Only just now am I noticing what a mess he left in here, there are bones, scraps, trinkets and blight residue coating a wall. I used to fume at him to clean up after himself... leaving such a disaster in this room was unsightly and attracts pests.

I'm caught between cleaning it up and.. leaving it.. now...

The saris ladies have noticed me waking from stupor... and noted they've been trying to get me out of it not for days, but for weeks, and more fervidly when I started to slightly thin from not eating. I hadn't noticed I was hungry. It just didn't matter to me.

They managed to finally and carefully return me to my feet... and I perhaps am reluctant to admit that without my ladies-in-waiting, I would have simply allowed myself to wither and starve. I kept the scale in my pack, and we all ate well this evening.

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'The elf is a.. problem. It sucks out souls. I cannot directly attack it lest I meet oblivion as did Selarth...' she thought. But she also had a solution at hand and the regents to make it happen.

She first tried to use a dragon skull as the base for the inherent symbolism of the body, but its formerly blighted origins ended up causing the enchantment to fizzle. In the end, she was forced to create a ceremonial head scale with a diamond inlaid in the forehead.

Two weeks of preparation, hours of spell casting and a complex ritual later, it had multiple layers of enchantment upon it.

The first layer was the very function of the helm, the second to attune this function to her alone the third to make the helm attempt to adhere like glue to the user's face until it is deactivated, the fourth to protect these core functions from anti-magic and spells, and fifth to mask the magic nature of the item so it feels and appears utterly mundane in every regard even to mages.

Beyond the fourth, additional layers of anti-magic protection and magic masking had been set as a buffer to protect the lower layers, just in case.

Content with her work, she wrote a word on a paper scrap and gave it to one of her saris handmaidens nearby. Donning the mask, glowed a soft shade of white similar to the color of the diamond that bore the brunt of the charges. The glow eventually snaked over her whole form, and once engulfed, she simply changed form.

The saris who had been watching her work blinked in surprised to see a female human (and one lacking clothes at that) struggling to figure out how to walk on two legs without a huge, bulky tail. Before long as well, the fleshy pink shape began to shiver from the air being slightly cooler in the library wing than down the hallway. She opted to sit down rather than take a fall and break some fragile piece of herself.

She placed her hand on her face. Grasping it, she gave it a bit of a tug to test if the mask was sticking properly. When all she felt was flesh as flesh moves, the test is successful. The last test performed is how it deactivates.

"Say that word please, Eryun." Azu requested.

The saris looked and the scrap and back at the sitting lady before uttering the word on the paper. Nothing happened. Azu followed it by uttering the same word and placing her hand on her face. The same white glow engulfed her, she returned to dragon form, and she removed the scale, all the while with a wicked grin across her maw. She looked to the saris.

"Can I trust you all to make me some fine fur robes for my other form whilst I adjust to that shape?" the dragoness purred. The saris nodded and scurried off to go get the others to make fine fur mage robes.

The rest of the day was spent learning to walk properly while using the helm, and the handmaidens sat excitedly in a group with thread, fabrics, furs and needles chattering away whilst they fabricated clothing. It wasn't an event out of the ordinary to make new clothes for someone else or to mend a torn garment, but to make clothes for someone that never wore clothes? What a treat. They prattled on and debated about colors, fur linings, what would best accent green eyes and gold trim well into the next morning.

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Dawn. The sun faintly peeks out through some clouds on the horizon and the weather was in a rare bout of calmness. She had equipped herself with a staff and her elegant attire, including a pair of sturdy leather boots she hadn't even asked for (as she hadn't remembered that human feet are soft and susceptible to stepping on sharp objects). Gazing over the rising sun, she took in a breath of air.

It smelled to her only of opportunities as she set out on the difficult path into Mahagra.