A handful of rangers were idling in the corner of the room.
Rodrigo had apparently taken the opportunity afforded to him by the fight between Charlie and Charlon to flee back into the lower levels of the dungeon. Without any weapons, he was unlikely to hurt anyone, including himself, but Oswin had still taken most of the rangers to look for him. The last thing they had wanted was for Rodrigo to take a wrong turn into a golem and end up as, well, anything else.
Meanwhile, Charlie and friends were standing around the body of Charlie’s clone, the former Charlon, who continued to lay listlessly on the floor. Except, of course, for Gregory.
The mink was on his hands and knees on the opposite side of the room, his fur matted with thick globs of cum. Eyes closed, the overwhelming feeling of nausea that permeated his body was only briefly relieved every time he puked up a new load of cum all over the stone floor.
But Charlie’s attention wasn’t on Gregory or his clone, it was on Veles, who had knelt down next to the clone and cast trim on it.
As Veles stood up, Charlie pointed at Geoffrey’s boots asked, “So, as weird as it will be to have two me’s, do you think you can trim that body onto Jeff?”
It had been over a month since they had trimmed Jeff into a pair of boots for his former body, and Charlie couldn’t imagine what such an existence was like, or the effect that it was going to have on him. The sooner they could get Jeff back into a real body, the better. Regardless of what or who that body was.
“I’m sorry but…” Veles said, before pausing to think about how to explain the current situation. “There’s a curse that’s tied to every aspect of that body. Trimming any aspect of that body onto someone else will spread the curse, as will trimming anyone else onto it.”
“But I cut the strings!” Charlie protested. The first thing he had done once the group was back together was to explain Shadowblur, the strings, and how cutting them undid any of the dungeon’s transformations.
“Two things,” Veles started, “the first has to do with the strings themselves. Magic is a sort of science that improves over time. People figure out new spells, and better ways to cast existing ones.”
Veles continued, “This dungeon is absolutely ancient. It has to date to early Paranor. I think what you’re seeing is a sort of primitive version of tailoring. Tailoring isn’t just a name for the magic, it gets to the very essence of its function – you weave a new character sheet for someone from existing sheets, existing strings if you will.”
“But those strings are contained within the character sheet. I think this dungeon’s tailoring predated the invention of the character sheet. The things have nowhere to shelter them, so they end up remaining outside of the body.”
Veles paused again, and Charlie took that as his opportunity to get a question in.
“That still doesn’t answer the question. If that was a curse that the boss of this dungeon put on Charlon, then why isn’t it gone. And why is he comatose?”
“The answer to those questions is the same – Finn,” Veles said, “the curse isn’t from this dungeon, it’s a divine curse. And when I looked at his backstory it was blank. This body is basically just an empty shell, the boss of this dungeon put a personality in there, but that all got erased when you cut the strings.”
“What is curse? Jeff maybe able to live with if not bad!” Palseks piped in.
Veles sighed, “No, it forces its victim to obey this dungeon’s master. If we tailor any part of this body onto Jeff, what we get won’t be him, but rather Jefflon.”
Geoffrey wiggled his toes inside of the boots that now Jeff now called his body. The polar bear had never been totally comfortable wearing another person, but these boots were so comfortable. And besides, with his limited intellect it wasn’t hard to forget. Still, he felt a bit guilty, and figured it was his turn to speak up.
“So there’s no way to turn him into someone else?” Geoffrey asked.
Veles rubbed his chin, “well, there might be a way. I’m not sure how happy Jeff will be about it, but its probably better than being stuck as a pair of boots.”
“Well,” Charlie said, “what is it?”
“You know all those taxidermies in the last room? Those used to be people. They’re dead, so I can’t use them as a body for Jeff, but I could trim the entirety of the taxidermy’s character sheet onto Charlon’s body. Then, if we get one of the destroyed golems, I could trim the word golem off of that and onto the taxidermy. With that, we’d have an empty taxidermy golem. From there, it’s a simple matter to trim Jeff into that golem. Like I said, he might not be happy but..,”
“It’s a hell of a lot better than being a pair of boots!” Charlie interjected as the rest of the part of the party nodded in agreement.
“Plus, its only until we get back to camp, then we can use the statute to turn him back into a bear. And it will be a hell of a lot easier for Jeff to walk that body out of here than it will be for us to drag it.” Veles said.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-
Veles walked around the room examining the taxidermies, with each one that he examined seeming worse than the last. Whoever was responsible for creating them had insured that the grotesque wounds that had led to their deaths were preserved in perfect, gory detail.
“Examine.”
It was a new spell he found himself knowing when he woke up this morning. Did that mean that he had leveled up? He wasn’t sure, but as a cantrip he could cast it as many times as he wanted per day, which made sense, given the limited utility of the spell – it let him view, but not edit, something’s character sheet when he touched it at the price of increasing his level of fatigue. Not particularly useful in combat, but for now it at least let him find a suitable body for Jeff.
Unfortunately, each taxidermy that he examined had the same cookie cutter backstory about dying in agony from the all too obvious wound permanently taxidermied into its pelt.
Did that mean that Jeff would be in agonizing pain if he was tailored into them? Veles didn’t know, but he didn’t want Jeff to have to find out.
Veles was about to give up when he noticed the dire fox sitting in the corner. Standing four feet tall, in life it must have weighed over three hundred pounds. Now reduced to a lifeless taxidermy, its shiny red coat was still a brilliant reminder of the beast that it once was. And most importantly for Veles, there was no obvious sign of whatever had led to its death.
Opening up its character sheet, Veles saw a backstory that was worth trying out: it had been poisoned by the bite of a Nerhydian Asp. That particular snake had a powerful neurotoxin that caused its victim to simply fall asleep and die. If ever there was a candidate for Jeff’s temporary new body, this was it.
He scanned over the rest of the body. The name was certainly an issue, but that would get overwritten when Jeff was trimmed in. The rest of the character sheet looked clean except for one minor surprise but… well, that probably wasn’t a huge deal for a golem, Veles thought.
And besides, this was only temporary, so if Palseks could put up with it full time, then Jeff could put up with it for a few days…