Milo has just finished eating his stew, and was now standing in front of a cracked mirror, looking at his robes. He could sense the mana pathways and circuits woven into the fabric, but they felt dauntingly complex, like staring at a control panel of a space shuttle. They felt different from the pathways carved into the staff - less like grooves you can pour mana through, and more like levers and dials forming intricate patterns you can adjust. He felt the ability to push and pull on different aspects of it, but didn't risk making any changes yet.
He flipped through his tome to see if he'll find any schematics or instructions about the cloak, but there was nothing related to it that he could recognize. So, not Alatar's invention, then?
He ran his fingers through the indigo fabric. It was covered in subtle ornaments that seemed to change every time he looked at them from a different angle. After carefully examining the cloak, he discovered two runes woven into the cloth with a thin silver thread. One on each sleeve, over the wrists, hidden on the inner side of the fabric. Both runes were empty, devoid of the magical energy.
One of the runes was already familiar to him - the sound rune. He tried using it, and it worked just like the rune on the staff, enabling him to modulate his voice.
The other one had intricate connections stretching out to every inch of the fabric, deeply intertwined with the modifiable patterns he saw. I could just try using it, he thought. He was dealing with a magic item, and there must be a way to activate it, to cause it to do whatever it was set up to do. He knew by now that experimenting with unknown magics is risky, but what were the odds that Alatar was wearing robes designed to do something truly dangerous to himself?
No risk - no gain. Milo stood in the middle of the room and flooded the rune with mana. The cloak hummed with the magical energy, but didn't seem to do anything until Milo glanced at himself in the mirror and jumped back in shock. In place of his reflection stood a tall, broad-shouldered man in spotless white robes trimmed with gold. He looked like he was in his 50s, strikingly handsome, with long white hair, bushy beard streaming down his chest, and piercing blue eyes.
"Um... hello?" Milo waved at his reflection, and the man had perfectly mirrored his movement. Milo looked at himself from every angle, then down to examine his body and hands. Yep, he was wrapped in some sort of illusion.
The man was taller than him, so Milo was looking out at the world from somewhere at the level of his illusory neck. With his illusory hand he reached for the slender staff strapped behind his back, and, to his surprise, he was able to pull it out and hold it up in the air. Unlike Milo's own staff, which was gnarled and twisted, this one looked straight as an arrow and made of smooth marble, with a flawlessly symmetrical gem embedded into its top. The staff felt weightless, and passed right through the objects as Milo moved it. When he thrust it forward, the tip of the staff has faded out of existence, apparently exiting the boundary within which the cloak was able to generate the illusion.
Milo played with the illusion for a few more minutes. He practiced speaking to the mirror, and making his movements look natural despite controlling this unusually tall body. It was weird to hear his voice coming out of this man, so he used the sound rune to make himself sound gruff and imposing. He struck noble poses worthy of being immortalized in statues. He summoned imaginary lightnings and parted imaginary oceans. He slayed imaginary dragons. He gave the mirror a deeply wise look, then an intimidating glare, then a sexy wink, which ended up being way more... potent... than he intended.
"Okay, okay, I will marry you!" exclaimed Chuck, who was observing the whole scene from his spot above the fireplace. "You're too charming not to."
"Alright, take it easy," grumbled Milo. "I'm saving myself for a rich princess with huge castle."
"Seriously though, be careful with this toy," warned Chuck. "Do you know who you're impersonating?"
"Um... someone who looks sexier than any man has any right to be?"
"No. Well, yes, but not just that. This is Sir Wulfric Runekeeper, the Right Hand of the Emperor, the Bringer of Justice, the Bane of the Wicked, the Sage Supreme, the Shining Sentinel that Smites the Sinners, the Handsome Hunk of Ham. Okay, I made up that last one. But you get the idea, right?"
"Someone who's close to the very top of this world's hierarchy, someone who has songs written about him, someone who really wouldn't appreciate being impersonated?" Milo guessed.
"You got it," said Chuck. "Someone who would make you live out the rest of your days as an ugly snail or a sorrowful mollusk if you so much as mildly annoyed him. The heroes are not the force you want to mess with, kid, the Light Wizards - even less so. It ended poorly for Alatar, and he was way mightier and more cunning than you are, no offense. "
"Are you sure you aren't exaggerating how eager he'd be to turn me into various invertebrates? Aren't the heroes supposed to be, you know, good?"
"Oh, they're good alright. Noble. Virtuous. And they won't let you forget how much better than you they think they are. And they know better. How to, you know, live your life and such. And they don't hesitate to smite those who disagree. That staff you got there? More than enough to land you in one of their 'redemption' facilities for a few years. Unlicensed magic, you see. Talking to a charming skull such as myself? Add a few more years for cavorting with the undead."
"Noted," gulped Milo, returning his attention to the cloak.
Just like with the runes on his staff, he sensed that he could make the mana flow through the rune on his sleeve in the reverse direction. When he tried it, he felt the patterns inside the cloak begin to readjust, and the man's features started to slowly morph. His hair changed hue, grew darker, his figure started shrinking. His beard grew shorter, his features somewhat softened, his face started looking similar to Milo's. Milo stopped the flow of mana as soon as he realized what was happening - the illusion was shaping to take on his own appearance.
Luckily, he was able to stop quickly enough, since he had no use for an illusion that reproduced his exact appearance. What he saw in the mirror now was a man who looked halfway between Milo and Wulfric Runekeeper. Shorter and younger than Wulfric, in his 20s, still maintaining a strong resemblance to the old wizard, but no longer as obnoxiously handsome and imposing.
"That's better," sighed Milo, "Now there's one less reason for some self-righteous maniac to turn me into a frog. Hmm... So you must wear this cloak for it to learn to duplicate your appearance? How did Alatar even manage to get it to represent Wulfric?"
"And why would he want to keep the appearance of his mortal nemesis?" asked Chuck.
"Oh, come on, that one's obvious. What better way to spy on your enemies than to impersonate them?" Milo realized that he has made a mistake by adjusting the illusion. Being able to disguise as a powerful Light Wizard would've been handy, despite the risks. But now that the cloak's parameters have changed, how would he return it to projecting Wulfric's appearance?
Milo pulled out his notebook, and spent an hour meticulously drawing a diagram of the cloak, recording the shape and intensity of every pattern he was able to sense, so that when needed, he could at least restore the current values.
Once he was done, he decided to risk trying to modify one of the endless patterns woven into the cloak, and attempted to recover his Wulfric disguise. He carefully reshaped one pattern, and watched his left forearm grow longer. He adjusted another one, and noticed that one of his fingernails turned bright green.
He experimented with the other dials, each reshaping a minor aspect of his appearance - the shape of his ankles, the radius of his neck, the height of his cheekbones.
"Character customization screen magic!" exclaimed Milo.
Unfortunately, the patterns were extremely complex and required very fine control, so tweaking his appearance was as difficult as painting a realistic portrait or building a realistic sculpture. He couldn't get even close to restoring Wulfric's appearance. But hey, if he ever needed to look like a deformed, bloated mutant straight from the uncanny valley, he knew what to do.
Eventually, Milo gave up and returned all the settings back to the way they were when he started, representing the younger version of Wulfric. That would have to do.
By that point, the cloak has drained most of his mana reserves, so he deactivated it and decided to stop the experiments until he recovers.
"Thanks for the advice, Chuck. I'll definitely try to avoid meeting any 'heroes' if I can help it. Shouldn't be too hard, this spot seems pretty secluded." Milo said, and mentally cursed himself, instantly recognizing his mistake. Seriously, who says stuff like that and expects to live? I'm not superstitious, but why tempt fate? Ah, whatever, I'm sure even in this crazy world there's no such thing as a jinx.
That's when he heard the familiar frantic banging on his door, and a squeaky goblin voice screaming, "They're coming!"
Milo's heart sank. Of course. "Gee, I wonder who might that be," he sighed.
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