The next morning was… interesting.

For one thing, it was the first time in many weeks that I woke up actually needing to use the restroom. Of course, I was currently sandwiched between the lilim, as was our custom, so I immediately realized that it was going to be a little difficult to extricate myself without disturbing them. But at least the three of us were sleeping on top of the covers, so it could have been worse.

It was hard to be certain, but I had a running theory that they ran a little hotter than I did. It would help to explain why it was that they never seemed to notice the cold—but then, they did not seem to notice the heat either. In any case, with how closely we slept together, I had soon become far too hot to use the blankets, and they did not seem to care so long as we slept skin to skin.

As ever, Arx was the big spoon. I no longer felt quite so dwarfed in her embrace since her transformation, and she was gradually becoming ever more… comfortable to lie against. So, I did not mind in the slightest. Fortunately, she seemed to still be in torpor from having filled her Core the previous evening, so instead of holding me with the usual death-grip, her arm was merely draped limply over me. I gently moved it to one side and sat up.

Of course, I wanted to take a quick look at her changes, but before I could, Jax sucked in a sharp breath through her teeth. It would seem that despite my efforts to be careful, she had awakened the moment I began to stir. “What the…? Aye… Drookit fannies of me ancestors!”

“What? What is it?” I whispered back.

“I gotta pish!” she hissed out through her teeth and quickly rolled out of bed. But as soon as she straightened, she winced and almost doubled over. “Whore’s arse barnacle… Wha—? Master help! I-I cannay stand from it!” That final bit was accompanied by a squeal, and she clenched her eyes closed.

“What do you want me to do?” I asked, jumping out of bed in a panic. “Carry you to the outhouse? We’re not even dressed!”

“Nay! Just… just bring over the piss pot!” She pointed a trembling finger over to one corner, and I saw a large porcelain bowl sitting there. I had noticed it there the night before, but until now, I had not realized what it was for. “Hurry! I’m… I’m starting to leak!”

That was all the encouragement I needed. Almost skipping with haste, I grabbed up the mercifully clean bowl—which was surprisingly heavy given its size—and slid it underneath her. The instant I did, she gasped in relief, and I heard the sounds of her filling the basin. Dutifully, I turned to give her a degree of privacy… though the sound was bringing my own needs to the forefront of my mind, and I helplessly began dancing in place.

“Hooo… if I’da knowed the script for the morning after, I’da never tanned it so hard,” I heard from behind me. “Ah… Hand of Maeve, but this is weird.”

“What is? Peeing?” I asked, a little confused. “As a… well, with woman parts, you mean? Is this the first time you’ve had to do that?”

“Aye, ‘tis,” she affirmed. “I ain’t certain-like as I care for it.”

“Really?” That actually surprised me quite a bit. She was usually rather gung-ho about the whole lilim thing. For her to express even the slightest qualm about her changes was unexpected to say the least. “You missing the ability to aim or something?”

“What?!” she said aghast, and I could actually hear the disgust in her voice. “No! Never! I just don’t like this feeling. It’s unnatural to have to… to let go like this. Feels… wrong.”

“Uh… if you say so,” I replied. I really did want to explore the topic further, but I was feeling a little too desperate in the moment to care just then. “But if you could hurry it up a little? I’ve got more than a bit of ‘wrong’ built up myself.”

“Oh, sorry,” she said with a chuckle, and I heard the sounds from behind me abruptly redouble. “One… second…”

It was a little closer to thirty. We really had drunk too much.

*****

About an hour later, the three of us were standing in front of a small tailor’s shop that Tips had recommended. The storefront had a signboard that was carved in a flowing, elegant script. It read, ‘Clothes for the Cultured.’

It looked expensive.

“This… might be more than what we need,” Arx said uncertainly.

I sighed in agreement before taking another furtive glance at her. This last Layer had pushed her Charisma up to 11, and it showed… though it was hard to explain why. The best I could describe it would be with something like the famous Spinal Tap quote: she was one hotter. And the ‘amp,’ to punish the metaphor even further, was only supposed to go to 10.

To be sure, I had definitely seen women who had more up top or extra junk in the trunk, to put it crudely, but as Arx was most assuredly showing off, that did not matter in the slightest. As of this moment, she was the most attractive person I had ever seen. She absolutely glowed with it. And the fact that I could just casually kiss her—and that she would eagerly return it—almost made my heart palpitate.

Her body was… well, perhaps it was to do with the particular set of stats she was sporting, but she most closely resembled a dancer. A very strong-looking… exotic dancer. She looked lithe—particularly in the legs. Each was long and thickly corded with muscle, yet soft to the touch.

Plus, she was dexterous to an an unreal level. I doubted whether it was comparable to her former abilities. We had not really needed to put them to the test since leaving the Dungeon, but I knew for a fact that she had complete control over each movement. It was trivial for her to simply wrap a leg over my shoulder—a feat she had demonstrated that very morning.

I had managed to resist, if only barely. It was hard to say why I was putting up a front anymore. Maybe I just did not want them to think they had that kind of power over me. Of course, they knew better.

Her only flaw was the stump of a tail that had grown out overnight. It was now about a hand-span long, which was a bit too much to conceal under her skirt. We had no idea what its eventual form would take, but currently, the thing looked like a long, gray-skinned, extra finger growing out of her backside. Much like with all adolescent things, it was in that awkward stage between cute and weird-looking, but I was sure that with time and Layers, it would come out fine.

And that one minor flaw was probably the only thing that was soothing Jax about the whole situation. We had all known this was coming—it was an inevitability. Arx was now officially the fairest lilim in the land. The simple fact of the matter was, Arx had started with better stats, and there was nothing any of us could do about it save to hold her back. And that would not be fair to her.

It would be nice if they had some kind of stat-boosting equipment like you can get in D&D. I had no idea what form that would take in this system, though. You literally had to grow into your stats here, so putting on a magic ring to boost your Strength or Charisma would be… well, I could guess. I’d bet it would be dramatic… and probably traumatic.

It was about then that I detected the beginnings of a smirk starting to curl up the side of Arx’s lip, and I realized I had been staring. Again.

“Well,” I said, clearing my throat gruffly and quickly turning once more to regard the storefront. “Tips did say that if we wanted something durable, this was our only option.”

“I can’t see how,” Jax argued, perhaps a bit more forcefully than necessary.

When I glanced at her, I detected a bit of a hard look to her expression. She was most certainly less than happy, but she was dealing with it. In an attempt to mollify her, I reached down and gave her bottom a quick squeeze. She was still my number one, after all.

She squeaked slightly before flashing me a contented smile. “Do ye think he can do engravings?” she asked, much more easily now.

“Maybe,” I hedged, though I doubted it.

Engravings were this world’s approach to enchanting magical items. I was not totally sure how it was supposed to work, but from what I had gathered, it required you to know a specific subset of skills to even do, and then you had to actually know the Words you intended to engrave. I had no idea how a person could ever approach something like that. Outside of a spell, I could neither speak nor write a single Word, and I knew eleven of them!

“Let’s find out.”

The interior was fairly cramped. Along one wall, there was a changing booth with a draw-curtain on a rod. Meanwhile, the other was taken up entirely by a series of simple mannequins with what I assumed to be formal wear. They were far too elaborate to be anything else. Short of a costume ball or a cosplay event, you would be hard-pressed to find anyone who would even consider wearing something like these outfits on Earth. The closest we had ever come would have been something like the French court just prior to the revolution. That said, they still looked pretty nice, and the colors schemes were well thought out.

Although, notably, I had not seen a single person in the whole town who dressed like that… save for the person behind the counter.

The man—or I assumed he was a man… it was hard to tell sometimes with the kinds—was wearing a wide-brimmed hat with several gigantic feathers poking out of the hat band. The rest of his outfit seemed to be composed mainly of straps, enormous buckles, and brightly-colored pouches. He looked like one of the Three Musketeers had just crash-landed into a Final Fantasy dimension.

Whatever his kind was, he had yellow skin and was rail thin. As far as I could see, he had no ears nor nose, though he had a wide mouth that seemed to be set in a permanent frown. Meanwhile, his head and torso merged together without the benefit of either a neck or shoulders and were of equal width, so where one began and the other ended was a mystery. Worse, his arms were little more than sticks that were attached… approximately where you might expect them to be? I could not see his legs at the moment.

Altogether, he seemed more like a cartoon caricature than a person. Nevertheless, there he was, and I was not about to let any preconceived notions about how a person should look color my judgment—as best I could, anyway.

Stepping up to the counter, I cleared my throat.

He did not acknowledge me at first. He was apparently too engrossed in the book he was reading. However, after a moment, he plucked one of the feathers adorning his hat and folded it into the book as a mark. With a snap, he casually set the book on the counter and turned to us.

“Velcoom do Clooze forza Cooltured,” he drawled in a bizarre accent that somehow distorted the lines between consonants and vowels. “Hoo can I—”

At that he stopped. Apparently, he had only just now gotten a good look at us. And from the wide-eyed horror in his eyes, he did not approve… which was understandable. Rude, but understandable.

Jax was not much of a seamstress, and her handiwork had been hasty—more focused on function than style. Since they were going to be quickly replaced anyway, our clothes had not been hemmed, so they were already beginning to fray. And they were… well, they managed to keep us decent, anyway. Still, if this peacock thought he could criticize her work, he would find out just how fast we could take our business elsewhere.

Quirking an expectant eyebrow, I folded my arms and waited.

The man took a deep breath and produced a handkerchief from one of his many pouches. For several moments, he proceeded to dab at his forehead and neck as if to wipe away excess sweat. But, it was overcast that day, and besides, it was very nearly winter. There was no way he was sweating.

Finally clearing his throat, he began again, “Oom… yis. As I say. Velcoom do mai shop-puh. As it happoons, you vill noot find a bet-tor tailor in all oov ze Enbrad-don lands. I varn you… mai services are noot chape-puh! But-ton! You vill noot regret my quali-tai!”

I blinked several times as I processed that. What even is this accent? It’s like some vaudeville actor tried to mash up all of the European languages with… like Japanese or something?

Fortunately, Arx seemed to recognize it, and she stepped forward. “Yes…” she began in a language that I suddenly realized I knew yet had no name for. Whatever it was, it must have been one of the many I had gained instinctual knowledge of after binding her. “We were told that you were able to—”

“No, no! Stop!” the man interrupted quickly in the same language. “Your accent is horrendous! I cannot tolerate it. If you understand, then fine. We can each speak our own languages, but please, I beg you. Do not sully my native tongue!”

Abruptly, Jax twirled on her heel and marched outside. At first, I thought that she might be upset… at least until I caught the sound of her laughing her ass off in the distance.

Rather more deliberately than I needed to, I cleared my throat again and opted to speak in Laoi’na. “Uhm… right. As we were saying, the three of us are Questers for the Words. During our last excursion, the clothes we were wearing… sort of disintegrated. We were told you were the person to see for durable replacements?”

He took a breath and smiled as though relieved. “Ah, yes. That explains much. Well then. You are in luck! I am well-versed in the tailoring arts, and have the Goddess-given skills to prove it! If you buy from me, I can personally guarantee that, short of tossing them to the flames, your purchases should regenerate perfectly.”

“They regenerate?” I repeated curiously, thinking of Arx’s knife. “How? Do we have to power them with Life Energy or something?”

Arx subtly elbowed me in the side, and when I glanced down at her, she was giving me an exasperated look.

Oh, right. We were supposed to keep that a secret.

The tailor chuckled incredulously at my question. “And how would you go about that, I wonder? No, no. Nothing of the sort. You won’t have to do a thing. I have my own methods to empower the effect. And at my current skill level, it should last at least a year—more if you do not stress them too much.”

Skill level, huh? I nodded slowly. “So… you’re saying that this is a skill effect, then? Not an engraving?”

“An engraving?” he repeated shrilly. “Do not be absurd! Why, I have never even heard of—” He stopped himself abruptly and took a steadying breath. “No. I do not have such an ability… good sir. And I would be very curious to discover anyone who did. Although, being Questers, perhaps you might have one or two such items for sale? I have long been searching for engraved items related to my trade, but the Dungeon rarely grants them. I can pay you handsomely.”

At about that point, Jax had finally calmed herself enough to return to the store. She had missed most of the exchange but had heard enough of the last part to answer. “Nay. Naught such as that. We was lucky to escape with just a few bits and bobs the last time.”

“I certainly hope you escaped with a few coins,” the man said with a chuckle, though there was a bit of a hard edge to his tone. I hoped he had not heard her laughing. “Preferably, gold ones.”

“Gold?!” Arx repeated incredulously. “You expect us to pay gold when your skill only lasts for a year?”

“At least a year,” he corrected quickly. “But if the price offends you, you are welcome to shop elsewhere. Perhaps you could find someone cheaper in Bradfirth? Though, I doubt it. It takes a great deal of time and money to develop a crafting Class to this level, and there is no knowing whether they will have the appropriate skills. Still… if you are short on funds, I can make you a set of regular clothes. My rate is four copper per complete set. Non-negotiable. Mind you, that is for daily wear. Formal items are priced on a per-item basis.”

Four copper? That’s like $200! Shit!

But it was not as if I had ever had custom clothes made. Maybe that was just how much it cost. Most of the time, I was doing good to shop at a department store… as opposed to Wal-Mart.

Hesitantly and almost dreading the answer, I asked, “How much is it if we do go for the regenerating set?”

He sucked in a breath to answer but seemed to quickly reconsider. For a moment, he drummed his fingers on the counter, apparently thinking it over. All the while, he gave each of us a long appraising look.

Eventually, he said, “I usually charge a gold piece per set. However… as there are three of you, I could perhaps consider a discount—provided you allow me some… creative license?”

Slowly, the three of us glanced over at the ridiculous outfits he had on display and then at what he himself was wearing.

Oh, I’m going to regret this…

“Um… how much of a discount?”

Initially, the man had offered to knock a silver off his price, per set of clothes, but Jax quickly set to negotiating. Being from modern-day America, haggling was not a skill-set that I had ever developed, so I was more than ready to hand her the lead. That particular art was only ever practiced in car dealerships, to my knowledge, and the one vehicle I had owned was a hand-me-down from my grandfather.

As for Arx… well, she chimed in here and there, but she mostly let Jax handle it. From what she later told me, she was usually drunk by the time she got around to buying replacement equipment, so she was lucky if she remembered to even bother. There was a reason she had been all but penniless when we had met.

Eventually, the tailor conceded to a price of six silver apiece. It was a lot better than the gold he had threatened us with before, but it still hurt to consider. Let’s see… a silver is something like four hundred, so eighteen of them would be… Seventy-two hundred bucks? For clothes?! My entire wardrobe had not even been worth that. I doubted whether I could even get that much for my car!

Chebs of Ahnbe…

It was no wonder Arx had cautioned me to be frugal. At the rate we were going, it would be far too easy to blast through everything we had earned. Still, if we planned on ever going back to the Dungeon, we were going to need some kind of solution. It was not as if we could bring a steamer trunk full of our spare laundry everywhere we went.

So, with a great deal of regret, I handed over two gold and two silver pieces, which he quickly swept into a cash box. Then, the three of us were ushered into the back.

For some time, the man bustled about with a brace of pins in his mouth and a cloth measuring tape, taking meticulous notes in a small, leather-bound book. Each of us were asked to stand upon a little, wooden crate in turn, while we were posed and measured in every way imaginable.

For me, this went rather quickly. However, once he got to the lilim, we ran into a bit of a snag.

“Madam-uh,” he argued, momentarily slipping back into Laoi-na in his irritation, “I have measured it twice to be certain. I can assure you that you measure at a precise forty-one and a third fingers at the rib, and fifty and two thirds across the bust. I could never live with myself were I to intentionally make something that did not fit.”

“And I’m telling ye,” Jax argued back, “I’m still growing. What good’s paying all that money if it’s not even gonna fit me in a month.”

“Same here,” Arx chimed in. “And don’t forget to include a hole in the back for a tail. Hers hasn’t grown in yet.”

The man looked between them for a moment, making some kind of fustering noise with his tongue. Finally, he assembled his features into an obvious outward appearance of decorum and said, “I suppose I will have to think of something. In the meantime, I have some samples. Why don’t the three of you look through them, try a few things on, and see what sort of styles you like?”

With that, he produced a few boxes of assorted items and excused himself through a side door. Whatever he was doing back there, we could clearly hear him swearing and tossing things around.

“’Snails, what a character,” Arx murmured quietly. “I don’t think I’ve ever met a merchant who was so up his own ass.”

“There was that JigJig, guy. Remember him?” I asked.

“JigJig the Smith, ye mean,” Jax corrected me. “Aye. Spoke Laoi’na worse than you, as I recall.”

I just smirked at the barb. It was deserved.

“That was his actual name?” Arx asked incredulously. At our nods, she chuckled. “Well, was he a smith, at least? It would be hilarious if he ended up being a tanner or something.”

Amused, I shook my head and began sorting through the samples. I honestly did not care all that much about what I ended up with. As long as I had something resembling pants and a shirt of some kind, I was good. A wizard’s hat might be kind of fun, though. I was not sure whether I could pull one off, but I was growing a beard now. That was one of the prerequisites.

Do not bother to ask why. Rules are rules.

My musings were cut short when I heard Arx hiss loudly, and when I glanced up, it was to find her hastily removing a pair of panties and throwing them to the floor as if they had bitten her.

“What was that?” I asked, more than a little befuddled.

She did not answer at first. Apparently, she had to work a shiver down her spine before she could speak. “Nails of the Three, that felt disgusting!” she finally gasped out.

“Disgusting?” I repeated incredulously and picked up the panties.

On inspection, they were a lacy, white affair with more than a few unnecessary little tassels along the leg-holes, but the material felt soft enough—much nicer than anything I had ever worn, anyway. I generally favored boxers, although most of ones I had ever owned had been three-pack Wal-mart specials. I usually wore them until they were on the verge of structural collapse, too.

“What’s wrong with them?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said while dancing in place and waving her hands around like she had just seen a particularly large spider. Except, of course, I had personally witnessed her eating gigantic bugs. Raw. “As soon as it touched your pussy, my skin started crawling all over.”

I had to rerun that sentence through my head a couple of times before what she had said finally registered. Did she just say… what I think she just said?

“What?” she asked defensively. “Why are you looking at me like that? Jax what is this? There’s too many emotions all at once.”

Jax chuckled low in her throat and shook her head slowly. “Oh… several things. Little bit of disbelief. Lots of shock… and a touch of arousal. Few others, but less important,” she explained. Smiling distractedly, she began sorting through the pile of clothes on the floor. She paused on finding a nice set of black panties and glanced at Arx before holding them consideringly to herself. “You nay realize what ye just said, do ye? Ah, ye poor muddled thing.”

“Shock, disbelief, and… Wait, what do you mean? What did I say?” More than a little concerned now, she looked back at me before asking again, “Dearest, what did I say?”

“Uh… well…”

Right about then, the tailor burst back into the room triumphantly holding a bolt of some kind of undyed cloth. “Ah ha! Eureka! Iya have foond it-tuh! I knoo thair woos a raisoon-uh I kept these mat-terial-la!”

Jax interrupted the man by making a sound like a tiger that had just been trampled by an elephant and literally ripped the panties she had just slipped on off of herself. Stomping them several times aggressively under her clawed feet, she shouted, “Hateful fud-wrapper! How dare ye do that to me!”

The man stared at the ripped garment on the floor like she had just murdered one of his children. I think some of the feathers in his hat wilted, too.

After that, we had been—politely, yet forcefully—asked to leave. The tailor had informed us that our clothes would be ready in five days, we were escorted to the exit, then the door had been slammed in our collective faces. Soon thereafter, a series of screamed epithets had issued forth from the shop.

I was not sure what any of them were, exactly. The man’s accent was a little too thick to make out from outside.

“That were rude,” Jax commented sourly.

“You did destroy a perfectly good set of underwear.”

“It were an awful set of underwear,” she retorted before glancing at Arx. “Ye was right about that.”

“Told you,” Arx said. “Besides, it was just a sample. There was no reason to get so upset.”

I just grunted noncommittally. Personally, I felt that the man might be a tad justified in his reaction, but I was not about to admit it. And at the very least, he had waited for us to leave before venting his frustrations.

Still, I was more than a little curious about my lilims’ reactions to wearing undergarments. Was it something to do with the material, or were they just required to go commando? And when had that started?

Thinking back, Jax had ended up using her own underwear as a top—at least until it got ripped up—pretty much as soon as she started growing breasts. And Arx’s clothes had gotten blown up entirely the very moment she had become a lilim. So, there were no answers there.

However, out of everything on my plate, this was a fairly minor concern. They did not really need underwear, did they? They had quite a lot of control over themselves down there—more so than any human woman could ever have.

Although…

Curious, I glanced over at them briefly before frowning. Now that I was thinking of human women, there was the question of… well, to put it politely… menstrual cycles. I could see Jax being ignorant of the subject given her origin, but if it was going to happen, it should have by now. She had been female long enough for it to be a problem. However, neither she nor Arx had ever mentioned it, nor expressed any concern over its delay. And Arx had always been female. She would be far more aware of that kind of issue.

However, that presupposed quite a lot. I had no idea how the reproductive systems of keltha or lilim were supposed to work, nor did I know whether any of that would ultimately be compatible with my own. So whether periods or pregnancy were even on the table was a mystery. We were talking about a species whose diet consisted solely of emotions and, as this very morning had demonstrated, only even needed to pee if they bothered to drink anything. For all I knew, they could have something like the vulcan’s pon farr and only mate every seven years.

Or, more worryingly, they could always be fertile. They could both be pregnant right now. It was not like we had any means of protection. Shit… I hope not.

But, I quickly dismissed that idea. Being female, I had to assume that such matters would be far more present in their minds than my own, and they tended to be… less polite about that sort of thing than I was. For neither of them to mention it even in jest was telling.

“I wouldn’t worry about it, Master,” Jax said, interrupting my reverie with a gentle touch on my arm, and I looked at her sharply. “I think that poof were more upset that we hated his flaming rags than that I ripped one up a bit. He were a prideful sort.”

Arx nodded along before adding, “I got that sense, too. I think it’s important to him that we be satisfied with his work.”

I took another long look at the two of them before ultimately sighing in resignation. Hmph… Ah, well. I’m probably worrying over nothing.

“Shall we see about getting some weapons, then?” I asked instead. “Maybe some armor?”

They both shivered at the suggestion.

“I nay think so, Master,” Jax said resolutely. “After that… just the clothes is bad enough.”

“Agreed,” Arx chimed in. “I would like to get a pair of scimitars, though. I’ve lost my old fighting style, but I still have quite a lot of skill with them. If it comes to close quarters fighting, I’d much rather have something like that than a dagger.”

I nodded before glancing at the sun. It was about noon, I decided. We had wasted half the day in that shop. “Well… then, I guess we should look around for some kind of weapons dealer. I bet Tips would know a good one. In the meantime, let’s check out that arena next to the inn.”

“Aye, let’s,” Jax agreed. “I need past me Boundary.”

With that, we set off again. Though, by that point, the streets were starting to thicken with people, all bustling about with their various errands, and as we were still a little full from the day before, we decided to walk quickly. If we stayed in this town much longer, the three of us might start actually getting fat from all the Life Energy.

Psh… that would be a change!