I walk on a cold and invisible surface. In our kitchen, my feet hover two feet above the floor as I step forward into open air. There is a shift in magic like a jolt of electricity passing through my calves and feet before my toes touch down on something stable. The invisible platform takes my weight as I step forward, but it is different from how it used to be. Instead of a solid horizontal surface like it had been before, the invisible force buzzes under my foot. The buzzing is so forceful that it would set my teeth to chattering if I let myself.

  Perhaps there was some mistake that I made in transferring the enchantment. I continue to walk around the kitchen just slightly off the ground, getting used to the certainty that there will be something solid to step on when I move forward. The enchantment draws hardly any magic from me when I activate it. If I weren’t capable of flying already, it might be a good way to get in the air. Yet, there is still the buzzing. I should do more work on it.

  My mageblade dagger spins in my hand as I walk around the kitchen. Idly, I run the tip of the blade across the pad of my finger. With most of my obsidianate equipment stowed away in my hidden armory, my skin is transformed. No matter how hard I press with the sharpened blade, it cannot bite into my flesh and at most draws slight red lines across my skin that vanish in seconds. Though, to be fair, I haven’t tried shooting my weapon at myself with real speed. That would just be insane.

  “What’s this then?”

  I look over to find Dovik standing in the doorway of the kitchen, looking up at me. I stroll around the side of the counter, walking on the air like it was a buzzing rock, and look down at him. “I’m checking my work,” I inform him.

  Dovik grins, a genuine grin, one which I am glad to see. Still, there is the oddity in his eyes, though the cracks that run through the brown of his irises are a strange cascade of pulsing yellow and green today. I can’t count the number of times I have tried to make him visit a healer, only to be put off. He says that he changes are small and merely side effects of his newest alchemical projects.

  “Do you have to do that naked in the kitchen?” he asks me.

  I quirk a brow, looking down at myself. I am wearing both a nice blouse I bought in one of the ritzier clothing stores two weeks ago and the gray coat that I put a lot of time into making. I get distracted for a moment, regretting that I never invested more effort into the coat itself. There is still potential, but the garment’s ability to repair itself is by far its best attribute. “What are you talking about?”

  “You aren’t wearing pants,” he says.

  Kicking out my leg to emphasize that I am, in fact, wearing pants, makes him take a step backward. Well, perhaps not pants to say. My order for armor underlining finally came through. The adventurers that I knew in Westgrove traditionally wore rough and tough fabrics beneath their heavier pieces of armor. That barrier is vitally important, as heavy armor chafes something terrible if it is just left to rub against your skin, and it offers very little protection against cold winds and nights. When I wore armor in the trial put on by the Willian Guild, I did the same. That was when it became apparent that the way they do things in Westgrove wouldn’t cut it in the future.

  Wearing simple linens under armor is fine up until a mage–myself in this case–is consuming the world in an inferno. At that point, burning away unenchanted clothing is a very serious consideration; one that I have had to deal with for a long, long time. You can’t wear enchanted cloth under real armor since every enchantment you carry as a magician subtracts from the total number of enchantments you can carry. Any enchantment put into increasing the durability of the cloth worn beneath armor is better spent on improving the armor itself.

  As a result, high-rank magicians and adventurers came up with a different solution, the underarmour bodysuit. The name really says it all. There are several materials out in the world that can be made into a garment that covers all the places any adventurer might wear armour while also hugging the body tight to prevent friction, chafing, or any other unpleasantness. Three weeks ago, I took a load of the spidersilk I picked up in Mari to a tailor that specializes in these kinds of pieces. The way the man looked over the material I provided and nodded to himself like it was the most common thing in the world instilled a lot of confidence, and I am glad to say that it paid off.

  This morning, or maybe some time last night, my order was delivered to the penthouse. Inside, I found three sets of the gray bodysuits that seem to glitter in sunlight. The material stretches just as well as it had previously and is even more tear-resistant than my improved skin is. It might even be able to take one of Dovik’s stabs without tearing. That wouldn’t prevent the me beneath the bodysuit from tearing; the gray spidersilk offers virtually no protection from anything other than slicing wounds, but it isn’t meant to. What I have finally acquired, after more than a year yearning for it, are clothes that won’t be burnt to a crisp, melted by acid, or cut to ribbons when I fight a monster. No longer will I be left standing half-naked at the end of a fight. My dignity will finally be intact.

  Did I have to pay another enchanter to do it for me instead of doing it myself? Yes. That does sting a bit, but I have no ability to spin silk, so it was unavoidable. No ability to spin silk yet, at least.

  “I’m wearing pants,” I say to Dovik, pointing down at the clinging gray fabric that runs all the way down my leg before ending at the ankle.

  “Is that your new look?” he asks, pushing my leg aside and walking into the kitchen to grab a muffin from the breadbox.

  “Part of it,” I say, walking on the buzzing platforms that appear beneath my feet as I make my way around the island. “I told you about my hidden armory ability. It makes outfitting myself more complicated. Better to be sure, but more complicated.”

  Dovik nods before sparing a glance back at me as he chews on the frostberry muffin. “Just…Didn’t think you would be one of those,” he says, gesturing to all of me. “Guess you are a mage though.”

  I roll my eyes at the implication. There are adventurers out there who have gotten it into their head that, since they have to be wearing the underarmor all the time, why not just enchant the underarmor itself? The material of the bodysuits can be made with incredibly magic-rich materials, offering the potential for incredible enchantments to be inscribed into the inner linings of the bodysuits themselves. But, like the material that I used for mine, these garments are not armor. Against burgeoning attacks, they offer almost no protection, and there is plenty of skin exposed to be burned or destroyed by the awful magics one might expect to find in the world.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  Still, there are adventurers out there who will go to slay monsters wearing nothing but form-fitting bodysuits, stuck with a number of enchantments that would rival even the best-made armor suits. But, no matter how much magic is stuffed into one of the garments, they simply aren’t armor. At the end of the day, having a solid piece of steel or other enchanted metals between your body and a slashing claw will be superior.

  It isn’t as if I don’t see why they do it. Essentia magicians and most adventurers have bodies that deserve to be shown off every now and again, and few things are more flattering to the chiseled grace of a magician than skin-tight fabric that can be designed to cling in very specific ways.

  “I’m not,” I tell him. “Though I am trying to consider what to wear over it. Should I wear civilian clothes to make myself seem non-threatening, or should I purchase a second suit of armor to wear and simply not enchant it? Then, it would be like wearing two suits or armor at once.”

  “But, you aren’t very strong,” Dovik says. “No offense meant.” The cabinet in front of him snaps shut as he retrieves the various glass tubes and containers he has purchased to distill coffee.

  “I’ll try not to take any,” I say. “You do have a point. I focus on speed, not strength. The only reason I can get away with using the obsidianate is due to my hidden armory taking care of the weight issue. Real armor might just slow me down too much.”

  “So, you do plan to be a tights-fighter?”

  “No,” I say immediately. “I’m not some kind of exhibitionist.”

  The man looks up at me in a way that I am sure is insulting. “Could go with a light outfit,” he says after a much too long pause. “Honestly, I don’t know why you are worrying about it. I think that this pursuit of yours to get deep into enchanting and try to master it is admirable, but we are planning to make it to the third rank soon. Once that happens, you are going to have to get an entirely new set of equipment. Those obsidianate pieces you have been putting together are impressive. I could never deny that. But next to brightplate, dragonscale, or magicloth, it is not even close.”

  He isn’t wrong. At the third rank, after a magician has tempered their body or when an endowed noble reaches maturity, the kinds of magical equipment they can wield are incredible. At the third rank, there are three main paths that armor tends to take. Brightplate is an incredibly dense material that is almost impervious to physical damage and has an immense capacity for enchantment. Dragonscale, while not actually being made from dragonscales, are small, almost crystalline, pieces of high enchantment that work together in coordination to act like a second, more rigid skin. It is the kind of armor that I have seen Arabella Willian wear before: it is incredibly expensive and difficult to make, but the power that it can output is well worth it. Magicloth stands out from the other materials commonly used in rank three equipment or higher, as it is relatively inexpensive to obtain. A strange property of the cloth allows it to easily convert magical power to kinetic energy, allowing it to repulse attacks rather than absorb them or even empower the strikes of the wielder. The only reason that it isn’t commonly used below the third rank is that it requires an incredible amount of magic to be absorbed into it to outweigh the benefits of simple, durable armor.

  All three materials have two things in common: they require an obscene amount of mana to function, and they place an incredible burden on the soul. Brightplate, by itself, is dangerous to try wearing before the third rank as it might cause an individual’s soul to collapse, and that is before it has been enchanted.

  “I don’t think any of the effort is wasted,” I tell him. “The obsidianate is necessary, at least for right now. Though now that I am thinking about it, which of the three would you want? Dragonscale, I am betting.”

  Dovik takes a long sip from his coffee before putting the mug back beneath his distillery. “Am I placing an order?”

  “I wouldn’t mind working on something for you. You would have to pay for it, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “So?”

  He taps his chin. “Dragonscale offers a good amount of protection while not sacrificing mobility. Still, magicloth would be best. The Kalfarian strain of magicloth is supposed to be highly conductive of space-affixed mana. You should use that for mine when you make it.”

  “I don’t even know where Kalfaria is,” I tell him. “I’m still figuring this out, Dovik. Don’t expect your princely gown for a while.”

  “Which reminds me,” he says, snapping his fingers and ignoring me. “I need to borrow your ship.”

  “My ship? Why?”

  “Well, you were doing all of that fishing with the adventurer's guild before, and I thought that I should do that as well. My affixes aren’t going to purify themselves,” he says.

  I look down at the man, clicking my tongue as I think it over. “What affixes are you going for?” I ask him. “You have tested what ones you will be compatible with, right?”

  “I have my natural compatibilities," he says. “Space and soul mana are my natural affixes.” When he sees the look on my face, he shrugs. “You agreed to share your abilities with me, so I don’t see a reason to hold back with you. Those two mana types are difficult to locate, so I was going to hunt an elemental affix as well. It looks like I will have good compatibility with stone, metal, or lightning. I only have so long to get this done, so I need your ship.” He holds out his hand. “Keys, please.”

  When I don’t immediately hand over the key to my ship to him, he takes a long and loud sip of his coffee.

  “You aren’t going to crash my ship again, are you?”

  “Of course not,” he says, putting on an offended tone. “I have been piloting ships for years. Why would I crash yours?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I say, rolling my hand over and pulling the key from my vault. I toss it to him, and he snags it from the air. “Maybe because you have crashed it at least twice already.”

  “One of those wasn’t a crash. I hit a big tree with it, and it stuck in the bark for a while. It was only after that it fell out.”

  “You will owe me for damages,” I say.

  He waves over his shoulder at me as he starts to leave the kitchen, the prism of a key grasped tight in his hand. “You worry too much.”

  I watch him go, surprised that he immediately leaves the penthouse. Shaking my head, I turn back to my original task, running the end of my mageblade across the skin of my palm. “That man has issues.”

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