Umbral Rune (Rough Draft)

Umbral Rune: Chapter 6 - Self-Expression

[Skell]

"How long do I gotta stand like this?" I groaned, hands stretched stiffly at my sides. "I feel like a doll."

"Until I'm done," Cynthine circled me, examining my body up and down.

"You know what I mean."

"And you know what I mean. You should count yourself lucky I'm capable of glamouring you at all," she passed behind my view.

I turned my head back, eyeing her. "How are you so sure you can change my appearance, anyway? Maybe I should've asked earlier, but I imagine being dead makes your job more complicated, compared to the usual... breathing subjects."

"Because I'm Cynthine Valzo," she used her hand to point my bony chin forward. "If I can make mermaids appear as legged women and centaurs as... well, legged men, turning a dead body into a 'living' one will be child's play."

"I'll, um, take your word for it," I said.

What in the Abyss is a mermaid? Or a centaur?

"All right," the glamour mage stopped in front of me. "Now that I've gotten a good look at your proportions, it's time."

Her words sparked a dormant excitement inside me. During our earlier argumen- er, conversation, we were both coldly serious and more than a little upset, but now the air had been cleared - the dark clouds parted.

Meaning I could breathe easy, and Cynthine, much calmer now, could focus on her specialty.

"Glamour Kit!" said the glamour mage. In a flash, numerous rose-pink tools materialized around Cynthine, calmly hovering in the air.

"Woah! What's all this?" my arms dropped.

"Skell," she scolded, grabbing a rose-pink paintbrush floating in front of her, "I told you to stay completely still. Move during the glamouring process, and it'll be your fault if your body becomes a horror story."

"Woah," I rose my arms, deadpan, "what's all this?"

"The tools of my trade," Cynthine gave a surprising, if light, smile. "Chisels, erasers, calipers, scissors, quills - as you can see, the list goes on."

"So these magical instruments are what you'll use to make me look human? Wow-" I stopped, then motioned my head to the floating saw. "You won't have to use that one, will you?"

She grabbed the saw with her other hand. "These tools affect your appearance, not you. So when I 'paint' you, your underlying body will remain untouched. And when I 'chop' off your arm, you won't feel a thing."

"...You're gonna do what now?"

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Monks, if I remembered the stories correctly, were masters of willpower. Able to sleep on beds of spikes and meditate for weeks on end. They had nothing on me.

Cynthine, in her grace, chose the one spot in the room's center where the many mirrors wouldn't reflect her work. And I, her skeletal canvas, was ordered not to move an inch. Meaning I couldn't even drop my chin to see the work-in-progress that was my body.

The urge to jump in front of a mirror or look down at myself was tremendous, one I resisted for silent hours. But it was eating at me.

As for Cynthine, she was absorbed in her work. No snarking, not even small talk. Besides the occasional grunt or "hmm", she simply chipped away at my glamour, running through every magical tool that circled her.