The first building outside the town was the stables, so Yves paid the stablehand a coin and told him to take good care of her horse until her return. She then wandered into the town, looking around as she went. She blatantly ignored the many stalls and passers by who called out to get her attention, instead mumbling things like, "I think it was right next to Vehimont's Elixir Shop..." and, "just take a left over here, and..."
Before long, Yves stopped in front of a plain-looking building with an iron-banded wooden door. "Oh, here it is" she commented, pausing for a few seconds as she examined the building's exterior. Once she was satisfied that it wasn't below her standards, she walked into the building and was greeted by a singular elder man standing behind a counter. "Welcome! Feel free to browse, I have the widest selection of swords in town!" Yves nodded and immediately began searching through barrels of weapons. The shopkeeper started rambling after watching her for a few seconds, possibly to encourage her to spend money: "Lately it's become a fad, even among royalty. to equip their servants with weapons."
Yves picked up a rapier-like weapon with a thick, rounded blade and a sharp point, then commented, "I saw you wielding something much larger than this the other day..." She then looked over at the shop keep and declared, "I want a sword that is a lot bigger and thicker than this one." She then showed him the weapon and he frowned. "Excuse me miss, but I believe that the sword you are holding is the correct size for this individual."
Yves frowned and violently slammed the sword back into it's place in the barrel, causing a few of the swords to clatter around. "I assume you heard me, yes?" she growled. The shopkeeper immediately stepped back with a bit of freight in his eyes, and exclaimed, "Yes! Right away!" He then disappeared into the back of the shop. As Yves was waiting, she commented, "You only seem useful when you're holding a sword, so I thought it'd be best to get you one." After his response about his gun, she looked over at him with an amused frown and retorted, "You mean that broken thing that Guiche stomped on? It sure didn't help you much last time."
When the shopkeeper walked back out from the back of the shop, he was holding a huge, wide sword encrusted in gold and jewels. Everything from the blade to the pommel was decorated exquisitely. He smiled eagerly as he offered the sword to Hayato, exclaiming, "This is the best item we have in our store!" The weapon glittered in the sunlight shining through the windows, it's edge keen and its point sharp.
Yves was watching her familiar as he examined the weapon, and listened to the shopkeeper boasting about the lineage of the sword: "It was forged in the finest ancient tradition by the renowned alchemist, mage, and swordsmith Lord Shvert du Germania. It slices steel ever so easily-" Yves interrupted at this point with a critical tone. "How much is it worth?" The shopkeeper held out three fingers on his left hand and declared, "Three thousand new gold coins."
Yves's mouth gaped in awe at his words. As she was recovering from her shock, she mumbled, "That's enough to buy a nice house, a garden and a forest." The shopkeeper reasoned that "that sword is comparable to a castle. It's a good deal if one estate will do." Yves sighed, depressed, and commented, "But...I only have a hundred new gold with me right now..."
The shopkeeper looked surprised after hearing this and, turning away from them, raised his hands up in a shrug and said, "Even a decent claymore costs around 200." Yves felt a bit desperate, so she asked, "Isn't there something I could buy for just a hundred?" The shopkeeper then scratched his chin, still looking away from them, and turned around after a few seconds of thought. "Just a hundred, huh?....Well, I do have something..."
The shopkeeper then walked over to a barrel over in the corner of the room and pulled out a weapon reminiscent of a training sword. It was made entirely of a rust-red metal, from the bottom of its hilt to the tip of its blade. It had an odd piece of metal attached to the top of the handle guard, and the handle guard itself was fairly small and unprotective. The blade appeared to have been riveted into place several times at odd places, and the edge was only edge-like in appearance with little to no sharp places.
The shopkeeper commented, "I suppose it's a bit old, but if you clean it up a bit, I'm sure you could get some good use out of it." Yves frowned and said, "I don't care what kind of business you're running here. Junk like that is only worth 60 new gold coins to me." The shopkeeper frowned and said, "Well I'm not willing to sell it for any less than 80." Yves then narrowed her eyes toward the shopkeeper. I don't know the first thing about swords, but I bet he's still ripping me off. She shrugged after weighing his proposition with the opportunity cost of rejecting it. "Considering how I'm low on time, I'll take you up on your offer. But if that sword turns out as crappy as it looks, you better watch your back." She then pulled out a sack of coins from her purse and walked up to the counter.
The storekeeper walked back behind the counter and helped her count out the coins. Once they both re-counted them, he pulled out a sheath from behind the counter and offered it to Hayato. "This is the sheath for the sword. If it's too small to go around your chest, you can hang it from your waist." Once Yves started storming out of the building, the shopkeeper grinned and called out, "Thank you for the business!" Yves grumbled, "I'm sure you are..." in response.
After Hayato started speaking, Yves found a gap in the crowd of people and waited there to listen to the peasant. In response to his comment, she frowned, eyeing him up and down. Not only were his clothes torn from his fight, they were covered in the hay from his bedding, dirt from the ground, and grime from the soap he used to wash her clothes. She barely held back a blush as she realized that she had forgotten about one of his basic needs, but firmly retained her frown and and impassionately declared, "Fine. I guess you're incapable of managing one pair, as I'd expect." She turned around at this point, continuing to walk toward a certain destination, "I'll get you a few simple garbs with whatever I have left after I buy my books."
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After the sword-shop, Yves walked around town for awhile, visiting multiple book stores. She ended up asking her familiar to carry around five of them, holding one for herself. All of the books had one distinct commonality: there was some sort of "ice" or "crystal" picture or icon on all of them. After buying the last two books, she led him over to a few clothes stalls, buying him 2 sets of clothes. Each set including a pair of shoes, a pair of wool stockings, a pair of long, beige woolen trousers, a white shirt with long sleeves and a long, v-shaped neck which was tied shut with leather strings, a brown, vest-like leather mantles and one sturdy leather belt of a similar type to the one affixed to the sheath of his new sword. She mumbled something about how far a single gold piece went for peasants nowadays as she made her way back to the stables. Before getting on her horse, she commented, "If you manage to keep those clean and undamaged until next week, I might reward you with better clothes." With that, she rode back to the university with her familiar.
-----
Once they got back, she had him carry her books back to her room, then got comfortable on the chair in the middle of the room and continued reading where she left off, once again telling her familiar to "go and practice with your sword or whatever - as long as you're not distracting me from reading."
-----
A few minutes after the peasant moved into one of the areas of the courtyard where people weren't gathered as thickly, a large, red salamander with a burning tail quickly darted out of some nearby bushes and rushed up to him. When it reached him, it headbutted the back of his waist as a surprise attack, then flopped down on top of him. Once he was immobilized, the salamander slithered down his back, bit the back of his shirt, and lifted him up by it as it rose to its back legs, carrying him and making a non-threatening, throaty gargling sound. It then worked its way back through the bushes and sneakily carried the peasant over to the earthen tower, walking in through a back entranceway. The creature seemed to be trying to be sneaky, taking the familiar through less-used passageways and effectively reaching the residence rooms in less than a minute after first finding the familiar.
It turned into a familiar residence hall, the same hallway that Yves's room was in, but it opened a different door, walking into a dark room with a bunch of candles set up throughout. The room had many red draperies throughout, including curtains for the bed and windows, a rug, an overhang for the dresser, and even what appeared to be a fur hanging from a coat rack. After a few seconds of silence, the salamander dropped the familiar onto the ground and waited behind him, looking over at the coat rack. The coat rack then turned, revealing that it was not, in fact, a coat rack, but was merely the red-haired buxome girl, wreathed in a rather large fur coat. She dropped the fur coat behind her as she turned, revealing a very showy set of purple lingerie about her body, and she warbled, "welcome to my very private suite, Hayato Mizuho...or was it Muzuho Hayato?"
She posed this question with a finger placed over her mouth, reaching her other hand around the back of her neck as she puffed out her chest. "I know I'm doing something I shouldn't, but you see...my codename is fever -- I tend to burn up like a flaming torch." As she said this, she adopted another gesture to accentuate her curves, pausing to see his reaction before adding, "I'm a woman in love. And the person I love is you." She paused her, blushing with a hand against her cheek as she bashfully added, "Love always comes so suddenly, does it not?"
She then dropped to her knees, supporting the weight of her chest with her arms as she leaned in toward him, murmuring, "You looked so handsome when you defeated Guiche in that duel." Here she started gradually leaning in closer and closer, saying, "When I saw it all happen, Kirche the Fever became...Kirche the Passion." At this, she caressed his left hand with both of hers, closed her eyes, and leaned in toward him, as if to kiss him.
But, before she was able to reach his face, a voice from the window shouted, "Kirche!" When she heard this, she stopped, opened her eyes, and turned to see who it was, seemingly unphased. "Styx, you startled me!" she commented, watching as he floated immediately outside of the windowsill. "I came here because you didn't show up at the pre-arranged time we set" She once again adopted her bashful look and calmly asked, "sorry, but could you come back in two hours?" to which he loudly responded, "that wasn't our deal!" As he was speaking, the flame from one of the candles shot over to him, smacking him in the face, and he disappeared from the windowsill, most likely falling down.
"Never mind him, right now the one I love most is...-" She closed her eyes and leaned in towards him once again, but another voice shouted from the window as she was about to kiss him. "Kirche! I demand to know who that man is!" The buxsome lady turned to look at the man in the windowsill, utterly unsurprised by his presence and seemingly not annoyed either. She simply raised the wand in her right hand and one of the flames of the candles shot into his face as he was saying: "Tonight I wanted you to burn up with me-" In his surprise, he continued to squeal, "eeeeeee!" as he fell down.
Once again, Kirche looked back over at Hayato, saying, "In any case, the night is short, and I don't want to waste even a single moment that we have." As she leaned in to kiss him this time, she kept her eyes open, because as she did so, multiple voices were heard shouting from the windowsill. "Kirche!" they all shouted, "what are you doing?! You said you didn't have any lovers besides me!" Kirche turned to face them, a slightly uncomfortable look on her face, and she responded, "Monakin, Ajax and Gimley, come back in six hours, okay?" She had a painfully fake smile on her face as she said this, but they responded by saying, in unison, "That's morning already!"
Shortly thereafter, Kirche turned to look at the large, red salamander creature which was still a foot or two behind Hayato, and said, "Oh fla~aame!" The creature then stood up on its hind two legs and shot out a large pillar of flame towards the people in her window. They then vanished, potentially falling back toward the courtyard below as Kirche turned back towards the peasant and the salamander lay back down. Kirche stared into Hayato's eyes for a few seconds, then playfully pounced onto him and, pinning him down, declared, "I love you, Hayato. Just let your worries go - I'm a lot more than that icy Mess could ever be." The venom of her words flowed out as smoothly as honey, her voice laced with a sort of seductive tone as she leaned in for a kiss.
A few seconds after Kirche's passionate kiss, the door to her room swung open.
In the doorway stood Yves. She wore only her nightgown.
"Oh..." Kirche commented, peeling herself away from Hayato in order to sit up.
Yves' eyes narrowed after a few seconds as she observed the situation, then she walked in, becoming more unbalanced as she continued along. She stopped a few feet in front of Kirche, blushing furiously, and shouted, "Kirche!"
"I'm busy right now, Blanchette." Kirche commented, hugging Hayato's arm against her breasts as she spoke, then leaning her head against his as she finished her sentence.
Yves didn't seem satisfied with this response. She clenched her fists together as she continued looking at her and blushing more, then squealed, "Zerbst,...why are you trying to seduce my familiar?!" Yves tried saying why a few times, but nothing came out of her mouth after the first two attempts. She blushed harder before she was able to finish her sentence, slowly approaching a bright pink complexion. The salamander behind her, which was hiding behind a table, casually watched as the exchange continued, either amused or unsure of what to do.
She dropped her attachment to Hayato at this point and shrugged, adopting a smug expression as she responded, "I suppose it can't be helped. Love and Fire are the destinies of the von Zerbst family. I only wish to burn in flames of love." She emphasized these words while looking at Hayato, smiling bashfully as she did.
Yves took a moment to swallow her heart, then shakily pointed to the ground next to her, staring her familiar in the eye, and commanded, "Come here."
Kirche lunged a foot or so toward Yves, expressing urgency in her face and voice, and argued, "You just wait a second. He may be your familiar, but he's also a proper human with needs and feelings and desires! It's unreasonable to get in the way of romance!" As she said this, she turned toward Hayato, then hugged him tightly with her cleavage pressed against his shoulder.
At this point, Yves was at a loss for words, so she stared at her familiar and tried to calm down enough to speak again.