Divine Curiosity

"I hope you can forgive me for destroying the outfit that you enjoyed so much, Lord John. I-I didn't intend to. I will ensure that the next one is properly enchanted."

"Yvara, I told you already, I'm not angry! Besides, if you hadn't burned it off, I would've just had to tear it off of you anyway."

It didn't take long, once the inklings of lust had begun to fade and reality started to set back in, for Yvara to dash off and frantically retrieve her original uniform. And it didn't take long after that for John, trusting that her temple dress was fully fireproof, to begin the teasing.

He could hardly help it—none of the others had ever been so adorably shy about such things. The closest was Lerianna, and he was more likely to get a scowl and a roundhouse kick from her than he was a blush or a stammer.

He'd always known that she had a reverence for him, but now that she'd expressed that reverence as affection, and having accepted those feelings, John couldn't resist seeing her make those cruelly adorable expressions. It had started with him offering to return the favor; she'd still been half-addled by arousal at that point, and he was pretty sure she'd nearly accepted the offer, but in the end she ran off before she could give in. Since she had come back, though, all of her shyness had returned in full, and the way she squirmed had put a smile on John's face for so long now that it was beginning to ache.

"L-Lord John, you're so lewd," Yvara squeaked out. "You don't have to tease me, you know! I-I'd gladly service you again if you just asked."

"Ah, but I don't need service. I need to see a beautiful woman blush with a color of red as deep and beautiful as the shade of her scales," John said, grinning as he slipped up behind her. He didn't come close enough to brush against Yvara's scaly back, but her tail did slide against the legs of his pants, and his hands came to rest on her hips. The merest touch made Yvara's entire body go rigid, though she leaned into his palms at the same time.

"O-oh dear. M-my feet are one of the last places for my body heat to reach, but I—oh my—I fear if you keep this up, we may have to start fireproofing the floors as well. I already fear sitting down for too long in your presence, Lord John…"

The remark made John's lips curl upwards gleefully, but he pulled his hands aside all the same. "Alright, I'll take it easy on you, Yvara. This time, anyway."

Yvara released a shuddering breath. John couldn't quite decide whether it was more relieved or disappointed.

"Thank you, my Lord. May I return to my work, or did you have some... further ideas?"

"Your duties?" John blinked once. "Yvara, this is your day with me. We can do anything you want, you know."

"I do know. And, erm, what we have done already has made me incredibly happy. More than I can put into words, especially right now," Yvara said, smiling as she played with the skirt of her temple dress. "But as I have said before, this temple is more than my duty. It is my passion, one that I choose eagerly, each and every day. That you would grant a humble servant like me a day at all is a blessed gift, and I have little else that I would ask."

"Nothing at all?" John asked, letting his words hang heavily in the air. He shifted forward slightly, just enough for the heat of his own body to mingle with the sweltering air that wafted from hers. He wasn't sure if she could even feel the subtle difference—he rather felt like a matchstick that had been struck next to an already raging bonfire—but the proximity alone earned a very audible, very **** swallow.

"I-I do not think the floor will be in any danger. My p-poor heart is going to give out at this rate," Yvara said, already starting to sound faint.

"Sorry, sorry. That one wasn't meant as a tease, you know." Not that that stopped the playful lilt from coming back into John's voice. "I was being genuine."

"I'm aware, Lord John. I fear part of me is all too aware." Yvara fidgeted again. Her long skirt made it difficult to see, but despite their mutual orgasms, it looked like the dragoness was already struggling not to grind her thighs together beneath her dress. "B-but not today. I have such good memories of today already, asking for more would feel like tainting them."

"I understand. I'll let you get back to work," John acquiesced, stepping away with not a small amount of ****.

"Not that I don't appreciate your enthusiasm." Yvara hesitated for a moment, her body twitching in a jilted way, and then she seemed to find the courage to follow through—her tail gently slid out, brushing against John's thigh, then returned to its neutral position. "I'll make sure that the new temple outfits for workers and chore duty are a bit more, erm, durable for next time. In case you, perhaps, stop by the temple and catch me while I'm cleaning a particularly low shelf...?"

Yvara was definitely right about the strength of the enchantments on her primary temple robes—for all the crimson that colored her face, and in spite of her voice being reduced to little more than a high-pitched squeak by the time that she finished, Yvara's uniforms didn't let off so much as a puff of smoke. She just stared at John out of the corner of her eye, her hips and tail wiggling so subtly that he couldn't tell if it was meant to be enticing or just because of how nervous and fidgety she was.

"I'll keep the invitation in mind," John said, fighting the urge to lean in and let his lips tickle her ear. He stepped a little further away, putting a touch more distance between them, and the very temple itself seemed to sigh in disappointment.

"Feel free to use the rest of the day as you please, Lord John. I'll see you later tonight, once my work is finished and I've started a new round of potions to brew in your alchemy lab, if you haven't attended to them already."

"What materials would you need to get your new uniform up to standard?"

"Oh!" Yvara spun, a hand clasped to her mouth in mild shock. "Lord John, you don't need to-"

"It's your day, and I might end up training. If I don't, I might do it tomorrow. We've got enough materials that I'm not going to be able to use them all to make potions in the time we have, especially once we start the marathon training," John explained. "Besides, there might be some overlap in materials."

"Um, well, really any enchanting base can be useful in the process. Non-elemental dust, shards, gems, essences, concentrated mana..." Yvara listed off another half-dozen before she realized that the point had been made. "For this specific use case, fire and water or ice attuned items would be the most helpful. The more kinds and the more powerful reagents you can bring me, the less I'll need of the generic mana sources."

"Is one of those elements more useful than the others?"

Yvara shook her head, to his mild surprise. "The enchanting methods I'm most skilled at involve either attuning the item to the essence of what is damaging it so that they no longer conflict with one another, or rendering it immune by fortifying it using the opposite aspect. Both are more or less useful depending on the circumstances, but in this case, they're equally effective, and neither is significantly more difficult than the other."

John nodded for a moment, considering what she said. He'd seen similar results in the list of Enchantments he could make, but he'd also seen the opposite. The downside of his abilities making magic so easy for him was that he didn't really understand the mechanics of the spells and how they interacted. He didn't really need to, in most circumstances—but learning more was never a bad thing.

"So is that saying that both elements are weak against each other? Or are they both strong against each other? Err," John paused for a moment in his questions, realizing that didn't make much sense, "what I mean is, how can you use the same and opposite element to achieve the same result? I don't know if your body heat is considered magical, but if the spells were equally powerful, do they always cancel each other out, or can one have an advantage in different circumstances?"

"Oh, I think I see what you're saying," Yvara said, her smile broadening a bit, and her body relaxing slightly. John had noticed since they began working together on the alchemy stations and brewing that Yvara seemed quite at home as a teacher, especially in the temple, despite her claims that she wasn't very good at public speaking or proselytizing. If she had proper knowledge of something, like with enchanting, construction, or the ways of the Lord's Temples, she showed no signs of her usual nerves, and even seemed to take a good bit of satisfaction from sharing her knowledge.

"Well, as you say, it can depend greatly on the circumstances. But, speaking in the broadest terms, enchanting things to defend against a known threat is generally easier than trying to overcome an equally well-known defense. To break through a magical defense with an offensive spell, you either need to design a spell which specifically exploits weaknesses in the way the defensive spell is formed, or overpower it with a vastly higher amount of magical power, or by expending much more mana. To defend against a specific spell, all you need to do is create a defensive spell that nullifies the harmful properties of the other spell, while avoiding any glaring flaws. All of this applies to enchantments in general, of course. When it comes down to specific elements, their nature and how they interact play a much bigger part in determining how you must structure the enchantments."

"Ah." John got the concept, though he had only an inkling of how that helped him in the moment. He already used that as a general plan in battle and in the preparations he'd been making for the war, he just didn't have the ability to custom-tweak his spells like she seemed to be implying. "So, what are your plans for the outfits then? How will you enchant them?"

"Well, if you bring me anything charged with the power of fire, I can weave those materials into the threads before I use them in the tailoring process." Yvara gestured to her primary uniform, the long black robes that matched the ones Aclysia had been crafted with. "That is the method I used for this outfit. It imbues each thread with fire-charged mana, rendering the threads all but immune to any non-magical heat, even the kind of **** temperatures my body can produce. It also slightly warms the dress. I don't even notice it, but if you were to wear it in this temple on a cold day, you'd feel the slight heat radiating from it."

"And with materials that can imbue the power of ice, what method would you use?"

"If you were to provide me with ice-attuned enchanting materials, I could use them while weaving the threads together and lace dense mana between the strands of fabric. I would effectively be creating a permanent spell laced within the dress itself, which would cause it to have a sort of heat-resistant aura around each thread. The threads themselves would still be **** to heat, but the enchantment would prevent that heat from reaching them in the first place. Given that this dress will be for manual labor, that might be the superior option. It would chill the wearer ever so slightly, enough to perhaps make their tasks a bit easier, or at least feel less exhausting."

"I think I see a bit more of what you're saying now." John tapped a finger on his chin thoughtfully, letting his eyes wander down to Yvara's dress.

Acolyte's Robes of the Lord's Temple
Formal robes worn by the live-in staff at temples dedicated to the Lord. Breezy, but elegant.
Rarity: Common
Enchantment: Lesser Fire Resistance -- Provides immunity to all non-magical flames. Reduce fire damage dealt to the wearer by 5 until Durability is reduced to 0.
Durability: [100 / 100]

"This works because you were just trying to protect the dress. But if you were trying to actually protect yourself, it would have to be a very different enchantment."

"Very much so. I could still use fire magic, but I would have to do something along the lines of creating a heat sink within the dress. One that automatically absorbed as much fire mana as it could safely hold, nullifying the effects of the spell before it could harm the wearer." Yvara reached down, running her fingers over the dress' fabric, carefully keeping her claws from pressing into the thin material. "As you can imagine, combat magic is a great deal more complex—and typically much more powerful. Crafting armor that can safely dissipate or divert a magical bolt of lightning without letting any of it electrocute the user involves more power and precision in an enchantment than simply keeping a uniform from burning due to, well, due to a clutz like me…"

"You're not a clutz. I wouldn't change you for the world, Yvara, you're far too adorable," John said confidently. He hadn't meant to return to the teasing, but his words got the same reaction from Yvara as she shuffled toward the door, looking suddenly self-conscious.

"I-if you need any further lessons on how others utilize their magic, I will always be available. But for now, I, err, I think I should get back to my work. T-take care, my Lord!"

John let Yvara go without bothering her further, his mind already wandering over his own set of skills and trying to think if he could apply this new knowledge somehow.

"I don't really have any options in Crafting to create different versions of items when I'm Enchanting. I can get similar enchantments with different effects, like adding different types of damage, but I can't use different recipes for the same effects, or alter recipes in any way beyond the templates I'm given. Yvara obviously can, and I bet Vallya probably knows quite a bit about it. But I doubt that any efforts we put into making better weapons or armor against the necromancers are going to give us something better than what the Order can make, given how much they know about holy magic and the undead."

John shrugged. The matter was slightly disappointing, but it was better not to waste time trying to outdo their allies, and instead focus on the things they could provide that others couldn't match.

"I should just focus on training and harvesting materials, and let the Order and their dedicated craftsmen forge them and bless them with the Lady's—wait, I have a Shard in my chest. Is that... similar?"

The thought struck John as he was clearing the temple's massive entryway, one foot already planted on the mountainside for the journey home. His gait slowed as he found himself staring at his own chest, the mere thought of the Shard of Bishamonten making his chest pulse with energy.

"This is a piece of a god, right? I mean, it's something like a remnant of some small fraction of Gaia, but that's still part of a God, no matter how small. Should I be able to bless things? What kind of enchantments could I make with this thing's energy...?"

John wasn't sure why that idea stuck with him. It wasn't as if any of the abilities his Shard gave him were based in holy magic. Though it did give him a damage boost to fighting evil opponents when he activated it, he had no reason to suspect that was holy.

"Does sound an awful lot like a paladin's sort of magic, though. That's usually holy affinity, right? Holy is usually considered good. Not always, though. And if a classification even exists for it, is 'divine' considered the same as 'holy'? Or is it closer to 'neutral' or 'true' damage? Koharu didn't mention anything about the rune she carved on my blade that's attuned to the Shard, but she barely seemed to understand what she had done in the first place. Who else would know? Actually, I still have those books that Moira let me take, and I do have all afternoon now…"