pick the one you think looks better, leaving the other to be sold.

Gained Cloak of Resistance

At a guess, you've got three more uses of the Spell of Literary Vision before you need to conjure up some fresh Gold Incense and a new book. You decide to go ahead and spend one of them on Hong's Belt.

...

The result is perhaps not worth the expense, as most of what you get is another rendition of the Legend of Hong, which swaps out the parts describing previous magic items for the current one. On that note, the reason Hong's Belt of Physical Might is not as powerful as a sorcerer of his caliber should have been able to produce does turn out to be at least partly due to the limits of Hong's skills at Augmentation Magic. For all his deluded egotism, the self-proclaimed Emperor of Light was aware of his shortcomings in certain schools of magic, and he created this Belt as a test of his abilities. Since he was seeking to confirm that he was actually capable of blending two separate Augmentation-based enhancements into a single item, it made sense for the item's power to be limited, so that if the work DID fail, he would not have wasted as much time and resources.

When the Belt turned out to be a success, both in magical effect and physical design, Hong set about designing a version, "truly worthy of my imperial glory!"

Apparently he'd heard of something called a Belt of Magnificence, and was determined to make his own, superior version.

"Considering how flashy the last Belt of Magnificence I saw was, that would be saying something," Balthazar notes.

"Like this, only more so?" you guess, holding up Hong's multi-colored jewel-studded belt.

"Actually, the Belt of Magnificence is traditionally made of metal, because there's enough power flowing through the thing that even high quality organic materials burn out in the enchanting process," the old sorcerer replies, shaking his head. "Unless you're using dragonskin or something, but then that's practically working metal already..."

That... sounds like it would pretty uncomfortable to wear.

"It IS usually worn over armor, heavy robes, and the like."

Issues of chafing and pinching aside, Hong was still sourcing the reagents he needed to make his super-belt when the Wandenreich came for him. Evidently part of the reason for his trip to Taiwan was because a local had something that might have been useful for the project, only for the materials in question to turn out to not be up to Hong's imperial standards. Negotiations for better goods were still ongoing when the Quincy dropped in.

In the time since you began practicing magic, you've dealt with knights and wizards, martial artists and sorcerers, Fae and monsters, an assortment of gods and even a few demons. However, to the best of your knowledge, you have yet to encounter a proper thief: the closest you've come to someone with that particular skillset would probably be the ninjas; and given how many of them were adherents of the spell-slinging and/or straight-up face-breaking styles of their craft, it's not quite the same.

There is a part of you that has a certain affinity for the larcenous arts and those who practice them, and you're curious to see what sort of history the ways of the light-fingered fellowship have on Earth - not to mention how one of them got mixed up with the Wandenreich.

And so, you spend some of your Conjured Book's last pages, as well as half of the remaining Gold Incense, to investigate the matter.

The legend that comes up this time is less straightforward than the ones you've read so far. Instead of a single narrative, it's presented as a series of short articles - no more than a few lines each - about seemingly unrelated heists that took place all over the world some decades ago. The first entry is set in France in 1938, just before World War Two, the next is in Belgium over a year later, and then there's a string of incidents in Germany and German-occupied territories from 1940 to 42 before things suddenly jump to England, and from there across the Atlantic.

You follow a trail littered by stolen jewels, missing portraits, a couple of musical instruments, carvings and sculpture of various mediums and sizes, and more. If everything being described was purely mundane and the work of the same agency or individual, it would add up to a total well into the millions by the standards of the time - and likely twenty times as much by today's reckoning - but each entry has an addendum which mentions a supernatural element to the crime: the pilfered gems were all reagent-grade; the portraits were of practitioners past and present; and the other items were alternately made by magical means, had been used in significant works of magic, or held powers of their own.

You wonder if the responsible party had any run-ins with the Mages' Association.

The unnamed thief meanders their way across the globe, visiting every continent except Australia and Antarctica, rarely working in the same area twice in succession after that spree in Germany. The number of crimes rises over time before reaching a steady eight or nine per year, at least for those significant enough to register to your magic, and some of these involve the Quincy: a statuette fashioned from spirit silver, over a millennium old; a bangle made only decades earlier, commissioned as a wedding gift by a father-in-law to be with more money and pride than good sense; and other odds and ends, more of them over time.

Finally, a decade and a half after leaving the country, the subject of the spell returns to France and raids the Wandenreich outpost in Paris. It is not the first such daring trespass in the rogue's history, and it is not quite the last, for by means of cunning and disguise and long preparation, the thief sneaks through the facility's Gate of the Sun and into Silbern itself.

"Wait, you mean we WEREN'T the first to break into that place?" Ambrose exclaims in dismay.

You're not quite sure whether to claim Hong's Belt or not, so you decide to leave it for the time being.

There is quite a difference between one man penetrating a fortress by stealth and subterfuge and two magic-users bypassing the place's defenses and hijacking its own transportation system to drop an army on the place. You express as much to the wizard.

Ambrose considers your answer with a frown and shakes his head. "I still feel like we came in second place, somehow. I have never liked that feeling."

You can't say you're fond of it yourself...

Getting back to the Book, it seems that while your globetrotting master thief managed to find and enter Silbern, their success did not extend much further. Skills that had first been developed to overcome mundane security measures and subsequently honed against supernatural opposition would have been able to deal with most of the physical protections set up by the Quincy - it was on the social side of things that the trespasser's abilities came up short. Isolated and isolationist, the Wandenreich had its own cultural trends and peculiarities that not even their earthbound cousins were fully aware of or welcome to take part in; more than that, while Silbern was large enough and sufficiently populated that it was possible for a given individual to meet a perfect stranger even after decades walking the halls, it was decidedly unusual to meet someone that NO ONE in your immediate social group seemed to know.

Unable to verify any of this before finding himself in the middle of a Quincy army on another plane of existence, the rogue whose wit and style had charmed and disarmed nervous marks, determined law enforcement, deadly guardians, and rival thieves alike was at last discovered before being ready to move. For all that their other skills initially helped to avoid injury and capture, once word of the intruder's existence and continued freedom within the walls made it to the Grandmaster, there was truly nowhere to hide.

Finally caught, very thoroughly searched-

"There are quite a few hidden pockets spread across the whole oufit," Ambrose admits. "Not to mention the expanded spaces."

-and after having hands bound and RE-bound three times before the frustrated guards finally resorted to sealing their prisoner's hands in balls of spirit silver-

Ambrose laughs a bit at that.

-the intruder was brought before the leaders of the Hidden Empire: the Grandmaster; the Schutzstaffel; those surviving Sternritter of the first generation, as well as their intended future peers and successors; and the heads of the various branches.

Given the thief's ability to penetrate Silbern in the first place, much less to avoid capture by any means short of the Almighty, many of the Quincy leaders had feared they were dealing with an elite Shinigami of the Second Division, or a member of one of the innumerable monstrous or demonic bloodlines to be found across the Earth whose particular heritage gave them some tremendous edge in the realms of stealth and subterfuge. Perhaps a human with unique spiritual powers focused on concealment, or mystical abilities devoted to the same, or even a renegade member of their own kin - that last, at least, might explain how the invader had known of the existence of their stronghold in the first place!

Instead, they saw a rather ordinary woman of European heritage, unremarkable in height and build for such ancestry, with the sort of light brown hair and eyes that could be found almost anywhere and the modest natural good looks of the girl next door - though said "girl" was now somewhere in her third decade of life. She had no supernatural blood that the Quincy could detect, a soul that was stronger than most humans' but displayed no special abilities beyond common spiritual awareness, and no inherent magic to speak of, just a hard-earned skill at manipulating the creations of others.

Under questioning, the thief revealed both much and little. She had no family connections to the Quincy or any of their enemies - indeed, she had no living family at all, and knew very little of the Soul Society beyond the fact that it existed and was one of the less appealing afterlives she'd ever heard of. She'd not been informed of the Wandenreich's existence by a turncoat among their kin or through the auspices of an employer - her current "job" was a private interest, one she'd initially been led to after stealing some information from the Thule Society-

Ambrose groans at this.

-back during the War.

Your magically acquired account doesn't outright name Erich Gruber as the source of the thief's information, but the description of "a wizard of low origins, hunting the Quincy to steal their secrets and increase his own power" seems fairly telling.

In any case, the stolen data included pictures and analyses of various Quincy-made artifacts found on different continents, all of a consistently high level of quality and similarity of style that seemed unlikely to have been the product of known Quincy populations. Some groups were too poor to have produced such things, others too young to have given rise to a craftsman with the necessary skill - to say nothing of how pieces found thousands of miles apart over hundreds of years were so consistently similar in design, purpose, and power. A common origin had seemed likely, some unknown but old and well-established group of Quincy, thriving where so many of their modern cousins were not.

As the thief noted, Quincy-made artifacts could go for good prices to the right buyers, and wealthy individuals or groups inevitably had more numerous and valuable pieces than the relatively destitute, so it had made sense to her to keep an eye out for that "mysterious Quincy group."

Understandably, the thief's admission that she'd sought out the Wandenreich just to rob them did not exactly endear her to them, although she clarified that once she'd started to get an idea of just how large, well-organized, and dangerous the group she was looking for must be, profit hadn't been her main motivation in finding them and taking their stuff.

What was?

"'I wanted to see if I could.'"

That is all your magic has to say about the woman who called herself, "La Renarde."

On second thought, you'll take it.

Gained Belt of Physical Might

Depending on just what powers are invested into the rest of the lady thief's gear, you may end up claiming the whole set, but the Belt, at least, is definitely worth taking. Your preferred combat style is pretty focused on speed, mobility, and evasion, and those are all things that a reflex- and agility-boosting enchantment can help with to some degree.

Plus, unlike Hong's stuff, it's a perfectly normal-looking leather belt. It'll go with just about anything you might care to wear.

Gained Belt of Incredible Dexterity

Since some of La Renarde's other stuff was already pointed out to you, you take a minute to investigate it.

The lady thief's enchanted clothing consists of two layers, the outer of which includes a knee-length brown leather coat and a pair of short, soft boots - or maybe tall shoes? The inner layer includes a stretchy, breathable turtleneck, padded leggings, and thin gloves, all in a shade of brown somewhat lighter than the outer layer.

The coat radiates an aura of Illusion, Summoning, and Transformation Magic, none of them terribly strong, which is actually harder for you to sort out than more potent enchantments might have been. In any case, you've soon determined that the Transformation effect is actually a Spell to Alter One's Self, while the Illusion Magic is focused on the numerous pockets that Ambrose mentioned earlier, concealing most of them from a casual inspection. Even a typical magically aided search might not have turned those up, and if you hadn't been told of them sooner, you might not have thought to look.

The Summoning Magic, meanwhile, is focused entirely on the hidden pockets, and reminds you of your own dimensional pocket spell, though instead of giving multiple points of access to a large single space, these are clearly a series of separate extra-dimensional containers that just happen to have their exits located very close together.

You don't know if La Renard ever walked out of a room carrying its full contents, but if so, she did it with a different storage medium.

The footwear, meanwhile, bears a blended aura of Abjuration and Transmutation, the latter portion of which you recognize as the Spell to Pass Without Trace - a simple effect, but quite a useful one for a thief expecting to run into security dogs and many monsters and demons. The other side of the magic seems to be based on the Spell to Dispel Magic, and for lack of a better technical term, has been wrapped around the lesser spell. At a guess, you would say it's designed to wipe out the wearer's MAGICAL trail along with their physical one - another very useful thing for a thief, if she were dealing with supernatural security.

Despite being made as separate pieces, the shirt and leggings are clearly intended to work together. The Illusion-based effect that passes through both of them is centered in the top piece and extended, in a manner of speaking, into the lower. Although the interconnected matrices are clearly derived from the Spell of Invisibility, you don't believe it's intended for them to turn the user completely undetectable to the naked eye; instead, this effect seems more like camouflage, a shifting of colors, blurring of edges, and deepening of shadows. The fact that the shirt is a turtleneck makes you think the magic can also be extended upwards, to help hide the face.

At least, that would explain why there isn't a separate mask along with this stuff.

And then there's the gloves. While these are also meant to be linked into the magic of the shirt, that's not their only or even primary function. There is an aura of Divination and Transformation here that you can't quite make sense of, as while the second part is once again a clear derivative of the Spell to Alter One's Self, the former doesn't match to any spell in your experience.

"It's an analytical spell," Ambrose replies, less than entirely helpfully. "The interesting thing about it is the trigger mechanism: it activates when you wear the gloves and hold your palm against a surface."

He's clearly testing you with this.

In the words of a great man: Yoink!

Gained La Renarde's Coat of Concealment
Gained La Renarde's Clothes of Camouflage
Gained La Renarde's Gloves
Gained La Renarde's Shoes of Secrecy

You consider Ambrose's words as you turn the lady thief's Gloves over in your hands, studying the magical matrix through your Mage Sight.

You're pretty sure that this isn't some method of detecting traps, as having to make physical contact with a potentially rigged object or location would risk setting it off. While there are some overconfident show-offs that would go ahead and take that risk, most thieves, even most GREAT thieves, know that wits and skill will only get one so far, and luck always runs out - so it's best not to needlessly tempt whatever mischievous or malicious forces you believe are out there, because they're always watching and waiting for their chance.

And at those times when one CAN'T avoid tempting Fate, the demon Murphy, and their ilk, it's better to use and risk something OTHER than your hands in the process.

Seriously, rogues need their hands as much as magic-users do. That commonality - as well as a shared love of secrets and the ferreting out thereof - is undoubtedly one of the reasons why so many ne'er-do-wells develop a knack for operating magic items...

Thinking on it, you can probably rule this out as some means of assessing the value of potential loot, too. A good thief can do that sort of thing by eye, even when they're dealing with magical goods, and for the less capable or experienced, something like an enchanted version of a professional appraiser's lens would be a natural fit for such a task. Certainly, wearing a pair of nice glasses would be less suspicious to any guards than someone walking too close to items on display or "accidentally" brushing into them.

The goggles that Ambrose pointed out as also belonging to La Renarde wouldn't pass unremarked in such circumstances, but the enhancement on them doesn't feel analytical anyway - they seem more like they're meant for the actual heist, rather than the scouting phase.

You suppose if the lady thief had been more magically powerful, or if she'd had a partner with such talent, she might have used these Gloves to gather information about targets for later scrying, but La Renarde's story didn't give the impression that she had that much magical ability OR that she worked with a partner. That leaves you with... not a whole lot, really.

"Any ideas, Briar?" you venture.

"Nope. You?"

"Some, but I ruled them all out." You turn to Ambrose. "So, what DOES it do?"

"You really haven't seen this sort of thing before?" the wizard asks interestedly.

You shake your head. "If I had, I wouldn't be asking."

"Huh." Then he shrugs and continues. "Well, the Divination-based enchantments on those Gloves can do two things. If the 'surface' the Glove is held to is someone else's hand, it will copy their fingerprints and handprints, and then replicate them using its Transformation power. The other thing the Divination can do is to make fingerprints appear on non-living surfaces."

You consider that. "You're telling me that FINGERPRINT MAGIC is a thing."

"Fingerprints, handprints, and footprints have been used as a method of identification for thousands of years," Balthazar notes. "Officials in ancient China used to authenticate government documents with their fingerprints, the Babylonians signed written contracts with them, and both groups would take prints as part of criminal investigations."

And if the practice is THAT old, then yes, there probably WOULD be magic based on it, wouldn't there?

Do you have any questions about Fingerprint Magic?

"Well," you say after a moment, "if this sort of magic is that old, I assume that there are standard counters for it?"

"Several," Balthazar agrees, "not the least of which IS the fact that it's an old and fairly specialized branch of magic that not everyone has ever heard of." He gives you a meaningful nod.

You return the gesture, acknowledging the point.

"Aside from that, a lot of what can be done with fingerprints, magically speaking, can also be done by other means that are either more effective or just more convenient," he goes on. "A signature isn't quite as strong a connection because it's made at one remove - through a tool, rather than by your body directly - and because your name may not be unique to you, but a signature is considerably less hassle to obtain and preserve than a fingerprint is, especially in today's culture. Conversely, while securing a bit of someone's hair or blood is about as much work as taking a fingerprint would be, it gives you a considerably stronger link in the bargain - and of course, you can combine those two for greater effect."

"This is where those Western stories about devils offering contracts written in blood comes from, isn't it?" Urahara guesses.

"It may actually be the other way around," Ambrose muses. "Some devils DO use blood-contracts to enforce their deals, even today, and given the bastards are functionally immortal if nothing kills them, I could certainly see some of them having used bloody fingerprints to seal deals in ancient China or Babylon, among many other places."

As Balthazar was saying, fingerprint magic has been overshadowed in or outright displaced from a lot of its traditional niches by other forms of magic, but there are still times and places where it's used - magical hand- and fingerprint scanners evidently ARE a thing in some places, some of them the handles of enchanted tools and weapons.

The easiest and most obvious precaution to take against being magically printed is, naturally, to not touch anything, but when that's unavoidable, you have to try to touch things in a way that won't leave fingerprints, whether that's by wearing gloves, using telekinesis, or polymorphing yourself into a form that doesn't HAVE prints to leave.

You idly wonder if THAT might not be the reason why fingerprinting apparently never caught on in Hyrule. Hylians and Gerudo definitely have them, and Sheikah probably do - although you're not going to put Rupees on that, knowing the reputation of that annoyingly ninja-like people as you do - but Zora? Kokiri? GORONS?

Anyway, if you have to handle something with your bare, actual hands, your next recourse should then be to try to erase your prints from it, to get other people to handle it - preferably as many as you can - or for preference, both.

"Like I said, the sympathetic connection between a fingerprint and its maker isn't as strong as the link between an actual piece of the body and the rest of it would be," Balthazar says, waggling the fingers on his left hand for emphasis. "It has to do with how the oils your skin produces are MEANT to be separated from your person, and very frequently at that, whereas flesh and blood... aren't. As weak as the link of a fingerprint is in the absence of any additional support, it's fairly easy to muddle with other signatures. An expert in the field might still be able to sort things out, but..."

But, like he said, there aren't a lot of experts in that particular field anymore.

"Could fingerprints copied this way be used as a link?" you ask then, giving your new Gloves a quick flap. "Magically, I mean?"

"I wouldn't care to rely on it for anything long-ranged," Ambrose says. "To get the best results with fingerprint magic, you want to use the ORIGINAL print, and for a lot of practitioners, saying 'the best result' is the same as saying 'ANY result'. The connections just aren't that strong. La Renarde's Gloves evidently sufficed to fool some types of security, but I suspect those would have been things she was handling directly, like keypads and device lockouts. If you tried to use a photograph or a physical copy of someone's prints to support a scrying spell, it wouldn't have any practical benefit."

Sounds like another reason why that branch of magic isn't as widely used as it once was.

Curiosity assuaged, you pocket the Fingerprint Gloves and turn back to your loot selection...

With the rest of La Renarde's gear checked and claimed, you give the goggles that Ambrose pointed out as hers a look as well. Although goggles are a bit unusual to see on a person outside of certain jobs and sports, the plain brown leather wrapped around the frames almost manages to make the item look dull and unremarkable - but only almost. The impression is decidedly contrasted by the lenses, which are made of a violet-hued crystal dark and opaque enough to appear black at a distance.

"These are a straightforward combination of several common pieces of enchanted eyewear," Ambrose states. "Goggles of Night for seeing in total darkness; Eyes of the Owl for seeing in conditions of poor lighting; and Eyes of the Eagle for improved visual acuity in general. They can also let the wearer perceive magic auras, but that's limited to just detecting the presence of spells and effects, not actual analysis."

You nod, guessing that these Goggles were La Renarde's default eyewear for when she was on a job, and that she probably had one or two more specialized items for analyzing magical effects she came across.

As it is, the eyepieces don't do anything that you aren't capable of replicating with a few spells, but by the same token, you'd NEED a few spells on top of your passive Mage Sight to do what this one item does.

Aside from La Renarde's Gloves, there are a few other pieces of hand-wear in the collection, including a set of fine silk gloves with the same color-shifting style as Hong's Cloak of Resistance.

"Nothing special here," Balthazar tells you. "Just a fancier than usual pair of Arcanist's Gloves. They make it easier to shape magic, especially when you're trying to do so while keeping an enemy from stabbing you or tearing your throat out."

Someone like Hong acknowledging that not all opponents would have the good graces to kneel before him or be swiftly and utterly destroyed by his awesome power? Admitting, moreover, that he'd be at a disadvantage in close quarters? Will wonders never cease?

You're surprised to see that there is also a gauntlet in this collection, although its presence in the "clothing" section instead of the armory isn't the only thing that's surprising about it. While it features four fully articulated fingers and a thumb, you have your doubts that they'd be flexible, for the metal plates that make up the armored glove look like they've rusted over - and even through in a few places, where the steel is pitted and scored. Despite looking like a worthless piece of scrap, however, the gauntlet radiates a moderately strong aura of Transformation Magic - one that partially matches the Spell of the Heart of the Metal, except... inverted?

"This is a Gauntlet of Rust," Ambrose begins.

"No kidding?" Briar remarks.

"Hush, you, it's the actual name of the thing. The basic enchantment woven into it can turn an item made of iron or iron alloys into a rusted hunk of scrap at a touch, while also protecting the wearer and their equipment from similar forces."

"How often does something like that come up?" Urahara asks.

"Not so often on Earth these days," Ambrose admits. "Not since all the rust monsters died out. Of course, they were never all that common..."

The Shinigami frowns. "'Rust monster'?"

"Picture a rust-red four-legged flea with a long, thin tail that ends in a sort of propeller-looking growth, two very long and fluffy antennae, and the approximate size of a pony," the wizard says. "Imagine that a single glancing touch from either antenna can rust a hole through any sort of metal, and then understand that the critter EATS rust and is almost always hungry."

Urahara adjusts his grip on his cane. "...ANY metal?" he asks carefully.

"ANY metal." Ambrose huffs. "Granted, the process is most effective against iron and its alloys, and inherently magical or artificially enchanted metals can resist the process; I never did get the chance to see how well stainless steel held up, if it did at all. Still, warriors who've encountered the critters tend to fear them as much or more than they do dragons."

Gained Xenology F (Plus) (Plus)

You can imagine why!

"I suspect the maker of this Gauntlet knew of rust monsters," the wizard goes on, "because it's been upgraded to function similarly to their corrosive attack. Where a typical Gauntlet of Rust will only work on iron, steel, and the like, this one proved effective on several other metals that would normally have been immune."

Being able to get three forms of enhanced vision in a single package is a pretty good deal, particularly if you go spelunking or tomb raiding again in the near future. Heck, even roaming the streets of Sunnydale after dark would give you a reason to wear them.

Gained La Renarde's Thief's Goggles

You just hope that these things don't make you look TOO much like a thief.

While you do have the basics of spellcasting in melee down, your skill is limited to just that - the basics. Any additional support you could get for such a situation would be useful, especially given your personal fondness for casting Fist and Sword given half a chance.

Gained Hong's Gloves of the Arcanist

You make a mental note to put in some time practicing your forms while wearing these Gloves. They shouldn't have any real impact on your punches and strikes, but you aren't so sure about grapples or deflections, and you DEFINITELY need a chance to get used to how they'll affect your grip on weapons.

You're having some trouble figuring out why someone would create a Gauntlet of Rust in the first place, much less how it might have ended up in the Wandenreich's possession or why they decided to put it on display. The question bugs you enough that you start to take the last of your Gold Incense out of your pocket... only to pause as a thought occurs to you.

A minute later, you're down the hall and back in Ambrose's spellcasting room.

"Any progress?" you ask your still too-tall Shadow.

"No," he admits with clear disappointment. Gesturing to the Simulacrum in the room with a certain casual respect, he continues, "Sir Knight, here, was good enough to help me work through our forms and physical exercises, but aside from the obvious and what we'd already figured out, nothing seems to have changed there. Psychic and spiritual abilities seemed unaffected as well, and that was about as far as I had time to get."

Disappointing, but at least you know where he can start next time. If there IS a next time, anyway; right now, you have something else in mind.

"I have something else I need you to do, and before you can, I need to re-summon you."

Shadow Alex blinks, and then shrugs. "Sure."

*Poof*

"...not going to lie," Briar says. "For a second there I wasn't sure if he was going to listen to you, or even if he'd be ABLE to."

Truth be told, you were a little unsure how well that would work, too. But now that it HAS, you get out your Conjured Book and the box of Gold Incense and balance both in one hand as you re-cast the Spell of the Dark Self-

*Poof*

-summoning a perfectly normal Shadow Alex.

"You know, it occurs to me that I just passed up a perfect opportunity to do a spooky entrance and make it look like I was still under some darker-than-usual influence," he announces. "Do you suppose Batreaux would be disappointed?"

Like you said, perfectly normal.

"...actually, CAN you alter your manifestation?" you wonder.

You know that magic-users who've been pulled across space-time by means of Summoning Magic can do that: Batreaux does it regularly; you did it yourself that one time Shadow Alex summoned you - though the memories of that are kind of confused, given you didn't and still don't have much experience with being summoned, and have your Dark Self's perspective of the situation besides; and various other beings you've called up have showed off in similar ways.

"It's more like WE could alter my manifestation, if we both agreed to it ahead of time - if you follow me."

You do. For all that Shadow Alex's appearance LOOKS like a Spell to Summon Monsters or a calling effect in action, it's really not. He's a product of high-end Illusion, elements of your own psyche woven into shadow and spun into substance through the Spell of the Dark Self - and even when it's being generated entirely by the Heart of Courage, it IS still a spell, and can be modified accordingly by its caster.

Hmmm...

Getting back to the matter at hand, Batreaux has yet to joke around where stuff like a projection of you possibly being taken over by the Curse of Demise is concerned, and you say as much, being mindful to leave out mention of the Curse itself in front of the knight.

"Point," your Shadow admits. "Anyway, now that I'm here, let's see what I can find out about that Gauntlet..."

The two of you and Briar hurry back to the clothes room, the knight-Simulacrum tagging along behind-

"I'm not in danger of going crazy anymore, though?" Shadow Alex says.

"You'll pardon me if I prefer to hear that from the Wizard," is the knight's answer. "Just in case."

"...eh, fair."

-and while you explain your idea to the three old men in the room, your Shadow sets up for the spell, setting the last (and only) Incense he was called into existence with into the hands of the Goddess-figurines, carefully moving the Gauntlet of Rust into their circle, and then readying his Conjured Book to receive the information.

Idly, you wonder if you should call that a Book of Shadows...

In any event, the spell works, although you do notice that the "Shadow Incense" is consumed much faster and more completely by the force of the magic involved.

Reading from his Book, Shadow Alex tells the tale of a mage whose arcane talents revolved largely around the Element of Metal. From the Hyrulean perspective, as well as your own, Metal would be a subset of the Earth Element, but there are other magical styles that take a different approach to things, the one that immediately comes to mind being the Chinese Five Elements Theory, which you've learned about in your research - and also because it gets used in a lot of modern Japanese fiction - but seeing as how this particular spellcaster went by the pseudonym of "the Mask of Vulcan," he probably wasn't working with that style of magic.

Mask was one of those cases of a practitioner whose magic, while powerful, could not be properly expressed through spells as you know them. Instead, he was a mage-smith in the truest sense of the term, forging armor, weapons, and other tools to fulfill various needs. His moniker came from his most iconic creation, a great cylindrical helm that bestowed a degree of invulnerability upon the wearer, protecting against physical harm and deprivation. Intended to allow its maker to labor tirelessly in the heat of the forge, the Mask also made for a rather effective defense in battle, a use to which its maker did not hesitate to put it when various beings tried to intimidate, threaten, or cheat him.

While his method of making magic might differ from that of more traditional practitioners, Mask still shared the need for material components - if anything, his requirements were steeper in that regard, since everything he did had to be given physical form - and so he was constantly seeking out and experimenting with new materials, often relying on his namesake device for protection in the process. It was the search for new reagents that brought him into contact with the Quincy, as Mask happened to cross paths with a group of the Earthbound during a Hollow hunt. While not able to see just what the spirit-archers were fighting, it was readily apparent that something large, invisible, and dangerous was smashing up the area trying to get at the fast-moving mortals, and it was just as apparent that the Quincy WERE attacking it with invisible projectiles of some sort - though Mask had the misfortune to confirm that fact when he inadvertently surprised one of the archers, who shot the strange masked figure on reflex before realizing that whatever he wore was not a Hollow's mask.

The Mask had not been intended to protect its wearer against spiritual threats, and so he was wounded, yet the defensive magic was potent enough to turn what might otherwise have been a fatal blow into a survivable one. The brush with death also forcibly awakened the smith's spiritual awareness, allowing him to see just what was going on.

He was understandably upset to have been shot out of hand.

He was also INSPIRED.

What was this strange energy that had nearly killed him, while also revealing a new level of reality? What were these tools the archers used to manipulate it, and what was that silvery metal they were made from? What was the hideous roaring creature, and why did it wear a mask?

And if he could harvest and harness these strange new materials, what wonders might he make of them?

You make a note to work on this later. Maybe having them appear in a burst of flame, as an homage to Din...?

As the Mask of Vulcan lay back on the ground, reeling from the impact of the Heilig Pfeil and the unseen world it had opened up to him, the Quincy that had shot him froze, shocked by the realization that he'd just fired upon a human who was no enemy - and in that moment of distraction, when he should have been providing cover fire, the Hollow closed with and struck down one of his two allies. The cannibalistic spirit was eradicated moments later, but the other surviving Quincy, enraged and aggrieved by the loss of his brother, then rounded on his companion with furious accusations - and when Mask recovered enough to regain his footing right after that, the Quincy's grievance immediately extended to include him.

Both sides could have handled the situation better than they did, but one Quincy was very angry, the other was stunned by guilt, both were grieving, and one other trait that Mask shared with many an arcanist was a distinct lack of the social graces.

Shadow Alex pauses in his reading to join the rest of the room in glancing at Ambrose.

The wizard huffs. "Excuse you, I am the LIFE of whatever party I am attending."

The knight-Simulacrum openly laughs at that.

In any case, when heated words turned to threats and threats to an attempt to take him into custody, Mask defended himself, striking the Quincy that was seeking to bind his hands. As a smith by trade, he was a strong man, and while not trained in any particular unarmed martial art, he'd had much practice in defending himself while seeking new materials or dealing with treacherous clients. On top of that, he wore armored gloves. All of those together with the Quincy's physical and emotional weariness after the unfortunate battle made it a simple enough matter to knock him out.

This still left the other archer, but that was the young man who'd accidentally shot Mask to begin with; he had no stomach to finish that particular job, as it were, and agreed to let the smith go free rather than press the matter. Making sure his remaining living ally did not come to further harm and that their fallen friend's body was not desecrated were more important.

Mask went on his way, injured but alive, with a head full of new secrets to explore and experiment with - and also a Quincy Cross, lifted from the angry young man who'd tried to make a prisoner of him.

Over the course of the next few months, Mask gradually teased out the properties of the Quincy Cross, both those it held as a working "magic" item and those specific to the spirit silver from which it had been crafted. At the same time, he was exploring his new awareness of the world around him and determining what new resources it made available to him, as well as the no-longer-hidden dangers he would now have to contend with.

Eventually, once he believed he had reached the limits of what he could learn from the Quincy Cross, Mask made an attempt to forge his own version of it.

And when that failed, he tried again.

And then again.

And then AGAIN.

Each time, Mask failed to replicate the spirit silver, and yet with each such failure, he learned more about building magical tools that could harness the power of the spirit world. Within few years, he had built a new forge, filled with tools that struck and shaped objects on the spiritual plane as well as the physical. A few years after that, he had forged a new Mask of Vulcan, one that WOULD protect him from angry ghosts, high-strung soul-sniping archers, and other such dangers - and it was well-needed, for by then, the byproducts and "failures" of Mask's work had caused the local spiritual energy levels to increase, making hauntings more common and more hazardous.

And at last, a decade and more since Mask's first encounter with the Quincy, he had his second, as the spirit-archers came to investigate the cause of the increased spectral activity in the region. Determining the greatest concentration of spirit energy to be a thriving smithy, they entered to speak with the master of the place - and found a humanoid figure wearing a strange helmet that seemed, at a glance, to have been forged from spirit silver, a substance that none but a Quincy should be able to make, let alone in such quantity.

Unless, of course, the metal had been stolen from their families, their homes, and their dead.

Once again, a Quincy shot Mask on sight.

That time, it was entirely intentional.

Although the mage-smith had tested and proved his new creations' effectiveness against other spiritual entities and forces, he'd not had the means to verify their performance against Quincy powers. So it was that, while the "Mask of Vulcan Mark Two" did prevent the second Heilig Pfeil ever fired at its maker and wearer from piercing his flesh or spirit, it did not completely ground out the forces involved in the technique.

Instead of shrugging off the impact of the blazing arrow as casually as he might have a sudden splash of water, Mask was knocked off-balance by the blow and staggered into his hearth, violently dislodging the project he had been heating there.

Mask was a skilled and experienced smith and had taken all sensible precautions to prevent a fire, and so the spray of burning coke fragments that was scattered across the back of his smithy found little if anything to burn. Unfortunately, Mask was also a mage who had been interrupted in the middle of crafting a magic item, and moreover, had the half-formed spell matrix of the work in question suddenly and violently introduced to an unplanned-for energy source.

The resulting explosion was akin to a Fireball with bits of metallic shrapnel mixed in, and it represented a level of destructive force that Mask had never anticipated might be unleashed in his workshop.

The resulting blast took out the roof and back wall of the smithy, set everything within range that was even remotely flammable alight, and blew the Quincy intruders back out through the door, dumping them into the street in a dazed, bleeding, smoldering heap. They could only lie there and watch in astonishment as the rear of the building collapsed - and then stare in disbelief as the furious, flame-wreathed Mask pulled himself free of the wreckage of his workshop and stalked towards them like a Hollow escaping Hell-

"That's not how that works," Ambrose sighs.

-bellowing in well-deserved fury as he proceeded to beat the idiots senseless.

Amazingly, no one died, although this may have been because Mask was more concerned about salvaging what he could from the ruin of his spiritual smithy than in taking revenge - at least just then. Still, these first two contacts between the Mask of Vulcan and the Quincy set the tone for all those that would follow, a series of some three dozen encounters that took place across four continents over a span of more than fifty years.

The Literary Vision does not go into too much detail about most of those incidents, save to state that they tended to followed the patterns established by the two initial meetings: either Mask's ongoing investigation of "spiritual smithing" and studies of spirit silver would bring him into contact with the Quincy (who were, after all, the only source of the metal); or else the Quincy themselves would come looking for Mask, whether as the unknown source of a spiritual disturbance or as the "thief in the metal mask."

It would seem that the reason your Shadow got all of this information from a Literary Vision of the Gauntlet of Rust is because the Gauntlet itself was present as far back as that first unfortunate encounter - at least in a manner of speaking. Mask evidently used the lightly enchanted armored gloves he'd been wearing that day as raw materials in the making of the Gauntlet, exploiting their extensive history of exposure to spiritual forces and his own magic to create this new tool.

As to why Mask made a Gauntlet of Rust, the answer was twofold: first, and primarily, he thought he'd worked out how to cause spirit silver to "rust" and needed a delivery mechanism for the magic, preferably of a reusable nature; secondly, given the ever-increasing use of metal in the world, being able to destroy everything from handguns to train cars to building supports with little more than a touch was a useful ability to have up one's sleeve.

The legend claims that the Gauntlet's magic was also intended to serve as the "centerpiece" for a much larger work, an array or device capable of magnifying the rusting effect and projecting it across a large area, thereby destroying all samples of spirit silver and greatly weakening the Quincy. Mask never got that idea beyond the theoretical stage, however, for his long-running feud with the Earthbound Quincy inevitably brought him to the attention of the Wandenreich, who were not at all pleased to learn of a magic-user who'd demonstrated even a limited immunity to Quincy powers, much less one who'd worked out how to craft something akin to spirit silver or - in his later years - begun trying to "harvest" Hollows for new works. A force was assembled and dispatched to deal with the man before his threat could grow any more severe.

Ironically, it wasn't the arrows of the Quincy that finally brought Mask down, but the simple march of time. He'd been in his early thirties when his eyes were first forcibly opened to the existence of the spirit realms, and though he'd remained in reasonable health and benefitted from various devices that enhanced his physical condition, decades of hard labor and magical experimentation had still taken their toll. In the middle of his last battle with the Quincy - a battle that he was at least holding his own in, so your Shadow's Book claims - the Mask of Vulcan suffered a heart attack and collapsed.

The Wandenreich force did not take the chance that he might awaken, stripping him of his creations and then executing him on the spot.

What happened to the rest of Mask's equipment is not mentioned, but the Gauntlet of Rust spent most of a decade in their research division before being placed in a high-security display in the Grandmaster's gallery.

Do you have any questions or comments, aside from the obvious inquiry of whether or not there's a big scary helmet over in the armory?

"Out of curiosity," you say, looking at Ambrose, "would there happen to be a big, scary-looking helmet in that growing armory of yours?"

"There were several helms, some of them intimidating, some of them enchanted," the wizard replies. "However, I don't recall seeing one that looks like the Mask of Vulcan, whether in the armory or in with the items still awaiting evaluation - at least not the ORIGINAL Mask that your spell described."

"I don't remember seeing any cylindrical helms, either," Balthazar agrees. "It's possible that the good smith significantly altered the appearance of his work as he improved it over time, but if it was named for the god of the forge, it may have been dedicated to or empowered by him. Modifying it after that wouldn't have been impossible, but also wouldn't have been something done lightly or too extremely."

Yeah, gods get a little touchy when people mess with their relics and holy items, which does beg the question of how Vulcan felt about the uses this mage-smith put the Mask to...

Anyway, while you'll keep your fingers crossed for the Mask to turn up in some form, in the meantime, you have the Gauntlet of Rust to decide what to do with.

After some thought, you have to say that you aren't hugely enthusiastic about claiming it. Sure, you might be able to reverse-engineer the effect that let Mask rust spirit silver, but you can't really say that you have much NEED for such a spell. If you get into another fight with a Quincy, you have other methods for disarming them, most of which won't suggest a connection to a former enemy or require you to get close enough to touch them with one hand.

As you put the Gauntlet of Rust back on its stand, your Shadow takes the last of your Gold Incense and heads for the door.

"Where are you off to, now?" Ambrose inquires.

"I'm going to go conjure some replacement incense, for the next time one of us calls on a Literary Vision," your Dark Self replies. "Did you want me to create a new book along with that, though?" he adds, looking your way.

You consider that. When you dismiss this iteration of your Shadow, every spell or supernatural effect he's maintaining will wink out with him, and the fact that he's able to create permanent versions of things just like you can is balanced out by the fact that he and his creations are things of Shadow, and so inherently impermanent. If you want to keep a permanent record of today's visions, a book made from shadow-stuff would not be the way to go.

Then again, you could just have your Dark Self make a Shadow Book for you and then keep him around long enough to copy everything in it to a more permanent medium later.

After Ambrose clears your Dark Self to "wander about unsupervised," he and the knight-Simulacrum both leave the room - the former heading off to make magic, the other to... do whatever it is the copied Knights of the Round Table are passing the time with - and you get back to picking out your loot.

While there are a few more enchanted sets of gloves in the collection, the only one that you have first refusal on is a very plain pair of gloves whose aura resembles that of La Renarde's Belt of Incredible Dexterity but is so weak that you doubt most people would notice any real benefit from wearing the things. This isn't to say that they're completely worthless to you - a study of how the enchantments on two physically separate Gloves both resemble and differ from those on a Belt might give you some insights, and of course you could always sacrifice them to fuel another work - but still, they're nothing to write home about.

After that, it's footwear. You immediately turn your attention to a pair of grey boots that periodically shimmer with a rainbow gleam.

"Hong's again?" you guess.

"Again, most likely," Ambrose agrees. "Visual effects aside, it's a pair of Boots of Teleportation."

"A classic choice for when you absolutely, positively have to be anywhere OTHER than where you are right now," Balthazar chimes in with his shopkeeper's voice.

"What's the range on them like?" you wonder.

"They're only about as good as the standard Spell of Teleportation, and only function a few times a day," Ambrose says. "Hong seems to have stuck with the standard three uses. Also, they'll only work for the wearer - and his familiar, if he has one."

"Thank you," Briar says.

Ah. Well, in that case...

The next set of footwear that catches your eye does so because, well...

"Are... those boots made out of LEAVES?" Urahara wonders as he leans in to take a closer look.

"LIVING leaves, at that," Ambrose says.

Sounds positively Fae.

"It does, doesn't it?" Briar agrees.

"That's one possibility," Ambrose admits. "Another is that a druid was involved, or that the Wandenreich somehow crossed paths with an actual elf, but the odds of that would be slim."

You are reminded of the dark-skinned, red-eyed elf-maid you fought back at the World Tournament. Did Ambrose not catch that match or hear about Amae from Altria, or is he just not recalling it?

As for the leaf-boots, they carry an aura of faint Augmentation Magic that has been "flavored" with energies that feel both natural and wild, much like the atmosphere of the regions of Faerie you've visited. Balthazar says they'll give the wearer a certain boost to their agility, even if they're not in the natural surroundings the maker might have preferred.

"You sure? It'll be twenty minutes or so before I can get both to you."

"I can wait a bit."

"Can you?" he muses, as he leaves the room. "I wonder..."

...yeah, that's fair. You HAVE been throwing the Spell of Literary Vision around kind of freely since you started going through the plunder. Maybe you need to restrain your scholarly need-to-know, or maybe all this stuff needs to stop being so interesting-!

Between your original birthday present for Kahlua, the selection of reverse-birthday gifts you made for the party on Bali Ha'i, and your other works, you've already created a rather wide range of magic items. Several amulets, a pair of boots, several gloves (of the paired and singular varieties), one set of glasses, a protective gi, backpacks, blankets, and bracers, to name some examples. Thus far, you've yet to hear about any of them malfunctioning, even for the stuff that spends a lot of time on the Hellmouth, in combat, or both, so you think you can safely say that you have a pretty good handle on the process of creating magic items meant to be worn on specific parts of the body.

With that in mind, you don't really need the Gloves of Dexterity for pointers, and given how weak the enchantment on them is, they're probably not worthy claiming as a gift for one of your friends. If they were a bit stronger, it might be a different story, but as-is...

That just leaves using them for reagent fodder and honestly, as weak as they are, they wouldn't save you that much time.

So, you'll take a pass on those.

While the idea of handing out Boots of Teleportation to your friends and family for emergency getaways or even regular travel is not without some appeal, you have to admit that there are some real risks to this sort of magic. The standard Spell of Teleportation always has that chance, however small, of dropping travelers in the wrong location even when they were aiming for a well-known destination, or the lesser but still non-zero chance of something going even MORE wrong.

Plus, you haven't forgotten the side-effects of your early attempts at teleporting on or near the Hellmouth. You would really rather not subject your loved ones to visions of all-consuming Evil if it can be avoided, and there are enough emergency escape options OTHER than teleportation available that you honestly CAN avoid the issue.

So, you will.

You honestly can't see anyone you know wearing living plants as shoes and getting away with it; even from what you've seen of monster society, this would be a bit out there, unless a dryad or the like was involved - and you have yet to meet anyone of such a nature. Even Briar couldn't wear these things in her human guise without drawing a lot more attention than she'd be comfortable with - especially in this town - and she doesn't exactly spend much time on her feet when she's tiny, meaning the Boots of Elvenkind would be rather wasted as one of your selections.

Better to exchange them for another kind of green.

"I feel the need to point out that I fought an elf at the World Tournament," you state.

"What was that?" Ambrose asks.

"When was this?" Balthazar says at the same moment.

They stop and look at each other.

"Right, the girl with white hair and black skin," Urahara confirms with a nod.

The other two old men turn and look at him.

"Seen the tapes?" you ask.

"Yoruichi has been picking up copies for the rest of us to watch ever since the Tournament started selling them, back in '75," the shopkeeper admits.

Huh. They had home video cassette recorders back then?

"At the time, it was still fairly new..."

"Not to sound too racist," Ambrose interjects, "but when you say, 'black skin,' do you mean dark brown, or actually black?"

"The latter," you reply. "If it matters, she also had red eyes and was able to levitate. Her magic felt a lot like darkness-"

"Well, of course it did," the wizard mutters.

"-and she seemed kind of disgusted by my Hellmouth reek."

That gives the old man pause. "In what sense?"

You think for a moment and then describe your match with Amae to give context: her reaction to you casting a spell being to angrily denounce you as a sorcerer; then accusing you of being a demon's lackey and being able to smell said demon's taint on you when you were in the clinch; and then accusing you of killing one or more relatives for your power.

"This was in your DIVISION?" Ambrose says. "The Under-TENS Division?"

"Yes?"

"...I was going to ask when the bloody DROW made it to Earth, but now I want to know what the hell's going on with them if they're letting their brats fight non-drow of the same level of development in reasonably fair contests on the SURFACE."

"What is a drow?" Urahara asks.

"'Drow' is the common name for an offshoot of the greater elven species that normally dwell underground on various worlds," Balthazar replies. "Their society is heavily matriarchal, xenophobic, competitive to the point of self-destructive insanity, and cruel, malicious, and treacherous enough to make your average demon feel right at home. They're also the followers of a downright psychotic demon queen of spiders that USED to be an elven goddess, who is either the product or the cause of the drow's general madness, if not both."

"Which is several of the reasons why they're not supposed to be on Earth," Ambrose adds. "The benign local Powers don't want something as vile as the spider-bitch getting her hooks into the planet, and the demonic Powers don't want the competition."

"Well, for whatever it's worth, she DID try to fight me fairly, and she also seemed to honestly hate the demonic, so she might be some kind of outcast... if that even happens with drow?"

"It's rare, in the context that you're suggesting," Balthazar replies. "There are plenty of drow who are forced out of their society because they have been caught on the losing end of the incessant power games and intrigues, lost favor with their goddess, or just want out from under the thumb of the religious matriarchy - not surprisingly, a lot of the last bunch are males, although females with no talent for divine magic aren't uncommon either."

What you sensed of Amae's aura didn't suggest a lack of talent for divine magic. Quite the opposite, in fact.

"Exiles of that sort don't suddenly stop thinking or acting like typical drow just because they've left their homelands behind, though," the Merlinean Master continues. "If anything, the fear, suspicion, and hatred that the other inhabitants of their native worlds have for drow as a whole encourage and even require the runaways to keep thinking and acting like the rest of their people if they want to survive. It takes something major for a drow to genuinely abandon her upbringing, and quite a bit of personal ability and sheer luck for her to survive the aftermath of such a decision."

"Factor in that the Spider Bitch and her fanatics like to hunt down and make examples of such individuals, and you're looking at a rather small number of true escapees of drow culture, all of whom would be well served by keeping themselves unknown to the planes at large," Ambrose chimes in. "Though I suppose that WOULD help to explain how a population of them could have gotten to Earth in spite of everything..."

You take all that onboard and then ask Briar to remind you to investigate Amae's circumstances later, before you go back to processing your plunder.

You're reaching the end of the selection of magical clothing, but there are still a few pieces for you to consider. One of these is a matching set of black leather duster, cowboy hat, and boots, all of which look - and feel - like they're just the right age to have come from the Old West.

Part of the magic bound to these clothes are straightforward protections from the elements, capable of keeping the wearer comfortable in conditions ranging from the dry heat of a Sunnydale summer's day to the cold wet of a winter's night up in the mountains. There's also a ward for keeping sand and grit out, and another of those "extension" matrices that allow the Spell of Protection from Arrows anchored in the coat to reach through the other two items, covering the user from head to toe in quite literal fashion. Beyond that, there's some more conventional reinforcement of the duster that brings it closer to being proper armor, and the boots have metal straps belted along the back of the heel that- hang on a second.

"Are those supposed to be spurs?" you ask. "Where's the rest of them?"

"The neck and the rowels have both been replaced by the Spell of Enchantment laid on those," Balthazar informs you. "It's a neat little application of the usual animal friendship spells, allowing the rider to provide a greater level of direction to his mount than spurs would be able to."

"...huh. No belt, though?" you add, flipping the front of the coat open to check the dummy it's hanging off of.

"There was," Ambrose says then, "but it included holsters."

Oho? "...occupied?"

"Indeed, and even if they aren't enchanted-"

Damn.

"-and deals notwithstanding, I have to say that after that business with the grenades, Arthur is decidedly NOT thrilled by the idea of handing over a pair of six-shooters over to you unless or until he's convinced that you know how to handle them safely and WILL do so," the wizard says.

Hmmm.

You excuse yourself for a minute and head down the hall to the spellcasting chamber, where you find your Shadow is still performing the Major Ritual of Creation. Noticing your arrival, he smirks triumphantly and briefly holds up two fingers, signaling how long you have to wait before he's done.

Shortly thereafter-

"What was that about being able to wait?" Shadow Alex taunts you.

"Shut up."

-you return with a full pack of Gold Incense and set up for your own spell.

Under different circumstances, you might have just moved the Goddess figurines, placing them around the hat, duster, and boots to try and divine the shared past of the items. While the Spell of Literary Vision and its predecessors are meant to work on one item at a time, you think that such a matched set would be linked together strongly enough for you to accommodate them.

The main reason you don't attempt this right now is because this isn't really the time or place for experimentation.

Looking the three items over again, you can't discern any significant difference in their apparent ages, so you go ahead and set the boots in your little circle, crack open your Conjured Book to its last remaining pages, and cast the spell.

The words which fill out your tome tell of a man named Lake, who did indeed live during the days of the settling of the American frontier. A skilled rider, marksman, knife-fighter, and general survivor, he was of age to have served in the Civil War but did not fight on either side of that conflict, instead spending the four years of the War - as well as three before it and another nine after - hunting the demons, monsters, and evil spirits that stalked the West. Some of these creatures were native to the territory, and in dealing with them Lake had contact with the indigenous human population, learning what their warriors, storytellers, and magic-users were willing to teach a white man about the dangers in the dark. Other fiends that haunted the Old West had come with the settlers, immigrants and adventurers in their own terrible fashion, and fighting those introduced Lake to many a colorful character with origins back East, be they near-ignorant survivors of supernatural incidents, fellow veterans of the trade, or the more academic sorts who'd had the means and motive to study the mystical and monstrous.

It was one such scholar of the occult that provided Lake with the comfort-enhancing and protection from elements enchantments on his Boots early in his career, and then tied in the protection spells of the Duster some years later. An agent of the Watchers' Council, this young fellow had been sent west as part of an effort to catalogue the supernatural traditions and dangers of the region, to determine if the natives had any legends about the Vampire Slayer, and to keep watch for any Potentials. While it wasn't expressly part of his mandate, the Watcher also acted as a point of contact for hunters who operated in the region, providing information, supplies, and the occasional bit of minor magic in exchange for stories of their exploits, any enchanted or simply mystically potent items they were willing to trade, and the occasional bit of muscle to deal with local problems.

As to the Quincy connection, one of Lake's rivals and occasional partners as a hunter was a member of the Wandenreich who'd come to the American West to field test new weapons designs, part of the Hidden Empire's ongoing efforts to modernize their tools and tactics. A "magic gun" that could shoot bullets capable of killing ghosts and other nasties was rather a big deal for Lake and his peers, especially given the Watcher's repeated insistence that revolvers - as the Quincy's new weapons were - were far too new to be compatible with traditional enchanting methods OR for anyone to have developed the new techniques necessary to make them a reality.

Of course, being a prototype, the Quincy gunslinger's weapon was far from perfect. Its maker had attempted to incorporate bullets of spirit silver for added punch, meaning that the gun it didn't have anything like the rate of fire or the capacity for continuous fire that classically trained Quincy archers were capable of reaching, and its yield could vary considerably depending on the ambient spiritual energy of the area where it was fired and the condition of its user. Reloads were difficult to come by, damage to the weapon was basically impossible to fix outside of Silbern, and of course, being fashioned from the Quincy-made metal, it was almost absurdly shiny.

Some of the people who tried to steal it were after it for that reason alone, neither knowing nor caring anything about spirits and demons. Lake was caught up in a few of these thefts, initially as an uninvolved bystander, and then once as a potential thief himself. Given the circumstances, Lake could have handed the "magic" weapon off to his Watcher contact for a pretty penny without anyone else ever knowing, but instead he passed it back to its owner, earning the Quincy's respect and gratitude - and a measure of his annoyance when Lake suggested that he make the gun a bit less shiny, to try and draw less attention.

Cowboys and demon hunters alike tend not to have long careers, and at sixteen years in the saddle, Lake was a decided outlier in both jobs. The Boots were with him through it all, and several incidents of apparent significance are named in your conjured narrative, while more are hinted at. Ultimately, Lake was fatally wounded while on a job with his Quincy partner, who broke protocol and called for an immediate evacuation back to Silbern for both of them, hoping that he would be able to convince his superiors to provide medical attention for the sake of a man who had - however unknowingly - acted to protect their secrets. While that debt and request were honored, Lake's injuries were too severe, and he passed a few days later, leaving his gear in the keeping of the Wandenreich.

Gained American History E (Plus)

Thoughts or questions about this tale?

Gained Lake's Boots
Gained Lake's Duster
Gained Lake's Hat
Gained Lake's Spurs

"I hadn't pegged you for a fan of the genre," Ambrose notes.

"I'm most interested in the Spurs," you admit, "but that three-part matrix extending the Spell of Protection from Arrows across the entire set is something worth taking a closer look at, too."

"Fair warning there, lad," the wizard says then. "Conceptually speaking, the spell is more 'Protection from Ranged Weapons' than it is is just 'Arrows,' so it IS technically effective against bullets and shot - and also darts, spears, sling stones, throwing knives, and other stuff of that nature, which were undoubtedly what the creators were thinking of, way back in the mists of Time. The problem is that most firearms hit hard enough that a single well-placed shot can still drop an ordinary man, and between their velocity and rate of fire, the spell can be overwhelmed in short order."

Definitely some points to keep in mind, there.

Turning your attention to the items of clothing that remain, you find a full set of furs - hat, coat, mitts, and even pants, with fur-lined boots - that make you recall the chill of the Antarctic with a shiver, even though the style is completely different from anything you saw being worn down there. Like with the cowboy outfit, there's been some reinforcement of the weather-resistance properties of the furs, although this one is much more focused on keeping out the cold and the wet and doesn't seem to offer any protection from dust. The hat has another spell meant to help protect the eyes from sunlight, although the aura is subtly different in a manner you aren't familiar with. There's a Quincy bangle hanging from the neck, but aside from that, nothing really stands out about it until you "look" closer with your Spiritual Sense.

Then, the outfit starts to actually FEEL ever-so-slightly cold, dark, and faintly menacing.

"What's the story with this one?" you ask, rubbing your hands together and resisting the urge to breathe on them. "And why wasn't it in with the cursed and nasty stuff?"

"It's Russian, from about thirty years ago," Balthazar informs you. "And the reason it wasn't in the other room is because it's not actually cursed or inherently evil, it was just exposed to something particularly nasty."

"'Something particularly nasty'," Ambrose quotes with a grumble. "A fine if understated description for the old menace."

"Who?" Briar asks what you're thinking.

"Baba Yaga," the wizard replies sourly. Seeing your lack of recognition, he elaborates. "A grand witch, iron-toothed crone, and far-traveled hag of Northern Eurasia, known, feared, and respected by the Slavic peoples since time out of mind. No way to tell if our Russian Quincy ran into her by accident or deliberately sought her out, although if it was the latter, he was an idiot and deserved whatever happened to him - I wouldn't be surprised if the old bat had been riding that mortar of hers around back when the FIRST Quincy Empire was around and giving Yhwach the evil eye if he glanced in her direction."

...

As for the Russian Quincy Furs...

"'Iron-toothed'?"

It's a peculiar sort of thing to call someone, and you can't help but wonder at it-

"She eats people," Ambrose says flatly.

-and now you regret asking.

"And while she kills and cooks her meals first," the wizard goes on, "usually in that order, even cooked bone can be hard on the teeth. Despite that, the old witch hasn't lost all of hers OR given up her diet, so either she's periodically breaking teeth and regrowing or replacing them-"

You can't really see a powerful witch putting up with something like THAT.

"-or she's enhanced her teeth and jaws to be able to crunch bone without issue-"

That, on the other hand, DOES sound like something a witch would do, if her preferred diet stood to give her problems.

"-or they were just that strong to begin with," Ambrose concludes.

"How likely is that last one?" you inquire.

"It depends on whether she was ever really human or not, or if the stories that call her an ogre are being completely factual," Balthazar says. "Unfortunately, the only one who might be able to offer a clear answer about Baba Yaga's origins is the witch herself, and it would NOT be a good idea to ask her."

"...'particularly nasty', huh?"

"She has a habit of killing people who inquire too closely about her, her abilities, or her possessions, or who just ask too many questions in general," comes the answer. "Then again, she also kills people who come to her seeking assistance and then fail to fulfill any of the tasks she gives them, who forget their manners, or who try to be charming."

You shake your head. "If she's that difficult to deal with, why does anyone go looking for her at all?"

"Because she IS the pre-eminent witch of that part of the world, if not the entire planet," Ambrose sourly concedes, "and there are centuries' worth of stories about wise, clever, and lucky heroes and heroines managing to survive an encounter with Baba Yaga and having their fates and fortunes radically improved in the aftermath. Desperate people just don't consider that for every Vasilisa or Ivan Tsarevich, there are countless others who didn't enjoy nearly so happy an outcome - such as the souls whose bones and skulls ended up in her fence."

Gained Russian History F

A little put off by the entire topic, you get back to making your selections.

Next on the lot is a set of vestments, such as a Christian priest or monk might wear, with a plain silver cross - not of the Quincy variety or a vampire's seal, for once - hanging in plain sight over the chest. These aren't enchanted the way most of the items you've examined thus far have been, but a moderate aura of sanctity emanates from them all the same, suggesting that whoever wore them was unusually strong in their faith, and had at least one major opportunity to demonstrate that fact.

"These were with several matched sets of armor and weapons bearing the iconography of an order of demon-hunters known as the Knights of Byzantium," Ambrose informs you. "Unfortunately, while they're good enough at the job to have been around since at least the Twelfth Century and have thousands of members all over the world, they're also extremists who regard any and all magic not born of faith in God as suspect at best, or more commonly as pagan devilry - or heresy, if you claim to be one of the faithful while also practicing the art."

Oh, good. "What's their stance on monsters and Fae?"

"Generally, just more demons in need of purging."

Lovely.

In the end, you decide that you don't really need a set of winter furs, or at least not ones that have some association with a being such as Baba Yaga. If she's killed as many people as Ambrose and Balthazar are suggesting, she probably wouldn't bother to track what became of their possessions afterward, but why take the risk?

It's a shame, though; between the fine quality of the furs and the foreign style, the whole outfit is kind of swanky, especially that hat...

On a similar note, you're not particularly keen on keeping anything that belonged to the sort of person that would probably have wanted to set you and a significant portion of your social circle on fire. That sort of ill-will is readily conveyed by spiritual power and seeing as how these vestments are the sort of "magic item" that came into their power by way of exposure to and contagion by supernatural forces rather than a deliberate and designed enchantment, it's quite possible that some of their unintentional creator's attitude carried over.

Your life is difficult enough with the seed of an ancient demon king's hatred lurking in your soul; you don't need the added frustration of wearing something soaked in somebody else's hate on top of that.

Besides, you can't imagine that wearing something which despised your existence would be comfortable. At the very least, you'd expect it to itch something fierce, if it didn't make you feel like you were legitimately about to catch on fire...

On the other hand, these Knights of Byzantium sound like the sort of organization it would do you well to learn more about, before you have an unexpected meeting with any of their agents. Thousands of people spread out all over the world may not sound like much in the grand scheme of things, but that's enough for the group to have eyes and ears in every major city on the planet - and all it really takes to make your life difficult is one person seeing something you don't want them to, one time.

You are in favor of your life not getting more difficult, and so, you set up to investigate the history of the vestments - specifically, the outer robe, which you remove from the rest of the attire and relocate to an empty stand with some assistance from Balthazar.

Your Spell of Literary Vision speaks of one Brother Silas, a monk in service with the Order of the Knights of Byzantium a century ago. Originally a humble servant whose duties involved keeping the organization's hidden facilities in good order, the cleansing and purification of the arms and armor of the Knights, and study of the many evils that afflicted the world, his strong faith and above-average spiritual strength were soon noticed by his superiors and saw him begin training to work alongside the Knights in the field. Here, his role would be to provide counsel both spiritual and academic, invoke the blessings of the Lord upon His faithful warriors and those innocents they labored to defend and save, and counter the unholy works of the witch and the demon.

For three years, Brother Silas served faithfully and well, his knowledge and his prayers allowing the Knights he walked alongside to find victory more quickly, more surely, and at less cost - and not just to themselves. More innocents returned home alive, with fewer wounds, fewer nightmares, and at times, renewed faith in God and their fellow man. Fewer of the faithless were put to the sword simply for believing or BEING different, and more of the true monsters of the night were caught and sent to their overdue judgment.

Yet in those years, Brother Silas saw horrors such as he had hardly imagined could exist and found difficult to reconcile with his beliefs. The influence of his superiors within the Order did him no favors, for in too many of them had heart and mind had been twisted and hardened and numbed to suffering by their own formative experience. With time, the good and faithful monk became a cold shadow of his former self: less and less did he entreat the Lord and His angels to ease the suffering of the wounded innocent; more and more did he call for vengeance upon the wicked; and though it was gradual, the price of the victories to which Brother Silas was attendant grew higher.

The final price was paid when Silas and his team went hunting for a demonic sorcerer - genuinely so, the words in the Shadow Book assure you - who had been kidnapping young women for sacrifice. The latest of the missing girls was an Echt Quincy whose elder sister was a Sternritter Candidate and had been visiting on leave when her little sister went missing. Following her sister's spirit threads, the Knappe arrived to find the Knights already present and attacking the sorcerer, paying less care to the safety or survival of his captives than they should.

And when the Star Knight-in-training revealed her abilities to protect her sibling and the other girls, Brother Silas accused her of being a "false angel" and encouraged his fellows to attack once the sorcerer had been cut down.

You're really starting to wonder just how often members of the Wandenreich, or even just the Quincy in general, get mistaken for angelic beings.

In any case, for all their skill and experience as demon hunters, the Knights of Byzantium remained physical fighters, and their only mystical support was divine magic - which is to say, applied spiritual power, the very thing that Quincy tear apart and repurpose to create their weapons. Five fighters to one, fresh and in close confines where their opponent could not bring her speed or ranged advantages to bear and had a dependent to shield besides, the zealous warriors might have seized victory. As it was, they were weary and bore wounds from their battle with the sorcerer, and the astonished Brother Silas's first wrathful invocation only served to strengthen the Quincy warrior - and with the sorcerer's death, the spell of binding that had kept the younger Quincy lost in a trance was broken, meaning there were abruptly TWO angry "angels" fighting in defense of family.

Even in the heat of the moment, the sisters were not truly shooting to kill, but two of the Knights of Byzantium died of their wounds regardless, and a third fell into a coma as his soul was overwhelmed by the spiritual force leveled against him. Brother Silas and the survivors were knocked out and taken back to Silbern for questioning, but the three conscious men refused to betray the secrets of their Order to an obviously dangerous enemy faction, and one eventually died in custody, managing to martyr himself. Silas's doom is more detailed: through intense prayer and meditation, he sought to focus all of his power on "banishing" his remaining conscious ally back to Earth, that this Knight might warn the rest of their Order of the dangerous organization that had taken their team; and though he succeeded in casting the other man from Silbern, the strain of performing a rite beyond his means proved too much for Silas's own body and soul to endure. He died soon afterwards.

It was this final sacrifice which catalyzed the latent power of Silas's Vestments, giving his robe and its future wearers a degree of protection from "unholy" powers - arcane magic in general and divine power not associated with the Christian God, as well as genuinely evil forces - and a limited ability to cast otherworldly creatures back to their own places.

Of the fate of Brother Silas's escaped companion and comatose ally, the spell reveals nothing.

Comments or questions?

You're about to close the Book on the Tale of Brother Silas and move on when you notice Ambrose shaking his head, a look of resigned exasperation on his face.

"Do you meet a lot of priests like that, Ambrose?" you ask.

"I've run into my share over the years," the wizard admits. "They're hardly typical, even among the orders that directly and actively deal with supernatural issues, but they're not exactly uncommon, either. There are only so many ways humans can react in the face of evil and horror, and the sort of righteous fury that wants to burn said face to ash and then burn its ashes isn't exactly a BAD one. Every so often, though, you get someone who can't or won't let that mindset go, who doesn't know or care to know enough to direct their wrath against the proper targets, and who has the charisma to inspire others to follow them and use their methods. If someone like that pops up in the wild, so to speak, they usually get themselves killed off in short order, taking a lot of others with them, but when the same sort of fanaticism pops up in an existing institution, it tends to get USED."

"Deniable assets are always a temptation," Urahara observes mildly.

The wizard hums an acknowledgment, but neither of them comment further on the topic.

Brother Silas's vestments were the last of the enchanted clothing that you have first dibs on, so you finally turn your attention to the bulk of the jewelry in the room, which has been set up on several shelves along one wall.

There are multiple sets of Bracers of Armor, ranging from entry-level creations to pairs approximately as effective as the Warrior-Princess Bracers to one rainbow-hued set that are distinctly better than your work, if not quite as good as such items can possibly be.

You aren't sure if Hong was being lazy about upgrading this one, overconfident in its current level of performance, or just too focused on saving up funds for that Belt of Magnificence he wanted.

While most of the Bracers are not directly damaged, at least not beyond scuffs and scrapes, the left-hand piece of one of the stronger pairs bears a ragged gash that has compromised its performance. Another of the sets at that tier has an uneven aura, as do Hong's work and several of the weaker models, which suggests the spell matrices are unstable - not so badly damaged as to be completely unusable, but not fully reliable. It's probably the result of the Bracers having been pushed too far at some point and then never properly repaired afterwards.

There are also a few Amulets of Natural Armor in the collection, although none are made of anything as interesting as a dragon's scale, instead incorporating things like a scale from a more mundane sort of reptilian creature, a bone, or a piece of hide. Like the Bracers before them, most of these Amulets show signs of stress from intense use.

Next to the collection of Amulets is another sort of pendant that consists of a blue gemstone hanging from a silver chain. Ambrose identifies it as a Periapt of Health, a minor device which renders the wearer immune to disease.

"What, all diseases?" you ask.

"Yes, even the supernatural ones - though not curses, poisons, or other afflictions that might ACT like disease. It also doesn't protect against most parasites."

Hm.

It is true that you can only wear one pair of enchanted bracers at a time. Even if you had multiple pairs of arms, that...

You pause, realizing that you actually aren't sure if having multiple sets of limbs would let you use more magic items. Horses, you dimly recall from somewhere, can't wear more than one set of enchanted horseshoes at a time, as the effects would interfere with each other, but against, a creature with four arms would be perfectly capable of wielding four different magic weapons all at once.

You turn to ask the other experts in the room where the line in such matters is drawn.

"It has to do with the shape of the items in question," Ambrose explains. "With items that are 'worn' in some manner, such as rings, gloves, and armbands, they're literally and conceptually supposed to be quite close to the body. They're also linked to specific locations - rings to the fingers, gloves to the hands, etcetera - which sets up the usual interference issues. Between the two, there just isn't 'room' for anything more, mystically speaking, even if you're dealing with a giant that typically has most of a man's height between its upper and lower arms."

"Items that are only HELD in the hands are a bit of a different matter," Balthazar interjects then. "Weapons, wands, rods, and staves all reach AWAY from the body and are meant to project power in the same direction. That gives them some metaphysical distance from the body and whatever other magic is affecting it, and most of them aren't specifically fixed to one location, besides, which minimizes their interference. Plenty of creatures can use their tentacles, tails, or even tongues to manipulate tools as well as you could with your fingers; give them a magic sword - or maybe just a dagger, depending on the size and dexterity of the 'limb' in question - and it'll work just as well."

"The tricky part THERE is getting things to work at the same time," Ambrose resumes. "A flaming sword that's currently on fire doesn't need any further input from its wielder to actually use that power, it just needs to hit something. If you have multiple blades, enough arms to hold them all, and the skill to actually hit anything with them, you're all set. Using multiple wands or rods in the same fashion is another matter, and I can't recall ever hearing of anyone who bothered learning how to do it with more than two at a time - and even that was more in the nature of a party trick than a serious tactical asset."

Huh.

...where were you, again?

Right: arms; bracers; and multiples thereof.

Even if you can't personally wear more than one set of enchanted bracers at a time, you can still get plenty of use out of the others, whether that's as raw materials for future crafting jobs or as gifts for your family and friends. You'd have to modify them a bit, seeing as how people can't exactly go around wearing pieces of armor these days without drawing attention, but a glamer would be easy enough to add, and hardly any price to pay for the reassurance of knowing your loved ones were walking around with the equivalent of full body armor at all times.

Gained Bracers of Armor
Gained Hong's Bracers of Armor

The same principles that applied to the Bracers apply to the Amulets as well.

...wait, if a creature has multiple heads...?

Gained Amulets of Natural Armor

While you are capable of casting the Spell to Remove Disease, a permanent ward against infections is still nothing to sneeze at.

Gained Periapt of Health

Moving on from those, you frown at the next couple of items that catch your eye. You were hoping to find some magic rings in all this plunder, and you have, but a couple of the ones that are marked as yours to claim or refuse are damaged in the same manner as the Bracers of Armor and Amulets of Natural Armor were. Given the aura of Abjuration Magic, those are almost certainly Rings of Protection, but they're the only ones of their kind you can see in the collection.

You aren't sure if that means the Quincy never found any other magic rings of this nature, or if they were able to capture others intact, recognized them for what they were, and decided to use them.

Next to those two lies an innocent-looking silver band, devoid of any gem or fancy patterns, which gives off a faint aura of Illusion Magic. Looking closer, you recognize the matrix.

"A Ring of Invisibility, huh?"

"A classic trouble-maker," Ambrose agrees.

After that there is a plain copper ring that radiates the particular blend of magic associated with healing spells. It's moderately potent, and when you look at the matrix more closely, you recognize that the spell-array resembles parts of the formulas required by the metamagic technique for heightening spells.

"I believe that's a Ring of Curing," Balthazar informs you. "It doesn't let the wearer cast healing spells if they couldn't do so before, but if they did have the ability, it will increase the maximum output of such magic. The effect isn't much per spell, but if you're the sort of person who spends a lot of time practicing medical magic, it can add up."

You definitely don't spend a lot of time healing, and neither does Briar. Still...

You don't hesitate to take both magic rings. Being damaged makes them unreliable in combat - which is likely why they were left on display instead of being worn by some members of the Wandenreich - but even if you lacked the means to repair them, they would still be valuable as study materials and sacrificial reagents.

As it stands, you DO have the means to fix the rings. Your skills as an item crafter are such that you might be able to repair the damage "manually," so to speak, although you can't say you'd be confident in the results. Given the choice, you'd much rather just cast the Spell to Make Whole or its greater variant - both of which you're perfectly capable of, even if the latter version still requires you to use a ritual.

...well, so does the FORMER, but...

Gained Rings of Protection

You take the Ring of Invisibility and slip it into your pocket.

Gained Ring of Invisibility

...

"What, not going to quote Tolkien at me?" you ask Ambrose.

"I've seen you turn a small army of already-disturbing disembodied hands into invisible terrors AND make a kindergarten class of earth elementals into invisible bombers," the wizard reminds you. "The temptations of that particular magic ring aren't going to send you any further or faster down the slippery slope of Dark Lordship than your own magic already does."

Does he have to say it like that?

There is a saying you heard, somewhere, about an ounce of prevention being worth a pound of cure. While the Ring of Curing isn't anywhere near that heavy, the point remains that your favored combat style involves a lot of high-speed movement - with the combined aim of overwhelming the enemy and keeping them from getting attacks off and also making yourself too difficult to actually hit - and, when you can afford the time and energy, multiple layers of defensive and enhancement magic.

Healing spells just haven't been a big part of your overall approach to combat, and you've yet to find a serious need for them outside of battle. Granted, that could change if you ever get seriously into providing magical healing for profit, as you've considered at times, but even then, your magic is powerful enough that the benefits of this ring sound like they'd be overshadowed by what you can already do.

With that in mind, you decide to leave the copper band unclaimed. At least for now.

Moving on, your next item of consideration is a gold band inset with five stones in a cross formation, which are both individually and collectively surrounded by tiny arcane script speaking of containment, sustainment, and projection. Four of the stones are pale and clear, but the fifth - the "uppermost" stone, from your current perspective - has a cloudy sheen.

"That little beauty is a Ring of Spell Storing," Ambrose tells you. "It can contain up to five spell levels' worth of magical energy, be it arcane or divine in nature, all bound up in a single spell or divided among multiple lesser ones. Stored spells can then be released upon command at a later time."

"Do you have to be a magic-user to use the Ring?" you ask.

"Not in the slightest."

Oh, my.

"Of course, it's easiest to recharge the Ring with a spellcaster's assistance, but it can also store spells cast from scrolls, so if someone has the skills and the resources, they could use it entirely independently."

That does sound rather useful, at least for people who can't normally make magic on their own. Five spell levels aren't much for any serious spellcaster - and next to nothing for you - but for mundane warriors, untrained civilians, or even people who've trained in a different form of exotic energy manipulation and would really like to have a few useful arcane or divine spells loaded up and ready to go in case of emergencies? Oh, yes.

"I'm guessing it's not compatible with Quincy techniques?" Urahara ventures then.

"That does seem to be the case," Balthazar agrees. "The Ring was empty when we found it, and it's currently holding a simple Spell to Detect Magic - but just the one."

No storage discount on cantrips, then? Good to know.

Well.

Next up is another silvery band, this time decorated with patterns of... fish? And also waves, but mainly it's the fish that catch your eye. The moderate aura of Augmentation Magic has a faint feeling of wetness to it, so you aren't surprised when Ambrose identifies it as a Ring of Swimming.

"Put it on, and even someone who'd never set a toe in the water before might keep up with a national-class swimmer. At least until the unaccustomed chill or fatigue get to them," the wizard adds. "Physical conditioning does play a role in that sort of thing.

How and why did something like this end up in Silbern? Sadly, the Ring is not potent enough for a Vision to tell you.

After that, and in almost direct contrast to the Ring of Swimming, is a gold band covered with patterns that suggest tongues of fire, radiating out from an orange-red stone that you half-expect to be warm to the touch. You hardly need to read its aura of moderate Abjuration Magic to determine that Fire Magic is bound to the thing, though that does tell you the effect is intended to be defensive rather than offensive.

"Ring of Fire Resistance?" you guess.

"A minor example of the craft," Ambrose agrees.

You wonder if somebody miscalculated what it is that Quincy arrows are made of, or if there's some other reason behind it having been in Silbern...

Yeah, you already have several options for improving maneuverability in the water, whether for yourself or for other people, directly or indirectly. Pretty much any of those methods can be applied at a moment's notice and from range, and some of them are just as good as what the Ring of Swimming seems to offer. Plus, there's less hassle: you can't always be sure you'll need a particular item ahead of time, much less remember to bring it; and casting a spell is generally easier than trying to get a small ring onto someone's finger when they're thrashing around in alarm.

If and when you discover a sudden and urgent need to not drown in the future that your not-terrible swimming skills, natural athleticism, and assorted means of supernaturally enhancing the former can't deal with, you can always turn yourself into a Zora or something else that can actually breathe underwater. Or maybe just cast Water Walk or Fly and exit the water entirely?

You suppose it'll depend on the situation.

While your supernatural protections against being burnt to ash aren't quite as numerous as your means of improving your aquatic mobility - much less your means of ATTACKING with flame - you've still got several options, and once again, they generally work better than what this comparatively humble ring can provide.

Resist Energy at three times the effectiveness? A Flaming Aura that makes you immune to heat and flame? Turning into a Fire Elemental and just dancing through the flames?

You think you're covered.

That said, you're curious about how this particular item ended up with the Wandenreich, as well as why they weren't making use of it. When it comes to energy-based Elemental attacks, Fire is one of the most common and commonly feared varieties, making any source of protection against its effects pretty widely sought-after, and doubly so for people who don't enjoy the convenience of being able to cast the Spell to Resist Energy.

Considering the incendiary nature of Captain-Commander Yamamoto's zanpakuto, you would think there would have been PARTICULAR interest in such defenses - although in fairness to the alarming level of Fire power you felt when the old man nuked Yhwach's splattered remains, wearing a ring of this level wouldn't be much better than just taking the hit directly.

Anyway, you get out your Shadow Book and check your pocket, and then mentally scold yourself as you recall that you're currently out of Gold Incense. Checking the time, you realize that it's been just about long enough for Shadow Alex to have finished conjuring replacement material for you-

-and here he comes now.

How convenient.

"So," your Dark Self says as he enters the room, "I hope I haven't kept you waiting too long..."

"Actually, I was just thinking of casting Literary Vision again."

He seems vaguely disappointed by your reply. Still, he hands over the... Shadow Gold Incense? Gold Shadow Gold Incense? Or maybe just Shadow Incense?

You'll go with that.

Taking the offered reagents from your Shadow without issue, you set the Ring of Fire Resistance down in the circle of Goddess figurines and cast your Most Popular Spell of the Day once again.

This time, the tale that your magic pulls from the mists of history is of a Nineteenth to Twentieth Century goldsmith by the name of... Goldschmidt. Which... translates to Goldsmith.

...really?

"That sort of thing was very common, way back when," Balthazar observes. "Smith, Cooper, Forester-"

"'The Butcher, the Baker, the Candlestick Maker'?" Shadow Alex quotes.

"Knaves, all three," Ambrose adds cheerfully.

You, Balthazar, and Briar all frown at the wizard for a moment before turning to Shadow Alex.

"Yeah, I'll own up to that one," he admits with a sigh.

"'Chandler' would have been the last one, by the way," Balthazar adds. "People were often known by their trades, and fathers passed trade and title alike on to their sons when they could."

Right, so the Goldschmidts lived in Berlin in the previous century, as they had for three centuries prior, and while not a mystically gifted bloodline, they had inherited an awareness of and involvement in the local supernatural community. Their skills were such that members of the lineage would occasionally be commissioned to craft items worthy of taking enchantments, a process that grew more common as word of their work spread among the community, and over the generations the precise requirements of and occasional direct involvement with their clients revealed a variety of secrets that were carefully jotted down and later investigated in private.

This eventually resulted in one Karl Goldschmidt manifesting as a modest magical talent in his own right. Unlike the man known as the Mask of Vulcan, he was not limited to working magic through metal, but he did not hesitate to make use of his mundane skills to support his arcane leanings, nor to do the reverse. Though he never did anything so dangerous as explore an ancient ruin or pick a fight with a troll, Karl's experiences and natural aptitude were nonetheless sufficient to raise his abilities to a significant degree.

The Ring of Fire Resistance you now hold was commissioned by and developed with the assistance of a member of the Wandenreich whose name, Bazz-B, you remember for its sheer weirdness. It was, you read, not the only Item of Fire Resistance that the partnership produced, but it was the first such RING that Karl had crafted. There were plans to refine the design: enhancing the power; simplifying the matrices so that only a magic-user would be able to employ the resulting ring-

Now THAT is an interesting thought.

-and then adapting the design to require the user to be a trained Quincy instead of an arcanist. Had it all worked out as planned, Karl Goldschmidt could almost have mass-produced potent Rings of Fire Resistance, which... okay, you still wouldn't bet against the Captain-Commander, but anybody they sent after him wearing a Goldschmidt Mark III Ring, as it were, would certainly survive longer than someone with a lesser model.

Unfortunately for that idea, the Nazis came to power and began exerting their influence on the supernatural community as well as on the mundane side of things. Via a series of promises both honest and false, attempted bribes, and finally threats to his family and a binding geas, Karl was forced into the Thule Society and made to turn work on various devices for little compensation. There was enough magical power gathered under that group's dark aegis that Grandmaster Haschwalth would not sign off on Bazz-B's initial plan to simply drop in on the building where they were keeping Karl, retrieve him, and incinerate everyone and everything that got in the way of their leaving.

"Does it specify anything?" Ambrose interrupts.

"Actually, yeah," you admit. "Apparently, Jugram didn't want to look too closely at any place that the Spear of Destiny was likely to be, much less send anyone in there."

"That was probably wise of him," Balthazar notes.

In any case, the Wandenreich put a slower, less confrontational plan into play, working to quietly smuggle the members of Karl's family out of Germany, while also seeking a way to break the enchantments that trapped the man under his unwanted masters. They succeeded in the former goal, but efforts towards the latter were rendered moot when Karl was killed by a bomb dropped in one of the Allied air raids of 1944.

The Wandenreich spent some years trying to adapt and copy Karl Goldscmidt's Ring of Fire Resistance, but they never quite managed to bridge the gap, and eventually the project was shelved until such time as a suitable arcane item-crafter could once again be found and recruited.

That had not happened by the time you and the Shinigami came knocking.