Beckett took the news that Dierdre had stolen his new clothes with more tact and aplomb than one would think, at first. Perhaps it was the fact that, having stood outside for the last half-hour or so without a stitch on, he had finally managed to achieve the closest thing to acclimating that he could manage. Perhaps some little anxious corner of his mind had predicted such a thing might happen, convinced that there was no chance of escape being as easy as it felt like it might be. Whatever the reason, when Wallace emerged over the top of the fence and delivered the news, the dormouse's response was sober and muted. He looked off to one side, thoughtfully. He turned back to fix Wallace with a clipped nod of understanding. Then, with his hands between his legs and his thick tail tucked along the crack of his backside, he retreated back to the manor.
For the rest of the day, he was posted in the library, poring over his book of magic. He took his bag into the room, so he could take his meals there. When he felt the need to stretch his legs, he did so by taking a lap or two of the room, book still in his paws as he flipped through its pages. He would put the thing down only long enough to test some incantation or experiment with the manipulation of his willpower. Then, he would once again be deep in the covers of his book.
Wallace found the mouse to be poor company, at that time. Once or twice, he tried to engage him in conversation. He would lean against the doorframe, arms folded, naked body on full display. Beckett had no words for him. At best, he had vague half-words, acknowledgments and assents thrown out with all the care of a half-eaten apple core to a whickering drake. Wallace had encountered this sort of behavior, before. Occasionally, he would run into a person who could place themselves in front of a task and stay there. Nothing but the pull of their bodily needs or the building they were in bursting into flame would pull them away. He had, in his travels, met a few people who fell into that state naturally. He had even robbed a few, as unsatisfying as the act felt to him afterwards. Rarely, however, had he met somebody who, by dint of life handing them a bad hand, was forced into such a workman's trance. He might have found it a pleasant surprise. He might have written off Beckett and his ability to pull himself together, and been impressed to be proven wrong.
Mostly, however, he was stymied. Wallace still had his conversation with Dierdre buzzing in his head, and was more eager to play the part assigned to him. He would make a few more passes, a few more attempts to get the dormouse's attention. After a while, however, as his blood began to cool, it became increasingly obvious that he was thrusting his crotch at a stone wall. He decided instead to skulk off to another part of the house, to amuse himself with his lockpicks.
By the time evening rolled around, he had managed to learn the trick to most of the locks in the house. He was working on getting into a room in the servant's wing when he heard Beckett call from upstairs.
"Wallace! Wallace, are you here?"
He did not jump at the sound of Beckett's voice, but he came pretty damn close to it. For a brief moment, he had forgotten he was not alone. "Aye?" he called back.
"I think I've found something." The voice coming from down the hall was supremely unconfident. "Can I ask you to come here a moment? I... I n-need a second set of eyes, I think."
Wallace was confused but, glad to finally hear Beckett say words, he tossed his picks into his bag and threw the bag over his shoulder. He padded down the hall towards the foyer, and walked around to the foot of the stairs. "What do you have, Beck? Finally learned to shoot fire... balls..."
At the top of the stairs stood Beckett, one hand clutching the elbow of his opposite arm. He was dressed, now; a monochrome green doublet and cream trousers covered his body. Wallace was confused to see clothes on the dormouse, but even more confused at the fact that being covered up seemed to do nothing to blunt his ever-present air of anxiety and exposure.
"Y-you can see them, right?" Beckett asked, refusing to make eye contact. "I-I-I'm covered? You can't see my... I'm covered, right?"
"You... are?" Wallace looked the dormouse up and down. "How did you manage to sneak those in to the house?" Realization hit. The rat's eyes widened. "Is this magic? Did you magic a bunch of clothes into existence?"
"Um..."
Beckett looked down at himself. From his perspective, he was still just as naked as he was this morning. The only thing that was different was a vague, almost imperceptible shimmer, filling the air an inch or so off of his body. It did absolutely nothing to cover him. Even his cock, stirring awake with the first flush of "fear," knew that.
"Not exactly," he explained. "It's illusion magic. I found a way to make things appear that aren't real, and used it to create a set of clothing."
Wallace vaguely knew what an illusion was. He had been around people of dubiously magical persuasions long enough. Even so, he squinted, confused. "Right. So you're telling me that you're actually still na-?"
"Yes," Beckett interrupted. "I am. Please..." Unable to fight the urge any longer, Beckett put his hands over his crotch. "Please don't stare too hard. Now that you know it's fake, you might accidentally see through it."
The rat laughed. "You know it's nothing I haven't seen before, yeah?"
"Wallace?"
He rolled his eyes, but in the face of such a plaintive, pathetic face, Wallace had no choice but to relent. "All right. So you can magic up a set of fake clothes. I suppose that gets around this Weaver lady's bugbear against us having real ones."
"That's what I thought too, but there's a problem." Beckett stepped to the side, compelled to hide part of himself around the corner, just in case. "It seems like I can only use this stuff on myself. The enchantment feeds on my willpower and it fizzles out if it's not attached to someone who can provide more."
"All right? That is a problem, then?"
"Well... I thought it would be good to make a run in town for supplies."
Wallace stared up at Beckett, confused.
Beckett blushed and shrunk behind the wall, some more. "I... was hoping I could get you to do it."
The rat paused, as the words sunk in. Then, once they did, his lips curled into a smug little grin. "Oh, well that is a problem. I wouldn't know thing one about maintaining a magic illumin thing."
"No." Beckett fidgeted. "No, I suppose you wouldn't."
"Besides, it's a bit risky, either way. I mean, I only just robbed the village this morning. What if somebody saw me?"
Indeed, Beckett thought, as an errant breeze passed right through his false clothes. Imagine being seen.
"So, what's the plan?" Wallace turned and sat down on the bottom stair. "You gonna have to make the supply run, yourself?"
"No!" The word spilled out of the dormouse's mouth, immediately and without thought. He only caught himself a moment later, at which point he was forced to pretend as though he would give the question some amount of consideration. "That is... I don't think it's going to be possible. A-as you said, the Weaver apparently has the power to bar doors. She probably won't let me leave the property, knowing I have the means to cover myself."
"I think she will," Wallace replied, idly rubbing his nails on his chest-fur.
"You do? What makes you think that?"
Wallace froze. "Uh, well... I mean, think about it." He looked back, trying to remain casual. "Taking your clothes away and refusing to let you put new ones on? Why else would she do that, if not because she wants you running around naked?" Inwardly, he ran the idea through his head, making sure it sounded plausibly like something he could have come up with on his own. Then, he pressed on with confidence. "Yeah. Obviously. This whole thing's gotta be some scheme to embarrass us. And you being forced to walk around a village with nothing but magic separating your tender bits from a couple dozen sets of eyes? Sounds pretty embarrassing to me."
Beckett made a noise, possibly meant to be one of assent and understanding, but whose meaning was muddled as it came out as a tiny whine.
Wallace laughed. "I think you should do it."
"No."
"Aye."
"Absolutely not."
"Beck."
"I'm not doing it!" Beckett disappeared entirely behind the wall. "I'm not! I can't go out there, even with illusions. I'll die!"
"Come on, Beck. You're not gonna die-"
"I will literally die!" Beckett insisted. "The heart was not built to withstand such trials! It will fail!"
It was good that he was now out of sight, because Wallace was now free to snicker to himself to his heart's content. He knew he probably should not press his luck, but ever since Dierdre put the idea of messing with the dormouse in his head, he was very keenly aware of how easy it was to do so. Having long since gotten over the danger of being in the clutches of one of the Fair Folk, he now found himself increasingly on the lookout for trophies to claim, funny stories he could tell to strangers at the tavern in the next town, while he tried to worm his way into new beds. At that very moment, the rat could think of no funnier story than this one; he was determined to see it happen.
Climbing the stairs, he rounded the corner. Beckett was sitting on the floor, knees up tight against his body, trying to cover things that, at that moment, Wallace could not see. Wallace made an effort to appear sober and serious, a skill which he had honed to an edge over the years. He might have called himself an "actor," if he had ever learned how to read scripts.
"Beck," he said, with all the gravity of a close friend confiding in another. "Listen to me, Beck. I don't think you realize the opportunity we have here."
"What opportunity?" Beckett muttered into his knees. "I've got rations, still. We can hold out for a few more-"
"No, no, no, not that. Just..." Wallace hesitated. He had spoken before he truly understood what kind of argument he was about to make, and now he needed to improvise. "This is an opportunity to... you know... get a handle on this Weaver lass's state of mind." Even as he said it, he was not sure where he was going with it. Seeing the look of interest on Beckett's face, however, encouraged him to push further. "Yeah. Just think about it, Beck. We've already established she can bar you from coming or going, if she pleases. And she's clearly watching us, while we're in this house. So you should do it. Just to see how she reacts. If she shuts the doors on you, then that must mean she's scared."
"S-scared?" Beckett looked up, wide-eyed. "Of what?"
"Of you," Wallace replied, with as straight a face as he could manage. "Of your growing power. I mean, two days ago you were doing the hand thing, and now you've got fully formed magic clothing? I tell you, if I were a magical sorcerer lady, I'd certainly be looking a little bit leery at you."
Wallace had known quite a few men like Beckett. Small creatures, physically or otherwise. The kind that spent most of their life either underfoot, or convinced they were underfoot. The rat had always found them decent company. Usually agreeable, sometimes easy to charm, modestly easy to rob. On occasion, Wallace found a trick that worked with those kinds, in particular, was to tease them with the concept of power, to convince them that they might be stronger or smarter or more important than the world at large considered them to be. Sometimes Wallace did it to see the twinkle in the eye. Mostly he did it to get them to do something foolish.
When he saw that same twinkle in Beckett's eye, he knew that something foolish was very much in the cards.
"Do you really think so?" Beckett folded his paws together, his eyes glancing off of Wallace's as he bashfully considered the hallway off to his left. "Goodness, I hadn't even considered... I mean, I knew that magic was powerful. That was the reason why..." He trailed off. His whiskers fell. The twinkle was quickly replaced with the same dread and hesitation that had come to mark most of his stay in the manor. He added "Wait. What if she doesn't? What if she... you know..."
"Lets you do it?" Wallace offered.
The mouse nodded. "That probably wouldn't bode well, would it? It probably... probably means she doesn't consider my powers a threat to her, yes?"
He flinched as the light from the windows was dimmed by a naked body. Wallace made no sound as he approached, seemingly walking on the balls of his footpaws without thinking about it. Beckett had no idea he was even approaching until he was standing over him, hands on hips, sensitive bits hanging shamelessly at eye level. Then, Wallace squatted down, so that he was almost at eye level.
"She just might," he said, confidently, "and to be honest, Beck? I think that's exactly what we want to happen."
There it was, again. The twinkle in the eye. Beckett had no idea what Wallace was going to suggest, but the fact that he seemed to so effortlessly have it to hand made it feel all the more important. Wallace, for his part, was making all this up as he went along, and taking that twinkle as a sign that he was pushing in about the right direction.
"Don't you see?" the rat pressed. "If she lets you out, it must mean she thinks you're going to embarrass yourself. Mess up the spell, lose focus, wind up naked as the day you were born right in the middle of the town square." Wallace ignored the plaintive whines of a dormouse with a potent mental image of humiliation, summoning all his fortitude to keep the smirk off of his face as he continued. "She's supernatural, right? One of those weird forest monsters that do crazy magic stuff? Well, she probably isn't used to having someone as powerful as you under her thumb. She thinks you're going to fail, that your spells are nothing more than simple parlor tricks. Imagine what would happen if you were to prove her wrong. If you defied her expectations and showed her just how powerful a sorcerer you were becoming."
"She'd stop me." Apparently, once the more anxious wheels in the dormouse's mind began to turn, they were difficult to stop. "She can take my books away, and hinder my ability to learn anything else that could help us."
"She can't, Beck. If she could, she probably would've done so by now. The Fair Folk are real particular, when it comes to their Vengeance Quests or whatever it's called. They can only do things to mortals that relate to whatever insult they've been given."
Beckett's eyes widened. Then, he grew thoughtful. "I see... I had actually considered that she might be one of the Fair Folk, but I had completely forgotten about the particulars of their Vengeance Quests. Extraordinary. But how did you recognize her as one?"
Once again Wallace panicked. Once again he kept that panic out of his face. And a moment later, he once again had an answer ready. "I would hear stories," he half-lied. "Tales of the fairies were always passed around my family. You know, 'don't cross a graveyard without an urlison to the Goddess, don't talk back to your sire, keep your room tidy or the fairies will grab you in the night and...'"
"Orison."
"Whuzzat?"
Beckett scratched his ear, distractedly. "The word is 'orison.' You give an orison to the Goddess. It's a kind of prayer."
"Look, forget about the orleeson or whatever it's called. That's not the point." Wallace sat down on the floor across from the mouse. "The point is, you should try it. Not even should. You need to try. You're never going to beat the Weaver unless you get this magic thing figured out. Walking around town for a time seems to be as good a test as any."
For about a minute, things were quiet in the house. They were so quiet, the only sounds were the jittering of Beckett's footpaw against the floor, and the cry of some animal out in the woods. Beckett spent that time thinking over the idea. At least, he was half-thinking it over. The other half was trying to find problems, pitfalls, any reason whatsoever to discard the idea as being impossible to even try. After wracking his brain, however, he could not find any. At least, not any beyond the sheer fear the idea instilled in him. He opened his mouth to speak, his voice small. "Do you... Do you promise that you can't see anything, right now?"
"I can't."
"Do you promise you can't?"
Wallace rolled his eyes. "I promise, Beck. Your magic's strong. All I see is an ordinary mouse in clothes that are just a bit too fancy for my tastes. Even knowing the magic is there, I can't see through it. The uneducated farmers down the hill aren't going to have a chance."
Beckett frowned. He curled in tighter, still convinced that the illusion would break any second. Then he sighed. "How do boys learn to swim?"
From the moment he stepped out onto the front lawn, Beckett was convinced that he would rather drown.
The morning was cool, and he could feel the constant breeze over every inch of his body. The spell still held. He did not dare look down to check, but the little pressure at the back of his mind told him that the spell still held. So long as he focused on that, he was safe. He was covered. Nobody would see his fur, or the inches of cock that had been freed from its sheath, ever since he moved to open the door and step out onto the lawn. He marched down the overgrown path at the briskest walking pace he could manage. He threw a hand on the gate and pulled, eager to feel it resist him so he could run back inside.
Of course, the gate opened without issue. He stared at the metal in his paw, dumbly. Then, he looked back at the house. There, in the doorway, Wallace beamed and waved him onwards with both paws.
Beckett sighed. "Get in the water," he murmured. "Just... get in the water."
He padded down the overgrown dirt path, as quietly as his footpaws could manage. He was not sure who it was he was trying to sneak around. Dierdre was magical and any beasts in the woods would probably hear him, anyway. Or at least smell him. The thought occurred to him that he might have encountered some early morning hiker, or an old house-wife out to collect mushrooms. Then, of course, the runaway thoughts happened. The mental image of being discovered, of the illusion breaking, of some poor innocent soul looking directly at him and...
He shook his head. Then he shook his head harder. The fear would not claim him. Not now. Not today. Today, Beckett had a spell pulling at his willpower in the back of his mind, and he would hold onto that spell like a sailor held on to the shattered boards of his ship in the middle of the unforgiving ocean. He had power to spare. He could hold the illusion for as long as he needed to, and longer besides. He would walk into that village, face all of its people, and know deep in his heart that he was safe. He was covered. Nobody would see him.
He still covered his crotch. At least up until the end of the treeline. But at least he kept his catastrophizing to a minimum. And when he actually managed to reach the treeline he had the presence of mind to take his hands away from his crotch. It only took him four minutes of heavy breathing and at least three overwhelming urges to abort his plans and scramble back to the manor. However, to finally say a point against him, it did in fact, take him a few minutes longer for him to finally summon up the courage to take that first step past the treeline and into the village proper.
The morning was still young, and the people of Chuleigh were firmly about their business. Farmers worked in the disorganized fields, tending to crops or using sickles to hack away at the ever-encroaching font of ivy that threatened their plots. A shirtless badger worked a plow together with a drake who was clearly getting too old for such strenuous labor. There were no children about, either in the fields or engaged in play. There very rarely were children in Chuleigh. The twins born to Hermine and her husband were the newest faces in several years, and no other couples seemed willing to experience the joy of parenthood at the moment.
A middle-aged shrew was the first to notice Beckett, when she looked up from the sewing she had taken to her front porch to finish. It was not the first time she had seen velvet on a person, but the last time she had been fortunate enough to do so she had been young and unmarried. The man who had worn those velvets was more handsome. Stronger of jaw and less pudgy. And he did not look back at her as though she were a descending Great Wyrm. She smiled and raised a paw in greeting, suppressing a chuckle as the dormouse flinched hard enough to nearly leave the ground, before giving an uneasy wave and an even uneasier smile back at her.
After that, more people started to notice. Beckett could feel every eye as it fell on him. Despite how cool the breeze felt on his fur, he felt like he was about to collapse from the heat of the sun and from his own body's attempt to self-immolate. Still, nobody said anything. Nobody cried out in alarm, nobody pointed, nobody threw invectives his way for his sinful display. Reluctantly, he looked down at himself. Then, he breathed a sigh of relief. The illusion still held. He still saw the ghostly outline of his false outfit. He was also catastrophically erect, but he ignored that. What mattered was that he was safe. Completely safe.
With a crooked smile and eyes wide with fear, he did the best impersonation of an ordinary mouse about town that he could manage. The villagers looked on in mingled confusion and disinterest, half of them wondering what a rich man was doing here and why he looked like he was being hunted, before turning back to their work.
For the past few days, when Adelard was not occupied with other labors, he was in the library. Learning his letters was a prerequisite for joining the church, something that the wolf had absolutely no affinity for. The translation of ink lines to words as they would have come out of somebody's mouth was arcane and obtuse, and even after almost a year of dedicated education he found the act to be burdensome in a way his fellow monks never seemed to feel. Up until this point, he had been exempted from scribe work, and he often had to be prodded in to studies. Many was the time when an increasingly embarrassed Adelard had to go to Father Cecil after encountering some new strain of word that he had never had cause to encounter, or when the combination of letters formed together to make a word that he knew perfectly well, but not in the way the letters suggested it should be pronounced. Needless to say, the act of reading was not normally high on the list of activities Adelard enjoyed doing around the church.
Recently, however, he had found himself reading as though his life depended on it. Chuleigh, being an old town on the edge of the Choking Wood, was no stranger to the Fair Folk. The monk had not needed to look overly hard to find books on the subject of the woods' stranger inhabitants. A treatise of oral accounts written by one of the previous Abbots, filled with fantastical claims and obvious exaggerations. A bestiary by a long-dead cardinal, incomprehensible with its archaic script but overstuffed with the most gruesome of illustrations. Finally, he found something worth his time. Tucked in a forgotten corner of the library was a small, unmarked book. Inside was a list of common orisons, and a primer on their usage. He skipped past the ones for things like "blessing young couples as they swore bonds of marriage" and "relief from the pain of gout" and kept the book permanently open on the section that most promised to put an end to his long, painful stint of self-imposed studying:
"Orisons to Defend Against Black Magicks and Other Foul Predations of the Unholy."
From that point on, things went more smoothly. Which was not to say that they were easy. Adelard still had to painstakingly translate the prayers that he was expected to mutter into his rosary, in order to focus his willpower and prime the little steel effigy of the Goddess to be used for... something. Adelard still was not entirely sure what, mainly because he still did not know a few of the more vital words. Whatever it was, it was bad for "black magicks," which was the kind of thing the Fair Folk did, probably. Apparently, if he said a certain phrase, after a time spent instilling his prayers into the symbol, he could...
When one of his fellow monks walked in to the library, it was to see Adelard hunched over a book, squinting at one word with the same intensity a man would give something he was about to murder. "Brother Adelard," he called, warmly. "A pleasure to see you here, this morning."
Adelard looked up from his work, and for a moment he felt a hint of self-consciousness. He sat up straight. "Brother Micah."
Brother Micah was at least a decade Adelard's senior, a gentle rabbit whose soft jaw was just starting to see the first gray hairs on his otherwise black chin. "This is the third time in as many days that I've seen you attend to your studies." Gliding around the table, he went to the shelves in search of his own reading material. "What has brought on this new dedication?"
"No particular reason." It was a weak lie, and despite the fact that Micah was a peer, the concept of lying to a man of the cloth still sat poorly with him. Micah did not seem to notice or care, but he could feel it fester in his stomach, until he found himself blurting out "I think the town may be in danger, soon."
"Danger?" Micah looked back, balancing a book on his finger as it lay half-out of the stacks. "What kind of danger?"
Adelard sighed. "I'm not sure. Magic? The Fair Folk? The Wood is being disturbed, and I have not been able to shake a certain fear about it."
Micah broke eye contact just long enough to grab his book and press it to his chest with both arms. When he turned back, he nodded. "I see. You believe that studying the Word will allow you to face this danger."
"No." Adelard chuckled, mirthlessly. "No, I would not trust myself to face a fairy unless it was on the sharp end of a knife-" He stopped himself, ears flattening as he remembered who he was speaking to. "Sadly I am of the cloth, now, and drawing blood is forbidden. As much as I want to raise my fists to it, I must snuff out that instinct, hope that somewhere within the light of knowledge is a better answer."
"Goodness, yes!" Micah beamed. "An excellent response, Brother Adelard." He stepped forward, reached a hand out. "I must say, you are adjusting to the role better than you give yourself credit fo-"
The moment Micah's hand touched the top of Adelard's, the wolf pulled his away with such violent force, one would think he had touched a hot iron. The movement was sudden enough to cause Micah to backpedal a half-step, the words in his mouth quashed by a noise that was half-yelp, half-gasp. Silence fell over the library, after that. The two of them stared into each other's eyes.
"Forgive me," Micah said. "I had forgotten about your aversion to being touched."
Adelard was chagrined, but nonetheless gripped his hand and tried to rub the tingle that had spread across the back of it. Rubbing the sensation away never worked, but focusing on the it was modestly effective at holding off the intrusive thoughts. He would not think those thoughts. Not about the monks. Never about the monks.
Micah did not hide his concern. He was dimly aware that Adelard had some sort of weight on his soul. A man his age would not have scrambled to the church without either that or a specific calling, and Micah had known his brother long enough to know that the wolf had most certainly not felt a calling. Even so, it was because Micah could see the weight Adelard was carrying that he knew better than to poke at it. "I'll not disturb you further," he said, turning for the door. "The morning is quite cool and dry, and I think I shall take my reading out in the cloister."
Adelard watched him go, but before he crossed the threshold he called "Wait, Brother." Micah turned back, eyebrow raised. Adelard's ears flattened as he turned the book around on the table and pointed. "This word. I do not understand what it means."
Micah leaned over to read the passage. "Hmm... 'abjure?' Is that the word you're..." Adelard nodded. Micah nodded back. "I see, I see. Well, looking at the text around it... yes. The word in this context means to rebuke." Adelard's expression to the rabbit was completely lost. Micah thought a moment. "Right... to censure?" Still Adelard did not understand. Micah scratched his chin and furrowed his brow. "It means... when you abjure somebody, you are telling them they are doing something wrong."
"Oh. I see. Thank you, Brother Micah."
"Of course. Find me on the lawn if you need any more help."
With that, Adelard was once again left alone. He sighed, simultaneously grateful to be free of awkward conversation and annoyed because it means he had to go back to his studies. Armed with almost an understanding of what the words that he was saying meant, he whispered a short prayer to the Goddess, his holy symbol almost pressed to his lips. By the time he was reciting the last few words, he felt the metal grow warm in his fingers, saw a dim font of white light emerge from beneath his muzzle. His eyes widened, and though he did not pull away from the symbol, he still felt an uneasy wariness, as if he were worried it was going to explode in his hands. He knew that devotees of the Goddess could work magic, but up until this point he had never really seen it with his own eyes. He certainly had never tried to work such things before. The fact that it was so simple that a man like him could do it was almost concerning, but he did not question it too deeply. Any weapon he could get his hands on in the coming days was valuable.
As he put the symbol down on the table, he saw the light change in the room. A shadow passed in front of the window next to him. Then, there was a soft but unmistakable tapping sound. Adelard turned to see one of the villagers, an old rabbit named Dallen, impatiently waving him over with one hand while the other still remained on the glass. Eyebrow cocked, Adelard rose to his paws and moved to the window, opening it and sticking his head out. "Good morning," he said. "Is something the matter?"
"Got a problem," Dallen replied, curtly.
"I... see? Do you want me to call the Abbot?"
"Nay. S'not a problem for old people." The old rabbit paused to spit on the ground. "Got a thief running around."
"A thief?"
"Aye, pup. A thief, I said. Some sneak broke into my house the other night and made off with my best pair of trousers."
Old Dallen was not the most organized or mindful creature at the best of times, and Adelard had been around town for long enough to understand that his memory was only getting worse with age. The first words out of the wolf's mouth were the exact same ones anyone else in town would have asked: "Are you sure you didn't just misplace them?"
"Bah!" Dallen had heard that many times before, and his memory never seemed to falter when it came to times when people treated him like a feebleminded old coot. "Same thing the wife said. And Zeke. And it might be as you all say. Doesn't explain what happened to all the other folks' stuff."
That caused Adelard to lean forward. "What else was stolen?"
"Roddick lost a shirt. Mildred's down one of her best dresses. Rin says she's missing a chunk of one of her cheese wheels, though that could have just been her boy. He's growing like a weed and I don't mean that kindly, between you and me."
"That's all that was taken? Clothes and food?"
"Ain't much else to take."
Adelard rubbed his chin. "I don't know anyone in town who would be so hard up as to need to steal from their neighbors. Nobody's come around for charity in a bit." He flinched and added "Not that I'd tell you if anyone did."
"Could be that new mouse that blew into town," Dallen offered.
"New mouse? What do you know about a new mouse?"
"He's right over there."
Wide-eyed, Adelard thrust his head out beyond the abbey wall and turned it where Dallen was pointing. Sure enough, there he was. The same pudgy little mouse he had seen a few nights ago. Or, at least, he thought so.
Did I ever see his face?
"I think," Adelard said, unsure, "I've seen him before. That man was in the Duke's manor."
Would I even be able to recognize him unless he pulled down those trousers and paraded his ass to all and sundry again?
"I think it might be. You know Yori, Hermine's man?"
This is a bad time to be bringing up a second slattern, old man.
"He gave directions to a mouse a bit ago, looked a lot like that." Something changed in Dallen's voice, though Adelard was too occupied with his thoughts to notice the cruel edge that sat at the back of the old rabbit's words. "Though, I don't know as anyone would be walking around in summer dressed like that mouse over there is."
It's him. It has to be him. I feel like I can see that rump through the fabric.
Adelard scowled, his lip curling back as he channelled his intrusive thoughts into anger. "There's no way a man like that could rob four families. He's not built like a sneak-thief."
"Maybe he didn't sneak." Dallen craned his head up to get closer to the monk's ear. In his glee, he almost forgot to keep the lilt out of his voice. "Maybe these old eyes are failing me, but do you notice there's something... off... about the boy's dress?"
What's "off" is how he thinks he can think to look presentable after dragging his whore-hole in front of me like...
"It doesn't seem all that real, does it? Like the boy's hiding something."
Oh, I could make him pay for embarrassing me in front of the Abbot. I could make him pay so dearly.
"And you know what I saw, just the other day?"
He'd probably like it. Pathetic little creature would probably beg me to...
"I saw the mouse with strange books. Ones with symbols like them fancy wizards use when they use magic."
Suddenly, all at once, the thoughts stopped. In its place was a cold shock of terror. He looked down at Dallen, who looked up at him with a grim look that suggested the monk hadn't misheard him. A second later Adelard was running for the door to the hall. A second after that he was careening to the floor as his leg caught on a table.
Micah, who was pulled from his reading by the sound of a table full of books clattering to the ground, stood and emerged from the cloister just in time to see Adelard, half in the hallway and pulling himself to his paws. "What happened?" he asked. "Are you hurt?"
"Sorcerer," Adelard replied.
"I-I beg your pardon?"
Adelard whipped his head around to glare at Micah, fangs bared. "There is a SORCERER in the town square!"
Just a few minutes before, Adelard's dreaded sorcerer was just about on the cusp of a heart attack.
Beckett stood in front of the counter of the local watering hole. The tavern had no name. After all, the residents never had cause to refer to any other tavern. It's owner was a cheery hedgehog, rare among her fellow villagers for being one of the very few with an eye for the world outside and a fascination with seeing money change hands. For most of its life, the tavern changed hands to anyone who could be cajoled into running it. Generations of unambitious owners had rendered the building a shell of its former self (not that the patrons minded so long as the ale flowed). Under Aude, however, the old building was showing the first signs of rehabilitation. New boards replaced old and a passing attempt at coloring the place with wreaths of the town's omnipresent ivy.
Aude herself was a little sunbeam, master of the merchant's smile and with a voice like a flute. Beckett might have found her charming. In less stressful circumstances he might even have found himself smitten. Unfortunately for the both of them, the knowledge that one fragile illusion was the only thing standing between him and disgracing a fine country maiden with the sight of his "prod" had nothing if not a profound focusing effect on the young mouse.
"There you go," she chirped as she placed a burlap sack on the counter. "I was going to save some of these rations for the merchants that travel through, but since you're new here it seems only fair to give you first crack at them."
Beckett pulled the backpack off of his shoulders and reached inside for his purse. "I suppose the money spends either way, doesn't it?"
"Oh, you joke." Aude accepted the money placed on the counter with a beaming smile. She inspected them avidly. "Truly sir, I am just excited to have a coin in my hand that hasn't already passed through every hand in the village."
"Is business really that slow?" Beckett made conversation almost out of instinct. He honestly wanted to leave as quickly as possible. The pressure of the spell still sat in the back of his mind.
"The village takes care of itself," the hedgehog said. "Nobody goes hungry, if the other folks can help it. Still, when one villager is trading barley to the other, and the other is making shirts for the first one, not a lot of coin gets made. Most only have a couple coppers to spare, and those they give to me when they want a drink. Then they sell me the things to make the ale..." She sighed, wistfully. "I tell you, m'lord. Were it not for the peddlers, I don't know as I'd remember what a full gold piece looks like."
Beckett had his supplies halfway into his bag when he flinched and said. "Oh, no. Good Miss Aude, you don't need to use titles like that. I'm not your lord."
"You're not? I thought you were living in the old Duke's manor." She looked him up and down. "And with those clothes you were wearing..."
Beckett dropped the sack in his backpack quickly, opening his hands so they could wave the tavernkeep from looking too closely at him. "Th-th-that means nothing! I mean... that is to say..." He fumbled for the words to say. The fact that Aude seemed amused at his fumbling (and wasn't horrified at learning his clothes were an illusion) reassured him enough to recover. "I am just a scholar, Miss. Not a lord. I have an ancestral claim to the manor, which is why I am staying there, but my family has not had a claim to nobility for a long while, now. But for a few extra silver in my pocket, I assure you I am in much the same societal space as any other in this town."
Aude seemed to simultaneously be happy and a bit disappointed that she was not serving a Duke. "Right, then. Beckett it is, then, not 'milord.'" She leaned against the bar, and though her modest country dress was cut almost to her throat, she still bent over in a way that defined the shape of her breasts more clearly. "Well then, if you don't mind me asking, how do you intend to pay your way into town?"
Beckett did not take the bait, mostly because he was preoccupied trying to know where the barkeep's eyes were. He flinched. "I'm sorry. Pay my way?"
"Earn your living," Aude explained. "Earn your 'keep,' as some of the older folks around here'd say. Since you're not our new lord, you're not going to be living off of the rents we offer, so there must be something you plan on offering the folks here."
"I..." Beckett's whiskers twitched. For the first time in a minute, the fear was supplanted by a new concern. "...well. To be honest, I hadn't quite thought of that. I don't suppose there's much call for a scribe or a bookbinder around these parts. Perhaps the church has books that need repairing."
"You repair books?" Aude leaned forward, this time avidly instead of flirtatiously.
The movement was sudden enough to make Beckett leap back a half-step, and his recovery was in no way smooth. "I... y-yes, I do. I learned the craft while I was in my studies. I... well, I love books, you see, and I wanted to do my part in preserving them."
"Oh, Goddess be praised! I thought I'd never find an opportunity." Suddenly, she pushed off the counter and moved towards the rooms behind the bar. "Wait here a moment, pray. I have something I need to show you."
Beckett did not have the wherewithal to either agree or protest. At first, he welcomed the opportunity to spend a moment with nobody's eyes upon him. As much as he would have preferred to leave this place as quickly as possible, the relative quiet of the bar was calming. Unfortunately, Beckett's mind was never calm for very long, and it was no time at all before he had found an entirely new reason to be anxious.
In particular, with nothing else to focus on, it was very easy for him to realize how incredibly hard he was.
Beckett doubled over onto the bar, elbows down, forehead resting between his interlaced fingers. He could see it, if he squinted, behind the semi-translucent green of his false clothes and poking out from his belly. It was throbbing. A warm enough burst of air would have set it to twitching. If he reached down to touch it... Beckett groaned, one footpaw drumming on the ground as he tried in vain to un-think that thought. He would not do that. Not again. Not after that horrible incident in the University library. He groaned again. Thinking about that was like a burst of warm enough air, and now he was leaking onto Aude's freshly patched floor. He wanted to touch it. Sweet Goddess save him, he wanted to touch it. Just one squeeze, and he would be fine. He wouldn't be fine. He would probably give the bar in front of him a sudden and incomplete coat of paint at the slightest touch. His footpaw striking the ground was loud enough to echo off the high vaulted ceilings.
The sound of a door opening finally gave him something to focus on. He whipped upright and tried to pretend like everything was normal.
Aude emerged from what was clearly her living area, carrying an old book bound in thin, creased leather. "Got this from one of the peddlers, ages ago," she explained, as she set the thing down on the bar and pushed it towards Beckett. "It's the only book I own, and as you can see, it's not aged very gracefully."
He could see what she meant, as soon as he opened the front cover. The bindings sewed through the parchment were beginning to fail after a thousand openings and closings. The leather that covered the wooden cover slats was warped with age, moisture and the sweat of palms. The back cover slat hung half off and was split across the bottom third. He did not know exactly what manner of impact could cause that specific damage, and frankly he did not care. He looked over the thing in front of him like one owuld look over a sick family pet.
"I..." For a moment, he forgot his situation. He could speak almost normally. "I can tell this book has been well-loved, Good Aude. Well-loved, but not exactly well-maintained." A simple wooden paddle hung between the pages as a bookmark, about halfway through. Curious, he opened to it and began to scan through the words. "The priests nearby should know the craft, if they keep a library. Had you not considered... bringing... the book to... them...?" His eyes roved over some of the frankest, bawdiest verse he had ever seen put to parchment. He had read more than a few courtly romances, a handful of poems that had made his whiskers twitch and his ears burn. Those were not the words in front of him. On the page were open and unabashed descriptions of lovemaking that were explicitly pornographic. His eyes glazed over unspeakable words, only pausing when they accidentally landed on a familiar name:
Brave Sir Wallace of Kainsbury
To the Maid's house he did ride
And grip'd firm his meaty sword
And in Maid's cu-
Aude brought a hand up and swung the book shut. The two of them shared a long, pregnant silence together, neither side daring to speak or even blink. Aude would eventually break the silence when she calmly explained: "It's not a book I feel I can bring to the church, good sir. It's private, you understand."
Beckett nodded, very slowly, and tried as hard as he could to pretend like nothing had just happened. "It will probably need new laces," he said, instead. "If I can get some glue I might be able to set the back cover properly. And it could probably do with a new fabric on the front. Fortunately the pages themselves don't appear to be rotted or eaten, nor have they been ripped from their sewing points. They only need to be set and straightened before they fall out, entirely."
"So you can fix it?"
"I..." Beckett nodded. "I believe I can."
Aude beamed. "Wonderful. You have no idea how valuable this book is to me."
Beckett had every idea how valuable this book was to Aude, but for the sake of maintaining concentration on his spell (and overall dignity) he did not think about that. Instead he opened his bag again. "I don't really know what this is going to cost. It should not be hard to source the materials from around town, but..."
He reached out a paw to take the book. A second paw landed on top of his. A tingle radiated up his entire arm, and his ears flattened as he followed the second paw up to Aude's face.
She smiled, an air of warm conspiracy about her. "Don't worry, sirrah," she purred. "I'm sure I can think of a few ways to repay you for this."
Beckett blushed. Violently. He spluttered and babbled. He stared down at the hand on top of his and up into the hedgehog's eyes, almost entirely incapable of thought. It wasn't until he felt the pull at the back of his mind start to subside, and the green velvet around his arm start to fade and become translucent, that he remembered that he had a spell to maintain. He yelped, retreating like a wounded animal, forcing the magic back into his concentration. Aude pulled back as well, an expression on her face as if she had just imagined seeing something.
"I-I-I..." Beckett lunged forward, grabbed the book in both hands. Then he beat a hasty retreat from the tavern, throwing pleasantries behind him the whole way. "I will be in touch, Good Aude! Be well! Good luck with your customers!"
Aude was confused. For a moment, she thought she saw the outline of the dormouse's soft body, stark naked and absolutely dribbling for her. The thought occurred to her, and not for the first time, that perhaps she had spent too much time with her snout in that one particular book. She really should have gotten a more chaste, courtly romance, or at least bought one of those on top of that particular collection of smut.
Still, it was a nice enough mental image. Surely the new villager would not hold it against her if she fantasized about it, a moment longer.
Beckett strode back to the road leading to the manor at a pace that was just shy of a jog, and it was only when he was in front of the church and one turn away from entering the woods that he finally allowed himself a moment to breathe. Nervously, he looked down at himself. It was fine. The illusion still held. With all the distraction and the vigorous exercise, his erection had all but retreated into its sheath, to boot. He allowed himself a sigh of relief. Then, he looked down at the book in his arms, pressed to his chest.
Dimly, he realized that when he was thinking about the book, he had all but forgotten about his predicament. The thought of getting to work with bindings and pages... no. Not just that. Just the thought of being useful to somebody else... it was strangely soothing. Focusing. He could not think about his exposed, naked body at the same time as he thought about someone who needed his help. He smiled. For the first time in days, he smiled. Immediately he looked up, eyes scanning over the village as he began to think about what he needed. Somebody around here could make a bolt of cloth, could cut him a couple of boards. Thread. He would also need thread. Maybe he could skip the boards if he could just remember the recipe for glue that they used in the University Library...
"Halt!"
Beckett nearly leaped out of his fur, as a harsh, authoritarian bark rang out from behind him. He whipped around to find himself staring at a wolf in priest's robes, brandishing a holy symbol at him.
Adelard had held a magically-enchanted holy symbol in his paws for all of five minutes, but upon brandishing it he wondered why he ever thought a knife would make him feel more safe.
What was once an inert piece of metal now seemed to thrum and vibrate against his fingers. So-called "white" magic did not work the same way as Beckett's sorcery, not that Adelard would have much cause to understand either. What held the power he wielded together was not some abstract focus, but rather emotion and will. Holding this power made Adelard feel powerful. Feeling powerful made Adelard feel righteous. That righteousness flowed through the symbol, sharpening its energy and molding it to the form first sketched out in his initial orison. This made the magic more powerful, which made Adelard feel more powerful, and so on and so on.
For a moment, Adelard said nothing. He stood there, at the foot of the church stairs, overwhelmed by the ever-escalating sense of might and fury that flowed through him. Beckett said nothing either, paralyzed with animal terror at this large, imposing man who stared at him with an ever-escalating sense of might and fury. Adelard saw this terror and assumed it was evidence of wrong-doing, which only made the problem of righteousness fueling power worse.
There was generally a reason junior monks were not trusted with the power of orisons, and this was probably one of the clearest examples of that reason.
The only thing that broke the spell was when Brother Micah came down the stairs behind Adelard. "What is going on?" he asked, clearly confused. It took him a moment to recognize that Adelard's pendant was glowing, at which point his confusion gave way to distress. "A-are you using magic?! Brother Adelard, those texts require strict supervision from-"
"He's a sorcerer!" The junior monk found his voice, and it was both strong and dark. "The symbol tells me so. He is weaving black magic as we speak!"
"N-n-n-no!" Beckett held his hands up, waving frantically and shaking his head to and fro. "You don't understand! I'm not... I-I'm not doing anything, sirrah! I swear it! I was just here for supplies and-"
"The Goddess sees you, witch!" Adelard stepped forward, thrusting the symbol ahead as it thrummed harder. "The Goddess sees you and so do I! I have seen you in the old Duke's manor, engaged in blasphemies beyond description."
A crowd started to gather in front of the church. If Adelard was not almost drunk on power, he might have recognized Old Dallen, coming from the exact opposite side of town from where he had seen him last. He did not, however. He only had eyes for the dormouse in front of him. He saw the fear in Beckett's face give way to dread. He saw the prickle of the fur, the chattering of teeth, and he knew he had his man.
And then, a shimmer. Something in Beckett's form flickered. The dormouse yelped and fell into a squat, throwing his paws over himself as he just barely kept his concentration on his illusion. Adelard's muzzle split into a dark grin. "Do you see?!" he called to the whole village. "This man is using magic! It shrinks against the light of the Goddess!"
Beckett rose to a stoop and held out a hand. "Please! Don't disrupt it! Please, sir, I beg of you! You don't understand what I'm..."
"SILENCE!" Adelard rushed forward. "While I draw breath, you shall not be allowed to harm the people of Chuleigh!" With his free hand, he sketched the Goddess's glyph. "I am the hammer of witches, and through my will foul Magicks will find no purchase. In the name of the Sacred Mother Goddess, I abjure thee!"
With those words, the magic released all at once. The villagers of Chuleigh yelped and shrunk away as the square was bathed in light. Beckett, too, flinched away from the spell that flew his way. He curled into himself as if bracing for a punch, knowing that he would not be able to get away in time. The only one who did not close his eyes was Adelard, and he would quickly regret that when the light faded, but spots of it remained in his vision. As he tried to shake them off, the rest of the town began to mutter and chatter. By the time he could see again, they had begun to laugh.
Beckett stood in the center of town, arms raised, one leg up. Slowly, he opened one eye. He looked down at himself, and he saw exactly what he thought he would see. The illusion had failed. Aside from the pack on his back, Beckett was completely exposed.
He was too stunned to cover himself, too stunned to hide away. Dumbly, Beckett looked around him, at the pointing fingers and derisive chuckles that floated his way. There had to be a dozen furs around. Two dozen. Three. Goddess save him, it felt like a million. His heart began to pound. His breath came in ragged gasps. Everywhere he looked, eyes were on him. Some were shocked, some were confused, some were laughing and jeering, but they all saw him.
They all saw him.
They all
saw
him!
All at once, he began to move. Beckett sprinted up the hill faster than he had ever run before, faster than he would ever have considered himself capable of running. He slowed down only a little bit when, halfway to the treeline, the convulsions hit him and he had to double over and grip at his crotch. Then he was back at full speed, groaning and leaving a trail of shame as it slipped through his fingers and onto the ground.
Of course, the village could not exactly return back to normal life, after an event like that. Even so, most people dispersed, chattering amongst themselves about what they just saw and what any of it meant. In no time at all it would spread to the rest of town, as people eagerly informed their neighbors about the strangest thing to happen in the town square in quite a long while. As they left, Adelard stayed at the foot of the church stairs. He still held the holy symbol aloft, though now it was entirely spent of its magic. With it having returned to lifeless metal, his mood was now significantly sobered. He stared blankly at the spot where Beckett had once stood, too bemused by the sight of naked dormouse fur to consider chasing after the man he had just outed as a sorcerer.
Brother Micah walked in front of him and scowled. The rabbit's words were soft but severe. "Brother Adelard," he said. "Come with me. We must speak to the Abbot about what you have just done."
Adelard turned his head, wide-eyed. "What?" He did not resist, at least not physically, when Micah ushered him towards the stairs. Even so, words of protest spilled out of him, without thought. "You don't unders... he was a sorcerer! He was. Do not look at me like that, Brother Michah. I tell you, I just saved this bloody village..."
Around the corner of the building, right around the spot where Old Dallen had allegedly spoke with Brother Adelard, a pair of green and slitted eyes smiled with malicious glee.
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